When I was little my mother tried to teach me to play piano. She could not understand why little boys would rather play outside in the mud. She decided because she was unable to focus my attention on it that I had no musical ability.
My grandmother played the saxophone until she was well into her eighties. When my mother was twelve they bought her a tenor saxophone. I begged them to allow me to play it in band when I became old enough. Because she believed I had no ability I was denied. Several years later my grandparents came for a visit bringing with them an old saxophone that my grandfather had played before they were married. Until that time I did not know that he had ever played. This gave Mother the necessary push to try to teach me. She began to show me the basics and taught a couple simple songs. I would often sit down with a hymnal and just try to play the songs I knew. I finally reached the point I could play about any song as long as I played them in F or C. I had also started playing guitar by this time. I took my sax to church and would stuff a towel in the bell and if the song was in one of the two keys I could play in I would play it otherwise I would play my guitar. Now after over 40 years of playing the towel has been replaced by a microphone.
A few years ago when I started Sunday school class I carried my sax (the one my grandparents bought for my mom when she was 12) to the podium. I demonstrated where to place your fingers to play a scale and played a scale for them. Afterward I informed them that they would each be asked to get up during morning worship and play the scale. They looked at me like I had lost my marbles (not an unusual occurrence) but I insisted that was to be the order of the service. They informed me they could not do it. “Why?” I asked, “I have shown you all you need to know.”
“Because we have not practiced,” was the reply. I then reached into my briefcase and pulled out the notes from a seminar that had been taught at the church on prayer. “On such and such date,” I told them, “we had a week-long seminar on prayer. I began to litter the front pew with tapes and CD’s of messages that had been preached at the church on prayer reading the title, date, and speaker.
“Today’s lesson was to be on prayer,“ I said, “the truth is, we do not need more teaching on prayer, we need more practice!” It is important that we understand the theology and doctrine of prayer but all of the study in the world is to no avail is we do not practice. Far too often we spend our time discussing the mechanics and methods of prayer but we never actually get around to spending the time alone with God.
If the church is to ever be all that God intends for us to be we must move beyond theory and put it into practice. In other words practice, practice, practice.
PRAY, PRAY, PRAY!