The Triumph of Trump

January 20, 2025! It is Martin Luther King Day, the NCAA D-1 National Football Championship, and the Inauguration of our 47th President.

Each event has its own constituency. To each their own is the one of importance. To them all congratulations.

The one with the most long lasting result is the inauguration.

Many Christians prayed for Trump to be elected.

As a result Donald J. Trump is now officially our President. In his Inaugural Address he called this the Golden Age and pledged himself to an unimaginable series of actions. Bottom line, there is no way he can achieve all he has pledged himself to do. However, based on his past you can be confident he will try.

The President declared that he believes his life was spared “for a reason…. I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said. Hopefully it was, and hopefully he will be used to that end. In that light every member of the praying population should make and keep a commitment to continue to pray for him.

“Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence” (I Timothy 2: 1, 2).

I have prayed for some presidents I didn’t like, but I have prayed for them because of this passage.

President Trump is an imperfect flawed person like the rest of us, so we can’t expect perfection from him. Neither does it mean he can’t be used by the Lord to achieve His will. God can use a crooked stick to draw a straight line.

At 8:00 AM, just before the Inauguration the President, Vice President gathered in St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square, known as the Church of the Presidents, for a worship service.  This is a tradition begun 92 years ago. The press reported every president since then has gathered there for such. Not so.  Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, was inaugurated on Thursday, January 20, 1977. Hours before the inauguration he, Vice President Mondale, the President’s Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs, their wives and other dignitaries gathered in the First Baptist Church in Washington, NOT St. John’s, for worship. I know because at the request of the President I planned the service and spoke at it. He asked me to do both.

As such, I had to provide the Secret Service a list in advance for them to do a security check. When I arrived at the door, the agent in charge told one more person than the number on the list was there. Panic! I checked the list and identified the “extra” person. It was me. I left my name off. Fortunately I had worked with the election enough that I was known by the agent and he cleared me to enter.