Diary of a trying Christian

The just ended Hallelujah challenge started on the 15^th of October 2024. It was for about 14 days. I remember Faridah sending me the link every day at exactly 12:00am and blowing my phone up with calls to make sure I woke up to join. I did. Every single day.

I looked forward to the worship, praise and prayers every day. I was excited. I was in the zone! Doing the very most to make sure I caught some hours of sleep and waking up at midnight to join and pray with the Hallelujah challenge.

I remember all of us being so excited and awakened in the Spirit, speaking about our experiences and encounters for hours the next day.

I thought to myself during the challenge, “this is the new me!” with so much excitement and enthusiasm. I will wake up everyday at 12:00 to pray from here on out. I wont let this fire die.

The challenge ended around the 29^th of October if I’m not mistaken.

The first dawn after the end of the challenge, I remember vaguely waking up and staying up about 15 minutes and going back to sleep. Eeeii, me that joined and prayed with Pastor Nat  for hours.

Okay, day 2. I don’t even think I managed to wake up at dawn for the next week to come. 

After about 2 weeks of constant sleep and no prayer, I revised my strategy. I set my alarm to wake at 4:00am to pray and then let my day continue from there.  **hahaha

The sleep  that continued  was a wonder. The alarm would go off, I would turn it off and readjust my sleeping position.

Some thing that the Holy Spirit is revealing to me as I type now is:

1. I was trying to do it on my own without the Strength of God. I wasn’t waking up to pray to maintain that spiritual momentum. It was more of pleasing/ satisfying my own ‘Christian mind’ that I was doing it so I don’t feel guilty about the encounters and experiences I had during the challenge.

I was jumping from 5 to 50. Let me explain. We all know our individual capacities in faith. And just like anything and everything, this capacity grows the more we nurture it. Most often than not, we have some encounters by virtue of the anointing of the atmosphere we are in, and with that we assume that we have arrived. We don’t take time to nurture our Christian walk with God.

By now, a few of you have set alarms telling yourself you will wake up at 12 or 1 or 2 to pray for 2 hours. But the truth is your capacity is about a good 20 minutes of prayers and you are maxed out. This makes the 2 hour goal look so herculean that you don’t even wake up at all to pray. You are discouraged from the start because although you have it in your heart to do it, you don’t have the mental and spiritual capacity. So why don’t you start with the 20 minutes? 10, 15, 20 minutes of prayer is way better than no prayer at all.

Does it have to be 12:00am everyday? Not at all. With my experience as being a new mom, my small madam has her own alarm. She can wake up when I’m about sneaking off to start my spiritual time and there is nothing I can do about it. Singing and worshiping with her wont put her to sleep any faster. I have to cuddle up, rock her back and forth and put her back to sleep.  And this will set my time off, but that’s okay. God knows. He is there watching me all this while.

My point is, being in his presence, is not a rigid exercise that has to be fit at a particular part of the day for a specific period so much so that if it fails to happen that exact moment, then it means its not worthy of happening at all.

It’s the earnestness of the session that matters.

I wanted this to be short so I’ll stop here for today. But you get  me right? Go easy (with reverence), go consistent.