May 2026

Jesus said that if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you’ll move mountains (Matt. 17:20). If you’ve ever seen a mustard seed, you know how tiny it is. Yet, having faith this small can effect such huge change. Faith must, therefore, be very important and must also be power­ful and strong enough to do something superhuman. However, just as a mustard seed can grow into a large tree (Matt. 13:31, 32), our faith should grow and not remain static.

Compare how Jesus describes His disciples’ faith in Mark 4:40 with the faith of the woman in Matthew 15:21–28.

Just because we call ourselves followers of Jesus doesn’t automatically mean our faith is strong. In fact, some people claimed to believe, but Jesus discerned what was really in their hearts (John 2:23–25).

Read Luke 7:1–10. What do we learn about faith from this account?

Maybe you’ve heard it said, “If I could just see the Red Sea parted, or manna on the ground, or Jesus heal a blind man, I’d believe.” Or perhaps you have had those same kinds of thoughts yourself.

Read for This Week’s Study

Mark 8:11, 12; Matt. 15:21–28; Luke 7:1–10; Eph. 2:8; Hebrews 11; Rev. 14:12.

Memory Text:

“Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see” (Hebrews 11:1, NLT).

Someone once said, “Faith is like WiFi. It’s invisible, but it has the power to connect you to what you need.” No doubt: without faith, there would be no relationship with God.

“If we thought and talked more of Jesus, and less of self, we should have far more of His presence.”—Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, p. 102.

Why pray when God already knows? Why should we pray when God is all-knowing? Ellen G. White explains it like this: “Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him.”—Steps to Christ, p. 93. Indeed, God knows our desires and our needs, and He reads every intent of our hearts. Yet, praying is good for us. It invites us to stop amid the rush in our lives, to pause and acknowledge that God is sovereign over all, and to place ourselves at His feet.

In the same way that Jesus taught us how to pray in Matthew 6:5–15, we can follow this simple model when we come to God privately, with our families, or as a church, remembering that prayer is speaking to God as a friend. Too often our prayers are full of requests when Jesus has taught us to pray for so much more!

Read Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9:4–19 and look for different parts of his prayer.

Consider how you might include the following components in your prayers:

In the time of Jesus, prayers that were long and carefully crafted like a performance—using complex words and often memorized—were highly esteemed. Jesus had nothing good to say about these kinds of prayers (see Matt. 6:5–8). He revealed them to be what they were: ostentatious shows of “piety.”

Perhaps you’ve prayed about something for a long time, maybe even years, and it feels as if God hasn’t heard your prayers. The Bible tells us to “ask, and it shall be given you” (Matt. 7:7), “if we ask anything according to His will” (1 John 5:14, NKJV). What is your understanding of these promises?

Faithful Elijah lived in evil times, with King Ahab doing more “to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kings 16:33, NKJV). By far the most dramatic moments in Elijah’s life came with the confrontation at Mount Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). At the climax of this incredible story, Ahab and his kingdom saw with their own eyes the truth that God answers prayer. This was an unforgettable moment in Israel’s history and is why the sudden change of events in this story catches us by surprise.