Pause, Pray, Proceed – Plus Two More!

Are you feeling overwhelmed with your to-do list? Maybe you’re struggling with maintaining your balance as wave after wave of problems keep knocking you down.

The lazy days of summer are long gone, and Thanksgiving Day is a little over a month away. Situations requiring decisions are piling up, and then an unexpected emergency rears its head. Now what?

Consider the Three Ps

A friend recently reminded me of her practice of following the three Ps: pause, pray, and proceed. As I considered the benefit of practicing the three Ps, the realization hit me that I often practiced them, but not in the correct order. Instead of pausing, praying, and then proceeding, my instinctive reaction is to proceed with whatever I think is best, then pause when I hit the proverbial brick wall, and finally pray for help.

Yeah, not very helpful!

So after a time of self-examination, I added two more Ps and have been more intentional about following all five . . . in the correct order.

Here they are:

Consider the Five Ps

1. Panic (not!)

Panic has a way of grabbing us by the throat when a crisis hits. Emotional balance disappears as we’re overcome with the tyranny of the urgent. We might feel as though we’re held captive by a sense of urgency, but that urgency is frequently manufactured by the demands of other people combined with our own fears and other emotions. But we can learn from the advice the apostle Paul shared with his young protégé, Timothy, when he wrote, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

And in his New Testament letter, James wrote, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4 ESV). So perhaps every crisis is not a reason to panic after all!

Instead:

2. Pause

Hitting the pause button provides a few moments to regain a proper perspective. Is the crisis really a crisis? What are our options? And who is the best source to identify those options? Friends? Wise counselors? Or perhaps God’s Word? The psalmist wrote, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105 ESV).

Which brings us to:

3. Pray

In his letter, James also tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5 ESV). The psalmist recorded God’s words when he wrote, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you” (Psalm 32:8). And the book of Proverbs tells us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

With such open invitations, why is prayer so often our last resort instead of our first choice?

After we receive the direction or answers we need as we spend quiet time with the Lord, we’re usually ready to rush forward into action. But there’s still another P to consider.

4. Praise

Before we jump into action, how often do we stop to praise and thank God for His wisdom? I love the biblical example of Daniel in Daniel 2 when he was put on the spot to not only interpret King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, but also tell what the dream was! Daniel prayed and received the answer, but before he rushed off to tell the king, he stopped to thank and praise God. In verse 23 he said, “To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king’s matter.”

Only then did Daniel move on to the final P, bringing the dream’s interpretation to the king.

5. Proceed

There’s a time to pray and there’s a time to act. After we’ve rejected panic, then paused, prayed, and praised, it’s time to proceed. Confident, not in our own strength and wisdom, but in the strength and wisdom of the One we belong to. I love Ephesians 6:10, where Paul writes, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” Yes, we’re to be strong, but that strength comes from the Lord. And in His strength and wisdom, we can move forward with assurance.

So there they are: the three Ps expanded to five.

Have you tried them? What was the result?