Don WiltonI am so honored to greet you in this edition of The Baptist Courier. What a blessing it is to have a paper like this in our state. The editorial staff is “out of the top drawer” and, judging by the wonderful response I have been receiving just from my article alone, I had little idea of the impact of The Baptist Courier on our people, let alone the wide readership. So, thank you for subscribing to The Baptist Courier , and thank you to the churches who have made this available to their congregations. This is a significant means by which we are kept informed about the vast involvement of our people across the board in missions and evangelism here in South Carolina and across the world, as we seek to share the message of Jesus Christ with a lost and dying world.
I do believe we must be careful not to focus too much on the half-empty bottle. For certain, there are many negatives in and around us. The presence and power of sin produce consequences in every segment of life. Sin corrodes our society, destroys individuals’ lives left and right, and effectively slams the door on the vibrancy of our witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. We must deal with sin directly and unapologetically from the pulpit and from the perspective of our own witness for the Lord Jesus as we strive to live holy and godly lives for our Savior and in His strength and power. But we do have “our bottles” filled with the power of God unto salvation. We believe in the transforming power of the blood of the Lamb. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth and died on a cruel Roman cross to bear the shame of our sin. Through His sacrifice, we can come to our Heavenly Father in true repentance and accept Him into our hearts and lives by faith through His marvelous grace.
Hence, my word of encouragement. It is a discipline not to focus on the negatives all the time. People often ask me what the key has been to the unprecedented unity and growth of First Baptist, Spartanburg. Among many other reasons, I encouraged people to “keep the main thing the main thing.” Focus on the Lord Jesus Christ in everything. Let Jesus make all the decisions. Let Him be who He is, the head of the church. Then, just “give it all away”!