Swapping recipes may not be everyone’s idea of a successful evangelistic service. But the nearly 750 people attending the Monday night closing rally of the Alabama Baptist State Evangelism Conference did just that in the area of living out the Christian life.
And, of course, most people there would gladly have accepted Frederick Haynes’ recipe for chocolate chip cookies, especially after he described them in detail a few hours into the service when stomachs were rumbling.
Haynes, pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, dazzled the crowd with his rhythmic, sing-song style of preaching and teaching.
Reading from Habakkuk 2:1-4, Haynes preached on “Seeing the Big Picture Through Your Tears.”
“All of us know something about the terror of tragedy,” he said. “Trauma, trouble, terror, tragedy, disappointment, defeat and delay have a way of dogging our footsteps,” he added. “Even those of us who claim the name of Jesus Christ have a hard time as we grope for answers that speak to our situation.”
Habakkuk is a “minor prophet with a major message,” Haynes said, noting Habakkuk questioned God’s reasoning for allowing the unjust to punish the just. “‘How long shall I cry and You not answer me,’ Habakkuk asks God,” Haynes said.
“God appears to take God’s own sweet time. … Then in chapter 2 after raising the questions (we learn that) God is not in the business of explaining but in the business of sustaining.
“If you have question to raise to God, ask it,” Haynes said. “God is not scared of your questions. He will sustain you and help you get through what you are going through.
“God will give you the strength to understand that where you are is not where you are going to be,” Haynes explained. “What we must do as people of faith is always be on the lookout for what is God is about to do. Even when the worst has happened to us, we anticipate the best is yet to come for us.”
Drawing the crowd’s attention even closer, Haynes described a vision as “a preview of coming attractions.
“A vision is when God gives you a glimpse of your future tense that orders your steps in your present tense. A vision is a revelation beyond your situation that energizes you beyond your expectation,” he said. “With a vision you never allow your current reality to blind you to your divine possibilities.”
Preaching on vision took Haynes to his story about chocolate chip cookies. “The individual ingredients do not taste good by themselves. They are part of a recipe,” Haynes explained. Also, the individual ingredients alone do not look like cookies, but the package on the box of cookie mix depicts the vision of how the cookies will look, he said. “And when the cookie dough felt the heat it began to take shape and rise because there was something in the dough put in there by me,” Haynes said.
The same is true with Christians, he added. “Christians stand tall when they go through something. We begin to rise because God put something in us.”
Haynes used his cookie story to remind Christians to keep their eye on the end result and that the vision will be worked out in God’s timing. The in-between time can be hard, he said, but “when you know in Whom you believe that will determine how you behave in the in-between,” he said. “It is not a life of just existing, but a life that has meaning and life. … The just shall live by faith … and faithfulness is a reflection of what we believe.”
Prior to Haynes’ encouragement that the best is yet to come and that God will carry Christians through the trials, Bob Pitman, pastor of Kirby Woods Baptist Church, Memphis, Tenn., reminded those in attendance to just do what they can.
While Pitman expresses his thoughts in a more soft-spoken manner than Haynes, he also wowed the crowd with his wit as he focused on an unusual biblical character — Shamgar.
Preaching from Judges 3:31, Pitman said, “Shamgar is very often overlooked and neglected.”
Shamgar was “a man who did what he could,” Pitman said. Coming out of a background of pagan worship, Shamgar represents “what happened to most of us,” Pitman said. “We fell on our face, and He called us into His service.”
So, Shamgar only slew 600 Philistines when others were slaying hundreds of thousands. “That’s all that was there,” Pitman said. “He did what he could. That’s all God asks of any of us.”
Jesus provides an example of doing what one can in Mark 12:41–42 when he describes the widow’s mite. “When Jesus saw what she put in He said, ‘What she put in was more valuable than all the rest of them put together.’”
Christians are to do what they can with what they have where they are for the glory of God, Pitman said. “I cannot overestimate to you the number of people who have the idea that they could really live for God if they had difference circumstances,” Pitman said. “If you can’t serve Him where you are, you won’t serve Him anywhere else.
“Every church doesn’t have the same opportunity,” he noted. “There are a lot of churches that could not baptize 250 a year.
“If we have personal agendas, if we are committed to building a personal empire, not only will they collapse, they should,” Pitman said.
“God has not called any of us to build our own personal empires, to be celebrities in the limelight. All God has ever asked of any of us is do what we can with what we have where we are for His glory.”
Closing out the rally for the evangelism conference was a multimedia patriotic presentation by First Baptist Church, North Mobile, in Saraland.
While the video/music presentation “Faith of Our Fathers” dealt with the debate over whether America was founded on Christian principles, the purpose extended beyond that, said Ed Litton, pastor of First, North Mobile. “We put the presentation together for July 4 last year, but it is part of a larger educational program within our church,” he said. “It calls fathers into responsibility in our church.”
The presentation included patriotic songs, war video footage, a video history on the founding of the nation narrated by Litton (captured on video in Washington, D.C.) and interviews with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Wade E. Horn, assistant secretary of U.S. health and human services.
Rick Lance, executive director for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said, “We are a patriotic people. We care about our country. We are a praying people and a passionate people about sharing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“We are in the business of making disciples of Christ,” he said. “A praying, patriotic and passionate people — that’s Alabama Baptists at their very best.”
Alabama Baptist evangelist Danny Wolfe and the choir from Heritage Baptist Church, Montgomery, provided special music and praise and worship throughout the evening.
Share with others: