The Durant Kiwanis Club held its 43rd Annual Community Prayer Breakfast in conjunction with the National Day of Prayer May 1 at the new Southeastern Baptist Collegiate Ministries building.
The keynote speaker was Trey Hedrick, director of the Baptist Collegiate Ministries.
Jered Hyatt, director of the SE Student Bible Center, provided a scripture reading and Fasiri Ellison, director of the Wesley Center at Southeastern, offered a special prayer.
The Southeastern Chorale provided special music singing three songs and closing out the breakfast with “God Bless America.”
The benediction was provided by Southeastern President Thomas Newsom.
Hedrick spoke about “The Power of Persistence.”
He said the fullness of God brings all things to conclusion that has not yet occurred and that is the second coming of Christ.
Hedrick spoke of the burial and resurrection and for people to go out and make disciples.
“Since that day, the church has been looking forth for the second coming of Christ, knowing that we live in an in between time,” Hedrick said. “Between Christ’s first and his second coming and in that, think about all the ways which the early church would have looked for justice be given to them in this time. There is a moral minority. They are an outcast of the current society. When Christ goes, they’re looking for a way in which deliverance would come. Persecution ran rampant in early centuries within Rome and they keep calling out, but we know now that the second coming of Christ does not happen in the first and the second century.”
Hedrick spoke of praying for justice and that ultimately, justice will come in the second coming of Christ.
He cited 2nd Peter, chap- ter 3, verse 8, that states with the Lord, one day is 1,000 years and 1,000 years is one day.
“His justice is tempered by only by his mercy,” Hedrick said. “In the Lord’s patience in that second coming, the gospel is going forward. In the in between time that his church lives in, is a period of mission. Of God on a mission to redeem the world to Himself.”
Hedrick cited Luke 18 to always pray.
“There are a whole lot of people that need the good news of Jesus and to come to faith in who He is that need to be brought into the family and for you and I, the mandate for us is application here in persistent prayer,” Hedrick said.
Hedrick spoke of obedience to God.
“God is not in the business of always answering all of our prayers on our schedule because he is not a vending machine,” Hedrick said. “He is in the business of shaping us through persistent prayer, though.”
Kiwanis President Shyla Whitlock told the audience to be persistent and share the message received during the prayer breakfast.
Newsom then delivered the benediction.
“I want to go off script for just a minute because I don’t know if I’ve ever had this opportunity, or if I will ever have it again, but I want to thank Fasiri and Jered and Trey,” Newsom said. “We do a pretty darn good job here at Southeastern of nurturing and preparing our students in the classroom and on the athletic fields and in the concert halls. But as a community of faith, I don’t think we thank these three young gentlemen very often and it’s not very often that we have all three of them together at a table for what they do to lead our students in terms of faith and guidance, and the impact they have on them and those that they touch throughout their lives. So, thank you very much.”
Newsom said when he was asked to give the benediction that he procrastinated preparing one because he felt the word would be put on his heart. That happened when Newsom attended the Excellence in Education banquet where coach Will Robinson was posthumously named the educator of the year. Robinson and his daughter Clara died during a Christmas Eve car accident.
“That’s when the word came to me because I was inspired by the family of Will Robinson,” Newsom said. “Will was posthumously named our educator of the year and it was a reminder of Will and his daughter and that tragedy that our community shared together this year.
“This is the word that was put on my heart last night for this morning and it comes from Romans 12, verse 15: ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.’ We’re so blessed to live in a community of celebration and joy, both in good times and bad. A community for support who supports one another and as Paul writes in this verse, he underscores the call to empathize with others, sharing in both our joys and our sorrows. It’s much like the words of Maya Angelou who said that she had learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way that you made them feel.”
