On Sunday morning, June 2, U.S. President Donald Trump made an unscheduled visit to the McClean Bible Church in Vienna, Virginia. Franklin Graham had called for a special day of prayer for the President on that day, saying, “If his enemies are allowed to destroy him, and pull down the presidency, it will hurt our entire nation.” Trump had tweeted about this multiple times. The church learned of the visit at the end of the morning service when they were told that the President was stopping by for prayer (“Pastor explains sudden decision to pray for Trump,” USA Today, June 3, 2019). The President removed his hat and stood respectfully onstage with his head bowed while Pastor David Platt prayed as follows: “Oh God, we praise you as the one universal King over all. You are our leader and our Lord and we worship you. There’s one God and one Savior and it’s you, and your name is Jesus and we exalt you, Jesus. And we know we need your mercy, we need your grace, we need your help, we need your wisdom in our country. And so we stand right now on behalf of our president and we pray for your grace and your mercy and your wisdom upon him. God, we pray that he would know how much you love him, so much that you sent Jesus to die for his sins, our sins. So we pray that he would look to you and he would trust in you, he would lean on you, that he would govern and make decisions in ways that are good for justice and good for righteousness and good for equity--every good path. Lord we pray, we pray that you would give him all of the grace that he needs to govern in ways that we just saw in 1 Timothy 2 that lead to peaceful and quiet lives, godly and dignified in every way. God, we pray for your blessing in that way upon his family. We pray that you give him strength, we pray that you give him clarity, wisdom, wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Please, oh God, give him wisdom and help him to lead our country. Alongside other leaders we pray today for leaders in Congress pray for leaders in courts, we pray for leaders in national and state levels” (“Trump Surprises Evangelical Church with Visit,” Christian Headlines, June 3, 2019). It was a prayer with glaring omissions (e.g., no mention of Christ’s blood atonement; no confession of sin; no mention of repentance), in a very cool, rock & roll, “let’s not judge” SBC church, and it is sad that the President spent most of his Sunday morning on the golf course. But we are glad that the President desires prayer, and we do believe in praying for him. While we don’t join hands with “live after their own lusts” rock & rollers (2 Ti. 4:3-4) and ecumenists and “tongues” speakers, because God forbids us to do so, we do pray without ceasing for our president and our government leaders in obedience to 1 Timothy 2, and we believe God for the answer even in dark times. (Friday Church News Notes, June 7, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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