How to pray for a president

Recently the world was captured by a powerful moment in the White House. Pastor Andrew Brunson was freed from a Turkish prison. While in the Oval Office, he asked President Trump if he could offer a prayer on behalf of the President. The President agreed, and the Rev. Brunson knelt down and prayed for the President of the United States.

In 2011, President Barack Obama held a meeting with the Circle of Protection, an alliance of Christian leaders committed to battle poverty and injustice. Around the table in the Roosevelt Room, the leaders and the President held hands as the clergy present prayed for President Obama and the other leaders of the country.

When someone mentions praying for our world leaders, many of us tend to squirm and fidget a bit. It might be an easy thing to do when it just so happens that someone with whom we agree is sitting in the Oval Office, but what about when you fervently disagree with that leaders' policies? How are you supposed to pray then?

When the Israelites were returning from Exile, they had a lot of rebuilding to do. They had to rebuild not just their literal infrastructure, but also the scaffolding of their own faith. The newly-exiled people are told to "pray for the life of the king and his children" (Ezra 6:10). This is an extraordinary claim given that it was leaders like the king who forced them into exile in the first place.

In his first letter to his friend Timothy, the Apostle Paul writes this: "I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity" (1 Timothy 2:1-2). For early Christians who were living under the constant threat of persecution under Caesar, this would have been understood as a radical call to graciousness and generosity of spirit.

Never does the Bible say that praying for a leader means that we ought to agree with what that leader believes or even what they do. Neither the Israelites nor the early Christians were in any sort of agreement with either King Darius or Caesar, yet they still recognized their calling, as people of peace, to pray for the goodwill of those leaders.

You may be very conservative, you may be very liberal, or you may be like me and not fit neatly into any ideological category. However, as a person of faith, we are called to pray for our leaders. That does not mean that we are to pray that their agenda would be passed exactly as they see fit, but we are to pray for their health, that God would grant them wisdom, and that they would enact policies that are centered on justice, kindness, and humility.

Perhaps we can take a cue from a prayer found in a journal at George Washington's home in Mount Vernon: "Increase my faith in the sweet promises of the gospel; give me repentance from dead works; pardon my wanderings, and direct my thoughts unto thyself, the God of my salvation."