A Prayer for Political Opponents

A Public Prayer Offered on the Occasion of the May 6 Countywide Prayer Rally at Jefferson College, Sponsored by Jeffco Christians United.

Heavenly Father,

We gather in the name of your Son and in the power of your Spirit to pray for our nation. Specifically, we pray for ourselves and our political opponents.

In your kindness, you have allowed for the establishment of a nation with many wise principles in its founding documents. We benefit from these and are grateful for them. Yet as we exercise our rights, we encounter others who exercise theirs differently, and this often troubles us, and it troubles them.

We speak freely and find that others don’t agree with what we say. We express our faith in the world one way, and others feel threatened. We see a relationship between your Word and man’s laws that others cannot or will not see.

We often disagree with our neighbors on basic ideas like justice and righteousness, virtue and vice, wealth and poverty, race and ethnicity, honor and dignity, and much more.

Even among other Christians, our own brothers and sisters, we often have significant disagreements. These threaten relationships, households, and even churches—the bride whom you love.

God, we desperately need your presence in these relationships as we relate to Christians with whom we have political differences, and especially as we relate to unbelievers who are likely to be our political opponents.

Father, forgive us for where we have sinned so grievously in this area. Forgive us for where we have let the heat crowd out the light. Forgive us for where we’ve sullied your name among our unbelieving neighbors while advancing political preferences, many of which have little to no eternal value.

Forgive us for when we’ve worried more about our neighbor’s vote rather than their eternal destination.

Moreover, we ask: help us to see the differences between biblical principles and prudential policies. Help us to distinguish your commands from our preferences.

Help us to not make the differences larger than they really are, and in so doing, treat people like they’re less than creatures made in your image, souls whom you desire to redeem.

Help us to be grateful every time we’re able to participate in civic life, cast a ballot, run for office, or voice a concern, knowing that these rights and opportunities are gifts, but help us also to respect others who share these rights and opportunities.

Help us sometimes, as your servant Paul teaches us, to surrender some of our freedom for the sake of not alienating people, and keeping opportunities open for conversation, trust, and one day, a brotherly affection that comes from us both knowing you as ‘Father.’

Soften their hearts and ours toward your truth and toward each other. And in this very delicate and tense election year of 2024, help us to model a different way of relating to political opponents, and in so doing, exalt the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray all these things.