The following is based on a video published on .

By now, we’ve all heard the horrific headline that Charlie Kirk has indeed died of his gunshot wounds at the age of 31. He was gunned down during an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. I'm sure your newsfeeds are blowing up with hot takes and commentary and hashtags. I want to take a moment to cut through all that politicized static and have us think together for a second:

How can we pray at a time like this?

Now, let's face it. We're in such a contentious moment that, when there is a horrific headline, there are those who will openly mock you for praying. And so, what do you do with the mockery? Pray harder. Pray all the harder. And so very quickly, three ways that we can be praying today in light of this terrible news. 

Number one, pray for his wife, Erika, Mrs. Kirk. Pray for her. Pray for their two precious little children. As a father, I can't even imagine not being around to raise my kids to love Jesus. Please pray that God shows up with supernatural comfort for her and those little children, ages one and three. Pray that God wraps himself around them in love. 

Number two, pray that the gospel advances in a time like this. You see, I do apologetics. I defend the faith. I do theology. There's so much that can be said for solid arguments on paper that God exists and the gospel is true. But it's really when everything hits the fan, when the sky is falling, that the true power of the gospel shines most brightly. I think of the horrific shooting by the deranged Dylann Roof several years ago at Emmanuel Church. Many of the families of the victims in the wake of the tragedy stood up publicly and preached the gospel that the grace of God is bigger than we realize. To me, that was one of the most powerful apologetic and evangelistic moments of the last 10 years, when these folks who love Jesus, who had lost loved ones, were able to stand up and not answer hate with hate, but answer hate with love. They did the gospel thing and not just give us some weak tolerance or even just some kind of love. They showed forth the gospel power of enemy love. So pray that the gospel of a God who loves enemies, a God who loves us when we were his enemies, spreads. Pray that the gospel that Charlie Kirk loved so well would advance in these times. And pray that rather than devolving into violence — answering violence with violence and evil with evil — that the gospel would triumph across the nation.

This leads to a third specific prayer request. In these times, you may be in a state of shock, grief, and/or anger. But make no mistake, there are those right now around this country, thousands, I would imagine, who may be secretly or in their echo chambers rejoicing at this horrible headline. I don't say that without evidence. When a CEO of a healthcare company was gunned down, there were several who publicly expressed joy and turned the shooter into a hero. And when Trump was nearly assassinated twice, some publicly hashtagged things like #nexttimedon'tmiss and other such horrible things. Understand that there is a culture of death surrounding us. There's an ideology that has swept the nation and captured and imprisoned many imaginations, such that they would hear a headline like today's and actually find something to celebrate. Now, those people — let me be clear — are ideologically possessed. And there is, I would argue, a demonic mindset at play that would say that we should rejoice that a 31-year-old father of two met his demise. And so, I would encourage you, number one, pray for Erika and her children. Number two, pray that the gospel advances through these horrors. And pray, number three, for the folks — thousands of them around the country and around the world — who are so ideologically possessed, so entrapped by darkness that they see what is good as bad and what is bad is good. Pray for the gospel to go forth and draw people out of their imprisonment, out of their captivity to the kinds of false ideologies that would inspire the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Join me in prayer.

Lord Jesus,

We lift up Erika Kirk. We lift up her precious two children who will now be raised without an amazing dad. Please surround that family. Infuse their hearts with an extra dose — a supernatural dose — of love and comfort as they grieve. Number two, we pray that as Charlie Kirk believed the gospel — knowing that sinners like us can only be saved by grace — that the message that he held dear would go forth around the nation and around the world in the wake of his assassination. Pray that more people are brought to the best news in the universe and can escape this never-ending cycle of hateful political ideology. And we pray, third and finally, for those entrapped in the very ideologies that Charlie Kirk tried to publicly argue against — that you would remove the blinders and that you would pull folks out of darkness into light. We pray this all in Jesus’s name. Amen.