Preaching the closing sermon of the State Evangelism Conference, Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt challenged Southern Baptists to basically get over themselves.
“Southern Baptists have felt they can do for themselves what only God can do for them,” he said, noting a steady decline in the number of baptisms among Southern Baptist churches. “Baptists think we can work it up and change these baptism numbers anytime we want to.
“It is as though we think we can revive ourselves,” Hunt said.
But “until (we change), we will be like other mainline denominations and down the tubes we will go.”
“There is a great need in this denomination that if we desire to see things come around, we must have more emulation to match our exhortation,” he said.
“It is easy for me to stand and tell my people what they ought to do.”
Preaching from Psalm 119, Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., challenged Alabama Baptists to contrast knowledge, understanding and wisdom.
Knowledge deals with studies, understanding means making sense of what is learned and wisdom is a gift from God, he said, noting the people of God must learn from God not just for edification but also to do what He says.
“People want to know just because they want to know,” Hunt explained. “But we ought to know so that we might do. It is the truth that you obey that will change your community, not the truth that you just know.
“You can teach what you know, but you can only reproduce what you [experience],” he added. “Understanding comes through experience … not because you read it in the Bible but because you experienced it in your ministry.
“Until we ‘get it’ and it makes sense to us and we experience it, our people are going to come and they are going to have a head full but their hearts are not going to be touched and they are not going to ‘get it.’
“Our attention needs to be focused on the Word of God, our eyes on Jesus,” Hunt noted.
True worship means “we see God for who He is and we see ourselves for who we are, then we see people for who they are. … You think a whole lot less of yourself and feel burdened for other people.”
Hunt added that surrendering to God means promising to do whatever He reveals, no matter what it is.
“The will of God is not optional,” he said.
“The reason the average person doesn’t know the will of God is because they are waiting for God to show them something they can choose.” (TAB)
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