The King's Heart
Who is a news watcher? We haven’t had cable in my house since I got married so going on 19 years…When 9/11 happened and everyone was glued to the set I had no idea it was happening until my husband called me from work. To this day I have still gladly not seen images of that tragic part of American history.
With all the current events we are exposed to daily via the media, we are often overwhelmed with sorrow. From current headlines about the pandemic and racial unrest, phases, new regulations, and rioting, our hearts can tend to feel on a rollercoaster. Even myself, who is often sheltered from the latest reports, feels the anxiety and tension. John Eldridge says this about the cumulative effect on our hearts in his latest book Get Your Life Back:
You’ve got to release the world, you’ve got to release people, crises, trauma, intrigue, all of it. There has to be sometime in your day where you just let it all go. All the tragedy of the world, the heartbreak, the latest shooting, earthquakes—the soul was never meant to endure this. The soul was never meant to inhabit a world like this. It’s way too much. Your soul is finite. You cannon carry the sorrows of the world. Only God can do that. Only he is infinite. Somewhere, sometime in your day, you’ve just got to release it. You’ve got to let it go.
Not only do I need to give God my concerns, a practice Eldridge calls benevolent detachment, I want to be part of change too. Sometimes my voice feels too small in the midst of the din clamoring for my attension. What can I do but pray, appealing to a greater power than my own? But how? Here is Paul’s advice to his prodigy Timothy, in giving him details about how believers are to live out the gospel in the world they are a part of.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:1–4
Notice that though we are to pray for all people this way, he highlights the need to pray for our leaders, with all types of prayers. Let’s break down what some of these terms mean:
Supplication
This word means to literally beg, and connotates the confession of sin and wrong and a desire to depart from it. In Luke 11, right after his teaching about the Lord’s prayer, Jesus tells a parable about a man waking up his neighbor at night to ask for bread to offer hospitality to an unexpected guest. Though in the Lord’s prayer Jesus gives us a guide for the content of our prayers, this story is meant to show the call to persistence in prayer until something changes.
Intercession
To intercede means to pray for someone else. Often when we share our “prayer requests” with one another we are asking someone to offer up these types of prayers. It is to pray on another’s behalf, in a sense being a mediator between them and God. Christ made for us the ultimate mediation, that through His sacrifice on the cross we access to God[1]. In fact, two members of the God-head make intercession for us in our need-- Christ [2] and the Holy Spirit[3].
Thanksgivings
No longer a Christian virtue alone, the world has grabbed onto the power of gratitude. A google search “benefits of gratitude” (which I did right before writing this section of my post) will give you article after article of the benefits of a thankful heart. This holds true for us in prayer as we thank God, we are forced to stop judging those that irritate us, but see the positives. Even if you can’t thank God for your leaders specifically, if you disagree on their character or conduct, consider thanking God for giving us government as an institution for human flourishing[4].
Now that we’ve covered the qualities of our prayer, let’s consider why we should pray for our leaders. Surprisingly, one reason is that it benefits us! God says that prayer for our leaders aids in bringing a peaceful and quiet life to our homes. Now to the mom with little ones running around, the quiet God wants to bring do our world is not silence, but the quiet sigh that escapes unbidden when all is well, a calm stillness and respite. You can participate in bringing that to our world through praying for leaders, who under the influence of godly wisdom can make decisions to benefit society. Another reason we see in this scripture is to God calls it good and doing so pleases Him. If God is our Father, we want to do things that please Him, not to save us[5] but to surrender love-offerings back to Him and do the good works He’s planned for us to do. Lastly God, called Savior with a capital S, wants all people to be saved, even our leaders, especially our leaders! Though the kings’ heart is water in our God’s hand[6], how much better a willing stream than a tempest…
Have I convinced you yet, and I’m preaching to myself here, that we need to pray for our leaders and not judge them? As a good friend of mine said recently: I wouldn’t want their job; it’s easy to sit back and criticize but how much better could I do? Join with me and pray for our local, national, and world leaders. As the last verse in Timothy says, pray that they would be saved and replace the world’s wisdom[7] with something more enduring, that we can stand behind for all eternity[8], submission to the providential rule of God as the kings of the earth bring their glory into His sovereign, light-filled country. What a glorious day that will be and prayer will hasten it here…thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven[9].
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