“First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all those who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What do you do when you don’t have any power? Well, one approach is to try to get some power. That would seem to make sense. After all, power is a good thing. We all want to have some power. But what about when that’s not an option? What then? You could gripe and complain. You could punish those who do have power by making their exercise of it as complicated and uncomfortable as possible. Neither of those, though, seem like terribly positive options. Much to the contrary, they will likely make things vastly more difficult for us. There is another way, though. Paul outlines a third way here could make quite a difference indeed. Let’s talk about the best thing to do when you don’t have any power.

This afternoon (at least relative to my particular time zone) a meeting will happen between U.S. President, Donald Trump, and Russian President, Vladimir Putin. The two leaders will meet at a U.S. military base in Alaska to discuss how to bring an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. No one really has any idea what the outcome of that meeting will be. Supporters of President Trump are hopeful. Opponents are already rolling their eyes. I don’t know that anyone trusts President Putin.

What is at stake in the meeting is the lives of millions of innocent Ukrainian citizens whose lives have unjustly been upended by Russia’s unprovoked war against the neighboring nation. At stake is also the lives of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who are being treated as little more than meat to be ground to nothing to satisfy the whims of an autocratic, power-hungry leader. Russia’s list of war crimes in their execution of their unjust war is long and disturbing. Ukraine’s hands aren’t entirely clean either, but an honest comparison between the two sides on this matter leaves the latter looking vastly superior to the former in moral terms.

For reasons that are complicated beyond what I am going to try to wade through here and which go back to the tribal roots of the Russian people, Putin decided that it made national sense for Russia to attack Ukraine with plans to absorb the smaller nation into Russia. And ever since, no one has really been able to do anything about it. The Ukrainians have fought valiantly and beyond what anyone else in the world imagined they would achieve. The West has collectively made sure they are equipped with weapons and supplies to continue fighting. But Russia keeps on bombing civilians and populations centers in what amounts to an unprovoked, large-scale terrorist campaign against an otherwise innocent nation. Oh, they’re hitting military targets as well, but they don’t seem to draw a very sharp line between the two.

What are we supposed to do about something like this? What are we supposed to do when someone with lots of power uses that power against someone with little power, and we’re off the side watching the whole thing unfold? What do we as Christians do in the face of governing authorities that have no respect for human life and dignity let alone any kind of genuine faith commitment?

Paul offers some pretty sound advice here for Timothy to share with his church. Before we look at this advice, though, let’s keep in mind the context. When Paul references “kings and all those who are in authority,” he’s talking about Rome and Emperor Nero. Those weren’t exactly authorities that were very warm and fuzzy toward believers. While Rome hadn’t yet turned the full weight of its attention on stamping out the growing Christian movement across the Empire at this point in history, their efforts were definitely ramping up.

The point here is that Paul wasn’t instructing Timothy to pray for people who shared his worldview and values and who supported or at least happily tolerated his movement. He was to be praying for people who hated him and were prepared to kill him in order to stop him. In other words, this would have been something like telling the pastor of an evangelical church in Eastern Ukraine (where evangelical Christians are being persecuted relentlessly by the virulently anti-evangelical Russian government) to encourage his people to be praying for Putin.

Saying all of that, I guess I’ve spilled the secret about Paul’s counsel. It was to pray for these people. “First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all those who are in authority…” There are times when someone is in a place to have a direct impact on national policy and direction by virtues of their words and actions. For most of us, though, we are merely impacted by those things. Yes, we can vote (at least in this country), but that only accomplishes so much. And when we are talking about leaders of another nation, we have even less of an ability to directly impact their actions.

It would be easy to sit back and complain that we can’t do anything, but that’s simply not true. We can pray. Now, let’s go ahead and acknowledge that the secular individual will hear that and immediately roll his eyes because prayer doesn’t do anything. The problem there, though, is not prayer, it is the lack of a belief in God. If there exists a God like the Scriptures describe Him to be, then prayer not only makes sense, it is the right thing to do in every situation and especially ones like we are talking about here.

God can do what we can’t. He can move where we don’t have access. He can change hearts and direct policy in ways we can’t touch. He makes clear more than once in various parts of the Bible witness that the raising up and lowering of leaders, and especially national leaders, is His prerogative. We don’t understand all He does and why, but His assertions of sovereignty are nonetheless clear. So, yes, praying is always a good and right thing to do.

But Paul goes beyond that to giving us a reason for praying for these folks: “…so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” That is, we pray for these folks in hopes that even if they don’t believe like we do, they’ll leave us alone to follow Jesus peacefully and without needlessly disturbing anyone else.

Now, God still honors the gift He has given us to make meaningful and consequential choices, and He allows those choices to play themselves out naturally almost all the time, including the choices of godless dictators. But this is why having the full picture of the witness of the Scriptures matters. We know that justice will yet come for evil leaders who use their God-gifted authority to pursue evil ends. We know too that God will one day restore all things and richly reward the faithfulness of those who have continued seeking and serving Him even in the face of vigorous opposition from ungodly leaders.

Still, though, we pray because there are no better hands in which to leave the situation than God’s. He is the one who is sovereign. He can change the situation for our good. He can sustain us in hard situations so that we can still thrive and advance His kingdom even in hostile circumstances.

So, with all of that in mind, would you join me today in praying over this meeting between these two world leaders? Pray for wisdom. Pray for humility. Pray for conviction and boldness. Pray for a commitment to honor the value of human life. Pray for an end to fighting. Pray for justice and peace. Pray for those who are still in harm’s way and will likely yet be for many days ahead of us. Pray for God’s glory to be known and His kingdom to be advanced. We don’t know what the outcome will be, but He does, and He will still be on His throne whatever it happens to be. To Him be the glory.