Thursdays in the chapel services here at Southeastern we pray for North American missions, and today the gentleman who was asked to lead in prayer started by saying, “Sweet Jesus…”

I wouldn’t recommend starting this way given the cultural connotations.

Relativism is really only a good idea at most and untenable and contranatural at least. One can claim that another can believe whatever he likes, but the moment that freedom granted to another is used to impinge on what the one is comfortable with, feelings of what’s right and wrong come out. In other words, it can be claimed that another can believe what he likes but when those beliefs are acted out much to the claimant’s chagrin, a truly unrevelativistic this-is-right-and-that-is-wrong feeling pops up.

For example, a Christian attempts to pray for the food of everyone seated around a table at a restaurant, but not everyone is a Christian, nor is everyone comfortable with prayer. It is verbally proffered that the one offering to pray for everyone’s food simply pray to himself in place of having everyone stop to pray. Additionally, it is interjected, “Yeh, keep that shit to yourself.”

Fair enough, if you believe that one should not pray for other’s food at a restaurant, then say that you think that’s wrong and admit that there is such a thing as wrong. The contranatural inconsistency reveals itself in the interjection when the one objecting also holds to moral relativism. For, surely, if the Christian wants to pray for everyone’s food, his belief should be respected and not rejected in order to be consistent with moral relativism. Moral relativism is betrayed in the interjection.

Theology I (Dr. Keathley)

• If you’re attending Southeastern and getting the Southern Baptist discount (1/2 off tuition) and plan on not serving in a Southern Baptist church and giving back to the Cooperative Program (which pays that other half of your tuition) after you graduate, you should go down to the Business Office right now and tell them not to give you the discount and start paying the regular price

New Testament I (Dr. Black)

• I can’t pray unless the Holy Spirit prays, but the Holy Spirit won’t pray unless I pray; prayer is an inter-trinitarian process.
• “Abba” was an intimate word used by a son to a father wherein obedience (not love) is at the core. The essence of “Abba” is “not my will but yours be done.”

Church History I (Dr. Hogg)

• Early on (at the time of Jerome) baptisms were done in the nude. (How symbolic of casting off that which is earthly and being born again!)
• In translating the Bible into Latin (what would later become the Vulgate) Jerome started to translate the Apocrypha, but ceased doing so, considering them uninspired and not Scripture. The apocryphal material was added back into the Vulgate after his death (in a sub-Jerome translation) and continue to be in the canon of the Catholic church today.

Baptist History (Dr. Harper)

• We think of America being founded on religious liberty for all but, at the time of the colonies, one was only aloud freedom of religious expression insofar as one practiced the denomination of that particular colony. Consequently, to practice otherwise was met with persecution.

The Albert Mohler Radio Program

• Tuesday – Dr. Mohler interviews Dr. Patterson (President of Southwestern Seminary) about a new degree program in their college that has caused a lot of media attention and controversy: a degree in the humanities with an emphasis in homemaking. The point of the program is this: there are those women who have both the desire and ability to be a stay-at-home homemaker, or those women who may find themselves on the mission field needing to make clothes and subsist without electricity and running water; this program is to equip those women. The program is open to women only (“as soon as we get a pregnant man walking in, we’ll sign him up”); but requires two years of both Classical Greek and Latin. Dr. Patterson invited any dissenters to come take the program and see if they can pass!

The Way of the Master Radio

• Wednesday – The hosts of the program are on tour in Europe and toured the John Bunyan museum in England (which reminds me that I need to finish Pilgrim’s Progress). This podcast takes the listener right through the museum with the crew.

When impressed to do ministry and given the opportunity to reach out and witness of the goodness, graciousness and glories of God in his son Jesus Christ, I feel immediately a wellspring of emotion growing up inside that wants to spill forth solution and gospel to the hearer. However, this emotion reminds me of the energy of God that is required to move a person from unbelief and unrepentenance to faith and repentance leading to salvation. I feel thrown back upon God the giver of good things. He alone can effect the change in the soul of the unbeliever. In evangelism we are wholly dependent upon him. Unless he draws who can come? Who can be saved? With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Prayer aligns the heart and exhorts God to fulfill his desire that all come to know him. That God would move in a mighty way in hearts all across the globe.

I am overcome with emotion. I throw myself upon the Almighty. He throws me back into the ministry believing that he will do a mighty work; and that mighty work is recovering the lost sheep through the exaltation of Jesus Christ, in whom the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form. Amen and amen.