According to Ronnie Floyd, churches in Alabama have one great need — the power of God.
But they also have one great struggle, he said — to remember why it’s life-or-death important.
“We have too many pastors, too many Christian leaders who are content to live life and do ministry without the power of God,” said Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of Cross Church in northwest Arkansas. “We’ve gone long enough where this world has seen what we can do. It’s time the world sees what our God can do instead.”
Seeing the lost saved
Why? Because we live in a world where billions are still unreached with the gospel, and “sadly and regrettably Satan has convinced us that it’s more about the songs we sing and the clothes we wear and the personal liberty that gives us the right to express ourselves in church” than it is about seeing the lost saved, Floyd said.
Alabama Baptists have a daunting task before them, but they struggle to stay focused on the mission, he observed.
“We tend to drift away from the mission of God, and when you drift away from the mission, you drift away from the power of God and the heart of God,” Floyd added. It means Christians are drifting away from devoted prayer.
And when that happens revival can’t take place, Floyd declared.
All the revivals that happened in Scripture — like in the first few chapters of Acts, including the 3,000 who came to faith in Christ at Pentecost — happened after believers devoted themselves to genuine, desperate prayer, Floyd said.
“We all want a Pentecost but do we want to pray? We all want our churches to grow but do we want to pray?”
When God’s people pray He shows up, Floyd told his listeners.
“And when God gets in something He takes it to a brand-new level, and that’s because God can do more in a moment than you can ever do in a lifetime,” he said.
He challenged Alabama Baptists to pray for an “unprecedented move of God like we have never seen before.”
He also challenged them to pray for urgency “like we have never had before.”
“What’s the difference between the early Church and the Church today? The early Church had urgency. We don’t have urgency,” Floyd said.
Sincere relationship with Christ
And Alabama Baptists lack that urgency because they don’t believe in lostness anymore, he said, explaining that often people think that if their friends, family and neighbors have some sort of religious affiliation, it means they’re okay with God even if they’re not really living out a passionate, sincere relationship with Christ.
“And that’s not true at all,” he said. “Each person you know — they are either lost or they’re saved. There’s no gray area.”
The Church needs a generation that’s not okay with drifting away from the power of God, Floyd said.
“The field is the world. And we can do this if we will stay connected to God’s power.”
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