Attending the meetings associated with the annual session of the Baptist State Convention often means a high calorie verbal diet of preachers’ sugar sticks delivered to the choir.

They preach it like we want to hear it. They gig the guilty, cajole the complacent and encourage the eager in a like-minded audience.

So Danny Akin’s collar jerk came as a surprise when he included a sharp rebuke to Christians who claim in one breath that God is sovereign and in the next declare that Barack Obama’s election as the next president of the United States was somehow outside of God’s will; a mistake; a fast ball that caught God looking.

“Shame on us,” Akin said at the Pastors’ Conference at Lawndale Baptist Church in Greensboro where he solidified his reputation for plain speaking.

While not an apologist for Obama or any other politician, Akin said that according to the Bible, God ordained the election's outcome.

"God did not wake up Wednesday morning (Nov. 5) and say, 'Golly, I didn't see that coming,’" Akin said. "If you think that, you're a heretic because you have denied the omniscience of God."

That is straight talk, refreshing and true from a man in a position whose other occupants usually tread more lightly. Maybe his words will embolden others of us who feel the same way but are reticent to speak in the face of such vociferous, blind and misplaced opposition to--and even fear of--the president-elect.

Leadership at all levels needs faithful prayer support. Every day brings new waves of bad news. It is time that those who say we believe in prayer, and who hold state and national conferences on prayer, and build prayer rooms and wear praying hands jewelry and take prayer requests before every meeting and who comfort a hurting friend by saying, “I’ll pray for you,” to do as we say and pray. Yes, pray for our leaders. Your leaders. My leaders.

Those who castigate others for believing only parts of the Bible and then say the election result is somehow outside of God’s will or knowledge would do well do read this again.

For complete coverage, click BSC 2008.