Stephen
Terry, Director
Practical
Prayer
Commentary
for the May 16, 2026, Sabbath School Lesson
"The
Lord said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.' Then a
great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before
the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an
earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a
fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle
whisper." 1 Kings 19:11-12
The voice of God is as gentle as
the kiss of a butterfly. This is a hard truth for us to accept. We do not want
gentle gods. Throughout our history we have created pantheons that mirrored our
worst traits. We worshipped gods like Zeus who raped mortal women, leaving
demigods as offspring struggling to understand who and what they were. (Genesis
6:4) Other gods, like Mars glorified the bloodshed of warfare and
vengeance. Relationships founded on betrayal rather than love were the rule in
these pagan pantheons. Those who claim the favor of the gods did their best to
mirror these attributes. They brought much suffering to the world, not only to
humanity but to the flora and fauna of creation. The abuse has not ceased even to
the present day. The world has been filled with woes. The list of evils is so
long this commentary cannot even begin to catalogue the resulting injuries to creation.
The Bible tells us that there was a time when the wickedness became so great,
God regretted creating humanity. (Genesis
6:5-6)
Imagine how much that must have
broken his heart. Humanity had been created in God's image. (Genesis
1:27) That image was to be the expression of God's love to all of Creation.
(1
John 4:8) God does not withhold his love from anyone, even those who hate
him. (Matthew
5:44-45) Jesus called us to do the same. (Matthew
5:48) We are called not to the perfection of obedience to denominationally
derived dogmas but rather to the perfection of love for God and for humanity,
all of humanity. Jesus did not seek to delineate whom he would die for before committing
himself to the cross, he gave his life for all, even when we had chosen to be
enemies of God. (Romans
5:8,10), (Cf.
John 3:16-17) We are told that the wickedness of Genesis, chapter 6 will recur.
(Matthew
24:37) Evil will increase to the point that humanity will live in constant
fear engendered by that evil, but the one who manages to continue to live as
the loving image of God we were created to be will be saved. (Matthew
24:12-13)
Unfortunately, we seek a god who
will avenge us on our enemies. Even the Bible is rife with that idea. Instead
of lamenting the tremendous loss of life as evil plays out its agenda on the world
stage and reaches the ultimate end evil always comes to, we are tempted to
shout "Amen! Punish them God!" Instead of Jesus giving up his life to save as
much of humanity as he possibly can through his righteous sacrifice, we would
rather God destroy all of humanity if only to save our singular unloving self
from the pyre of vengeance. We would be happy to light that flame in vengeance
for all the suffering the earth has endured. But in doing so we condemn
ourselves and reveal what is in our hearts is not the image of God, but only
hardened stone, stone that God would have us lose. However, we must seek to
live in the image we were created to live in, the image of God's love. If we
do, he will soften those hearts and restore them to his creative intent. (Ezekiel
36:26) Despite all the evil he did in his life, including murdering Uriah
and raping Uriah's wife Bathsheba, God loved King David, and David repented and
sought that heart restoration that God offers. (Psalm
51) In prayer, he asked, "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a
steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy
Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing
spirit, to sustain me." Because of this willingness to repent of his evil path
and to allow God to remake his heart, David was called a man after God's own
heart. (Acts
13:22) He understood the image we were created to bear and sought it. He
recognized he had not achieved it and could only do so through God's
intervention and creative power.
In Eden, mankind could walk and
talk with God face to face. That is hard to imagine. When Moses came into the
tabernacle in the wilderness, he had to cover his face with a veil when he came
back out as it was so bright people could not look at him. (Exodus
34:29-35) Generations after Adam, we are told that Enoch walked with God
and eventually went home with him. What a precious opportunity it must have
been to still be able to be in God's presence and experience that love without
recoiling from the brightness of such purity of character. Now, instead of that
experience, we have the opportunity for prayer. It is a poor substitute for the
communication we had earlier and is often abused. Some make a noisy show of
public prayer as if to demonstrate that they have a relationship with God that
others do not, despite having no shining face or need for a veil to cover their
reflection of God's glory. I often wonder what God thinks of those who put on
such a show. Public prayer says nothing about our relationship with God. When
Solomon dedicated the temple, his prayer was before all the people and
accompanied by a host of sacrifices. Nonetheless, his heart was not open to God
as his father David's was, and he followed the gods of his pagan wives. That
influence bedeviled the Israelites until the Babylonian captivity and created a
fissure between the ten northern tribes and those who remained loyal to
Jerusalem.
Prayer is intensely personal and
we should not seek to magnify our relationship to God through public prayer
demonstrations. A flowery prayer made publicly is no more effective than the
prayer of those who pray privately and may even be less so if our minds are
filled with concerns about what others are thinking about our prayer. Some
might feel it is a witness for their faith. But if that is our witness, it is not
an effective one when compared with the witness of a loving heart that brings
hope and support to those who are in need. It is possible to get so caught up
in acting righteously that we lose sight of the more pressing need to be humbly
loving. We can get caught up in dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" of a
lengthy list of doctrinal rules and never once ask ourselves if there is enough
evidence to convict us of being loving.
We live in a world where power
is expressed by inculcating fear in others and then using that fear to
manipulate them into submitting to our will. This happens both within and
without the church. We teach others that is how God is by claiming to follow
him and acting like that. We make our Jesus the Jesus who would drive people
from his temple with whips. This is a god many prefer because he acts like we
think we would in similar circumstances. In fact, we have become quite good at
driving others from holy precincts because they do not conform to our understanding
of the character of God. But Jesus said he would draw people to him. (John
12:32) Only love can draw others like that. There is no place for fear in
our relationship with others, nor with God, if we open our hearts to him. As
John said, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because
fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
(1 John 4:18) Our desire to make others fearful to drive them to God makes it
impossible for them to enter a love relationship with God. Instead of living in
the joy of his love, they live in fear of punishment if they do not measure up
in the judgment, negating the fulness of salvation available through Christ.
Prayer becomes the practical means of bypassing all those induced fears and receiving
grace directly from God. We tend to measure the effectiveness of prayer and
even the existence of God by whether our prayers are answered tangibly. But
such prayers do not gain us entrance to paradise. It is the praying man or
woman who in personal communication with God discovers that over the years communication
through prayer has led them to be more loving, kind, and caring. That change is
not manifested in how often we attend church, what clothes we wear, what car we
drive, what committees and boards we participate in. Instead, it can be seen through
the love in our eyes shining forth from our hearts that we have been with God.
Unless private, personal prayer changes us to be more like the loving image of
God we were meant to be, we would be no worse off if we never prayed at all.