By Brian Blackwell, Baptist Message staff writer
ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM) — Executive Board President Tim Williams, pastor, Williams Boulevard Baptist Church, Kenner, reminded board members about the need for laborers for the harvest.
Williams drew from his experience as a “missionary kid” in Liberia, West Africa, to explain an idiom used in that country, “I hold your foot.”
“If you have something I want and you don’t want to share with me, I’m begging you or pleading with you, by saying ‘I hold your foot.’”
He added that if someone needed relief from the chief or a judgment in their favor, they would get on their knees in front of the chief, hold his foot and say, “I beg you. I plead with you. I hold your foot.”
Williams also explained that it is an expression of intense gratitude, when someone has done something you didn’t deserve, something above and beyond what you could expect. “You would fall on your face before them, and you would hold their feet!”
Sharing from Luke 10, Williams said Louisiana Baptists must fall at the feet of God and cry out.
“I sometimes wonder if we throw ‘praying for the lost’ around pretty flippantly — and praying for workers. We do pray but is it a deep desire?” he asked.
“Pray to the Lord of the harvest,” he said. “And so, as we gather to deal with our business today and answer questions and deal with issues, let us be reminded that our priority is to pray. Pray to the Lord of the harvest with desperation, with earnestness, and pray that God would bring people to a saving knowledge of Him.”
