TOGETHER: Make an eternal difference in a life

Posted: 9/01/06

TOGETHER:
Make an eternal difference in a life

I recently attended a church where a new pastor was being received, and the deacon who prayed for the new pastor warmed my heart and caused me to rejoice that this new pastor would have people praying for him like that.

Prayer makes a difference, and Texas Baptists are now entering the time of year when we pray specifically for the missions needs of our state. The Week of Prayer for Texas Missions will be Sept. 10-17.

Executive Director BGCT Executive Board

Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas already has spent the summer laying the groundwork for the missions needs in our state and beyond. Texas WMU launched a new ministry called “Awakening.” In several locations across Texas, WMU involved women and girls in times of awakening. More than 3,000 gathered to network, study, learn and pray. They have taken a huge step forward in their ability to help churches through awakening the prayers and mission passion of women.

Carolyn Porterfield, executive director of Texas WMU, has a heart for prayer that makes me anticipate so much the annual week of prayer. Our WMU leads the way in most of our churches in encouraging all of us to pray for the spiritual and physical needs of Texas and the world.

Prayer turns our hearts toward God. And when we pray, we feel the needs of the world pressing down on our souls.

Those needs are great in Texas, and in September and October, churches will be collecting funds for the annual Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. The Mary Hill Davis Offering gives every one of us a chance to do something really big for the sake of the gospel and for the needs of lost Texans.

This time of prayer and giving offers you an opportunity to give above and beyond your regular tithes to your church and combine your gifts with the gifts of 2.3 million other Texas Baptists. Why?

• So clean water can quench the thirst of a child along the Rio Grande.

• So people in apartments and mobile home parks can have Bible study and church in their own communities.

• So new churches can be started that will reach hundreds of people for Christ who likely would not have been reached otherwise.

• So college scholarships can be awarded to worthy young people who often are the first in their family to go to college.

• So churches can be helped to start ministries of compassion and evangelism in their own communities.

• So BaptistWay Press Bible study curriculum can be produced in seven languages.

I invite you—in fact, I urge you—to be involved in this great offering to help us get our arms around Texas.

What should you give? Pray and ask the Lord to give you a generous heart. Some of us can give a $1,000. Some can give $500 or $250 or $100. But whether it be $1,000 or $5, when we give the best we can, it stretches our hearts and calls us to a new level of difference making.

I encourage you to make this mission offering a time of stepping up to the challenge of Texas and doing more than you ever have before. I believe God has blessed us so that we can be a blessing.

Here’s your chance to make a difference—an eternal difference—in someone’s life.

We are loved.

Charles Wade is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.