My Testimony.

Today, I can’t help sharing the great, wonderful feeling that has enveloped me in the past several months. It’s about my church attendance. For many years in Gods’ own country, I stayed away from churches. In all those years though, it wasn’t like Jesus and I were quarreling. Actually, I remained in constant communication with Him, except that it was just me and my God. And somehow, I felt at ease and at peace with myself. My wife however would not let me be with her preaching on the importance of fellowship…blah…blah.

So, I woke up one Sunday and decided to resume church-attendance in America. From that day though, I discovered that I was not feeling at ease any more in spite of having many smiling faces around me. Soon, going to church was like being dragged to a place I didn’t want to be, until I finally stopped. Then, I began to change churches. Unfortunately, the feeling was the same everywhere I went. I was beginning to think the problem was with me in view of my strange “extra-sensory perception” (ESP). I’m one of the very few individuals that can see and feel beyond smiling faces. And there were times when I wished I was like my wife who could, at will, turn off her “antennae". By so doing, she sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil.

I was about giving up when a friend suggested a church. Skeptically, I went visiting the place one Sunday. And…boom…I did not just feel much at ease, I actually fell in love with the church. For the first time in years, I’m always looking forward to be in church. Now, like a dream, I’m attending a church where the accumulated stress and pressures (from work and life’s tribulations) disappear as soon as I walk in. And after each service, I leave the church feeling exhilarated with a new supply of vigor and freshness. This is amazing.

The Only Prayer You'll Ever Need.

At the Stanford University's Memorial Church last Monday, Oprah Winfrey was reported to have educated the audience on what it meant to live a meaningful life.



Asking the more than 1,000 members of the audience to close their eyes, the media mogul encouraged them to breathe and feel the pulse of their personal energy.

"Open your heart and quietly to yourself say the only prayer that's ever needed: Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said. "You're still here. You get another chance this day to do better and be better, another chance to become more of who you were created and what you're created to fulfill. Thank you. Amen."

Oprah Winfrey was there to deliver an annual lecture in honor of the late Professor Harry Rathburn, a former faculty member at Stanford Law School. She went on to give students a glimpse of the earliest parts of her spiritual formation, back when she was a child attending Sunday school classes in rural Mississippi.

That’s it! I am in total agreement with Oprah. The only prayer we’ll ever need is a prayer of thanksgiving. All God needs from us is a heart of gratitude. Therefore, there is no point in delivering long speeches to God in the name of prayers. At the end of the day, those verbal epistles rarely contain one word of thanks but a long list of demands.