I have written up a python script that allows a user to input a message, his email and the time and  they would like the email sent. This is all stored in a mysql database.
However, how do I get the script to execute on the said time and date? will it require a cron job? I mean say at 2:15 on april 20th, the script will search the database for all times of 2:15, and send out those emails. But what about for emails at 2:16?
I am using a shared hosting provided, so cant have a continously running script.
Thanks
A cronjob every minute or so would do it. If you're considering this, you might like to mind two things:
1 - How many e-mails are expected to be sent per minute? If it takes you 1 second to send an e-mail and you have 100 e-mails per minute, you won't finish your queue. 
2 - What will happen if one job starts before the last one finishes? Be careful not to send e-mails twice. You need either to make sure first process ends (risk: you can drop an e-mail eventually), avoid next process to start (risk: first process hangs whole queue) or make them work in parallel (risk: synchronization problems).
If you take daramarak's suggestion - make you script add a new cron job at end - you have the risk of whole system colapsing if one error occurs.
Timed email reminder in python