July 15, 2002
Now is the time to move with
God's Spirit, Texas pastors tell CBF
___FORT WORTH--Now is the time for Baptists to ride the wind of God's Spirit and be the face of Jesus in the world, Julie Pennington-Russell told the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
___Pennington-Russell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, preached in the opening worship service of the Fellowship's general assembly, held in Fort Worth June 27-29.
Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, preaches in the opening session of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's general assembly in Fort Worth. (Photo by Mark Sandlin/CBF)
___Texas Baptist pastors preached all three key sermons at the Fellowship meeting. Charles Johnson, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, delivered a message during the missions focus the second night. Roger Paynter, pastor of First Baptist Church in Austin, led the closing Lord's Supper service.
___Drawing on the experience of Baylor University students who launched the youth revival movement in the 1940s, Pennington-Russell called modern Baptists to abandon themselves to God's call.
___The story of the youth revival movement is chronicled in a new book written by the late Bruce McIver, titled "Riding the Wind of God."
___The leaders of that movement were "the most unlikely assortment you could imagine," Pennington-Russell said. "All they had was a deep, delirious love for Jesus."
___Yet their work "impacted the faith of people for years to come ... (and is) still felt here today."
___"The same wind is blowing," she declared. And modern Baptists may ride it again, "if we're willing to grab hold of the Spirit of God as it rushes by and hold on for dear life."
___Now is the time to do so, she said, because now is the only time anyone is guaranteed.
___Acknowledging today is a dangerous time of change and uncertainty, she admonished: "The question is not how I feel about now. The question is, 'What do I do with the now that's been given me?'"
___By riding the wind of God, Baptists can focus on the face of Jesus, who was the ultimate example of seizing the day, Pennington-Russell said. "If anyone ever carped every diem, it was Jesus."
___Johnson elaborated on that theme, shifting the focus from time to the lives Christians are given to do the work Christ started on Earth.
Roger Paynter of First Baptist Church in Austin leads the assembly in observance of the Lord's Supper during the closing session Saturday morning Paynter was one of three Texas pastors who led in general session worship._
___In a service that featured a time of commissioning 23 new missionaries, he commended the entire force of CBF missionaries as "our challenge"--vital role models for how the Christian life should be lived and invested.
___"Life is a marvelous loan from God," he said. "Every particle of this gift is grace."
___Jesus lived his life in that knowledge, treating it as "a life on loan," commissioned to do what his heavenly Father sent him to do, Johnson noted.
___Time passes and life is spent,he observed, urging listeners to follow God's leadership and do the work, the ministry God created for them to do.
___"Even as I speak, you're aging," he said. "Now is the time" for response to God's call.
___Johnson called participants' attention to blank cards they received when they entered the meeting hall. He urged them to write on those cards, committing themselves to whatever task God had placed before them.
___"With you, God can issue and establish and construct his good news and affirmation in this world," he said.
___Paynter also prompted participants to consider God's calling in their lives.
___During the past 11 years of its existence, the CBF has urged Baptist Christians to ask, "What is the character of our calling?" Paynter said, adding, "It is still the right question."
___It also is a never-ending question, he noted.
___"We ask: 'What is it that God has called me to do? What at the heart of it all is my response to God? What am I to do with what I have been given? ...
___"Our primary calling is to know the One who is the caller, even Jesus Christ."
___Baptists have "spent a lifetime" seeking to fulfill that answer, Paynter said. The Apostle Paul points to the answer, which is found not in the work of the Christian, "but the work of God in us."
___The New Testament's word for "work" means "purposeful, productive, maybe measurable, but always creative," he said.
___That speaks to the artistry of God, the Creator who is at work in human lives, Paynter stressed. He quoted Christian author Frederick Buechner: "God the artist isn't finished with the good work in your life."
___Therefore, the Christian's calling finds definition in God's creative work, he added. "Maybe it is to be the canvas that receives the creativity of God. Let us never forget that, with paintbrush dripping with grace and bold strokes of joy, God really is at work within us."
_____
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