Panhandle pastors & laymen
seek to 'connect with God'
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___PLAINVIEW--Prayer provides the key for helping Christians make connections with God, speakers stressed at the Panhandle Pastors' and Laymen's Conference.
___"Connecting with God" was the theme for the 80th annual conference, held at Wayland Baptist University in Plainview Feb. 19-20.
___"In all prayer, God has two over-arching purposes," claimed keynote speaker T.W. Hunt, a prayer consultant and author from Spring.
___"God's first purpose in prayer is to make us like himself," said Hunt, a former faculty member at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and staff member of LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, Tenn.
___"Second, God designed prayer to make us participate in his work--to do what God does. Prayer starts with God. He invented prayer to communicate with us." That concept speaks to how Christianity stands apart from all other world religions, Hunt stressed.
___"The basic difference between Christianity and every other religion is Christianity alone is based on relationship," he explained. "Jesus said our first commandment is to love God above everything. That is relationship. And the second commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. That is relationship."
___In contrast, oriental religions focus on "negation of self, learning not to suffer," he said, adding Islam stresses meeting the legalistic standards prescribed by Allah, and animism centers on totems or representative objects of worship.
___In Christianity, God provides three "frames of reference" for relating to people, Hunt said.
___First is "mutual occupying," he reported. "God is in us; we are in God."
___Second is multiple "relations," he said, explaining that through the God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Christians relate to God as a father, brother, friend, bridegroom, guide and a whole host of relationships.
___Third is "proximity," or God's presence, he added, reminding that Jesus told his followers, "I am with you always."
___Christians enter into that presence through prayer, Hunt declared, describing six kinds of prayers in two categories.
___Four prayers--confession, worship, praise and thanksgiving--respond to God, he said. They are personal, "making us like God."
___Confession restores sanctification or holiness, which has been removed by sin, and it is prayed in response to God's own holiness, he said. Worship prayers express love for and adoration of God and are offered out of response to God's glory.
___Praise prayers lift up the attributes of God, such as God's majesty, power and mercy, and they are said as Christians respond to those attributes, he said. Thanksgiving prayers come from people who are grateful for the riches of God.
___Asking prayers are comprised of petition and intercession, Hunt suggested.
___Petition prayers ask God for blessings for oneself, he said, noting the Bible records more prayers of petition than of intercession.
___"The greatest saints made petitions and wound up doing great things for God," he recalled. That's because those prayers focus on becoming like God. "God wants to stretch us, to make us greater persons," he said.
___Intercession prayers are offered on behalf of others and comprise two-thirds of the answered asking prayers of the Bible, Hunt said. These prayers focus on working with God to accomplish God's purposes.
___Acknowledging, "God does not answer a prayer if it is out of his will," he nevertheless urged Christians to pray, particularly for others. "At this time in history, it seems God most wants us to intercede. ... Why? Because it is maintaining what Jesus is doing right now, by the side of the Father."
___Christians also need to listen to God, stressed Bill Wright, pastor of First Baptist Church in Plains, who was chosen president-elect of the conference at the Plainview meeting.
___"Most of our prayer life will be better if we do more listening than talking," Wright stressed. "When was the last time you got on your knees and said, 'God, all I've done is say gimme, gimme, gimme. Now, speak to me'? It will change your life."
___Despite popular opinions to the contrary, prayer alone does not have power, insisted the other keynote speaker, John Franklin, a prayer and discipleship specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources.
___"The power is not in prayer. If we believe that, we might as well be Muslims; they pray five times a day," Franklin said. "The power is in God. When we pray, we better connect with God, who has all the power."
___Christians can learn from "all the great prayer warriors of the Bible," he added. "Whenever God said it, they believed it and instantly acted 'by faith,'" he said, quoting the 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews.
___"The starting point for Jesus in our lives is faith," Franklin said. "He always starts with faith. Faith precedes everything else in the Christian life."
___Faith is vital in prayer because it is linked to expectation, he added. "On a scale of zero to 100, what is the likelihood of meeting God in prayer if we come with no expectation? Zero. He responds to his people on the basis of expectation."
___That's not the same as televangelists' "name it and claim it" promises of health and wealth, he contended. "But faith is the absolute expectation that God is going to do something, and he will."
___To connect with God's power, Christians must deny self interests, Franklin said.
___"Denial of self determines more power with God than anything else in Christianity," he insisted. "Witnessing, prayer, Bible study, sacrifice and so forth without (denial of self) mean we are of no use to God.
___"If we don't have the ability to get on our knees and see life from God's perspective, we'll forever be missing God. That is the fundamental error for all of us. We have a propensity for turning toward self."
___God is blessing as prayer is taking hold through the world, Franklin reported.
___"We live in the most exciting time in history for Christianity," he said. "Thirty-five percent of all Christians of all time have been saved since 1990. Three thousand people are saved each hour in China. God is descending and turning the world upside down."
___He cited statistics from China, Africa, India and Korea to back his claim, lamenting, "America is one of the few places in the world where Christianity is not turning culture upside down."
___Elsewhere, Christians come to prayer "expecting that God will act," he said. "Faith is a requirement for God to be pleased. We have to come to God with an absolute certainty that he hears us and will answer us."
___Conference officers for 2001-02 are President Phillip Hamilton, pastor of Sunray Baptist Church in Sunray; Vice President Tim Holloway, president of Baptist Community Services in Amarillo; Secretary/ Treasurer Charles Bassett, special assistant to the president of Wayland Baptist University; and President-elect Bill Wright, pastor of First Baptist Church in Plains.
The Baptist Standard
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