How to Pray for the President...

...and any other politician you might disagree with, and competitors, and those neighbors you feel wronged by:

You may have heard that this past Sunday was declared Pray for the President Day, by Franklin Graham who has endorsed perhaps the most corrupt, misogynistic, racist, narcissistic, xenophobic President of the United States we’ve ever had. There are exhortations in scripture for us to pray for people in authority. President Trump, apparently to take advantage of this declaration, stopped in at a mega-church just outside of Washington DC, following a morning of recreation. He didn’t participate in this church’s services or any church’s services. He went up on stage to ask for the prayer.

In conversations, I find that praying for the President falls into a few categories:

1) bless the President to be successful on policies I agree with;
2) neutrally bless the President with divine wisdom to govern well;
3) change the President’s heart and mind;
4) perhaps all of the above.

We have a few examples of suggestions for how we should pray for those who oppose us or we simply disagree: Christ on the cross; disciples in the Samaritan village. There may be others we could include, but let’s start with these.

Christ asked that God forgive those who crucified Him. “They don’t know what they’re doing.” Just forgiveness for they were blind and deaf to the coming of His kingdom. Christ was asking that God forgive those who were hurting, persecuting Him. He was not asking for forgiveness for the persecution of others.

In an earlier incident, Christ and His disciples were traveling to Jerusalem passing through Samaria. A village didn’t show hospitality to them and the disciples wanted to call down heavenly fire on the village. Christ rebuked them. There was no call to pray for the Samaritans to change in heart or mind.

Christ also exhorts us to pray for and bless our enemies. So we might be left with option 2, as Paul seems to suggest in his epistles.

In my opinion, it was unacceptable to pray for the President on the stage because it implies an endorsement of his values, policies and behaviors. I don’t know if it happened in this case but I would have asked him, “Mr. President, what would you like prayer for?” This is much like the situation with Christ and the blind man by the side of the road; Christ asked him to state his request even though it was obvious the man was blind. Perhaps it’s important for God to know if we want to change, change our circumstances, change our hearts and minds so we might ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.’ If the President expresses a desire to decide and act in a way that intends to bring glory and honor to God, I could pray for that. If he just wanted to be blessed so that he would be successful...”Mr. President, I will pray for you but not publicly nor that your success is the expectation that God will grant. May God grant you the courage to do the right thing so that all people living in the United States could live in peace, in justice, in love and in joy.”