Whitlock Challenges University Community to ‘Live Worthy of Our Heavenly Citizenship’

August 29, 2018

Oklahoma Baptist University President Dr. David W. Whitlock delivered the annual Convocation address Wednesday, Aug. 29. Convocation takes place the first Wednesday of every fall semester and is a time when the president inspires the university to press on in the year ahead.

“As we begin a new academic year together, I want to challenge us to always keep at the core of the paths we choose, whether professionally or personally, the person of Jesus Christ and His gospel, and the clear teaching of Scripture,” Whitlock stated to a packed house of students, faculty and staff inside Raley Chapel’s Potter Auditorium.

“This year, my prayer for us as a distinctively Christian liberal arts university is that we conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of our heavenly citizenship,” he said. “For those of us who are followers of Christ, regardless of whether we are U.S. citizens, or from one of the more than thirty nations we have represented among our student body this year, each of us has dual citizenship. One is temporal, our earthly citizenship in the nation in which we were born or naturalized, and that citizenship carries duties, rights, and responsibilities to our respective nations.”

“In our battle as disruptive witnesses to restore human dignity, let us bear the scars as those who have hope. Let us speak to our nation and world as the prophet Isaiah spoke to his: ‘Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow…’ This is a worthy calling. This is a labor worthy of our time and effort. This is a challenge worthy of the high calling of God in Christ.”