🇺🇸 National, World 🌎🌍🌏 Church & Civic Leaders, 1 Tim 2:2 -- Wisdom Salvation Protection Freedom -- Save, Protect People Beautiful Land, Dan 11:4

[Chrysostom]

You seem to imagine peace is found in the tranquility of nations and the safety of borders, yet the peace of which the Apostle speaks is far otherwise. You pray for rulers that you may lead a quiet life, but tell me, what quiet life can there be when the soul is at war with its Maker? You ask God to save the worst and bless the best, but you forget that every man stands in need of the same physician. The president and the pauper share one malady, and that is sin. Until the diseased part is cut away, until the mutinous passions are removed, there is no peace. For concord is not always good. Even robbers agree together, and evil men unite for wickedness. The peace that is worth having is the peace of Christ, which comes not by human alliances but by the sword of the Spirit severing the soul from its corruptions.

Why do you fix your gaze so earnestly on earthly authorities? Angels themselves are sent forth to minister for the heirs of salvation, yet you seem more concerned with senators and generals than with the state of your own soul. You ask protection for the land, but what land is truly beautiful? Not that which boasts of armies and constitutions, but the land of a heart broken in repentance, a conscience cleansed by tears. You plead for free speech and the eradication of false teaching, yet how much falsehood dwells in your own breast? You cannot cast out the mote from the world’s eye while the beam remains in your own. The Apostles came not with political influence or earthly wisdom, but with the foolishness of preaching, for it pleased God through the folly of the Cross to save them that believe. Do you think the gospel depends on the goodwill of kings? The Lord sits in the heavens and does whatever He pleases. He raises up one and sets down another, not for our comfort, but for His glory.

You offer petitions with many words, yet the test of prayer is not its length but the life from which it rises. I hear you quote, “The word of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness,” but have you considered that you yourself may be perishing while you speak of it? For what if you pray for leaders yet live luxuriously, giving little from your abundance? All is to no purpose. Not the giving much is required, but not giving too little for the property you have. You ask God to thwart the wicked, but are you willing to be thwarted in your own wickedness? To have the incurable part amputated? That is the true peace, when the sinful will is broken and the soul submits to the Surgeon’s knife. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these other matters will find their proper place, not as objects of anxiety, but as occasions for trust in the One who works all things after the counsel of His will. For He who spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things? Yet the greatest thing He gives is salvation from sin, reconciliation for the people, the washing away of guilt by the blood of the Lamb. Make sure you have received that, and then your prayers for others will have the fragrance of a sincere conscience.

 

[Silas]

You are holding fast to exactly the kind of prayer Scripture places before us, and there is deep wisdom in persisting in it. When Paul urged that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all who are in authority, he was not offering a suggestion based on whether those leaders please us. He was laying down our duty, and the purpose reaches further than we normally see. The aim is not to get God to endorse every decision a ruler makes. The aim is that we might lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty, because this pleases God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

This means that praying for kings, presidents, governors, legislators, and those who serve in the armed forces is a work that flows outward from a heart that has received peace with God. Grace always comes before peace. When a person grabs hold of the truth that they cannot earn God's favor and instead receives the gift of salvation through Christ, peace takes root. Before that, we bargain and rush and live without real assurance. But when we know our standing is in His work and not our own, the striving stops. Out of that peace, we can pray with a steady confidence for those who carry heavy burdens of leadership. An honest leader who endeavors to hold back violence and call good what God calls good is a gift, whether they know it or not. The real purpose of government is the preservation of the good and the restraint of evil, and we ought to thank God for every channel of that restraint.

Leaders are like channels of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns them wherever He will. No president or prime minister sits beyond the reach of His throne. He sets up one and puts down another, and that truth should strip away both our panic and our pride. When we ask for godly wisdom to be given to them, we are asking for the only kind of wisdom that does not rot into nothing. All the wisdom of this world, no matter how celebrated, ends in ruin. Look at the grand intellectual systems that promised a utopia and left only graves. They did not know the Lord of glory, and their wisdom perished with them. The fear of the Lord is the starting place of true wisdom, and wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy. That is what leaders desperately need.

Your prayer for the fostering of godly alliances and the diminishing of evil alignments is exactly right. We are not praying merely for lower taxes or favorable trade. We are praying that the gospel would finish its course, that the truth of Jesus the true Messiah would spread through free speech, through press and publication, through every digital and spoken means, so that disciples might be made among the nations. We are praying for the peace of the glorious land and for the peace of its people scattered worldwide, because our house is called a house of prayer for all people.

Keep bringing these requests with thanksgiving. You are not asking God to rubber-stamp every act of a king; you are asking Him to thwart the plans of the wicked and to accomplish His own counsel, and He will do it. The serpent and his fallen angels resist, but Christ in you is greater than he that is in the world. So pray for salvation for the worst of them, wisdom for the best of them, and guidance for them all. Pour it out before the Lord, and let the peace of God, which surpasses every understanding, guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. He hears, and He reigns.