Prayer is far more than a private devotional exercise—it is one of the God-ordained ways His purposes move into the earth. In this episode of Light on Life, we explore how prayer impacts kings, leaders, and nations through vivid examples in the Word of God from Daniel, Jeremiah, Caiaphas, Peter, and the rulers surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. This message shows how God stirs leaders, positions rulers, and even uses their words in connection with praying people. If you have ever wondered whether your prayers can affect world affairs, this teaching answers with a resounding yes. How Your Prayers Release Tremendous Eye-Opening Ability for Good, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

This Week: Discover how God works through praying people to stir kings, guide leaders, and move His purposes forward in the earth.

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Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This weeks call is:

Pray. Stand. Influence.

This week, move beyond personal prayer and begin praying intentionally for kings, leaders, and those in authority.

Ask God to stir hearts, guide decisions, restrain evil, and use positions of power to further the gospel in the earth.

Your prayers are not small—God can use them to touch leaders, shape history, and open doors for salvation.

Join the Conversation

Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believers life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).

This week’s question is:

Question: How has this teaching changed the way you think about praying for leaders, rulers, and those in authority?

Share: Name one way you want to begin praying more intentionally for kings, government leaders, or voices of influence this week.

Remember: God speaks His plans—but He brings them to pass through praying people.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 49 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 44 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes:

• Well again, welcome.
• Let’s pray.

Father God open the eyes of our heart concerning our responsibility to pray for all men, and those in authority that we might see all men come to Jesus. For this has been your plan from the beginning. I thank you for arousing the churches to pray for the leaders of their nations, states, and cities. We pray for the leadership of our churches so that they might rise up with the authority that God gave us by raising us up and making us to sit in heavenly places in Christ. I thank you for that in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Powerful Prayer: How God Works When His People Pray

• We are starting with a tremendous prayer promise in First John.

1 John 3:21–22 (NASB 2020) — 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

• In a previous podcast, we learned that knowing God is not proved by words alone, but by loving Him with your whole being—heart, soul, mind, and strength.
• We saw that real knowing of God begins with His Word revealed and His commandments kept.
• As we respond to His truth, we guard His Word, yield to His will, renew the mind, discipline the emotions, and walk in obedience to Him.
• We discovered that revelation opens the door, but loving response keeps us walking with Him in a real and ongoing relationship with Him.
• But here’s the turning point—If that relationship is real… it must produce something.
• If knowing God is real, lived, and powerful, what does that kind of life actually produce in the world around us?
• Does loving God with your ALL stay private—or can it move history?
• Can a believer’s prayer life affect nations?
• Can they impact kings, rulers, leaders, and other authorities?
• Scripture says it can.
• God has always moved through the prayers of His people to influence kings and those in authority for the express purpose of all men coming to know Jesus as Lord.
• And that is where we are headed next.
• How Your Prayers Bring Powerful Eye-Opening Power for Good, all on the next edition of Light on Life.

Powerful Prayer: How Prayer Impacts World Affairs

1 Timothy 2:1–4 (NASB 2020) — 1 First of all, then, I urge that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made in behalf of all people, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

• Praying for kings is a matter of urgency.
• The Greek word urge is a word of extreme conviction.
• Urge is authoritative in tone, and functions as a command.
• Paul isn’t making a gentle suggestion but rather calling for prayer with compelling force.
• Why the urgency?
• Because the souls of men are at stake.
• The number one thing on God’s agenda is “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
• Kings, your president, the ruler of your nation, are center stage in the plan of God.
• The stakes are high so we must see how our prayers impact kings.
• Throughout Scripture, God redirected kings, opened doors, and shifted nations—all through the prayers of His people.

How Prayer Works with Kings: Daniel and Jeremiah

• Your prayers release dynamic world-altering power.

James 5:16 (AMP) — 16 Confess to one another therefore your faults (your slips, your false steps, your offenses, your sins) and pray [also] for one another, that you may be healed and restored [to a spiritual tone of mind and heart]. The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].

• The ESV states it this way.

James 5:16 (ESV) — 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

• It’s imperative that we understand the released power that comes by the praying soul.
• The verb ‘power’ captures the thought of possessing genuine strength or capacity to produce results—not mere potential, but actual potency at work.
• Prayer becomes effective when it lines up with God’s purposes.
• Purposeful prayer is not loudness or intensity.
• It is not bombarding heaven trying to talk God into the notion.
• Neither is productive prayer the act of informing God.¹
• No, He already knows.
• When you live righteously, your Spirit-led prayers partner with God to bring His plan to pass on the earth.

Jeremiah 25:8–12 (NASB 2020) — 8 “Therefore this is what the LORD of armies says: ‘Because you have not obeyed My words, 9 behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these surrounding nations; and I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and hissing, and an everlasting place of ruins. 10 Moreover, I will eliminate from them the voice of jubilation and the voice of joy, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. 11 This entire land will be a place of ruins and an object of horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. 12 ‘Then it will be when seventy years are completed I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation,’ declares the LORD, ‘for their wrongdoing, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it an everlasting desolation.

• Here the Lord tells the prophet Jeremiah about what will happen to grossly disobedient Israel.
• The Lord sends His servant: Nebuchadnezzar.
• Yes, you heard that correctly: brutal, ungodly, prideful Nebuchadnezzar — God’s servant.
• Seventy years in captivity was Israel’s high price for rebellion.
• So here is Daniel, known for his dedication to prayer, sitting in Babylon with his people.

Daniel 9:1–4 (NASB 2020) — 1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of Median descent, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans—2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. 3 So I gave my attention to the Lord God, to seek Him by prayer and pleading, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. 4 I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed, and said, “Oh, Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and faithfulness for those who love Him and keep His commandments,

• Underline in your thinking what’s taken place.
• Daniel prays about a prophecy that the Lord gave.
• You know the Lord who said:

Numbers 23:19 (NASB 2020) — 19 “God is not a man, that He would lie, Nor a son of man, that He would change His mind; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

• Jesus picked up this same thread when He added.

Matthew 24:35 (NASB 2020) — 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

• Why is Daniel praying if God’s Words will never fail?
• God speaks His plans—but He brings them to pass through praying people.
• That’s not opinion—that’s how Scripture works.
• Does that short-circuit your theology?
• So, Jeremiah prophesies the Word of the Lord and Daniel prays that Word would come into being.
• Here’s the outcome.

2 Chronicles 36:22–23 (NASB 2020) — 22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia—in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah—the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that he sent a proclamation throughout his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying, 23 “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever there is among you of all His people, may the LORD his God be with him; go up then!’ ”

• The base word ‘stirred’ means to arouse.
• The Lord actively stirred the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia.
• But, He did it in connection with the prayers of a righteous man.
• God moved the king of a world power because one man prayed. That’s not theory—that’s Bible.
• Add these words to your prayer arsenal: “Lord, stir the hearts of…” and name the leader before Him.
• There are many examples of God doing just this.

2 Chronicles 21:16–17 (NASB 2020) — 16 Then the LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines and the Arabs who bordered the Ethiopians; 17 and they came against Judah and invaded it, and carried away all the possessions found in the king’s house together with his sons and his wives, so that no son was left to him except Jehoahaz, the youngest of his sons.

• God stirs kings.
• First Chronicles 5:26 shows God arousing another ungodly ruler according to His purpose, the King of Assyria.
• Jeremiah Fifty-One echoes the same voice.

Jeremiah 51:11 (NASB 2020) — 11 Sharpen the arrows, fill the quivers! The LORD has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, Because His plan is against Babylon to destroy it; For it is the vengeance of the LORD, vengeance for His temple.

• God has a plan—but He’s looking for someone who will pray.
• Don’t stop at just praying for ungodly leaders.
• God stirs the righteous as well.

Haggai 1:14–15 (NASB 2020) — 14 So the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and worked on the house of the LORD of armies, their God, 15 on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.

• Prayer makes tremendous power available.
• That’s a Bible fact.
• Now, it’s your turn.
• The question is not whether God has a plan or the means to accomplish it.
• The question is whether you are the man God uses today.
• Now, there is another eye-opening way God steers world-rulers.

How Prayer Works with Kings: He Puts Words In Leaders Mouths

• God puts words in the mouth of leaders.
• Words they had no intention of saying.

John 11:49–52 (NASB 2020) — 49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, 50 nor are you taking into account that it is in your best interest that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish instead.” 51 Now he did not say this on his own, but as he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation; 52 and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

• The Holy Spirit prophesied through the mouth of one of the most wicked high priests in Israel’s history.
• Caiaphas had no intention of fulfilling the Word of the Lord spoken through the mouths of the Old Testament prophets.
• But that’s exactly what he did because God used his mouth.
• Think of the potential consequences of this!
• Gaze at some of the outstanding world altering words that shaped history.
• In 1863, the American Civil War had been raging for over two years.
• Casualties were massive.
• In the midst of a nation deeply divided—politically, socially, and militarily, when the outcome of the war was uncertain, Abraham Lincoln stepped forward and said.

This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.

• In 1987, Ronald Reagan said to the leader of the Soviet Union,

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

• Those words played a major role in ending Communism.
• Now in these examples, were those words prophetic?
• Did God put these words in the mouths of these men?
• We can’t say for certain.
• That’s something we may only fully understand when we come to the other side.
• But one thing we can say for certain.
• In the approximate year of 1406 BC, The Lord put words in a donkey’s mouth to speak to religious leader gone awry, a man named Balaam.
• You will find that account in Numbers twenty-two starting at verse twenty-one.
• The take-away?
• If God can put words in a donkeys mouth, He can put words in a leader’s mouth just like He did Caiaphas.
• God has a pattern of using the words and decisions of leaders to move His purposes forward.
• He does this in connection with men in the earth who pray for kings and all who are in authority.

How Prayer Works With Kings: The Battle for Control

• Nothing illustrates the battle over what goes into a leader’s mouth like the encounter Peter had with Jesus in Caesarea Philippi.

Matthew 16:13–17 (NASB 2020) — 13 Now when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you yourselves say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

• Peter had a rock solid revelation that he spoke out in answer to Jesus’ question — “Who do men say that I am?”
• “You are the Christ the Son of the Living God!”
• It’s an exciting thing to have the Father God use you by putting revelatory words right in your mouth.
• But moments later.

Matthew 16:20–23 (NASB 2020) — 20 Then He gave the disciples strict orders that they were to tell no one that He was the Christ. 21 From that time Jesus began to point out to His disciples that it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem and to suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and to be killed, and to be raised up on the third day. 22 And yet Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You!” 23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s purposes, but men’s.”

• Get behind me Satan?
• Yes—this wasn’t a little demon.
• Satan himself was influencing those words.
• One moment God — the next Satan.
• Peter needed protection from demonic influence.
• The kind of protection that gets released through praying people.
• The tension you see in this account is what happens today in the decision making halls of world leaders.
• What comes out of a leader’s mouth—and who has access to it—is directly connected to whether the Church is praying.
• Are you praying for kings?
• It’s time to take God’s Word as seriously as He does.
• Man your battle station.
• Pray for kings.
• Pray for leaders.
• Ask God to use the mouths of those in authority to further the gospel.
• The souls of men are at stake.
• God speaks His plans—but He brings them to pass through praying people.
• God has a plan—but He’s looking for someone who will pray.

How Prayer Works with Kings: He Positions Leaders To Be In Power At A Certain Time

• Now with all of this, you might think, “Well, why doesn’t God just put a saved man into office in the first place.”
• “Why allow the wicked to rule?”
• If the wicked had not been in authority, Jesus would not have been able to go to Calvary to save the world.
• God moves men through mountain-moving prayer.
• Think of all that had to happen for the prophecies concerning Jesus to come to pass.

Galatians 4:4–5 (NASB 2020) — 4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters.

• And with that thought, here is the Illustration of the Day.
• Mathematician Peter W. Stoner (in Science Speaks) analyzed the probability of just 8 specific prophecies about Jesus being fulfilled by one person.
• His conclusion?
• The odds of just 8 prophecies being fulfilled by one person is 1 with 17 zeros!
• How big is the number 1 with seventeen zeros after it?
• Stoner explained it like this:
• Take the entire state of Texas-cover it with silver dollars two feet deep.
• Mark ONE coin.
• Blindfold a person and let them pick one coin.
• That’s the odds — one in one hundred thousand trillion.
• Now that’s just a mere eight prophecies.
• If you ramp this up to forty-eight prophecies you have number one with 157 zeros after it!!
• You can’t even wrap your mind around that number!
• Yet scholars say there are over three-hundred prophecies Jesus fulfilled.
• God has tremendous eye-opening ability.
• He can bring the exact person to the planned place at the right time for His plan.

Acts 4:23–28 (NASB 2020) — 23 When they had been released, they went to their own companions and reported everything that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard this, they raised their voices to God with one mind and said, “Lord, it is You who MADE THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH AND THE SEA, AND EVERYTHING THAT IS IN THEM, 25 who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said, ‘WHY WERE THE NATIONS INSOLENT, AND THE PEOPLES PLOTTING IN VAIN? 26 ‘THE KINGS OF THE EARTH TOOK THEIR STAND, AND THE RULERS WERE GATHERED TOGETHER AGAINST THE LORD AND AGAINST HIS CHRIST.’ 27 For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever Your hand and purpose predestined to occur.

• God gathered rulers like Herod and Pontius Pilate within His plan—positioning them in that moment to fulfill what had already been written.
• He gathered the Gentiles — all who had an unwitting part to play in the salvation story.
• They meant it for evil—but God used it for redemption.
• Herod and Pontius Pilate were wicked rulers.
• Jesus was innocent.
• A righteous ruler would have let the innocent Jesus go free.
• Jesus being set free was not the plan.
• A crazed Jewish crowd provoked by devils and demons had to be in place to holler, ‘Crucify Him.’
• It had to happen this way to fulfill what was written.
• When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice — those are true words spoken by Solomon.
• But in this case, the unrighteous were just as vital to fulfill God’s plan.
• Pray for kings, not according to your perception of right but according to God’s long-range purpose.
• God speaks His plans—but He brings them to pass through praying people.
• God has a plan—but He’s looking for someone who will pray.
• Will you be that man?

How Prayer Works With Kings: Putting The Word Into Action

• Prayer is not meant to stop at your personal needs.
• This message calls you to widen your prayer life and stand before God for leaders, rulers, and those in authority.
• Ask the Lord to stir hearts, restrain darkness, position the right people, and use words spoken in places of influence to further the gospel.
• Your prayers matter more than you think.
• They are part of how God works in the earth.
• Are you praying only about what touches your life directly, or are you also praying for kings and those in authority?
• Start making governmental prayer part of your walk with God.
• Bring leaders before the Lord by name, ask Him to stir hearts according to His purpose, and believe that your prayers can help move His plan forward in the earth.
• If this message opened your eyes, there’s more.
• Tap into the Light on Life Podcast and continue building a life that knows God, walks with Him, and moves His purpose forward in the earth.
• Don’t just listen—engage, grow, and share it with someone who needs it.
• If you have listened to this podcast and you do not know Jesus in the pardon of your sins, and you would like to know Him for yourself, pray this prayer after me.

Father God, Thank You for Jesus’ obedience to go to the cross for me. I receive forgiveness of sins right now, and I say with my mouth that Jesus is my Lord, and I will walk with You from this day forward. Thank You, Father, for receiving me into the family of God. I declare that I am a child of God this day.

• If you prayed that prayer, reach out to us so that we can send you something helpful to get you started in your walk with God.
• How Your Prayers Release Tremendous Eye-Opening Power for Good.
• You guys have a great God week, and we will see you next time for another edition of Light on Life.

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