The Prayer Patience Intersection

For some reason, I have been thinking about two very powerful spiritual concepts, patience and prayer. The Senior Pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church, Frederick Douglass Haynes III, recently made a statement from the pulpit that sort of capsulated my thoughts. He said, “There is no such thing as an emergency in eternity.” It appears for those who claim Christianity that time, God’s time, must somehow be reconciled with man’s time. Prayer seems to provide the mechanism we think we can accomplish this. There is no such thing as an emergency in eternity. In today’s so-called fast-paced world, we tend to want what we want now, immediately, including those things that we ask God for. At times, we rush to be delivered from, sent to, get ours, or solve whatever. As if God operated On our time schedule, we can question God’s judgment based on the amount of time He answers or doesn’t answer our entreaties. We even evaluate prayer by how long it takes to hear from God as determined by our body clocks. Many want to treat this situation as if God was on call awaiting our text. I’ve come to understand that through prayer and legitimate belief in...