Christians and President-Elect Barak Obama

Yesterday evening my church, Covenant of Grace Bible Church, squeezed into a small home where we enjoyed taking part in the baptism of an adult, a teenager, and three children. All were baptized in a hot tub--the children and teen by their fathers and the adult by me. Whereas, in many churches, which have facilities with built in baptistries this would seem a bit unusual but not for us. We've been doing this for almost five years now.

We did something else last night that I really do think may be unusual given the kinds of things I am hearing come out of other churches, Christian radio talk shows, and the forwarded email I receive on a daily basis. You see, we took our entire prayer time as a church and devoted it to praying for our new president-elect, Barak Obama. We didn't criticize him, curse him, question his policies, jest about his lack of experience, run down his family, or even debate whether he is a genuine citizen of the United States. We just prayed for him.

Furthermore, we prayed for his success and asked God to bless him and his family as well as protect them all. We asked God to give him wisdom beyond his years as well as understanding and the ability to lead this great nation. We asked God to show him where he is wrong and to drive him to his knees in prayer. We also asked God to drive us--His people who are called by His Name to our knees so that we would humble ourselves, pray, and seek His Face and turn from our wicked ways--especially the wickedness of cursing and criticizing rather than praying for the man God in His sovereignty and for His glory put into office on Tuesday November 4, 2008.

I think its sad and very unbecoming of those who do claim the Name of Christ to continue in the trashing of our next president. We, perhaps need to be reminded of the Apostle Paul's words in Philippians 2:12-16. Verse 13 must be understood to mean that God is sovereign in our lives and thus, the placing of Barak Obama into a position of authority over us as our president is God's doing. It is His doing, not for our good pleasure but for His and thus verse 14 makes it clear that we are not in any position to grumble or complain. Rather as verse 15 points out, we should appear as "lights" in the world.

This word for lights is referring to the function stars had in ancient days of serving sailors as navigational aids. Sailors would use the stars as their guides to ensure safe passage as they traveled. Interestingly enough, that is what God says we as Christians are to be like--guiding lights for unbelievers who do not know the way. And the way we do this is found in verse 16. When we hold fast to the Word of God and live it out before the world we in effect are acting like the stars that guided ancient sailors into the way they should go.

Call me naive or just plain politically uninformed, which is a nice word for stupid, but I don't think trashing the president-elect is obeying Philippians 2:12-16 and thus is sin. Perhaps, we really do need to humble ourselves and turn from this wicked way so as to pray for our leader rather than follow the example of unbelievers and curse him.

I do understand the disappointment Christians feel in the election of a man who does not have a track record of voting in accord with biblical absolutes and principles. Furthermore, I completely detest and oppose his stand on abortion. I disagree with a great deal of what President-Elect Obama proposes to do but none of that changes the fact that he is the man God chose for our country at this time (Rom. 13:1). Therefore, I am responsible to pray for him (1 Tim. 2:1-3)and I don't know about you but it just doesn't seem to work for me when I'm trying to obey God and pray for a man I have just trashed. But then again, maybe I'm just plain stupid.