As President William McKinley lay dying from an assassin’s bullet in Buffalo, New York, in 1901, the Lord’s Prayer was on his lips. Prayer had been a lifelong practice that guided McKinley through his political career and into the presidency. McKinley had been born into a devout Methodist home fifty-eight years before, and born again at age fourteen in a Methodist camp meeting. According to his pastor, A. D. Morton, young McKinley stood up during a youth meeting and said, “I have sinned; I want to be a Christian . . . I give myself to the Savior who has done so much for me.”1

McKinley’s mother, a woman of intense devotion and prayer, taught him to pray by example and encouragement, but his greatest lessons in prayer were forged under the pressures of his duties as President of the United States.

One of his heaviest decisions arose in 1898 regarding the status of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. One day, a delegation of Methodist leaders came to the White House, and McKinley told them how he had decided to resolve the crisis in the Philippines.

“The truth is, I didn’t want the Philippines,” he said. “I did not know what to do. . . . I sought counsel from all sides—Democrats as well as Republicans—but got little help. . . . I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight, and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way.”

McKinley relayed the strategy that developed in his mind as he prayed: that the Philippines should be taken seriously and helped, that the United States should “by God’s grace do the very best we could by them as our fellow-men for whom Christ died.” McKinley added, “And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.”2

I love that little slice of presidential history because it illustrates what we should do when we don’t know what to do, when our problems seem unsolvable, and when our burdens keep us awake at night. Human advice may help, but nothing compares to taking our burdens to the Lord and processing them through prayer, so as to arrive at guidance, wisdom, and peace.

Prayer is the buffer zone of the soul, where fear is repulsed and where grace and guidance are gained. This is the process described in Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Robert J. Morgan, Worry Less, Live More: God’s Prescription for a Better Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2017).

We have just released a new Bible study on based on Robert Morgan's book, Worry Less, Live More

These lessons are available on Amazon, as well as a part of my Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription Service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year.

Sessions include:

The Practice of Rejoicing

The Practice of Gentleness

The Practice of Nearness

The Practice of Prayer

The Practice of Thanksgiving

The Practice of Thinking

The Practice of Discipleship

The Practice of Peace