Just wanting to express my thankfulness to God that thousands of Southern Baptists are gathering today in order to worship the living God in spirit and in truth.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your grace and mercy.
May we continue to “make disciples of all nations.”
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My gut reaction was to say that a significant portion of our church’s Southern Baptists absent due to being ill or out of town. But, I heartily “Amen” your sentiment just the same.
GUNNY HARTMANs last blog post..A PERSON is smart. PEOPLE are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.
Personally, I just want to be conscious of God’s presence in worship. Our pastor preached on the 4th commandment and about how worship ought to be voluntary, an act of gratitude and devotion. We are to worship in Spirit and in truth. It was a really good message, and then we had prayer meeting at 5:30 p.m. Afterward I went to hear a gentlement whose ordination sermon I plan to preach on 6/6. On 5/31, d.v., I will preach our son’s 10 anniversary service at his church. I am conscious that this is a rare event. By the way, one of my fellow students at SEBTS was from Northern Ireland and he knew one of Spurgeon’s great or great-great grandsons (I can’t remember which) who was pastoring a church in Norther Ireland back in the late 60s early 70s. I am always amazed by the fact that my life has been touched directly by many of the notables in the past two hundred years. In my first pastorate in MO I had a member who had attended a D.L. Moody crusade in St. Louis in the 1800s. A friend’s mother was converted in a Billy Sunday crusade in the 1920s in Ill. Another friend had Billy Sunday preach in his pulpit in Brooklyn during Sunday’s great crusade in NYC in 1917. My ordaining pastor, Dr. Ernest R. Campbell attended Bob Jones U with TW Wilson (Billy Graham’s childhood friend). Dr. Campbell knew all the members of the Billy Graham Crusade team. One friend had as a teacher of preaching, Dr. Jeff Ray at SWBTS. Dr. Ray was the last fellow to live with Dr. B.H. Carroll (Dr. Carroll would have students stay with him to help them attend seminary). Another person whom I met and who preached a revival for me at the Gum Springs church was the last graduate Assistant of Dr. A.T. Robertson. Dr. R. Paul Caudill had a Ph.D. in Greek from SBTS. One friend lead the music for Dr. George W. Truett in a revival in a church in Alabama. Dr. L.G. Meadows also won some of sin-city (Phoenix, Ala.)’s criminal leaders during the hey-day of crime in that city in the early 50s. I am conscious of the hand of God working in my life and that is what is important to me. As to myself, I am a wretched sinner who is, I trust, being saved by the sheer grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think it is important tht, like Jacob, we awake to the fact that: “God is in this place, and, surely, I knew it not.”
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