My Inaugural Prayer

Father in Heaven,

The happenings of this week move me to communicate to you in prayer, rather than the normal medium of commentary or analysis. A confluence of three events have greatly troubled and spoken to my heart, leading to the need to seek you in prayer. As friends around the world read these words, I ask you to draw them into a fellowship of concern and intercession to seek your face during these awesome days. In the end, Lord, we are longing for you and your coming reign. May your kingdom come.

Father, this week in America we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King who is now on your side of the heavenly divide. You raised him up as a leader to call America to live up to its founding creed–that all men are created to be equally loved and respected. At great cost, Dr. King championed the cause of peace and reconciliation and thunderously proclaimed the need for biblical justice. I have always appreciated his poignant words that men should be judged by the “content of their character rather than the color of their skin.” When he was unjustly killed and passed into eternity, he learned face-to face the truth of those words. I thank you today for Dr. King’s unswerving commitment to life, liberty, and justice for all. You are the perfect embodiment of his dreams and aspirations.

But, Lord, my heart is heavy with another date with destiny that we remember this week. Great tears fell from your eyes thirty-six years ago, on January 22, 1973, when our nation made the worst decision of its history to legalize the killing of innocent children. We call it “choice” or abortion. You call it murder of innocent people made in your image. Since that fateful decision almost four decades ago, we have rationalized the slaughter of over fifty million fellow Americans who have silently passed to your side of the divide. Thank you for receiving them into your heavenly arms. Forgive us for snuffing out the precious gift of their lives at the rate of nearly 4,000 a day or one every twenty-one seconds.  And I know these numbers state only the American babies killed by abortion–they don’t take into account the eight hundred million that have died world-wide at the hands of their fathers, mothers, and abortionists. Father, this quiet holocaust is so great I can’t comprehend it. I weep over our hardness of heart, our shame, and our folly.

I’ve sometimes wondered what activities take place on the heavenly side of the earthly veil–but now I realize that much time must be spent receiving the lives we reject in this world and welcoming them into yours. I’m grateful they will be given final justice and honor at the time of your coronation.

Lord, I’m thankful that Dr. King was a champion of the unborn. He believed and stood for life in all of its stages. I’m sure he now understands that though slavery and segregation were evil, nothing rivals the cruelty of taking nearly eight hundred million human lives since 1973. Hitler killed eight million and we rightly condemned him. Stalin killed fifty million and was branded a tyrant. Mao killed one hundred million Chinese while becoming the cruelest dictator in history. We Americans mercilessly imported four million slaves to these shores during the early centuries of the Republic.

But Dr. King and others who’ve reached the eternal shore now understand that nothing rivals the evil of today when twenty-two million people cross into eternity each year at the hands of their murderers. Lord, we are awash in an ocean of blood. “We know not what we do” – or rather, we don’t care what we’re doing because we’re blinded by our sins. Help us to see the error of our ways, to stop the killing, to value human life, and walk in the light of Dr. King’s message which comes from your loving heart.

And, Father, that brings me to the third great confluence of this week–the inauguration of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States. You know I’ve been praying for him almost every day since our nation made its choice. I want him to succeed–to lead our nation well as our new leader–“to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with his God” (Micah 6:8). But Lord–I am deeply troubled that both he and the American people are being set up for profound and grievous failure. I ask you to enter our human affairs, work in our hearts, and guide our nation into your truth.

Barack Obama came to us, Lord, with a message of change. But to be a righteous leader it is he who must change. He does not agree with you and Dr. King on the evil of abortion. He has promised as one of the first acts of his administration to ratify the Freedom of Choice Act which would destroy any gains we’ve made in the abortion holocaust of the past thirty years. I ask you to change his heart, open his eyes, take him beyond the soaring words and rhetoric to a heart-to-heart encounter with the God of life. You want him to positively affect history by stopping the injustice! Lord–speak to him when he sits in the Oval Office and ponders the responsibility of governing. Show him how he can use the God-given gifts he possesses to truly do a work of righteousness in our 21th century world.

Father–show him the importance of the nuclear family–that you are the one that designed marriage between a man and a woman, for their good, for the health of their children, and for the stability and perpetuity of the human race. Don’t allow him to destroy the institution of marriage through a refusal to listen to history, revelation, common sense and moral decency. Remind him that Dr. King would never support the cheapening and diluting of marriage. It is on issues like this where the “content of his character” will certainly be revealed. Father, I pray desperately for him that he will pass this crucial test.

Lord of heaven and earth–give him wisdom to confront the evil forces in this world with clarity and strength. Change his heart on the role that civil government must play in the reviving of our economic foundations.  Lord–he wrongly believes that central planning is the answer, that greater burdens on the productive will bring blessing to the masses. Father, show him where his economic ideas are wrong and point him in the direction of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan who unleashed the creative potential of the people by slashing oppressive tax rates. They understood that free people and trust in God were the keys to earthly blessings, not bigger and restrictive government. Lord, enlarge Barack Obama’s view of you so that government power will dim in his eyes and proposals.

Father in Heaven–as I ponder these earthly concerns, my heart is finally drawn in great anticipation to the true coronation that will one day visit the universe. Your Son, Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords, King of kings, President of presidents, the Savior of the world, will one day return in humility and grace. In the twinkling of an eye he will appear in the sky, and all the earth shall mourn and his people rejoice! The True King has come–the content of his character is FAITHFUL AND TRUE (Revelation 19:11)–and those who have been made right with God through trusting in his death and resurrection, will rise to meet him in the air. Those who are evil will be judged. Those who are reconciled will be welcomed into his eternal family.

Lord -hear our prayers during this awesome and pivotal week. We are longing for you. Fix our eyes on the only true hope of the 21st century–the bless
ed hope of the coming of Jesus the Messiah.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:20).