Stephen
Terry, Director
Prayer Power: Interceding for Others
Commentary
for the July 25, 2020 Sabbath School Lesson
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you." Matthew 7:7, NIV
As a young man, I became convinced that prayer was
a matter of appeasement, and if I did not do it right, God would not be pleased
with me and would ignore my prayers. I tried to make sure I was doing everything
right. Like a magician's apprentice learning to properly cast spells, I had to
make sure my hands and my body were properly positioned, and the right series
of words were uttered. I believed this was how to ensure success with my
petitions. However, the results were underwhelming at best and nonexistent at
worst. Because of my perspective and pride that I was right, instead of
questioning my approach, I simply sought for parts of the magic that I was
missing. This caused me to go through a period when I thought the key was to
pray on my knees and never stand during prayer, whether offered by myself or
others. I was reminded of this period when I witnessed another young pastor get
on his knees at the pulpit for prayer recently. I hope his success in prayer is
better than what I found. The position made no difference for me. The results
were the same. This does not mean that I did not experience spectacular miracles
and answers to prayer, only that those answers did not depend on the position of
my body or the formulaic words spoken. I discovered an answer eventually that
worked for me, but not before going through some difficult times.
As Christians, our experience with church tends to
be more didactic than dialectical. Someone stands up front and pontificates to
the rest of the congregation about how things are to be done. There is
typically no dialogue, no asking of "What did you mean by that?"
or "How is that to be applied in my life?" For some, this is a difficult environment to grow
spiritually in. It can also be dangerous, for the speaker may be poorly qualified
to instruct others, not having found a valid spiritual path themselves.
However, I was able to fully plug into this as I was raised in a home with an alcoholic
father, and I learned early on that life was a matter of keeping him appeased
to avoid his wrath. Therefore, if God was our father, I knew exactly what the relationship called for. I was fully
attuned to anything the speaker might say that would tell me how to appease
God, just like I had sought to appease my father. And although I learned later,
they were not the result of any appeasement on my part, enough apparent miracles
and answers to prayer took place that I felt validated in this appeasement
approach. As a Seventh-day Adventist, I included with this package of formulaic
obedience strict Sabbath observance, tithe paying, and sending my son to
parochial school. This was my practice for many years. But also, during that
time, a situation was developing that would challenge all of that.
During my first year of pastoring with several churches
in the U.S. Midwest, my first wife was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. This
became a matter of persevering prayer for me and many church members. But despite
those prayers, she continued to worsen. Eventually, I had to make the difficult
decision to leave the ministry to care for her needs. We struggled for years,
and while the church was supportive in several ways, it was also difficult.
Employment offers from the church were rescinded when they discovered my wife
was disabled. Student loans held by my Adventist college were turned over to
collections rather than attempting to compassionately help us in our need. I
learned the value of that college degree in practical terms when I sought secular
employment to support my family. The saying that if you have a dollar and a theology
degree, then you have enough to buy a soda seemed all too true. But despite all
of that, I struggled to remain faithful, believing that a stern God expected
obedience, no matter what abuse we might endure. And if not for my sake, at
least for the hope of my wife's healing, I had to do all I could to carry on.
We fell behind on rent, instead paying thousands in tithes, offerings, and
parochial school tuition. Perhaps in recognition of the amounts I was paying,
the church placed me in positions of leadership in the local church and the
school board. Although I feel I served those positions well, they also brought me
deeper into the idea that obedience was necessary to appease God and be saved.
Before, my perspective on God and the weekly sermon were the only ecclesiastical
sources of that pressure, but when I occupied those leadership positions, I discovered
that it created the possibility of censure by others caught in the same appeasement
struggle if my obedience was not constantly on display and verifiable.
Things came to a head as my wife worsened. As we
are taught in the book of James,[i]
we gathered the elders of the church to anoint her and pray over her. She was
not healed, but instead, steadily worsened and died a tragic death that even
today, many years later, it pains me to think about. Some might say that our
faith was inadequate. However, James also states that our faith is demonstrated
by our works, not our words. Obedience seemed to be key again to appease God to
the point that he would grant healing. I had tried to be obedient to a fault,
and my wife was perhaps even more so, being raised in the church, brought up
through the parochial school system, and strongly influenced by a family with
conservative religious values. How much more is required to finally get God to intercede
compassionately for us in the face of prolonged suffering? This crisis of faith
meant that I needed to search for answers that had eluded me for years. Instead
of seeking answers from the church, I took the matter directly to God.
In the book of Isaiah, in the King James Version,
God says "Come now, and let us reason together..."[ii]
and in Malachi, God says, "Prove me now...,"[iii]
specifically in the context of tithe paying. Since I had been paying tithe
faithfully for decades and continued to struggle, and was not seeing the
overflowing blessings promised, the only test I could make was to cease paying
it. I did this several times, off and on, over the next few years, and saw no
difference between times I was tithing and times I was not other than finally
being able to cover all my obligations for utilities, housing, etc. It also freed
up funds to support missionary activities that had previously gone to support a
vast, multi-layered administrative network that spanned the globe and seemed ever
more interested in using that administrative authority to impose more and more
control over the local churches and less and less for the purpose of introducing
others to Christ. I was also set free from niggardliness in my relationship
with God, worrying about things like whether I should tithe on the gross, even
though I never see all of that money, or on the net, which would mean I would
not have such a big bite out of my income. Those discussions can get incredibly
involved and can delve right down to the "mint and cumin" of things.[iv]
The minutiae of obedience can be a heavy burden we lade ourselves with. But
Jesus says he sets us free from burdens,[v]
so maybe it should not be surprising if we do not find peace.
This test encouraged me to try other approaches to
my relationship to God. One of the discoveries I made was that God does not seek
to establish an appeasement relationship with us. If that were the case, there
is nothing we can offer him to accomplish that.[vi]
If our obedience could in any way restore our relationship with God, Jesus
would not have had to die. In fact, every claim that our obedience appeases God
in some way negates the efficacy of that sacrifice by Christ, asserting that it
is not enough to open the door to salvation. We too often take the strait gate
and make it ever more strait with our denominational demand to embrace appeasement
theology. That kind of theology opens the door for ridiculous boasting that
implies that because a wealthy parishioner is able to pay a double or triple
tithe out of their abundance they are somehow walking in the graces of God that
the poor and disabled can never achieve. They would be the first to tell the
widow who contributed her mite that, nice as the gift is, it is not enough. She
needs to be on a systematic giving plan and commit to regular contributions to
the church budget. That is the problem with appeasement. It always asks for
more and more by implying that whatever we offer must somehow be lacking if we
are not experiencing the prosperity that Malachi promised.
What I have discovered is that God is not some
hoary entity, sitting on a throne atop the pile of our offerings and sacrifices,
gloating over the loyalty of the wealthy who give so much to the church. No,
that is man's perspective. We should have learned the falsity of that from
observing Jesus' life here on earth. He was continually accused of
disobedience. Imagine that, accusing God of disobedience to his will. He was
the truest revelation of God's will through his compassion for the poor and the
sick, and his rebuke of the indifference of the wealthy to those struggling
just to survive around them. I discovered that God is not seeking to judge us
over our obedience.[vii] Instead, he is seeking
to save us from the untoward consequences of some of our choices, consequences
that increase suffering and oppression. To that end, he simply wants to restore
what we had in the beginning, to walk and talk with us.[viii]
I can almost hear the tears in his voice when that relationship was broken, and
he cried out to Adam and Eve, "Where are you?". What joy that will be for us
and him when it is fully restored. That is all prayer is, building the
restoration of what we had where we can once again walk and talk with God as a
close friend, with love and open hearts. And sometimes the best response to
what we tell him is not be a heavenly vending machine full of answers to
prayer, but to weep with our heartbreaks or rejoice with our happiness. Have
you lost a loved one? He knows what that is like. Have others betrayed you? He
knows that as well. Have some taken what little you have for themselves? He has
been treated the same. Have others given you a public beating? They did it to
him, too. He was hurt in every way, and he wants to hear about our experience,
share our sorrows, and speak hope and healing into our hearts. All we need do
is talk to him and tell him about it. He will be happy to listen.
