SBC second vice president speaks at BSSB emphasis

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Lying in a New Orleans hospital bed in September 1977 with broken bones and intense pain, 21-year-old Fred Luter Jr. didn't know if he would live or die.

He was a street-wise young man whose mother had always made him go to church no matter how late he was out on Saturday night. But he had fallen into the wrong crowd and made a series of choices that had led him away from God.

A deacon who was more concerned about his spiritual health than his physical pain got in his face with the question, "I'm not asking you if you're baptized. I'm asking you if you're saved."

"God, if you'll save me, I'll give you my life," Luter told the Lord that day.

Speaking April 16-18 during the Baptist Sunday School Board's annual Spiritual Emphasis Days, Luter said, "There are a lot of things I wonder about, but salvation is not one of them."

Now pastor of the 3,000-member Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, Luter also is second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention and a BSSB trustee.

In messages on salvation, temptation and dealing with trouble, Luter challenged employees to keep Christ the focus of their lives.

"It's not enough to profess to be a Christian," Luter said. "You've got to have Christ in you" and live saved lives.

"This is our battlefield," he said. "Working for the Lord is not easy, but the retirement package is out of this world.

"As long as you're living, breathing and have blood flowing in your veins, you will face temptation," he warned. "All of us have some ex-es in our lives that God has delivered us from.

"Sin will always take us farther than we want to go, charge us more than we want to pay. God will always give us a way out, but you've got to want to take it.

"God has done a work in my life," Luter said. "I've lived on both sides. God is a keeper, but we've got to want to be kept."

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