The Place of Intercession: Praying for President Trump

I hope you heard the speech that Donald Trump gave at the UN to the General Assembly.  Just as impressive were the words that he brought as he led the religious freedom conference at the UN. 

Jon Gurley, a PRMI Intercessor, sent me the following piece for our discernment on September 24, 2019.  I will follow his discernment with some teaching on what I call, “stepping into one’s place of intercession.”   This will provide the context out of which Jon is calling us to join in prayer for President Trump as part of our mandate given us in I Timothy 2:1-2.  

Discernment from Jon

It has been a huge battle just to get this written!  

Donald Trump’s 2019 speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 24 was one of the most somber and sobering statements ever addressed to that world body.

For those of us who have been involved in prayer for him for several years it seems as if he hit all the key points the globalists, liberal press and the radical left have been promoting incessantly for the past two decades or more.

From Iran’s threats of destroying Israel and the US to China taking unfair advantage of global markets, to religious persecution, to open borders, to bluntly naming the evils of socialism and communism, his speech was not holding back on any of the hot topics the world is embracing.  Here is one stunning example of bluntly naming the evil. 

One of the most serious challenges our countries face is the specter of socialism.  It’s the wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies.
Events in Venezuela remind us all that socialism and communism are not about justice, they are not about equality, they are not about lifting up the poor, and they are certainly not about the good of the nation.  Socialism and communism are about one thing only: power for the ruling class.

Today, I repeat a message for the world that I have delivered at home: America will never be a socialist country.

In the last century, socialism and communism killed 100 million people.  Sadly, as we see in Venezuela, the death toll continues in this country.  These totalitarian ideologies, combined with modern technology, have the power to exercise new and disturbing forms of suppression and domination.

President Donald Trump UN Speech

This was only one of the times Trump named and “threw down the gauntlet” to the evils that threaten world peace, freedom and prosperity, of which any one would provoke the ire and hatred of those named. 

I have heard it said that the election of Donald Trump was like hitting a pause button to the rapidly advancing anti-Christian and anti-Semitic actions of not only Western culture but of others around the world.

That address, as well as the one on the previous day regarding worldwide religious persecution, are both huge wake-up calls that can be used to thwart numerous activities of those who have rejected God and the Good News of His Kingdom.   

Here are links to the two speeches Trump gave at the United Nations.

(By the way, Andrew Brunson, the EPC pastor imprisoned in Turkey, was also at that seminar and introduced by Trump.) 

If all you can hear in my viewpoint is one of partisan politics, then I implore you to stop and listen to what he said and show me which of the positions of the address was against what we understand to be God’s will for mankind.

I’m sure he was reading a prepared message to the world and didn’t write every word, yet none of the statements contradict the very actions his administration has been pursuing since his inauguration. 

For more information on this I encourage you to read this link from Intercessors for America:

Even if you have read this before, it would help to continue to see it to counteract all the rest of the stuff out there that relentlessly attacks Trump. 

I would expect that after such a speech his detractors will do anything and everything possible to get people to rise up against him with a furor. It might even come to calling for his impeachment on some new trumped up charges.  Anything to make his UN speech and the actions calling for religious freedom become a nonevent.   

Further, as Trump named the evils and the consequences of those evils – which I believe reflect Satan’s agenda rather than God’s–we can expect ferocious demonic counter attacks to come against him, the administration, and America.  Indeed, I believe these counter attacks have already started. 

We intercessors are called into the gap to pray that Satan’s impending assaults will be overcome. 

The Scripture that has been on my mind all day is Matthew 16:1-3: 

 Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.

Matthew 16:1-3

Between what is transpiring in Israel, Iran, and the Middle East, and in America with the coup of the Democratic party by the Radical Left Marxist ideology, the United Kingdom’s struggle to restore its sovereignty, Israel’s ambiguous election results, the protestors on the streets of Hong Kong resisting Communist tyranny, etc., things are definitely heating up!   

Trump cast a unified, powerful vision into all these conflicts and challenges that I am convinced are far more consistent with God’s kingdom purposes for all humanity than the alternatives. 

I believe we are called to pray fervently that Trump’s words are not just portrayed as political speech, but rather as a place to agree in prayer and stand against the devil’s plans for mankind. 

Respectfully submitted for your discernment, Jon Gurley  September 25, 2019

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Here are some suggestions as to how to join in prayer: 

Pray for the Holy Spirit to pierce Satan’s cloaking which is hiding the evils in the following movements named by Trump: 

• Globalism which destroys the sovereignty, freedom, values and history of nations. 
• The Radical Islam embodied in Iran which threatens death to America, is filled with anti- Semitic hatred.
• The totalitarian ideologies of socialism and communism which, combined with modern technologies, have the power to exercise new and disturbing forms of suppression and domination. 
• Other dangers named in the speech that the Lord lays on your heart. 

Ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in discerning and then cooperating with him in overcoming the demonic strongholds that Satan is building to oppress humanity. 

Pray that the Lord will accomplish His Kingdom purposes through President Trump and his administration and that they would be protected from Satan’s attempts to block God’s plans. 

Pray that the Lord would call, equip and deploy intercessors to join in this work of praying for God’s kingdom purposes to be advanced within the United States.

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The Call to Our Place of Intercession

As I read Jon’s words, much of which I witness to, I anticipate that many will ask, “Is he not just an avid Trump supporter who is just being political?”    

No doubt some will accuse him of just blindly supporting Trump – as I have been accused each time I have called people to fulfill the mandate given us in II Timothy 2:1-2 and pray for Trump.    

But let me tell you that you will not understand what Jon is saying unless you understand the concept of “your place of intercession” in which a person transcends politics and political parties and opinions.  

Such intercessors move to an entirely different spiritual space which enables them to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in shaping human events according to God’s plans rather than Satan’s.  

To explain this extraordinary position of an intercessor, I share the following section of my new book coming out soon entitled, Electing Trump: The Spiritual Battle.   

I share this to help intercessors understand how we are called to fulfill our biblical mandate given us in I Timothy 2:1-2 about praying for kings and those in governmental authority.  

This is not a matter of supporting or condoning all their actions or behaviors, but rather of cooperating with the Holy Spirit in advancing God’s Kingdom purposes in a fallen world through all of us – including our government leaders who are also sinful.  I tell my story of how I stepped into my “place of intercession” which like Jon and many other intercessors has involved me in praying for our 45^th President.

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This comes from Chapter 4 entitled: 

Past Politics and into our Place of Intercession

As described in the last chapter entitled, “Is Trump the Next Hitler?” through the phone call from my daughter Elizabeth, I was called into cooperating with the Holy Spirit in constraining those tendencies toward demagoguery that were inherent within the populist movement and especially in the personality of Candidate Trump.  

This prayer engagement was in some ways diffuse, lacking focus.  But the Lord seemed to be calling me and the very small prayer team (which included Jon Gurley) to focus more and more on the one person embodying and inflaming that populist movement—Donald J. Trump.  God’s calling on me, however, led to a growing conflict within myself—I did not like Trump at all!  

I was happy to pray to constrain the potential evil within the populist movements in America and the United Kingdom.  But I was not at all happy when the guidance included Candidate Trump, the chief, and to me the most obnoxious and flawed embodiment of the movement. 

I struggled to get past my own political opinions and views, which strongly favored Ted Cruz as a person of good character, biblical faith, and political experience.  

I had seen evidence that had convinced me that Cruz could and would meet those four criteria (explained in the opening chapter) needed by national leaders for defeating Radical Islam and the Radical Left.  However, I kept experiencing the Holy Spirit calling me to work with Him in ways all relating to Trump, and not to Ted Cruz.  

One wintry cold night at the end of February as I was taking a walk, I had an argument with God about this.  I had passed a Ted Cruz campaign sign in the front yard of our neighbor, and said, “Lord! Why don’t you call me to focus prayer on that candidate?  Does he not fit in your plans in this great war with the Devil for the soul of our nation?  Can you not use him to defeat the nemeses to your Kingdom, Radical Islam? Is he not a much better person and experienced politician than Trump?  

He is a person of deep biblical faith.  And I do not think Trump has any faith at all except in himself.  What about his obvious past immoral lifestyle! What about his saying that he did not have anything to ask your forgiveness for?” We had a long talk! In answer, the Lord reminded me of Isaiah 55:8-9 which came to me in the words of the Revised Version.

 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.   For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” 

The Holy Spirit went on to remind me of the times in the Bible when the Father had chosen a sinful human being through whom to work or allowed such a person to step into a position of power and authority.  To the people at the time, without the perspective of the whole story that can only be known in historical retrospect, it must have been baffling why God had chosen such a flawed person or given such apparently absurd guidance.  The Bible is replete with examples:  

1. Choosing Jacob rather than Esau the oldest son.
2. Abraham ordered to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice.  
3. Gideon having to reduce his army to just 300 to oppose a far more numerous enemy.  
4. God giving Moses a stick rather than an army of people to defeat Pharaoh. 
5. Guiding Hosea to marry a prostitute.  
6. Samuel anointing Saul to be king.
7. Elijah anointing an obviously very bad person— Jehu, as king who would destroy the wicked apostate dynasty of Ahab and Jezebel.  
8. Jesus calling Judas who would betray him as one of His disciples. Etc. Etc.!

The Holy Spirit also reminded me of my own hero Sir Winston Churchill—his brash personality, the World War I military debacle of Gallipoli, his drinking, his personality flaws, his amazing ability to put people down, his self-promotion and sins which were many and blatant—all of which in the eyes of his contemporaries were so egregious that they disqualified him for leadership.  Yet in the moment of greatest peril, the Lord had raised him up as the means of defeating the great nemesis to, what Churchill called “Christian civilization”—Nazism. 

My walk past the Ted Cruz sign continued for a long time in what I believe was a Holy Spirit inspired reverie.  Finally, toward the end of the walk, I surrendered and said, “Ok Lord!  I am all in!  I will put aside my opinion and obey you as you call me into this battle to advance your Kingdom on earth through whomever you choose to work through, even if…”

Then I had to add the truly hard part of my surrendering, “…it is Donald J. Trump OR Hilary Rodman Clinton.”  Because I did not see Hilary meeting those four criteria to defeat Radical Islam or the Radical Left, I really did not think God could be choosing her.  But I knew my total commitment to take part in the Lord’s battle plans would not be unconditional unless I added her as a possibility. 

When I had finished my walk and gotten back to my house and could warm up beside the wood stove, I felt that something in the spiritual realm had changed.  Or rather I had changed.  

I had gone through the same dynamic of surrender to God the Father and to submitting to His plans that Jesus Christ had experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane in that night of agony when finally he was able to say, “not my will be done but thy will be done.”   

When Jesus had made that surrender, everything had changed!  The die was cast!  The course was set.  He was all in for God the Father’s plans no matter the cost, the suffering, and the agony of the cross.  When Jesus made that surrender, He entered the place of total dependence on the Father and His grace, guidance, and power to see Him through this impossible mission of dying on the cross. 

Of course, I was not being called to go to the cross like Jesus, but in a way, I was being called to die to my own opinions and preferences, and to join totally, participating in God’s plans no matter what they might be.  For me now it no longer mattered who God chose, or what political party He would work through to accomplish His purposes.  

My job was to jump whole-heartedly into the dance of cooperating with the Holy Spirit.  The how and the who the Father was going to use to defeat Satan’s schemes and advance His plans was no longer a matter of my opinions, my likes or dislikes, or my political inclinations.   I was to move in synch with the Holy Spirit as a coworker and friend of Jesus Christ and as a citizen of the Kingdom of God.   

This set me free to transcend the politics and titanic egos and not be swayed by the clashing opinions.  I heard the deafening noise of the opinionated media and campaigning, but with greater clarity I heard the small still voice of the Holy Spirit.  I was neither for or against Trump nor anyone else!  I was neither Democrat nor Republican nor Independent.  I was detached from the politics because I had shifted into a different space altogether.  

It was not that I had given up my rational abilities, rather they were harnessed in service for the spiritual battle for the soul of America.  I was not the commanding general of those battle plans.  Jesus was, and my role was to take part in fulfilling the role that He had called and entrusted me with.  I had stepped into my place of intercession. 

I know this may sound pretentious or over exaggerated.  But that is what happens to intercessors. They live in two different worlds:  the spiritual as they are sitting with Jesus in the heavenly places, and concurrently, like living in a parallel universe, they are walking on earth with the rest of humanity.

[The rest of the chapter provides the biblical basis for how, when we step into our place of intercession, we are able to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in shaping human events according to God’s Kingdom purposes.]

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So my prayer for each of you is that you will be led by the Holy Spirit into your place of intercession so that you can take part in advancing God’s Kingdom.  If your place of intercession is to pray for President Trump in fulfillment of I Timothy 2:1-2, then please let us know.  You may be called to join the POTUS Prayer Network.  Just send a note to Martin, martin@mobilizingprayer.org if you are.