Prayer, the Church and the Christian

In my time attending fairly typical evangelical churches, I have noticed a pattern in public prayer. Those who pray about national or international situations do so with a distinctly socialist / left wing approach. The solution is always centralist intervention and control. This is the standard approach to prayer that is acceptable in most evangelical churches. Woe-betide anyone who steps outside of this script. It will be deemed as the terrible sin of ‘being political’. This is typical of a culture where secularism is by default seen as neutral and anything that challenges it is seen as religious.

A recent example I witnessed was a congregational prayer where the person praying asked God to give our government wisdom as it managed the pandemic, as it managed education and various other aspects of civil society. These kinds of prayers sound nice. Of course we want our government to act with wisdom.

Unfortunately, the worldview implicit in these prayers is a statist one. And statism does not reflect the wisdom of God for his world. It is an idolatrous and pagan view that the state is responsible for managing all of life in society. The ‘god’ of the system is the state, just like it was for the evil and tyrannical empires of old. To be clear, this is a view of society to which no biblical Christian should subscribe. As Christians, we should not be praying for this idolatrous system to run like a well-oiled machine. We ought to be praying that its idolatry will be exposed for all to see. Like Dagon’s embarrassing end, we should ask that this idol will fall and bow to the true and living God. After all, God has installed his king in Zion and calls the kings of this earth to kiss the son (submit!) to him lest they be destroyed (Psalm 2:12).

So what ought we to pray for? Well, Paul gives us a hint. He says we should pray “for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (I Timothy 2:2). Our prayers for our state government leaders should be directed in a way that enables us to lead peaceful and quiet lives that are godly and dignified in every way. That precludes praying in a way that endorses our state controlling every aspect of life. A deified state will always oppose Christians because the Christian worldview holds an authority that is above the state. This is a political statement that a grasping state cannot tolerate.

Christians have already seen through this pandemic what centralised control by a deified state can do to the Church. We have been told to stop meeting to worship King Jesus, against his express command and we have been told to bar unvaccinated Christians from our gatherings under certain conditions, which is also a clear violation of the gospel.

So how did the Christians pray for people like Nero? If the book of Revelation is anything to go by, I suspect the prayers would have been more along the lines of “How long O Lord” (Revelation 6:10) and a call for Christ to come in judgment. I suspect they would not have prayed that Nero act with wisdom as he managed the affairs of the empire. A desire for living godly and quiet lives would have led to prayers for the removal of the wicked. Read the psalms. As a family, we have been praying daily for the removal of the wicked from power and for God to vindicate those who have been oppressed. Sure we pray for Ardern to repent, but if she refuses to bow the knee to Christ, we pray that she will be humbled and that all her government’s pretensions and attempts at deity will fail in a most embarrassing manner that New Zealanders will know that there is one true God, and she is not him.

This brings me another prayer I recently heard in an evangelical church. I can’t quote word for word, but I did write down the general gist of the prayer. The leader said, “He (Jesus) sends us out, into the world not in a way where he needs victory over his enemies. but where he dies for his enemies.” Now to be fair to the chap, I think I know what he meant, but the wording seems very unfortunate. This ‘we lose’ type of Christianity is completely unbiblical and consequently extremely unhelpful.

Christ wins. The cross only looked like a defeat, but was in fact the death blow to Satan’s pretensions at lordship. The resurrection led to the ascension and to Christ’s sitting down on his throne, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named” (Ephesians 1:21). As his gospel goes forth, his kingdom is growing. This is victory. It’s not some ‘spiritual’ victory in the sense that it is a victory in the private realm of individual hearts. It’s that but it’s more than that. It is Christ’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). This earth and society is going to be transformed as Christ’s kingdom is extended. More and more bow will bow the knee to his lordship. Individual lives will continue to be transformed. Families will be transformed. Societies and cultures will be transformed. The “earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). We’ve seen this in the history of the church and in particular the Western church. We must give up on this emasculated version of Christianity that has Christ’s lordship stuck in our hearts making no difference to the world. This is a last gasp Satanic delusion designed to stop us from claiming Christ’s crown rights over all the earth. He has commanded us to teach the nations obedience to their king (Matthew 28:18-20). All authority has been given to Christ. This will be done, he cannot lose. So pray that he will use each of us in some small way as this commission is slowly but surely fulfilled.

Photo Credit – Patrick Fore.