Daily News Column

I've started a weekly column in our local newspaper on Friday. Here was this week's submission.

Practice patience, prayer
Dr. Jason Pettus
Published: September 11, 2009
It is said that timing is everything. I have seen the importance of timing play out in my life and ministry on many occasions. There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t hear a story about the impact of perfect timing.

Recently, someone visited their doctor for a regular check-up that they usually do not take the time for. At that visit, their doctor found a mass that would have led to that person’s death had it gone untreated.

A shared story I hear from time to time is about the guy who says he was running late for an appointment or class and happened to run into the girl of his dreams. He pursues her and gets her to marry him.

My favorite story lately was the one about someone who received a job offer and took it and found out that same afternoon they would be losing their current job. That is great timing!

God has designed time with a grand purpose. We read in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that God made the world in such a way that “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” And Romans 5:6 teaches us that “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Salvation was provided by God at just the right time.

Having heard this, the question I know some of you are asking is, “When is my time?” I imagine many are wondering, “When am I going to get my miracle cure, my needed job or my long-desired love?”

I don’t know the answer to that question for you, but I know God does and I know that you can trust Him to provide for you at just the right time. The best thing you can do is pray.

Now, doesn’t that sound like a nice preacher answer? Pray about it. Indeed! I can hear the groans now. But I will tell you and can testify that prayer works. I believe prayer is the most powerful and most underutilized ability we have. God allows us to speak to Him and request His intervention. Not only does He allow it, He commands it. In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, we are told to “pray continually.”

There are some who will question the effectiveness of prayer. I spoke with a person this Sunday who has been praying fervently for a practical need to be met in her life. She has done everything in her power to position herself to see this need met, but God has not seen fit for that to happen yet.

She wondered why that was. She wondered if she should even continue to pray. I told her, “Yes, without question you must continue to pray.” Her response was, “Well, it does not seem that God is doing anything.”

I then spent some time helping her understand that even when it doesn’t seem that God is doing much, God is at work. As a matter of fact, there was a day in our world when it seemed that God was doing the least, when in fact God was doing more than we can fully understand.

As Jesus was nailed to the cross, it seemed that God the Father was not doing anything. In the agony of that traumatic event, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) As Jesus died, it seemed that God was doing very little, but in reality God was accomplishing the most important thing in human history. According to 2 Corinthians 5:19, it was when Jesus was dying on the cross “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.”

Sometimes, when it seems that God is doing the least, God is in fact doing the most.

There is no telling what God might be up to in your life, but you can rest assured that if you are His child living under His leadership in His love by His grace through your faith, He is up to something. We are told in Philippians 1:6 that we can be “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” It is just a matter of time with God.

Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted;
Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done;
The work began when first your prayer was uttered,
And God will finish what He has begun.
Though years have passed since then, do not despair;
His glory you shall see, sometime, somewhere.
— Ophelia Adams