Piano Lessons

Mark 6:45-46 says, “Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side to Bethsaida, while He Himself was sending the crowd away. 46 After bidding them farewell, He left for the mountain to pray.”

Prayer. Everyone knows it’s important, or at least has heard that it is. This may be different for you, but for me, it is so hard to pray. It’s like practicing the piano when I was younger. It was something I had to do or my mother would make me pay for the lesson. It is something I feel huge pressure forcing me to do it.

With prayer, it’s the same thing. I don’t really enjoy it, except for sometimes when I feel like I really get connected with Christ. It’s like those times when I get a tune right, or the right hand is doing exactly what I want it to on the keys. I guess the hard part is praying when you don’t, in a sense, get the notes right.

I’m not saying I am praying for the wrong things. In fact, one-way of looking at Philippians 4:6, which says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God,” there are no wrong things to be prayed for, but your heart can be in a wrong place. The verse says with thanksgiving.

Throughout the Psalms, you can see the waywardness of David’s heart. You can understand his emotion and his problems with the world. Why does he write all of this down? I believe so that we can know that we should bring everything to the Lord in prayer. If you look at David’s psalms, you will see that He always gives glory to God and says that He is the ruler of all or just names His greatness. This is a heart with thanksgiving.

One reason I write about this is because sometimes it’s hard to get alone and away to pray. Some people do it in the mornings, some in midday, some at night. People say you should pray in the morning to start your day off right. Some say the night because you can recap all the things that happened and praise God for the things you saw Him do. The truth is pray all the time, without ceasing.

The only man I ever met who has really taken this to heart, and you could see the effects of it, was a man named Joe. We were walking across campus at the college when he saw a lady with a cast. Soon after we passed her, he turned around and offered to pray for her arm. I was so tempted to leave and go on to our meeting that we were headed to, but I wanted to watch and see what was going to happen.

He prayed over it, and he showed the lady love by just talking and praying with her. She began to cry, her heart touched by this random act of kindness. I asked him later how he knew that he was supposed to pray for her. He said to me, “The Bible says pray without ceasing, and I just felt like that was the right thing to do.”

Now we are called to pray without ceasing, but that does not mean we are suppose to give our time that we could be spending in prayer to worthless things. Jesus was in complete communion with God, and He still went to be alone with Him on the mountain.

The last thing I want you to see prayer as is a legalist idea, something you must do. It then becomes much like learning the piano at a young age. However, it’s something you’re going to have to push through. Because I took piano at such a young age, I learned so much about the fundamentals of music. However, I majorly lacked in inspiration. I had no one to look up to and say, “I want to be like you.”

Praying should be something that we enjoy, that we just love doing. After piano lessons, I decided to move on with music and pursued drums, guitar, and then the piano again. I feel in love with music. In the same way, we should fall in love with praying. However, for some people, this could take years of “beginner’s lessons”, but for some it may only take a day.

Practice Practice Practice – Forsake All