God’s answers to prayer are grounded in God’s graciousness and faithfulness. But He will not answer if we do not petition Him. An examination of Scripture reveals that Christian prayer has always been essentially petitionary. Thus prayer should be part of our everyday lives. We may ask God for spiritual and material needs (though the latter should be subordinated to the former), letting God know the desires of one’s heart (Job 6:8; Ps. 21:2; Phil. 4:6). I, like many of you, have been blessed by petitioning God through prayer.
While working as a business reporter for The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville in the early 1990s, I was compelled to pray, crying out to God for direction. I was living a profligate life, arrogant, obnoxious and void of meaning. As a conservative journalist, I was miserable in a sea of liberalism. However, I came to understand that the source of my misery was due to not living the life God intended, with little evidence that Christ had saved me at age 10.
One day I came home from the office so depressed that I plopped down at my kitchen bar, laid my head on the counter and inconsolably wept. As I began to pray, the Holy Spirit revealed the truth of my sinful living and need for confession, repentance and to ask for forgiveness. So I did and then I cried, “God help me! You have given me the ability to be a journalist. Why can’t I do that for You?” (I will come back to this later.)
Fast forward three years. I was editor of The Daily Herald in Columbia, Tenn., about 50 miles south of Nashville. I had re-committed my life to Christ and was loved and nurtured by a great church, First Baptist Church of Columbia. The people there loved me and showed me how to love and serve others.
I developed a habit each morning of kneeling by my bed to read my Bible and then praying before I did anything. Then one morning it happened. I awakened and felt the presence of God in my bedroom. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced and to this day I cannot describe it. I jumped out of bed and trembling, fell face-down on the floor. I cried out to God, asking Him what it was that He wanted. I heard nothing. In a few moments it was over. Almost breathless, I jumped up and called my pastor and told him what had happened.
“Get over here right now,” he replied.
When I arrived I asked him, what is going on with me? He laughed, put his arms around me and said, “Could it be that God is calling you to full-time gospel ministry?”
I replied, “You can’t be serious. I’m 42 years old! I have no theological training. Why would God call someone like me?”
“Well,” he said still with a grin, “I think you ought to pray about it.”
I did and I came to see that God was, indeed calling me. So I publicly made it known at a Sunday night service. To my amazement dozens of people came to me afterwards, smiling and saying, “Don, we’ve known all along. We were just waiting for you to obey God.”
So First, Columbia affirmed me (they would later ordain me) and sent me off to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. I arrived on campus with nothing but the first semester paid for and $800 in my pocket, fully trusting God to provide – and for five years and through two master’s degrees, He did.
Now let’s go back to my tearful prayer to God when I asked if I could do journalism for Him. I had given no thought to that prayer as I began seminary. I actually thought God was calling me to Christian education because the people at First, Columbia had affirmed my ability to teach (I taught the single adult Sunday School class for years). But as time passed, God opened doors for me to do Christian journalism. First, in the public relations office at Southern, then at the WORLD (magazine) Journalism Institute and as a national correspondent for Baptist Press, which is where the Missouri Baptist Convention Executive Board discovered me in 2002.
Two decades have passed since my desperate prayer to God during my frustrating days at The Tennessean. But not a day goes by that I do not acknowledge His faithfulness to me. God is in control of my destiny. I owe Him everything.