HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 17, 2026 – We pray wrong. We see a drought and pray for rain. We see a broken nation and pray for healing. We see ungodly people doing ungodly things, and we pray for God to forgive them. But what we should be praying for is an outbreak of righteousness, an epidemic of doing good, a pandemic of people choosing what’s right in God’s eyes, even when it flies in the face of what the world thinks is right. At the same time, we need to pray for God to strengthen us to levels he hasn’t strengthened us before, so that we can persistently and under every circumstance model godliness, model godliness, model godliness, until it spreads like a holy contagion to everyone around us.

We need a pandemic of godliness.

You can’t change God’s justice. You can’t call for a review of God’s terms just because you don’t like them. God sent Jonah to warn the Ninevites that their city would be destroyed in 40 days. When the King of Nineveh heard Jonah, he didn’t ignore him or mock him. He didn’t try to silence him. He didn’t threaten to arrest him for hate speech or for creating a public disturbance. No, the King responded by instituting a nation-wide emergency. All Ninevites were to drop whatever they were doing and immediately sit in sackcloth and ashes, including their animals. And they were to fast until the king told them to stop. No arguments and no exceptions. They couldn’t even drink water. The King believed that if Nineveh did this, God might change his mind about destroying them.

Note that the King didn’t simply pray to God to forgive the Ninevites’ sins. Nor did he curse God for the threatened destruction. He instead took the most drastic godly action possible and used his authority to make sure that everyone else did. “But, Charlotte”, you might be thinking, “People today aren’t going to this. They’re not going to stop whatever they’re doing and go along with whatever the government or other authority tells them to do.” You might be surprised. During the last “pandemic”, whole populations stopped whatever they were doing and donned masks. Whole populations obediently stood six feet apart. Entire industries were shut down, schools and businesses were shuttered, people self-isolated at home – some welded in from the outside – until they were given permission to leave. Whole populations complied with the most drastic of decrees without question. And they did all this for months – even years – because they were afraid to catch a cold. You’d be surprised at what people can be persuaded to do under the right authority.

When God saw the Ninevites’ collective show of repentance, he called off the planned destruction. Note that God’s justice didn’t change; the Ninevites changed, and in changing their behavior, they changed their due reward.

All nations today are on the fast-track to destruction. We need a pandemic of godly behavior to stop the destruction or at the very least to delay it. Praying for God to forgive us and save us is not going to cut it this time. Like Nineveh, it’s too late and we’re too far gone. We need instead to pray for people to make godly choices – to choose what’s right in God’s eyes. And we need to pray this prayer while making godly choices ourselves, every day, all day, without exception. Our prayers will only have authority if we ourselves model what we’re praying for.

We urgently need a pandemic of godliness. It begins with localized outbreaks of making good choices.

Let’s get that pandemic started now!

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. 

(Jonah 3:5-10)