Hello, Bridgetown. I'm Gavin Bennett and this is the Bridgetown Daily for Wednesday, February 3rd.

As has already been discussed, February is Black History Month in the United States.

This is a beautiful opportunity to spend time learning about the legacy of Black folks in our history as a nation,

remembering, mourning, and confessing our sins, and celebrating giving thanks and ruminating on the unique aspects of God's kingdom that came and comes to us through our Black brothers and sisters.

That said, I've been thinking a lot about a man named William J. Seymour.

As you know, Bridgetown, we've been on a journey through many years of leaning into a life of abiding in the Holy Spirit.

And especially with American church history in mind, William J. Seymour played a very large part in that.

Seymour was born in Louisiana in 1870 during a time when the KKK violence made his formal education impossible.

Within the first decade of his life, history tells us that more than 2,500 citizens of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana were lynched or burned at the stake by the pseudo-Christian Klanzmen.

So Seymour was mostly self-educated until he was able to finally attend a Bible school.

But only kind of, he was still refused to actually attend class but was made to sit just outside of the classroom with the door slightly ajar.

Can you imagine what Seymour must have been thinking and feeling?

With such open animosity and disgust that surrounded him for something outside of his control, something actually in fact that was God given and God designed the color of his skin, what compelled him to keep going?

Why keep trying?

Well, like for many of our Black brothers and sisters, it certainly wasn't the system, which wasn't even attempting to hide its bias.

The only thing I can imagine was that Seymour knew the voice of his shepherd.

He was called by someone higher and he refused along with the prophets and even our own Lord to bow before the powers and principalities and instead chose to listen to the voice of his true king, who shared in his sufferings, transforming them into the glory of God's own kingdom.

How much we have to learn from William J. Seymour's example.

But there's more. In the afternoon, after classes, Seymour would go preaching in a predominantly black part of Houston with one of his professors who was white.

But his professor would not allow him to preach in the front alongside him but made him sit in the back.

This professor even went as far as segregating the altar, not allowing black and white members of the same kingdom to kneel together.

Now fast forwarding through more years of faithfulness and perseverance and racism, Seymour left Houston and began pastoring a small church in California.

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