Prayers During Pride Month 2026

Editor’s Note: This is an article from a few years ago (June 2022) that remains appropriate today in 2026. At the end, I’ve added a acronym for pride that is a good prayer guide. We’ve been using this for a few years as we prayer for those attending pride events.

Pride month is upon us, when the LGBTQ+ communities participate in many activities and parades to raise awareness and encourage others to live out their LGBTQ+ identities in the open. With this season comes a full array of emotional reactions. Some are celebrating; they have survived, especially in the face of great rejection and abuse. Others, reminded of an estranged family member, are grieving every time a rainbow flag comes into view. Some are coming out for the first time, so walking down the street with others who are like them feels like a breath of fresh air. And others still can see nothing but a celebration of sin. There are of course many other feelings and experiences happening as well. How do you find yourself reacting?

What do we do in the face of such disparate perspectives?

When a way forward seems hopeless, all I know to do is pray. Regardless of where you find yourself in the spectrum of emotional reactions to Pride, I think we can all agree that there is division and pain surrounding these issues. Families and churches have been torn asunder. I do not believe this is God’s heart for the LGBTQ+ community. I do not believe this is God’s heart for their families either.

As I pray for the church and our response to the LGBTQ+ community, I am reminded of the book, Us versus Us, by Andrew Marin. In an interview about his book, he observes of his time working in the gay community in Chicago, “(a) most LGBT people in Boystown regularly attended a faith community the majority of their youth; (b) most still believed in God and were interested in one day finding a faith community again; and (c) most were less concerned with a church’s theology of homosexuality than they were with how they were treated by individual Christians in those churches.”

Most who have left the church have not left their faith. This is good news!

This month, as you see a rainbow flag flying in your neighborhood or in a commercial on TV, I’d like to ask you to pause and pray. Pray for reconciliation in families. Pray for loved ones to be able to truly communicate what is in their hearts and their love for each other. Ask God to intervene in the church, that His purposes will be accomplished and that the enemy’s purposes will be thwarted.

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PRIDE Prayer Guide

For a few years now, we’ve been praying over pride events in Denver. You can use this acronym as a guide for how to pray. Please join us in prayer!

P - Protection for Participants

R - Restoration of Relationships

I - Included/Surrounded by Believers

D - Desire Relationship with Christ

E - Enveloped by Christ’s Love

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