A Man of Prayer
by Oliver Carlos
There are so many ways on how we remember best the late Felix B. Tamolang. For me, growing up as his nephew who lived next-door, I can tell countless stories about him. I can even write a hundred blogs just about him.
When I was a kid, he’s the Atoy Co look-alike and play-alike who would always defeat me badly in our pick-up games at our yard’s basketball court. Later, I see him as the millennial James Bond. He would always have the most updated, and highest-end gadgets, like cellphones, laptops, camcorders, video players, television sets, and cars. He wanted his stuff to have a special function or a hi-tech ability. He once had a talking wristwatch that you can verbally ask any Philippine History question, and it would always tell you the correct answer. Meanwhile, his latest car had a hologram speedometer.
But the best description I can give about my Uncle Felix is that he’s a man of prayer. He just loved to pray. He prayed all the time. He doesn’t have a prayer life, he had a life of prayer. “Prayer life” connotes that prayer is just one of the many compartments of one’s life, but “life of prayer” means, your whole life, every compartment there is, is consumed in prayer. That’s Uncle Felix.
When he became a pastor of our church in the early 2000s, the first order of the day was to make our church a praying church. He wanted prayer to be the specialty of the house, just like what Isaiah 56:7 (NIV) says:
“I will…give them joy in my house of prayer…for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
He introduced the practice of having weekly prayer meetings in every household. The youth group of the church which we call SWAP (Students with a Purpose) also held our version of a prayer meeting. We had a regular SYPA. It’s an acronym which means Swap Your Problems Away. We young people truly enjoyed God’s presence and we also had a great time praying together in those years. We prayed for one another, we prayed for our church leaders, we prayed for the nation, we prayed for the Good News to spread everywhere. Prayer was so sweet.
Pastor Felix practiced what he preached. In our clan gatherings such as birthdays, anniversaries, dedications, and holiday celebrations, he would always lead the prayer before the meal. He would lay his hands on the ones celebrating the special day. He would pray for more blessings to come to that person.
When somebody in the family gets sick, he would pray over that relative. The last time uncle Felix prayed for me was last New Year’s Day of 2021. I was at my parent’s house in Los Banos that week to celebrate the holiday. As I was dressing up for the New Year lunch party and clan reunion, my lower back twitched and I instantly fell on the floor. This is a chronic problem of mine. My wife helped me on my feet, and my mother rushed next door to call Uncle Felix. He arrived quickly and prayed over me. I felt my uncle’s sincerity along with God’s love and concern for me at that moment.
If there’s one thing God is teaching us as we look back at Felix’s life, that lesson is we can be a man or a woman of prayer just like his servant. It is possible, it is attainable. Each and every one of us doesn’t need to be a super celebrity Christian just to be a prayerful person. Pastor Felix is no extraordinary zip-zapping geek, he’s as human as you and me. I’ve seen him every day of my growing years in our compound in Los Banos, and I can attest to the fact that he’s as regular as anyone of us.
The Bible encourages every believer to be prayerful. We read in James 5:17–18 (ERV):
“Elijah was a person just like us. He prayed that it would not rain. And it did not rain on the land for three and a half years! Then Elijah prayed that it would rain. And the rain came down from the sky, and the land grew crops again.”
In this passage, a couple of miracles happened when Elijah prayed. This is not because Elijah was great, but it is because the God whom he prayed to was great. Elijah was ordinary, God is extra-ordinary. We ordinary people can experience God’s awesome power if we just learn to pray to him and him alone. So beginning today, let us pray with joy and zeal in our hearts, to the one and only prayer-answering God.
