Prayer and war

How much does prayer matter in our pursuit of war?

May 03, 2026

Author’s note: I started this article last September, and it sat for a long time unfinished. We were not at war then; I think, regardless of the president’s statements, you can say our troops are definitely in harm’s way right now, if not in actual war. It is time to complete this thought.

I’ve lately been immersing myself in a few studies and videos on war. There’s a 3-hour documentary in the style of Ken Burns on Youtube on the roots that led to World War I. There’s another on the psychological destruction of Nazi beliefs of World War II German POWs held in the United States. And in the back of my mind, there’s this one where Youtuber Destin Sandlin—a mechanical engineer—with his partners is attempting to manufacture the simplest item, a better grill cleaner, entirely from U.S.-made parts, and so far is failing.

Destin’s channel, SmarterEveryDay, also did a series on war, which is a must-see for anyone concerned about the current prospect for one happening. Against this background, I can’t help but think that my generation, the one conveniently poised between the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of both Gulf wars, who grew up with the Cold War, apocalyptic expectations, but no real understanding of how it feels to have a war with real loss, might face, in our remaining years, a war that America can lose, with our kids (or for some, grandkids) desperately fighting it.

Then I look at how I could pray against this.

I think of Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer,” which he demanded not be published while he still lived. It is a short piece, where those in church are given to pray for our troops in a foreign war. A man, whom Twain calls “the stranger” enters this church, walks up to the pastor and bids him stand aside. The minister, startled, does so, and the man begins to speak: “I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” He brings to the ears of the congregation the “unspoken” part of their prayer:

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

When we pray for our troops, is this not implied in the transaction offered before God? We pray that Cain, not Abel, be slain. We pray that the Almighty has blessed our righteous cause and that we march not for our own glory, honor, or way of life, but endued with purpose from on high. We pray that God Himself has given us our marching orders, to destroy the enemies of heaven. We fashion ourselves like King David and his armies, or King Saul sparing the last of the Amalekites, against the specific word from the prophet Samuel, as recorded in 1 Samuel 15:13-15. We like to think it’s our mercy to spare the enemy, and our actions are not rebellion against the Lord, but our own obedience, as we concoct it.

It is easy to see modern Israel in this image. Since 2023, the Israelis, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the most American-like figure in Israeli politics since the country was founded, have engaged in what they call “jungle rules” of war—there is no target unworthy of elimination if they are in command of, or even aiding, the enemy. Israel has wiped out the entire leadership of Hamas, more than once. It has destroyed the command structure and senior commanders, including the political leaders, of Hezbollah, and is not working on the next echelon as Israeli troops seek to scrub all traces of the group’s military presence from southern Lebanon.

And Israel, joined by the United States, eliminated—killed—the entire top leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a single raid, on a single morning, as targets of opportunity. Given the talk from both Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, you’d think they had a plan for the people of Iran to rise up and depose the despotic theocracy ruling that place. But no such plan has revealed itself. In fact, it seems that both leaders are content to deal with the replacements in the Supreme Leader and political masters’ places, who are also loyal to the death to the Islamic Republic. Instead of crushing the ruling faction, this war has exposed the immense power the regime still possesses to choke world commerce, and inflict great harm upon the United States and other free nations.

It seems we now have a war that we could conceivably lose. From a global perspective, I believe Iran is really a proxy for a World War, one we must win. But from a spiritual perspective, are we really doing God’s will, or engaged in His righteous work, by fighting this battle?

So how shall we pray?

The prophet Jonah was instructed by God to go to Nineveh, which today is Mosul, in Iraq, and bring the message that God is displeased with their idolatry and hedonism: “its wickedness has come up before me,” said the Lord to Jonah. Jonah did not want to preach that message to Nineveh, because they were a people reviled and hated by the Children of Israel, why would anyone want to extend to them God’s mercy? So Jonah fled. If anyone is familiar with Bible stories, or attended Sunday School, we’ve all heard the story of Jonah in the belly of the whale. Most people think that the miracle of the story is the whale and Jonah’s survival, having been tossed from the ship he was on after the crew heard Jonah’s confession of disobedience in the midst of a terrible storm.

That’s not the miracle at all. Jonah was selected by God to deliver the message to Nineveh, and God was not about to let Jonah escape his assignment by running. (Who can run from God’s presence, anyway?) Whether you believe the “big fish” story or think it’s just an analogy for God’s persistent pursuit of Jonah, the result is the same. Jonah went to Nineveh and brought God’s message: repent or be overthrown; you have forty days to consider your ways. When the message reached the king of Nineveh, he repented, as did the entire city.

The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. Jonah 3:5.

The Lord, as promised, brought mercy.

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. Jonah 3:10.

Jonah was furious. How could God have mercy on such wicked people? He prayed for death. God brought understanding by using a plant under which Jonah had sought shelter from the sun, then allowing worms to consume the plant. Jonah was again angry and prayed for death.

⁹But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
¹⁰But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” Jonah 4:9-11

The people of Nineveh were not obedient to God because they did not know good from evil. God used Jonah to bring that message and welcome 120,000 people into communion with Him. That is the miracle.

Our troops are sitting at sea and in bases around the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Some of our sailors and Marines at sea cannot be resupplied, and the Navy, envied for decades for its great food, is reduced to serving canned slop. This image of the United States, who in every war has been the masters of logistics, does not project well in the world. We have been pulling our punches in fear of taking casualties, but in the process, making ourselves targets, or suffering the humiliation of leaving without having achieved any kind of victory.

So how shall we pray?

The fastest-growing underground Christian community in the world is in Iran. Some estimates say there are more than a million believers in Iran, up from under a thousand in 1979, when the Islamic Republic took over. There are 90 million people in Iran, a country roughly the size of Alaska. The fact the one percent of them are believers in Christ, and that number is greatly added to each day, is a miracle. Should we pray for that as God’s will? It is certainly God’s will, from the Christian perspective.

The Islamic Republic and the IGRC believe there is a supreme, unitary god. They believe they know who he is. They believe in their scriptures and that their god, the god of Islam, of Mohammad, will bring about paradise. They are willing to kill, and die, for their god. The IGRC has over 190,000 military members; in all our strikes, along with Israel’s, we have killed between 3,500 and 6,000, depending on whose numbers you believe. We have done billions of dollars of damage to the country’s infrastructure. They have inflicted upon us $9.4 billion in added costs per month; that’s an additional $52 per American each month.

We are engaged in a war of attrition with Iran, and we could conceivably lose that war. The Iranian theocrats are willing to kill their own, or die themselves, for their cause. Economic chaos is not something they will bend to. However, if some of them begin to see Jesus Christ in their dreams, and hearken to His call for faith, well that will be a miracle, and it could end the war.

Which victory do we want to pray for?

Will we pray for our troops to prevail, for Iran’s “roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger”—which we see in Gaza, by the way, as the result of “jungle rules”, or will we pray for mercy at the hands of a loving God?

I believe in a strong military, for the sake of defending our freedom. But doing half a job is worse than doing none at all. Our leaders have placed us where we can suffer more harm than doing good, and that our failure to finish has left Iranians worse off, and the regime more powerful over its people, than before we arrived.

I pray for victory, but the victory of faith. For the Christian, we believe Ephesians 6:12:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

The IRGC and its henchmen do not know their right hand from their left. God can extend mercy to them, and in this age, the Christian’s commission is to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The war is not against the people of Iran, but against the spirit that motivates them to wickedness. God is able to do miracles.

I will not pray for our troops to prevail in martial glory, though if we must pursue military ends, I pray we do it quickly and with maximum impact. Let’s get it done and finished. I pray that God extends his mercy to Iran, and that our suffering is not in vain. I pray that God gets the glory, not our leaders, or our troops.

I pray that the words of the stranger not come to pass: that we not “drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief…” That is not the will of the Almighty.

“Jungle rules” only work for a time, and only under the shelter of the wings of the Most High. For now, it appears that Israel is operating under that shelter, for God’s purpose is His own to ponder. Nowhere in scripture does it say the United States is similarly protected. One day, God may withdraw His protection for Israel, as His will is to provoke their jealousy. Perhaps, that is the day Iran becomes a Christian nation. I don’t know; there are many more learned in theology and eschatology than me.

But I do know that American Christians are playing with fire if we believe that we are somehow the Scourge of God (what Attila the Hun called himself), and that our martial supremacy is somehow an expression of God’s will and power. All we will achieve is death, destruction, and our own suffering. I pray, above all, that American Christians will awaken from our political nap, and see the world with spiritual eyes. That our prayers would not tend toward the church in Mark Twain’s story.

The members of that establishment concluded about the stranger: “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”

I am hopeful that churches in America, today, do not arrive at that same place. May we repent of our own wickedness.

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