Lesson 7: “Practical Prayer”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Adventist—what is the purpose of prayer in your life and in your church life? How do you make it “personal”, and what does it mean to talk to God as to a friend, as Ellen White instructs? Does prayer feel intimate to you, and are your prayers are answered? What stands in your way of praying effectively?
Three Examples
The lesson presents three Bible characters as examples of “practical prayer”: Hannah, Elijah, and Daniel. The way these people are explained is the way I learned to understand them when I was an Adventist. The recorded prayers of these three are taught superficially as formulas for addressing God. The context and the people’s trust in God’s sovereign faithfulness are not the primary focus. The recurring theme in these studies is that WE must focus on fixing our attitudes of trust and steadfastness by talking to God about them.
In order to address the underlying Adventist worldview that drives the way Adventists understand prayer, we will look especially at three things in this week’s lessons. First, we will go behind the scene and examine Elijah’s flight to Mt. Horeb and his conversation with God there. Second, we will look at the underlying expectation that Ellen White gives the most practical advice about prayer, and lastly we will examine some of the revealing approaches from the Teachers Comments that interpret the Lord’s Prayer through Ellen White’s moralizing worldview that misses the Lord’s reminder to trust God.
Elijah on Mt. Horeb
Sundays lesson addresses Elijah’s fear and depression after his victory over the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel. The study summarizes the account from 1 Kings 19 this way:
What is so striking about this story is that, although Elijah gave in to despondency and discouragement, God came to him in tenderness and care, providing food and water again (1 Kings 19:5, 6)—so much so that he lasted for 40 days and 40 nights (1 Kings 19:8). And when God finally revealed Himself, it was in a very different manner than He had before.
Sometimes in our lives, God answers in very direct, powerful, and undeniable ways. This strengthens our faith, and we feel the closeness of God in our lives.
Other times we waver and give in to temptation, thinking that it’s too hard to follow God with unswerving faith. We look for God’s answers in ways we expect Him to respond, not realizing that His thoughts and ways are far higher and wiser than our own (Isa. 55:8, 9).
The Teachers Comments spend more time with this account, yet just as I remembered from being in Adventism, the emphasis was on the “still, small voice” and not in the forces of nature that preceded the soft whisper. I missed the comparison with Moses on that same mountain, and I failed to see the contrast between Elijah’s lack of faith with Moses’ intercession for sinful Israel. Most of all, I missed, as does this lesson, God’s revelation of His own sovereign timing and dealings with His people. The Teachers Comments say:
Unexpectedly, Elijah hears only “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). The Hebrew phrase qol demamah daqah means literally: “the voice of a thin silence.” Only then does Elijah understand that he is in God’s presence (1 Kings 19:13). The sensational sound of fire and rain were miracles that demonstrated God’s power. But even more than these sonorous phenomena, the voice of God’s silence is heard as the most obvious manifestation of His presence and as a resounding proclamation of divine revelation.
But this summary misses the point. Elijah, having just led Ahab through a rainstorm after killing the priests of Baal, is frightened when Jezebel threatens to kill him. He runs to Mt. Horeb—which is another name for Mt. Sinai. Elijah ran to the mountain of God and hid there.
Just as Moses met God on Mt. Sinai and received the covenant documents from Him on behalf of Israel, just as Moses spoke with God, so Elijah came to seek God. Yet their attitudes at the mountain were completely opposite each other’s.
We are intended to see the parallels between Moses and Elijah. Moses, the mediator of the Mosaic covenant between God and Israel, spent 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain with God. Elijah, after receiving food from the angel of the Lord, spent 40 days and nights without any further food as he waited to hear from God.
Moses had gone to Mt. Sinai because God told him to go. Elijah, by contrast, ran to the mountain without being called—defeated and feeling sorry for himself. Moses interceded for Israel on the mountain after they built the golden calf, begging God not to forsake them and if necessary to kill him instead of the people. Elijah, on the other hand, condemned the nation for breaking the covenant and complained to God about the uselessness of his own work as a prophet. Moses took responsibility for the people he shepherded; Elijah felt angry and bitter towards them and ran from them to God.
When Moses went to Sinai, God displayed His power and judgment in ways similar to the power He displayed in front of Mt. Horeb, but with Moses, God was revealing His sovereign right to rule the nation. He was providing them a way to worship a just Sovereign without dying or sacrificing their own firstborn. With Elijah, God demonstrated judgment power in the wind and earthquake and fire, but they were messages to Elijah that although Elijah wanted God to judge the nation for their sin, God was the One who decided IF and WHEN He would judge. He was NOT judging the nation then, but when the faint whisper came, Elijah still hadn’t perceived God’s sovereign message of His right to rule His way. Elijah still complained to God.
And then God sent Elijah back. He couldn’t run from his job; he couldn’t run from the nation. He had to go back and carry out God’s sovereign assignments: anoint the kings of Syria and of the northern kingdom of Israel, and appoint his own successor, Elisha. Elijah was not pleading with God for Israel as Moses had when God threatened to judge the rebellious nation in the wilderness. Rather, Elijah was begging God to vindicate him and to judge Israel!
God showed Elijah that He was sovereign, and Elijah had to do the work God gave him. Furthermore, Elijah was wrong. The whole nation hadn’t apostatized; God was preserving 7,000 Israelites who hadn’t worshiped Baal! Elijah had to trust God!
There’s one more point of significance here: Moses, representing the law, and Elijah, representing the prophets, were the two men who were glorified with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. They were the two “icons” who represented Israel’s life and religion: God’s appointed mediator of the old covenant and the representative of the prophets He sent to Israel.
Elijah’s trip to Mt. Horeb was not primarily a retreat to be encouraged by God. Rather it was a cowardly act that God had not assigned to Elijah, but God met him there and reminded him that only Yahweh was sovereign. Only Yahweh had the right to judge and destroy, to encourage and to restore. The Lord restored Elijah and reminded him to go back to the people about whom he had been grumbling and trust HIM. Elijah had a job to do, and God was accomplishing His purposes.
Elijah’s trip to Mt. Horeb is not an example of “practical prayer”. It was a demonstration of God’s sovereign correction and love and provision. Elijah had to trust God! God’s purposes cannot be thwarted by fearful humans; God is bigger than a prophet’s depression—and His saving power was keeping a loyal remnant for His glory.
Read the Bible—and Ponder Ellen?
Thursday’s lesson has a series of questions with Ellen White-shaped answers. The one that stopped me as I read is the third question and its answer:
What is the role of faith in prayer? Read Hebrews 11:6 and ponder these words: “Prayer and faith are closely allied, and they need to be studied together. In the prayer of faith there is a divine science; it is a science that everyone who would make his lifework a success must understand. Christ says, ‘What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.’ Mark 11:24. He makes it plain that our asking must be according to God’s will; we must ask for the things that He has promised, and whatever we receive must be used in doing His will. The conditions met, the promise is unequivocal. . . . We need look for no outward evidence of the blessing.”—Ellen G. White, Education, pp. 257, 258.
Do you see the incredible irony? “Read Hebrews 11:6 and ponder” the words of—Ellen White?! Hebrews 11:6 says this:
And without faith it is impossible to please [Him], for he who draws near to God must believe that He is and [that] He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.—Hebrews 11:6 LSB
Ellen’s paragraph is confusing and discouraging; it demands that the one praying meet certain requirements in order to hope to have an answer. It does not AT ALL describe praying with biblical faith!
The faith of which Hebrews speaks is the kind of faith Abraham had: he believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness (see Genesis 15:6). True faith BELIEVES and TRUSTS God. It takes God’s word seriously. The one who has faith trusts that God has revealed to us all we need for life and godliness. He has given us His Son to propitiate for our sin, and when we believe and trust what the Lord Jesus has done, we pass from death to life!
Hebrews is addressing an audience of Jews who have been born again through faith in the Lord Jesus alone. They understood what it means, that it is impossible to please God without faith. Without saving faith, one remains in his natural condition: dead in sin.
When one believes, he passes from death to life, as Jesus said in John 5:24.In fact, Romans 3:9–18 tells us that in our natural state, no one can please God or even seek God. We have to trust and believe that He has done everything necessary for our salvation.
Only when we have passed from death to life can we pray with faith, because only when we have been born again does God’s own life dwell in us.
Ellen’s vague moralizing about “divine science” that everyone must understand is so much nonsense. She knew nothing of what Scripture means when it refers to having true faith!1 Faith is NOT a “divine science”. It is a trusting belief that God cannot lie, that God will do what He says He’ll do, and placing one’s full weight of trust on Him. Faith is believing that God has already completed all that is necessary for our salvation.
When a person has been made alive with Jesus’ own resurrection life and has already passed from death to life, prayer means something.
Adventists struggle to pray and find relief. They struggle to know how to pray according to God’s will. In fact, prayer can become obsessive-compulsive. As an Adventist I struggled with OCD and prayer. I felt I had to pray every few moments for forgiveness of negative thoughts or not-quite loving words. I had to pray all the time for God’s will to be done and for His help and for His intervention and forgiveness—and I believed that if I forgot to pray, whatever I forgot to pray about would be held against me by God and would qualify as sin.
I drove myself crazy with impulsive prayer! But when I was born again through faith and trust in Jesus’ finished work, that obsessive prayer stopped. I had relief! The sovereign Lord God who had saved me KNEW ME, and He taught me two of the most important things I ever learned about prayer.
The first was that because I was born of God, adopted by Him as His child, and indwelled by the Holy Spirit, I was privileged to call God “Father”. The lesson mentions that the reader can address their Father when they pray, but God is not everyone’s “Father”. It was Jesus Himself who taught His disciples to address God in prayer as “Father”—because He is the true Father of all who believe! Those who have not been born again are asked to come to God in repentance and trust and ask Him for mercy and forgiveness and life, but we have the privilege to call God Father because that is who He is. We are to learn to think of Him as our true Father who will provide all we need and care for our needs.
The second thing I learned about prayer is that God KNOWS. No matter what situation I face, I can ask Him for His mercy and intervention, but I can also thank Him for what He is doing that I cannot see. That idea would not have meant much to me throughout most of my Adventism. Yet when I realized that God asks us to give thanks in all things—even in times I didn’t know what to pray for because the details were too complex to fully understand, the Lord helped me realize I could thank Him for what He is doing that I cannot see.
Even when we don’t know the details, our sovereign God is at work, and we can rest knowing He will complete what He begins. Yet this kind of confidence in our Father is only understood by those who know Him, who have been born of the Spirit and have passed from death to life.
Daily Bread and Controlled Appetite
The Teachers Comments break down the Lord’s Prayer into seven “principles” the reader is encouraged to put into practice. Principle #4 reveals Adventism’s worldview shockingly well:
Principle 4: Give us this day our daily bread: Engage in a charity project to bless and benefit others. When you eat, be moderate in your intake, thanking God for what He has provided and not overindulging your appetite.
What?! Jesus’ instruction to ask our Father to provide our daily bread means EXACTLY what he says! There is absolutely NO HINT in this request that suggests application of Ellen White’s Health Message! This is a prayer of faith that God will provide His children with the food they need to survive each day. It has nothing to do with moderating intake or overindulging appetite. In fact, this request has nothing at all to do with appetite!
This line in the Lord’s Prayer echoes Jesus’ teaching that we are not to worry or seek what we will eat or drink or wear. We are to do the work God gives us without worrying about our daily sustenance!
“And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying. “For all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek, but your Father knows that you need these things. “But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.—Luke 12:29–31 LSB
This command has nothing to do with regulating diet or moderating appetite! It is entirely a command to BELIEVERS to trust their Father! We don’t need to worry because God has already promised to give us what we need if we seek His kingdom. This is a PROMISE, and the line in the Lord’s prayer is how true believers are to pray in faith knowing that their Father will keep His promises to them! It is not a veiled instruction for our own behavior; that line from Jesus’ prayer is a statement of TRUST on the part of the believer who’s coming to her or his Father knowing He is faithful! It’s blasphemous for Adventism to insert Ellen White’s health message into the Lord’s Prayer!
And yet—Adventism really cannot do anything other than to approach prayer as a duty which the individual is. To figure out how to do properly. The underlying belief is that, if the Adventist doesn’t do his best to obey the principles and beliefs of Adventism including the health message, none of God’s promises will come true for them.
In fact, this underlying belief reveals the physicalist worldview of Adventism. Adventism does not believe in “original sin”, the idea that each person is literally born spiritually dead—because Adventism does not believe humans have immaterial spirits separate from the body!
Because Adventists reject the biblical view of the nature of man and deny our spiritual identities, identities that Paul tells us are born dead and under the wrath of God, they have no way to understand “sin” except as bad decisions and deeds. Adventists miss the fact that the issue of knowing and pleasing God is not about obedience. Rather, it is a matter of life and death.
We are born dead and must be made alive. There is no other way to be saved!
Prayer is the natural response of a person whose spirit has been made alive through faith and trust in the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
Adventism cannot rightly teach the biblical principle of prayer because it has denied the biblical teaching about the nature of man, of sin, and of salvation. Prayer is possible when we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of promise when we have heard and believed the gospel of our salvation. The Holy Spirit within us teaches us to trust God and His word, and He teaches us to pray with confidence because we are His and He is our true Father!
Adventist, have you struggled with prayer? Have you realized that you cannot overcome your sin by trying hard to obey? Do you feel like prayer is a burden, a requirement that you must do if you are going to be successful as a Christian?
Stop. Stop struggling with prayer, and open your Bible to the gospel of John. Get a notebook and spend some time each day copying the book of John into the notebook, asking God to teach you what is true.
See that Jesus is God the Son in the flesh. See that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. See that He took your sin in His body to the cross and endured God’s wrath in your place. See Him die the death you deserve to die, and see Him buried in the tomb. Then see Him rise the third day, shattering YOUR curse of death because His sacrifice was sufficient to pay for all your sin!
Believe that He has done everything necessary for your salvation, and trust Him. Lay your Adventism at the foot of His cross and trust Jesus alone. Believe Him today, and you will pass from death to life.You will learn what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to now God as your true Father.
Believe Him today, and pass from death to life. Prayer will never again be a compulsive discipline but will be the natural trust of a child who knows his Father will do what He says He will do. †
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
- May 9–15, 2026 - May 7, 2026
- We Got Mail - May 7, 2026
- May 2–8, 2026 - April 30, 2026