Prayer and Voting

Christians all over America are praying for the outcome of their presidential election. They seem to want God to determine who will be the next president, but I don’t think that makes sense.

The United States has adopted democracy. This is a system designed to enable the people to choose the president, not God. If most of the people were following Jesus and walking in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit that might produce God’s choice for president. But in a country where large numbers of people are no longer following Jesus, it becomes a system that shuts God out of the process of choosing a president.

So when people pray about the election, what are they expecting him to do. He will not cause ballots to be lost. He will not miraculously intervene and change ballots once votes have been made. The most that God could do is speak to people and prompt them to vote in a particular way. However, he has given us freedom, so he will not force people to change their vote to align with his will. This means that most of the people who are not following Jesus, and some who are, will ignore any prompting of the Holy Spirit about how to vote.

In a nation that has adopted a system that allows the people to elect the president, and many have chosen not to follow God, asking God to determine the outcome of the presidential election is naïve. The people will choose the person they want.

I realise that some Christians believe in a doctrine of meticulous providence in which God determines every event that occurs on earth, but that belief is not consistent with the scriptures. I explain this in God's Sovereignty.

If a nation has deliberately chosen a system of government in which the people choose their president, I don’t understand why they would expect God to override the people’s decision.