on stamina

A good friend of mine is a musician in a worship band. Recently he shared with me that the worship leader would strum a little at the end of a song, trying to push the limits of a song when there are no more notes on the page. This seemed to be a concept that the rest of the team was challenged with at first, because once the song is done, naturally the playing is done. What the leader wanted was for the band to develop the ability to continue playing when the sheet music is done. It's this act of stamina that impressed my friend, and me when he told me.

This principle of stamina was applied later during a prayer evening at church where we had a very informal night of encouragement with each other. What was brought up was the idea that when we get into a habit of praying regularly, consistently, we enable ourselves to go for longer periods of time. How can someone who spends little to no time praying expect to pray for an hour?

I really like how this principle of stamina can be applied to anything in life, and particularly to things of spiritual worth. I thought of using the phrase "prayer takes practice", but as a friend pointed out to me it may suggest that "practice makes perfect", and therefore there is a state where you can achieve perfect prayer. Instead I prefer to call it "training". Stamina builds as we continue to train, because through training we don't meet a level of perfection - but we are better today than we were yesterday.

Considering this principle gave me a fresh perspective on pushing the limits of what we do and why we do it. The motivation can begin with passion, but it's our stamina that helps keep us pursuing those passions with such zeal.