National Day of Prayer, The American Miracle and the Gift of Liberty

This morning, before the day began to unfold, I stopped by a small church to pray with a Korean pastor. As we prayed for our families and the nation we love It struck me that we are here because someone before us prayed. We are free because generations before us believed that liberty was worth kneeling for before it was ever worth fighting for.

Tomorrow as we acknowledge the National Day of Prayer, let us pause to remember something deeper than politics. The unbroken human longing for freedom and the God who grants it.

For thousands of years, people lived under systems of tyranny, kings, emperors, warlords, and governments that believed human beings existed to serve the state. The idea that ordinary people could govern themselves was unthinkable. Power flowed downward, and the individual had no inherent rights.

Then came the American experiment, something the world had never seen before.

For the first time in history, a nation declared that rights come from God, not from rulers, and that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. This radical, biblical idea, that every person is created in the image of God and has inalienable rights, became the foundation of the United States. It flipped the entire structure of human governance upside down.

Today President Trump reflected on that sacred inheritance. During America’s 250th birthday year, he said, “we pledge to never forget the countless blessings God has bestowed upon our people and our country.” He described how, “from the cradles of civilization in the ancient world to the Christian empires of medieval Europe and the miraculous founding of our own Nation, the entire Western experience has been connected by a golden thread of devotion to God.”

He highlighted the role of faith in America’s Revolution, reminding us that the Second Continental Congress called for a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer” as they sought God’s blessing in their fight for “freedom, virtue, and posterity.” Only weeks later, “armed with unshakable faith,” the colonies declared independence and began the long march toward liberty’s victory.

He also noted how this devotion to God has carried our nation through every chapter of its story from abolishing slavery, to preserving the Union, to defeating totalitarianism, to planting our flag on the Moon. Through triumph and trial, America has acknowledged only one Divine King.

This is the heart of our national identity. This is the source of our strength and the reason liberty took root here and nowhere else.

So tomorrow as we pray and recognize National Day of prayer, remember that freedom is not guaranteed. It is a gift from our Lord, entrusted to us to defend, preserve, and pass on. The same biblical truths that launched this nation must continue to guide it.

Let us not go backward. Let us keep moving forward and let us protect the precious gift of liberty and freedom that God has given the United States of America.

But most of all, let us remain, always, one nation under God.