LUBBOCK—Southern Baptists are either on the verge of one of the greatest moves of God or on the “verge of the greatest bust in the modern world,” Odessa pastor Byron McWilliams, newly elected president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, told messengers to the annual meeting in Lubbock on Oct. 27.

Preaching the convention sermon from Isaiah 64 and the prophet’s pleading with God to “rend the heavens open and come down” to show himself powerful, McWilliams said he is praying for the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force daily as they seek to make the SBC’s cooperative missions mechanism more efficient and effective, but more important, he said, “we need a fresh encounter with the presence of God, that’s what we need.”

Amid a church culture of tepid preaching, unsure doctrine, humanistic approaches that glorify man, and dismally low baptism rates, Southern Baptists must cry out for God’s appearing as Isaiah did.

“This is a passionate prayer he is crying out to God,” McWilliams said. “This is not a prayer [that says] ‘thank you for this food.’”

A move of God requires the pleading “Oh, God!” type of prayer that people pray in times of gut-wrenching crises and the persistence that Jacob modeled in Genesis 32 in refusing to let go of the Lord until he blessed him, McWilliams said.

Such praying, he said, recognizes God’s holiness and calls out for God’s resurrection power.

“Folks, let me tell you, when God shows up at your church, there is power in your church,” there is a great advancement of God’s name and an acute understanding of man’s insignificance relative to God’s power and majesty. Nothing makes that clearer than God’s glory revealed in the grandeur of the universe, McWilliams said.

Further, such an awareness of God’s greatness reveals to man his sinfulness, and leads, consequently, to the conversion of souls.

A movement of God is also predicated on waiting for God to give direction and then “locking on to the horns of the altar—and I am not talking about an attempt to manipulate God.” God doesn’t work that way, McWilliams said.