Discipleship and Prayer
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the January 18, 2014
Sabbath School Lesson
“If you believe, you will receive
whatever you ask for in prayer.” Matthew 21:22, NIV
In December,
2013, Smithsonian Magazine published the picture seen here and declared it the
oldest known telephone in the Western Hemisphere.[i]
Constructed of gourds and approximately seventy-five feet of twine, we can only
speculate what this 1200-1400 year old device might have been used for. It was
apparently made by the Chimu people of the Northern Andes who were eventually
conquered by the Incas. There apparently is no indication that the Inca ever
adopted this technology. One cannot help but wonder where we might have been if
there had been an unbroken line of innovation traceable back to this ancient
instrument.
Communication
over distances has been a challenge throughout history. Whether we used signal
fires, semaphore flags or horseback couriers as in the past or smart phones,
e-mail and social media as we do today. The effort to approach instantaneous
communication, without degradation, over vast distances is the holy grail of communication
inventors. As we approach closer to that goal, we find the weak link is more
likely to be the humans doing the communicating. Who hasn’t been told, “I didn’t
get your e-mail?” And who hasn’t called
a phone that we know is with the call recipient at all times only to go directly
to voicemail every time? We may have the technology to provide almost instant
communication, but it cannot guarantee that every call will be welcomed.
Biblically,
instantaneous communication is apparently nothing new. When Daniel was praying
to God, the angel, Gabriel, appeared to him and told Daniel that when he began
to pray, he was sent to bring Daniel a special message.[ii]
Even if Gabriel had only been in the next town, the rapidity with which the
message was delivered in response to the prayer would have astounded the
ancient Hebrews. However, if the angel had been in heaven and heaven was
assumed to be out somewhere in space or beyond, the speed of response would
have been mind boggling. Of course this might be no great trick for a
transcendent God. A God who is everywhere every time would probably find the
idea of being constrained by the linear flow of time in any way ludicrous. We
might say, “Yes, this is true of God, but Gabriel is an angel and not God.” But
perhaps, we are overlooking a basic principle of how our universe operates.
As the
Apostle Paul is reported to have stated when quoting the Cretan philosopher
Epimenides, “in him we live and move and have our being.”[iii]
Again, he wrote in his letter to the Philippians, “…it is God who works in you
to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”[iv]
Perhaps if the active agent sustaining the universe is a God who transcends the
limitations of time and space, then those who are wholly dependent upon Him
have available through Him ability that challenges our comprehension. Possibly
they might have the ability to step from one dimension to the next as easily as
you or I might walk through a door. Perhaps such abilities beyond our
perception may be why Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small
as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and
it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”[v]
Of course,
Jesus’ words regarding the mountain may be taken literally or seen as metaphor.
But even with a metaphorical mountain, the summation that “Nothing will be
impossible for you,” leaves little room for symbolism. “Nothing” is usually not
interpreted to mean “some things,” no matter how much we may desire to avoid a
literal understanding. But this begs the question, “If the prayer of faith has
such awesome properties, why aren’t we seeing mountains moving right and left
all over the place? Could it be that, once again, we are overlooking how the
universe operates?
While it is
true that some will see the failure to move mountains around as a reason to
deny that there really is a God, they may be as guilty of black-and-white,
absolutist thinking as some Christians at times tend to be. Such thinking can
be a barrier to allowing for possibilities beyond the threshold of our understanding.
It also implies that God is finite, easily defined and therefore subject to
scientific methodology that can prove or disprove His existence. While we may
choose to define God in this manner, it only serves the purpose of allowing our
“straw man” to be summarily dismissed based not on observed reality but on a
construct of our making. But if God exists beyond our perception or
understanding then we had all better hedge our bets as we cannot logically dismiss
that which we cannot perceive or understand.
Returning
more specifically to communication, some might say regarding God that since
they prayed to Him and did not observe an answer to their prayer (i.e. moved a
mountain), He does not exist. Some
Christians may glibly reply, “Yes, He did. The answer was simply ‘No.’” But
that is just as presumptuous as the one who says there was no answer. On the
one hand, the former might be better off to say, “I saw no answer,” than to say
there was none. This acknowledges that there may be things beyond our
perception, which we already know scientifically to not only be possible but
likely given the finiteness of our knowledge and understanding.
On the other
hand, the Christian response implies a perfect perception of all possible
divine responses. However, a scientist might be able to share how difficult that
is to accomplish at times even in a controlled environment. As for the Christian
response, they may be speaking of a lesser god that can always be understood
and interpreted to their liking. When faced with a crisis that they do not
understand, they will find how little comfort such a god can be in the face of heartache
and loss.
There is
nothing facile about prayer. It can be rather a conundrum even for the
Christian who asserts its effectiveness. For instance, if God is all-knowing,
why do we need to pray to such a deity? Wouldn’t He already know what we were
going to pray even before we said it? And if Jesus was/is God, why did He pray?
Was He talking to Himself? Logically these things don’t make sense, and perhaps
this is a reason why some find it hard to take Christians seriously. Yet, once
again, both Christians and their opponents approach these things with
assumptions implying that they see the entirety of the situation for what it
is.
On a
fundamental level, we may see prayer as communication. However, could prayer be
something that, like God, transcends understanding? Perhaps even the word “communication”
is inadequate to define prayer. We may be able to begin to get an understanding
of how that could be when we look at simple oral communication. In such a
process, we have a speaker and a listener. The speaker speaks and the listener
hears the words. This is one-way communication. Dialogue occurs when both
participants alternatively play both roles. However, what happens when we
include other facets, such as body language. The communication can quickly
become more complicated. We can even send conflicting messages by saying one
thing and indicating the opposite with our body posture. This is only
communicating on two levels. If communication can become so difficult to
understand at this basic level, what happens if we are using a method of
communication that transcends every level of our understanding? Perhaps that is
what happens with prayer.
The Bible
hints at that possibility. Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Romans, “…the
Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but
the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”[vi]
Perhaps where we stand now, we are unable to communicate adequately on every
level and only divine assistance is capable of overcoming that lack. Maybe it
is like a tribal villager whose child is sick and goes door-to-door in the
village, but all their pleading is useless as no one else has what he needs to
help the child either. Then someone shows up in the village with a satellite
phone, something the villagers have neither seen nor owned, and a call is
placed for medical assistance and the child is saved. The person with the phone
made up what the villagers lacked.
While this
illustration is a rather poor attempt to show that what we need for prayer may
be outside our understanding, it should not be understood to be saying that
every prayer will provide the equivalent of the person with the satellite
phone. That would be arrogance on my part, for it would imply that my
understanding of prayer was authoritative. It is not. I can no more guarantee
efficacious prayer than anyone else.
Do I pray?
Yes, and I do so regularly. Why? I do so for two reasons. First, I pray because
Jesus did. If He was/is divine that implies a perception that transcends any
that I might have, and if with that enhanced perception, He still felt it
necessary to pray, perhaps it would be good for me as well. Perhaps this is
what is meant by the phrase “prayer of faith.” Second, I pray because when I
deal with life each day, I must admit that there are things and events that are
beyond my ability to deal with. Whether perceived to be efficacious or not, prayer
allows me to feel as though I am participating in a solution rather than
endorsing the problem.
While prayer
can be a way of avoiding confronting problems that we can deal with without it,
it doesn’t have to be. In fact, when we use prayer in this way, we may be
abdicating our responsibility for making things right in the very troubled
world we live in. Perhaps we should pray, but we may also need to advocate in
other ways as well for changes to the problems that confront us. Maybe prayer
will give us the strength and courage to do that.
