First Baptist Church of Endicott, NY

Greetings from the Pastor’s Study.

Summertime is traditionally a time for family vacations . . . a time away from the routine business of our normal schedules. Sometimes we are able to go away to a lake or the mountains. Or perhaps we just stay at home, but without the pressure of everyday life.

Too often the cares and business of life so consume our focus that our
relationship with our Lord suffers. Every waking moment is directed to the tasks at hand and the list of things that cry out for our attention never seems to get any shorter. Before long our thoughts of God are simply an afterthought at the end of a long, busy day, or simply another obligation on our already full “things-to-do” list.

I heard a fellow say one time that if the Devil could not cause us to fall to a moral temptation, he would try to make our lives so busy that we would have no time left for God. This is exactly why we all need time away . . . from
the cares and concerns and pressures of daily living. We need to be intentional about making time to pray and worship and read God’s wonderful “Love Letter” to us.

Jesus certainly understood about the need to get away. The Bible makes a number of statements about Jesus going off to a lonely place to pray to be refreshed. Sometimes it is at night after a busy day of ministry. Other times it speaks of His habit of rising early in the morning, going to a quiet place where He can be alone and pray. In any case, we see this discipline that He Himself practiced for His own benefit, and that He modeled for his disciples . . . and us.

So, my friends, as you enjoy the wonderful New York summer and are refreshed during your time away, please make time to see that your spirit is refreshed as well by spending some alone time with the One who loves you
best. If you are out of the area, make sure you visit a local church and be a blessing to them as they minister to you. But if you stay in the area, don’t stay away from church.  Look for the Lord to use this special time as a period of rest  and renewal for your spirit as you draw close to Him worship.our

God bless you . . .
Pastor Jim

Greetings from the Pastor’s Study.  If you have been a steady reader of Tower Topics you know that we have been taking a hard look at how we “do church” and how we can do it better to be more effective in reaching our community with the message of the Gospel.  In conjunction with this effort, we have adopted a new mission statement to help us focus our energies in meeting our goal. It reads as follows:

The First Baptist Church of Endicott exists that all people . . .
KNOW the love of God in Jesus Christ;
GROW as followers of Him;
GO share the love of God in our community and world.

The concept that we “Grow as Followers of Him” will be the topic this article.  Below are the stages of a disciple and the characteristics of each.

Hopefully after reading through this brief article you can identify where you are currently and what you need to be doing as you grow as a follower of Him.

God bless you in your efforts.
Pastor Jim

Greetings from the Pastor’s Study.  One of the characteristics  of  our  Christian  faith  that  I appreciate  so  much  is  the  promise  of  new beginnings.  Time and time again throughout the Old Testament we read about God renewing His covenant  with  the  children  of  Israel.  The  story seems to be a familiar one in which the Israelites wander away from their relationship with God and begin to chase after the various pagan deities that
are  worshiped  by  people  in  the  surrounding  regions.    God  resents  this adulterous relationship that His people are engaged in and begins to bring hardship and difficulties to the Israelites to make them wake up and realize what  they  have  abandoned  and  at  what  cost.    Eventually  they  get  the message,  repent  of  their  sin  and  begin  to  start  all  over  again  in  their relationship with God.  As you read through the Old Testament this seems to be one of the consistent themes throughout.

Now perhaps you think that you and I are more sophisticated and more spiritual than the people that lived in Old Testament times and that we would never do anything like that.  Our love for God and our commitment to Him never wavers.  We have the Holy Spirit.  We have the benefit of 2000 years of Christian heritage.  But alas, some argue today that America has become a post-Christian nation.  And what are we as a nation but the sum total of the individual in this nation.  Our national witness, or  lack thereof, is simply a reflection of the spiritual condition of the people in the nation.

Robert  Robinson,  a  Methodist  preacher,  captured  this  thought  in  the hymn he wrote in 1757 entitled, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace. Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above.  Praise the mount! I¹m fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.
Take my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for thy courts above.

Note especially the next to last line of the hymn, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love.”  Rev. Robinson sensed this same tendency in the human heart to “wander from the Lord.”

Perhaps you have felt the same way some time last year and you are wondering, “How many times can I go back to God?  How many times will He take  me  back?”    Well  the  good  news  is  that  our  God  is  a  God  of  new
beginnings.  This does not give us a license to sin.  But be assured that it is more to Him that you get back in
right relationship with Him if you are not already.  And what better time to get back where you know you belong than right now at the start of the year?

God bless you this wonderful time of the year — a time of new beginnings.  And I pray that you and your family will have a happy and blessed New Year.

See you in church.
Pastor Jim

Greetings from the Pastor’s Study.

What are some of your memories of Christmas? Are they fond memories of giving and exchanging gifts,
going to church on Christmas Eve with your family, singing Christmas carols and sitting down to a delicious Christmas meal? Or, do your memories of Christmas bring back difficult times for you?  Sadly, this is the case for too many people. In what is supposed to be a season of joy and celebration, the opposite is what often actually occurs; frustration, anger, depression and disappointment.

When these types of occurrences become the backdrop by which Christmas is “celebrated,” individuals develop a distorted view of what Christmas is really all about. Efforts to simply cope with, or perhaps compensate for, these distorted views of Christmas generally make the problems worse instead of better.

So while neither denying that past difficulties occurred nor pretending we have a perfect family, let us go back to the basics . . . . what Christmas is really about. It is not about how much money you spend on presents for others. It is not about how much others spend on you. It is not about how many lawn decorations you have in front of your house, or how fancy your tree is decorated, or how sumptuous your meal is. . . or anything like that.

It’s About Jesus.

If the Christmases you have experienced in the past have been frustrating and disappointing and you dread each year as the season approaches, I genuinely am sorry about that. But, let me encourage you to put that aside the best you can and focus on the real meaning of Christmas.

It is about God making a provision for our lost condition. Like a disease, sin had spread without exception throughout all humanity. It was this terminal condition of sin which separated us from Him that would ultimately prevent us from ever experiencing any hope of restoration with Him.

So, when the time was right He sent Jesus, his only Son, to come to earth in the form of a baby . . . . born of a virgin . . . angels sang . . . shepherds witnessed . . . and we are the recipients of the greatest Gift ever given. For the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes grew to be the perfect man who would give His life on the cross of Calvary as the only means by which our terminal condition . . . sin . . .could be not just put in remission but eliminated. This is what Christmas is all about . . .remembering the greatest Gift ever given!

So my friends, as you enter the Christmas season this year, don’t get all worked up about the “stuff” that really doesn’t matter. Remember, accept and enjoy the greatest Gift that has even been offered to you.

God bless you richly. See you in church.

Greetings from the Pastor’s Study. Perhaps you have heard the story of the man who wished to dispose of his home. He went to see a friend who was in the real estate business and describing his house and property to

the man, asked him to write an advertisement which he could put into the local newspaper. His friend did as he was asked and then read what he had written to the home owner.

“Read that again,” said the man who wanted to sell his house. His friend obliged and heard this incredible comment: “The house is not for sale. All my life I’ve wanted a place just like the one you have described. But I never knew what I had until I heard what you have written about it.”

I shared that story with a man in our church in Indiana who made his living as a real estate agent one day while we were having lunch together. He laughed and said to me, “Jim, that happens more often than you would
imagine.”

Isn’t it remarkable that we so often have to see our lives or possessions through the eyes of other people in order to truly appreciate what we have? Unfortunately, we live at a time when we are bombarded daily by commercials urging us to buy the next new gadget or our lives will not be complete. The video entitled, “Affluenza,” which we saw sometime ago after a harvest dinner, poignantly exposed the epidemic of dissatisfaction that many Americans feel as they desperately “try to keep up with the Joneses,” with many ending up in bankruptcy.

It should not be this way. In fact, Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to stop and reflect on the many blessings God has bestowed upon us and thereby, hopefully, break the cycle of pessimism and discouragement of never
being able to live up to this “imaginary, unattainable standard of perfection” promoted by Madison Avenue.

Take some time to look at your life, your possessions, your accomplishments and thank God for where you are right now. Is it wrong to want more . . . to accomplish more . . . . not necessarily. But, if you look around at other people and wish you had their new car or new home or job title with its perks, and not be thankful for what God has given you, it won’t be long before you will become resentful, bitter and unpleasant to be around.

So this month, my friends, take time to be thankful . . . yes, truly thankful for all you have; your family, your friends, your home, your church, your job and especially for your relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. For I am convinced that if we will learn to be thankful for what we have and not be bitter about those things we don’t have, we will have significantly more joy in our lives and experience that peace that passes all understanding.
God bless you.
See you in Church.

Pastor Jim