“And Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
– Matthew 22:37–40
As we pray during these 31 days leading up to Presidential Election in the United States, these verses from Jesus’ mouth in Matthew 22:37–40, may be the most important verses we could read and pray according to because they inform everything.
Would a supreme love for God and a selfless love for others steward the way that we interact with the world.
As we think about voting, I talk about the sermon before you vote, but we don’t have command in the Bible to vote mainly because old Testament, New Testament times, God doesn’t speak to democratic elections like we are experiencing in the 21st century. But that doesn’t mean that we just treat voting lightly, instead we think through how to steward our vote with love for God and with love for others as ourselves. So how do we steward our vote to express love for God? And how do we steward our vote to express love for others?
Our Affection Belongs to God
I’m not saying that automatically makes it easy to know how to steward your vote or who to vote for, but this is what drives us. This informs the way we vote, the way we do everything we do. And even our perspective in the middle of an election to say my devotion, my affection is definitely not to this or that candidate, to this or that party. My affection belongs supremely to God, and I want to love others as myself. I want to lay down my life and love for others.
When that is evident in our lives, it totally changes our perspective on the country around us. And then is there not a greater need than these two verses to mark more and more and more of our hearts and more and more people’s hearts in our country. Our greatest need is to be restored to God. We need his mercy. We need spiritual awakening to who God is, his love for us and what it means to love him with everything we have. This is what we’re created for. We were created to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Matthew 22:37–40 Encourages Christ-Like Love
And then what would it look like if we loved each other like this? What would social media look like if we loved everybody else as ourselves? What would our interactions and our communities look like in our cities? So many different issues that we discuss around an election. What would they look like if we were truly selflessly, sacrificially, loving others as ourselves. So Jesus, we pray that these two commandments would inform, transform, drive us in every way during these days.
Lord God, we pray that you would help us to grow in love for you during these days. We pray that on November 4th, we will love you more than we do today. And we pray that you would help us to love people around us as ourselves. God teach us, help us transform our hearts, that we might love selflessly and sacrificially. We would love our family in this way, that we would love friends in this way, that we would love coworkers in this way.
Loving Our Enemies
And God that we would love our enemies in this way. Just like you command us to, God. We pray for super natural love for others. Selfless, sacrificial love for others that flows from your sacrificial love for us. God, we are so amazed, odd, grateful, humbled that we have the privilege of being in a love relationship with you.
God, even as I’m praying this right now, I’m just freshly overwhelmed by this reality. I pray this for every single person who’s listening right now that we would realize in a fresh way that we have been created, designed to live in love for you, in light of your love for us and God, we pray. We pray for the spread of your love in this way across our country. God we pray that you would bring many, many more people in the United States, other countries that are represented. And those who are praying right now to know your love, God, among unreached people.
Matthew 22:37–40 Prays for God’s Love to Reach All the Nations
As we pray every day for people in the world who have yet to hear of your love in Jesus. God we pray for Somali, men and women, millions of them. God may they know your love for them in Jesus. May they experience life and loving you with all their heart and soul, the mind and strength. God, we pray for spiritual awakening in America. God we pray for hearts awakening to their need for you. We need to be reconciled to you, to repent of sin and to experience a love relationship with you.
So God, we pray for love. God we pray for supreme love for you and sacrificial love for others to mark each of our hearts to drive us and how we steward our vote and how we live on a daily basis. And we pray that this love, this kind of love, this supernatural love would spread in our country for your glory and for the good of others. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
