The greatest gift that God has given us is faith.
Keynote speaker Joseph Coffey, a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church and auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese for the Military Services, shared that message and his own faith with a crowd of more 1,000 people during the 59th annual Louisiana Governor’s Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday at the Crowne Plaza in Baton Rouge.
“There are millions of people around the world right now who could only dream of being able to express their faith publicly without fear as we are doing,” Coffey said. “I’ve always believed that faith is a gift, freely given to us by our loving father, God our creator, and faith is believing without seeing.”
The interdenominational prayer breakfast is a statewide event that coincides with the opening of the legislative session as a time of prayer for the leadership of the state, including the governor, Legislature and all state and elected officials. It was the last prayer breakfast as governor for John Bel Edwards, who has served two terms.
“During the most challenging times — and there have been a number of them — I could literally sense, I could feel the prayers being offered by the people of Louisiana,” said Edwards, who is Catholic. “And it is very reassuring. It’s very comforting, and I just want to thank you all for that. Thank you for what you do for our state every single day. This prayer breakfast is about fellowship, worship and prayer.”
The special musical guest was Christian recording artist Charles Billingsley, a Grammy and Dove award winner.
The theme of this year’s breakfast was “Faith Not Fear” taken from Isaiah 4:10: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
“I think we need to have faith not fear, except for the fear of the Lord,” Edwards said, adding that Proverbs says fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. “If you fear the Lord, you need not fear anything else.”
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