News / Events
Women brave icy weather
LifeWay Bible teacher emphasizes exclusivity of Christ
Shirer, a Bible teacher from Dallas, headlined the first Going Beyond event for 2008 Feb. 22-23 at The Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers, Ark., a stone’s throw from Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters in nearby Bentonville, Ark. The LifeWay Women area of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention sponsored the event.
Shirer’s message emphasized the need to recognize the holiness and exclusivity of God, and that He is a God readily available for a personal relationship.
Culture tries to convince people that there are many ways to God; that what an individual believes to be true is true for him.
“But I don’t care what any book says, what any celebrity says, or even what Oprah says,” Shirer said. “She can sit there on that couch nodding her head all day, but that doesn’t change the fact that the only way to God is through His only Son, Jesus Christ. The question is not how can a good God allow only one way to meet with Him. The question is how can a good God, a holy God, allow any way for us to meet with Him.”
Shirer asked the women how many of them, like her, were “pastor’s kids.” Her father is Pastor Tony Evans of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. To those who raised their hands, she asked if they ever got tired of being used as examples in their dad’s sermons. She laughed and said, “My dad always used us as sermon illustrations! Now, it’s payback time.
“My dad can’t use a computer. He’s a smart man, but technology … no, no. But, he decided he wanted to learn to use one so he could look up my brother who played football for Baylor University.
“My sister and I were at my parents’ house and dad called out to my sister to come show him how to turn the computer on. She turned it on for him, but then got a phone call. As she was leaving the room, he asked her what to do next. She told him to use the mouse. He looked around the floor, didn’t see any mice, but then noticed that thing connected to the computer with a cord that looked like a tail. He called to her and asked what he did with the mouse, and she told him to use it to move around on the screen.”
Then, laughing at the memory, she said, “I walked in the room and there was my dad, holding the mouse against the computer screen, rolling it around.”
She said that while that was a comical example, it led to a serious thought.
“My dad has a computer on a desk at home and a laptop neatly stored in a desk drawer in his office,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how many computers he has if he doesn’t use them and learn about them.
“Now think how many Bibles we have laying around our homes, in desk drawers, on shelves, on a coffee table,” she said. It doesn’t matter how many we have in our homes if we don’t use them.”
“The amazing thing about Jesus,” Shirer said, “is that He only did the Father’s will. He could have done all kinds of wonderful things, all kinds of good stuff, but He didn’t. He only did what the Father asked of Him.”
That is a lesson for today’s Christian woman, Shirer said. “We have all kinds of good things we could be doing. We can study. We can teach. We can visit. We can do missions. We have enough options that we can do good things 24 hours a day. But, ladies, God does not call us to do every good thing.”
She asked, “Do you have any idea how much less stressed we would all be if we only did God’s best?”
LifeWay will sponsor four more Going Beyond events in 2008: April 26-26 in Charlotte, N.C.; Aug. 8-9 in Troy, Mich.; Sept. 26-27 in Bossier City, La.; and Oct. 3-4 in Hendersonville, Tenn. For more information, go to www.lifeway.com/women. Pictuers of the event are available at http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0%2C1703%2CA%25253D167220%252526M%25253D201280%2C00.html?.
