Some of my favorite moments in our kids growing up years have been story-telling time. I remember one time after we told the Bible story about the book of Genesis, I said to my daughter, "And Honey, do you remember who the first Mommy and Daddy were?" And she said, "Yep! Eve and Steve." Okay, good, so much for my Bible teaching. I said, "Do you remember who their boys were?" She said, "Yep! Cain and Mable." There we go again.

Well, back to the drawing board for Bible stories. But I do think the Bible is exciting, and I wanted my children to think so. So I tried to make the telling of the stories as exciting as possible. So, each night I would take the story to sort of a cliff-hanger point and I'd leave it there, often to loud protests. But even when they objected, they were ready to listen the next night. You know, when you don't tell the whole story, you keep folks interested.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Chapter at a Time."

If you are in need of God's guidance today, would you walk with me into the life of Abraham for a minute? God's got a great story line for Abraham's life. He's going to have him leave his home, he's going to have him go to Canaan land, and he's going to eventually promise him that that land will be his. Then he's going to promise that He's eventually going to have a son, and that son's going to become a great nation, and He's going to give that son to him miraculously. But did He tell him that all at once? Oh, no. God only gives Abraham the story a chapter at a time, like I used to tell my kids stories.

Just real quickly, as we march through his life in our word for today from the Word of God, Genesis 12:1-2, "The Lord said to him, 'Leave your country. Go to a land I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you.'" He sure doesn't give him very many details. He just says, "Leave and go to this land." Well, that's what Abraham does. He goes on what information he has.

Chapter 12, verse 7: He's in Canaan. God appears to Abraham and says, "To your offspring I will give this land." Now he finds out that there's going to perhaps be some children. And then he finds out that it's going to be the land of Canaan that God was talking about. In chapter 15 and verse 4, God goes on to say that it's going to be to a son that will come from your own body. "You're going to have a son!" Then finally, He leads him in Genesis 22, to the offering of that son, willing to sacrifice him. And after he has shown that willingness, God gives him blessings that are unprecedented.

Notice the pattern of God's leading. You might need to know this right now to understand what He's doing in your life. He shows you what you need to know to take the next step. Then, after you do just that next step, He'll show you what you need for the next step. It's an unfolding scroll...a little at a time. It's like me telling that story to my children. Because I didn't give them the whole story, they were eager to get back to my lap the next night.

The old hymn writer said, "We cannot see what lies before, and so we cling to Him the more." See, the plan is the easy part for God. He could give you that in one blueprint right now, but you would walk away with that under your arm and not need Him, not depend on Him, and not be back in His lap.

God wants to build trust in Him in a day-to-day relationship. And so He shows us the story a little at a time. Like Abraham, your mission is to take the step He shows you today from His Word; not to worry about the whole big picture. There's another reason He doesn't show it all to us. If He did we might either run from it or run to it and we'd ruin it, like jumping ahead of the book and wondering why the chapter didn't make any sense.

But if God's will unfolds a day at a time, then it just seems natural when we get to it. So, act on the chapter the Lord is revealing to you right now, and then return to His lap tomorrow for the next exciting episode.

Our plane was racing down the runway, preparing to take off from Nashville. I was so exhausted, I was already drifting off into la-la land. Then came those jolts as the front wheels left the ground. The team member who was with me said, "Have you ever felt anything like that?" I said, "No." And I dozed off. I wouldn't sleep for long; the flight attendant suddenly announced that we had blown a rear tire on takeoff and we were heading back to Nashville. For the next 45 minutes or so, we were circling the area, burning up as much fuel as possible for what could well be a crash landing. I called my wife from the plane. I asked her to get people praying. My team member joined me in committing this whole situation to the Lord. The flight attendants went into emergency mode to begin to prepare us for the landing. They demonstrated how to brace for the landing. They had us pull out our emergency instruction card from the pocket in front of us; something they had asked us to do before we took off; something hardly anyone did. But as the attendant began her briefing she prefaced it with a simple exhortation, "This time I want you to really listen." We really did!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Ignoring, Postponing, and Dying."

I'm very thankful to God for the way He answered prayer and brought our crippled aircraft in safely for a welcome from an armada of emergency vehicles and personnel. I was impressed with how the crew had prepared us. I was impressed with the way we all listened. And why did they have our total attention the second time when they reviewed those exits and evacuations? It's obvious, because we were in a critical situation now; because the information could be life-or-death.

Our word for today from the Word of God, Hebrews 2:3. "How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?" God has been trying to communicate life-or-death information to some of us for a long time. That word "salvation," that's not just a religious word. That's serious stuff. Salvation is how to get out of a plane that might be on fire; how to get out of a burning building. But like those passengers on that flight, we don't pay much attention to salvation information until we're suddenly in a critical situation...until we finally realize that what we do with this could be the difference between life and death.

God is used to people, as it says here, "ignoring such a great salvation." Maybe He's been trying to get your attention with the most critical information you will ever hear - that we're under an eternal death penalty for running our lives our way instead of God's way. And that His one and only Son, Jesus, absorbed all your sin and all the hell of it when He died on the cross, and that your only hope with God is putting your total trust in Jesus, like a person in a burning building would pin all their hopes on the rescuer who came to save them.

You've heard that news before, and maybe you've even accepted it with your head. Maybe it's been that God has even shaken things up recently. He's asking for your attention before it is eternally too late. He says, "This time I want you to really listen."

This requires an action step of making Jesus your personal Savior. If you haven't done that - if you've been putting that off - consider this God's emergency call to make your peace with Him.

I believe there's someone listening right now who's saying, "I don't think I should risk one more day without the Savior." Are you ready to begin this life saving relationship, to open your heart to Him? Tell Him that right now. I want to help you in every way we can, that's why our website is there - ANewStory.com. It will help you find your way home to Jesus.

God simply says, "How will you escape if you ignore such a great salvation?" Especially after what it cost. It cost God's one and only Son His life! Please, don't ignore this any longer. Your life - your eternity depends on it.

There's something invigorating about being the first one out and around in the morning; you sort of feel like the conqueror of your environment. Like when you're the first one out exercising in those first hours of the new day. I had that feeling one morning as I went out for my fitness walk.

I really like to walk when I'm away from home, too. And I was in a setting where right behind me there was this really scenic 18-hole golf course. I'm not a golfer, but I am a walker. There was a beautiful path around there, so I struck out on my early morning walk, and the mist was there, and the dew was all over the golf course. And I said, "You know what? I am the first one to conquer this golf course today. There'll be a lot of people out here later, but I have beaten all the golfers." I felt like the world was all mine, or so I thought. Then I got to one hole and I saw a carpet of dew covering the green, and footprints all across the green. Someone had walked there before me.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Someone Else Has Walked There First."

Our word for today from the Word of God is from John 10:4. Jesus beautifully, intimately describes His relationship with us here as being like that of a shepherd with His sheep: Him shepherd, me sheep. John 10:4 says this, "When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them and the sheep follow Him."

I discovered this verse many years ago, just before we moved from all of the "knowns" that we had in Chicago, to all of the unknowns of northern New Jersey and New York City. We moved there to begin a youth ministry. We had no supporters, we had no place to live, we had no office, we had no staff. We knew nothing. We just claimed this verse, "...when He brings out His sheep, He will always go ahead of them." We got there and we found out that God had picked out an apartment, He picked out friends, He had picked out a church, He had picked out an office for us, He picked out supporters; people who could open doors that we needed opened, and that's what God does for all His kids.

Everywhere Jesus will lead you to walk, He promises to walk there first; He goes ahead of you. That's how a shepherd operates. Wherever he's going to take his sheep, he goes ahead of them to see if there's enough pasture for them to be fed, if there are any wolves there that he needs to take care of, and where the cliffs are that they might walk over. He makes sure that He checks it out before they get there. He prepares it for them. That's just the kind of Shepherd He is.

Think of the fear that takes out of the future; the uncertainty that takes out of the future. Like the old song says, "I know not what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future." Right now maybe you're looking ahead at the next few weeks, maybe months and you're anxious about it. Honestly, there's a whole lot of question marks; there's a lot of unknown out there.

Well, there is one known in the midst of your unknowns. Guess what? That one known covers all the unknowns. Jesus will always be your "go ahead" Shepherd. He always does that with His sheep. He has promised that He would, and He always keeps His promises.

In fact, today He knows your situation, and I think He brought us together and brought this verse to my heart for you, as a personal assurance from Him to you that He is already stepping ahead of you. There's nothing to fear on a path that Jesus has walked before you. It's the blessed security that only a follower of Jesus Christ can know.

So, wherever He takes you, yours won't be the first set of footprints you'll find there. Jesus got there first.

Jeremy was a young man who worked in our office every year after he got out of college, and then he became a veteran of our On Eagles' Wings Native American team. But something was different this particular year for him - a woman! Yes, a woman in Jeremy's life! And, believe me, it was no secret. He started telling us all about her as soon as we saw him again. The romance had just developed in the weeks preceding, and there was nothing he would rather talk about. She lived quite a ways from where we were, and the more he talked about her, the more he wanted to be with her. At first I was kind of amused by this young love, until I remembered that it was me not so many years ago, telling anyone who would listen about the woman I loved. By the way, I will always love talking about her.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Joy of Telling."

My young friend couldn't wait to tell us about the person he loved. And, as a result, we couldn't wait to meet her. You see, that's how it's supposed to work with any of us who love Jesus Christ. We love to tell about Him, and as a result, some people we know want to meet Him.

It was a summer when, as we often do, our On Eagles' Wings team had brought the hope of Christ to a number of Native American reservations. Wendy, who was 16, was one of our new team members. During that amazing month, where hundreds of Native American young people began a relationship with Jesus, Wendy had the joy of leading her first people to Christ. At our last night, she said to me: "You know, I accepted Jesus when I was little, but I've never really felt Him until this month. And I know what I want to do with my life now. I want to be in full-time ministry, telling people about Jesus Christ."

Why had Wendy suddenly begun to feel Christ in her life? Why did she suddenly have a sense of mission in her life? I believe it's largely because she had just spent the whole month doing what followers of Jesus are supposed to do all the time. She was telling lost people about the One who loves her, the one she loves.

And that telling about Jesus might be the missing ingredient in your life as one of His kids. Paul prayed this revealing prayer along these lines in Philemon, verse 6, our word for today from the Word of God. Here's what he said: "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." Paul seems to be saying here that there's a level of experiencing your Savior that can only be reached by telling others about Him. You don't have a religion to share, or a church, or some beliefs. You have a person to tell about - a person who loved you enough to die for you!

Something powerful happens in your life when you finally open your heart and open your mouth to let people who've never met your Jesus know what He's like. Paul says you start to have "a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." Maybe that's what you've been restless for. Like that young woman on our team, when you start talking about Jesus, you may finally start feeling Him in your life as never before. And by starting to carry out your mission to be His ambassador, you may finally begin to get a clear picture of His greater plans for the rest of your life.

Not to mention that what you know about Jesus is their only hope of ever being in heaven with you someday! You need to tell about Jesus. They need to hear about Him, because you need to talk about the greatest love of your life. And they need to hear about the one who loves them more than anyone. You tell them about how much He loves you. Sooner or later, I believe they're going to want to meet Him too.

Surprise! I used to be in a quartet. Oh I did! Listen, don't laugh out loud. Yes, when I was in college, for a little while I sang in a gospel quartet. I did not sing any solos. No, no solos for me. Now, musically, I'm okay in a group. Solo - not so much. You know, in a way, we're all like that.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I'm going to have A Word With You today about "The Antidote For Loneliness."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God takes us back to the book of Genesis, to the very beginning to Adam; a fellow with a great home - the Garden of Eden. Couldn't beat that! A great job - he's got all the benefits you could possibly have. He's got closeness to God. But in Genesis 2:18, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'" Then the account goes on to talk about the creation of Eve for Adam from Adam's own rib.

It's interesting that God looks at a man who seems to have an ideal environment and everything going for him and says, "It is not good for you to be alone." See, we're built from our very creation, to live in partnership with someone we love - no solos. Now, being married doesn't necessarily mean you're not alone. Some people think the worst loneliness of all is being married to the wrong person.

Maybe you haven't been protecting your time with the person you're married to, and so, tragically, you are married but both of you feel alone because everything else has crowded each other out. You've got to get back together again.

I said being married doesn't mean you're not alone, but being single doesn't mean you are alone. Paul, for example, was very single, very busy, never married. And yet he had a network of people who supported him his whole life. His letters are filled with references to those many people who were ministry partners, people who helped him, encouraged him, lifted him up. He told us that the mother of Rufus was "someone who has been a mother to me too" in Romans 16. He said Timothy was his son in the gospel.

He said to Timothy, "Recalling your tears, I long to go see you so that I may be filled with joy." And then he had a friend, Onesiphorus, who according to 2 Timothy 1, refreshed him. And to the believers in Rome, he said, "By God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed."

Paul was a tower of spiritual strength and emotional strength. If any Christian could have gone it alone - could have been a soloist - he was the man. And yet he nurtured and needed peer partnership. He had spiritual brothers, and mothers, and friends, and refreshers; a network of people. Now, you can't expect if you're single for any one best friend to be like a marriage partner to you and meet all those emotional needs. And you'll smother a person if you try to get one person to be that.

But you can build, like Paul did, a network of caring people and you're part of God's network for them. It's a two-way street. You need to invest in those friendships; take time with them; build yourself a rich life while you're single. You've got to be a good one before you can be a good two anyway. Don't just sit there and wait for Prince Charming or Cinderella to come along. Build life partnerships now. Guard quality time with them as a married couple must do.

Being single doesn't mean being alone if you'll invest in those life partnerships and not just sit there saying, "Oh, when am I going to be married?" Take encouragement from this, that the God who made you need people - will give you the people you need.

Many years ago we were shopping for a place where God wanted us to build a radio studio that we desperately needed. I've got a beautiful one at our headquarters today but back then we needed just something that would get us through. We were looking at a possible location - this big barn of a room with a high ceiling and it was totally bare. Well, when I looked at it I saw a big bare room, but not Kasey. No, he's a carpenter and he started talking about this wall here and that partition there; the control room in that corner, where the doors would be, and how we could soundproof the floor. It was amazing! He was seeing all kinds of things in that room that I couldn't see! But, then, that's the great thing about carpenters!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What the Carpenter Sees in You."

I do think that's how Jesus looks at you. After all, He's a carpenter. His earthly father, Joseph, was one and Jesus grew up with a carpenter's skills - and a carpenter's eye to see what someone could become; not just what they are.

The blueprint is in our word for today from the Word of God in Ephesians 2:10. And it's an eye-opener, really, as to who you really are and why you're here. "We are God's workmanship." Let's stop on that...you are no random assembly of molecules. You are a handmade, one-of-a-kind masterpiece creation of Almighty God. You may not have been treated like you're that valuable, but that's who you really are. And your Creator is the One who says so. Here's what the whole statement says, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

When Jesus looks at you, it's like my friend, the carpenter, looking at that empty room. He sees what that room could be after his skilled hands are finished renewing it. Jesus knows the masterpiece you were created to become, the difference you were created to make, the value you are created to have. That's what He sees. Maybe other people have only seen the bare room, and maybe you've been made to feel pretty worthless, incompetent, unloved, unworthy. But they don't see what Jesus sees; what you were born to be.

And here's why you may have missed knowing how much you're really worth. You're missing the One who gave you your worth. You're missing Jesus. The Bible says we have marked up this masterpiece God made with our self-centered living. God calls it sin, and our sin has built a wall between us and the God we were made by and for. So, we're cut off from the One who loves and values us the most; so much that He thought you were worth sending His Son to die for!

And you will never really know how valuable you really are until you open your heart to the One who loved you enough to die for you. You don't have to spend one more day away from the One who made you to be His masterpiece. The One who sees you through His Carpenter's eye - and sees one He created with His hands, paid for with His blood, and the one He wants to forgive, restore, and renew this very day.

But it's your move now. Now you have two choices: put your trust in Him to be your own Savior from your own sin, or basically say, "No thanks, Jesus. I'll just settle for more of the same." If you're ready to belong to Him, why don't you tell Him that right now. "Jesus, I'm done running my own life. I was never meant to. I am putting my life in the hands of the One who gave me my life...in the hands of the One who gave His life for me. Jesus, beginning this very day, I am Yours." This is the day to come home, my friend.

A great place to land if you want to begin this relationship is our website where you can have all the information you need to make this choice. That website is ANewStory.com.

Jesus, the carpenter, sees in you what everybody else has missed, and maybe even you have missed - the person you were born to be. And today, He simply waits for your invitation to start making you all you were meant to be.

Two words, but a valuable reminder about how important Mom is and why she is. I had occasion to stay at my son and daughter-in-law's house while I recovered from a painful injury. They set me up with a wonderful little "apartment" in their basement - recliner, remotes (of course), kitchenette. And like all the babies in our family, a night monitor. Now, I needed some help in the middle of the night, but I hadn't touched the pager. Suddenly, I hear my daughter-in-law's feet coming down the stairs. In my 3:00 AM haze, I said, "But how did you know?" She smiled and gave those two little words: "Mom ears."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mom Ears."

There's something a lot of us have to celebrate in the mother that God put in our life. Those Mom-ears who heard our silent cries over the years, who heard our need when others would only see our deed. Who heard the unspoken fears, the unspoken pain, and carried them to the throne of God. Sadly, mom-ears have also heard mean words that they didn't deserve, angry words that left a scar, rebellious words because we didn't want to hear what we now know was wisdom. But somehow, a Mom heart could reach for some of God's amazing grace, and forgive, even though wounded.

As a dad, I learned early how important it was for me to seek and respect what my wife heard in our kids, believe me. Those times when I got home and I was ready to drop a bomb on a disobedient child, she would intervene with "actionable intel" of what was going on behind the scenes in their life. I'm not sure moms fully know their massive power to define their child's life for better or worse.

Proverbs 31:26 says, "She speaks with wisdom on her tongue." And in a verse worth considering, our word for today from the Word of God in Proverbs 14:1 it says, "The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down."

Sure, I know moms who've turned their God-given Mom-ears to the seductive song of our world, "all about me." And their children languish under the awful cloud of "I'm not worth much. My Mom doesn't think so." Deafened moms can't hear themselves nagging, controlling, criticizing, diminishing - hoping to make a "super kid" and crushing them in the process.

The Mom-ears that have tended to miss their children's cries are those who stopped listening to the One who gave her those children. Psalm 127:3 says, "Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from Him." It's so easy to succumb to the selfie drumbeat of "my rights, my pleasure, my flourishing." And a sort of deafness can grow. Deaf to those quiet little cries in the night, the intuition to drop everything and listen to someone I love. The Heavenly Father's promptings as He (in the words of the Bible) "gently leads those who have young" (Isaiah 40:11).

But thank God many of us were blessed, not with a perfect mom, but with a mother whose ears truly heard us. If you have a mom with those wonderful "ears," would you tell her how her finely-tuned heart shaped your life and changed your life while you can.

If you're a Mom who wants to have better ears for your children, just know there's amazing power to do that. In the Jesus whose relentless love led Him to die for our sins, which are the great relationship-wreckers. There is no greater life-force on earth than a woman whose ears are always open to the voice of God and the voices of those she loves.

And for the one who listens to all this with little to celebrate - because your Mom really wasn't one - there is a higher hope. Because God has said, "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion for the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will never forget. See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands" (Isaiah 49:15-16). That's right, with nail prints.

His ears listen all day, all night for the deepest cries of your heart.

It was one of those winter nights that chills you to the bone - cold temperatures, a brisk north wind, a freezing rain, some snow. Our friends were inside their house, and their horses were inside their barn. Well, actually, three out of four of their horses were inside the barn. Cassie, their Shetland, was standing outside for some strange reason. So as our friends looked out their window, they saw this pitiful scene: one lone horse under a barn light, standing there with the freezing rain and snow pounding down on her, forming ice on her mane. Now, her horse friends were all smart enough to be in their nice warm stalls, but, oh no, not Cassie.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "In the Cold When You Could Be Warm."

That horse chose to stand out in the cold - when all the time she could have been in the warm place that had been provided for her. You know in some ways, a lot of people are making that same mistake - maybe you.

In a way, maybe you feel as if you've been standing out in the cold for a long time. There's this loneliness that no relationship has satisfied, this confusion, this gnawing sense of uncertainty and insecurity, this emptiness that never seems to go away no matter what you've filled yourself up with. Emotionally, spiritually, it's as if you're out in the chilling wind and the freezing rain. But you don't have to be. There's a warm place that's been provided for you, but you have got to step inside. In fact, this very day, I believe Jesus Christ himself may be beckoning you to come in where it's warm.

Listen to His invitation. It's our word for today from the Word of God in Matthew 11:28 - "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." If we're "weary and burdened" it may be because we haven't come to Him. It could be that Jesus has been asking you to come to Him for a long time but you've never responded. He's been waiting to answer your loneliness with His unloseable love, to turn your confusion into a sense of knowing why you're here and where you're going. He wants to replace that uncertainty with this unshakeable peace, to fill that emptiness in your heart with the relationship with Him that you were made for. But you're still in the cold because you've never really come inside where Jesus is.

There are actually five things you can do with the man who died to pay for your sins. You can just outright reject Jesus. You can ignore Jesus, pushing Him to the margins for other pursuits. You can postpone Jesus - you'll get around to Him someday. You can agree with Jesus - believing everything you've ever been told about Him. Or you can commit yourself completely to Jesus. Four of those five responses end the same place - out in the cold, now and forever. Only one leads to heaven: giving yourself to Jesus. Yes, it's possible to agree with everything about Jesus and yet never have given yourself to Him. It's about commitment, not agreement.

Today, though, He's close to you. He's where you are, and He's whispering, "Come to me...I will give you rest." Today you can begin your relationship with Him by saying, "Jesus, you died for me and I'm giving myself to you for now and forever." That's when you receive what He's been waiting to give you all these years. If that's what you want, we would love to help you begin your love relationship with Jesus. That's why our website is there. That's why I encourage you to go there today. It's ANewStory.com.

You've been out in the cold long enough. There's no need for you to be out there any longer. You're so close to the warmth and the safety of belonging to Jesus Christ. Today, won't you come inside?

OK, let's put away all the junk food snacks for a minute and reach for a healthy snack today. Yes, it's time for some fresh fruit. It could be an apple, an orange, a pear, but the next time you eat one, would you look for the example on the inside? There is one. Oh, I wouldn't recommend you eat that entire apple; you'll probably want to stop when you get to the core. But notice what's there in the middle of that apple. Yep, seeds that can make another apple!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "You Have Life to Give."

That little encounter with the inside of a piece of fruit can actually take us all the way back to the first fruit that God ever made, and a powerful example of some of what gives our lives real meaning.

Genesis 1:29 - it's our word for today from the Word of God. The Lord told Adam and Eve, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it." As I was reading that, it really struck me that God has created things with the seeds of reproducing themselves built right in. When God created man and woman, He told them to "be fruitful and increase in number" (Genesis 1:28).

But that principle of fruit carrying the seeds of the next generation goes beyond just physical reproducing. Jesus said to His followers, "I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last." And certainly that includes people who will come to Jesus because of you. They are fruit that your life is supposed to be producing. So, how are you doing?

The great creative plan of God is that when He creates a life, He creates it with the potential of reproducing life like itself - "Fruit with seed in it." The moment you gave your heart to Jesus Christ, God made you fruit with seeds, with the capability and the purpose of making some more like you! Apples generate apples, oranges generate oranges, and followers of Jesus generate followers of Jesus. Or at least they're supposed to.

But you know what? There's research that shows that maybe even just 10% of believers ever tell someone about their relationship with Jesus Christ, which in that case would mean 9 out of 10 believers are missing their destiny. They have the seeds of life to plant in another heart, but they're doing nothing with those seeds. And people around us go on dying without Christ, and without any hope of heaven.

Isn't it time you start bearing some fruit, like people who will be in heaven with you because you helped them know how? And God's plan is that we reproduce our own kind. Moms introducing other moms to Jesus, and students introducing other students to Jesus, and golfers pointing golfers to Christ, and business people reaching business people, and wounded people reaching wounded people. God has made you who you are; He's placed you where you are so you can take people like you to heaven with you! How are you doing with your divine assignment?

We're not talking here about you adding some new activities to your already overstuffed life. This is just using things you already do to bring other people who do them to Jesus. You already live where you live, you go to school where you go to school, you work where you work, and you play where you play. Just go there with the conscious mission of helping some of those people go to heaven with you!

There are seeds of spiritual life that God planted in you the day you met Jesus. And He's counting on you now to plant those seeds in the people like you. In fact, their eternity may depend on it.

If you've ever checked your suitcase when you're about to take a trip by airplane, you know what they do with our luggage. No, not lose it. Not usually. The ticket agent determines what your final destination will be, he prints out an adhesive sticker with that destination on it, and he puts it around your suitcase handle. And then you settle back in your seat, knowing that bag will meet you at the other end of the trip. With the millions of bags the airlines handle daily, it's amazing that most do go straight to the right destination. Now there are some exceptions. Like the one I checked in Idaho. Oh, I checked it through to my final destination - Newark, New Jersey. To this day it's still floating somewhere out there in the Baggage Twilight Zone. Like I said, most of the time they get it to your final destination.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Guaranteeing Heaven."

If you belong to Jesus Christ, God has placed a final destination sticker on you. It says "Heaven." And I am happy to report to you that, unlike human delivery systems, God's batting a thousand on getting His there.

Our word for today from the Word of God starts with John 10:27 - in a sense, it's kind of your personal life insurance policy...for eternal life. "My sheep listen to My voice; I know them and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of My Father's hand."

Jesus says, "I know the ones who are Mine, and I've put My final destination sticker on them. It says 'Eternal Life.' No one is going to get them away from Me. I won't stop until I've delivered them safely home." Isn't that awesome? Your getting to heaven is not up to you. That's what the Bible means when it says it is "not by works" but that it is "by grace you have been saved through faith" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Now it may be that you have often questioned whether or not you really belong to Jesus and whether it really is settled. Those recurring doubts could be for one of two reasons. One is that you really don't belong to Jesus yet. He's in your head but He's not in your heart. Even though you have a lot of Christianity, maybe you've missed Christ! You know He died on the cross to pay the death penalty for the sinning you've done - you know that you need Him as your personal Savior.

But somehow you've missed that actual moment of commitment, that transaction, when you stand at Jesus' cross and say, "For me, Jesus. What you did here is for me. Right now I'm giving me to You."

If you asked me if I was married all these years it would be an easy question to answer. Yeah, there was a time I made a conscious commitment of my life to Karen. If you have committed yourself to Jesus, you should know you have. If you don't know you have, you probably haven't. And it's important you get it settled today because this is eternity. Do it before your heart turns harder. Don't risk another day without Jesus.

The other reason you may not be sure of your final destination is that you've fallen for the devil's big lie. He knows that, based on your trust in Jesus Christ, God has put His "Heaven" sticker on you. Satan's lost you - so he's now reduced to making you wonder if you're really going to heaven. Your enemy wants you to spend your whole life wondering if you belong to Jesus instead of living like you do! Don't fall for it any longer!

If you're not sure there's been a time when you've begun your relationship with Jesus, make sure today - once and for all. You can wonder if God has ever marked you for heaven before today, but at least you'll know He did it today if He's never done it before.

I'd love to invite you to go to our website where an awful lot of people have confirmed the beginning of their relationship with Jesus. That's why it's there. So go to ANewStory.com.

Then, enjoy the trip each new day. He will deliver you safely to your destination in heaven. After all, He paid your fare with His life!

Nantucket - a romantic island off the coast of Massachusetts. Waterbrook - a humble cabin in the woods in the mountains north of New York City. Long Beach Island - a little house by the Jersey shore. See, those are places where my wife has been her most beautiful. That's not because she had new makeup on, or was all dressed up, or did her hair differently. Those are just some places where we've gone to be alone, and where I finally slowed down and noticed her again. She was beautiful all the time, but I didn't notice it all the time, because I saw her best when we were alone. If you're in a lonely time right now, let's talk.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Seen In Your Desert."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Genesis 16:7. It tells the story of a young woman named Hagar. Maybe you remember that Abraham and Sarah got impatient for God to send the son that He had promised, and Sarah was getting older and older. The baby didn't come, so Sarah, going along with the customs of that day, suggested that Abraham sleep with Hagar, her maidservant, and then Hagar would be the surrogate mother through whom a child would come. They couldn't wait for God to do it His way, so they had to figure out a way they were going to do it. It's not how God wanted it done, and after Hagar gets pregnant, Sarah gets a little jealous. And Hagar gets a little caustic about it.

Now we find her out in the desert all alone because guess what? She's been driven there by her mistress, Sarah. Here she is used, rejected, deserted, she's pregnant, she's alone in the desert, she's the picture of abandonment; all alone, or so she thinks.

Genesis 16, verse 7: "The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. The angel of the Lord said to her, 'You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery.'" He goes on to describe some of what to expect from this son, and then she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. "'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me.' That's why the well is called Beer Lahai Roi." Which, by the way, means "the well of the Living One who sees me."

It's interesting the name of God here, "I have seen the One who sees me." Maybe right now you're in the desert; it's a very lonely desert. God sees you in your loneliness, and He has heard your tears. We keep hearing our desire to be seen...Oh, here is the God who sees you. The broken relationship, the lost loved one, the years of living alone, the collapse of your family; God sees you. Do you see Him? She said, "I have now seen the One who has been seeing me." When no one sees, when no one knows, when no one understands, Ishmael. You know what that name means? God hears.

And guess where we tend to see God best? Yeah, in the deserts of our lives. Not until we are stripped of all the other supports in our life, that's when Hagar finally saw the God who had been seeing her all along. That's when we see Him. That's when you dig deep into His resources; you see what He can do. You feel His love, and you let His love be enough. Paul said, "When everybody had abandoned him" (2 Timothy 4:17), "the Lord stood by my side."

I told you when I noticed my wife's beauty and wisdom the most - when there was no one else around. Well, it's the same in a relationship with the Lord Jesus. When it's just the two of you, maybe like it is right now, you can see Him as you've never seen Him before.

How did we know it was a stupid question? Our family was in Alaska some years ago and we asked some of the folks there what seemed like a reasonable question, "Where can we go to see a moose?" Turns out seeing a moose is really no big deal in Alaska. In fact, some people we talked to had hit one recently! So, they're everywhere. Sure. While I was busy speaking, my wife and kids drove all over the countryside looking for some moose. Nada. Maybe people hit them all! They even went to the Moose Sanctuary and they saw no moose there; frustrated, tired of looking, and pretty sure those moose were only in pictures in the tourist brochures. One morning we walked out of the house where we were staying, piled in the car, and started driving down the driveway. Suddenly, one of the kids shouted, "Moose!" And sure enough, there were three members of the antler gang right there at the bottom of our driveway! What we'd been looking for all that time was right in front of us!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Looking for What's Right There."

You know this is a time when spirituality is important to more and more people, there's a word you hear a lot and folks use it to describe themselves spiritually - I'm a "seeker" or I'm "searching spiritually." And that's a good thing to be doing. We're created with this eternity dimension by a God who is eternal, and we'll only find life's real meaning by shopping in the store called "spiritual answers." That part is right.

Today, as never before, there's a spiritual cafeteria to choose from. Our search for the truth can carry us to many different religions or a blend of several religions; into New Age spirituality, into ourselves to find the power within us. But like our family hunting for moose, we're looking, but often not finding what we're looking for. Much searching - still no lasting peace, no security about eternity.

It was a number of years ago where 39 members of the "Heaven's Gate" cult committed suicide. It was really unsettling because these were bright people, competent people; sincere spiritual seekers hoping to graduate from earth to, believe it or not, a waiting spaceship. That was their unusual belief. But listen, this is what I wanted to share with you - what one national news magazine observed about them and about us. It said, "Subtract the spaceship and the mass suicide, and you have a yearning and a search familiar to millions of Americans."  That's true.

That magazine pointed out what they called universal needs that many people are trying to meet: "the craving to belong, the wish to connect to something larger than oneself, the secret hope of finding an all-caring parent who offers protection and comfort." I'll tell you what, those needs were built into us by our Creator. 

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Colossians 1:16. "All things were created by Him and for Him." That simple statement from God could be the beginning of the end of your spiritual search. He says you were created by Jesus; you were created for Jesus. The Savior who's been pretty much in front of you all the time, but maybe you've passed him by because you get Jesus confused with all the religious baggage attached to His name because you thought it was some new spirituality you needed.

But only Jesus died to remedy our central spiritual problem: we're away from God because of our sin. And only the One who paid for that sin with His life can put you and God together. Without that, all spiritual searching must, sooner or later, turn up empty. The day you find is the day you say, "Jesus, You died and it was for me, for my sin. And today, I am Yours." 

He's been here all the time, but you've missed Him. Why don't you make today the day you find Him? Make a trip to our website and find out there how to be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com. 

Searching is good. Finding is better. Your long search will end in the loving arms of the One who's been patiently waiting for you all this time. Jesus - the end of your search.

There's something invigorating about being the first one out and around in the morning; you sort of feel like the conqueror of your environment. Like when you're the first one out exercising in those first hours of the new day. I had that feeling one morning as I went out for my fitness walk.

I really like to walk when I'm away from home, too. And I was in a setting where right behind me there was this really scenic 18-hole golf course. I'm not a golfer, but I am a walker. There was a beautiful path around there, so I struck out on my early morning walk, and the mist was there, and the dew was all over the golf course. And I said, "You know what? I am the first one to conquer this golf course today. There'll be a lot of people out here later, but I have beaten all the golfers." I felt like the world was all mine, or so I thought. Then I got to one hole and I saw a carpet of dew covering the green, and footprints all across the green. Someone had walked there before me.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Someone Else Has Walked There First."

Our word for today from the Word of God is from John 10:4. Jesus beautifully, intimately describes His relationship with us here as being like that of a shepherd with His sheep: Him shepherd, me sheep. John 10:4 says this, "When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them and the sheep follow Him."

I discovered this verse many years ago, just before we moved from all of the "knowns" that we had in Chicago, to all of the unknowns of northern New Jersey and New York City. We moved there to begin a youth ministry. We had no supporters, we had no place to live, we had no office, we had no staff. We knew nothing. We just claimed this verse, "when He brings out His sheep, He will always go ahead of them." We got there and we found out that God had picked out an apartment, He picked out friends, He had picked out a church, He had picked out an office for us, He picked out supporters; people who could open doors that we needed opened, and that's what God does for all His kids.

Everywhere Jesus will lead you to walk, He promises to walk there first; He goes ahead of you. That's how a shepherd operates. Wherever he's going to take his sheep, he goes ahead of them to see if there's enough pasture for them to be fed, if there are any wolves there that he needs to take care of, and where the cliffs are that they might walk over. He makes sure that He checks it out before they get there. He prepares it for them. That's just the kind of Shepherd He is.

Think of the fear that takes out of the future; the uncertainty. Like the old song says, "I know not what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future." Right now maybe you're looking ahead at the next few weeks, maybe months and you're anxious about it. Honestly, there's a whole lot of question marks; there's a lot of unknown out there.

Well, there is one known in the midst of your unknowns. Guess what? That one known covers all the unknowns. Jesus will always be your "go ahead" Shepherd. He always does that with His sheep. He has promised that He would, and He always keeps His promises.

In fact, today He knows your situation, and I think He brought us together and brought this verse to my heart for you, as a personal assurance from Him to you that He is already stepping ahead of you. There's nothing to fear on a path that Jesus has walked before you. It's the blessed security that only a follower of Jesus Christ can know.

So, wherever He takes you, yours won't be the first set of footprints you'll find there. Your Shepherd got there first.

She was one of the most admired women in the world - Mother Teresa, that angelic woman who devoted her life to the least of the least in the slums of Calcutta, India. The world's greatest leaders wanted to meet her and to experience her love and her moral authority. And actually, she was just a diminutive woman who made such a difference in the world. Some years ago, a young man wrote a letter to Mother Teresa, asking her how he could make his life count as she had with hers. He waited six months for a reply from this very busy lady. When it came, it was just a postcard with just four words on it - four very powerful words - "Find your own Calcutta."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Life That Matters."

If you do just what comes naturally, you'll live the kind of life most people do - self-focused, self-centered, self-serving. But a life that's only as big as you are is too small to live in. And you might be feeling an emotional and spiritual claustrophobia right now. Business as usual just isn't satisfying that restlessness in your heart is it? Your life is full, but not really fulfilling. Find your own Calcutta. Find some people who need you and start pouring your life out for them. The lid will come off your life.

Jesus gave us an immortal, indelible picture of the two ways to live life in His classic story of the Good Samaritan. It's in Luke 10, beginning with verse 30, our word for today from the Word of God. "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side" - as, by the way, did another religious leader who came by next.

Jesus goes on: "But a Samaritan...came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds... He put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him." Then Jesus went on to say that the Samaritan paid all the expenses of the beaten man's recovery; and that this Samaritan was the kind of neighbor He expects all of us to be.

And there in that simple story is a picture of two lifestyles - you can be all about yourself, ignoring the needs of people in your path... or stopping for people's needs, bearing the burdens of a bleeding world. I was really touched by a news report about a man whose choice might help you step up to a life that makes a far greater difference.

It actually happened right after September 11th and it said that "David Townsend's perspective changed profoundly on September 11th." It says, "From that moment forward, (Here's what he said.) I realized that we are not going to live forever. I feel an even greater sense of urgency; feel compelled to leave my mark on the world. It has changed my outlook totally and shaken me to the core." So, apparently, according to the story, Townsend left his job to work in social services with the homeless and with urban churches. Here's his quote, "September 11th reinforced in me the need to live a life that matters."

I think that's the kind of life you want isn't it? So learn to wake up each morning and ask yourself, "Who needs me today?" not "Who can meet my needs today?" There are people in your personal circle - people in your community - who desperately need someone to care, to be there for them. And remember, there is no greater difference you can make in anyone's life than to introduce them to Jesus Christ and take them to heaven with you! That's an eternal difference!

With however many years or few years you have left (who knows?), live to make the greatest possible difference with the rest of your life!

I don't think it's that I'm incompetent when it comes to technical things. I think I was just born a hundred years too late. I probably would have fared better when they hadn't invented so many machines and appliances, and computers. I would have done fine in those simpler days. I mean sometimes it is just so embarrassing. I can't, you know, get a lamp to work, or I can't get some appliance to work, and no matter what I do it doesn't go on. The ending is too often the same. My youngest son for example would come in and say, "Dad, is it plugged in?" "No." Oh, I didn't check that! I hate that! So many times we tinker with everything and miss the one simple factor that needs to change.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "God's Blessing and Broken Things."

Our word for today from the Word of God offers a possible diagnosis for why some important things in your life just aren't working right now. Maybe you're like me trying to get things working at the house. You've tinkered with all the different parts of the problem. Well, have you considered the possibility that it isn't working because God is withholding His blessing? And it won't work until God gives His blessing to that part of your life. You say, "Well, why?" Well, because something He really values may be missing.

Our word for today from the Word of God, Psalm 133:1 and 3 - "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity. For there, the Lord bestows His blessing." Did you catch what the Lord is saying here? "I put my blessing where My people are together and unified." The implication might be this. Where they are not unified, I do not put My blessing.

Well, let's look at your personal frustration right now - that door that is not opening, the money that just doesn't come, maybe the child who won't respond, the results that just aren't coming no matter how hard you work. Could it be that you're not plugged in to God's blessing because there are fractured relationships, strained relationships right now?

1 Peter 3:7 tells husbands to "treat their wives properly so that their prayers will not be hindered." In other words, when that relationship with your wife isn't right, God will not answer your prayers. Maybe your children will not come around until mom and dad deal with the walls that are between them. Your church won't grow until those factions come together in a common cause. Like rescuing the dying people all around you. The money or the answer won't come until you fix that broken relationship.

See, that broken relationship, and you know which one it is, is breaking God's heart. Do everything in your power to take down the walls that might be costing you the blessing of almighty God. Keep checking until you understand what is there that's broken that God says needs fixing. Quit tinkering with the problems that really aren't the problem.

You have to go check and make sure you're plugged in at the right place. Check the power source. And the power source is a current called the blessing of God. There is nothing worth sacrificing His blessing for. And no sacrifice too great to have His blessing. He's told us where He puts that. He's told us where He gives that blessing.

It's when He sees His people hand in hand.

For a long time, I have been fascinated with the story of the Titanic. The sinking of that seemingly “unsinkable” ship after a collision with an iceberg is filled with so much human drama that has inspired endless movies, books, and documentaries. Finding the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic fueled even greater information than ever before. Some of the drama of those discoveries has been within our reach as the Titanic artifacts exhibit went across the country in some of America's leading museums. You could see many personal items recovered from the Titanic’s debris field along with displays that recreated the feeling of being a passenger on that doomed ship. And now there's at least one permanent Titanic museum in the country. When I went into this one on the early tour, I was given a boarding pass with the name of a real person who'd been aboard that awful night. At the end of the exhibit, there’s this big wall with the names of everyone aboard – first class, second class, third class, crew. Every person is either on the list that says “saved” or “lost.” I looked hard for my name, and I discovered that I was one of the few crewmen who was “saved.”

A pastor I know, who I had told about my experience there, well, he went to see the exhibit for himself. But he told me about it. He looked me in the eye and he said very soberly, “Except I was lost.”

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “The Shock at the End of Our Voyage”.

One of the most sobering truths in the Bible is this: God has two lists. Each of us is on one of those lists. Everyone we know, everyone we care about, is on one of these two lists. In 1 John 5:11-12, God plainly says, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” There it is – the “saved” and the “lost.” And it all depends on one thing – whether or not you have Jesus in your heart.

It doesn’t say, “Whoever has religion has life” or “whoever lives a good life has life.” No, it’s all about Jesus and whether or not you’ve ever begun a personal relationship with Him. That life-saving relationship begins when you realize that Jesus’ dying on that cross was the only thing that can pay the death penalty that you deserve for running your own life, for hijacking your life from your Creator. And that means you know now that you've got to put all your trust in Him to save you, because you can't do a thing to save yourself.

For my pastor friend, it was a shock to get to the end and find out he was “lost.” That’s the shock that for real so many are going to experience when they meet God. My friend didn’t know until the end. But we can know right now which list we’re on – depending on whether or not we’ve given ourselves to Jesus. If you know you’ve done that, you are among God’s rescued.  

But now it’s up to you to rescue those around you who are still on the “lost” list. The “saved” and “lost” list from the Titanic can never be changed. But there’s still time for people you know to be moved from God’s “lost” list to His list of those who are “saved.” But you've got to do something about their lostness. You’ll have to step up to tell them about Jesus, to be their rescuer.

The devil – who wants as many lost as possible – is working hard to keep people on both lists preoccupied with something other than eternity. If you’re lost, he’s trying desperately to keep you from Jesus, even right now, until time runs out. If you’re saved, he’s trying to desperately keep you from reaching out to rescue the people around you until time runs out.

If you’ve never reached out to Jesus to rescue you, grab the hand of the Rescuer who came all the way from heaven to come and die so He could rescue you. If you want to go to sleep tonight knowing you belong to Jesus, tell Him now, “Jesus, I’m Yours. The battle's over. I'm Yours!"

Get over to our website as soon as you can today, ANewStory.com, because I think you will find there everything you need to know about how to be sure you belong to Jesus. 

When you’ve taken your last breath, lost is forever; but not yet. This very day, you can move from death to life, and from lost to saved.

Now, I’m not in the business of advertising any particular ice cream spot, but let’s face it, it’s kind of fun to go to Baskin Robbins. You know, they have all those flavors they advertise. Now, you can write to me and tell me that maybe you like another place better, but listen, I know you like to go where there’s a lot of flavors. And you know what? It seems like it takes me an hour to decide which one I want. Well, not really, but seems like an hour to the person whose waiting on me. But the variety is a lot of fun. Now, can you imagine an ice cream store that offered only vanilla? Yeah, boring! After a while you get tired of the same old flavor. Can you imagine a person who said, “I only eat vanilla. I never tried anything else.” I’d say to them, “Man, look at the list! You’re missing so many flavors. You can have ice cream so many different ways.” How boring to think that all ice cream has to be the one flavor you like.

I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “Many Flavors At God's Place”.

Our word for today from the Word of God is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. And we go, in a sense, to God’s ice cream parlor if you want to put it that way. And it’s called the church—the body of Christ. Listen to all the flavors. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.” Verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 12, “The body is a unit, though, that is made up of many parts, and though all of its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” 

Okay, now, if there’s one message we could get from these wonderful verses it would be this. Variety is God’s plan for His body. He’s not interested in cookie cutter Christians. He wants many styles, many flavors of Christians. God likes variety. Guess what we like? Uniformity. We want everybody to be like us—like our group. So as a consequence, generally speaking, Baptist Christians only know Baptist Christians, and Assembly of God Christians only know Assembly of God Christians, and Methodist Christians only know Methodist Christians, and Presbyterian, Presbyterians, etc. The list is infinite.

But, you see, none of us has all of Him. But all of us together have all of Him. Don’t cut yourself off from all the other flavors; don’t just be a vanilla Christian. See, we disagree only about, say, 10% of it. Ninety percent is about Christ, and sin, and salvation, and Christ’s return, and the Bible: we tend to agree on those. We need each other. Those different styles and different emphases in the body of Christ are not only God’s will, but they make you rich.

One group of Christians may teach you how to pray and get a hold of God. Another group may really have a vision for missions, and they’ll help you care about a lost world. Others will really get you into personal evangelism. There’s another group of Christians who might really help you learn about God’s sovereign control over things. And then there’s a group over there that may be strong in loving and caring and accepting. And this group over here, they’ll teach you a lot about worship. And this one, oh you’ll learn a lot about careful Bible study. Hey, listen. We will be together forever. All the labels we have here on earth won’t make it past the gate of heaven. Why don’t we get together now? 

You’re on God’s side when you’re against whatever divides His body. It’s not all vanilla. Its lots of flavors. It’s all ice cream; but it’s lots of flavors, and that’s what counts. We’re all the church. 

So, celebrate the variety in God’s family. And enjoy all those flavors.

When our oldest child was born, they didn’t even let fathers go into the labor room. That was nice. Then when our second one was born, fathers must have gotten a little smarter. They let us go into the labor room, but not the delivery room. And by the time our third one was born, hey, fathers had really gotten smart! I was actively involved with the doctor in the delivery. But, of course, I couldn’t just walk right into the delivery room. No! First, I had to do what the doctor and nurse had to do – scrub up! Oh yeah, they made sure I washed thoroughly with disinfectant. Then they covered every part of me but my hands and my eyes and my nose – and they put a mask over my mouth, a thoroughly ugly cap on my head and this goofy smock over my clothes. My only consolation was the doctor looked as geeky as I did. They gave me paper booties, oh that was cool, but I understood. They can’t allow any dirt to infect that environment. You've got to be clean to get in.

I’m Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “No Dirt Allowed.”

It seems like more people are thinking more these days about spiritual issues. That's a good thing, including what happens after we take our last breath. One area of curiosity is heaven – which we can guess about if we want, or we can get our information from the One who made heaven, who lives there, who sets the standards for going there. Of course, that would be God. Who, in the Bible, describes heaven, not as a state of mind, but as a very real, very mind-blowing place.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Revelation 21:4. It is a partial description of heaven. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” Later it says, “The great street of the city was of pure gold.” Imagine! This is what we consider the most precious substance on earth. We'll be walking on it in heaven! It's pavement. We can’t begin to imagine the glory of this eternal destination.

Then in that same passage, here's something very disturbing, “Nothing impure will ever enter it,” He says, “nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” (Revelation 21:27) God says heaven is a lot like that delivery room; no one is allowed in there who isn’t clean. They would infect an environment that has to be pure. God’s saying here that He can’t allow anyone with sin into heaven or it won’t be heaven any more.

But here's why that’s so disturbing. Romans 3:10 in the Bible says, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Well, if sinners can’t get into heaven, then you and I have no chance no matter how religious we are. No matter how much good we do, it doesn’t remove any of the dirt of a lifetime of choices that were “my way” instead of God’s way, that defied what God wanted. The scriptures show us that there will be a lot of surprised people in hell; people who thought they could get to heaven by being good enough. But their good didn’t remove the sin that keeps people out of heaven.

But this verse mentions those who will enter heaven; those in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Your name goes there when you get every sin of your life erased from God’s book. Here’s the only disinfectant that can do that. 1 John 1:7 says, “The blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.” Our only hope of being clean enough to enter heaven is what Jesus did when He died on the cross to take the death penalty that we deserved to pay for our sin. The question is, has there ever been a time when, in your heart, you’ve stood at Jesus’ cross and basically said, “Lord, I’m putting my total trust in you to forgive me, to erase my sins from your book? You're my only hope.”

If you’ve never done that, if you're not sure you've done that, why don't you make sure today. Jesus has become your personal Rescuer from your personal sin at that point. Go to our website because I've put there the information that will help you nail down and make sure this is the day that Jesus becomes your Savior from your sin. That website is ANewStory.com.

We're all too dirty to enter that sin-free environment of heaven. You can get clean this very day, but only Jesus can do it. If you want to go into Jesus' heaven, you've got to get clean. This is that day.

I've only been to Israel once, and just for a short visit, but I will never forget the thrill of seeing those places where Jesus walked when He was there, and watching all those names and places in the Bible suddenly come alive. It really was one of the highlights of my life, except for one thing. I went alone, on my way back home from a ministry trip to Africa. As I stood on the Mount of Olives, and as I walked the streets of old Jerusalem, as I experienced the feel of Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee, you know what I kept thinking? "I want my wife to see all of this. I want to experience this with my kids!" Yes, Israel was terrific, but I really wanted to share it with the people I love.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your People In Heaven."

I guess that's just the way it is when you're enjoying a special place; you want the people you care about to be there, sharing it with you. That must include the most special place of all - heaven.

Imagine that you get to heaven and you see Jesus. After you fall on your face in adoration and awe, you begin to thank Him for all He did to get you to heaven. And then you ask a question that's been on your mind since you arrived, "Lord, is Scott here? Is Linda here?" What if Jesus says, "Oh, did you bring him? Did you bring her?" See, Jesus was counting on you to help those people you love understand what He did for them on the cross and to point them to the only One who could get them to heaven.

In our word for today from the Word of God, Paul anticipated the joys he was expecting when he got to heaven. In 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20, he says, "For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy." Now, when Paul sees Jesus, his joy is going to be that the people he loved - that he loved enough to introduce to Jesus - will be there with him.

I wonder who you'll be looking for when you get to heaven; people who, as far as you know, may not be headed there right now. If you want them to be there in heaven with you, you've got to tell them how they can know the Savior who died to get them there. In fact, that's why God has you in their lives, to help them go to heaven with you. So, how are you doing with that?

There are very few sadnesses deeper in life than standing by the casket of someone you could have told about Christ - you should have told about Christ - but you didn't. Well, you know, we can't have any of those opportunities back, but we do have the friends and neighbors and coworkers and loved ones who are still with us. And we still have time to tell them, but no one knows how much time.

This very day you could start praying what I call the "3-open prayer." First, "Lord, open a door." That's a natural, God-given opportunity to bring up your relationship with Christ. Then, "Lord, open their heart." And then finally, "Lord, open my mouth." You don't even have to pray, "Lord, if it's Your will." It is His will. "Lord, open a door. Lord, a natural opportunity. Lord, open their heart; get them ready, and Lord, open my mouth with the words, and the approach, and the tone, and the courage to tell them what I know about You." Begin to seek opportunities, pursue opportunities to tell the people in your personal world about the Son of God who loved them enough to pay for their sin so they don't have to.

If there are people you want to have in heaven with you, please while there's still time, share with them the only message that can get them there.

There were a lot of dramatic images from the military action known as Operation Iraqi Freedom - but I think few were more dramatic than the middle-of-the-night rescue of a prisoner of war, Jessica Lynch. If you were around at the time, you probably remember it. As Coalition forces advanced quickly from the Kuwaiti border to the capital of Baghdad, Pfc. Lynch's unit of Army maintenance troops made a wrong turn, ended up in the middle of an enemy ambush, and no one knew Jessie Lynch's fate. She was listed as missing in action. But acting on the tip of Iraqi sympathizers, a Special Operations Force fought their way into the hospital where she was imprisoned, found her, and quickly carried her to a waiting helicopter. And then, they had to fight their way out, too. But Private Lynch was safe - saved by rescuers who risked it all to bring her out.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Day You're Rescued."

I'll never begin to know what it must have been like to be a prisoner of someone like Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. But I do know a little bit about how it feels to be rescued from a situation that I couldn't get out of, that otherwise would have been fatal. I know what it is to be rescued by someone who risked it all - actually, who gave it all, to bring me out. It's a life-saving experience shared by millions of people over 2,000 years. It's a rescue that can happen to you.

This rescue was planned in heaven and executed by no one less than the very Son of God, Jesus Christ. It's described by God Himself in Colossians 1:13-14, our word for today from the Word of God. It says of God that "He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

We don't realize it, but we are in as deadly a situation as that rescued POW was in - actually a lot more deadly, because without a rescue we will be imprisoned forever in an awful place the Bible calls hell. That's where the death penalty is carried out for a human being who has run their own life instead of letting their Creator run it. Who has dared to say, "God, you run the universe. I'll run me." Which, according to the Bible, describes all of us, no matter how religious we might be, and no matter what religion we're from. We're sinners. We are unable to get ourselves out of our own dark side, we're unable to get ourselves out of the penalty for our sin. We are trapped in what the Bible calls "the dominion of darkness."

But Jesus came, fighting his way to rescue us. Dying on a cross to pay the penalty we deserve, so we could have (as the Bible says) "the forgiveness of sins" instead of the punishment for our sins. No religion can get you out - only a rescue can. And only Jesus did what had to be done to rescue you. This very day - maybe through these very words - He is breaking into your life, offering to be your personal Rescuer from your personal sin and its eternal penalty. If you'll grab Jesus by His hand and just say, "Jesus, You're my only hope. You paid for my sins when you died on the cross. You proved you're alive by walking out of your grave. I want you to walk into my life today. Beginning today, I am Yours, Jesus."

Don't you want to know that you're right with God? Don't you want to know that eternity is settled? If you want to know you belong to this Rescuer that loves you more than anyone ever could, let this be the day you give yourself to Him.

Let this be the day that you check out a website that is all for you at a moment like this. It is literally designed for this crossroads moment in a person's life - ANewStory.com. I invite you, I urge you, I encourage you to go there as soon as you can.

Jesus paid the ultimate price; made the ultimate sacrifice to bring you out. The strong hand of your Redeemer; I wish you could actually see it. He's reaching for you right now. Please - grab Him now.

There's nothing more discouraging for the family chef than these three words, "I'm not hungry." Maybe you've faced those words. You know, kids have impatient stomachs. Of course, only kids. We don't, right, adults? But kids have impatient stomachs, so they eat whenever the urge hits and whatever the urge tells them to eat. And, of course, I'm sure our kids were like yours. They would usually go to the refrigerator and get some carrots or a tossed salad. Right? Some broccoli, some high fiber cereal? No! Our kids did not! Don't worry, neither do yours. Oh yeah, they'd go after junk food. Most kids today are junk food junkies, and they fill up on it. So, my wife would give us this beautiful spread of pot roast, and potatoes, and fresh vegetables, home baked bread. And the troops, "I'm not hungry." They're too full to eat. How discouraging when they're full of junk food. Now junk food may be okay, but not when it spoils your appetite for real food.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritual Hunger, Spiritual Junk".

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is found in Luke 8. It's the familiar story of the parable of the seed and the sower. And as you know, Jesus talks about the seed falling on four different kinds of ground. Let's look at one today. He says in verse 11, and this is the meaning of the parable, "The seed is the Word of God." And in verse 14, "The seed (or the Word) that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they're choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature."

Now these are people, who are Christians, and they remain Christians, but they are God's under-developed children. Children who never experience what they could have experienced. They always miss God's best. Why? They were choked. Choked by worries, anxieties, things they're afraid of. They're choked by chasing what money can buy. They're choked by focusing their energies on their own pleasure, their own feeling good. God has a lot of spiritually anorexic kids. You know that? They have an appetite disorder.

They're just not hungry for the Bible any more. They're not hungry for time with Jesus. They're not hungry for church; for spiritual input; for Christian fellowship. They almost go just dutifully. Have you noticed in yourself maybe recently a diminishing desire to get into the Bible; to get with God's people? Oh, you used to have an appetite. Where did it go? Could it be you've been filling up on junk food? Maybe things that aren't wrong in themselves; they're just taking over what you think about and talk about most of the time.

An unbalanced interest or concern has taken over and crowded out any room for God's Word in your life. Maybe you've become preoccupied with a hobby, television, the Internet, soap operas, music, maybe a special friend, maybe your car, maybe your house. Maybe God's time in your life, God's voice, God's Word are being choked by something far less important, far less eternal. It's just been crowded out. All your thinking time, all your mentally neutral time is gone. Do you have a spiritual appetite problem? Could it be that some junk food is filling you up?

God has so much prepared for you; so much He wants to say to you; so many ways He wants to lighten your load. But you come to the table saying, "I'm not hungry." Next time you're reaching for more mental junk food, reach instead for the banquet of the Bible. Spiritually it is the breakfast, the lunch, and the dinner of champions!

Because we've spent so much time on Indian reservations over the years, the story I heard about one little Native American boy is especially meaningful to me. He lived with his mom in a little hut on a reservation in the Southwest. His dad had died, and that meant the boy had to take responsibility for their sheep at a pretty young age. One day a missionary passed through their village and he explained to the little boy how Jesus Christ died for him and wanted to be his Shepherd. And that day this little shepherd invited Jesus into his heart.

As the missionary was about to leave, he asked the boy if he could teach him a Bible verse. The boy said, "I don't think I can remember it." But the missionary gave him just five simple words from the Bible to remember. "The Lord is my Shepherd." But the missionary taught him a little trick for remembering it. He said, "Use the fingers of your right hand to help you remember 'The - Lord - is - my - Shepherd.' And when you get to the fourth word, wrap your left hand around the fourth finger of your right hand. 'The Lord is my Shepherd.'" Well, the boy remembered it - really remembered it - as the missionary would learn when he returned one year later.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Two Words That Decide Eternity."

When the missionary revisited that village, he stopped by the hut where the little shepherd boy lived with his mother. He knocked on the door and the mother answered. When the missionary asked for her son, she said, "Oh, you didn't hear? Last winter a sudden blizzard hit us while my boy was out in the hills with the sheep. He didn't make it back. It was three days before they found him frozen to death."

The missionary couldn't muster any words except a quiet, "I'm sorry." Then Mom said, "You know, when they found my boy and they brushed all the snow off his body, they discovered something very unusual. His left hand was wrapped around the fourth finger of his right hand."

"The Lord is my Shepherd." Is He yours? It's possible that you know about Jesus, that you believe in Jesus, that you go to His meetings, maybe you even do things for Jesus. But somehow, you've never made Him yours. You've never made the Shepherd your Shepherd. You've never made the Savior your Savior.

The difference is two little words found in our word for today from the Word of God from Galatians 2:20. "I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." You stand at that cross that you may have known about all your life. You look up at the price the Son of God is paying there. And you say with your heart, "For me. He's dying there for me. It's my sin He's paying for." And then you say, again with all your heart, "Jesus, I'm Yours."

If you don't know you've done that, you probably haven't. Because it's a conscious choice. And you need to. Having Jesus in your head will never get you to heaven. He's got to be in your heart. This could be your day to finally move Him from your head to your heart so you don't miss heaven by those 18 inches.

Right now, wherever you are, would you talk to Jesus? That tug in your heart? That's not me; that's Him. Maybe you could talk to Him in words something like this: "Lord, I've been running my own life. I resign. I believe that when You died on that cross, You were paying for every one of my sins. And now I'm giving You what You paid for with your life - I'm giving You me."

That's the choice that changes everything, including your eternity. I want so much for you to be sure you belong to Him. That's why I'm going to urge you to go to our website, ANewStory.com, because right there you will find the information that will help you secure this relationship and know beyond any shadow of a doubt that now Jesus lives in your heart and you will live in His heaven.

Can you say it now? "The Lord is my Shepherd."

I imagine it's been a little while since you've asked somebody, "How's your liver today?" I never thought about it until my wife got sick. She had hepatitis, and for many months I learned how vital the liver is; never thought about it before. It's the filtration plant of your body. We've got all kinds of toxic materials pumping into us every day in medicines that we take, and foods that we eat, and our liver keeps those poisons from getting into our blood stream. Now, liver disease like hepatitis or cirrhosis can cripple you or even kill you if the poison can't be filtered. See, it's deadly if the poisons don't get filtered and they get into your blood stream. And there is one toxin that is on the loose, and it has a long history of being a killer.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Poison In the Blood Stream."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is going to come from Matthew 27. I'll begin reading from verse 18. And you are going to see the identification of perhaps one of life's most deadly toxins. We're in the middle of one of history's most ironic and most tragic episodes. Israel's Messiah has come in the person of Jesus Christ, and yet ironically it is the religious leaders who are clamoring to have Him executed. They bring Him to Pilate, because they don't have the authority to put Him to death. And there was a sobering footnote here as He is on trial before Pilate. You may have read past it many times. It's sort of a spiritual EKG that looks inside the human heart; what makes people so mean, so critical, so destructive. And it identifies that awful poison in the human blood stream.

Here's what it says in a little footnote to the trial of Jesus. "For Pilate knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him." In the words of the King James Bible, "Out of envy they had delivered Jesus up to him." Oh, they offered a lot of smoke screens; they gave other reasons. A lot of it was spiritual talk. There were religious reasons, and they sounded very, very spiritual about it. But the real issue - bottom line - was envy. Jesus was delivered up because of it, and people are still being delivered up because of envy.

The dictionary says that envy is, "A feeling of discontent or jealousy, usually with ill will at seeing another's superiority, advantages or success." You see, envy is a denial of God's faithful provision for His children. It's saying, "You know what? He's got one and I don't. How come? How come I don't have any? It's not fair." And it often causes us to crucify people with religious words of course.

But envy is a poison in the blood stream. It always starts with comparing. You can't envy unless you first compare homes, children, or beauty, or opportunities, or clothes, or positions with what somebody else has. Isn't it interesting that one of the Ten Commandments of God is "You shall not covet." And you know what? You'll never covet if you don't compare. It always starts with comparing.

Think of someone you've been critical of lately - maybe negative toward them. When they come around you, you start getting some dark feelings. I wonder if you'd be honest enough to examine your motives today. Could it be envy at the root? You've seen what you perceive to be maybe their superiority, or their advantages, or their success. Ask yourself this, "If envy is in my life, Lord, who is the object of it? Envy gets all dressed up, starts to deliver someone up for destruction. It is an ugly poison in the blood stream. Pray for that person that you might be comparing yourself with and envying.

Call envy by name, and trust your Shepherd to give you what's right for you. Filter out that poison of envy. It's a killer!

"Moon joy." That's what the Artemis commander called the crew's lunar euphoria as they approached the moon. And that was just the beginning. For all their science, for all their simulations, they were almost at a loss for words.

The view behind the moon and seeing the Earth left them in awe. And to think - they were looking at one little blue marble in one galaxy. In what is estimated now to be two trillion galaxies!

Four people have now traveled farther from our planet than all the billions who have lived on Earth. The commander said "It was the most spectacular moment... It paused all four of us in our tracks." As they got their first full glimpse of their home planet.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The View From the Moon and the Search in Your Heart."

We're wow-ed by our sunsets on earth. They got to see an "Earthset" as the earth dropped below the lunar horizon - and a stunning view of the moon eclipsing the sun.

Commander Wiseman said, "No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular. Surreal. I know there's no adjectives. I'm going to need to invent some new ones to describe what we are looking at out this window."

Three thousand years ago, the psalmist David seemed to be lost in wonder, too, just viewing the night sky from earth. Here's what he said in our word for today from the Word of God - Psalm 8:3-4.

"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is mankind that You are mindful of them, human beings that You care for them?" (Psalm 8:3-4).

The wonders of our tiny corner of the cosmos overflow the heart, whether simple or scientific. So what is the word for what we feel in these awe-filled moments that take us beyond ourselves?

The word is worship. But, like love, worship is incomplete without an object. "I love" is a nice beginning, but it needs a name after it. So does a heart that is overflowing with feelings of wonder, inspired by the majesty of creation.

Creation itself is not enough for a heart in search of somewhere to land our soaring soul. We are reaching for the Source.

The sacred Scriptures complete our cosmic soul journey by pointing us to Jesus. The Christ. The Son of God.

Colossians 1 says, "For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... all things have been created through Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:15-16).

One crew member said, "You're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live. You are special."

Looking at the cosmos from this "special" place, David marveled that the Creator of it all would be "mindful" of us or "care for" us.

This planet is not even a speck in the oceans of galaxies. But it is here that God Almighty chose to make creatures in His own image! Made - and here's what takes my breath away - to have a love relationship with Him! The Son of God Himself came here, to this little planet to make that relationship possible - by dying for the sin that stands between us.

The wonders of a space journey to our farthest destination so far have revealed the greater journey of every heart on this planet. To find the One behind the wonders. Who not only created this planet. But who has visited this planet to take us to Him. The wonder of all wonders is that... "God so loved the world!"

This world. Our world. Us.

And the relationship He made us for is within your reach today if you say, "Jesus, I am Yours from this day forward." If you want that relationship, then our website is for you today, go there. It's ANewStory.com.

When you reach for Jesus, the greatest wonder of all is not in the skies. It's in your heart. He's in your heart.

Certain birthdays are like, you know, special milestones. Every birthday is a milestone, but take 40 for example. For some reason, we sort of enshrine that particular one as a special marking place in your life. And I remember when my wife had her 40th birthday. I'm not going to tell you when that was, but she handled it very well. I mean, she was so cool about it; it was no big deal. I hope when I get to my 40th I'll be able to handle it as well. Well, it wasn't like she had just crossed some great river in her life. Then my 12-year-old son came along a few months later. He said this, "Hey Mom, do you know you've been on earth for 14,662 days?" You put it that way, it takes on a whole different feel. Forty years doesn't sound too bad, but 14,000 plus days? Hello, prehistoric! After he said that I got to thinking about the days that we had with our three children, and you begin to realize how many are gone, and how many are left, and how quickly they slipped away. And you think about kids. They don't think about next year, next month, or next week. It's all about the day isn't it? You know, we need to take a better look at the days we still have; the days that you have.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Capturing Days."

Our word for today from the Word of God is found in Ephesians 5. I'm going to begin reading in verse 15. "Be very careful how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is." This verse that's in the middle, verse 16, talks about making the most of every opportunity. It's sort of in a sandwich between two verses that have some very intriguing phrases, "Don't live unwisely." Live smart in other words. Don't be foolish.

And then it talks about your destiny here on earth - God's will. And it all seems to be wrapped around this phrase, "Making the most of every opportunity." You want to live smart? You want to get God's will? Seize every opportunity. Now, it's no coincidence that the verses that follow this are about family relationships. In fact, in chapter 6, verse 4, only a few verses later, it says this to fathers: "Bring up your children in the training and instruction of the Lord." I think the way you do that is to capture each 24-hour period as another moment to mold the lives of your children and your grandchildren. There's so little time to strengthen them for a world that is so lost.

We need to ask ourselves, "Lord, have we touched You together today as a family...me and my kids? Have we talked about where we saw the Lord today in our lives...our God sightings? Have we celebrated how something in the Bible helped us today, or have we prayed about something real and personal together today. Have we explored the Bible together today? Have we gone out to some people in need and done the work of Jesus together? Have we touched each other today? Have we expressed our love for each other today? Have we gotten in touch with what made each other happy today? Have we talked about things that were hurting the other members of our family?

See, the greatest classroom our kids will ever experience is the classroom of everyday life - that natural teaching that comes up in the flow of the day. See, by the time you finally have time to do this with the kids, they probably won't.

I know one of the greatest burdens of my life is the days we lost. One of the greatest challenges of my life: how do you make the most of the days ahead? It means reordering some priorities; it means leaving time in what tends to be a wall-to-wall schedule, and asking God each morning for the opportunities, the determination, the timing to mark your children for Christ that day.

Hey, the days are flying by. Grab each one; capture it for Christ. You can't have any of the days back that are already gone, but you can make the rest of your days the best of your days.

Think about what you looked like in seventh grade. You say, “Oh, no! Please, I’d rather not.” Are you thinking, "Man, what a hunk I was! What a Miss America!” Probably not.

Our daughter had a funny experience in her senior French class in high school. There was some down time and some girls were comparing their wallet pictures, including our daughter. She had her senior picture and she also had her seventh grade picture. The teacher asked what everybody was laughing at. Now, my daughter has always had a beautiful smile, but I’ve got to tell you in seventh grade it was decorated with braces. She had glasses. Her hair was kind of kinky and curly, and she looked like a seventh grader. 

Well, her French teacher looked at that picture next to the very beautiful senior in her graduation picture; no glasses, long hair, carefully curled hair, big, blue eyes not concealed by glasses. And that teacher had a simple two-word reaction. I think it was the French words, “La Miracle!” Well, my daughter was laughing with her friends and her teacher at that seventh grade picture because, it wasn’t her anymore. 

I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “Miraculously Changed.”

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 6:9. It starts out with very bad news and ends with some really good news. We read about people with a past here, with a reputation—a record. “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” That’s a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of pain there.

But listen to 1 Corinthians 6:11. Stand by for the very good news. “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified.” That means made special again. “You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” People who are cleaned up, made special again, made right with God; only one possible way, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s like my daughter with her seventh grade picture. She couldn’t laugh at it when she was that person, but she sure could as a senior because that photo represented who she was then, not now. That’s the “la miracle” of being a new creation in Jesus Christ.

Here’s what the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “When you’re in Christ you’re a new creation. The old is gone; a new life has begun.” He not only changes your eternal future from hell to heaven and makes your present meaningful and satisfying, but He miraculously makes your past sins irrelevant. It may be that you’re sometimes pursued by a past you wish you could do over or erase, but the question is, “Did you honestly bring it to Jesus’ cross and repent of it?”

Well, if that’s so, Acts 3:19 says, “Repent and turn to God and your sins will be wiped away and times of refreshing will come from the Lord.” It’s gone! God is treating you as if you’re a whole new person. 

Listen to this: “He carried our sins in His own body on the tree that we might die to sin and live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). He’s dealt with your past. It’s all paid for on His cross. It’s all part of the sorrows He carried and the sin He was crushed for. 

This very day you can have every one of those sins erased from God’s Book if you would come to Jesus and say, “Jesus, you died for my sin, I’m putting my trust in You.” That miracle could take place for you this very day. I would love to show you how. Just go to our website, it’s ANewStory.com. 

You can tear up the old photo. That was you. It won’t be you any more because of Jesus.

There are few words that strike fear into the heart of a student like the word “test.” Now, I’m informed that some are to be feared more than others. For example, an essay test is a 10 on the anxiety scale. You have to know your stuff. True and false, well, that’s not as bad. And multiple choice, oh man, that seems to be especially popular among students. See, there’s the right answer right in front of you; just pick the right one. Now, occasionally multiple choice tests are complicated by those confusing words: All of the above, or none of the above, which makes it a little tougher. Actually, academic tests are pretty good preparation for the real test that you take for the rest of your life.

I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “When Marriage Is a Multiple Choice Test.”

Now, when you go into training on how to counsel people, one of the first things they’ll tell you is to ask this question when you’re counseling someone, “What are all your options?” And I’ve often done that when I’ve tried to help someone…to list all of the choices that they have in a given situation. So, get your multiple choices right in front of you. It’s especially good advice when it’s your marriage that’s being tested. And, by the way, every marriage is tested some time or another.

Maybe it happens in all those expectations you had, or suddenly confronted with the reality and what you expected him or her to be, or what you expected marriage to be. Well, reality is almost always different. And maybe that’s hitting you.

There’s conflict that doesn’t seem to be resolved. Maybe there are secrets about your spouse that you never realized before like you do now. Maybe you’ve been very wounded by this one who’s closest to you. Or communication is like totally broken down. Maybe your mate is very busy and you’re very lonely. Maybe you’ve even been violated by the ugliness of unfaithfulness. But when your marriage is hurting, what are your choices?

Well our word for today from the Word of God is in Malachi 2:13. “Another thing you do…” God says, “…you flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because He no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, ‘Why?’ It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you’ve broken faith with her. Though she is your partner—the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the Lord made them one? Do not break faith with the wife of your youth. “I hate divorce”, says the Lord God.” Now, in a world where divorce is considered one of your multiple choices, God says, “I hate divorce.” He doesn’t say, “I hate divorced people.” He says, “I hate divorce.”

One of the most important choices my wife and I ever made was this: Divorce is not and never will be one of our options. You know what effect that has in a marriage? All your energy goes into fighting for your marriage. It’s like a house you know you’re going to stay in for the rest of your life. You put all your energy into making that one work and fixing it up. None of your energy should be converted into considering a divorce possibility. As soon as you acknowledge that possibility, you make it much more likely.

Now, there are a lot of multiple choices: To pray in faith that God will change things, to seek counsel, to talk to other couples, to schedule time to talk it through, to fight it through, to admit you’ve been wrong, to choose to forgive. But it strengthens that marriage to eliminate ending that marriage as an option. 

Now, while the Christian world opens the door wider and wider for believers to choose divorce, God hasn’t changed. He still hates divorce. Again, not divorced people. When marriage becomes a multiple choice test, use every choice there is to fight for your marriage. And don’t divert energy into how to end it. Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding, and He’s still doing marriage miracles.

Rwanda – It was the centerpiece of a lot of news attention back in 1994. Bloody civil war; tens of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered there. There were nightly images of emaciated refugees, dying of disease, dying of starvation. And children; oh, you just couldn’t forget the children. Many of those kids had lost everything in the carnage. 

Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, took a medical team to try to help there, and I heard him tell about one little girl he said he could never forget, and I don’t think I will. He was in this rebel camp and he was walking by an army truck. He noticed this one little girl sitting in the back of it and she was just rocking back and forth, and she was singing something very softly but in a language Franklin couldn’t understand. 

There was a soldier standing by there paying no attention to the girl, and Franklin said, “What happened to this little girl?” And he said, “Oh, the same as all the others. She’s got nobody left.” Franklin said, “Well, would you do me one more favor? Would you tell me what she’s singing?” The soldier seemed a little annoyed, but he listened for a minute and he said, “Yeah, it’s…” Then he went on to translate it. When he translated the song, it was clear that this little Rwandan orphan hadn’t lost everything.

I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “Unloseable.” 

The soldier, after hearing this song sung by that little Rwandan orphan girl said, “Yeah, it’s something about Jesus loving her.” Franklin said, “Is it Jesus Loves Me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so?” “Yeah, yeah, that’s it.” With her world torn apart, with every human who loved her gone, this precious little victim had one unloseable relationship. Do you? They couldn’t take Jesus away from her.

Our word for today from the Word of God - Romans chapter 8. It begins by talking about the worst things that could happen to you in your life, and in verse 37 it says, “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nothing in the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” A love you can never lose; a love that will never lose you.

Jesus is the unloseable person we’ve looked for all our lives. Actually we’re built to belong to our Creator. If it weren’t for Jesus, we would never have the possibility of that heart-satisfying relationship because of the gap between God and us. It’s called sin. That’s basically the self-rule of our lives. It could be summed up in those words “I did it my way.” So the God that we’re built by and for is out of our reach until that sin bill is paid. Talk about love! God’s only Son came to remove the only thing that could keep us from His love - the death penalty for our sin. From the moment you say, “Jesus, I’m putting my total trust in you and what you did on the cross for me” you belong to God. You always will. Nothing in heaven, nothing in hell, nothing on earth can end that relationship. God has guaranteed it.

Quite some time ago, my wife and I spent a week at a little house at the Jersey shore; it was like a mini-honeymoon. And two weeks later she came down with a life-threatening case of hepatitis. I’ll never forget the night when she almost died. I realized that this one person who would never choose to leave me might not have any choice about it that night. I’m so grateful God spared her. But that night I realized that the closest thing I have on earth to an unloseable person is loseable. But you know what? Since that day, came the day that I did lose her. But I was still able to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know.” I hope you can too.

You probably never thought you’d learn anything from a little Rwandan orphan girl, but she was hanging on to Jesus with all her heart. Maybe it’s time for you to do that. I’d love to help you know how. Join me at our website AnewStory.com. 

Isn’t it time you grabbed Jesus’ hand? Because that’s the only hand that won’t ever let you go.

The great Bible teacher, Dr. Harry Ironside, used to tell a story about a man who lived in a small country town in England. One day, he went to London where he would need to stay for several days. He was glad to be there on a Sunday because that gave him an opportunity to hear some of the great preachers of his day. He wrote home to his wife, and he said: “Last Sunday morning I went to hear Dr. Crandle, and in the evening I went to the Metropolitan Tabernacle to hear Charles Spurgeon. I was so greatly impressed by both of them. Dr. Crandle is certainly a great preacher, but Mr. Spurgeon has a great Savior.”

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “Dethroning Me.”  

So who are people impressed with after they have been with you? Are they impressed with you, or are they impressed with your Jesus? In many ways, that’s the measure of the authenticity and the impact of your life.  

There have been few more brilliant, more gifted men to walk this planet than the great Apostle Paul. But he didn’t want people thinking about him. He wanted to leave people thinking about Jesus. He says so in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 4:5, “We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” He’s saying it’s not about us, folks. It’s all about Jesus. And that’s a relief!

I’m guessing there are some people close to you who do not have a relationship with Jesus and therefore they have no hope of heaven because they don’t have Him. And there are probably some of them at least who you’ve never told about what Jesus did for them, and I bet I can guess why. That would be one word—fear. Am I right? Fear of what they’ll think, fear for your relationship or your position, fear of messing it up, or fear of rejection. All the fears that keep us from telling about Jesus have one thing in common. They’re all about me. They might reject me, they might think less of me, or I might mess it up. We trip over our preoccupation with ourselves and we never get to the people whose eternity depends on them hearing about our Jesus.

But it’s not about me. “We preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.” It’s all about Jesus. That’s why Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:2, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” There it is, Jesus and His cross. That’s your message. Knowing what Jesus did for them on the cross—that’s really the only impression that matters. So, don’t encumber the simplicity of that glorious Good News with other things like church, religion, cultural issues, politics, lifestyle issues. There’s no point in attacking the lost lifestyle of a person who’s lost! “What a surprise! Wow, they’re acting lost!” Well they need a Savior. Let’s focus on that!

There’s something very wrong if you’re using Jesus to make a name for yourself or to impress other people with you. You are actually hijacking His glory. And there’s something wrong if you’re not telling people about Jesus because of something about you. It’s not who’s doing the telling that’s the issue; it’s who you’re telling about—the One who offers the greatest love in the world.  

Just take them to the cross and show them that. He offers them the greatest power in the world. Take them to that empty tomb and show them that. He’ll give you the words. He’ll give you the opportunity, and He is your message. So make Jesus the subject. Keep Jesus the subject. Don’t let religion become the subject, because Jesus made this awesome promise. He said, “When I am lifted up…I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32).

We kept two special remembrances of our wedding. One was a piece of wedding cake that we froze; the other was a recording of the ceremony. The recording was a much better idea than the cake. We ate the cake on our first wedding anniversary. You've heard of chocolate cake; this was more like chalk cake. But oh, the recording, now that was a great idea. In fact, often on our wedding anniversary we have replayed it. We relive that wonderful day that our marriage began. I know some couples go beyond that. They actually dust off the old wedding dress and reconvene what's left of the wedding party, and it's good for a couple to remember that wedding day. Don't you think? It's good to remember where it all began isn't it? In any important relationship a trip back to the beginning can rekindle the spark.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Back to Where It Started."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 11, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 23. As we read, notice that there is a place that Jesus knew we would often need to visit. I think you'll find these words familiar, "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same way, after supper He took the cup saying, 'This cup is the New Covenant in My blood; do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of Me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.'"

You've heard that before, right? It's the Lord's Supper passage many churches would say - communion. And Jesus said the point of it all was "remember Me" and "remember My cross." In other words, I believe the Lord is saying to us that we often need to return to the place where it all began.

To be sure, the practice of communion or the Lord's Supper, some call it the Eucharist is established in this passage, but it goes beyond that practice. It also establishes a principle that we need to frequently visit the cross where we were bought and paid for. And He established this way of remembering Him to make sure that we do because He knows our tendency to forget.

Now, remembering the price that was paid for us can happen at the Lord's Supper, and it should. But it can happen in your bedroom or your study, as you let yourself wander mentally, spiritually, emotionally to the foot of your Lord's cross. You can visit the cross while you're driving or walking alone. At a time of great guilt, visit the cross. At a time of great doubt, of great pain you visit the cross and you again look into the eyes of that One who is agonizing under the weight of your sin.

The hymn writer wrote these words: "Beneath the cross of Jesus, my eyes at times can see the very dying form of One who suffered there for me. And from my smitten heart with tears to wonders I confess the glories of His wondrous love and my unworthiness." You see, at the cross you realize how serious your sin; the sin you've been trying to justify. You realize how forgiven you are; how loved you are. You strip away all those meetings, and responsibilities, and creeds, and rules, and you realize that Christianity really boils down to two people: Jesus dying for you and you at the foot of His cross. And it clarifies everything.

It could be that there's never been a moment when you've been to that cross and said the two words that are the difference between an eternity in heaven and an eternity in hell, "For me. You're doing this for me, aren't You?"

I would invite you today to tell Him, "Jesus, beginning today I'm Yours." And go to our website where you'll find out how to be sure you belong to Jesus Christ. That website is ANewStory.com.

Visit the sacred spot of the cross often. You'll come away different every time that you go back to the place where it all began.

We have one of our staff who has a pretty regular assignment. That is, show up at the post office every morning. Yeah. The one who goes there is a pretty familiar figure. They know about what time to expect our person to come in, and they know it's important. See, the orders are, "Don't stop at the office. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go straight to our post office box." See, that daily trip to the post office is really our lifeline. He checks the box and there we find the contributions that really keep us going, very important communications, maybe answers we're looking for. And I'll tell you what, if he's sick, we'll send somebody else over there first thing in the morning. We are dependent on that daily pickup.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Don't Miss Today's Message."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is actually written by a prophet who's in the pits. Now, you didn't know prophets got in the pits. Well, you thought they were on top of everything all the time? No, the neat thing is that the heroes of the Bible have their down days. And I'm so glad, because so do I; so do you.

Lamentations...now how do you like that for the name of a book written by a prophet? Right away you know the fellow's not feeling too good. Lamentations 3, and listen to the mood he's in as I begin verse 19. "I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me." I think in Hebrew that means, "In the pits." Right? "This I call to mind and therefore I have hope."

What do you call to mind, Jeremiah? Well, here's what he says. "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, For His compassions never fail." Now, get this. "They are new every morning." And then you remember that hymn that comes from these words, Great Is Your Faithfulness. Do you know what the margin of survival is when you're overwhelmed, when the pressure's coming at you, when your feelings are at low ebb? He says, "It is the Lord's compassions..." and notice "...new every morning."

Now, it may be that you're limping along right now because you have started too many days without checking your box. I mean to fill up with today's special strength, with today's special love, with today's special words from His book for this day and all of its needs.

Richard Foster, the author of Celebration of Discipline, writes that when he prays, he likes to pray palms up/palms down. He puts his palms down first of all to empty out all of yesterday, and then he prays with his palms up to get all that God has to give him that he's going to need for that day. That's a pretty good idea, dropping yesterday's accumulation; receiving today's strength. And the key words are "every morning."

We live life, not as years, not months, not weeks. We live days. That's why a once a week fill up won't do it, or some occasional spiritual highs. We're wired for an every morning relationship. The alternative is a growing mountain of stress, and frustration, and paralysis, frayed nerves, frayed relationships. See, it's possible to go through a daily Bible reading and prayer ritual without picking up the Lord's love for that day. I'm talking here about having a transaction with Him each new morning.

Like our staff person going to the post office, your first responsibility of the day is to stop and see what's come from God for you for that day. There will always be what you need if you stop to pick it up before you rush into your day.

Your Father has something special to give you for this day. So, don't forget to check your box.

April 3, 2026

Write your description her Twenty-three marks on the wall of his four-by-four prison cell told the story. It had just been three weeks since the soldiers captured him - the number one name on the Most Wanted List - at a local bar and they hauled him into this cell. The charges were robbery, treason, and murder. Day 23 was going to be just another day there, or so he thought until he heard the growing sounds of that angry mob outside the window above him. He managed to grab the bars on the window and pull himself up high enough to hear what the crowd was screaming. It was a combination of shock and fear that swept over him when he heard they were shouting his name! "Give us Ba-rabbas! Give us Ba-rabbas!"

Then the chant gradually began to change. Now they were shouting with this bloodthirsty anger, "Cru-ci-fy him! Cru-ci-fy him!" Barabbas slumped to the floor. He couldn't believe it. He'd been their hero, but now they were calling for his execution by the most brutal means of execution ever devised - death on a cross. Within minutes, five soldiers were dragging him, kicking and screaming down the corridor, up the stone steps, and to another door. They flung the door open, pushed him through it, and slammed the door behind him.

It took a little while for him to realize where he was. He was out on the cobblestone street of Jerusalem. He was free! Before reality could fully dawn on Barabbas, the door behind him opened again. He literally had to roll out of the way to keep from being trampled by this angry crowd pushing their way through with a bare-backed, bleeding man in the middle of them. As Barabbas plastered himself against the wall of that narrow street, he could see that man's back had been so brutally beaten it was like one gaping wound, exposing tissue and bone everywhere. Barabbas' first instinct was to run while he could, but he didn't. He followed that crowd all the way up to that skull-shaped hill just outside the city, where from a distance, he heard the hammer and the spikes that the heartless executioners of Rome were driving into that man's hands and feet.

It turned dark as night in the middle of the day and the skies opened up with a deluge of rain. Curious spectators just began to drift away. Finally, Barabbas felt safe enough to walk slowly to the top of Skull Hill, with his head covered. It was as if there was a magnet pulling him toward the man hanging on that middle cross between two other dying criminals. Barabbas had heard the man say from that cross, "Father, forgive them." He'd heard many things at crucifixions. He'd heard cursing, and screaming, and threatening, but never "forgive."

He now could recognize the face that was beaten almost beyond recognition. It was Jesus - the man who had done no wrong, whose only crime was to love those that no one else cared about. And in that moment Barabbas found himself looking up into the eyes of that man on the middle cross and saying aloud, "Jesus, you don't deserve to be there, I do. But because You're dying there, I don't have to die." I could walk up to the cross where Jesus died and say that, and so could you.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You on this Good Friday about "When Good Friday Gets Personal."

I don't know if Barabbas ever really made it to the cross, but I do know that getting to that cross to have your sins forgiven is your only hope of heaven. Our word for today from the Word of God is in Galatians 2:20, and it simply says, "The Son of God...loved me and gave Himself for me."

If you've never been to Jesus' cross and said those words, "For me. You're dying for me," this could be your personal Jesus-day. When you tell Him you are His, when every wrong thing you've ever done will be erased from God's book, because the blood shed on that cross was shed to pay for it. And when you trade hell for heaven this very day, would you tell Him, "Jesus, you're dying for what I've done. And today I am yours."

And then, would you make a trip to our website? It's ANewStory.com. I want to help you today be sure you've crossed over from death to life.

Good Friday - Jesus died for your sin today so you don't have to.

April 2, 2026

When we finally graduate from childhood to grownup hood, we trade in some simple games for some complicated games. You know, once you get bigger, you have to learn all the rules of football, baseball, and basketball. And they can get pretty complicated. But I remember some of those uncomplicated games I played when I was little, like dive bomber. Yeah, simple rules. All you had to do was come in with your arm extended and knock the hat off the other guys head. That was pretty simple rules. Oh yeah, and try not to knock off the head with the hat. And then we played keep away. That was pretty simple. Keep throwing the ball back and forth and keep it away from the guy in the middle. That was easy. And dodgeball, Did you ever play dodgeball? You know, we'd play dodgeball when a bunch of us guys would get together and we had a good sized ball. And the object of the game was very simple. When another guy tried to throw that ball at you, you just tried to dodge it. In fact, we boys got pretty good at dodging. In fact, some of us still are.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Men Who Run."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Genesis 3, and I'm going to be reading from verses 7-10. It really introduces us to an interesting and often frustrating trait in a man, especially if you happen to be a woman. It's a trait that goes all the way back. Listen to this scene from the Garden of Eden, "Then the eyes of both Adam and Eve were opened and they realized they were naked. So, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord God called to the man, 'Where are you?' He answered, 'I heard You in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'"

Now, it's interesting. When God came to talk after that first sin, Adam grabbed Eve's hand and ran and hid. Did you know Adam is still running from substantial conversation...from confrontation. He's even running from talking with Eve. You see it when it comes to conversations about feelings, about personal and inner personal problems, or conflicts. Oftentimes, we're the great postponer. You know, a wife says, "Honey, we need to talk." So the husband turns out the light and says, "Yes, later, Baby." A child is showing signs of needing some guidance or correction, and Dad will put off confronting that as long as possible - sometimes until there's a heart wrenching crisis.

Men tend to avoid areas where they aren't sure of their competence. So, you know, we'll talk about activities, and achievements, and work, and sports, and politics. But many of us men are unsure of ourselves when it comes to deeply personal areas. So, we play dodgeball when it comes to talking about personal problems. And those things just keep growing until they explode.

As a man, I must, with God's help, resist this urge to run...to postpone...to live with the word "later" when it comes to significant conversation. So many human tragedies could have been averted if only a man hadn't put off dealing with problems and not let the sun go down on it. If we're going to be the leaders God has commanded us to be, guys, we've got to turn and face the issues. Discuss our deep feelings and solve problems while they're small enough to solve.

It's far more manly to catch what's thrown at you than to dodge it.iption here…

April 1, 2026

If you don't know how to swim, it's not cool to let your friends know that, right? Well, let me tell you, it's just not smart not to tell them, especially if you're going into the lake with them to swim. The scene was Lake Michigan. This ten-year-old boy was me. I couldn't swim and I was too proud to tell my friends. Suddenly, as I waded deeper and deeper, I lost my footing and I began drinking the lake. I can remember the terror of it to this day. My friends thought I was just trying to be funny. I'd gone under for the second time, and man, how I remember! I was helpless. I could not contribute a thing to getting back to shore. Thankfully, someone saw me, jumped in and that rescuer did it all!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Hand That Is Your Hope."

That day in the lake I had one hope - a rescuer. Only one person jumped in to save me, and I'm literally here today because of him.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Timothy 2:3-6. "God our Savior...wants all men to be saved...There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men." Now the saving that God is talking about here is from the effects and the punishment for the way we've run our lives. The Bible makes it clear that we are drowning in the guilt of our sin and in the death penalty that God attaches to sin.

And God says that when you and I were drowning spiritually, His own Son, Jesus, jumped in to rescue us. He loved you so much He couldn't stand to lose you. In God's words, "He gave Himself a ransom." A ransom...that's paying the price to get someone back. For Jesus, that was a high price. It meant absorbing all the hell and all the punishment for your sin and mine as He died on that cross.

But you can still go under. You can still drown, if you won't let Jesus rescue you. Maybe it's hard for you to admit that you can't somehow swim to God on your own. In fact, you've done some very good things to make it to Him - but not good enough to meet the perfect standard of a perfect God. In Romans 3:10, God includes every person when He says that by His standards, "There is no one righteous, not even one." Not even you. Not even me. Like me that day at the lake, there's nothing you can contribute to your rescue. Your only hope is a savior. And only one person jumped in to save you. That is Jesus Christ.

All that any religion can offer you is a book of swimming instructions - their way to swim to God. But it doesn't matter if they're Protestant swimming instructions or Catholic swimming instructions, or Jewish, or Moslem, or Buddhist, or New Age or whatever. Swimming instructions won't rescue a drowning man or woman. Only the Savior can do that. And only Jesus did the dying it requires to get rid of your sin and to get you into a relationship with your Creator.

Even now, through these few minutes, Jesus is coming to you, offering to do for you what you could never do for yourself, and that is save you from your sin. All you can do is grab the Rescuer as if He's your only hope, because He is! You can't rescue yourself. Won't you finally put your pride aside and all the religion and the goodness you thought would get you to heaven, and just reach for Jesus? He would have never died on that cross if your goodness could get you to heaven. It took His death! That was the only way.

Tell Him right now, "Jesus, I believe that when you were dying on that cross my sins were some of those sins you died for. And I have no hope but You. I'm glad You're alive from the dead and I'm asking you to come in to be my Savior from my sin."

It would be a great time for you to go to our website because it has, there, the information you need to be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.

Allison and her daughter and two friends were out for a trail ride in a remote area. They were to rendezvous later, actually, in the afternoon with other family members at their overnight campsite. When it came time to head back, they were somewhere on the side of a mountain, picking their way through very rocky ground. No matter which way they went, they couldn't find the main trail that would take them back down the mountain. They could see where they needed to be, but the terrain was too rugged to get down any other way. The hours wore on, dark began to fall, and Allison's two friends finally made an attempt to get to a cabin they could see. Well after dark, Allison and her daughter finally saw flashlights moving up the mountain. Her friends returned with the man from that cabin. He helped them pick their way to a point where they could actually get right back on the trail. Much to their surprise, while they had been lost, they had been very close to the trail all along!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Close to the Trail, But Lost."

It's possible to be close to the trail and still be lost in the great outdoors or in your search for God. And without a rescuer, you will never make it home - to God, to heaven.

Jesus met a man who was, like many of us, almost where he needed to be, but still lost. What He said to that man gives all of us religious folks something to think about. This man, who came to Jesus as an honest spiritual seeker, indicated that he really seemed to understand and agree with Jesus' teachings. Then in Mark 12:34, our word for today from the Word of God, "Jesus said to him, 'You are not far from the kingdom of God." My friend was "not far" from the trail home, but she was still lost. This man was "not far" from belonging to Jesus, but he was "not in."

That's what Jesus might say to a whole lot of us church folks, us Christianity veterans. We agree with Jesus. We go to His meetings. We like Him a lot. We look like we belong to Him. But see, you can have all that and still be lost because there's never been that moment when you fully committed yourself to Jesus as your personal Rescuer from your personal sins. You've never actually grabbed Him like a drowning person would grab a rescuer and you've said, "Jesus, you're my only hope! Save me!" It's His death for your sins on the cross that really is your only hope of having your sins forgiven...of having a relationship with your Creator...of going to His heaven when you die.

But the Rescuer has come to you right where you are - close to the trail, but still lost. He's come looking for you today. We'd never find Him. He'd have to come looking for us. The sheep never finds a shepherd. The shepherd always comes and finds the lost sheep.

He's come to where you are today to bring you home to Him. Maybe these words right now are His way of reaching out to you. He's ready to bring you home to the relationship you were made for; the relationship you've been missing your whole life. Let this be the day that you finally actually belong to the One you've been around for so long. Tell Him, "As of today, Jesus, I am Yours."

You know, our website is a destination for people who want to be sure they belong to Jesus Christ and their eternity is settled and their sins are forgiven. I want to urge you to get there as soon as you can today. It is ANewStory.com.

You may be very close, but you're not in. Could there be a greater tragedy than for you to get to the gates of heaven one day and hear Jesus say, "You were so close, but you're not in." That can change this very day. You can go to sleep tonight knowing that you belong to Jesus!

You know, most of us have heard words like this when we're going through a hard time, "Oh, I understand how you feel." Maybe you have muttered under your breath, "You have no idea." One situation in which those words should probably never be spoken, are a man to a woman in labor. Yeah, that's right! Now, I've been through labor with my wife three times, but I can not say I understand how she felt. Labor is easier for some women than others I understand, but having a baby is not easy for anybody. I still remember vividly our first time around the maternity track. My wife's increasingly frequent contractions and the trip to the hospital, and then the hours of intensifying pain, and then the last most intense pains of all. And suddenly, a baby girl! Now, I know it's easy for me to say, but I know my wife would have always agreed. It was a painful process with a glorious result. And you know, the result has lasted a lot longer than the pain.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Good In the Pain."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 8. Here we're going to meet a man with the credentials to talk about pain, about hard times. Paul has been brutally slandered, he's been beaten, he's been attacked, he's been left for dead, he's been arrested on false charges, he's been in prison unjustly, been ship wrecked, deserted. What a list!

In Romans 8 he talks about "our present sufferings." And he even speaks symbolically of this world "groaning as if in the pains of childbirth." And then later on in the chapter he mentions trouble, hardship, famine, sword, and then he says this, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." How can that be with all the worst pain in life? It goes back to a God-given perspective on the pain of your life. And that's in Romans 8:28. He says, "And we know that all things are working together for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to God's purpose."

So, what's the good in the pain? Well, it says, "For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son." In other words, the good that comes out of the pain is to make you what this world needs so desperately; someone who is more like Jesus.

Now, God doesn't send all the pain; some of it He allows. But it can't come to you unless your Heavenly Father okays it. And how does God decide what He will allow to come into your life? I think He's asking, "Could this make him or her more like Jesus?"

My consistent experience has been that the hardest things I've gone through have been God's most powerful tools in my life: faith, humility, compassion, mercy, learning the power of prayer, closeness to Jesus. They have been the blessed results of pain that made me know and trust God as never before. And like the pain of our daughter's arrival, my wife has enjoyed the result a lot longer than she had to endure the pain.

Because God's agenda in our lives is eternity, not just 70 years. The payoff will always be much greater than the pain. You may be in a hurting time right now and you don't have a choice. But it really matters what you focus on. If you focus on the pain you're going to become bitter and self-focused, burned out, and worn out, and negative. But if you focus on how God can use this pain to make you more like Jesus, you'll have the baby that the pain is supposed to give you. The tragedy will be if you get the pain but you miss the point.

If you're hurting today, remember that your loving Father, who sent His Son to die in your place, is using your hurt to bring about a beautiful result, which you will be enjoying long after the process is a distant memory.

When you're little, your parents seem immortal. They're not. Sooner or later, most of us get the kind of call that I got, and maybe you've gotten - a parent is gone. In my case, the hospital called to say my Mom had been admitted due to a medical emergency, but her body gave out and she was gone. No matter what the circumstances, the death of someone you love is always a shock, even if you knew maybe it was coming. When you're the only living child and your other parent is already gone, there's this numbing list of arrangements that you suddenly have to make. Thankfully, that wasn't the case with my Mom. Mercifully, funeral arrangements had been made and paid for years in advance.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Most Important Arrangements You Will Ever Make."

It was a real blessing to have funeral arrangements made in advance, believe me. But my mother had made much more important pre-arrangements for the day she died, and those arrangements were the greatest blessing of all. Years ago, my Mom had made a choice that guaranteed she would be in heaven for all eternity. These are the most important arrangements you will ever make - or fail to make.

God knows we're so busy living that we don't give much thought to dying. In fact, we generally try to avoid thinking about death as much as possible. Until we're looking in the casket at someone we've just lost. It's hard to look face-to-face at death like that and not think, "Where will I be when it's me there?" This isn't about being morbid. It's about being ready. If I know I'm prepared for something that's coming up, I don't have to keep thinking about it. It's settled. There's nothing more critical for you to settle than your eternal destination. Avoiding those arrangements carries a price too high to pay.

That's why the Bible says in Amos 4:12-13, our word for today from the Word of God, "Prepare to meet your God...He who forms the mountains, creates the wind...and treads the high places of the earth - the Lord God Almighty is His name." It is this awesome God who will decide when you and I will take our last breath; when eternity will begin for each and every one of us. The Bible says that you and I actually have an appointment with our Creator - the time when the old-timers used to say you "meet your Maker." God's Book says, "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). A divine appointment, the nearness of which we cannot know, and judgment for every wrong thing we have ever done.

When you face God, it's too late then to make your arrangements. That's got to be done here and now. So many people think they'll get to heaven by being good. They're wrong - they're eternally wrong. The Bible clearly explains: "It is by grace (that's undeserved love) that you have been saved, through faith - and this...is the gift of God - not by works" (Ephesians 2:8-9). All our good can't possibly cancel our sin because sin has this eternal death penalty, and a death penalty cannot be paid by somebody doing good. Somebody's got to die, and someone did. Jesus did - so you don't have to. Your only hope is grabbing Him like a drowning person would grab a rescuer.

If you've never done that, you are not (in the Bible's words) "prepared to meet your God." But you can be, beginning today. You can actually know from this moment on that you are going to heaven when you die, because the sin that would keep you out of heaven has been forever forgiven by the One who died for that sin. Your spiritual rescue begins the moment you say, "Jesus, I'm putting my total trust in You and what You did on the cross for me. I'm Yours."

Our website is basically there to help you be sure you belong to Jesus. Let me give you that web address. It's ANewStory.com.

There is no greater peace, there's no greater security, than to know your arrangements for eternity have all been made. This very day you can prepare to meet your God.

No one could have ever guessed the outcome. It was the first round of the playoffs for Illinois' high school football championship. There was this one team, we'll call them Goliath. They were ranked sixth in the nation; first in the state of course. When they beat teams they didn't just defeat them, they buried them. In the first round they were matched up with the team most likely to be eliminated in the state playoffs. This team had lost three games; they had just squeaked into the playoffs. We'll call them David. Final score: 14 to 13. Yeah, you guessed it! The number sixth team in the nation was defeated that day by a team few people had ever heard of. The sports writers seemed to agree that the problem with the champions had been overconfidence. Well, that's happened to number one ranked teams in college football and many other sports. It really can be dangerous to be a winner.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Trouble With Winning."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Peter 5:8. God says, "Be self-controlled and alert..." In other words, stay awake! "...your enemy, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." Now, we need to find out how he attacks and what his opening is so we're not the one he devours. When you want to do that, you've got to go back to chapter 5, verse 5. Here's what it says, "All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand that He may lift you up in due time."

So God is talking about pride and humility in the same passage where He talks about the Devil being able to bring you down. See, I think you're never more vulnerable than you are after a major victory. The sports world has plenty of evidence of that; the spiritual world proves it to us. God is warning against the pride that sets you up to be a lion lunch. When it's in sports, you win, you think you're good, you lower your guard, you under-prepare, you lose. There were pictures in the papers of defeated players of that Goliath high school football team, and the young players were in a state of shock and depression. In the wreckage of their championship hopes they're asking, "How could this happen to us?"

That's happened to a lot of men and women who could have been spiritual champions. We start out very dependent on God when we start doing things for Him. We know how much we need Him. We're scared to death. And then He trusts us with some success, and we begin to think that the success is achievement. It's not achievement. It's a gift from God. We begin to think, "Aren't I something?" Instead of, "Isn't He something?" And we begin to get spiritually careless. That's all the Devil needs to bring you down.

You see, as long as you're trusting Jesus, he can't get to you. The Devil can't beat Jesus. But as soon as you start trusting in you, he can beat you. You're ready for a fall. Often when we're facing a spiritual challenge we draw very close to the Lord don't we? But as soon as it's over, there's a tendency to let down. I've experienced it. Then you let your time with Jesus start to slide, and you let proud thoughts begin to creep in, and you compromise a little since you sacrificed so much before, right?

So we are never more vulnerable than after major victories. That's when we really, really need to keep our guard up. We need to pray much. We need to get others praying for us. If you understand this simple principle of post-victory danger, you can build a wall against it. God sees in you a champion for the cause of Jesus. The question is can He trust you with some victories? Defeat will drive you to the Lord. Just make sure that victory drives you to Him as well.

And if you'll guard against the dangers of victory, then it won't be you sitting in the pain of a sudden and stunning defeat saying, "How could this happen to me?" See, if you can handle winning, you're really championship material.

The snowstorm hit Chicago on a Saturday, and many of the people stranded at Chicago's O'Hare Airport didn't get out of there until Tuesday. That scene was not unique for O'Hare, of course. I've sat in a plane on the runway for three hours just because brief thunderstorms went through. The fact is, O'Hare Airport is a hub for so many connecting flights to so many places. And because it's in the Midwest, it's near one of the Great Lakes and it can get hit with all kinds of weather, which sometimes shuts down one of the busiest airports in the world. Someone said, "When O'Hare sneezes, the whole airline system gets pneumonia." It's true that when bad weather makes the hub close down, nothing can get to where it needs to be.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Storms That Stop Us."

Stormy weather doesn't just shut down airports. It can shut down people, too. If you've been through a stormy time in your life recently, you know that tendency to sort of pull back, turn inward, and stop delivering what you usually deliver. And there's a problem with that. Just like O'Hare Airport in Chicago, you are a hub - you are a hub through whom God sends love and encouragement and leadership and help to the people around you. If bad weather shuts you down, the people around you are hurting.

In our word for today from the Word of God, we see Jesus being battered by the most severe storms any human being has ever faced. He's in agony on a Roman cross. He's abandoned by most of the people He counted on. He's suffering unspeakable pain, physically and spiritually. Jesus has been for so many the hub through which God has sent His love into their lives. Now, going through such awful turbulence and damage, will Jesus shut down and be all about himself?

John 19:25-27 - "Near the cross of Jesus stood His mother, His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw His mother there, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, 'Dear woman, here is your son,' and to the disciple, 'Here is your mother.' From that time on, the disciple took her into his home."

Here in the stormiest moment of His life, Jesus is still delivering God's love into people's lives. At a time when any of us would have been thinking totally about ourselves and the excruciating pain we were going through, Jesus is still thinking about the needs of others. Even then, even from the cross, He's thinking about His mother's needs. He's thinking about the needs of the man on the cross next to Him. He's calling for forgiveness for His executioners. With every reason to shut down, Jesus is still asking what He asked every day of His life, "Who needs Me here?"

And that is the model He has left for you and me, for those of us who have answered His invitation, "Follow me," to still be delivering His love even when we are being battered by the storm. When we're hurting, when we're tired, when we're stressed, our tendency is to think mostly about ourselves, isn't it? We go into survival mode, "Everybody get out of my way. I don't feel good," or "I'm really busy," or I'm really tired." And we get shut down, not by the storm, but by our self-centered, self-pitying response to the storm. Life is tough, so suddenly it's all about me, right?

But Jesus calls us, Jesus shows us something better, something higher - a more supernatural way to live, to draw on His grace, to keep giving out His love even when we feel battered, to be all about others when I feel like being all about me; because I will find my life by giving it away.

You are a divine hub for delivering God's resources into people's lives. You just can't let the storm shut you down!

We were traveling a good distance and it took a couple of days. We needed to get there at a certain time, so we had a lot of drive-through meals, and therefore a lot of fast food. That means our eating decisions were pretty simple. We didn't make them on the basis of flavor, or nutrition, or elegant surroundings. No, they were based on whoever was the fastest, the closest to the road and whatever we could eat the most quickly while traveling. Now, our sons have a really high tolerance for fast food. But even they have their limits. After a couple of days of fast food, when it was time to get dinner, even they said, "Please, let's stop at a restaurant and eat. We know we'll have to slow down a bit. We know we'll lose time. But we'd had enough fast food. It's time for real food."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Prayer That Waits."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 18. "Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, 'In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the pleas, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"

Now, even though the judge didn't care, she just kept coming and she just kept asking. This was Jesus' parable, and let's make it very clear that the judge is in no way a picture of our God. That's not the God we know, the one who cares deeply enough to have His Son die for us. He actually welcomes us coming to Him. See, this widow is sort of a picture of what we ought to be. Jesus wants us to keep coming, "Always pray and don't give up" He says.

Maybe you feel like giving up because it looks like nothing is happening. He says, "Don't give up." He doesn't want us to give up. That might be the word He knew you needed to hear this very day. See, it could be why you're listening right now. He's telling us to keep coming to Him, not based on how we feel, or what's happening with our circumstances, but on the strength of His unchanging Son.

Listen to 1 John 5:14-15. "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we have asked of Him." He hears, He responds as long as it's in the boundaries of His will. He's promised that. He wants us to ask Him; to keep coming to Him with our need. In fact we should ask more what He wants actually than what we want. And He wants us to keep at it.

God's not keeping an account on how many times you come. But He knows that our relationship is more important than we thought if we continue to develop that relationship by continually seeking His presence. He wants to give a closeness to us, and He often uses a waiting time to develop Christ like faith that we would never have if we had the answer right away.

Now, you and I don't want to take time for God to cook up a real answer. We'd rather pick it up at drive-through. But the quick answer is seldom the one that's the best answer. Keep bringing your requests to your Father, asking Him to change you while you're waiting for Him to change your circumstances. He's preparing you for His answer.

As my tired of fast food sons will tell you, the good stuff takes a little longer, but it's worth the wait.

I'm not sure if it's harder for a baby to have major surgery or adults like us. Little Jamie? He was not even a year old, but he had to undergo heart surgery; which I associate kind of with older people. Jamie was the nephew of one of our team members, and she was from Australia. The miles made it pretty tough on her, so we all joined her in praying for this little guy so far away. And thankfully, Jamie came through with flying colors. His heart was fixed. It was a tough operation, but it had to be done. You see, Jamie, they said, had a hole in his heart, and you can't just leave it that way!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Heart Holes."

It's understood that a hole in the human heart is serious business and that you have to take corrective action to get it fixed. Thank God, there are surgeons with the ability to do just that. But when it comes to emotional holes and the spiritual holes in the human heart, it's amazing how many people are walking around with that heart condition totally untreated. But, like its physical equivalent, a hole in your heart spiritually will greatly limit what your life could be, and one day it will cost you your life. The good news is there's a surgeon who repairs the spiritual hole in the human heart. He's done it for many people. He's done it for a long time.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from John 4. It's a story out of Jesus' life. It's noon, it's hot, and Jesus stops at a well for a meeting that it turns out God has arranged. A woman arrives at the well with her water pot to get another day's water supply. She has no idea Jesus knows all about her. She's a woman with a past, a reputation, with a lot of mistakes, and a lot of men in her life. As the conversation proceeds, she's forced to admit that she's been divorced five times and she's currently living with another guy. Her life has been an endless search for love and fulfillment in a series of unfulfilling relationships. She's got a hole in her heart that's never gone away. Maybe like you.

Jesus addresses it in a disarming way by comparing it to the physical thirst that brings her to the well that very day. Verse 13 of chapter 4, He says, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." Thirsty again. You know, that's a word picture for our lifelong search for something that will quench the thirst in our soul - to fill the hole in our heart. It could be that every relationship, every accomplishment, every religion has left you "thirsty again."

Listen to Jesus' offer: "But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Who needs all these trips to wells that never fill you up when Jesus could put a spiritual and emotional spring inside you that will finally quench your thirst.

All our lives, it's our creator we've been thirsty for, because all of the me - first, sinful choices of our life have cut us off from the One who made us, whose love we were made for. But all the garbage was heaped on Jesus when He went to the cross to pay for your sin and mine so we could finally find that peace-giving relationship with God we've needed all along.

It's a relationship that's within your reach right now; if you'll tell Jesus you want Him to be your Savior from your sin. That woman we just read about did not have "meeting the Savior" on her list for that day, and you probably didn't either. But Jesus met her where she was, which is what He's doing with you right now. So today could be your last trip to wells that never satisfy.

Would you tell Him, "Jesus, if you died for me, I know I can trust you with my life. I need my sins erased from God's Book. Come into my life today I'm putting all my trust in You." Our website, ANewStory.com, can help you land this for sure.

See, Jesus is the only Heart Surgeon who can finally repair the lifetime spiritual hole in your heart. Why go one more day with the emptiness inside, when the Son of God has come to fill it forever?

Let's go see the meteor shower! Man, when it happens, it's all over the news. It's one of the few times astronomers make the front page. I mean, earth moves into this dust trail of a comet that passes through, and this thing happens about every 130 years. When that happened the last time, we went out at the prescribed time with our trusted binoculars. My son got out his telescope. He found a place where he could get away from as many lights as possible, because at that point we were living near a major city. And others went too; apparently they had read the same stuff we had. And they were in various chiropractic poses with their necks, bending back trying to see this spectacular meteor shower. Everything was in readiness, and they said on the news that there were some meteor fireworks that night. Of course, we didn't see any. Oh yeah, just about show time, the clouds decided to roll in.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Clouds Covering God."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Joshua 7. After the incredible victory at Jericho, the Jews have lost in a smaller, far less challenging battle at a city called Ai. They'd been told not to take any loot or plunder anything from the city of Jericho or God would judge them. Well, they've just now lost at Ai. Joshua couldn't figure out what happened.

It says, "Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell face-down to the ground before the ark of the Lord, remaining there till evening. The elders of Israel did the same and sprinkled dust on their heads." "What's happened, Lord? What went wrong?" "And Joshua said, 'Ah, Sovereign Lord, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? If only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan!" Oh, Joshua, you don't know what the problem really is.

"The Lord said to Joshua, 'Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned.'" See, God's people had been experiencing God's power; they'd been experiencing victory; they'd been experiencing obvious closeness to the Lord, but something was wrong, and Joshua was thinking of everything,

"Maybe it's this. Maybe it's that." He's complaining, "Why can't we see Your brightness any more, Lord?" Feels a little like that night we looked for the meteor fireworks. They were there, but there was something between us; something keeping us from experiencing it. We couldn't see that.

Well, God says, "Joshua, get up! You're going down the wrong trail here. The problem is that Israel has sinned." Same Joshua, same Jehovah at Jericho, but God's blessing has been withheld because there is besetting sin. When it is dealt with aggressively later in the chapter, the blessing of God returns. Maybe you have that feeling right now. "Something's wrong. It just doesn't feel like it used to between God and me." Maybe you're not feeling the power and the victory; the supernatural things you were seeing. And like Joshua you're wondering where the blame goes. While you're trying to reason it out, God is saying, "It's sin. There's a cloud that's come between you and Me. You can't see Me. You don't have a clear look at Me because of that sin."

Think about it. Have you dealt with the thing that might be causing God to withhold His blessing? Have you even asked Him about it? It could be a broken relationship, a resentment that's slipped in, the return of an old habit or an old way of thinking. Maybe it's a compromise you've been making. Or you've returned to self-managing things that you had surrendered to Him. Or you've been shoving your mate or your family aside or compromising your integrity. I don't know what it is, but the Lord's saying, "That's the reason. That's where the clouds are. That's why you can't see Me."

It's the last place you like to look for an answer for what's wrong. But could it be that sin has crept into your camp? Could it be that the clouds of compromise have come between you and the Lord, who once blazed so dramatically through your life? You see, the Lord Jesus is still producing spiritual fireworks.

What He's done before, He wants to do again. But those fireworks can only be seen by those who don't let sin block the view.

Sometimes during pro football games, the camera focuses on a single player on the sidelines, the guy who just made that great play. And he'll look at the camera and he'll say those two words they almost always say, "Hi Mom!" See, it's just an indication of the debt that a lot of people owe to the love of their mother.

Six-year-old Stephen will owe a debt to his Mom that he can never repay. He was horseback riding with her and with his older brother and sister and they were near this ranching town in western Canada. A cougar ran right in front of Stephen, spooked his horse, and Stephen was thrown to the ground. Well, the cougar immediately pounced on that little boy. And his mother, Cindy, leaped from her horse, grabbed a stick and started hitting that cougar knowing that that cougar would turn his fury on her. Stephen's brother and sister dragged him to safety and then they rode for help as fast as they could. Stephen lived. His mother, Cindy, didn't. She took all the fury of the cougar so the son she loved wouldn't have to.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Animal Inside."

It's pretty incredible love, isn't it? Well, you have been loved like that. Except the deadly animal that's tearing us apart lives inside us. It's that part of you that says those things that deeply hurt the people you love even though you don't really want to hurt them. It's whatever produces the dark side of you, that bitterness, the self-destructive thoughts, the adulterous inclinations, the anger. There's this side of us that we hate. The people we love hate it, God hates it - it's the animal inside. We seem powerless to fight it off. I mean, if we could have we would have by now.

Jesus named this animal. He said in John 8:34, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin." Sin is that untamable monster inside of us and the Bible is very blunt when it describes what this animal ultimately will do to us. It says, "Sin when it is full grown gives birth to death." The wild animal of sin is a killer. It kills our relationships, it kills our self-respect, it kills our reputation, it kills our future, and ultimately it will take us to hell.

We are like little Stephen. We're helplessly at the mercy of this killer animal except that someone intervened; someone who loves us like no one ever loved us. In God's own words in 1 John 4:10, "This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin." In other words, Jesus knew that you would not survive the fury of the animal called sin, so He turned all the fury of that animal on himself, on the cross. He basically said, "Take me, I will die so this one I love doesn't have to." But the one who died was not a mother. It was the only Son of God. The death He took on Himself wasn't just physical, it was the agony of an eternal hell; an eternal separation from God. That's what He was absorbing when He died on the cross for you and me.

This incredible rescue could be your rescue this very day if this would be the day that you would put all your trust in this Savior to be your Savior. Has there ever been a time you did that? If you're not sure there has been, there probably hasn't been. Don't wait! Don't risk another day without this Savior. Open your life to Him and say, "Jesus, you are my only hope. Not my religion, not my goodness, nothing else I could ever depend upon. Jesus, I put my hope... all my hope on you. Beginning today, I'm yours."

There's a reason we call our website ANewStory.com, because it could be page one in a new story of your life. Would you check it out today? It's ANewStory.com.

Look, you know the power; you know the fury of this horrible animal called sin. It's time that you experienced the rescue of the One who loved you so much that He willingly turned the fury of your sin on Himself so you could live.

I was on a flight from Chicago to Newark, and I was busily working until suddenly the pilot put on the brakes. We weren't really near Newark yet, so I tried to figure out what's going on. It looked as if the plane was beginning to circle, and our wing was dipped down a little bit. So pretty soon I said, "You know, I believe I've seen that house before. Those trees look familiar." I got to see them again, and again, and another time. Yep, we were in that time warp that is dreaded by every frequent flier called the holding pattern. We weren't standing still. No, I'm happy to say we were not standing still. That wouldn't have been good. But we were using up time, we were using up fuel. We were in constant motion; we just weren't making any progress.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Stuck in a Holding Pattern."

That leads us to our word for today from the Word of God from Philippians 3, beginning in verse 12, where Paul says, "Not that I have already obtained all this or have already been made perfect. But I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do. Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Now, if anyone could have been satisfied with where he was spiritually it would be the Apostle Paul. He was living one of the greatest Christian lives in history. You can tell from this passage that in spite of that he is refusing to stay in spiritual neutral. He's certainly not going to go in reverse and live on his spiritual memories. "Forgetting the things that are behind" he says. No, he's in high gear. He says, "I'm forgetting what's back there. I'm pressing on. I haven't got it all yet. I want the rest of Jesus. I want to know Christ!"

Paul never flew, but I don't think he would have liked the holding pattern. You know, maybe you're in a holding pattern right now spiritually. You started on your journey with Jesus. You've made some progress, but somewhere along the way you slowed down and you're circling ground that you've covered before. You're not standing still; you're just circling in this holding pattern.

Churches get in holding patterns. Ministry organizations get in holding patterns. Oh they keep their calendar full: time for the banquet, time for this activity, time for the board, time for the committee. But are they taking any new ground for the Lord?

Spiritually healthy people are restless people. They're aggressively pursuing more of God's power in their lives than they've ever tasted before. They want a more intimate relationship with Jesus than they've experienced yet. They desire to have a greater effectiveness in praying than they've ever had before. They want to make a greater difference with the rest of their life than they've ever made before. Am I describing you - this restlessness for more in prayer, more of God's power, more intimacy with Jesus; knowing Him better than you've ever known Him; making a greater difference for Him?

These kinds of spiritual healthy people want to make more of a difference than they've ever made. Is that you? Is that your church? Let it begin with you, breaking out of your holding pattern, getting moving again. See, it begins when you say, "Lord, I'm tired of this plateau. Activity is not obedience. I know that. Busyness is not power. I want all You have, Lord, I want more of You than I've ever tasted before. I want to make more of a difference with my life than I've ever made before."

Find some other people who feel the same way and pursue the Lord together in prayer times. Make it a discipline to find new ground in God's Word, to get to Him daily. Circling the same ground in that airplane, I was restless to get on toward the goal. And it was a good feeling when we finally started moving in the right direction.

Aren't you tired of a spiritual holding pattern?

Years ago I heard a friend tell about a scene from his childhood that he never forgot. My friend was around on that black day in 1929 that marked the beginning of the Great Depression. One of the great traumas of America's financial collapse, of course, was that many banks just went under almost overnight. Well, my friend literally remembered seeing a neighbor at the locked gates of his bank, and he was literally pounding his fists bloody on those gates, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Give me my money! Give me my money!" There was no money to give.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Danger of Being Religious."

That desperate man, and millions like him, placed their security in an institution. An institution that sure seemed safe but that ultimately and suddenly failed them. A lot of church folks are making that mistake today. Did you know that? Placing their eternal security in their church; in believing its beliefs, attending its meetings, even taking church leadership. Sadly, none of that's enough to get your sins forgiven or to get you into God's heaven.

Sometimes religious folks argue over which church is the right church. Well, in Jeremiah's time there was no argument. God's people were the Jews and their temple was God's self-declared house on earth. But even that wasn't enough.

In our word for today from the Word of God, in Jeremiah 7, beginning with verse 10, God says, "You come and stand before Me in this house, which bears my Name, and you say 'We are safe'...'But I have been watching,' declares the Lord." God goes on to point out the sin in their lives - sin that no amount of "church" can make right. He goes on to describe His pending destruction of what God calls (listen to these words) "the temple you trust in."

Boy, that's the danger of being religious. You tend to trust in your religiousness instead of in Christ. Christianity will never get anyone to heaven. Only Christ can get you there. Only Christ died to pay for the sin that disqualifies every one of us from going to heaven. Jesus established the Church to represent Him on earth, to do His work on earth. But church can be the most dangerous place in the world if that's where your trust is.

Christianity is all about Jesus, but it can actually cause you to miss Jesus. It's called false security; feeling like you're okay with God because you speak the language, you agree with the teachings, and you've been around it all these years. Why, no one would even question that you have a relationship with Jesus - except Jesus. And He's the only One who matters.

Could it be that somehow in the midst of a religion all about Jesus you've missed a personal relationship with Jesus even while you've been a good church person for a long time? Jesus described some active church folks to whom He will say on Judgment Day, "I never knew you" (Matthew 7:21-23).

Somehow, they have never actually given themselves in total faith to the One who died to pay for their sins. There has to be that time when you say, "Jesus, some of those sins You died for were mine, and I have no hope of heaven except You and what You did on the cross for me. So beginning right now, Jesus, I'm yours."

Have you taken that step? I would say that if you don't know, you probably haven't. If you've missed it, don't go another day without moving Christ from your head to your heart... from being a belief to being your own personal Savior. Tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm yours."

Look, let me invite you to go to our website today. It's ANewStory.com. You can have the information there to nail down and be sure once and for all that you do belong to Him.

The church you've trusted in, the religion you've trusted in, the goodness you've trusted in are inadequate substitutes for the real thing - putting your total trust in Jesus. Because, my friend, it's all about Jesus!

I opened the refrigerator and there it was again - the pig! Yes, years ago someone bought it, put it in the refrigerator for a while and then it disappeared. I thought maybe he'd gone to the bacon factory, but then the pig was back. See, this pig was actually plastic, and whenever you would open the door, the plastic pig started oinking at you. It's annoying, but it does make you think about what you're about to do to yourself.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The No Regrets Alarm."

Our word for today from the Word of God - very familiar verses from Matthew 6, beginning at verse 9, "This then is how you should pray." And this is what we commonly call The Lord's Prayer of course. "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one." How many times have you prayed that? That's an important prayer. We almost don't think about those words. "Lead me not into temptation; deliver me from evil."

In other words, "Lord, help me see where the temptation is. Help me steer away from it. Keep me from anything that the Devil might be trying to get me to do." Well, how do you do that? That's through His Holy Spirit. In fact, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit, who He called the Comforter, would do that. He said it in John 16:8. He promises "that the Holy Spirit - the Comforter - when He is come, He will convict the world of sin." He also said in John 14:26 He will "bring to your remembrance all the things that I have taught you." In other words, the Holy Spirit's going to bring to mind how Jesus feels about this.

The day you put your trust in Jesus as your Savior, God plants in your soul a sin alarm. Now somebody planted a gluttony alarm in our refrigerator; this noise that makes you stop and think before you reach for something. It was annoying, but the pig could keep you from doing something you would regret later; like how you'll feel when you step on the scale tomorrow.

We do need some noise inside of us when we're about to reach for something we're going to later regret. And God delivers us from evil if we will listen to the inner alarms He triggers when we are about to sin. He says something like, "That's not the truth; don't lie. That's not pure; don't watch it. That's going to hurt; don't say it. That's going too far; don't do it."

See, one alarm in us is what I call Scripture brakes. God brings to your mind a statement from the Word of God that keeps you from making a mistake if you listen. It's the brakes; step on the brakes. D. L. Moody said that "When you think sin you ought to think Scripture." That's why it's important to commit to memory verses that God can later use to warn you away from the edge. Psalm 119: "I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I will not sin against You."

Now, another sin alarm is what I call shame warnings. See, many of us don't carry a sense of shame from the sins of the past, and God erased those from His books if you've brought those sins to Jesus. But sometimes the shame feelings are there a long time after God has forgiven us. And that's actually not all bad, because God can remind you of the damage that comes from saying yes to that temptation, using the shame warnings from the past. Listen to those.

One other sin alarm that God uses when you're reaching for something that could hurt you is Spirit tremors. It's an uneasiness in your spirit that says, "This just isn't right." That's probably the stirring of the Holy Spirit. Listen to that inner warning. But respond immediately and put on the Scripture brakes, respond to the shame warnings, to the Spirit tremors before sin drowns them out and you grab a plateful of regrets.

After a while, I have to admit I got immune to that pig warning in the fridge. I finally just put it away. Don't do that with the Holy Spirit alarm system inside you. Do not quench the Spirit, because He knows the price tag for what you are about to grab.

At first I thought some apocalyptic event had hit our town. Schools were all empty, there wasn't a school bus in sight, lots of people suddenly disappeared. Not to worry. It was just Spring Break.

Of course, for many of America's young people, Spring Break is code for "party like there's no tomorrow, baby." Well, after downing lots of booze and sometimes drugs, your internal censors just go off duty. So a lot of folks come back from break with little memory of some big mistakes. Partying that lasts for a night; regrets and scars that can last a lifetime. Going for "break" and coming back broken.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Timeout Tragedies."

There's this lie that sets people up for expensive choices, hurtful choices. What you do when you're away, or when you're alone, or when you're anonymous doesn't count. It's not just a lie students fall for. Businessmen on trips, women home alone, guys on the Internet, girls texting, people on vacation or at a party. I'm almost sure there's someone listening right now who would do anything to erase what they did when they believed it wouldn't matter.

It does, doesn't it? Because while you can turn off your internal controls, you can't turn off your conscience. It picks up every wrong thing we do - or, in God's vocabulary, every sin. As observed by the wife of a governor who was disgraced by the discovery of his long - distance affair, she said, "You can pick your sin; you can't pick your consequences." It's so true.

So your conscience is always running and so is your calculator. It's adding up the consequences, because as the Bible says, "whatever a man sows, he reaps." That's an inescapable law of the universe. Worst of all, the camera's always running, too. In our word for today from the Word of God, God's camera is described this way, "A man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths." You know that "Sin City" commercial that says, "What you do here stays here"? No, forget about it! If God knows, you're caught. Oh, believe me, God knows.

It doesn't matter how drunk you are, how depressed you are, how devious you are, how deserving you think you are. The Bible says, "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23). So, first the thrill, then the bill. The fear of discovery, the trail of cover-up deceit, the guilt, the shame, the loss of self-respect, the ugly consequences, and the judgment of Almighty God. "For," as the Bible says, "God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

See, nothing good happens when we blow past God's stop signs. That's why we've got to run from the rocks that we've been drifting toward and saying "no!" to that seductive, but devilish voice that says "Forget about tomorrow; now is all that matters." Oh, tomorrow really does matter.

But what about the memories? What about the shame of the mistakes that it's too late to change? Well, there's hope in a word called "forgiven." The very God whose plans for us we trash has made this stunning promise: "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" (Hebrews 8:12). Like the wonderful feeling of a shower when you're disgustingly dirty, God says He'll make us clean inside; every sin erased from His book, with our eternal sin-bill paid in full because of a cross. Where Jesus, God's one and only Son, in the Bible's words, "carried our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24) and He absorbed the judgment I deserve: The choices that accuse us. Gone! Forgiven!

That's what happens when a sinner grabs the Savior. It's nothing less than a new beginning.

And that's why our website is called ANewStory.com. It's where you can find the information that will help you begin your new story with Jesus Christ. Please go there. The rebirth miracle is within your reach right now if you'll just tell Jesus, "I'm Yours from today on."

My wife and I were on a ministry trip to Phoenix, and much to my surprise she decided to have her gall bladder out there. Actually, it was much of a surprise to her, too. You don't plan these things. I remember that night she left dinner early, and I found her about an hour later in unbearable pain. Nothing was making a dent in that pain. Finally we went to the emergency room and they said, "Time for this gallbladder to come out."

Okay, I would never have chosen to do this out of town, a couple of thousand miles away from home. But in the providence of God it was a great hospital, and one of the best surgeons in this field practiced at that hospital. The classic gallbladder operation used to take several weeks to recover from. You know, they just make this big, long cut. Well, this doctor said, "I hope to do it by laser." Great news! He did, and there were only three little wounds. The gallbladder was gone, and she took just a few days to recover - all because of what a laser could do. One ray of focused energy aimed at this problem and you've got what feels like a miracle.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Prayer - The Laser From Heaven."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Hebrews 4:16. What a great prayer promise this is! "Let us then approach the Throne of Grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Now, first in this verse you've got the macro - the Throne of Grace. You are going into the throne room to be with the One who created and manages 100 billion galaxies. Man! But then He brings all that power down to the micro. He says, "Come into that throne room with your little time of need." It's so little compared to His power. But He says, "Bring it in." And you focus all of His power on one person on earth who needs God's touch; one need, one situation, one impossibility.

The specific prayer for a supernatural intervention is like laser power. It's a ray of focused energy from heaven, aimed by your prayer at one need on earth. Wow! The power of that prayer laser is described in Matthew 18:18. It says there, "Whatever you will bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Several great things happen when you focus the energy of God on someone or something on earth. First, God really loves it. Revelation 5:8, Our prayers are a bowl of incense in heaven. It's like incense for God to smell. Secondly, your faith grows. You're stretching your faith to trust Him for a supernatural intervention, and the larger your faith, the bigger things you'll be able to trust God for in the future.

Thirdly, Satan's grip is broken when you focus God's laser on something on earth that he's holding onto. Pray for that. And if you really want to turn up the laser power, get others to pray with you, focusing their faith and God's power on that need. Matthew 18:19 says, "If two of you agree on earth on anything you ask it will be done for you by My Father in heaven."

Jesus told us in Luke 18:1 we "should always pray and not give up." So while you're waiting, let God turn His laser on your life. He may want to do some laser surgery first to remove some infection in you before that answer can come.

When that doctor aimed his laser at my wife's point of need, we experienced what seemed like a medical miracle. When you pray specifically, in faith believing, you focus the healing, heart-changing, mountain-moving power of God on something or someone that you care about. So expect a miracle!

Ever since I was little I've been fascinated by the American Revolution, and I always wanted to see Concord Bridge, where it sort of all began. You know, the shot heard around the world? By the time I got there, I had two little boys of my own who were not fascinated by the American Revolution. I wanted to spend a while at Concord Bridge, imagining those Colonial farmers descending and the Red Coats stepping up to the bridge in their rigid formation.

Unfortunately my sons were not interested in all of that. I tried to tell them the story; yawn! Come on, this is vacation. Who cares about history, right? One last idea. I got their tricorn hats that we bought them and we got some sticks for them to use as muskets. I made them the Americans and I played Red Coat. So they came charging across one side of the Concord Bridge. I went running away from them. I eventually ended up fatally wounded. And when we were done they said, "Let's do it again, Daddy!" Of course they won every time. They became interested, but not until they had a part.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "From the Backseat to the Battle."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 20:6-7. Jesus is telling a story about a man who needs help at harvest time. He's gone out three times during the day to get more and more help. And finally, he goes out near the end of the working day, and it says this: "About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?' 'Because no one has hired us' they answered. He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'"

There's an urgent job to be done! Harvest time passes fast; you've got to get to it. There's only a few days to make it all happen. Big job - urgent job with not enough help. Men standing around? Why? Because they said they didn't have a job to do. So Jesus says here basically there's a job for everyone in the harvest; the harvest of human hearts.

See, a lot of church folks are like my sons at Concord Bridge. You hear the facts about the battle. You hear stories of what other people have done to reach people, but you're not playing any active part. You're just watching.

Actually God doesn't intend to have any of His kids just be spectators. This is a war with life-or-death stakes going on. He wants you out of the stands and into the game. Maybe your Christianity is kind of gray and boring. And it is until you get a mission, not just hear about people with a mission.

You need a job to do for Jesus, and you can be sure He's got one. You're surrounded by work He needs done. There are boys who need you. There are girls who need you to reach out to them. There are senior citizens who are lonely and need to hear about Christ in their few remaining years. There are teenagers maybe you could connect with. There are homeless people. There are Christian workers who are buried in administrative detail and you could help relieve them for the work that only they can do. You are urgently needed somewhere I'll tell you.

When you get a mission, when you get a piece of the action, your faith comes alive. You read the Bible with a new appetite, you pray with a new intensity, and you listen with a new openness. You can't just go to church to get filled up and meet your needs. It's a staging area for God's rescue operation on earth launched at the cross. It's a place for God's soldiers. It's a place to get ready for the battles that affect people's eternities.

Christianity seems hollow, meaningless and boring without a personal mission, and you are needed. So don't just listen to secondhand facts about the battle for human souls and for eternities. Do what my boys did. Grab a musket and run to the battle in Jesus' name.

It was one of those 3-H summer days: hazy, hot, and humid. It's not advisable to sweat on those days, because there's really no place for it to go. You keep running into your own sweat. And you know how it is on those days; you kind of feel "ugh"...you feel like doing nothing. Well, it was one of those days, and a brief storm went through. It was the leading edge of a cold front the weather man said, and the temperature dropped almost 25 degrees in a four-hour period of time. That heavy, muggy, hazy air suddenly cleared out; people started moving around again. I'll tell you, the view all of a sudden was crystal clear. The atmosphere was refreshing finally. Did you know a person can actually have that effect?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "An 'Others' Person in a 'Me' World."

There was, in that upper room where Jesus held The Last Supper, a very tense atmosphere that night. There was an argument brewing in the corners of the room as to who was going to be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Several people were fighting over the job of Assistant Messiah, I guess, and it was a climate of real selfishness. "Me first." "King of the hill." And then a refreshing front moved through the room and changed everything.

Our word for today from the Word of God is in John 13, and I'll begin at verse 4. "Jesus got up from the meal, took off His outer clothing and wrapped a towel around His waist. And after that He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples' feet; drying them with the towel that was wrapped around Him." Later on in the chapter it says, "When He had finished washing their feet, He put on His clothes and returned to His place."

"Do you understand what I've done for you?" He asked them. You call me teacher and Lord, and rightly for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. No servant is greater than his master. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them." Man, the atmosphere changed that night because of one thing Jesus did. He did the job no one else wanted to do; the lowly, smelly, dirty job that usually a slave did - washing feet.

Jesus did the job no one else wanted to do, and in so doing, He displayed the power of one person who decides he will be the servant in his little corner of the world. "I will be the servant in my family, I will be the servant in my business, I will be the servant in my church, in my circle of friends. You say, "Well, not me. I don't want to do it." Well, what about Him, the Lord Jesus, the Son of God. He did it. Think about the tasks that everyone avoids where you are.

Well, what if, in the name of Jesus, you just quietly started to do one of those? Notice, Jesus didn't say anything at first. He just unselfishly moved out and started doing it. When you do that, it defuses an atmosphere that's heavy with conflict and self-centeredness. It puts your faith into the kind of action that even your worst critic can appreciate, including a non-Christian family. They may not understand your beliefs, but they understand someone who will pitch in on what no one wants to do.

See, that makes you the Jesus-person in your situation. Just try it. Don't announce it; do it joyfully, do it consistently, and pretty soon you're going to win the special influence that only a servant has. See, you're a help and you're not a threat to people, so they'll listen to you. Now you said at one point in your life you would follow Jesus, right? And He's a foot washer.

Do the jobs no one else wants to do, and let God use you to clear out the oppressive heat of selfishness. What a refreshing change in the atmosphere you could bring to the place where you live.

There was a time when single parenting was kind of an exception in America. Not any more - millions of families where it's just a mom or a dad now. There's been a lot of conversation and a lot of articles written...a lot of commentary about the impact of not having a dad who's really being a father to you. A little while back, one of the leading health officers in the United States said, "The greatest issue facing us is fatherlessness." Then Time Magazine commented on women who actually choose to have a fatherless family. Here's what they said: "They are bringing a child into the world with a hole at the center of his life where a father should be."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I'd like to have A Word With You today about "The Father Hole In Our Heart."

However you feel about those comments and those quotes, we all know that life's a little tougher if you don't have a dad or somebody who isn't acting like a real dad.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 15. This is the familiar story of the prodigal son, who got his inheritance early from his father, went to a far country, spent it all, ended up feeding the pigs and having to eat with them. Verse 17 says, "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father, and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' So he got up and went to his father."

This is the story of a searching man whose real problem was that he was away from his father. Maybe that's a picture of you right now. In the story, God is the father, and God has told us He wants us to know Him as our Heavenly Father. You say, "Well, if he's like the father I had, I'm not interested." Well, remember this. God is not like the father you had on earth. He's like the father we all wish we had, and what you're feeling down deep in your soul, that's father lonely. We have a hole - a daddy deficit - that we're waiting for a father to occupy.

How do we lose Him? How do we find Him? Look at the verbs in Luke 15. It says that the young man "set off for a distant country." The Bible says actually we've all done that. It says, "We have all sinned and fallen short of God's glorious ideal," we've wandered away like sheep. (the Bible says) We are away from God by our own choosing. The next verb says, "He squandered his wealth." See, all our years away from God are squandered years. They're wasted years until you know the relationship with a father that you were made for.

Then the next verb says, "He spent everything." You can do that so easily. We spend, in search of the missing part of us. We can't find ourselves in achievements. We can't find ourselves in relationships, or pleasure. We spend everything, and then it says, "He longed to fill his stomach." Maybe you feel an emptiness inside of you like a hunger that never goes away, a hole that's never been filled.

Then we read, "He came to his senses." Maybe that's where God is bringing you right now. It's hard to live without God. It's hell to die without Him. It says that the son went to his father. And see, there's only way you can get to the father you were made by and made for. In John 14:6, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." What would happen if you came to Him today? It says, "While the boy was a long way off, his father saw him, ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him." That's the welcome you would get from God today. He runs to you with His arms wide open no matter what you've done.

Why don't you run to Him and be born into His family today? Don't you want to begin this relationship? Tell Jesus, "I'm yours."

Our website is ANewStory.com. Would you check it out? That's where you can find the information that will show you how you can finally belong to Him.

See, no longer would you then have the hole in the center of your life where a father should be. No father on earth could ever fill that hole anyway. It was made for your Heavenly Father. Come to Him and you'll never be father lonely again.

Every summer we used to take a large delegation to a great youth conference in Ocean City, New Jersey. One of our veteran staff was in charge of that delegation, and it was a big responsibility at the shore. When my son was old enough to go to that conference, he commented on Greg's leadership. He said, "You know, Greg's really serious." Well my wife and I kind of laughed. We said, "Oh, you should hear some of the crazy things he's done down at Ocean City." And then my son said, "Not any more. He's in charge now." Well, my son was making a pretty valid observation. As your authority increases, so does your responsibility. Followers, I guess, can goof off, but leadership; oh, that's serious business.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Leadership Lifestyle."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is about leaders, and you might be one whether you realize it or not. Hebrews 13:17 - "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority." Now, I've always thought "Hey, wouldn't it be great to be one of those leaders? You get to be obeyed and submitted to." Yeah, wait until you hear the rest of the verse. "...they keep watch over you as men who must give an account." Whoa.

That means that if you have anyone looking to you, you will one day have the privilege and the opportunity to explain to God what you did with those people. Man! "God, here's how I influenced those people and why they ended up as they did."

Well see, God's looking for people that He can trust with a promotion. He's looking for teachers and leaders, and musicians, and shepherds for His Kingdom. And maybe He's trusted you with some influence: a class, or a study group, a church, maybe a musical ministry, a position of authority in God's work. Well, then, be careful how you live. You can do so much good, and you can do so much harm.

In a letter that James Dobson wrote years ago he told about an incident that occurred when he went to a Christian book seller's convention and for the first time he saw all of his materials displayed and his picture all over the place. And he said, "I heard as it were almost an audible voice saying, 'Jim, look around you. I have chosen for reasons that you don't understand to make you visible and influential with My people. And in that sense, I am preparing to make the work of My Kingdom vulnerable to you. That's why I'm telling you to be careful; think before you act; hold a tighter reign on your tongue and on your thought life than ever before. When your natural impulse is to become angry or vindictive, resist the temptation as much as possible, and keep your life free of willful and deliberate sin. You will soon be in a position to hurt my people. See that it doesn't happen.'" Whew! Man!

Now, you're not a Dobson, or some spiritual star perhaps, but maybe God's lifted you to a place where others are looking at you or to you. And it's exciting, but it's a heavy responsibility, one for which you must give account the Bible says. Exercise care in what you say, what you joke about. Be careful what you watch. Stop with the negative comments, the critical comments before anybody can hear them, those displays of anger. Not for you; not now.

God has called you to some measure of leadership and the responsible lifestyle that goes with that. I think that's an awfully powerful incentive to be all you were meant to be in Christ. It's a good thing; a good reason to live up to what Jesus wants for all of His kids. But He has put trust in your hands. He's put His reputation in your hands. He has made His Kingdom vulnerable to you. You are in a position to hurt some of God's people. See that it doesn't happen.

My son bought an old Mustang when he was in high school. No, not the kind with four legs. The kind with four wheels. He actually used money he got from selling some of his valuable baseball card collection. Some years later, he wanted to sell it and put the proceeds into the work he was going to be doing with Native Americans. He put an ad in the paper about it. First day - no calls. Second day - no calls. He wasn't expecting a line at the door exactly, but he thought he'd get a little more response than that. Then he found out why. He checked the ad and found that the newspaper had goofed and published a phone number that was a wrong number. But what a difference that one little number made! When we dialed the number in the paper, there never was any answer. You gotta feel bad for some guy who's looking in the paper, sees a car he wants at a price he likes, and dials the magic number that cannot possibly reach the person who has what he's interested in.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Wrong Number for Heaven."

There's someone you want to reach; someone you need to reach. They have what you're interested in, but maybe you've got the wrong number. It doesn't matter how many times you try, you just can't get through to them.

For many people, the One they want to reach, the One they believe has what they're looking for is God himself - the One who made them. In fact, in this age of growing interest in spirituality, there are more and more people who are realizing that the answer for their soul and their life has got to be a spiritual one. What we've accomplished, what we've owned, who we've known - none of those has filled the hole in our heart. So we want to reach our Creator - the One who has the peace and the meaning we need now, and the eternal life that we'd like to have when this life is over.

But just as people may have sincerely tried to reach my son about his car, many spiritual seekers never get through because they're sincerely dialing the wrong number. But God has published His number - very clearly, in bold print - actually in Bible print. Anyone who tries to reach the Creator this way is going to get through. Remember, in the midst of a thousand theories about how to reach God, the only One who can really tell us how is God himself - and He has.

Our word for today from the Word of God is John 14:6 - "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." In a world of listings with God's name on them, there's only one that reaches Him - the one marked Jesus. Jesus doesn't say, "I will show you the way." He says, "I am the way." Whether or not we reach our Creator is all wrapped up in what we do with Jesus - not with His teachings, not the religion named after Him, but with Jesus himself.

The reason He is the way is explained in 1 Timothy 2:5-6. The Bible says, "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all men." We can't understand what it takes to reach God until we understand what it is that keeps us from being able to reach Him. We have this wall between God and us called sin - which means we've made ourselves our own god by choosing to do it our way instead of God's way. And we've earned an eternal death penalty, which only one person even claimed to pay; only one person could pay. God's Son, Jesus, who loved you enough to do the dying for your sin on the cross. All our religious and moral efforts to reach Him are all wrong numbers and they're deadly.

You may be a very decent person, a sincere seeker, an accepted member of the Christian community, and still not reach the God who has what you need. Because you can only reach Him by putting your total trust in Jesus to rescue you from the penalty of your sins. Have you ever done that? Would you like to?

Tell Him that now. "Jesus, I'm yours." Go to our website, the information is there to help you be sure you've begun a relationship with Him. The website is ANewStory.com

He's been waiting for your call for a long time, but you've got to come the way that He's provided, the only way. Through His Son, who loved you enough to die for you. When it comes to eternity, a wrong number can cost you everything.

I was writing an article last night and all of a sudden this flood of thoughts just came rushing into my brain. I never did finish that article and I ended up writing something else. You're about to hear what came flooding into my brain, because it's what's been going on in the world.

We all know, look at the news. The world is like exploding. And this is the conflict in the Middle East right now, dominates the news - and the hearts of a lot of people.

The world is once again, we've been here before, plunged into a season of unnerving peril and uncertainty. Not long ago, remember? I know you do, it was a mutated virus. This time it's drones and missiles and terror.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Dangerous Times, Destiny Times."

And the Apostle Paul's sober warning to his young protégé Timothy echoes across the centuries at times like these: "In the last days, perilous times will come" (2 Timothy 3:1).

He went on to describe why it would be so dangerous as history's fourth quarter approaches. It's not because of weapons or wars. But because of what people will become.

The description here, I'll have to say, is disturbingly familiar.

He said, "People will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving... and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good."

You know I can probably go on social media right now and find everything I just read about.

But don't you get the feeling that there's something much bigger going on here than just global politics and converging crises? Maybe you're feeling what I'm feeling...

There's something profoundly spiritual going on in our world right now. In our world, in our time! Like something climactic.

I don't have words for it. Except to say - our world is increasingly starved for a Messiah. Someone who can fix what seems hopelessly broken.

But we're increasingly disillusioned with all the messiahs we've tried, all the things and people we thought might be a messiah for us.

And waiting at the threshold of human history - and billions of fearful hearts - there stands Jesus. Returning one day to the world that the Bible says, "crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 2:8). But this time coming as "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Revelation 19:16). To a world described in Biblical prophecies as remarkably like our own.

So my bottom line is simple: all that really matters is what will matter when Jesus comes! Now the truth is, a lot that won't matter then tends to matter too much to us. And a lot that will matter then kinda gets pushed to the margins.

Now, once again, I hear Paul's voice, this time giving Timothy his marching orders.

It's our word for today from the Word of God; it's in 2 Timothy 1:7-8, and chapter 4 beginning with verse 1 - "God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline. So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord... I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead... preach the Word of God... work at telling others the Good News."

Man I want to see what Jesus sees when He looks at the people in my world. I want to see those "Sheep without a shepherd." "Lost." "Perishing."

In Him, we have the Hope people have despaired of ever finding. We have the peace that defies the storm. We have the love that finally fills these empty hearts of ours. We have the Message that changes eternities!

Friends, we have the Gospel!

And with our eyes on the fourth quarter game clock, we need to be spreading that Good News as never before! Faster. Farther. Better.

God has assigned us here "for such a time as this." Hard times? Yes. But it's harvest time!

In high school our teenage son had a very, very busy life, which just might go with having the same last name as I do. And sometimes I would just find him kind of collapsed on the couch. So, he'd have his New York Giants mug, and his school books, and what was going to be on TV, and of course he had his phone. Now, don't think cell phone. This is like the old fashioned land line phone. Unfortunately, the phone plugged in two rooms away, which means that the cord was stretched to the max to get to his little zone with the couch, and I could tell when he had the phone there, because I kept hearing people muttering all through the house after they tripped over the cord. See, it was right where all of us had to walk to get to the living room or to the kitchen. And I'd just say, "Hey, you've got to do something about this thing that people keep tripping over!" Well, so do you and I.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How We Keep People From Jesus."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 2:24. It is a sobering indictment of first century believers. Listen to these words: "As it is written, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles (or the unbelievers, or the unreached) because of you." Now, the Jewish believers that Paul was talking to were the reached people. And he was saying, "You believers... Because of you, the unreached people are blaspheming God."

Then he talks a little bit about why, for example, in chapter 2, verse 21. He says, "You, then, who teach others; do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?" Then he says, "God's name is blasphemed because of you." In other words, "You're not living what you say you believe, and people are tripping over the contradictions in your life." It's like my son's telephone cord. People keep tripping over it - it's in the way!

You've got to ask, "What is there in my life that could be keeping someone from my Jesus?" It's a pretty horrible thought to think that someone might end up lost forever because I turned them off to Jesus by my inconsistency. You know, most people who come to Christ do it because of a Christian they know. And most people who refuse Christ do it because of a Christian they know.

I wonder if your temper is canceling out your message about a loving Savior. Or the humor that you use. Is it contradicting the purity that Jesus stands for? Maybe that sarcasm is so harsh that it's hard to reconcile with the compassion of Jesus. Maybe your gossip or your backstabbing; maybe that's tripping people up. Or the fact that you're negative most of the time, your laziness at work or school, or a complaining attitude.

See, a Christian ought to be the best employee that employer has, so they bring credit to the name of Jesus. You ought to be the hardest working student in that class whether you get the best grades or not. You're the advertisement for your Savior, and I know you'd hate to be a reason for someone to reject Christ because you never dealt with your tripper-upper.

Actually, if you were to let Jesus change that part of you; that part that's kind of out-of-control, that's inconsistent, that's confusing to an unbeliever, it might just create a curiosity in folks that like, "Wow! What happened to him? You're different." That might get them started investigating your Jesus. It might give you the best opening to share Christ you've ever had; that simple change in you. When they see what happened to you, you get to tell them, "It was Jesus." Because they never saw you be like this before. That's a powerful testimony!

My son and I had to solve that cord problem before someone got hurt. He had to do something about the thing that kept tripping people up. Will you do that in your spiritual life? I believe you can provide an uncluttered path to the Jesus who your friends so desperately need if you'll get rid of that tripper-upper.

A beard really changes people - especially men. You can make a man look older, scruffier, wiser, or more suspicious. A beard does amazing things. Some wives and girlfriends can't wait for their guy to grow it. Others can't wait for him to shave it. My friend, Lou, spent much of his time clean-shaven. He also spent many of those same years as an alcoholic. They were terrible years for his wife and for his daughters. One day, Lou became so desperate he surrendered the control of his out-of-control life to Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the Savior beat that bottle that had always beaten Lou, and right about then, he started to grow a beard. He actually has had it for several years, but a couple of years ago he decided to shave it one morning. He walked out to his family, and he said, "Hey, what do you think?" His little girl started to cry. She begged her Daddy to grow his beard back. See, the old face made her think of her old Dad. She was afraid the old Dad was back.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Old You, Gone for Good."

Our word for today from the Word of God is in 2 Corinthians 5:17. It's a promise from God to do something we could never do for ourselves. It's a miracle only He can do. Listen to this: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" Man, what words! "New creation" not from the outside in. No, this is from the inside out, and it's what happened to Lou and it could happen to you. You've got to come to the point where you're tired of not being the man or woman, or the husband or wife, or the mom or dad that you really want to be. You know, that person that you love really needs you to change.

Okay, here's my right hand on the right side of this table. This is the man I want to be - that people need for me to be. Now, here's my left hand over here on the other side of the table - this is what I actually am. I can't seem to close this gap between these two hands. That admission in itself is the first step to having a new you. Behind our mask of having it all together is a man or woman who may be addicted to selfishness, or unfaithfulness, or to lust, or to depression, or maybe we're addicted to a temper that's out of control, a sexual appetite, a habit. We've tried reforming. It hasn't worked!

That's what gets us ready for Jesus. See, you're ready as this verse says, to be "In Christ." Without Him, we're in trouble. The ultimate diagnosis of our inner darkness is called sin. We've got the wrong person running things. And the Bible says, "Sin, when it is full grown gives birth to death." Sin separates us from the people we love, from the person we want to be, from the person we need to be. Worst of all, it separates us from our Creator forever, unless we are "In Christ."

How do you get in Christ? John 3:16 says, "God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not die, but will have eternal life." All that faith that you've put in yourself and your religion and in other people? You take all that and you put it all in Jesus now. You say, "Jesus, I'm yours."

That's the new beginning, a new dad, a new mom, a new son, a new daughter, a new mate, a new friend. Someone much stronger will be in your driver's seat. Jesus will take your life places you never dreamed it could go and daily recreate you into someone who is becoming like Jesus Himself. Why don't you make this the day that the new you begins - your new beginning day. Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours."

In fact, our website is there to help that new beginning, it's called ANewStory.com. Check it out today and you can find, there, what you need to know to begin this relationship with Jesus.

As my friend's daughter found out, a new Dad is more than just a new face. It's a transformed heart. It's a miracle only Jesus can do. And it's a miracle that Jesus is waiting to do for you right now.

Mystery rides were part of growing up at our house. Usually it was a Sunday afternoon, and I'd pile our three kids into our car for a ride. I think we explored every corner of our area. And as we did, we discovered over the years, a lot of great things. But I've got one son who's a lot like me. He wants to know the plan before we leave.

"Hey, Dad, where are we going? Where are we going to eat? What are we going to eat? What are we going to do while we're there? How long will we be there? What time are we going to get home?" He would pump me with more questions; I felt like I was being interrogated by a police sergeant. Sometimes I knew it was better not to explain where we were going. I mean we've done things that would have sounded boring if I had told about them, but they turned out to be exciting and I knew they would. Plus surprises are fun anyway. So, my kids got used to hearing two words when we were about to begin a mystery trip, "Trust me." I don't think I let them down. It was good training for journeys with their other Father.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Going Not Knowing."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the life of the Apostle Paul. He's still Saul of Tarsus here. Acts 9 - he's on his way to wipe out Christians. He missed some in Jerusalem. So he said, "I'll get them in Damascus. They all went there; I'll find them in Syria." We begin in verse 3: "As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?' 'Well, who are you, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. 'Now, get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.'"

Now, it's interesting that Saul's training for his whole life in Christ began immediately with a mystery trip. Yeah, did you notice that? He has just opened up to Jesus, and the Lord says, "Go into the city and you will be told." "Lord, what do you want me to do there? Who am I going to meet there? How am I even going to be able to see; I'm blind right now?" The Lord says, "Go and you will be told." Well, he spent the rest of his life living like that.

In Acts 20, when he was on his way to Jerusalem as the great Apostle Paul and his friends were trying to discourage him, he said, "Compelled by the Spirit, I am going not knowing." See, you have a heavenly Father who often takes His children on mystery trips. Maybe you're on one of His mystery trips right now. There's a good destination He's got in mind, but right now He's telling you just the next step. In essence, He's saying to you as He did to Saul, "Go, and you will be told as you are on the way."

It may well be that you're in the middle of one of those times right now, and the tendency is to say, "Now, Lord, if you'll just give me all the information, give me all the facts, I'll start going that direction." And the Lord says, "No, you start moving in that direction I've told you to go, and you'll get more information as you go."

Now, maybe you're waiting to have all your questions answered before you move, and right now there are more question marks than there are periods or exclamation points for sure. Can you almost hear your Father saying as He bundles you into His car, "Trust Me, let's start traveling together."

Hey, He died for you. Is He ever going to do you wrong? God's mystery trips always lead to a destination that is selected with you in mind, for your good. So, why not settle back, enjoy the trip, and let Him drive. Trust your Father and don't be afraid of going not knowing.

This was a Fourth of July where there would be no fireworks. Just a lot of tears.

It was raining when the campers went to sleep that night. But no one knew that the Guadalupe River would turn into a raging flood while they slept.

The girls at Mystic Camp were awakened by that flood smashing into their cabins. Some were able to escape. Twenty-four could not.

A few days ago, the President recalled that awful night. In the middle of his State of the Union address. He told the story of one of the Mystic Camp girls. Her name, Milly Cate. Eleven years old.

In the midst of the surging flood, she prayed for God to save her.

And a man who seemed to come out of nowhere, did.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hope When The Water Is Rising."

He was Scott Ruskan. Coast Guard rescue swimmer. You know those guys who come down from a chopper to rescue people from oceans and housetops.

Now Scott had gone to college to major in accounting. But Somewhere along the way, he decided his calling was to rescue. But this was his first mission.

And he was the answer to Milly Cate's prayer.

We know that because the President of the United States told us told the story. He said, "As the waters threatened to sweep her away, 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond closed her eyes and prayed to God she thought she was going to die. Those prayers were answered when Coast Guard rescuer Scott Ruskan descended from a helicopter above."

You know Milly Cate was one of 164 people that he rescued that awful night. He was the only first responder around.

The President introduced him and then honored him on the spot with the prestigious Legion of Merit medal for "exceptionally meritorious conduct."

But his real "award," well that was the young girl next to him. Milly Cate.

Who, facing almost certain death, had one hope that night. A rescuer from above. Thank God, he came.

You know in a way, that's my story, too. And, no doubt, the story of many who are hearing this.

I want you to hear our word for the day from the Word of God. It tells the greatest rescue story of all.

Galatians 1:4: "Jesus gave His life for us... to rescue us."

Now with Good Friday approaching, that's what that middle cross at a place called Skull Hill was all about. The greatest act of love in the history of mankind. As the Bible explains, "He carried our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24).

And that's because instead of living for the One who gave us our life, we have raised our fist and said, "You run the universe, God - I'll run me." And spiritual hijacking carries an unspeakable, eternal death penalty.

So there I was, I stood facing the onrushing flood of the judgment of Almighty God. Nothing I could do could pay that death penalty.

And here is the stunning rescue story that captured my heart forever. I did the sinning. God's Son did the dying! That's how much He loves me, and you.

The Rescuer from above didn't just risk His life to save us. He gave His life.

And like a camper facing death that tragic night, my only hope was a Rescuer from above. And I'm compelled to say this today. And get to you with this message, because I don't want you or anybody to miss Him. God says, "I have set before you life and death. Now choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

I pray you will do that this day. If you have never reached out to the Rescuer to be your rescuer from your sin take care of that now. Say, "Jesus I am yours from this day forward."

Check out our website would you, because there you will find what you need know to be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.

Because when Jesus comes to rescue you, you ought to grab His hand. Because Hope has come.

I had a friend who was a veteran sailor, and occasionally he would take us out on his sailboat. And I learned that when my sailing friend said it was time to go in, I'd better listen. There were times when we were out and the weather was beautiful, and I thought it was going to stay beautiful. But, man, his instincts knew better. He'd say, "I think we'd better go in." I'd say, "On a beautiful day like this? This is a ten." He'd say, "It isn't going to stay that way."

You know, there has been more than one occasion where I sailed with him into port and entered the harbor just as the storm broke loose. His instincts were amazing! You might be in a storm right now, or maybe you're headed for one and it just doesn't look like it yet. I have some very critical advice before you set your course or before you sail any further.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Navigating Stormy Weather."

Now, our word today from the Word of God is found in Luke 5:5, and the occasion here is where Jesus has asked Simon Peter to go out and fish again after he had fished all night and caught nothing. And Jesus said, "Look, I know it's the middle of the day. I know that it's hot. I know it doesn't look like a good time to go out, but I want you to." Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything, but because You say so, I will let down the nets."

See, the way it looked would have led Simon Peter to a fruitless conclusion...or let's say a fishless conclusion. It looked like there was no point in going back out again, but Jesus said do it. And just because He said it, Simon Peter did it. And what Jesus said, led to victory.

I watched an interview that was recorded on an anniversary of the D-Day Invasion - the greatest military assault in history - June 6th, 1944. General Eisenhower told about how the decision was made to go on that date. He wanted to go on June 4th or 5th, and June 4th, 1944, was a beautiful, starlit night. The commanders of the allied troops were gathered with General Eisenhower at their Southwick House command post in England. Colonel Page was the Chief Army Meteorologist, and General Eisenhower was told by him that gale-force winds and high tides would soon be assaulting the Normandy beaches; actually by the next morning.

Well, should Ike believe what he saw - this beautiful, clear starlit night? Or should he listen to the man who knew? His answer, "No go." Even though it would cost them their first choice and it would prolong the wait for 180,000 troops who were waiting on ships anxious to move. Now the next day - opposite weather. It was stormy as predicted and Colonel Page came in and said, "We're going to have improved weather the next day with moderate winds and tides. It's going to be a good day to go." Okay, should General Eisenhower go by his senses, or by the man who's the authority? Ike paused for about 30 seconds, and then he said two words that are emblazoned in history, "Let's go." The room was clear in two seconds, and the rest is history.

Now, you have a decision right now to make whether to believe what your senses, and your feelings, and your environment are telling you about a moral choice, about giving up on a person, about giving in to a temptation, about giving up on a commitment like a marriage, or about running into a decision. Don't base your life on what's going to change in 20 minutes - which is your feelings. Base it on the Word of God which hasn't changed in 20 centuries.

Do it His way, no matter how it feels.

Okay, try to picture it. Maybe you don't have to picture it. Maybe you've been there. It's the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, just before doors open at, let's say, Walmart. It's still dark, but a lot of people are lined up, anxiously waiting to enter. It's the day of those fabulous sales that stores like this have to encourage your early Christmas shopping. And for a short time after the doors open, there are some absolutely amazing prices on many popular items. But you have to move quickly and scoop them up. One year recently, I remember the crush of people was so great, at one store a lady was nearly trampled to death when the doors opened. And at another store, another year, a man actually was trampled to death. Once you're in the store, you know what to do. No browsing. No chatting. You're on a mission! Just look for those sales opportunities and grab them while you can!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Grabbing Opportunities to Save a Life."

Aggressively seizing opportunities because time is short - that's not just a picture of a sale day shopper. That's supposed to be the picture of every follower of Jesus Christ. Not just browsing and cruising through our days, but really making them count...really making a difference with your life.

If you read our word for today from the Word of God in the original language of the New Testament, you can see just that kind of urgency and intensity. It's Ephesians 5:15-16 - "Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise, but as wise" - now what follows is God's definition of what it means to "live smart." "...making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil." The original Greek conveys the idea of aggressively buying up every opportunity you have to do something about the darkness around you.

Near the end of this letter that Paul wrote from a prison cell, probably chained to a Roman guard, he gives us a living example of this "make a difference" mindset in action. He says, "Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel...pray that I will declare it fearlessly, as I should."

In another letter, we learn that there were believers ultimately in Caesar's household; likely some of those soldiers Paul spent so much time with. He saw his imprisonment, not so much as an ordeal, but as an opportunity to tell people there about his Jesus and to rescue them from evil.

Life is full of life-saving opportunities for those with eyes to see them; for those who understand that we're supposed to be looking for them wherever we are. I know when one member of our family was in the hospital, the reason seemed clear. There was a patient who left a trail of Jesus all through that hospital. There just to get well? No. They were there positioned by God to help spiritually rescue some of the people in that hospital.

If you want to make the greatest possible difference with the rest of your life, and I hope you do. If you want to help some people be in heaven with you, and I hope you do. Then each morning pray for natural opportunities to bring up your Jesus. "Lord, open a door." Then look for those opportunities to open up. Buy them up like an alert shopper.

When someone shares a burden or a concern with you, don't just promise to pray for them. Ask if you can pray with them right then. Chances are they have never heard their name in a prayer all their life! I've never had anyone turn down that offer by the way. And if God opens the door, tell them after you pray that you weren't always able to talk to God like that because there used to be a wall between you and Him that Jesus took down.

Look for opportunities to share your personal hope story, which is the story of the difference Jesus has made for you in certain life situations, particular needs, and certainly your eternal situation. Look for those opportunities. Pray for those opportunities. Grab those opportunities. Why? Because God is putting people in your life so they can have a chance at Jesus...and a chance at heaven. That's an opportunity you just must not miss.

I don't know if you're like me, but have you ever wondered where children learn all the psychology they seem to know? They use it pretty effectively to get their way. Oh, we adults have to take courses in child psychology. They don't take courses in adult psychology, but they do pretty well. Kids learn very early how to maneuver, and motivate, and manipulate to get what they want. They use division. You know, like divide and conquer. Kind of get Mom and Dad played against each other. They use guilt sometimes to do it; sometimes, they even use, yeah, deception.

Now, I've traveled a lot in my lifetime, and my wife had to be especially alert for one particular tactic as the kids were growing up. They'd say, "Oh, we're going to do such and such." And she'd say, "Well, who said you could?" "Daddy." Of course I wasn't there, no verification possible. So maybe Mom might be fooled if you said it just right, unless I called, until I got home. Then kids learn an important life lesson, "Don't put your Father's name on something he does not approve of."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Father Never Said You Could."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Samuel 15. I'm going to begin reading at verse 10. Understand that King Saul has been asked to lead the Jews in the eradication of a cancer called the Amalekites, and to destroy not only their armies and their leadership, but also all of the loot that might be taken so there would be no trace left of the poison that they had become.

Well, the Bible says, "Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel, 'I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he's turned away from Me and has not carried out my instructions.' Samuel was troubled and he cried out to the Lord all night." Well, then we read in verse 13, "When Samuel reached him, Saul said, 'The Lord bless you. I have carried out the Lord's instruction.'"

He had not. "But Samuel said, 'What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of the cattle that I hear?' 'Oh, but I did obey the Lord' Saul said. 'I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder. The best was devoted to God in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God.'"

Well, that just doesn't work. God isn't fooled! You notice here, though, that he tries to make something rebellious into something religious. He's talking about the Lord all the time, but he's disobeying Him. Saul is trying a child's trick to justify something wrong: putting your Father's name on what you're doing. That happens a lot. You can justify almost anything by saying, "The Lord led me."

I talked to a man who divorced his wife not too long ago to marry a relative of his, of hers really. And he said, "Well, Ron, the Bible says love is of God, and I love this woman. So it must be right." Come on, it's bad enough to break God's law. Don't put God's name on it. Don't try to put a spiritual makeup job on leaving your husband or wife when God says, "I hate divorce." Don't rationalize materialism by saying, "Well, I want to make more so I can give more to the Lord's work." Don't make a decision to do what you want to do, and then dignify it by calling it "the Lord's will." Don't try to dress up undisciplined living by calling it, "following the Spirit's moving." That's taking God's name in vain.

We Bible folks have this way of dressing up sin rather than dealing with it. Saul learned that it doesn't work to put spiritual names on sin and religious words on rebellion. Oh, my kids learned not to put their Father's name on something that their Father didn't approve of. God's kids need to learn that about their Father.

Don't dress up a sinful choice in God-words. Your Father never said you could do what you're doing.

My plane had just landed in a Midwestern city during a record breaking cold spell and the pilot welcomed us to the city with a temperature reading that made you want to divert the fight to Florida. Well, at least I had checked the weather channel and I was able to anticipate the ice age, so I had the appropriate coat, scarf, gloves and layers. As I was waiting for my suitcase in the baggage claim area, I heard someone yell, "Grab those pineapples." Excuse me? Well sure enough there were two couples just returning from Hawaii with beautiful live flowers around their necks, and they were wearing short sleeve shirts and, of course, carrying their box of pineapples. Well, when I hit the wind outside, I was cold, but I was prepared. I can't imagine what happened to the Luau bunch! When they woke up that morning they probably just said, "Well, it's warm here. I'll just dress for where I am." They were totally unprepared for where they were going!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Dressing for Your Final Destination."

Now Jesus actually told about a man who was very prepared for where he was, but totally unprepared for where he was going. Maybe like you. Luke 12:16-20, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus told them this parable, "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do, I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods and I will say to myself you have many good things laid up for many years, take life easy, eat, drink and be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you, then who will get what you have prepared for yourself!'"

Here's a man who was really dressed for where he was, he had it all, he had his earth security well planned out. But he forgot about where he would be spending most of his future - in eternity. He was totally unprepared to meet God.

Someday your heart's going to beat for the last time, and in that unpredictable moment eternity will begin for you. And at that point it won't matter what your title was, or your income, or your religion, or your achievements. All that's going to matter is whether or not you have a personal love relationship with God. A relationship that can, according to the Bible, only be accessed through God's Son, Jesus Christ. Why? Because no one can make it to heaven with sin.

See, God was supposed to run your life and mine, but over and over we've said, "No, I'll do it, God." The Bible says, "All of us have sinned and we've fallen short of the glory of God." In this parable, "I will" three times. That man God called a fool, he just said, "I will, I will, I will." Because of that, God is out of our reach, but we're not out of His.

God says this is love, and this is the Bible speaking. "Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" in the most incredible act of love you'll ever hear about. The God we defied sacrificed His one and only Son to carry our death penalty for the sinning we did. And now your eternal destination, heaven or hell, depends totally on what you do with the man who died for your sin, Jesus Christ.

You can reject Him, you can ignore Him, or you can reach out to Him and say, "Lord I'm not ready for eternity but I want to be. I'm facing the fact I've gone my way instead of yours over and over again. Right now I'm putting all my trust in You and Your death on that cross for me to remove the sin between God and me, and to open the door to eternal life for me.

I want to invite you to go to our website because it's there to help you be sure you have begun a relationship with Him. It's ANewStory.com.

Maybe you've been so focused on where you are now, that you've neglected your forever. Yeah you're one heartbeat away from eternity. Isn't it time you got ready for where you're going to be for a very long time?

You know it's tough the first time your child goes to camp...I mean for the parent. The kids probably have a ball; it's just tough for the parents. It all comes together when you have to sign that permission slip, and then a medical release, and then insurance forms. You start to think of all the things that could go wrong - the bad things that could happen.

Now, up until now you've been there in the background to protect them and to make sure they're eating the right things, and guiding them to make the right choices. But now, even if it's only for a few days, you're turning your precious child over to someone else. That's why I like to know someone who's going to be in charge there. A lot of responsible parents do that; even with conferences we've planned. People will say "Hey, I want to find out who I'm turning this kid over to." It's tough. I want to be able to trust the person to whom I'm handing my son or daughter. But it's still hard to release them.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Turning Over Your Treasure."

Our word for today from the Word of God is from 1 Samuel 1. I'm going to begin reading at verse 27. It's part of a prayer that Hannah, the mother of Samuel, prayed. We know that Samuel grew up to become a mighty judge in Israel; a mighty leader for God at a strategic time. She had wanted this child for so many years. She had been barren, and finally God miraculously sends her a child. Listen to her very poignant words, "I prayed for this child," she says, "and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him. So, now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life will be given over to the Lord." Wow!

Hannah is saying about a child that it has taken her years to have, "Lord, whatever you want to do with him; wherever you want to take him is fine with me." You know it's hard to say, "Whatever you want, Lord" just about your own life. I think it's even harder to say that about your child's life.

My friend is in the ministry. And Rob and his wife have served the Lord actively and effectively for many years. And their daughter, who's in her mid twenties, came to them and said, "Mom, Dad, I feel like God has just called me out of nursing and is calling me into the ministry." Rob said, "I couldn't believe how I responded. I said, 'Well, honey, you're making such good money now as a nurse. And, you know, that's security.'" And he said, "For two weeks I tried to talk her out of it. Finally," he said, "I realized what we had prayed for all of our lives, we were now trying to talk her out of."

Well, that's understandable. We've all been brainwashed with the American lie about what success is and what security is. We push our kids to perform and we often neglect their character. We want them to be societal winners sometimes, rather than spiritual warriors. The child God gave you is on loan to you. Not yours to keep; not yours to assign. Your job is to help them discover the person they are in Christ and the works God put them on earth to do. Not the works you want them to do.

If you're a parent, could I encourage you to take a Hannah inventory today? Are you releasing your son or daughter for whatever? Whatever assignment your Lord has for him or her? Or do you have a plan for your child that you're trying to get God to sign off on. Don't stand in the way of God's best for that child of yours, and don't be seduced by the lies our world tells us about what's best for them.

Find a quiet place, and again, turn over your treasure to the One who gave that treasure to you in the first place.

"I don't wanna go." When our boys were little, that was sometimes what they'd tell me when we were out in the woods where it was totally dark and a little scary. Well, not for me. I mean for them, of course. But I would reach for their hand and their little hand would instinctively reach up my way when we hit a dark stretch, and they'd grab on tight. Now the strangest thing happened. Once they had their father's hand, their feet started moving. They could go where they otherwise would never think about going as long as they had my hand.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Hand That Keeps You Safe."

At the other end of life's spectrum from little boys was where my wife's grandfather was. He was 94. He was unable to remember very much, including my wife - his granddaughter. She called him one day and she said, "Hi, Granddad." She, of course, told him her name, and she said, "I love you." He wasn't very happy about it. He said, "I don't know who this is." Some strange woman was calling and saying she loved him! What is this? Well, she reminded her Granddad of his only son and that she was his daughter. "I don't know you." Finally she just said, "Well, Granddad, remember this. Jesus loves you." To which he replied, "Now Him I know!" Isn't that interesting? After 94 years, not much that he could remember, but there was one person whose love and whose presence he was still aware of - Jesus.

Listen, that's not a religion. That's a relationship so real that it's there for you through every conceivable stage of life. For my wife, it was real when she used to walk that dark stretch of road from her house to the school bus as a little girl. They lived way back in the woods, and that last stretch was beyond where she could see Mommy, or the neighbor, or anyone. Knowing those trees could be hiding the bears and the mountain lions that she knew were in their area, she would just start to sing, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me."

This Jesus - this Savior - is literally the hand you never outgrow. The hand that is there for you as my hand was there for my boys in those dark and uncertain places. Here's our word for today from the Word of God. It's the familiar words of the 23rd Psalm. They're a description of a personal relationship with God that I hope you have, or if you don't, that you'll begin it.

These are the words my own father wanted me to read to him the day he was going into that heart surgery from which he would never recover. Here are the words, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want...Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me."

This deep, personal, unloseable relationship with Jesus Christ is what I pray you will begin. It's the relationship your heart has always been hungry for. This is the Savior who'll be with you through the turbulence of being a teenager, the pressures of parenting, the lonely moments of being single, the darkness of depression, the struggle of disease, or divorce, or disaster, or facing death.

The hand of Jesus I think maybe is reaching out to you right now. If you look closely you'll see nail prints in that hand. They're there because of the price He paid to tear down the wall between you and God. His brutal death on the cross was to pay the death penalty for your sins and mine. Now He waits to forgive you; to be the one constant in your life and in your eternity no matter what changes.

Don't you want to grab that hand of Jesus to be your own personal Savior, your lifetime friend? Tell Him today, "Jesus, I give my life to the One who gave His life for me. I've been running it. You run it from now on. Jesus, I'm Yours."

Experience that love for yourself today. Go to our website because it's set up to help you begin your relationship with Jesus and to know you have. It's ANewStory.com.

You know, for an elderly grandfather, for a very sick father, for a frightened little girl, for you, the same never-leave-you person is Jesus. His hand is reaching. Won't you grab it? I'll tell you, He'll never, never let go.

Ten more minutes and my wife would have never been born. The story that changed everything is hope for any of us who love someone who's making some very bad choices. My wife's grandfather, Bill, had given up on life. Trashing a profitable career for the alcohol and cocaine he could not resist. He was labeled with a prison record, he was penniless, he was hopeless and he was suicidal.

And that night, as he walked South State Street in downtown Chicago, he was minutes away from Lake Michigan where he'd decided to end it all. One thing saved him. A mother who had never given up on him. There, on the street, he heard the song, the one his mother used to sing to him. It was coming from the rescue mission he had just passed. Something made him stop and go inside. And there a caring mission worker shared a Bible verse that has probably changed more lives than any other. The worker started, "For God so loved the world that He gave..." Suddenly, Bill finished it. "...His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16). Somewhere in the long-clouded corners of his memory, he could hear his mother teaching him those words.

And that night - minutes away from ending his life - he found life. He never touched or wanted alcohol or drugs from that night on. And he spent the rest of his life bringing the hope he'd found to forgotten people across the country. And now three generations Bill never met are here, and they're living and spreading that same hope because of one man's choice that night.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why It Is Too Soon to Give Up."

The story behind the story is told in the inscription on the back of a photo of young Bill. His mother wrote, "O Will, every night when I read my Bible, I look at this picture and I ask God to keep you and somehow seal your heart with His love. You may see this after I'm gone and you'll know that I never ceased to pray for you. Mother." She did live ten years after the night God answered those prayers.

Even as her son's life got darker and darker, this mother was hanging onto a powerful but easily-forgotten truth. That's one that I, too, have hung onto - even today. Because so much of my life's work has been trying to love and rescue people who just keep spiraling downward. It's a hope-preserver for all of us who grieve and who pray for broken, prodigal people.

Never forget the difference between a chapter and a book. See, many a book with a happy ending has some very dark chapters. A loved one's seemingly unstoppable rush to the edge of the cliff? That's not the book. It's a chapter. If we lose that wide angle lens perspective, we're going to lose hope. But the Bible urges us in our word for today from the Word of God in Galatians 6:9, "Do not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest..." And Jesus said that we "should always pray and not give up" (Luke 18:1).

That's what Bill's mother did. She wept over many chapters. She never lost sight, though, of the ending God could write to the book of her son's life. She just kept loving, praying and believing. And the final chapters of Bill's life were more glorious and more miraculous than she could have ever dreamed.

If we can remember, in the darkest hours of a loved one's heartbreaking journey, that this is a chapter, then hope can win when despair is strong. Even as I write this, there are young men and women whose life-eroding choices I grieve for. But I know there is a relentless Shepherd who came, He said, to "seek and save those who are lost" (Luke 19:10). He says, "I will search for the lost and bring back the strays" (Ezekiel 34:16). He will do whatever it takes to bring them home. Even when it meant a cross.

So, as long as there's breath, there's hope. I know, because Bill's beautiful granddaughter, my wife, told me.

You may have seen an actor named Iron Eyes Cody in a lot of roles as an Indian. He used to tell an old legend about a young Indian brave, going through the rites of manhood. As he hiked solo into this beautiful valley, he decided to test himself against that rugged, snow-capped mountain that dominated the valley. When he reached the top, he felt like he was standing on the rim of the world. Then he heard this rustle at his feet. It was a snake. Before he could move, the snake spoke. He said, "I am about to die. It's too cold for me up here and there's no food. Would you put me under your shirt and take me down to the valley?" The young brave refused. He said, "I know your kind! You're a rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you'll bite me and you'll kill me." But the snake said, "No, I promise to treat you differently. If you do this for me, I will not harm you."

Finally, the young man was persuaded, so he tucked the snake under his shirt and carried it down to the valley. But as soon as he laid it on the ground, the snake suddenly coiled, rattled, leaped and bit him on the leg. The young brave could only cry out, "But you promised!" As the snake slithered away, he hissed back his answer, "You knew what I was when you picked me up."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Sin's Deadly Secret."

The story is a legend. But the Indian brave's mistake has been repeated in real life over and over again. God wants you to be sure you know exactly what that snake is - and what it will do to you - before you're fatally bitten.

Which takes us to our word for today from the Word of God in James 1:15 - it's an anatomy of how sin gets us to pick it up and what the inevitable outcome will be. "After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin." Looks good...looks harmless - or at least I think it's worth the risk. First, I want it, then I do it, then I pay for it. It goes on to say, "And sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death."

See, sin always works the same way - first it fascinates, then it assassinates. Always. The killer snake will always be a killer snake, no matter how harmless it appears or how likely it looks that you'll get away with it. Not a chance. Sin always kills. It kills your self-respect, it kills your reputation, your closeness to God. You're not going to get away with it. God says, "Be sure that your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23).

You might be entertaining thoughts right now that you should have never let in, flirting with something you should be fleeing, making compromises that have brought you to the edge of a spiritual disaster, getting close to someone that you should be getting away from, or you could be harboring hard feelings that you really should have let go of by now.

Down in your soul, you know what it is. It's sin that killed your Savior, sin that always bites the one who handles it. And just because you can't see any consequences now, don't be fooled. Satan will be sure you're hooked and in a position where your fall will do the most damage - then you'll feel his fangs. This is God's loving warning, "Drop it now, while you can, before the inevitable deadly consequences come."

My friend, this is why Jesus is called Savior. Because we need to be saved from the killer of Sin. It kills everything, it will take us one day to a Christless eternity. It will take us out of His Heaven to his Hell. We'll never make it to His Heaven. But that's why Christ died, He took the sting of the serpent, He did the dying. And today He offers you eternal life in exchange for your sin and your death penalty. Would you tell Him today, "Jesus, I want to be forgiven, I need to be forgiven." He will come into your life and change what you could never change.

Listen, if you want this relationship with Him, go to our website and we'll help you get started with Him. It's ANewStory.com.

You can't afford to hold the snake of sin close one day longer. You know what it is when you pick it up. And you know what it will do. And Jesus has come to rescue you.

Our family, and probably yours, can be divided into two functional groups: the morning people and the night people. Which, by the way, are dysfunctional the other part of the day. You have those at your house? Well, often they marry each other. I don't know why that happens. And then they drive each other nuts at the beginning and at the end of the day. Now, my daughter, for example, oh, she was the slow freight train in the morning. She was almost a no freight train in the morning. It was hard to get her up; it took a long time to get her going, not much spark there, not too many smiles. She was not really like that the rest of the day. But morning was just not her time.

Now, I'm a morning person. Then about 10 or 11 o'clock at night, I start to unravel. I'm the slow freight or the no freight then. Well, I hate to tell you this, but I get to be less and less fun to be with as it gets a little later. Meanwhile, guess what my daughter was doing? She was bouncing off the walls at this point. See, we both could use a little help at the down end of our day. So could you probably.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "At the Down End of Your Day."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God has something for both the morning people and the night people. It comes from Psalm 92:1-2. "It is good to praise the Lord and to make music to Your name, O Most High, to proclaim Your love in the morning and Your faithfulness at night." This is talking about praising, and making music at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. It says we should be, as followers of the Most High God, positive at the beginning and at the end - both ends of the day.

Now, I've noticed a gap between my metabolism; especially my late night metabolism, and my desire to be like Jesus. See, they're in conflict. Oh, I can be having a good day of serving, and being unselfish, and caring about other people, being positive all day, and then the hour starts getting late. The later it gets, sometimes it just seems like the more selfish I get, the crankier I get, the more brittle, irritable. I'm less likely to go out of my way. I'm more likely to say something cutting or sarcastic, or to complain about having to do something. Now, maybe that happens to you in the morning.

Guess when I need God's resources the most? I need them at night, because I'm a morning person. I need to consciously stretch the lordship of Christ to cover the down end of my day. There's a part of my day that seems like I'm the least under His lordship, and I'll bet there's one for you. And that's the part I need to depend on Him the most. Maybe morning's your toughest time to be a Christian.

Well, David said in Psalm 90:14, "Satisfy us in the morning with Your unfailing love that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days." See, in your case, you've got to wake up and think of Jesus first thing. Whichever is your down end of the day, be sure that Christ's lordship reaches from your first waking moments to your last conscious moments. You can really hurt those you love the most at your harsh end of the day.

Remember, our Lord is the One who gives you a pillar of cloud to wake up to in the morning assuring you of a God-designed day, and who gives you a pillar of fire at night to assure you of His illuminating presence at night time.

So, here's a practical take home test on your spiritual maturity. What difference is Christ making at the down end of your day?

I thought she was the cutest little thing in junior high. She didn't think I was the cutest little thing in junior high, though. See, I decided to make an all-or-nothing play for her. I went downtown and I spent all my allowance money on this necklace for her; the finest rhinestones you have ever seen. Then I wrote this eloquently mushy note to go with it and I sealed them both in an envelope which I proceeded to hand her one day as she passed by my desk in study hall. The next day, she passed by my desk again, and I looked down and there was a familiar looking envelope with the note and the necklace in it. Ouch!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Loving God Back."

I'll tell you, it hurts to spend a lot on someone you care about and basically have them not care. It's a feeling Jesus Christ knows all too well. In fact, without even knowing it, you may have been responding to His love that way.

That love, and the response Jesus should get from us, is clearly described in 1 John 4:10, and then verse 19, our word for today from the Word of God. Here's what it says, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." And what a sacrifice - the sinless Son of God taking the filth of your sin and mine so we could be forgiven. God's one and only Son, the Prince of Heaven, abandoned by Father God because He was carrying your sin and mine. The One angels worship, with nails driven angrily through His hands and feet, a spear thrust into His side, absorbing your hell so you would never have to go there. Amazing love - unspeakable love - love which demands a verdict from you and me. Will you give yourself to the man who gave His life for you? Or will you, however politely or religiously, withhold your life from Him?

1 John 4:19 explains the only response worthy of the sacrifice. "We love Him because He first loved us." As actor-director Mel Gibson immersed himself in the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus in preparation for his movie, "The Passion of the Christ," here's how he described its impact. "The full horror of what Jesus suffered didn't really strike me. But when you finally see it and understand what He went through, it makes you feel not only compassion, but also a debt. You want to repay Him for the enormity of His sacrifice. You want to love Him in return."

It's possible to appreciate Jesus' death on the cross, to respect Him for doing it, even to be grateful for it and still miss the only response that really matters to Him - the only response that makes what He did for you on the cross really yours. The incredible Bible verse that says, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son" says He did that so that, "whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). "Believe" means you grab Jesus like He's your only hope. You're abandoning every other hope you might have clung to for getting to God.

You say to Jesus, "I cannot resist this love, not any longer. Your death for me is my only hope of being forgiven and going to heaven. So Jesus, I'm giving you what you paid for. You paid for my life and my future and my eternity. Jesus, I'm Yours."

If you want that, I want to help you be sure you've got it and that's why our website is there. So I urge you, at your first opportunity, to visit me there at ANewStory.com. Come and be sure that you belong to Jesus from this day on.

After all God's Son gave for you, I can assure you of this, God is never going to forget what you do with His Son.

One day when our daughter was a teenager, I heard an interesting variety of emotions coming from her room. First, I'd hear her laughing, then sniffling, then she'd let out an occasional "I can't believe it!" Finally, my curiosity got the best of me; I had to know what she was doing. She said, "I'm reading my diary, Dad." Well, as she was reading that diary, she was reliving a lot of great moments, some hard times, and a number of lessons learned. I've often wished I could go back and enter into how I felt at some key moments in my life. The problem is I didn't write it down.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Power of Journaling God."

Now, it really is true: if you want to keep something, write it down. Like a friend once told me, "The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory. In fact, when it comes to some of life's experiences - some of life's most eternally important experiences - writing it down shouldn't be optional.

Your most important experiences in life are your personal times with Jesus Christ. They are what shape your life here. They're a foretaste of what your eternity is going to be about - being with Jesus. And this side of heaven, the primary place where you meet your Lord is in His Word - the Bible. But it won't change you if you don't remember what He says to you.

Which is what God is saying in our word for today from the Word of God in James 1:22-25. God says, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does."

Like a person looking in the mirror in the morning, you're supposed to look into God's Word to see what needs to change. First, God says to reflect on what He's saying to you in His Book, "looking intently" into it. Then He says to remember what He's said to you, and that's usually the problem. Even a few hours later, we probably can't remember what He said or what we read. And these verses in James imply that we will only make spiritual progress if we are "not forgetting" what we heard from the Lord.

That's why I tried something many years ago; keeping a daily spiritual journal. If I gave it a title, I'd just call it "My Times with Jesus." I never kept a personal diary about how I was feeling but I did start a journal of my times with Jesus. And I started doing it and I haven't stopped, including this very morning. Those entries in a notebook have turned out to be the tangible proof of God at work in my life - an album literally showing my growth in Jesus Christ.

I really want to strongly recommend this spiritual journaling to you. As you browse back through it later on, you'll be able to see the pattern of God's leading as it's unfolded and you'll find in it an incredible faith-builder in the crunch times.

Write down the date and where you're reading. Then read a few verses two or three times. Then write down two things: first, what did you read? Summarize what God was saying in your own words, not Bible words. Secondly, write down what you're going to do differently that day because of what God said. (1) What did God say? (2) What am I going to do differently because of it?

It's really exciting to keep a record of what God says and what He does in your life. That diary will be filled with the power and the presence of your Lord. And when you're feeling discouraged or confused or alone, reach for the record and experience again the wonderful power of a journal that is glowing with your personal experience of God.

As a longtime New York Giants football fan, it's hard for me to tell a story where a Dallas Cowboys player is the hero, but this one I couldn't resist. Charles Lowery tells the story of a visit by then Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman to visit this young patient's ward in a children's cancer hospital. T.J. was one of those patients, a young boy who was dying of cancer. After visiting with him, Troy promised that he would score a touchdown in that boy's honor. As he was leaving, T.J.'s mom took the quarterback aside and told him that the boy didn't have long to live. Well, the promise stood. The following week was the Cowboys' first preseason exhibition game, and they didn't even play Troy that week. But T.J., of course, was glued to that whole game hopefully.

The next week the Cowboys played in Mexico City, putting starters like Troy Aikman in for only the first quarter. The Cowboys had driven to their opponents' 20-yard line where Troy dropped back to launch a pass - only to tuck the football and, much to everyone's surprise, run the ball in for a touchdown - and then to be tackled in the end zone by these two monster defenders. Well, some Dallas sports writers were all over Aikman because he did what he's not supposed to do as a quarterback. He risked injury like that in what they called a meaningless game. They should have talked to T.J.'s mom. She said, "Troy knew it wasn't a meaningless game; not when he was playing for someone who was dying."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Every Day, Every Play Matters."

You know, it really is true. There is no such thing as a meaningless anything when you do it for someone who's dying, which in terms of God and eternity, many of the people all around us are doing. The Bible clearly says that anyone who "does not have the Son of God does not have life" (1 John 5:12) and that they are "without God and without hope in this world" (Ephesians 2:12). That includes anyone in your personal world who has not had their sins forgiven by faith in the Christ who died for them: coworkers, neighbors of yours, fellow students, people at the gym, at the club, teammates, family members.

But Jesus has placed you where you are, right next to those folks, so they could have a chance at Him, a chance at heaven. And He's depending on you to tell them - to play your position each day as if you were playing for someone who's dying. You are. The Biblical story of Esther is, in a way, the story of everyone who belongs to Christ. She is the Jewish girl who, by God's design, became the Queen of Persia with no one knowing she was a Jew. Then, through the treachery of an anti-Semitic aide to the king, a decree was issued that mandated the death of every one of her people.

For Esther to appeal to the king would mean the very real risk of her own life. But her godly cousin gives her this haunting challenge, "Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" That's Esther 4:14, and it's our word for today from the Word of God. And she realizes she is in that position to save dying people, and she risks everything to rescue them.

Now, something very exciting, very enlarging happens to your life when you realize that what you do every day doesn't have to be "everyday stuff." It's relationships and opportunities to point someone where you are to life in Christ. So nothing you do is meaningless, not when you do it to help someone who's spiritually dying. And the life of a church or a ministry is suddenly electrified when the leaders and the members there decide to do what they do, not just to make themselves comfortable and blessed, but to rescue the dying people all around them in their community. It changes everything.

There's a lot at stake in whether you are a silent follower of Christ or one who breaks your silence to tell them about the Jesus who is their only hope. My friend, this is life-or-death. And it means that the way you play really, really matters.

Many years ago I shocked my kids. I told them I could remember life without television! Yeah, I know you can't believe the reaction to that. It's inconceivable to them that there was ever life before TV. Well, I was there I'm afraid to say.

Now, I've seen a lot of changes since we got our first TV. I think I was about five or six years old, and my dad brought home this little box with a seven-inch screen. My mother and I would, like, burn out our eyes, sitting next to it trying to find whatever was on in that little box. And if you didn't like what was on, there wasn't a lot of choice; there were not very many channels.

Over the years independent networks began to develop and they began to have more choices. And then, cable TV, and then you got like hundreds of choices. And finally, along comes the remote switch and you don't even have to get up if you don't like what's on the screen. You just push a button! I'm really good at that thing! You just change the channel or turn it off. Of course, you might just be turning off a message you need.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Needing to Hear What You Don't Want to Hear."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Chronicles 26. It's about a Jewish king, King Uzziah, who was a legend in his own time. He was blessed by God. He defeated the ancient enemies of Israel. He built these impressive towers. He had the most advanced army of his day. But, 2 Chronicles 26, beginning in verse 16, says this: "But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense." Now, you might remember that only a High Priest, a consecrated High Priest could enter into the Holy Place of God and do that. But, this is a proud, arrogant, spiritually insensitive act on the king's part.

"Azariah, the Priest," it says, "with eighty other courageous priests of the Lord followed him in. They confronted him and said, 'It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is for the priests - the descendants of Aaron - who have been consecrated to burn incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you've been unfaithful and you will not be honored by the Lord God.'" Well, it says, "Uzziah had a censor in his hand ready to burn incense, but he became angry.

While he was raging at the priests in their presence before the incense altar in the Lord's temple, leprosy broke out on his forehead." And we go on to read that he had leprosy until he died, and had to live in a separate house.

Here's a story of a powerful man, and courageous priests. He didn't like what he heard from them, so he just changed channels. He didn't get angry at what he had done; he got angry at the people who cared enough to confront him with what he'd done. Now, the important exhortation in this story is this: listen to your confronters. The more successful we get, the more we need them and the less we want them. The best friends you have are the ones who are willing to tell you the unpleasant truth about you; who hold up a mirror.

So, how do you react to your critics, your confronters, your correctors? Think about your reaction to the suggestions of the corrections that you've gotten say from your parents, or from your spouse. Did you blow up? Did you walk away? Or did you honestly consider whether there might be at least some truth in what they said?

Right now, God is probably assigning someone to be your confronter. He does that because He loves you. You need one. Who is it? Are you listening even if the news is hard to take? Or do you leap to the defensive and you shut down if you don't like what you're hearing? Your confronters may or may not say it well. They may or may not have the right attitude. But they may have a point. Listen to your confronters. They may help you avoid a crash later.

I know you want to tune it out or turn it off when your confronters are broadcasting. But you need that news. Don't switch channels.

Years ago, we had this 1998 Oldsmobile, and it had behavior problems. You could say it was acting up again. I was thinking about this one time that it seemed to be having lots of problems at the same time. So my wife and I looked at each other and said, "It's time to take it to Mr. Oldsmobile." So, we dropped it off at the local Oldsmobile dealer's garage. Of course, they knew exactly what was wrong and exactly what had to be done. Of course! That shouldn't be a big surprise. They represented the manufacturer. And the manufacturer knows how it runs best. Right?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Sex and the Inventor."

In our lifetime, our culture has gone through a culturequake that probably registers about a 9.5 on the Richter scale. One area that has been severely shaken is our beliefs about sex. So much so, that our culture is just rapidly redefining what's normal, including sexual relationships outside of marriage, sexual relationships with the same sex, sex where the only deciding factor is whether you can do it safely.

But sex is just too powerful; it's too beautiful to risk messing it up. I'd like to think that this bombardment of sexual ideas has left God's people untouched, but you know better than that. That's why it's time to take this wonderful invention called sex right back to the Manufacturer to see how it's supposed to run. Because the quake has left too many victims scarred, and lonely, and devalued, and struggling with guilt, and shame, and brokenness.

Remember, no one knows more about sex than the Inventor. So let's go to the Manufacturer's manual - you may know it as the Bible - and we'll see what the Manufacturer of sex says about His invention in our word for today from the Word of God. It begins with Mark 10:6. Jesus is talking. "At the beginning God made them male and female." Okay, so God thought up this whole thing. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Now the Inventor of sex says He designed it to be an exclusive language of love with only one person in your life - the person of the opposite sex to whom you are committed in a lifetime covenant called marriage. Anything else is abnormal sex - sex as it was never meant to be, sex that can never deliver the fulfillment and love and excitement that belongs only to those who wait for and limit themselves to Designer Love.

The debates over abstinence and safe sex, living together, and same-sex relationships tend to be a clash of human values and viewpoints. What we're talking about here is the Inventor's word on sex. The user doesn't have the final word. The Inventor does. His word is final. It doesn't matter what percent of any group believes differently or what the culture says is normal or what your glands or rationalizations say is okay. The Creator of sex has spoken. He's never changed His mind. Sex is for one man with one woman, committed to each other for life. And the Creator of sex is also the Judge of all mankind - the One to whom we will give account for what we have done with His powerful gift of sex.

You may very well say, "You know, I have crossed the boundaries of God more than once." And the Bible says, in fact, we will stand before Him in judgment for all of our actions that have violated His boundaries - outside of His fence...His laws. But I have wonderful news for you. The very things you're thinking about right now that may have brought shame and guilt and great concern about the judgment you may face are the very things Jesus was nailed to a cross to die for, pay for, and forgive you for.

This very day He could give you a brand new beginning. The Bible says you can be clean and forgiven when you grab Him to be your Rescuer from your sin. If you want that, tell Him that today. Go to our website and find there the information you need to confirm a relationship with Him. That's ANewStory.com.

Sex at its best is for those who keep it inside the Manufacturer's boundaries. Anything else is a lie that promises excitement, but yields loneliness and scars. The Inventor knows best.

When our kids were living at home I couldn't believe people actually paid to go to the circus. We had a circus right there! It was free - a three-ring circus. Now the most exciting issue was usually, "What am I going to wear today?" And then that cry by various experiments with different combinations until some outfit finally looks right. Does that sound familiar? Of course it's always punctuated by these discussions of who's wearing whose shirt, or whose pants, or whatever. Actually, whether you go to school or to work, what to wear is kind of a challenging choice. Unless of course you're one of the lucky ones; you just wear a uniform. You don't have any decision to make; somebody else made it for you. You have to consider the weather, and what season it is, and what mood you're in, and what people you're going to see, and do the colors match, which is hopeless for me. Well, in the process, you might overlook the one item you have to wear to school or to work every day.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Joy Looks Good On You."

Now, there's some intriguing detail in the biblical saga of Nehemiah. You may remember he's the man that led the Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem in 52 days after they'd been away for 100 years. Now, he was cup bearer to the king, and that king by the way was the King of Persia. He was quite a ways from where he needed to end up in Jerusalem. But Nehemiah had a tremendous burden on his heart. And he had a desire to tell the king his burden, but he wasn't sure how to open the conversation.

Well, in our word for today from the Word of God, which is in Nehemiah 2, beginning in verse 1, it's interesting to see how the king actually initiates the discussion. And it ends with him giving Nehemiah everything he needs for this rebuilding project. And you know why the king initiated it? Because Nehemiah didn't wear to work what he usually did.

Here's our word for today. "When wine was brought for the king, I took the wine..." Nehemiah is speaking here. "...and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before. So the king asked me, 'Why does your face look so sad when you're not ill? This could be nothing but sadness of heart.' Well, I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, 'May the king live forever. Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire.' And the king said to me, 'What is it you want?'"

Well, the rest is history. From there it was the rebuilding of the wall of God's city. In essence the king is saying, "Nehemiah, where's your smile? You always wear it to work. Where is it today?" Nehemiah was known for his positive attitude on the job - his joy, his smile. So much so that it was an event for Nehemiah not to be smiling at work. Now, for many of us it would be an event that we were smiling when we're in the middle of our daily responsibilities.

But if you're a Christian, you get your joy from your invironment, not your environment - from Christ inside you. No one should ever ask you, "Hey, how come you're so happy today?" Like it's unusual? That should be routine. Maybe they might ask you why you're so down today, because that would be unusual. Most of us just plod mechanically through our school day, our work day, our household responsibilities. Sometimes we're like expressionless drones. And often we're complaining and whining like everybody else.

But consider Nehemiah's working wardrobe - a predictable smile, a contagious joy, and a consistent positiveness in the midst of daily drudgery. In our world, that is an attention getter, and that wardrobe is always in style.

Wear joy to your work place every day. You'll knock 'em dead!

Maybe it's because my father-in-law was a corrections officer for a while, and I've heard his stories about the wasted lives behind prison bars. Whatever the reason, I've always admired the men who minister as prison chaplains. That's a tough ministry, but it's a ministry so desperately needed.

My friend Bill works as a prison chaplain. This particular incident he shared with me touched me then and touches me now. Bill had been visiting this cell block and as chaplain, he went out to the exercise yard for some fresh air. Three tough young inmates walked up to him and one said, "Hey, mister, are you broke?" Bill kind of fished around in his pocket and didn't find any money in there. And the inmate said, "It doesn't matter, man. Your money's no good in here anyway. Now, are you broke?" This time the inmate was insistent about it. Here's what he said, "Mister, don't try to minister to people in here if you ain't broke, because we all are."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Broken Savior for Broken People."

You don't have to go inside a prison to find people who are, in the words of that inmate, broke. There's so much pain today and so much heartache from broken things: broken families, broken health, a broken heart, and broken trust. You may be "broke" perhaps even in spite of a life that's successful and an outward image that's looking fine.

Now, our word for today from the Word of God, Hebrews 4:14 - "Since we have a great High Priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess." Here Jesus is called High Priest. And we learn from the Old Testament that those are the ones who represented people to God. So Jesus is now our personal representative with God in heaven.

Let's say that young inmate could walk up to Jesus and ask, "Are you broke?" He would need to hear that next verse, verse 15. Here's what it says, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence." He's walked in our shoes. He's felt what we feel and we can come to Him with confidence.

We're coming to a Savior who has lived the feelings that we are bringing to Him. He knows what it is to be poor. He knows what it feels like to be turned on by your family; to be betrayed by someone very close. It all happened to Him. He knew what it was like to be lonely. He was all of those. This Savior knows our pain. He gets us! There are other people who could empathize. There are some counselors who can help you understand the pain, but only Jesus can carry your pain and begin to heal a lifetime of scars.

He says, "I came to bind up the broken hearted." But the great tragedy could be this: You're needlessly carrying all your hurt alone, because this Savior isn't your Savior, because you've never given yourself to Him. We're all the victims of people's sin, and we're sinners ourselves. Sin is our personal rebellion against our Creator saying, "God, you run the universe and I'll run me" because we're away from the One we were made by. We keep making choices that increase our pain.

But Jesus is saying to you today, "Why are you carrying that all alone? I died for you. Won't you let Me be your Savior? Let me pick up your pain. Let me begin to apply my love to your wounds."

Don't walk alone one more day. Let this be the day you let this Jesus start driving the life that He died for and that He made. You ready for Him to take over? Well, then, why don't you tell Him that right now, "Jesus, I'm yours."

Our website can help you get there. Please go there today. It's ANewStory.com. I hope you'll check it out.

If a person says, "Jesus, I'm broke." Someone who's been broke can help you. You see that mangled body of Jesus on that blood-stained cross, and you see that the Son of God was broken so you don't have to be broken any more.

Jack Phillips was a senior radioman on the maiden voyage of the ill-fated Titanic. On that fatal night when two-thirds of her passengers and crew would die, Phillips actually received a message from a ship called the Masaba. That ship was reporting on a major ice field ahead and the message gave the coordinates where the Titanic could expect to encounter those icebergs. It was the place where just two hours later, the Titanic would, in fact, hit one of those icebergs. The message with the warning of what was ahead - would you believe it - didn't get delivered. Jack Phillips was really busy at the time - a lot of radio traffic - and he stuck the message on a spindle to be delivered sometime later, and it never was. That one decision would cost the lives of 1,500 people and the life of the radioman himself.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Deadly Silence."

Life-saving information never delivered. That is a tragedy that has been repeated countless times, as followers of Jesus Christ fail to deliver the life-saving message God has given to them. The message of how His Son's death on the cross paid the penalty for our sin and made the way for our sin to be forgiven so we could go to heaven. But if those who know it never tell those who don't, lives are going to be lost forever. That is the deadly silence.

If you belong to Jesus, you may not fully realize the reason you are where you are and the incredibly important role you play in the plans of God and in the eternal destiny of people you know. There's a story in the Bible that wonderfully illustrates your position in the lives of your family, your coworkers, and your neighbors. It's found in 2 Kings 5:1-3, and it's our word for today from the Word of God.

The Bible says: "Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. Naaman was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy." Okay, highly successful, very famous leader suddenly facing something bigger than he is - the fatal disease of leprosy.

The story continues: "Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, 'If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria (that was Elijah) he would cure him of his leprosy.'" Ultimately, General Naaman acts on that information. His body is healed and he opens his heart to Jehovah God.

Someone close to him knew how he could be saved and she took the risk to point him to the only person who could help. Humanly speaking, she was working there because of something bad that had happened to her; she was captured by enemy soldiers. But she came to understand that she had been divinely positioned where she was to save a life there. So have you. God, not circumstances, has positioned you where you are so you can help save the lives of the people there by pointing them to your Jesus; the only one who can save them.

Like the girl working as a servant in the home of a very important man, it's a risk to tell them how they can be cured of the cancer of sin and how they can live forever. You won't take that risk if you're thinking about yourself. You will take the risk if you realize that the greatest risk of all is that they will die without the information that could have helped them go to heaven with you. We can't be this close to them for so long and never tell them the life-saving information we know.

Pray each day that God will give you natural opportunities to share what you know about Jesus. Ask God to show you how to approach each person, and even ask Him to give you the words to say. He's promised He would. Living a Christlike life in front of them is very important, but it's not enough. They'll never guess that Jesus died for them just cause you're a good person. You'll have to tell them that. You have the message that can save their life. To leave that message undelivered is unthinkable.

It used to be a lot simpler to take out the garbage. The only decision we had to make that day was to take it to the curb. Not so much anymore! Now you've got to make sure you don't put out any grass clippings or limbs with your regular trash. We recycle everything! And those items are supposed to be separated. When we lived in the Metropolitan New York area their rules about garbage disposal were even more complicated. My friend Craig had recently moved there and wasn't familiar with the regulations. He let his garbage pile up for the first few weeks with odoriferous results. He finally found the instructions on handling trash and he told me, "It wasn't that I didn't want to get rid of that garbage, I just didn't know how to."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Saying Goodbye to the Garbage in Your Life."

Some of us face a quandary similar to my friend's, only with the emotional and spiritual garbage of our lives. Things we've done that we wish we could undo. Things we hope no one ever finds out about. The guilty memories that keep replaying in our brain. Not to mention the pain we carry inside. We want to get rid of our garbage, we just don't know how to, and it continues to pile up in our soul. Well, there is a designated dumping ground for our lifetime of garbage. It's on a skull shaped hill with a rugged cross at the top.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Peter 2:24. Speaking of Jesus, it says, "'He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.'" See, all the guilt of all the sins that you and I have ever done, God's Son absorbed when He was dying on that cross paying our death penalty for our sin.

In Isaiah 53, God graphically describes this dumping of all our sin garbage on His Son. It says, "He carried our sorrows, He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him." Just think! Every lie we've ever told, every angry, hurting word we've ever spoken, Jesus carried it on that cross. Every lustful thought, every immoral act, every adulterous act, every act of violence or selfishness, Jesus the sinless Son of God absorbed it into His soul on that cross.

Why? In the words of the Bible, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son." And today this Jesus invites you to bring the accumulated garbage of your life to the cross where he died to forgive it. Jesus said of those who nailed Him to that tree, "Father, forgive them." If He could forgive that, there's nothing you've done that He cannot and will not forgive! But you have to come to Jesus willing to admit that you're a sinner, willing to tell Him that you're putting all your trust in Him to erase your sin from God's book and to give you life forever. You can trade in your guilt for His forgiveness. You can trade in your pain for His healing. You can trade in death for eternal life when you ask the One who died for you to be your own Savior.

Have you ever done that? If you're not sure you have; if you're ready to finally be forgiven and clean, let me encourage you to go to our website where we have laid out very simply how you can begin your personal love relationship with Jesus Christ. Go to ANewStory.com.

There is no reason to deal with the garbage of your life again. Not when Jesus Christ has shown you what to do with it. Bring all of that garbage of all of your life to Skull Hill where it was already dealt with by Jesus, and leave it there.

If you're paying attention, a child will often tip you off very early as to what to expect from them later on in life. I've got movies of our daughter, and she was about five or six, maybe, singing for us using a spoon - a big wooden spoon - as a microphone and standing on something in the living room as a stage. Well, over the years, she's done singing, and a lot of speaking. It was really no great shock; we saw the first hints of that when she was little. When our son was five, he was tying our house together with string very imaginatively. I'd walk in, I'd open the back door, and it would open the drawer of my dresser in the bedroom. He had everything tied together. At the age of 13 he was the technician of the house, who loved to figure out how things work, how to take them apart, how to put them together, I hope - how to solve problems. You know what? He grew up to be a great planner and a very creative ministry technician. There's a pattern...a connective line from the past into the future in the life of every child; my child and God's child. In fact, that's true of you too.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Leading of a Lifetime."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Psalm 37. I'm going to begin reading in verse 4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this." Verse 23 says, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in His way." Don't you get the feeling as you hear about how God is leading in these passages that His leading in our lives is a consistent, long-term pattern - not just some sudden departure. God usually leads in a straight line. He doesn't just go "boing" off on some tangent. It's a straight line from what He's been doing in your past, into the present, and consistently into your future.

Now, maybe you're at one of those crossroads right now. It's decision time; you've got a major choice to make. Well, one guideline in determining what God wants for the future is to see where He's been leading you and how He's been leading you in the past. For example, here it talks about Him giving you the desires of your heart. Could you trust your desires in this decision? Well, if you've kept the first part of the verse you can. "Delight yourself in the Lord."

Have you been, over the last months and years, having daily time with Him, where you're just enjoying Him?

Then it says, "Commit your way to the Lord." I wonder if you've said to Him over and over again about this area of your life, "Lord, anything goes. Whatever You say is okay." I'm committing to obey you, sight unseen. I don't know what it is but I will follow You. You're not giving Him a contract to sign; you're giving Him a blank piece of paper that you've already signed.

Well, with those understandings when you're trying to decide, look at those desires you've felt for a long time, especially the ones you've felt when you've been close to Him. Not just things you've felt for a few days. And if they line up with God's Word and with good counsel, and with the facts, those desires are probably God-planted.

Now, keep a spiritual diary of what He says to you through the Bible. I've been doing that for years. I'm so glad I've got that. Don't make a major decision based on one verse, but look at the things God has been saying to you over and over. Look for the pattern. God's will for tomorrow will pull together all He's been doing in your life up until now: the experiences, the fulfilling achievements, the talents, the desires, the themes that He's unfolded to you in His Word.

So before you look ahead, look back at God's pattern in your life. His will is the natural next step of following Him daily up until now. He's leading you in a straight line. So, don't just grab the impulse of a moment. Look for the leading of a lifetime.

"Family Secrets" - that was the bold headline on a Newsweek magazine. The story was inspired by what happened in the life of then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was, as she was being considered for that position, learning a secret her family had kept for decades. She thought her grandparents had been Czechoslovakian Catholics who died peaceful deaths. But they were, in fact, Jews who'd been murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. But Newsweek was using that incident to point out how many families have secrets in their closets, from hidden adoptions to hushed-up romances, sometimes with painful consequences. Like one lady the story told about, a lady named Deborah. She was a student at a music conservatory when she married an African American man. She's white and she had two sons. Later that marriage ended in divorce.

When Deborah moved back to her parents' white neighborhood, her sons were not accepted there, so she decided they'd be better off living with an African American family. She put them up for adoption and tried to resume her life. But she was tormented by that decision. In fact, she lost her trained lyric-soprano voice. She said, "I was never able to sing after that." When she remarried, she kept her past a secret for ten years. When she finally confessed it to her husband, he responded compassionately, they went on a search for her sons and there's a happy ending. In the magazine's words, "The family was reunited, the secrets were told, and almost miraculously, her singing voice came back."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Secret That Keeps You From Singing."

It's amazing the torment that can come from a dark secret. Maybe you know that firsthand. In a sense, it can keep you from singing, from experiencing all the joy and all the freedom that you were created to have. It's even more amazing the release that can come from dealing with the dark secret.

Maybe there's a dark secret or more than one secret that are tying you up inside. It may be your secret sins, or the sins of someone else against you. But as long as it's a secret, you're a prisoner to it. And even though others may not know the dark secrets you carry, they're feeling the effects of it. They feel it in your anger, your depression, or some other way it comes out in your personality. Usually when you continue to store a dark secret, it just continues to multiply the pain and keep you from singing.

Well, our word for today from the Word of God, it's got hope in it! John 8:32 - "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free." Now we live like this: "the truth will scare you to death, or the truth will ruin you." Jesus said no, it will "Set you free." Like that woman who could no longer sing, you can't be free until you face and deal with the dark secrets. Jesus goes on to say, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed." Jesus is the Liberator from the bondage of your past! Maybe it's time for you to open up your hurting heart to the Liberator so He can do what only He can do.

If you're going to face the dark secret, you need someone to go with you there who will not condemn you, and that would be Jesus. He's known your secret all along. He died to pay for all that sin. He died to forgive it. You need someone who is also strong enough to carry that secret, to heal its wounds, to restore you. Isaiah 53 says of Jesus, "He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him." That actually happened on Jesus' cross where every sin and every secret of your life was dealt with and paid for.

And today He's saying, "I'm ready to help you face it, to make you clean, to become your personal Savior." Would you tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm Yours." Our website will help you cross that line. It's ANewStory.com.

You've been a slave to those secrets long enough, haven't you? Maybe this is your day to finally be free and to finally sing again.

It's amazing what a difference two words can make. For example if you're a teenager, your life can change dramatically when you hear just two words, "You're grounded!" Or if you're working, "You're fired." Or those two words that changed my life forever. You know what those two words were? "I do." It's amazing what two words can do.

Now, if you're in a down time right now, there are two words that can make all the difference to you. And then there are two words you may not feel like saying at all.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Two Words That Lighten the Load."

Our word for today from the Word of God, 1 Thessalonians 5:18. For those of us who are wondering what God's will is right now, here it is. "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Paul says here that the giving of thanks in all circumstances is really tied to our destiny in being in the center of God's will. I think that the suggestion here is that two of the most powerful words we can speak are "Thank you." Or more precisely, "Thank God."

We all know that we like to be thanked, and we all know how it feels to do a lot for someone and never get a thank you. Right? Of course God is an expert in that field. But when you say, "Thank God," that's when I think it does more for you than it does for Him, especially if you're in a time in your life when you don't feel like saying thanks, because the specific present circumstances aren't very pleasant.

There are a few benefits, I think, that come from saying those two powerful words, "Thank God!" First of all - contentment. Even in the midst of an ugly situation like Paul being in prison, you can find contentment by saying the words, "Thank you." Paul certainly knew about that when he wrote the book of Philippians 4.

Remember what he said? "The peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus." He had experience to write that. And then he says in verse 6, "In everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." Say, "Thank God" and a marvelous sense of contentment will come over you, even in one of life's prisons. The secret of contentment in a crummy situation - a terrible situation - is to focus on the Lord - the good things that He has been doing in the middle of the bad. It means focusing on what you have, not what you don't have. Thank God!

The second thing that it does is you don't need to be noticed. See, pride gets stamped out at the gate when you give credit where credit is due and is properly given to God right away. "God, I know this was You. Thank You." When you start to take the glory for what God has done, stop. Send it up to God, "Thank God." Don't let your ego start to inflate.

The third benefit of thanking God is confidence. Because, you see, the same God who blessed your life in the past, who brought you through other things in the past, is going to meet you today. Look at His track record. Look at His history. The same God who I just thanked for moving a mountain yesterday, He is going to move mountains again for you. He'll do it all again! He's done it all these years for all His people. He's the same yesterday. He's the same today. He's the same forever. He's going to meet your needs today.

Rejoicing is really the habit of looking for God at work and acknowledging it when you see it. Thanking God is sort of like putting sweetener in a bitter drink. Negative thoughts are just going to make the drink that much more bitter. A thankful heart, a joyful heart, a heart that believes that God has said, "I know the plans I have for you. They are for good and not for evil; to give you a future and a hope."

In the midst of this small dot in your life, look at the big picture and say, "Thank You, Lord."

Some dear friends of ours lost their 19-year-old son. Because of the way it happened, his death was a sudden, gut-wrenching tragedy. With Jesus as their anchor, even through this, they made this incredible faith statement. His mom and dad said this: "God wants life to come from his death." One way that's happened is through their decision to donate his organs to help save and improve some other lives. Not long after their son's death, the word came back that someone in a neighboring state had received their son's heart. That's been a source of comfort and encouragement to them. As they say, "Our son's heart is giving life to someone else."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Heart Like His."

In a sense, Jesus wants to give you a new life by giving you a new heart spiritually - His heart. To live your life seeing what He sees in the lives around you, caring about the things He cares about. It's part of the miracle that happens when you turn your life over to Jesus. He fulfills this promise from Ezekiel 36:26-27 - "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit in you."

When you ask Jesus to put His heart in you, your life can never be the same. Paul talked about what a Jesus-heart does in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in 2 Corinthians 5, beginning with verse 14. "Christ's love compels us." Suddenly the love Jesus has for this world is part of you, and that love drives you to touch as many lives as possible with that love. Paul goes on to describe the dramatic revolution that takes place in what, or who, you live for. "He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again."

Look, what's our natural bent? To live for ourselves, right? What makes us look good, what makes us comfortable, what fulfills our desires, advances our agenda. But when Jesus puts His selfless heart in you, it's not all about you anymore. It's all about Him and the people He died for, and your life is never the same.

A life that's all about your needs and your agenda is a very small life. A life that's all about Jesus, all about the needs of others, all about introducing people to Jesus - that's a super-sized life - one with the satisfaction of knowing you are fulfilling your created destiny. But it takes a new heart, because our heart is, by itself, self-centered and earth-centered - not eternity centered.

When Jesus plants His heart in you, you finally realize who you really are and why you are where you are. Paul says, "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God was making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconciled to God."

Going to work is never the same again. Going to school, going to the club or the gym, even going home to your neighborhood, because now you see the people there through Jesus' eyes, and He sees future inhabitants of hell unless someone helps them get to heaven by getting them to Jesus. You now know you are there on Christ's behalf, saying what He would say to them, trying to rescue them as He would rescue them. And your everyday stuff? It's never everyday again - it's got eternal significance.

If your life has been very full but not very fulfilling, if you want the rest of your life to really count, if you want to live your life for something that will outlast you, then it's time for you to open up your heart to receive the heart of your Jesus. It begins when you pray, "Go ahead, God, and break my heart for the things that break yours. Go ahead and fill my heart with the love and the burden that fills yours." Then fasten your seatbelt for a life of spiritual greatness.

With His heart in you, you will live a life you could have no other way. Don't settle for anything less.

The story goes that some years ago a cartoonist named Walt Disney - maybe you've heard of him - well, he went with his children to an amusement park, and he was disgusted! The park was covered with litter, bathrooms were filthy. And that day Walt Disney made up his mind that the park he wanted to build someday would always be clean. If you've ever been to Disneyland or to Disney World, you know Walt Disney got his way.

You know how they keep it that way? As soon as a cup or a wrapper drops, it seems like there's someone there to pick it up. They keep big messes from happening by quickly cleaning up every small one.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Don't Let a Mess Get Started."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God, it's from Ephesians 4:26-27. I guess we could call it God's clean-up plan. "In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the Devil a foothold." Now, here's an interesting passage that leads into the next chapter, Ephesians 5, and it's about Christian marriage among other things. And I think that's appropriate, because well, you've got a wonderful blueprint here for keeping big messes out of your marriage. He basically says, "Don't go to bed mad."

I think this ought to be over every married couple's bed maybe, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" because that gives the Devil a place to stand; a little foothold that can start to erode a relationship. Follow the Disney method for avoiding big messes. Don't let a mess get started.

Many marital disintegrations can be traced to some hurt or issue that once was pretty small. It could have been dealt with easily then, but it wasn't, and layers and layers have accumulated over that now. There's scar tissue, there's hardness, there's bitterness and there's resentment. If only it had been dealt with before the sun went down.

You know why we don't do that? Oh, a husband's too busy. He says, "Well, I can't deal with this little thing right now; it's too small an issue." Get it while it's small. Or maybe the wife's too busy herself, or she's too protective and she says, "Well, the poor guy. He's got so much on his mind, I don't want to bother him" and so it gets buried. But like toxic waste, it's not going to go away. It's going to keep radiating poison, and one day it will be a critically deadly poison. Conflict, hurt, and misunderstanding? They have to be dealt with on a 24-hour basis. Otherwise, there's a build up, and one day an avalanche that buries everyone. It's a whole lot better to deal with a snowball than an avalanche.

That issue - the frustration - will never be smaller than it is today; it's only going to grow. The Bible says in Hebrews 12:15, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God. Do not let any bitter root grow up among you. It will cause trouble; it will defile many." I think that might include the kids who get the radiation from the toxic waste that's been buried.

So look, don't let another day go by without beginning to deal with the issue. And if you have to get help from an outside person, do it. But deal with it. You can be close in your marriage. You can stay close till death do you part if you'll pick up the little mess - the first wrapper that drops.

It works for Disney World, and it works for the Magic Kingdom of marriage. Just don't let a mess get started.

Hey, you could use a good fish story today, right? Once upon a time there were these beautiful fish who lived five miles under the ocean. How do I know? They were the subject of a PBS television special. So this is a for real fish story. Now, because these fish are really striking - I mean they are incredibly colorful - some folks thought they might look good in someone's tropical fish aquarium. So they tried to bring these fish to the surface. They didn't make it. They blew up when they got near the surface! They were designed to live under that pressure at the bottom. Well, no happy ending, except they're going to leave the rest of them where they belong - five miles under the ocean because that's where they were created to be!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Where You Were Born To Be."

You know, it really works this way in all of God's creation. There's an environment that things and people were created to be in, and things really work when they're in that place. They really don't work very well when they're not where they were designed to be. Well, thankfully, God makes very clear the environment you and I were created for. So we don't have to waste our lives searching for it, or just waste our lives. In fact, probably the single most important question you have to answer while we're on earth; you know what it is - Why am I here?

God answers that question in six simple, but life-changing words in His book, the Bible. Here's our word for today from the Word of God. It's from Colossians 1:16. Speaking about Jesus, it says, "All things were" and here are the six words, "created by Him and for Him." Look, try putting your name in that Biblical statement. Here's your name: "________ (right there, OK?) was created by Jesus and for Jesus."

Just like those fish were created to be in the pressure of that deep sea environment, just like the earth was created to be in an orbit around the sun, you were created for Jesus, you were created by Jesus for a relationship with Jesus, where you live for Jesus. When you have this personal relationship with Him, you're finally where you were born to be.

Problem: We don't live for the One who gave us our life. We live for ourselves. Again, in God's own words, "All of us have wandered away like sheep; each of us has turned to our own way" (Isaiah 53:6). The Bible has a word for this rebellion of ours - sin - middle letter: I. And it says that our sin separates us from the One we were made by and made for. If we die with that sin-wall there, it's going to be there forever.

When those deep-sea fish are outside the environment they were made to live in, they eventually die, and so do we. And some of that dying happens even now as we keep looking for love in places that don't deliver it, looking for some inner peace, some fulfillment in achievements and relationships and experiences that can't possibly give it to us. Because we're not where we were born to be - knowing Jesus, living for the One who gave us our life and who gave His life for us.

That's the only way we could ever have a chance to get into the orbit we were created for. All those sins of ours have hell as their penalty - a penalty you and I deserve to pay. A penalty that God's Son paid in our place when He died on the cross. Whether or not you ever experience why you're here, whether or not you ever see heaven depends totally on what you do with what Jesus did for you. His call to you is to put your total trust in Him to be the rescuer from your sin. The moment you do that, the relationship you were born for becomes yours forever.

If you want to experience the peace and the wholeness that only a relationship with Jesus can give you, I hope you'll tell Him right now that you want Him to come into your life. And then I hope you'll pay a visit to our website as soon as you can, because there we will help you know how this relationship with Jesus works. It's called ANewStory.com.

All those years that you've been away from the One that your heart's been searching for, man, isn't it time to experience the relationship you were made for, and to finally be where you were born to be.

At first, Rob's friends thought he was avoiding them. They'd ask him to go somewhere and he'd say, "Sorry, I can't." Eventually he told them why he couldn't go. He had something much more important to do. He would just say, "I've got to go to my meeting." Not too many teenagers would choose going to a meeting over going with their friends, but Rob made a good choice. See, Rob is a teenage drug addict, and he's being rehabilitated through a 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. One important key to fighting his problem is attending that support group meeting several times a week.

A few months ago he went back to cocaine. He had stopped going to the meetings. Actually, all of us addicts, like you and me, will only make it if we make the meetings.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Meeting Jesus, Daily Light."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Mark 1. I'm going to begin reading at verse 35, as we get a look inside some of the intimate side of the life of Jesus Christ. It says, "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed." Simon and his companions went to look for Him. And when they found Him, they said, 'Everyone is looking for You.' Jesus replied, 'Let us go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.' So He traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons."

Now, in this passage, Jesus is doing what He does repeatedly in the gospels. He is modeling the highest priority of a busy schedule. And here is His highest priority - a regular one-on-one meeting with the Heavenly Father. If Jesus did it, we cannot possibly say we've got an excuse for not doing it. Scripture is filled with examples of this. Moses getting up to meet God in His tent of meeting. David saying, "Early will I seek You. Satisfy us in the morning with your love."

You see, we need our meeting because of our addiction. We're all earth addicts; we're hooked on this world's ideas. We're hooked on this world's entertainment. We're hooked on this world's ways of treating people. We're all sin addicts as well.

After following Christ for a while, Paul says, "The things that I want to do, I do not do. The things I don't want to do, I keep on doing" (Romans 7:15). We're addicted to sin. We're addicted to earth. Now, the 12-step dependency programs recognize that you can't change without regularly going to the support group meetings.

Now, our support group is a support person. We cannot stay away from sin unless we have our meeting - yeah, our meeting with God - regularly. The day you skip your meeting is the day you start to slip. We're not talking about some legalistic ritual where you have check the box Christianity: read my Bible and prayed. No, not doing your duty. It's a love thing. I must be with my Lord because I love Him; I want to be faithful to Him, not unfaithful. I need to plug into His power this day, picking up fresh manna for this day, getting His daily dose of strength for this day, getting His guidance for this day. I need that to fight my addiction to sin this day and my addiction to earth stuff. Yeah, today.

See, I've been hooked on things that hurt me, things that hurt others, things that hurt God. We were all addicts, and we just can't afford to miss those meetings. So, did you show up for yours today?

Disney World. The Magic Kingdom. How can a four-year-old girl be a little cranky in that dream destination for kids her age? Our granddaughter had been having a great day there with her mom and her cousins while her daddy was busy in meetings. She'd done all the princess stuff she loved, she'd gotten the autographs of Disney characters that she loved, she'd gone on rides she'd been looking forward to. But for some reason, by early afternoon she was just a little out of sorts. By that time, her dad was available, and he showed up to take her on some rides. And suddenly, it was like the clouds had blown away and the sun came out. She was the bouncy, happy little girl we all know again. In retrospect, I guess it was easy to diagnose why the clouds had rolled in. She was missing her Daddy!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Substitute For a Daddy."

It's true of every one of us, even if our childhood is way behind us. There's a spot in our heart and in our life that was meant to be filled by a father. If you've been trusted by God with the awesome assignment of being a father, don't ever forget there's nothing that can take your place in the life of your son or daughter. No matter how young or how old they are.

In Ephesians 6:4, our word for today from the Word of God, He speaks directly to dads: "Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." We fail our children, and we fail the God who gave them to us when we continually "exasperate" them.

We exasperate them by our absence. We're so busy they just get our leftovers while everyone else gets our best. And that's wrong priorities. We exasperate our children by our unavailability. We're around them, but we're not with them. We're all tied up with sports on TV or some website, checking something out, we're doing our "chores" or we're involved in our hobby or our work. We're there, but they can't have us - because from the way it looks to them, there's something always more important than they are.

We exasperate our children by our criticism, too. How many of us have been wounded by the feeling that we could never be good enough for our dad? If you're always harping on what they need to improve, on what's wrong with them, that child is going to have a hard time believing they have a lot of value. The praise and encouragement of a dad is one of the most powerful life-shaping forces on earth.

Our kids are also exasperated by a father's silence - he doesn't express his feelings, he doesn't show or speak his love for them. So they're never sure where they stand. And a dad can exasperate a child with just passivity - a failure to lead, to set and enforce consistent boundaries, to provide spiritual leadership for them.

Maybe you're thinking about the hole you have in your life because of what your father never was for you. I call it the daddy deficit. I've got a wonderful promise from God for you in Psalm 68:4-5. "His name is the Lord...a father to the fatherless." And Psalm 10:14 declares that "You, O God...are the helper of the fatherless." God is already your Creator. He wants to be your Father - to love you, to care for you, not like the earthly father you had, but like the father you always wished you had.

But first you've got to have the sins forgiven that stand between you and Him. God the Father sent His only Son, Jesus, to die to pay for those sins so you can belong to the ultimate Father you were made for. The day you put your total trust in Jesus to forgive your sins, you get a personal Savior and you get the Father that your heart is missing.

You ready for that? Tell Him you want to belong to Him. Tell Him today. Go to our website and find there the verses that will show you how to be sure you belong to Him. That site is ANewStory.com.

You know, as a Dad, there's a lot of regrets. He'll forgive every mistake, every sin we've ever committed. All the hurts we've inflicted, He died to pay for them. This could be your new beginning today.

He's waiting to welcome you into His big ol' Father's arms this very day.

Our daughter-in-law grew up in the desert. So, the first time she saw the ocean, and the seashells that are all over the beach at low tide, she said, "Can you keep them?" She did! I mean, the good news is, "Yes, you can." And we've loved collecting seashells when we've had opportunity to spend time along the coast. Some of those shells make it to the shore totally intact. Others, well you know, are broken, sometimes by the surf, sometimes by seagulls who've peck them open to get at their yummy tenants. Occasionally, I've found a particularly striking treasure, though, like the conch shell that I picked up a few years ago. It was badly broken. But inside there was some amazing beauty - beautiful swirls in white and blue and pearl, and it made an incredible design to behold. Outside, that shell was just like rough and plain - just another shell - but not on the inside. I never would have seen its unforgettable beauty if it hadn't been broken.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Beauty From Brokenness."

God displays some of His most beautiful creations through broken things. Maybe broken is a word that in some way describes you right now. Then it's possible He could show folks some of His beauty through you.

As hard as that might be for you to believe right now, you need to hear what your Creator has promised to broken people in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in Isaiah 61, beginning with verse 1. Speaking of Jesus, the Bible says, "The Sovereign Lord has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners...to comfort all those who mourn...to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." God says that, through His Son, He wants to unleash in your soul healing for the pain of your past, and a freedom from the darkness that has brought you down. He wants to turn what's been something ugly into something beautiful and something life-giving.

He goes on to say of the broken people He touches that "they will be called oaks of righteousness...for the display of His splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated...All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed." So, God says He wants to do a powerful restoring, hope-giving work in broken people, so He can use them to do a powerful, hope-giving work for Him in a broken world.

I know He does that. I've seen it in a team of young Native Americans who have lived the despair of the highest rates of alcohol and drug abuse, and sexual abuse, and suicide on this continent. They are broken! But with Christ now in their lives, they go on our On Eagles' Wings team to the heart of North America's reservations telling their hope stories. And a generation that hasn't listened to anyone, that's written off Jesus as the white man's God, listens to them. And they have led literally thousands of Native Americans to Christ, because the light shines more brightly through broken vessels...a broken vessel like you and me.

They will listen to you because of your scars. They can see through your wounds the amazing beauty of a joy and a hope that only a Savior like Jesus can give. If you'll turn away from your despair, and maybe your bitterness, anger, self-pity, and give your brokenness to Him, He can do that miracle for you.

The songwriter was right when he said this, "All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife. But He made something beautiful of my life."

The Lakota Sioux call them the Paha Sapa. We call them the Black Hills. The people who live in Keystone, South Dakota, call them their backyard. If you have ever visited Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills, you probably drove by or through Keystone. But the Keystone you drive through now isn't where Keystone used to be - not since the flood of 1972. It was devastating. Back then, Keystone was in the valley by a lazy little creek which suddenly became a raging flood one day in 1972, roaring through that valley, destroying the town, and claiming many lives in the area. Well, it was then that the folks of Keystone decided to make a change. When they rebuilt their business district and many of their homes, it wasn't on the ground they had always been on. No, the flood changed all that. They moved up the mountain to higher ground.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living Where It's Safe."

Life's floods come in many forms; those major crises or disasters that carry away a lot of what we had been depending on. An illness, or maybe a death can do that, a divorce can do it, a disaster, a broken relationship, the loss of your job. There are a lot of upheavals that come rushing in and they change the landscape of our life forever. And they make you think, maybe for the first time, about where is the best place to build the rest of my life.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Psalm 46: "God is our refuge and strength; an ever present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea" - here come the floods - "though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging" (verses 1-3). We're talking here about life's major upheavals - everything you used to count on getting washed away.

But remember, "God is our refuge and strength," so we don't have to fear those things. Why? Because when you've lost everything, you haven't lost everything! Not if you have a deep, personal love relationship with the God who never leaves, never lets go of those who belong to Him.

The Psalm goes on to say, "The Lord Almighty is with us, come and see the works of the Lord" (verses 7-8). And then a simple statement that may explain the reason the flood was allowed to happen, so you would finally, "Be still and know that I am God" (verse 10). Maybe, for all practical purposes, you've been "God" in your life. You've been controlling things; you've been living life your way. And you've been building your life around someone or something here on earth - something or someone that the flood may be washing away, or maybe it already has.

God's message to you through all of your stress and your pain is, "It's time to move to higher ground." Having seen how fragile, how losable all your earth stuff is, are you ready to build on something you can never lose, no matter what hits you? You were created to build your life on the One who gave you your life - God Himself. But the Bible says we've built it on ourselves. And it took the brutal death of God's Son, Jesus on the cross, to pay the death penalty for all of our "I'll be God" choices.

The folks in Keystone, South Dakota, would never have considered moving to higher ground until that flood hit. And maybe you would have never considered turning your life over to Jesus Christ, but now the floods have hit. And you now know that nothing earth can offer you will give you what your heart is so hungry for. Isn't it time to move up the hill? It's the hill where Jesus died for you so you could finally have something that's called "ever-lasting"?

If that's what you want, would you tell Jesus you're done running your life and you want to put your trust in the One who died for your sin? Check out our website today, it will help you know how to be sure you belong to Jesus. It's ANewStory.com.

The flood has done its damage, and maybe it's sent its message. The ground you've been on is not where you were meant to live. It's time to move to the higher ground that you were made for. And, Jesus is the higher ground. And you, my friend, will be safe. Safe forever.

My wife, my son and I were walking across a parking lot talking. All of a sudden the people who were walking in front of us whirled around and the lady said, "I know that voice!" Well, I'm always afraid when somebody says that to me; I wonder if it's like somebody I like, you know, I owe money to. But this does happen every once in a while, and sometimes it's someone I do owe money to, but more often than not it's someone who somehow has come into contact with this particular voice over the radio, and usually on a lot of occasions.

In fact, in the past, my son has said to me, "Dad, would you please talk in a different voice today? We just don't want anybody to know who it is." So I considered talking like this sometimes. Hello, how is this? But they weren't interested in that. No, it's not that bad.

It's really nice to meet some people who are friends by way of radio. People say to me, "Oh, I know that voice." Well, of course, they happen to tune in to the radio the same time every day, they happen to hear this voice a lot. In fact, one person came up to me and right in the middle of a Christian book store and they said, "Hey, you sound just like yourself." Uh...right, I always have! Actually I'm not the only one.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Knowing His Voice."

Our word for today from the Word of God - John 10:4-5. Jesus is speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd, and He says "His sheep follow him because they know his voice, but they will never follow a stranger. In fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice." Then He goes on to say to us later in the chapter, "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They, too, will listen to My voice." He keeps saying that over and over again, "Listen to my voice."

And then in John 10:27 Jesus says, "My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me." Jesus says here that the strategic issue in the life of one of His sheep (and that's you and me if you've given your life to Christ) is that they be able to recognize their shepherd's voice. And they can. The sheep do, because they hear the shepherd's voice all the time; they're used to listening to it.

Someone who is involved in the ministry asked me the other day, "Ron, how can you really know God's will when you're making a major decision?" You have to be able to recognize Jesus' voice saying, "Follow Me this way" in the middle of all the other voices. You can't recognize Jesus' voice in the major decisions if you haven't been listening to His voice every day. See, God's will for your life isn't three or four major decisions, it's a thousand daily obediences. "Lord, what's Your will for today?" You open His Book; you seek personal daily orders for today. You apply that verse to something you're facing today, and then you obey the Lord consciously in that particular area. You do what His voice said to do.

So you have a God's will day and then seven of those make a God's will week. After 30 times it becomes a God's will month, and then eventually those months become a "God's will" year. And through each daily obedience He is making you into the right person, who will be at the right place, at the right time, with the right people. So, you walk naturally into His will for your future one day at a time. But you cannot skip His daily broadcasts; His daily "I want to have a word with you today." You follow your Lord on a 24-hour basis. He will lead you where you ought to be, because He's just a good leader. You have to be able, though, to recognize His voice, and God sounds just like Himself.

Listen to Him regularly. And when you're looking for His special leading for a special decision, you'll sense His pull, and you know what you're going to say? "I know that voice."

There were only two words in the headline in USA Today, but most of us understand the urgency of those two words: "Blood needed!" They were talking about an alarming shortage of blood available in blood banks due to a severe winter, a holiday season, and a bad flu season. One spokesman for the Association of Blood Banks said, "If you've had a bad car accident or a couple of gunshot wounds, you're in a world of trouble." I guess so. There is no fact more basic to human life - without the blood you need, you die.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Blood, No Life."

We understand the need for blood physically. But if God didn't explain it to us, we'd never understand our need for blood to live spiritually and to live eternally after we die. Our word for today from the Word of God tells us about it and it's a good thing. It's in Hebrews 9:22. It says, "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness." That's pretty straight up isn't it?

The reason forgiveness is so critical is because that's the only way to have the sins of your life removed from God's book. There's no chance of heaven for you or me if we try to go there with our sin, and there's no way to get rid of our sin without God's forgiveness. And here God tells us there's no way to get that forgiveness without blood - blood that is shed for the death penalty that sin carries.

For God's ancient people, the Jews, that meant a system of regular animal sacrifices where the shedding of a substitute's blood - the blood of that animal - could provide a way to be forgiven. But it was only temporary and it was very incomplete because, as God says later in Hebrews, "It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). But then God sent to earth the only One who was perfect enough to be the substitute for all of us, shedding His blood for us. "We have been made holy" the Bible says. That means acceptable to God, "through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all" (Hebrews 10:10).

Now, there are some people who don't like all this talk about blood. But this isn't about gore. It's about love. We just don't understand the seriousness of our condition with God. We're lifelong rebels against His rule over us. We're under an eternal death penalty that can only be paid by someone dying! If you want to see the horror of all of our lies and our selfishness and our lust and our pride and our sexual sins and all the hurting we've done, just walk up to the Cross of Jesus and look at the mangled form of the Son of God. Listen as He cries out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" That's what our sin looks like. That's what it took to pay for my sin. It took the blood of the Son of God.

If you're depending on anything else, no matter how spiritual or how religious to get you to God, you're not going to make it. God provided this way for you to be forgiven, for you to live forever. The question is, have you ever been to Jesus' cross in your heart and put all your trust in the One who died there in your place? There's no reason you have to pay for your sin. Not when Jesus, in His love, already paid it for you as your substitute. The Bible says, "He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world"... and yours.

Have you ever put your total trust in Jesus to be your Savior, your Rescuer, your Forgiver? If not, why not begin your relationship with Him today? Just say, "Jesus, I've been running my own life. I resign. Today, I'm abandoning all trust in everything else and putting all my trust in You.

I'd love to help you make that commitment to Christ and understand it better. That's why our website's there. Please check it out today. It's ANewStory.com.

For you to have a relationship with your creator, for you to ever go to heaven, there's blood needed - the blood of Jesus Christ covering the sin of your life. Without the blood, we die. But life is within your reach right now, right where you are. Jesus is there.

One of the temporary after effects of my wife's bout with hepatitis years ago was some memory loss. Now, I forget a lot of things and I don't have an excuse. Well, for a while, my wife had a great excuse for forgetting some things, because that memory loss had some real effects. Like the day she left the pot of water on the stove to boil. She promptly moved away from the kitchen and forgot all about it. She told me she even forgot about it after she smelled something burning. So, she went all through the house; checked the dryer, checked the furnace. "What in the world is that burning smell?" Well, when she finally decided to check the kitchen, you can probably guess what the scene was. Oh yeah, there was no more water left in that pot; it had boiled dry. The burner was red hot; the pan had become part of the burner. It was bonded to the burner. It literally had to be broken off. Yeah, she needed some heat to do her job, but not that much heat!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Not More Than You Can Bear."

By the way, lest you be too concerned, that was a temporary memory loss, and she got it all back. Let's look at our word for today from the Word of God. Because it's a promise for people who are in the oven, you might say, who are suffering in some intense heat right now. 1 Corinthians 10:13. Listen to these familiar words: "No temptation (or testing it could be translated) has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted (or tested) beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted (or tested), He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."

Don't you love the promise of those words, "Not beyond what you can bear"? Those are words with your name on them maybe today because of what you're having to bear today. God promises He will not take you beyond what you can handle.

I've always found potters to be intriguing. When we go to colonial villages I always enjoy watching them. I saw an interview with a potter, and she talked about how they take this formless lump of clay. And with their skilled hands on that wheel, they're able to make it into something beautiful and useful, and then the oven. They cook that piece of pottery that they've molded. They cook it at temperatures of up to 2,200 degrees to make sure that the shaping will last. It actually takes extreme heat to make the beauty and the usefulness permanent.

The interviewer said, "Well, is it possible to get the oven too hot for the pottery?" She said, "Oh, yeah. For example, if you get it up to say 3,000 degrees it will just melt down." But then she said, "The potter always knows the melting point." So does yours. God's bottom line in Romans 8:29 - "He has predestined that you would be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus." He wants you to be like Jesus, so He uses the heat in your life to burn off the junk that might otherwise never come off. And God has been building in you lately a new love, a new patience, new purity, a new hunger for His word, new faith to trust Him, new character. But if it's never tested, it won't last. You have to take that new you into some intense heat for it to become tough and permanent. If the new you can get through this heat, you'll have a powerful new confidence in God's work in you.

Right now, maybe all you know is it's just really hot. Well, you have a guarantee from the Master Potter, "not beyond what you can bear." Oh, He might take you to the edge, but He'll never allow you to go over. God will let the heat make you stronger, but He'll never leave His masterpiece in the oven too long.

For any of us who were alive at the time, we'll never forget those images of the World Trade Center attacks and those heroic rescue efforts that followed them. One moment still sticks with me. It hit me. It was this interview with a big guy who was helping the rescuers. He was sitting on a curb at Ground Zero, talking with a reporter from a cable news network. He told how he had been delivering food to the rescuers, and then he was making his way back through the rubble when he decided to reach into that rubble just on the chance someone might be there. Unbelievably he suddenly felt this warm hand grabbing his arm. Immediately, he went and got helpers who pulled a firefighter out of there alive! And then that's when he lost it in that interview, and he choked out these words, "He touched me first."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Rescue - No Greater Honor."

That man at Ground Zero had been part of one of the most moving experiences a human being can have - being involved in the rescue of someone who otherwise would have died. It's an experience that God intends for every one of His children to have, except the rescue isn't the physical kind that might give a person 30 or 40 more years on earth. No, it's a spiritual rescue that will give a person heaven!

Wherever you live, wherever you work or go to school, wherever you shop or wherever you recreate, you've been assigned as God's rescuer in your circle of influence. Listen to the incredible position God has entrusted to you. It's described in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 5:19-20. "God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation." Translation: it's up to you whether or not the people in your personal world find out that what Jesus did on the cross was for them. Verse 20: "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us."

So you are Jesus' personal representative to the people you know. Yes, to show them Jesus by your life, what Jesus is and how real He can be in a life. But that's not enough. They can only get God's message about Jesus if you tell them about Him. And it's life-or-death information that you've got locked up inside you. You're going in for the spiritual rescue of someone whose only hope may be what you know about Jesus!

Now, how do you begin your rescue work? By praying by name, faithfully, for people who don't know Christ. Pray for God to open up natural opportunities for you to explain your relationship with Jesus. Look for an opportunity to pray with them about something that's bothering them. Invest some time in being with them, doing things with them, building bridges into their life. Don't just spend all your time with people who are already going to heaven!

D. L. Moody, the great evangelist once said, "There is no greater honor than to be the instrument in God's hands to lead one person out of the kingdom of darkness and into the glorious light of heaven." And may I add, there is no greater thrill. Just ask a man who has been the first to touch someone who otherwise would have died.

When it's rescue - when it's life-or-death, you drop everything, you risk everything, you do whatever it takes to bring that person out. For some person you know, you are that rescuer. You are their chance!

I guess it's possible to get lost in a computer. There was an article I read a while ago that talked about how some business leaders were complaining about this emerging problem with some of their computer people. They were talking about computer technicians who just kept going deeper and deeper into programs, and spending lots of time on sophisticated functions that didn't really have anything to do with getting their job done. One of them had an interesting name for it - "the rapture of the deep" they called it; lost somewhere in that computer; making the computer an end in itself rather than what it's supposed to be, which I think is a means of getting a job done. You know, some people get lost in the Bible too.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Headful of Bible."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from James 1, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 22. "Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like." I think this verse is talking about people who know the Bible, but are fooling themselves. That's kind of scary, isn't it? I mean, we're Bible people. But it's possible to be self-deceived and in the process of getting to know the Bible you get self-deceived. Why? Because you've forgotten that the purpose of studying the Bible isn't just to know the Bible; it's to do it; it's to be changed by it, like looking in the mirror. What needs changing? You don't just get information. If you looked in the mirror this morning you probably took action!

So, like the computer buffs, they remember Bible facts, they discuss theology, they look for deeper and deeper meanings, they analyze the Bible, they dissect the Bible, they learn big words for things in the Bible, but they're getting lost in biblical space. To be sure, we should never take God's revelation lightly. It demands, it requires serious study. That's good. But the ultimate objective is not to know it; it's to do it.

2 Timothy 3:16 - "All scripture is God-breathed" - good, good. "...and is useful..." Oh, it's supposed to do something, it's not just something you know. Maybe you've been slipping into a state of let's call it uh... passive loyalty to the Bible. Oh, you've got the head part going. Yeah, you're strong in Bible information, but maybe you're weak on application. Maybe when you were a younger Christian you didn't know much about it, but you were applying it. It was changing you, wasn't it? Maybe the balance has shifted.

There are three ways to read the Bible. You can read it for information, you can read it for inspiration, and you can read it for transformation. And that last one is what God has in mind. When you pick up the Bible, are you asking every time you read it, "What connection does this make to something I'm going to face today?" Start a spiritual diary, and in it you write two things: What did I read today; what is God saying here and put it in your own words... not Bible words. And then, what am I going to do differently today because of what God said?" The Bible isn't just to be mastered. It's to be obeyed.

So don't get lost in a spiritual rapture of the deep. Oh yeah, go after the deep things of God to be sure, but only so they can deeply penetrate the way you live. Otherwise, you could be very deep but very dead.

It was very cold in our house. I was the first one awake that morning, and as I scampered through our personal Arctic I checked the thermometer. It said 50 degrees. I called Mr. Furnace to come. In the meantime, I turned on the kitchen stove, opened the door and sat in front of it to have some personal spiritual time. My kids told me that with my eyes closed it looked like I was praying to the stove! Great! Well, Mr. Furnace came and he finally figured it out. See, the problem was not the thermometer, it was the thermostat. Because the thermometer was just reflecting the temperature. It was the thermostat, which of course, controlled the temperature!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Thermostat or Thermometer?"

The fact is, you may be a thermometer, or might be a thermostat. Thermometer people tend to reflect the temperature of the people around them. "If you're hot, I'm hot. If you're cool, I'm cool. If you're nice, I'm nice. If you yell, I yell." Thermometer.

What most of us would like to be is a thermostat - someone who controls the temperature in our situation. Your family sure needs for you to be a thermostat. If everyone's a thermometer, hello chaos. The people you work with, your friends - they need someone who is under control, who doesn't go off with the stress, who is steady and caring and peaceful. Those thermostat people are rare, and so they're valuable.

My friend, Mark, runs a rapidly growing, highly pressurized company that services some of America's largest corporations. In the heat of battle one day, one of Mark's execs came in and said, "Man, how do you handle this pressure?" Well, Mark is kind of like the eye of a hurricane - the center of calm in this swirling storm. Actually, Mark explained his thermostatic peace in a word - "Jesus."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the words of Jesus Himself in John 14:27. He is talking to His closest friends on the most stressful night of His life, just before His arrest and execution. And it's on the eve of what is about to be the most stressful chapter in their lives. If stressful is a fair description of your life right now, these words from Jesus are for you, too. Here's what He says. "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

I'm sure I don't have to make a list of the uncertainties in our world that could make any of our hearts "troubled" or "afraid" right now. There's plenty of them, and you probably have a pretty impressive list of your own. But in the midst of combat conditions, Jesus says, "I give you My peace, like nothing, like no one on earth can give you."

A love-relationship with the Son of God is the secret of my friend Mark's peace under pressure. It's a peace that I have experienced over and over again from hospital rooms, to gravesides, to doctor's offices, to airplanes in trouble, to out-of-control weeks. The anchor, I'll tell you, is that relationship with Jesus Christ.

And when you know you belong to Him, you can be a thermostat instead of a thermometer because you know you have an identity, you have a security, you have a love that is rooted in something you cannot lose. The freedom of knowing that whatever's at stake in this situation isn't all there is. You're anchored to Jesus Christ, His unloseable love, and His unstoppable plans.

It's the relationship you were made for, that you've been missing because your sin has cut you off from your Creator. It's the relationship that Jesus died to give you by paying for your sin on His cross. Invite Him into that storm of your life and let Him replace it with His peace.

If you want this relationship and to be sure you belong to Him, our website is there to help. It's ANewStory.com. Check it out today.

Jesus makes a thermometer person into a thermostat, who has this inner power... His inner power to set a whole new temperature. And right now He's just waiting for your invitation.

I got to thinking the other day about some of the close calls in my life - those moments that could have been my last, but obviously they weren't. There was the night that a drunk driver totaled our car with all of our family in it, but thank God it didn't total us. I was driving. We could have died; we didn't.

There was that night my plane was only a few feet away from landing at Newark Airport, and suddenly it revved up, and we took off again sharply, and about 15 minutes later the pilot said, "Well, we decided we wouldn't land when we saw that there was someone else on our runway." I was very glad for that decision. I thought that was a good choice! See, there's no telling what could have been that night with another plane on the runway.

I'm still here and so are you. In spite of some close calls you've had, some you knew about and I'll bet there's been some you never knew about. We have all been inches or seconds from death probably many times, but we're still here. Why?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Knowing How Long You'll Live."

Now, I'm going to read to you today a word for you and me from the Word of God from 2 Timothy 4. It's from a man who had cheated death many times - the Apostle Paul. He says, "At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion's mouth." Now, many people think that refers to Caesar's attempt to have him killed. Many people tried to have him killed.

"The Lord will rescue me," he says, "from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom." Now, I like what he says here. "I've been delivered from the lion's mouth, and I will be rescued." For how long? "...until the Lord will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom." You want to know how long you'll live? Till your work is done.

Paul was saying, "My work's not done. When God says it is, that's when I'll go home." Here's an exciting principle to remember: a person is immortal until his work is done. Now, some people's work for the Lord is done when they're five, some when they're 15, some 45, some not till they're 95. I think there are some people who think their work is done, but God doesn't think so. They're still here. And then there are some who think that their work isn't done, and God thinks it is.

You won't be left here one extra day. But every day you are here, go for it - live out your life mission. See, this principle has two important implications: one, your safety does not depend on your surroundings. I guess you could be in a hail of bullets (now, I don't recommend you go looking for a place like that), and if your work isn't done, you're going to be okay. But if your work is done, you can be in your living room on the couch and God will take you home. You're immortal until your work is done. Psalm 139 says, "All the days ordained for me were written in God's book before one of them came to be."

Secondly, God's got work for you to do. The fact that you woke up this morning means that God has a destiny for you for this day. He's delivered you from every lion in your life so you could finish what He's put you on earth to do. What a way to live: fearlessly, confident, significantly! The Lord will rescue you from every attack except one. And that will be when He takes you safely to His heavenly kingdom.

January 8, 2026 When I had to go for a new passport, it meant I had to dig out a document that I don't look at very often - my birth certificate. I...

Treasure Island, A Child's Garden of Verses - those are just some of the literary classics written by Robert Louis Stevenson. He must have had a way with words from the time he was a boy. Anne Graham Lotz tells of a night in his boyhood when his nanny just couldn't get him to bed. Young Robert just kept staring out the window, oblivious to her talking to him. Finally, she said, "Robert, what in the world are you looking at out there?" As she pulled back the curtain, she realized he was watching the lamplighter making his way down the street, lighting one street lamp after another. Young Robert Louis Stevenson saw something more. He said, "Look at that man! He's punching holes in the darkness!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "You Are the Light of Your World."

What an awesome description of the reason God has placed you where you are! You're not there to shake your head and bemoan how dark it is where you work or go to school or whatever your environment. You're there to punch holes in the darkness! So, how are you doing on that so far?

Well, let's listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 5:14-16, our word for today from the Word of God. If you belong to Jesus, He's including you in this. "You are the light of the world." Wow! Think of your personal world and people in your world. Jesus says you are their light. He goes on to say, "A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp or put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

Look, we live in a pretty dark world, right. But it is not a world without light unless the Christian in a situation fails to punch holes in the darkness by living like Jesus would live there, treating people like Jesus would treat people there, and handling situations and temptations as Jesus would handle them. So many of Jesus' followers don't realize who they are - His personal representative in their personal world.

You punch another hole in the darkness every time you show up with joy instead of gloom on your face, with good things to say instead of griping, every time you stop for someone who's struggling, when you consciously put someone else ahead of you, when you insist on taking the high road when it's tempting to cut corners, every time you weep with someone who's weeping, or you rejoice with someone who's rejoicing, and when you reach out to someone who's really been acting pretty unloveable.

The lost folks around you probably won't be all that impressed with your don'ts or all the religious meetings you go to. No, they need to see meaningful differences in you because of Christ in you.

But it isn't enough that they just see that you're different. They need to know why, or they'll never be able to get out of the darkness themselves. They need Jesus. See, He put you in their life so they could find out what Jesus did for them on the cross; so they could find out from someone who's living proof that Jesus is alive and how they, too, could have a life-changing relationship with Him. Have you told them about your Jesus yet?

Humanly speaking, you may very well be their best chance at heaven - or maybe their only chance. They could watch you for the rest of your life and they're never going to say, "You know, Charlie's such a nice guy. I'll bet Jesus died on the cross for my sins." They're not going to figure that out. You have to tell them that.

Every morning, before your Lord, tell Him and tell yourself, "I am the light of my world." And go out there, showing a harsh and lonely and self-serving world that there's another way to be. Defy the darkness wherever you go. Punch holes in the darkness with the brilliant light of Jesus Christ that lives in you!

It turned out to be one of TV's biggest and most surprising hits of the time - "Touched By an Angel." Actually, CBS almost canceled it after its first season. But they responded to all this mail they got, encouraging them to give it another chance. And with that, it just took off. It was consistently one of the top 10 TV programs in America! It was about three angels who take on human form and assignments from God to bring His hope and His messages into certain people's lives. And in an age when angels had become an intriguing subject for a lot of people, this positive program was really a success. Who would have guessed that it would be a success? Stories of humans whose lives are "touched by an angel"? Of course, there's an even bigger surprise. Did you know that angels can be touched by a human?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Heaven's Waiting for You."

Actually, the Bible says there is something you can do that literally touches the angels in heaven. It all has to do with a spiritual homecoming God has been waiting for a long time for you to experience.

Our word for today from the Word of God is about that. It's in Luke 15:10. Jesus has just been telling about the joy of a shepherd who is bringing home his lost sheep...and a woman who has just found a treasured possession she had lost. In both cases, the finder gets their friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me. I have found my lost sheep...or my lost treasure." Then Jesus tells how people like us can touch the angels in heaven. He says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

In heaven, they know that God sent Jesus, His one and only Son, to rescue us sinners. And according to the Bible, that's me, that's you, that's all of us. It says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). The angels were there the night the Son of God came to live among us that first Christmas. An angel was there strengthening Jesus when He agonized in a garden over the cross that He knew He was going to be facing in a few hours.

The angels know that we who have lived outside of God's plans deserve the death penalty for running our own lives. They also know that God loved you so much that He sent His Son from Heaven to die so you don't have to.

And now God is waiting, has been waiting for a while, for you to respond to His love...to turn from your "my way" living and put all your trust in Jesus to forgive what only He can forgive, because only He died for it. He's waiting for you to come home spiritually. And when you do, the angels - who know how much is at stake in your decision about Jesus - they start celebrating your homecoming - a party in heaven.

If you've never had your moment when you've begun your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you could make your peace with God right where you are right now. Here's a homecoming prayer you could pray from your heart, "Lord, I know my only hope of having my sins forgiven, my only hope of going to heaven, is You and what You did when You died on the cross for me. I know you're alive! You walked out of your grave, and now I want you to walk into my life. I'm putting all my trust in You. I want You to be my Personal Savior. Beginning this day, Jesus, I'm Yours." If you prayed that, It's your homecoming day!

Let me invite you to go to our website, and there you'll see explained very simply and briefly how to begin and be sure you've begun your relationship with Jesus; how to know you belong to Him. The website is ANewStory.com.

If you will make this the day you come home to the One who died for you, the Bible says, heaven starts celebrating. Why? Because now, you'll be going there someday...and you'll be there forever.

My friend, Ed, thought he had the perfect hiding place, and he told me about it. Now, Ed's not really his name, but it is a true story. The incident happened this way. Some years ago when he was a teenager, and he came from a nice Christian family - nice Christian boy, except for some of his reading material. Now, it was before Internet days but there was a magazine called Playboy. He had a habit of going out and buying Playboy and some other magazines like it, and he hid them in an old, unused icebox where no one ever went. And he was sure no one knew the place. Well, when he went to get his dirty magazines one day, they were gone. But that's only part of it. In their place there was a Bible. He knew his dad had to leave it there. There was never any yelling, his dad never talked to him about it, but he bought no more magazines because of that little switch his dad had made.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Royal Switch."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 10, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 3. "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

Now, this talks about weapons that will tear down strongholds. And as you study this passage, it becomes obvious that spiritual strongholds are sinful ways of thinking that, well, maybe they've been part of our personality for a long time. Maybe they're wrong ways of thinking about the opposite sex, about depressing feelings in your life, or about a relationship with someone who's hurt you, maybe it's lust, or depression, or bitterness, or self-pity. But it's got a strong hold on us. And then it goes on to say, "We can take captive every one of those wrong thoughts to the obedience of Christ."

Now, until you can master the source of sin, which is your wrong thoughts, that sin will master you. How do you do that? Well, Ephesians 6:17 talks about the spiritual weapon that will work. It says, "Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." learn a lesson from a friend's wise father. Where there had been dirt in the form of those magazines, he put God's Word. He didn't just remove the dirty; he replaced it with a Bible. Now, if you want to beat sin...if you want to beat those wrong thoughts, then you've got to have two strategies working for you. First, take out the garbage - the garbage thoughts - and don't collect any more. That means turning your eyes away from the magazine rack. It means flipping the channel when something comes on that has no business going into your mental computer. It means not ever clicking again to go to those places on the Internet. It may mean, as it did for some of my friends, of putting a picture of Jesus on their computer, or another man who said, "I can't even afford to have a computer at home. I've got to beat the monster inside." It may mean avoiding negative conversations that fuel the dark side of you; canceling a subscription to a magazine, or a streaming service, or monitoring the music you listen to - whatever it takes to be free of the bondage.

Secondly, you have to put the Bible where the dirt has been. You take a Bible bath daily. You dwell on what you read. You write it down in a journal so you remember it. You use it that day so it becomes part of your personality. There's no substitute for memorizing the Word of God.

D. L. Moody said it so well, "Think sin - think scripture." I like what someone wrote in my Bible one time, "Either sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin." Now you have a weapon that can tear down a stronghold of sin and tame the most sinful of thoughts.

"Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee." Put God's Word in the same hiding place where you've been hiding that sinful stuff. That is the royal switch.

There's this beautiful spot on the coast of Maine called Bar Harbor, because there's a bar in the harbor. It's a sandbar that's totally exposed at low tide and totally submerged at high tide. The bar goes from the mainland to a little island called (you'll never guess) Bar Island. The island's okay, but you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time there. Although some people do - a lot more time than they had planned to spend. When our family walked across the bar at low tide, we made sure to check that tide chart to see when the tide would be coming back. As we were walking back from the island, the tide had started coming in. Then there were those intelligent tourists who waited a little too long to start back, and suddenly there was no way back! Now, you know what? No one has to be stranded on that island. There is a way off, if you take it!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Escape From Lonely Island."

Lonely Island is not on any map that I know of, but it's an island we've all spent time on. Loneliness is like an emotional island and we can get stranded there when we've been isolated, or ignored, or left out, or forgotten, maybe misunderstood, abandoned. Maybe even today finds you in the middle of another one of your lonely times.

The good news is you don't have to be stuck on Lonely Island. Loneliness is ultimately not a prison sentence. It's a choice! Feeling lonely is unavoidable. It's part of being human, but staying lonely is a choice. Just like Bar Island, there are some steps you can take to leave that island.

One way to make a lonely time a short time is to find somebody who needs you; to reach out from your loneliness, even if you don't feel like it, to make a difference for someone else. At a time when loneliness leaves you thinking mostly about you, it's important to decide to look beyond yourself. Another antidote to loneliness is to expand your world, especially your circle of friendships. If you take the risks to reach out to more people, you can reduce your trips to Lonely Island.

But even with all our efforts to cope with the lonely times, a lot of us carry this gnawing sense of loneliness with us most of the time. It isn't necessarily that there aren't people there for us, it's just that those people have never been enough to fill us up inside. It's like there's always something missing. Actually, like someone missing. Well, there is - the One you were made by - the One you were made for.

The incurable loneliness in the human heart is ultimately cosmic loneliness. We're lonely for God. No earth relationship has ever been able to fill the God-shaped hole in your heart. In the words of the Bible, in Isaiah 59:2, "Your sins have separated you from your God." Your sins are all those thousands of choices you've made in your lifetime that disregarded God's way for "your way." So here we are, away from the one person who has the love we're looking for. The only person who knows why we were created; the person we will meet the moment we die.

For our word for today from the Word of God, consider this promise from Jesus in light of the loneliness you know all too well. Hebrews 13:5 - "I will never leave you. I will never forsake you." Think of it - unloseable love, unconditional love. Jesus' love for you took Him all the way to a brutal death on a cross, where He gave His life to pay your sin-bill with God. The one whose love you've been looking for all these years is yours the moment you say, "Jesus, I'm Yours." You are one step of faith away from the world's only "never leave you" love. Would you take that step today? "Jesus, I'm yours. I'm pinning all my hopes on You."

Our website is there to help you get started. I hope you'll check it out today. It's ANewStory.com.

Your anchor relationship could begin this very day and it will never end. Never, no matter what else changes and no matter who else leaves. And you will have just spent your last day alone.

I think every kid loves a circus. And there's probably a kid inside of all of us. I still love the circus, too. I've always been personally fascinated by those death-defying artists from the high trapeze. They leap, perfect poise, have grace, from one trapeze to another, until they end up safe on that platform all the way across the arena from where they started. And I guess you could eventually get used to hanging onto a trapeze, and you'd feel comparatively secure as soon as you reached the next one. My problem would be the time between trapezes. Yeah, that would bother me. Actually, it bothers all of us.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living Between Trapezes."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Jeremiah 29. And you might, like God's people in this passage, be living between trapezes right now. One phase of your life is behind you, and you're counting on a new one up ahead. But right now you're in one of life's great like in-between times. We all go through those. Well, so were the people of God that he was advising in Jeremiah 29. The Jews were in a temporary spot, so to speak, between two permanent spots. They had started out in Israel, they will end up back in Israel, but right now they're between trapezes. They are in-between in captivity in Babylon. It's a temporary place.

Here are instructions given by God for people between trapezes. He says, "Build houses, settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage. Increase in number there and do not decrease. Also, seek the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Now, the message seems to be this: When you're in-between, don't hold back. Live as if you're going to be there the rest of your life. He uses words like build, settle, plant, increase, work for the good of that city, improve where you are. I can hear you saying, "But Lord, this isn't where we want to be. We just want to ‘get by' until we, you know, get to where we want to be." Well, Jeremiah 29:11 is that great verse that so many people quote, where God says, "I know the plans I have for you..." (Now remember, it just follows everything I read before about their in-between status.) "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future."

See, God's good plans for tomorrow come from you living whole-heartedly today between trapezes. Today maybe you're not where you want to end up, you're between jobs, or you're in one that's just a stop-gap. Or you're single, waiting, wanting to be married. Maybe you're living in a temporary situation or waiting for some breakthrough. Well, like the Jews of old, it's just an in-between place. But like them, God expects you to build there, to plant there, to increase, to improve that place. Someone once said, "Bloom where you're planted." And as you do, you give God the attitude that He can use to ultimately bring you those great plans, to bring you His very best.

If you're in between trapezes right now, remember, this is a terrible place to lose your concentration. Be all you can be right where you are. Actually that's the best way to get safely to the destination that you want so much.

If you consider yourself a religious person, boy, have I got good news for you! Recent research indicates that those who consider themselves religious tend to have lower blood pressure than the rest of the population, they are less likely to be obese, to have cancer, to be hospitalized, and they have a 29% greater chance to live longer! And religious people (it says) tend to have lower rates of depression, less suicide, greater sexual satisfaction in their marriage, and overall a greater sense of well-being. What do you know, Jesus was right when He said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness" and "Blessed are the pure in heart" (Matthew 5:6, 8). Lots of good news if you're a religious person, and some very disturbing bad news.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Bad News About Being Religious."

That bad news comes through loud and clear and it's in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in Matthew 7:21-23. Jesus is describing some horrible surprises when some religious folks stand before God.

Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you.'" The unsettling bad news is this: some very religious people will be stopped at the gates of heaven!

These are clearly people who know a lot about Jesus...who've done a lot of things in Jesus' name...who are, no doubt, considered to be Christians by the people who know them. Except for one thing - Jesus says, "I never knew you." Somehow, in the middle of lots of Christianity, it is possible to miss Christ. It's possible to be very religious, very involved with Christian things, and to miss Jesus and to miss heaven!

How does this happen? Jesus said that what these people missed was "doing the will of my Father in heaven." Well, in John 6:40, Jesus tells us exactly what that is. "My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life." That's what God the Father wants. That's what He demands as the only way to get into heaven. It's not doing Christian things or believing Christian beliefs or observing Christian rituals. It's putting your total trust in His Son as your only hope of having eternal life.

That's the problem with some of us church folks - we're actually counting on our Christianity, our church attendance, our spiritual track record as the thing that will make us right with God. But none of it can do that. That's why Jesus came. Your sins and mine carry a horrible, eternal death penalty in hell; one which can't be paid by any amount of human goodness, but only by Jesus' death on the cross.

It may be that for all your years of being around Jesus, of agreeing with Jesus, you've never grabbed Jesus like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard. You've never told Him you're abandoning any trust you have in your religion or your goodness and you're putting your total trust in Him to be your rescuer from your sin.

If you've never taken that step, if you're not sure you've taken that step that makes all the difference, would you do it today? "Jesus, I abandon all hope but You. I now come to you totally on the basis of your death on the cross and your resurrection. I turn from my sin to You controlling the rest of my life." I hope you move Him from your head to your heart today.

You know what? I'd love to help you make that commitment to Christ and cross that line to belonging to Him. That's actually why our website is there. It's ANewStory.com. Would you go there today?

I don't like to perform a wedding unless I can first have several premarital counseling sessions with the couple. I remember when I told my youngest son (he was very young at that time) that I was going to be performing a wedding ceremony for one of the women on our staff. But the way I said it was this: "Hey, guess what? I'm going to be marrying Margaret." He burst into tears. He said, "What about Mommy?"

So I've cleaned up my vocabulary a little bit, but I won't perform a wedding unless I can first counsel that couple. I'll tell you why. You need to get some of the stars out of their eyes. "I love him!" "I love her!" Well, that's great, but most pre-married couples need an emotional optometrist who can help them take a little more honest look at this person that they really do love. So I try to give them some emotional glasses to see who is really there. I think those sessions are a "must" and in fact I even give some tests to show the differences in expectations and in their perceptions of each other. Why? Well, because of the truth of three time-tested words, "Love is (fill in the blank) blind." No it isn't! Not really.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Love Has X-Ray Vision."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Philippians 1:9-10. This is a great prayer here! In fact, I think it's a prayer we ought to just pray right out of scripture on behalf of some people we care about. Here it is: "And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight." It doesn't sound like love is blind there, does it? "And I want to pray this so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ."

Now, the word that's used here is agape love. Of the several Greek words that could be used, this is the one for divine love; it's the highest form. He says, "I pray that your agape will abound more and more." And he said that agape love is insightful. It's not just blindly accepting of everything. This applies to all your relationships, not just romantic relationships.

Then he gives here some solid guidelines for all the important choices that you are making at this stage of your life. He says that this knowledgeable love will make you able to discern. It really means to test. Test what? Well, I want you to have the kind of love, God is saying here, that's able to check out what is best.

The Greek word that's used here is one that literally means to carry through. What's worth carrying through life? I want you to be able to discern that. It's often translated "more valuable" in the Bible. When you put it together it seems to say this, "Authentic love checks out every choice and chooses what's really worth the most."

That kind of thinking settled it for my oldest son one day when he was trying to spend all of his allowance on junk food at the store. But he didn't, and when he left he said, "Dad, I decided I'd spend on what lasts." That's what this is talking about. Some people have us believe that love is this syrupy, naive, acceptance of everyone and everything. But actually, that was pretty tough, because it keeps asking, "What's really best in this situation? What will last?" Not, "What's more comfortable, what's more fun, what's more acceptable, or what's more materially profitable?" No, what's more eternally valuable?

You can have that discernment in your daily choices the same way the first-century believers did. You've got to pray for it. Ask for it often. Like Superman, you can have x-ray vision, but to see the things that are really valuable. God can give you powerful inner eyes when you open up to His discerning love. When you have love, God's way, it's not blind - it has x-ray vision.

I don't get sick very often, but that one year I did pick up the special flu bug of the year. Which, of course, meant my wife soon followed suit. We believed in sharing everything. Then our friend, Janice, got a similar flu - sick for four or five days. Then her husband got it - sick for four or five days. Then their lucky daughter took her turn - sick for four or five days. Their teenage son was the only one who didn't get it. His mom said he was the one walking around the house with a can of Lysol all the time! You can almost count on it - when one person is infected with a germ, it's probably going to end up infecting the people closest to them.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Cure for Family Germs."

Every family has them - those germs that get passed around the family. And they're not all the kind you go to a doctor for. The most virulent, most damaging family infections of all come from moral germs, spiritual germs, some of which have infected generations or are in the process right now of being passed on to yet another generation.

One writer tells about his friend, George, and the angry explosions he had with his wife - angry words which unfortunately his little son could sometimes hear down the hall in his room. There was one particularly bitter argument where George yelled to his wife, "I don't need you. I don't want you, and I can't stand you!" A few weeks later, George was awakened by sounds down the hall from his bedroom. They were coming from his little boy's room. George tiptoed down there and he stood and listened in horror as his son was angrily telling a stuffed animal of his, "I don't need you. I don't want you. I can't stand you!"

That's how the family diseases are transmitted from one generation to the next. There are those weaknesses that scarred our parents' lives, probably their parents' lives, and who knows how many other generations! Tragically, we tend to carry that baggage into our lives and then infect another generation with them. We seem to be unable to stop the things in us that hurt most the people we love most: that anger, that selfishness, the criticism, the abuse, the addictions, the negativity.

But there's wonderful news about our family infections in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:18-19. Listen. God says, "You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, with the precious blood of Christ." Translation: there is a connection between my hurtful weakness and what Jesus Christ did when He died on the cross. If I open myself up to the love and the power of Jesus Christ, the disease can stop in this generation! I can be in the Bible's word "redeemed" from it.

The central disease we all have that poisons our closest relationships is the disease of me - a disease the Bible calls sin. That's just a life you run instead of God running it, and it can only be conquered by the One who died to pay the death penalty for all our sinning, and that's Jesus. When you put your total trust in Him to be your "Savior" from all your sin, He enters your life. He unleashes His power which raised Him from the dead to start changing you from the inside out.

The Bible says, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has gone. A new life has begun." If you're ready to finally be forgiven, if you're ready to finally be free, then you're ready to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ.

What you do is you say to Him, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hope on you because you died for me. I am yours beginning today." That's a new beginning for you and for your family. I'd love to share with you more how you can be sure you belong to Him and what this relationship can do for you at our website. And it's got a name that's appropriate - ANewStory.com. That's what it's about - a new story for you.

The spiritual infections in your family - haven't they done enough damage? And the Man who died for you is willing to begin His miracle healing of your past, your present, and your future. Think what it could mean to you and to those you love, "It stops here - in this generation! Because Jesus is running things now!"

If you live in a place like Florida for example, this word probably doesn't mean much to you - winter, cold, or furnace. See, during the summer you don't give your furnace a thought, but in the winter up north it makes life bearable. That's why when we lived in New Jersey I was not a very happy camper when I woke up and felt a very cold nose coming out of the covers. (No, I didn't sleep with a dog...it was my nose!) And I felt a cold floor under my feet where there was no carpet. And then I would peek out the window and see a very low temperature out there.

Now, my first stop was the furnace downstairs. If it wasn't working I knew what to do. I called our family doctor. You say, "What? You don't call..." No, that's right, I didn't call the doctor. I called our neighbors and told them the furnace wasn't working. You say, "Wait a minute, what good does that do?" No, I called the newspaper delivery boy and said, "My furnace isn't working!" I called the post office and said, "Hey, can you fix my furnace?" You say, "Ron, none of those calls will help. Call the furnace man!" I did.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Tell the Person Who Can Fix It."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 5. We begin at verse 23. Jesus said, "If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift..." He says forget the religious stuff. Don't do your spiritual thing. No, "leave your gift in front of the altar. First (in other words, before you do your thing with God), go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift."

There's a parallel passage in Matthew 18:15 - "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over." It talks about involving other people from the church if that doesn't work. But the pattern is the same in both cases - go straight to the person. Now, we're not talking about a furnace here, but we're talking about a relationship that's not working. And Jesus addresses one of these dark corners of human nature.

We've got this tendency to talk to everyone about the problem we have with this person except the person we have the problem with. And that sin divides families, it divides friends, it divides churches, it divides ministries, and maybe you are in the middle of one of those poisonous situations right now. Jesus says there's only one way to go when you have a problem with another person - straight to that person.

We'd rather gripe to other people, we'd rather gather support for our side, get sympathy, form some power block of people who agree with us, and give the Devil an open door he can drive a truck through. The irony is that none of those other people can fix what's wrong. The problem you've got is with this person.

Now, we know it would be dumb to tell the letter carrier about our cold furnace, or the garbage man. Wouldn't that make you ask, "Hey, do you just want to gripe or do you want a solution?" Then why do we go to all the wrong people when there's a break in a relationship or some hurt? Going to the person involved is the only way it can really be fixed. You can be a relationship radical if you'll covenant to go direct in a world that would rather gossip and backstab.

You can be an agent of real love and real peace if you always stay away from the back room, the back-biting, and you speak directly to that other person. That other person? They may respond or they may not respond, but you have done the only thing Jesus can bless, and you can sleep well tonight.

So, whether it's a furnace, a family member or a friend, tell the person who can fix it.

It was a Kleenex moment that Christmas season, for sure. Like the first Christmas, there was a newborn baby involved, but no manger. How about a Jumbotron screen at an Anaheim Ducks hockey game, of all places?

Sergeant First Class Robert Vandenberg had been gone for ten months. He'd never seen his newborn son. He was far away in Afghanistan when little Travis was born. So all eyes were on the big screen when he appeared suddenly to - at least in this small way - be "home" for Christmas.

Skype from Romania. That's how his wife, and his one-year-old son, little Travis would make a connection this Christmas season. But with thousands watching this touching reunion by screen, the technology Grinch suddenly showed up. There was barely time for "hellos" before the sergeant started disappearing in a spasm of static. Sadly, his wife handed the microphone back to a team rep.

At that very moment, Sergeant Vandenberg walked down the steps of the arena and right into the arms of his wife! Then he picked up his new son and held him up in front of him - looking in his eyes for the very first time.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Coming Home for Christmas."

I don't know if they sell Kleenex at the stadium concession stands, but if they do, you can bet they sold out that night. I confess I reached for some when I saw it on TV. I think one of the reasons it touched me is that I saw something else in that moving reunion. I saw the first Christmas. I saw myself.

Christmas - when a God we thought was so far away came down to where we are. To hold us close. In fact, the ancient prophecy of the coming Messiah predicted it. And it's our word for today from the Word of God recorded in Matthew 1:23, "'A virgin shall be with child and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is translated, 'God with us.'" Not just God projected on the screen of some church or religion. But God right here. God up close.

Too often, though, He has seemed far away hasn't He? Like there's a lot of distance between me and the God I really need. It turns out that distance is not just a feeling. It's real. But it's not God's fault. It's mine.

Let's face it, I've wanted to believe in God, but I also want to run my own life. In essence, occupying the driver's seat in my life - a life He gave me. We have, in the words of the Bible, "left God's path to follow our own" (Isaiah 53:6 NLT) and at great cost. Isaiah 59:2 says, "Your sins have cut you off from God." Actually, I knew that. I think we can all feel the distance.

But then...Christmas. As Linus so eloquently quoted to Charlie Brown, "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11 KJVA). In that stable in Bethlehem, God stepped out of eternity and into time. So He could step into my life and your life and change it forever. Not God as a fuzzy image. Not God far away. God with us. With me. In my home. In my office. In the doctor's office. In my grief. In my loneliness. In my pain. In "the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23:4 KJVA).

But it would come at great expense to Jesus, because 33 years later, the hands of the Bethlehem baby would be nailed to a Roman cross. And today, this one who loved you enough to die for you, who came that Christmas for you and me is reaching out and saying, "On this Christmas day, would you give yourself to Me?" He's been waiting a long time. He's ready now for you to come. You can tell it by the tug you feel in your heart. That won't always be there.

So, right now while you can, say, "Jesus, I'm Yours." Go to our website today if you want more information because there you'll see how to be sure you've begun this relationship on this Christmas day. It's ANewStory.com.

See, Jesus came in Bethlehem to go to a cross so God could be your Father. And so you could be, forever, a child in His arms.

It was the biggest night of the year in a little town called Cornwall. It was the night of the annual Christmas pageant. Since there are no nearby malls or cities to compete with, the pageant is pretty much packed out every year. It's an especially big deal for the children in town. They get to try out for the roles in the Christmas story, and everybody wants a part.

Which leads us to the problem of Harold. See, Harold wanted to be in the play, too, but he was...well, he was kind of a slow and simple kid. The directors were ambivalent, I mean, they knew Harold would be crushed if he didn't have a part, but they were afraid he might mess up the town's magic moment if he did. Finally, they decided to cast Harold as the innkeeper - the one who turns Mary and Joseph away the night Jesus is to be born. He only has one line: "I'm sorry, we have no room." Well, no one could imagine what that one line was going to do to everyone's Christmas.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Christmas Invitation."

The night of the pageant the church was packed, as usual. I mean, the set was in place, and there was an entire wall with scenes of Bethlehem painted on it, including the door of the inn where Harold would greet - and then turn away - the young Jewish travelers.

Backstage, the angels were playing Frisbee with their halos, and the shepherds were waiting 'till the last minute to put on their annually laundered bathrobes, and Harold was being personally coached by the nervous directors. "Now remember, Harold, when Joseph says, 'Do you have a room for the night?' you say...you say..." Hesitantly, Harold said, "I'm sorry. We... We have no room." The directors looked at each other somewhat hopefully. They'd done all they could.

Well, the Christmas story unfolded according to plan - angels singing, Joseph's dream, the trip to Bethlehem. Finally, Joseph and Mary arrived at the door of the Bethlehem Inn, looking appropriately tired, discussing whether the baby might come tonight. Joseph knocked on the inn door. Backstage, the directors were just out of sight, coaching Harold to open the door now. And wouldn't you know it - the door was stuck! The whole set shook; Harold tried to get that door open. When he finally did, Joseph asked his question on cue: "Do you have a room for the night?"

Harold froze. From backstage, a loud whisper: "I'm sorry. We have no room." And Harold mumbled, "I'm sorry. We have no room." And, with a little coaching, he shut the door. Well, the directors heaved a sigh of relief - prematurely. As Mary and Joseph disappeared into the night, the set suddenly started shaking again, and the door opened. Harold was back! And then, in an unrehearsed moment that folks would never forget, Harold went running after the young couple, shouting as loud as he could, "Wait! Wait! You can have my room!"

I think little Harold may have understood the real issue of Christmas better than anyone there that night. How can you leave Jesus outside? You have to make room for Jesus. And that may be the issue for you this Christmas season. What will you do with this Son of God who came to earth to find you? This One who trades a throne room for a stable, angel praise for human mockery, this Creator who gives Himself on a cross? The Bible gives us the only appropriate response in Galatians 2:20, our word for today from the Word of God: "The life I now live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." You look at what Jesus did to pay for your sin on that cross, and you say those life-changing words - "For me."

Jesus is at your door this Christmas. Maybe He's been knocking for a long time and maybe He won't keep knocking much longer. All your life - even in the events of the last few months - it's been to prepare you for this crossroads moment with Jesus your Savior.

I'd love to help you cross over as the Bible says, "from death to life" belonging to Jesus. Our website is there for that purpose - ANewStory.com. Don't leave Him outside any longer. Open the door this Christmas season. "Jesus, I cannot keep You out any longer. Come on in. You can have my room. You can have my life."

It was Christmas Eve, and the Hutchcraft family was acting out the Christmas story. Our daughter was Mary, with a towel draped over her head. Our oldest son was Joseph, bathrobe and all. Our then two-year-old son was the closest we could come to a baby, so he was in the giant laundry basket. I was, of course, an angel dressed in a white sheet, sitting celestially on the back of the couch. And my wife - well, she wanted to be a sheep. So she was crawling around the living room floor with our sheepskin rug draped over her, doing her very best "baaa's." And the doorbell rang! It was two teenage girls from our youth group. Their folks were home getting drunk, and they were wondering if they could come to our house for a little sanity. When they came in, our Christmas players were in full gear, "baaa" and all. The door was open and we invited them right into our Christmas.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Open Door at the Manger."

It was only appropriate that we should say to anyone who came to our door on Christmas Eve, "Come on in." After all, that's what God did when His Son was born that first Christmas. He threw open the door and said, "Come on in" no matter what you're like. He might be saying that to you this very day.

Anybody's welcome to come on in and join God's family. How do we know? Well, for one thing, look at who got the first invitation to "come on in." Shepherds. These guys were considered the lowest of the low-lifes. They were unfit to even be allowed in God's temple. So of all the people God could invite to the first Christmas party, who does He ask to come? Shepherds.

It says so in Luke 2, beginning with verse 8, in our Christmas word for today from the Word of God. "There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them..." The angel made this startling announcement: "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord." So Jesus begins His life on earth by welcoming in people that most would say are definitely "not His type."

Maybe that's how you feel; you're not the religious type. Maybe you, like the shepherds, have experienced your share of closed doors, rejection, condemnation, and plenty of loneliness. It could be you've done a lot of things, and made a lot of mistakes, just looking for love and acceptance. And you know you've done a lot of wrong things. But that's the very kind of people Jesus came for!

The people who miss Jesus and miss heaven are the people who think they've got it all together, who are very religious and very good and they think not really in need of a Savior who died on the cross for their sins. But just like He did for those shepherds, whether you were born in church or never been in church in your life, Jesus is throwing open the door to His family and to His heaven and He's saying, "Come on in. I died. I rose again so you and I can be together forever."

The greatest mistake you could ever make would be if you missed what Jesus died to give you. Can you think of a better time to throw open the door of your life to Jesus than Christmastime - the time He left heaven to come here to rescue you? He's waiting for you to reach out to Him and put your total trust in what He did for you on the cross - whatever you've done. This isn't about what you've done. It's about what He's done on the cross for you.

Right where you are, at this very special time, why don't you tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours from this day on." Your life will never be the same. I would love to help you right now make that new beginning of making the Savior your Savior this Christmas season.

I just invite you to go to our website and there you can find for yourself how to be sure you've begun this relationship with Jesus. The website is ANewStory.com.

And as we celebrate the day Jesus was born, you can celebrate the day you get born into His family. Go to sleep tonight with Christ in your heart with His peace in your soul. From Him, and from our team here - Merry Christmas!

Visiting people who are in the hospital - I'm guessing that's not your favorite thing to do. A lot of times it's hard to know what to say to the person; especially if their condition is serious. But there are some visits where it's easy to think of things to say - like when you're visiting a new mom or a new baby. All you have to say is, "Aww, she's beautiful!" "Oh, he looks so smart; so alert" or "That's the cutest baby I've ever seen!" See, you're supposed to say these things even if the baby still looks all red and bald and wrinkled. But that first Christmas...well, one of the first people to see Mary's baby did not follow the usual script.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Strange Words For a Christmas Mom."

Following the Jewish custom, Mary and Joseph brought their baby boy to the temple to be circumcised, just eight days after that first Christmas. God had someone waiting for them there - an old man named Simeon who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the One he called "the Lord's Christ." He actually held the baby in his arms and praised God for sending Him.

But then came those strange words for a new mom. In Simeon's words we find the shadow of great pain for Mary but great hope for you and me. In Luke 2:34-35, our word for today from the Word of God, "Simeon...said to Mary, His mother: 'This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel...the thoughts of many will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.'" That's not exactly what a new mom wants to hear.

But eight days into Jesus' life on earth, Simeon is foreshadowing the end of Jesus' life. The Bible tells us that 33 years later "near the cross stood His mother" (John 19:25). And surely, as Mary saw her boy nailed to a cross and pierced by a soldier's spear, that sword Simeon spoke of must have pierced her soul.

So as we sing our "sleep in heavenly peace" and "joy to the world" carols, let's not miss the shadow looming over the manger. It's the shadow of a cross. But that cross was not some tragic twist of fate. It was the plan of a God who loves you so very much. It was His plan to give you and me a chance to go to heaven instead of hell; to enjoy the relationship with God we were made for but we've missed because we're running our own lives.

And if there had been any other way to erase your sin from God's book and pay for your sin, believe me, God would have done it. But all your goodness, and your religion, and your Christianity can't pay sin's death penalty. Someone had to die to pay for it, and Someone did - the Son of God.

The writer of the classic carol, "What Child Is This" expressed it powerfully: "Nails, spear shall pierce Him through, the cross be borne for me, for you; hail, hail, the Word made flesh, the Babe, the son of Mary."

So you've had your Christmases, you've celebrated Jesus' coming. Have you ever had your Good Friday where you stand at the foot of that cross and say the two words that are the difference between heaven and hell, "For me, Jesus. And I'm giving me to You." That's the only way you can receive the gift of eternal life that He died to give you.

Have you known about Jesus all your life but maybe missed that step? If you've never done that, let this be your Jesus-day. You'll have a lot more to celebrate than just Jesus' coming to earth. This season you'll celebrate His coming into your life. If that's what you want, tell Him right now, "Jesus, I want to belong to You. I am taking for myself what You died for on the cross." What a new beginning this will be for you.

A lot of people have found help in beginning that relationship at our website. And I want to invite you to check it out this very day. It's ANewStory.com.

It wasn't just Mary's heart that was pierced on that awful day on Skull Hill. We can only imagine the anguish in God the Father's heart, watching His Son be broken for you. So you can be sure that God will never forget what you do with His Son.

One of the amusing sides of Christmas is people shopping in departments they never otherwise shop in - generally clueless. Let me give you an example that I can relate to - men shopping in the ladies clothing department. Oh, we're a mess. Now, if you need a good laugh; you're feeling a little down, you ought to go to the ladies garment department somewhere; especially the more personal the item is, the funnier it is to watch men shopping. They're slightly embarrassed, generally incompetent at what they're doing, and it's very important if you're going to go shopping for a woman during the Christmas season that you get the woman's size: your wife, your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, or whatever. And you trust that the tags are right, of course, on the size. You know that a small had better be a small, because you don't know anything. A large had better be a large. Now, you want to know how to sow some confusion and have some fun? (Don't anybody do this, please.) Imagine if someone snuck into that store late one night and just changed the tags around. Well, people would make a lot of wrong choices, all because the sizes were wrong. Now, that doesn't happen to clothes, but it does happen to people, and it takes the Christmas Story to straighten out small and large.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How Christmas Rightsizes the World."

Our word for today from the Word of God is found in Luke 1:52-53. Mary is pregnant; she's carrying the baby Jesus, and we get a little idea of the insight God has given her as she prays this prayer, what is often called The Magnificat. She says, "God has brought down rulers from their thrones, but He has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, but He has sent the rich away empty."

You know, Mary has the right sizes on the right people. She has the smalls on the small, and the bigs on the big. You see, the world would call these the big people - those people who are called rulers and rich. But she says, "the rulers have been brought down. The rich have been sent away empty." God's heroes - the people the world calls small. They're identified as the humble, who He lifts up, and the hungry, who He fills up.

You see, what is a big deal to men is a little deal to God - big deal like money, gifts, title, fame. That's a little deal to God. Conversely, what's a little deal to men: "You don't have much money. You don't have much influence. Not many people know you. You're average." See, that's a big deal to God. You hear people say all the time, "Well, I'm just a... I'm just a student. I'm just a mother. I'm just a secretary. I'm just a helper. I'm just a Sunday school teacher. I'm just a laborer. It's just a small church. It's just a little class. I'm just a choir member." With God, there are no "just a's," not in God's value system.

Bethlehem, we're told, was "little among the villages, but out of you (little village) will come the Prince," Mary, the peasant but the Mother of God's Son. Shepherds, the outcasts of their society, the first evangelists. I wonder if you have the two qualifications for God's heroes: humble, which means you are totally depending on the Lord, and hungry, restless to know and serve Him more. God likes to make folks like that big for Him - the humble and the hungry.

Remember to give attention to the people others ignore. They're the big people to God - children, the poor, the powerless. Oh, by the way, don't ever call yourself "just a..." again. God does His biggest things through the smallest instruments. Call big what God calls big. Make sure you've got the right size.

Every day the people who broadcast the news to us have to decide what's going to be big news and what's going to be little news. The big news they talk about first. And the little news may not get mentioned at all.

Unfortunately, there are often disasters that occur every day, and they may or may not be big news. Most disasters produce casualties, but casualties are sort of little news. That means people just got hurt. Then there are fatalities. And when there are fatalities, well, sadly, that makes it big news - somebody was killed. The fatality factor seems to propel news to page one. The story of Christmas has a casualty in it, a fatality and a champion.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Christmas Knockout."

Now, I know you thought this was about Christmas and it is. But we're suddenly going to be in the Garden of Eden for a minute with our word for today from the Word of God which is in Genesis 3:15. The great tragedy; perhaps the greatest tragedy of history has just taken place as Adam and Eve have chosen to disobey God. Sin has entered a perfect world, and God is already talking about the solution.

He speaks to the serpent, who is the Devil, and says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He (that's her offspring) will crush your head and you (that's the serpent) will strike his heel." Did you know that Christmas began in the Garden of Eden? The answer for sin began at the moment sin entered the world. Because God says here there will come a man ultimately descended from Adam and Eve - from the very people who perpetrated sin in the world - a man will come who will crush the serpent.

Notice the verbs here. It says the serpent, Satan, will strike the heel of the Messiah who will come. Satan's going to be able to hurt the Redeemer. That happened at the cross. But it was canceled three days later when Jesus Christ walked out of His grave. But notice what the Redeemer is going to do to the serpent - crush his head. That's the difference between a casualty and a fatality. When the Redeemer comes, Satan will receive a death blow He says.

You need to know that the Devil, for all of his interference in your life right now, is a dead man. Colossians 2:15 says "Christ disarmed the powers and the authorities, and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." If you're in Christ, if you belong to Jesus, the most the Devil can do is to wound you. You may be a casualty, but thank God you will never be a fatality. Satan tried over and over again to wipe out the Messianic line - the family from which Jesus would come. And then he tried to wipe out all the babies that were the age of baby Jesus. It didn't work. He's beaten!

Why would you ever let the Devil or his people beat you or intimidate you? God has entered human history in person. Everywhere Jesus went the forces of darkness surrendered. Everywhere Jesus goes now through your life, those forces of darkness still must surrender.

So, Christmas isn't just a warm and fuzzy little story about a baby in a stable and a star. In the battle for human lives, in the battle you're facing today, Christmas is God's knockout punch.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Green Lights on the Rescue Road."

The driver of that Critical Care Van is, of course, on an important mission and he needs green lights all the way. So do we, if we're carrying out a mission that's been given to us by our Lord. See, He's got assignments for all of us who belong to Him. He's got assignments for you. Maybe you're living out His assignment right now, or maybe you're holding back on saying "yes" to an assignment He's trying to give you. In either case, there's something decisive that you need to know. When you're on a mission for Jesus, He's the One who turns the lights green as you go. He actually promised.

1 Thessalonians 5:24, our word for today from the Word of God, is one of the places where He made that promise. It simply says, "The One who calls you is faithful and He will do it." That's it! When Jesus prompts you to do something for Him, He isn't about to leave you stranded somewhere in the middle of His mission and in the middle of His will. You can't see how it's going to get done, how it's ever going to come together. He says, "I got you into this, I'll see that it gets done!"

Where's the money going to come from? His problem. If it's God's will, it's God's bill. Where are the people you need going to come from? He's already getting them ready for you and you ready for them. How are you going to get over the huge obstacles that are in the way? The God who parts Red Seas is going to make the way for you. How can you possibly do this thing when you are so flawed, so inadequate, so ordinary? Since when is this about what you can do? With God's assignment always comes God's enabling!

Look, Jesus might be summoning you right now to undertake some work for Him. It may be here, it may be thousands of miles from here. Maybe He's summoning you to touch some lives for Him, maybe a few in your immediate world, or maybe more people than you could ever imagine. But many times, all we see are the red lights ahead. So we resist our Master's call and we miss His amazing will. Your Lord has promised to turn those red lights green - not before you move out for Him, but as you're moving out for Him.

Just like that Critical Care Van, you're carrying something that lives depend on - the Good News of Jesus Christ. There are people that He is depending on you to tell, so they can be rescued from an eternity without God and without hope. Don't let those red lights keep you sitting in the parking lot.

Now start driving toward that mission God has given you, and leave those green lights to Him!

There are certain occupations where I think you need a particularly strong self image. For example, I would think a dentist needs a strong self image. I mean, he's a professional, he's helping people, but it's just hard to have so many people dreading what you do. Or in the world of sports, like a baseball umpire? Everybody thinks they can see better than the umpire can. You can tell because they keep yelling, "Hey, are you blind?" Because they don't agree with your call. Everybody thinks they have a higher IQ than you do. They keep commenting on the intelligence of an umpire negatively just because they don't agree with him.

But you couldn't have baseball without the umpires. I mean, can you imagine the players trying to agree on whether a guy was safe or out at second? That would end the game right there. Or how about letting the fans decide? Man, there would be chaos without the umpire. So, let's say there's a dramatic play at home plate. The winning run is sliding into home plate as the ball is thrown to the catcher, there's a cloud of dust, there are thousands of voices giving their opinion whether the runner was safe or not, but there's only one voice that matters. The umpire settles it.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Own Personal Umpire."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Colossians 3:15 where God says, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace." Notice here it says that "the peace of Christ should rule in your hearts." Now, that word in the original language of the New Testament means to be the judge; the one who awards the prize. In essence, "Let the peace of Christ be the umpire in your heart."

In other words, the peace of God is your own personal umpire. As you make each day's choices, you need some way to decide what should be safe and what should be out. Well, that's the peace of Christ. You've got a lot of choices. You've got right or wrong choices, and some of them are not covered by a specific rule in the Bible. You've got to decide which way to go in a lot of situations; which option is the one God wants.

Well, the Bible says, "Let the peace of Christ decide." Let it be the umpire. Now, this peace comes as you continue to bring a choice to God. You come to Him with a blank piece of paper and you say, "God, you know what I'd like, but I'm not going to give you a contract to sign. This is my blank piece of paper. What do you want?" And as you pray it through, I think you'll find that one way you're supposed to go. One road feels right most of the time when you're praying about it when it's just you and Jesus - as you pray about it over and over again.

Now, I'm not talking about rushed prayer here. You've got to have time to let Him put His thoughts into your heart. But as you get off your knees and start to go through your day, the peace of Christ is going to be challenged by a lot of other voices - like the umpire and all those people in the stands. I mean as soon as you get with other people, God's will starts to seem a little less clear than it did when you were just with Him. There are all these other voices, but you've got to focus on the one voice that decides it.

How can you tune your peace meter so you can hear and receive the peace of Christ? Well, the next verse says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." So you need to have some increased time in God's Word. You need to memorize some verses. You need to read whenever you can, looking for a personal word from the Lord. The more you get full of God's Word, the more God has to work with in giving you His personal guidance. His peace and His Word always go together.

Human umpires? Well, they're right some of the time. God's umpire is right all the time. Why don't you offer your choices to the Lord and ask for His peace as the confirming signal in your heart, that sense that you've had a divine "OK" or a divine "forget it"? God's peace is His wonderful way of calling "Safe!" or "Out!" on the calls you have to make. And you'll always win if you go along with God's personal umpire.

It's about that time of year when you start getting all those Christmas letters from people. You know, all those family letters that tell you about all the things they've done: Junior's in Boy Scouts, Emily's in cheerleading. I've noticed there's one recurring word; it's almost like a theme that runs through all those letters. It's that little four-letter word "busy." Everybody tells you how busy they are all year long. "I'm busy, busy, busy and I have a busy, busy, busy family."

I don't know how it is at your house, but the race is at full speed in most of our homes right now getting ready for Christmas: The dinners, the parties, the shopping, the wrapping, the churching, the decorating, entertaining, and driving. Aren't you tired just hearing about it? It's amazing that the angels introduced this season by saying, "Peace on earth." Christmas seems more like a time when instead of peace on earth we're "going to pieces" doesn't it?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have "A Word With You" today about "How Did Martha Get In The Christmas Story?"

Well, in the midst of all this Christmas chaos, I want to blow the whistle, call a time out, and ask an important question, "How did Martha get in the Christmas Story?" We'll talk about that in just a moment.

First, our word for today from the Word of God in Luke 10 - I'll begin reading at verse 38. It is not part of the Christmas Story, but then again, maybe in a strange way it is. "As Jesus and His disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha (there she is) opened her home to Him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Him and asked, 'Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me.' 'Martha, Martha' the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'"

Boy, Martha would have been a real treat during the Christmas season, don't you think? She had a way of getting all stressed out. And what was happening here was that although there was not a Christmas to celebrate, it was Jesus' season at Martha's house and she's going crazy! She would have written a great Christmas letter because she's busy. The tragedy is that Martha is so busy with the festivities of Jesus' coming, she has no time for Jesus.

Here we are, you and I, in the most Christ-conscious, Christ-honoring time our culture has. Oh, there's a lot of phony in it, but this is the most Christ-honoring time that we have. And if you and your family aren't closer to Christ at Christmas, haven't you missed the point of it all? You've wasted this golden time.

I'm realistic enough to know that you're not going to cancel all your plans...all the running around before Christmas. But if possible, how about lowering your expectations of yourself? Don't try to do a year's worth of everything in the next few days. And more importantly, stop right now and put a reserved sign on some prime time between now and Christmas. Commit yourself to quality time with Jesus each morning from now through Christmas. It will stabilize you during these stressful days.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Christmas actually crowded out your time with Christ? It's so easy to lose that time in all this busyness, isn't it? Don't! No, study the Christmas accounts in the Bible. Convene the family for some quality, spiritual time around the Lord Jesus - more than you usually do. I mean, it's going to have to be intentional - a decision.

Reach out to your lost neighbors; pray for them. Use your time in line and in traffic to worship the Lord and focus on Him. Give thanks daily for the gifts coming your way. Here comes a verb that doesn't exist. Don't get "Martha'd" this Christmas. Put Him first. Put your time with Him first. Make everything else fit around His time.

Don't get so busy with the festivities of Jesus' coming that you have no time for Jesus.

I opened the refrigerator and there it was again - the pig! Yes, years ago someone bought it, put it in the refrigerator for a while and then it disappeared. I thought maybe he'd gone to the bacon factory, but then the pig was back. See, this pig was actually plastic, and whenever you would open the door, the plastic pig started oinking at you. It's annoying, but it does make you think about what you're about to do to yourself.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The No Regrets Alarm."

Our word for today from the Word of God - very familiar verses from Matthew 6, beginning at verse 9: "This then is how you should pray." And this is what we commonly call The Lord's Prayer of course. Remember this phrase? Of course you do. "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one." How many times have you prayed that? "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." Or as some translations say, "the evil one." That's an important prayer. We almost don't think about those words. "Lead me not into temptation; deliver me from evil."

In other words, "Lord, help me see where the temptation is. Help me steer away from it. Keep me from anything that the Devil might be trying to get me to do." Well, how do you do that? That's through His Holy Spirit. In fact, Jesus said that the Holy Sprit, who He called the Comforter would do that. He said it in John 16:8. He promises "that the Holy Spirit - the Comforter - when He is come, He will convict the world of sin." He also said in John 14:26 He will "bring to your remembrance all the things that I have taught you." In other words, the Holy Spirit's going to bring to mind how Jesus feels about this.

The day you put your trust in Jesus as your Savior, God plants in your soul a sin alarm. Now somebody planted a gluttony alarm in our refrigerator - this noise that makes you stop and think before you reach for something. It was annoying, but the pig could keep you from doing something you would regret later; like how you'll feel when you step on the scale tomorrow.

We do need some noise inside of us when we're about to reach for something we're going to later regret. And God delivers us from evil if we will listen to the inner alarms He triggers when we are about to sin. He says something like, "That's not the truth; don't lie. That's not pure; don't watch it. That's going to hurt; don't say it. That's going too far; don't do it."

See, one alarm in us is what I call Scripture brakes. God brings to your mind a statement from the Word of God that keeps you from making a mistake if you listen. It's the brakes; step on the brakes. D. L. Moody said that "When you think sin you ought to think Scripture." That's why it's important to commit to memory verses that God can later use to warn you away from the edge. Psalm 119: "I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I will not sin against You."

Now, another sin alarm is what I call shame warnings. See, many of us don't carry a sense of shame from the sins of the past, and God erased those from His books if you've brought those sins to Jesus. But sometimes the shame feelings are there a long time after God has forgiven us. And that's actually not all bad, because God can remind you of the damage that comes from saying yes to that temptation, using the shame warnings from the past. Listen to those.

One other sin alarm that God uses when you're reaching for something that could hurt you is Spirit tremors. It's an uneasiness in your spirit that says, "This just isn't right." That's probably the stirring of the Holy Spirit. Listen to that inner warning. But respond immediately and put on the Scripture brakes, respond to the shame warnings, to the Spirit tremors before sin drowns them out and you grab a plateful of regrets.

After a while, I have to admit I got immune to that pig warning in the fridge. I finally just put it away. Don't do that with the Holy Spirit alarm system inside you. In God's words, "Do not quench the Spirit," because He knows the price tag for what you are about to grab.

I was in Georgia when a friend said to me, "Do you know which team is one of the best football teams in our state?" When I said I didn't know, he said, "The Georgia School for the Deaf." I've got to tell you that kind of caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting a school for the deaf to be like football champions. He said, "Man, we played them when I was in high school and you always had to get up for that game. They were always the toughest."

I began to think, how could you play football if you can't hear the signals being called? He said, "Well, they bring their band to every game and the signals are called through the drum beats, and they feel the signals through their face." Well, I couldn't do that. But they can. They've got radar I don't have because they face a challenge I haven't faced.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How Your Rough Times Can Help You Help Others."

Our word for today from the Word of God is in 2 Corinthians, the first chapter, beginning in verse 3. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of compassion, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow into our lives, so also should the comfort of Christ overflow."

Verse 3 here talks about this beautiful side of God. He's the God of all comfort. He's the God of compassion, the healing hugs of God, who brings what only He can bring us - a supernatural comfort deep inside of us where no human being can go. I hope you've experienced that.

There's a comfort cycle here. It says that we're supposed to comfort with the comfort we got from Him. This word comforting is really the Greek word that means "called alongside of to help." It's saying God comes alongside to encourage us so that we then can do that for others. The comfort isn't just for us to get comfortable. It's to fill us up with love and support that we pass on to others.

How does this happen? Well, you go through a deep valley. Maybe you lose someone, you have a season alone, some lingering illness, maybe a financial disaster, or you're abandoned, you're betrayed, and it hurts. But God does something beautiful with that hurt. He turns it into sensitivity, into radar for people who are hurting in that same area.

Joni Eareckson Toda was paralyzed as a teenager in a dive, and it was a terrible tragedy. But the worst thing that ever happened to her has given her a worldwide ministry. She knows how disabled and wounded people feel.

My friend, Jean, was abused as a girl. She's got a wonderful ministry to abused girls. My friend, Don, was raised in a broken home. He has an incredible ability to work with kids from troubled backgrounds. When you open up your hurt and your wounds to the God of all comfort, He can use you in ways you never dreamed.

When life's trouble hits you, it can be a tool either for Satan or for God. You dwell on the pain, you dwell on the people who hurt you or on yourself, and you're going to start a downward cycle of depression. That might be where you are right now.

But if you surrender to Jesus all the pain, all those people who hurt you, all the questions, you're on your way to turning a loss into a victory like those football players at the Georgia School for the Deaf. They have special sensitivity because of their loss, because of their handicap. You can too.

It might be that you're going through so many of life's troubles, so much of life's pain without the Great Comforter, without the God of all compassion because you don't have a relationship with Him. You might have a religion, but you don't know Him personally.

I tell you that Jesus came here to walk the most painful road anyone has ever walked, to die on a brutal cross to pay for the sin that keeps us from God, so the wall could come down between you and Him this very day. And all His resources are yours to walk through the pain and the storm. Our website will show you how to get started with Him - ANewStory.com.

God can give you radar from your rough times - radar that will make you the one who can be Jesus' person for another hurting person.

If you've ever listened to the fans at a college or professional football game, you know some of them are the ultimate experts at what their team is doing wrong and what they should be doing. It's just amazing some of those fans haven't been hired as, like, head coach of the team, right? After speaking for professional football chapels and getting to know some of the players, I was less than patient with their critics all around me up in the stands. I mean, I knew some of those guys on the field. I knew they had everything on the line when they played and that they were the only heroes in the game. You know, there are no heroes in the stands. Sometimes I just wanted to stand up and say to one of those guys: by the way, I never did because they were all bigger than I am. But I wanted to say, "Hey! Why don't you get out of the stands and get in the game!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Get In the Game."

I've got to wonder if Jesus isn't trying to say something like that to many of His "fans," which by the way, He has plenty of. There are millions of believers who are willing to go to Jesus' meetings, give to Jesus' causes, and cheer for the ones that are on the field. Oh yeah, and sometimes criticize from the stands how the players are playing. But Jesus doesn't need any more fans. He needs players - players who will join Him in winning some victories; some lives for the cause that He gave His life for!

In Numbers 32, where we find our word for today from the Word of God, there is a sobering picture of the spiritual dynamics in Christ's church today. The Jews are preparing to go in and challenge the Canaanites for the Promised Land. The Jewish tribes of Reuben and Gad had been told that the land God was giving them was on the East side of the Jordan - the safe side. All the other tribes would have to go in and fight for their land on the other side of the river. The "East-siders" had this great idea, "Moses, how about we just stay here with our families and set up our little homes and farms?"

Moses' reply in Numbers 32:6 comes echoing down through the centuries as a wakeup call for complacent Christians today. He said, "Shall your countrymen go to war while you sit here?" Man, I can almost hear Jesus saying that to us today. "Should persecuted Christians and struggling missionaries take all the risks and fight all the battles to reach the lost while you sit here?" Or, in other words, "Get out of the stands and get in the game!"

Later, Moses said that if they failed to leave their comfort zone and go with their brothers into the combat zone, they should "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23). Did you know that's where that verse comes from? Sin that will find you out is the sin of complacency and passivity when there are battles to fight for the Lord!

Today, the battle isn't for land, it's for lives - people who will spend eternity in either heaven or hell, people all around us and half a world away. Jesus' Great Commission to get out His Gospel cannot be delegated to a few spiritual daredevils we call missionaries. His Great Commission, His final orders before He left for heaven is always first person singular! Jesus intends for the cost and the risk of rescuing a dying world to be equally shared by all those who belong to Him! The Son of God sacrificed everything for it, and many have over the years, including this past year, sacrificed their lives for it. And many others have given their whole lives to this greatest cause in the universe.

So who are we to just sit passively in the stands, just cheering or even jeering? So many of our brothers and sisters have gone to war. How can we sit here and ask them to make all the sacrifices? There is a war to win for Jesus Christ! It's time to get out of your comfort zone and go where your Savior is - in the combat zone!

Jim cracked me up with the story he told in his recent family newsletter. He and his honey were enjoying some personal time at the Atlantic Ocean, which is really big. Jim decided to take a picture of himself and the ocean, which is really big. Later, he made a disturbing discovery which he reported this way. "I think I missed the ocean!" Which is really big. Oh, he's in the picture, but the Atlantic is nowhere to be seen. Now how can a smart guy miss something as big and as beautiful as the ocean? Well, by totally focusing on himself.

I've made that mistake. Missing the big thing because I was so focused on myself. I suspect I'm not alone.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What You Miss When You're a Selfie."

When we're hurting, when we're grieving, when we're grappling with this big problem, we tend to go inward and become all about ourselves. We miss the person we married because we're so focused on our frustrations with them. Before we married them, we magnified what we loved and minimized what bothered us. Now we're all about our frustrations with them, forgetting all we loved about them. So it's selfie time. All about me. Losing sight of the one we once could not live without. So we stop loving like we did, and they start responding to the change.

We can miss our kids the same way. By dwelling on how they're disappointing us, defying us, or distancing themselves from us. So we're sucked into a cycle of seeing - and talking about - only what they need to change. Not seeing - and talking about - the big picture of their strengths and their potential. We focus the lens on our hurt and our fear and our frustration, and we miss the big stuff. That masterpiece God made and entrusted to you in that child.

I know how much my picture can become a selfie when I'm going through a hurting time. Pain tends to make us selfish: self-centered, self-pitying and all those nasty self words. But my Bible tells me that there's always something bigger going on than the immediate situation. It's affirmed in our word for today from the Word of God from Romans 8:28, "All things work together for good to those who love God, and are called according to His purpose." And the Bible says, "I know the plans I have for you, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a hope and a future" (Jeremiah 29:11).

There's a Big Plan for my good. But I'll miss the big and beautiful part if I just focus on my pain. When my precious Karen was suddenly gone that May, my natural tendency was to be all about me - my grief, my life without her, my future.

But, thankfully, God quickly rescued me from my selfie. And He began to show me what I could become through this greatest heartbreak of my life. I can honestly say my heart is more open than it's ever been - open to God's voice, open to letting my journey help somebody else on their journey, open to broken and breaking hearts that are all around me.

What's scary is that our "selfie" can actually cause us to miss the biggest and most beautiful sight of all - the God who made us. We so want to have life our way that we live as if we've dethroned Him from the throne of our life. In the Bible's words, "Each of us has turned to His own way" (Isaiah 53:6). And, you know, all those choices where we've sort of said, "God, You run the universe, but I'll run me" - well, in the Bible's words they have "separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2). And you knew that without listening today, you could feel that gap between you and Him.

All about me. Missing the God who's the reason we're here; whose love we're made for. Who thought we were worth sending His Son to die for.

Maybe this is the day that you release the wheel of your life - your selfie life - to the One you were made to know and made to belong to. And the One who gave you your life is the One who's supposed to be running it. Would you tell Him today, "Jesus, from now on I'm yours."

Go to our website. There's so much more there about how to be sure you've begun a relationship with God. It's ANewStory.com.

The Ocean of God's great love is right there within my sight, that big thing, unless I'm blocking the view.

Our dog, Missy, had just ridden with us on a 1,600-mile round trip to Chicago and back. That was the first for her. It was a first for me to do it, too, with a dog and we both survived! Miracles still happen. Missy had been through a lot of upheavals in her routine as a result of that trip, and she'd had an exhausting two days. I can't believe now I was empathizing with our dog!

Well, anyway, all of this might explain her uncharacteristic behavior when we returned home. She just hunkered down all day long underneath this white cabinet in the kitchen. There was barely enough room for her under there, but no one could coax her out. She was a grump! She didn't come out to eat. Now the two people she responded to the most got down there and tried to speak "doggy" to her. Nothing. Finally, her primary caregiver reached her hand under there and promptly got it nipped by a dog who never did that. This was an animal with an attitude!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Ugly Times."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 13. You may recognize this as being maybe the greatest description of what love really is like in all the Bible. And in a world that's pretty confused about love, 1 Corinthians 13 is more relevant than ever. As you listen, would you think about the people you love and measure how you're treating them by these words from God?

Here's verse 4: "Love (and you could say my love for whoever) is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." See, love is not a feeling. It's not words. It's not the official status of certain people. It's an act or way of treating people - certain ways that I'd like to underscore from these verses. If you love someone it means you treat them with patience, you treat them kindly, and you look for what you can do for them, not what they can do for you. And your love doesn't get easily angered, it doesn't nip at people. Are you listening, Missy?

I think that too often we're all like the dog. We're exhausted, we're feeling low, we're thinking of ourselves a lot. Inwardly we've crawled under the cabinet, and instead of responding, we bite, we snarl, we punish people for needing us when we're low. But love is better than that. Just look at the One whose life we're trying to copy.

Look at Jesus, experiencing the greatest agony any human has ever experienced as He hangs on a cross, bearing in His soul all the hell of all of us. Is He lashing out? Is He demanding to be left alone in His pain? No, He's reaching out. Jesus - He's patient, He's kind, He's not rude, He's not self-seeking, and He's not easily angered on the cross. He's caring about the need of the man on the next cross, the needs of His mother. He's forgiving those who nailed Him there. I want to be like that, don't you?

I know that my tired times, my stressed-out times, my hurting times, a lot of times they don't bring out the best in me. I've nipped at too many people I'm supposed to love in times like that. But those are the times when love shows its true colors, when it's sacrificial, when you give it at a time when you feel like giving out.

So maybe you'd like to join me in making Jesus Lord of your ugly times. You say, "Lord, when I'm like this I'm often not like You. Please re-train me Lord. Help me to draw deeply on Your grace and Your love right now. Give me a victory in this time when I feel just like I want to focus on me. Empower me to love people in the times that I would normally be plain old ugly."

Remember, you will experience Christ's love and Christ's power on a new level as He overrules your tendency to snarl or to bite. The people around you don't need a wound from you, they need supernatural love.

There's a bridge in a park not too far from here - they take carriage rides there. It's just a bridge to most folks, but not to our son and daughter-in-law. That will always be a very special spot to them. It's where he asked her to marry him. It's interesting how a plain old piece of geography becomes forever special when something special in your life happens there: the place you were born, or maybe where you had your first date or your first kiss, or where you were married, or where some significant "first" in your life took place. When a certain place is where something important started, it will always be a special place.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Place Where Heaven Comes Down."

For many of us, there's been a place and there's been a time when everything changed, because it was there that we began our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. One day on my way to an assignment in downtown Chicago, my wife and I decided at the last second to take a certain exit ramp off the expressway. The exit sign indicated the street where I spent the first six years of my life. I haven't been back there since. And, no, it is not a cave.

We drove a few blocks until we spotted the three-story brick apartment building where my Mom and Dad, my baby brother and I lived. I knew it as soon as I saw it. We turned the corner to see if the school was still there. That old brick fortress was still standing, still a school like it was when I went there for my first day of school. Then I had to drive those three blocks to the church on the corner. It was like I was four or five years old again. My baby brother had died suddenly, and my grief-stricken father decided to take his other son to church - a place none of us ever went. I could almost see my Dad now, sitting in his old car by a side door, smoking his cigarette, reading his Sunday paper waiting for his boy to come out.

There was a choir rehearsal that night my wife and I found the church, and a nice lady took me up the long stairs to the third floor room that I remembered at the top of those stairs. That's where Junior Church met, and I choked up. I turned to my honey and I said, "This is it. This is where I asked Jesus into my heart." And there on the wall was the same image of Jesus I remembered most as a child - the Shepherd with a little lamb in His arms. Later, as I learned the Scriptures, I came to realize that in that room at the top of the stairs I had, in the Bible's words, "crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24).

I pray that if there has not been a time and a place like that for you, there will be soon...in fact, maybe today. In Genesis 28:16, our word for today from the Word of God, Jacob talks about the spot where he'd camped for the night and God showed up to change his life. He said, "Surely the Lord is in this place...how awesome is this place!" But after all is said and done, it's not the place that really matters. It's that there is a time when you open up your life to the Savior who died to pay for your sin. Jesus said it's like being born, and the birth is a definite beginning isn't it?

Has there ever been a time when you consciously gave yourself completely to Jesus as your only hope of being right with God? If you have, you know you have, whether or not you remember the exact time or place. If you don't know you have, you probably haven't.

Scripture says, "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near" (Isaiah 55:7). That could be today for you. The place might be right where you are. God is moving in your heart now and "surely the Lord is in this place." The Shepherd has come to you to pick you up and carry you from this moment on, all the way to heaven. But you've got to say yes to Him, to tell Him with all your heart, "Jesus, I'm Yours."

If that's what you want, then I would love to be an encouragement to you at this turning point in your life, like I had in that little room on the third floor so many years ago. If you'd let me have that privilege to show you the information that will secure your relationship with Jesus, I ask you to go to ANewStory.com.

This day can become your birthday and this place can become your birthplace, because you are about to be born into the family of God.

Missionary pilots are some of my greatest heroes. See, missionary pilots fly around the world and land places where you think a plane could never land. They know how to take their plane apart; they know how to put it back together again.

When I was in college, a few of my friends were in a missionary aviation course and it was tremendously competitive. They studied on campus for two years when we were there, and then if you made the list, if you made the cut, you went down south to the flight campus at an airport. I said if you made the cut. See, only half of the guys would end up going.

One Friday afternoon they posted those names, and I watched my friend sweat it out all week long. For some I think it might have been the longest week of their life. Finally the day came and there was a list. You could hear the shouting of some of the guys who had just experienced one of the most exciting moments in their life, because they found out they had made the list!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hell's Highest Compliment."

Our word for today from the Word of God: we're in Acts 19, and I'll begin at verse 13. "Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, 'In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.' Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, 'Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?' Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding."

That's a pretty enlightening passage because it appears that the forces of darkness have a list of people they consider a threat. The demons said, "We know Jesus. We know Paul. Who are you guys? Let me check the list. You're not there." These guys used the right words and they tried to do spiritual things, but they were spiritually powerless.

I always thought it would be a worthy if unusual goal to have my name known in hell. It's quite a list to be on, huh? I wonder if they've ever heard of me or you there? You don't make the list by attending meetings, or believing beliefs, or just saying Christian things, or even holding Christian offices. No, you make the Devil's list by making a difference for Christ.

Maybe you've been under fire lately. You've felt some pressure physically, or financially, or medically, maybe emotionally. It could be in your relationships. Maybe it's marital. Well, it's not time to blame everything on the Devil. I"m not a fan of that. But it is possible you made his list. Maybe you've started to take Jesus seriously for the first time in your life. Maybe you're starting to take some risks to move out for Him. Maybe you're finally moving from being a spectator to being a player for Him. Or you're daring to speak out about Jesus to lost people. Or possibly you're checking out your priorities and considering leaving your comfort zone to serve the Lord - stepping up to spiritual leadership.

Well, that means you are or you soon will be pushing back the darkness. A wise old pastor said, "The ferocity of Satanic attack upon you increases in direct proportion to your potential usefulness for Jesus Christ." That's true, but you have nothing to fear. No! The Bible says, "Greater is He that is in you than he who is in the world." But you need to know that the turbulence may be coming from the Devil, which is God's signal that it's time to get your armor on and fight with spiritual weapons. It may be that nothing is really wrong; something is very right in what's going on in your life. Your new commitment to Jesus Christ has set off an alarm bell in hell.

When you're making a difference for Jesus, you're on the enemy's list, and honestly I hope you're on it. Making that list, you might say, is Hell's highest compliment.

One of the large churches in our area started a new building and they announced it would be for community outreach. But they did something I've never seen a church do before. They gathered the congregation around the just-completed foundation of that new building and they asked them to throw something into the foundation. Now you've no doubt seen people's names on the outside of a building's foundation, especially on the cornerstone. But these folks were actually putting names inside the foundation - the names of people they care about who don't belong to Jesus yet - people they are hoping and praying will be in heaven with them some day.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Names on Your Heart."

That's what should be at the foundation of every church, every ministry, every child of God - the names of specific lost people who we want to rescue. Here's a great example of how it's supposed to work. It's in our word for today from the Word of God.

In John 1:41-42, we find that a young fisherman named Andrew has just discovered Jesus Christ. Notice his very first instinct: "The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, 'We have found the Messiah'... And he brought him to Jesus." Notice the first thing that happened was that Andrew had a name laid on his heart, a specific person he wanted to meet Jesus as he had. And we all know what a world-changer Simon Peter turned out to be because of someone who loved him enough to bring him to Jesus.

There's someone like that in your life - someone who may never make it to Jesus if you don't bring them. And God is trying to plant their name deep in the foundation of your heart, so that person becomes your own personal spiritual mission from God. You need to begin to pray what I call the 3-open prayer on their behalf right now: First, "Lord, open a door." That's a natural opportunity for you to bring up your personal relationship with Jesus. Then, "Lord, open their heart." In other words, do things in that person's heart or life that will make them surprisingly ready to hear about You. And, finally, "Lord, open my mouth." Give me the courage, the words, the tone, and the approach. Let's try those: "Lord, open a door. Lord, open their heart. Lord, open my mouth." By the way, you don't have to pray, "If it be Your will." It is.

It's one thing to talk and pray generally about all those people out there. It's something else to have a burden with a name - a burden that acknowledges your personal responsibility to be the one to introduce that person to Jesus. That's why Jesus put you in their life in the first place! You've been divinely assigned to them.

And lost people should be the consuming passion of every Christian church, every Christian ministry. Our Lord's personal mission statement was to "seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). How can ours be anything less than that?

For all of us, it's just so easy to fall into doing what's easy - which is to have a ministry that's "all about us," "by us," "to us." But Jesus is all about "them." We've got to ask Him to help us see what He sees when He looks at the people all around us. They are the future inhabitants of hell, unless someone intervenes with the love and the hope that only Jesus has.

So would you make the names of some lost people that you want to be in heaven with you part of the foundation of your life, your priorities, your passion, your prayer. They're why He came, and they are why He put you where you are.

When I visited the Gulf Coast of Florida, I got to see a couple of glorious earth turns. The sky was ablaze with color and the sun disappeared on the horizon. You say, "Excuse me, Ron, that's a sunset." Hey, wait a minute. Are you from the 14th century or something? The sun doesn't set, it doesn't move! The earth moves! As it makes its revolution, your point on earth turns away from the sun every 24 hours. So that would be an earth turn, right? And we say the sun sets. Well, the earth is turning and you can see how mankind got it wrong for so many centuries. I mean, it looks as if the sun is revolving around the earth. It revolutionized a lot of thinking when people finally understood what was revolving around what.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Changing World, Unchanging Truth."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Timothy 3:16. It says this: "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." Verse 17: "so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Now, what this is really saying is the Bible is the sun - God's unchanging, unmoving truth. Everything else has to revolve around what God's Word says. God's Word on any subject is the final word.

If you read this passage, it's written in the context of a time when Paul is predicting that moral values will be in total confusion, when wrong's going to seem right, when what's right will seem wrong. Doesn't that sound familiar? It's a time when imposters and false ideas will be deceiving many people. And so God's instructions to Timothy are, "You continue in what you've learned and become convinced of what you've learned from infancy - the Holy Scriptures."

In other words, you've got to stay where you are. Don't let anything make you compromise on what God's Word says. It's unsettling to see that some research indicates that only about a fourth of America's Christians are sure there's absolute truth. We're shaky on this authority issue, especially when it comes to areas that cramp our style or require us to change or go against what our group or our culture says is true today. We sometimes try to make our idea the sun, and then we try to make the Bible a planet that revolves around it. We put more weight on what is politically correct or culturally correct than what is biblically correct.

In academic circles, for example, there's this subtle temptation to submit the Bible to whatever your discipline is, whether that's the current trend in sociology, or literature, or the arts, or science. Well, you've got to submit your discipline to the Bible. God's Word is the final word of origin of the universe and the origin of man. And any explanation that says God did anything other than instantly creating a fully developed adult is wrong. God's Word is the final word on divorce, on re-marriage, on sexuality, whether it's hetero or homosexuality. Or what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man. It's the final word on justice, on wealth, on sex, on the value of an unborn life.

No mental contortions can neutralize God's authoritative Word on the subject. You do no one a favor by trying to make God's Word more acceptable by diluting what it says. We stand on this book, and I hope every day as we're together this book becomes more practical and more living in your life.

The planets in our world are in chaos as human wisdoms are confusing, they're colliding. But God gave us this brilliant sun, one settled, unmoving, always true authority to keep the planets in the orbits they belong in - the Word of Almighty God, the Bible. People came out of the dark ages when they realized that the sun did not revolve around them.

We come out of the darkness when we realize and we never compromise the final centrality of the Bible in our personal universe, and when we put the planets of all those other ideas where they belong - in orbit around the sun of the Word of God.

I always look forward to it as one of the season's great Christmas moments - the lighting of that towering Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. And it's happening this week!

I remember one year that it was just a tad more exciting, for me anyway, because I had sort of a second-hand personal connection. The tree came from the farm owned by our good friends' daughter and son-in-law. They were chauffeured to ringside (actually rink-side) seats for the big show. So, not only did I get to watch the tree and the performers. Hey, I had, like, friends on the front row!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Rockefeller Center Christmas - Ringside Seats at the Tree."

Apparently, the NBC "tree scouts" look for evergreen candidates year-round. And one of them spotted this one, driving down Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania. It was readily visible from the highway and he liked what he saw.

In the months leading up to the tree being cut down, the "treeologists" (I don't know if that's a word) would come with a large tractor trailer full of nutrients for Mr. Spruce. They wanted to be sure he was in good health for his moment of glory!

Rachel, our friends' daughter, describes herself as a "big Christmas elf." She said the giant tree was the only thing at her home she didn't decorate for Christmas. And now it was going to be decorated big time for all the world to see! You could say she was slightly excited.

I suppose our friends have viewed the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree as we always have - a nice Christmas event. But not last year. No, it went from being just an event to an unforgettable personal experience!

And thinking about that just rang a bell suddenly in my heart, because the whole Christmas thing can be much the same - a warm, cuddly event, inspired by the familiar story of that baby born in the Bethlehem manger. But it's a lot more than that for me. The event became a life-changing personal experience. When I realized the ultimate meaning of the events that night in Bethlehem, I saw that it was all about the tree.

In a sense, the shadow of that tree looms over the starlight in the manger. This child is here on a mission - a rescue mission. And that mission will take Him, 33 years later, to the tree. A Roman cross on a skull-shaped hill.

In our Word for today from the Word of God we learn in 1 Peter 2:24. "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree." Christmas was for a cross - the place where the baby of Bethlehem would become the Savior of the world by taking on Himself the death penalty for every human sin. "He bore...on the tree" every hurting thing, every dirty thing, every selfish thing, every angry thing, every wrong thing of every person who ever lived.

For a time, the horrific death of Jesus Christ on a cross was just an event to me. Remembered on Good Friday. A belief to be believed. A religious symbol. But one day it became so much more. It went from an event to the most profound personal experience of my life. When it hit me, "What's happening on that cross is...well, for me. For the sinning I've done. For the punishment I deserve."

And that's the day I was given a ringside seat at the tree, when my heart melted at the love this Jesus has for me - enough to die for me. I enthroned Him that day, not as just the Savior, but as my Savior. And that changed everything. As it has, and as it will, for anyone who makes what happened on that tree "for me."

I wonder if you've ever done that? Have you ever taken this man who loved you enough to die for you, who is your only hope of heaven. Have you ever taken what He died for? He's the only one who can forgive the sin that will keep people out of heaven. Have you ever said, "Jesus, I want to make what You did on that cross personal for me, and take the event and make it my personal experience"? Would you tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm Yours."

We can give you more information about being sure you belong to Him. Just go to our website - ANewStory.com.

Christmas begins at a stable. Life begins at a tree.

I was in one of those "big box" stores over the weekend - and Santa was strolling the aisles wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. I told my wife, "It was fun to see Santa. I was just a little surprised to see him carrying pepper spray on his belt." (OK, I made that part up.) But the thought never would have occurred to me, except for that crazy Black Friday and all the headlines. People getting pushed, punched, sprayed, hospitalized, and even shot - all in the frenzy to get some coveted item cheap.

Well, there was this image on a news organization's website that was almost laughable - if it weren't more sad than funny. Pictures captioned with the day's major headlines kept rotating across my screen. First came the photo of pre-dawn bargain-hunters massing outside the store - caption: "Shoppers Show Up in Droves." Next picture - hundreds of thousands of Egyptians massing in a square in their capitol city, and it said: "Crowd Swells in Cairo's Tahrir Square."

You're right! They were there trying to bring down at that time a dictator. I smiled - and then I sobered - at the contrast. One crowd fighting for bargains. Another crowd fighting for freedom. I was ready to put those pictures side-by-side with the caption of my own: "So what are you fighting for?"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Black Friday Battles."

I'm not against bargains. I like them. But the contrasting agendas of those Black Friday crowds were reminders to make sure that I'm investing myself in the battles that really matter. Even though there are less important battles that constantly jockey for my attention and for my time.

We find our lives filled with the pursuit of more house, more money, more Facebook friends, more fun, more title, more commitments, more sports, more gadgets, more entertainment. We dance to the music of a culture that tells us what we must have, what we must see and do. We put our energies more into having than giving, into activity - more than relationships, into maintaining church programs - more than moving out to reach people who are clueless about our Jesus.

Christians choose to define themselves by the ten percent that divides them rather than the 90% that unites them. Couples fight over petty differences instead of fighting for their marriage. Relationships between family, friends, business people often focus on the insignificant rather than what really matters and really is important. Church folks fight over music styles and personal slights instead of fighting for the lost and for the hurting people just across town.

Jesus said to stop running after all these "temporaries" that possess the lives of people who live like this world is all there is. And our word for today from the Word of God says, in Matthew 6:32-33, "seek first the kingdom of God." In other words, the things that God thinks are worth living for and fighting for. Like the hard work of a happy marriage, strong relationships, building kids who have a Jesus of their own. Like the ever-living, never-dying souls of the people you know, and the powerless and broken people who break the heart of Jesus and ought to break ours.

I love this high tribute to David, the "man after God's own heart." It says, "He fights the Lord's battles" (1 Samuel 25:28). After all, those are the only ones worth fighting.

Maybe it was the dumb voices I did. But the kids used to love it when I read "Winnie the Pooh" to them. Tigger with his irrepressible "hoo-hoo!" bouncing everywhere. And Eeyore with his head down and his ever-present gloom. I'd rather be Tigger than Eeyore maybe without the bouncing. I mean, I want to be the one to leave sunshine in the room, not storm clouds.

That's not so easy. There's plenty to make us Eeyores: overheated schedules, grumpy folks, medical battles, family tension, too little sleep, long delays, aggravating pain, and aggravating people who are a pain. And then there's the antidote - thanksgiving. Well, actually, giving thanks. That may be the difference between being the joy-bringer or the joy-killer.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Tigger, Eeyore, and Thanksgiving."

The "inventors" of our Thanksgiving exemplify that difference. According to H. U. Westermayer, "The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than those who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving."

There's Thanksgiving, the holiday. Then there's thanks-living, the lifestyle. It's the difference between the dirty window and the blessing glasses. Yep! See, when I look out a dirty window, the whole world looks yucky. Even the really good stuff is dimmed by all the caked-on dirt that's coloring my view.

If you've decided your role in life is "victim," it's going to be hard for you to see much that's positive through that window: abused, neglected, abandoned, misunderstood, passed over, or wounded - that's real hurt. But to let those who hurt you define you? That's a self-imposed sentence of despair; denying the many good things because they don't fit the victim narrative - living as a prisoner of your past.

Unthankfulness, for whatever reason, breeds some ugly offspring. In Romans 1, God describes how humans end up doing unthinkably depraved things and where that downward slide starts. "They wouldn't worship Him as God or even give Him thanks...their minds became dark and confused" (Romans 1:21 NLT). Okay, here it is. Unthankful heart - dark mind, bitterness, resentment, depression, anger, rebellion against God. They come from an ungrateful heart.

Yes, you can choose to go through life looking out your dirty window, seeing all that's wrong. Or, you can choose to put on your blessing glasses that enable you to live, not in denial of the bad stuff but celebrating the goodness of God all around you if you have eyes to see it.

And those blessings are always there: the ever-changing masterpiece of the Ultimate Artist all over the sky, the yard, the smile of a friend, the laughter of that child, the roof over your head, the food in the fridge, the job you have, that person who cares. We call them "God-sightings."

Actually, thanks-living isn't just an option for a follower of Jesus. It's a command. "Always be joyful." How am I going to do that, for heaven's sake? Well, in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 and 18, where it says, "Always be joyful." It also says, "Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Jesus."

When you look at life through blessing glasses, all kinds of good things blossom: joy that's from what's happening in your spirit, not your situation, peace that banishes anxiety, faith that sees a God who's bigger than whatever is bigger than you are.

Thanksgiving's a great time to become intentional about collecting blessings, not burdens. Living "with gratitude in your hearts to God."

For me, that thanks begins, not at a turkey-filled table, but at an old rugged cross where I once again allow myself to be leveled by the love of my Jesus who took my hell so I can spend forever in His heaven.

Thanksgiving and thanks-living begin with the love that will never let me go.

When our kids were growing up, the early morning shift around our house was particularly exciting. I was getting ready for a full day, three kids were scrambling to have what they needed for school, my wife was playing maid, chef, valet, and chauffeur. Man! In the rush, a lot of our communication was basically non-verbal. For example, one morning I was shaving and thinking through this endless list of things I had to do that day - all the Lord's work, of course. I was mulling over a sermon, radio programs, an important appointment that day, an event I was planning, and my son popped in. Now, I must have somehow succeeded in telegraphing how much I had on my mind (the Lord's work, remember? Right.) - he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. Then, as I was praying about all the Lord's work I had to do that day, I remembered an important decision my son had to make that day, one that he probably needed to talk to his father about. I had just missed the Lord's work.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Mission at Your House."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from John 4:30. Jesus has just had a transforming conversation with this Samaritan woman He met at a well, and she goes back to tell her village about the Messiah she has just met. The Bible says, "They came out of the town and made their way toward Him." The disciples, who have been in the village shopping for groceries, are just focused on trying to get Jesus to eat some lunch.

But with these unreached Samaritans streaming out of the village toward them, Jesus says, "Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest?' I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." To Jesus' disciples, this village was just a rest and refueling stop. Apparently they were looking ahead to some great future ministry and missing the ministry right under their noses!

Sounds like this father shaving, thinking about the ministry he had ahead of him and missing a son who needed some ministry right there. All too often we're like what I was that busy morning or the disciples were that lunch time in Samaria. We miss the work of God that's right under our nose. In fact, you don't even have to leave your home to do the Lord's work. Actually, the work of God begins at home! That's one reason the qualifications for spiritual leaders in 1 Timothy 3 tell us that it must be someone whose relationship with their spouse and their children is healthy.

So we often fill up our lives with ministry responsibilities, only to reach other people's kids while missing our own, to bring blessing to God's house while neglecting our first responsibility - the congregation at our own house. Many husbands and wives, children and parents have been the victims of a distorted view of God's work - that you have to leave home before you start doing ministry. You know, your family may be the most important ministry you will ever have.

This doesn't mean you withdraw from every spiritual responsibility outside your home, but it does mean you take care of the Lord's work at home first. Maybe your unbelieving family member would be better reached by your staying home with them sometimes than by your going to a meeting to pray for them. Your mate, your child may need your ear, your encouragement, your counsel. And they may need it at least as much as anyone you're going to see at your meeting.

So look around your house for those needs that are there before you go charging off somewhere else to start doing the Lord's work. Sometimes the most important Lord's work you have to do is right there under your nose!

We met Dan and Rita and their dog when we took our Native American team to a reservation in South Dakota. They live in this dusty little village, doing their best to make a difference for the people there. They've got this little dog named Gal. Now most dogs are pretty aggressive in meeting strangers - they come right up to you, even on you. But not Gal. No, she retreats when she sees people. She cowers actually; she trembles. Dan and Rita explained why. Their dog had been severely abused by several previous owners before they got her. So she has a hard time trusting even people who want to treat her right, but she's missing a lot of loving that way.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Where Trust Is Born."

Wounded, then afraid to trust, and missing a lot of love. That's not just the life story of a dog. It's a life story of millions of people. It might be your story. You've been betrayed by people you should have been able to trust - abused, abandoned, deeply hurt. And it's hard for you to trust anyone. You've just been hurt too often.

It's even hard for you to trust someone who wants to treat you right. Maybe even the Person who wants to give you the deepest love a human being can ever experience, and that would be God. You're not even sure how you feel about Him. There have been tragedies you don't understand, there've been questions you can't find answers for.

And even though all those children sing that little song, "Jesus loves me, this I know," you can't sing their song because you haven't really trusted Him with everything you've got. You've never really experienced this "I will never leave you" love. In fact, that's the promise Jesus made to those who belong to Him. He said literally, "I will never leave you or forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5).

If you struggle to trust even the God who has the love and the healing you need, I ask you to consider our word for today from the Word of God. It's from Romans 8:31-32. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" Someone might be asking, "Is God for us?" Here's the answer: "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all - how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?"

God says, "If you want to know if you can trust Me, come to My Son's cross." Because the only way for you and me to belong to God is to have the death penalty for our sin paid. God gave up His Son to pay it. God really doesn't want to lose you. He really does love you. Just look at His Son, hanging on that bloody cross, pouring out His life in exchange for yours.

Stand at the foot of the cross and try to get these words out, "I don't know if I can trust You." It's pretty hard to say those words there, because you've finally found the one person you can totally trust. Because the Savior who loves you enough to die for you will never betray your trust. He will never do you wrong! Who else can you count on to love you like that for now, forever?

Trust is born at the cross of Jesus when you let the walls around your wounded heart finally come down, and when you say, "Jesus, I need a Savior. I need to be forgiven. I need Your love. Jesus, I'm Yours."

If you've never done that, let today be the day you let His love flood into your hurting heart. I want to invite you to go to our website, because it's there for someone who is ready to begin their relationship with Jesus. I hope you'll go there today - ANewStory.com.

There's more love waiting for you than you ever imagined you could have. The arms of Jesus are wide open, extending to you hands that have nail scars in them - proof of how much He loves you. Now, it's your move.

Professional football wasn't the same for me once I began to have the opportunity to speak at NFL chapels. All of the NFL teams have chapel services before their games. And so, a few hours before game time, I had the opportunity to meet in a hotel conference room with a number of the players; sometimes from our local team, sometimes from a visiting team. And the players were so intense! I mean, it was a lot more than a game to them. By the time that day was over, their career could have been in jeopardy, their income was on the line, sometimes what shape their body was in was on the line.

Then, because they often gave me two tickets, I would go to the stadium. And there I saw those wonderful, courteous New York fans. There they were out in the parking lot with their little grills having a party and passing their six packs. Then they'd go into the stadium and here is this guy; he's kind of the stereotypical football fan. He's got, you know, a lot of six packs that he's been carrying around in his stomach apparently for a number of years stuffed into some New York Giants or Jets shirt. He's got a Budweiser hat on. He's passing more down his way, and he's yelling and screaming. He knows all the players by their first name of course. Well, at least it sounds like it. And he knows how to play every play; he's very quick to criticize.

Of course, because I know how intense it is for the guys on the field because I've been with them, I just want to stand up and say, "Hey, Buddy, why don't you just be quiet for a little while? Why don't you get out of the stands and get in the game? Let's see how you do." Look behind you right now. Maybe there's someone telling you that.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Get In the Game."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians 4, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 11. "It was God who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers." Now why do we have all this here? Well, we're about to find out the reason why we have all these sermons you've heard in your life, and all the Sunday School lessons you've ever heard, all these guys talking at you from radio. Why all of this? Why is that all happening?

Here's why: It says to prepare God's people for works of service. See, that's why you've gotten all this input you've been getting spiritually all these years. It isn't so you can just be smart about God. It's to get you ready to do something... "for works of service." So many of us are willing to go to the meetings, put some money in the offering, and maybe do some low-risk jobs. But we're like that fan in the stands. We like watching, maybe criticizing. We don't mind kind of being on the fringes and sometimes even telling those players on the field how to play better.

Well, see, Jesus has enough fans. He doesn't need any more fans. He needs players, and it could very well be that He's had you tune in today so you could hear these words, coming from Him, not from me, "Get out of the stands and get in the game."

Someone has wisely said, "In the first reformation the people of God were given the Word of God. Now a second reformation is needed where the people of God will be given the work of God." See, God has work for you to do; not just to go to Bible Studies and attend meetings and sing the songs and support ministries. It's time for you to play! There's someone only you can share Christ with. You're closer to that lost person than any other believer.

There's a group that maybe He wants to burden your heart for. There's someone who needs your time, your attention, your experience. In American Christianity we like to assign all of it to a few spiritual athletes. We call them pastors, missionaries, youth leaders. How about they take all the risks for us? But Jesus says we are all to be out on a limb, taking risks to serve Him.

Why don't you be one of the heroes on the field? There are no heroes in the stands. Dare to say, "Lord, what would You have me to do?" You've spent enough time watching. Now get out of the stands and get in the game.

One football team owner called it "the single most impressive symbol of being a champion in all of sports." Yep, he was talking about the National Football League's Super Bowl ring. The rings on Super Bowl champions are worth many thousands of dollars each one! Can you imagine losing something that valuable, that irreplaceable? Former Oakland Raiders champion, Gene Upshaw, can remember that. Yeah, he can imagine it. To keep his Super Bowl ring safe at home, he put it inside a bank that looked like a Pepsi can. Problem: he forgot to tell his housekeepers. You know where this is going? Yep, they mistook the bank for an empty pop can and tossed it out, ring and all.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Treasure In Your Mirror."

That was a costly mistake - trashing treasure because of the container it was in. Well, that's a mistake many people are making. Except the treasure is themselves. And maybe we needed to talk about this today because maybe you're throwing away a treasure called you.

Now you may not feel very valuable right now. Maybe you're not feeling very good about how you look, or what you weigh, or the fact that you're still single. You're not sure how much you're really worth. But you're making the same mistake those housekeepers made when they threw away that ring - judging the worth of what's inside by the container you come in.

It could be that you feel pretty worthless because you've been passed over, put down, rejected, maybe abandoned, or maybe abused. And the tragedy is that you may have been throwing yourself away because you don't know how valuable you are. There are a lot of ways to throw yourself away. You can throw yourself away sexually, socially by the people you hang out with, chemically, alcoholically, just by giving up or withdrawing, maybe even thinking suicide.

But you have worth that you'll never see just by looking in a mirror or basing it on how other hurting people are treating you. If you want to get an evaluation of your worth, you've got to go to the One who created you. He's the one who knows your value. In our word for today from the Word of God in the Bible, in 2 Corinthians 6:16, your Creator says, "We are the temple of the living God. As God has said...'I will be their God, and they will be My people...I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters,' says the Lord Almighty."

Did you hear what the God of the universe says about those who belong to Him? They're His temple that He lives in, His people that He walks with, sons and daughters of the King! If you don't feel like you are priceless treasure, maybe it's because you are without the One who gave you your value in the first place; the Creator who made you as His one-of-a-kind creation. You're missing the love you were made for. And that's because, well, we've chosen over and over again to turn our back on God and do things our way.

But the Bible says God values you so much that He thought you were worth having His Son die for you! Good Friday was for you. Picture Jesus hanging on that cross. That was to pay for your sin so you could belong to Him. You'll never know how much you're really worth until you are in His loving arms.

Jesus won't make you give yourself to Him. It's your choice to finally end those self-directed, wasted years and to stand at His cross and say, "Jesus, the 'me' years are over. You love me. You died for me. I'm yours."

Why don't you make this the day that you become a member of His family. And say, "Jesus, I'm yours from this day on." There's a website I want to direct you to, it's ours. If you go there you'll find what you need to know from the Bible to be sure you belong to Jesus. It's ANewStory.com. Go there please.

Maybe you've believed that you really don't matter much, and maybe you've thrown yourself away for long enough. You mattered enough to Jesus that He poured out His life for you. Isn't it time you belong to the One who loves you most?

One way to make a lot of money in America today is to have a good book or seminar on the subject of management, especially time management. We are management crazy! Tell me how to get more from my time, how to get more done, and get other people to do things. Well, I've got some very interesting advice and it didn't cost me a dime. It was on a wall plaque. It said, "When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble."

As our society gets more complicated and more stressful we try to delegate more and more; things that we all used to do for ourselves years ago, at least in other generations. You know, a lot of kids used to be raised and educated at home. Then our culture got to the point where we delegated all of the education out to others. And now, the pendulum is swinging back to homeschooling.

And, most of us don't work on the farm very much any more, so we have to delegate the physical development that our children used to get doing all those chores on the farm to P.E. teachers so they don't turn into blobs. We can delegate house cleaning to other people if you've got a little money. There are people who say, "We'll take care of your lawn for you." You can delegate cooking to McDonald's. You can delegate a lot of things. There's one thing, one assignment, you actually cannot delegate.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Parent's 'No Delegate' Job."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Deuteronomy 6. Here we find the instructions that God gave to the Jews when they were going to have to raise their children in an atmosphere that had two challenges. Challenge number one: after having been pretty poor, now He's going to put them in an environment where they have lots; where they have plenty. They'll be affluent.

Secondly, they're going to be in the middle of a pagan culture, tempted by pagan girls, pagan guys, and pagan music. Sounds a little bit like the world in which we're raising our kids: pretty affluent culture, pretty pagan culture. Well, in that kind of a setting, God gives these instructions - couldn't be more relevant. Our word for today from the Word of God: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them upon your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

You can delegate some of the education of your children, and some of their physical development - might get someone else to drive them around. But you cannot delegate this one responsibility - helping them fall in love with the Lord. That's your job if you're a mom or dad. "Love the Lord your God," and that's supposed to come through the parents. They'll teach the kids to do that. You just can't give that responsibility to any Christian school, or leader, or organization. Only a parent can get close enough to transfer a love relationship with Christ. Others can give your child information, encouragement, examples, but the buck for shaping your child's soul stops with you.

How does it happen? Well, there are two things here. First of all, there's time spent. You can tell. It says, "as you're walking with them, sitting with them, you're there when they get up, you're there when they go to bed." We're talking about the classroom of everyday life; you have to spend that kind of time. Secondly, it happens through natural faith. "There's another person living at our house, guys." This isn't just formal devotions. You learn to love Christ as He is a real person at your house; somebody we relate to, we talk to. We talk about Him and we talk with Him in real and natural ways in the fabric of our everyday life.

Don't forget the Lord because of all the goodies of life. We fall in love with those goodies and get too busy to do our number one job. Our mission is not to create church members, or to create believers in their parent's faith. We're to raise God lovers, and that's got to begin in your own heart.

Maybe the epitaph of your life will be, "He taught us to love Jesus." No one else can do that like you can.

Some years ago, we took a delegation of teenagers to a youth conference at the Jersey Shore, and one of our volunteers was one of the counselors. One evening she left the meeting early to check on one of the kids from our group. She started walking down the Boardwalk. Suddenly she hears this cry for help from the water down below. She realized that a girl was out there in that dark ocean about to drown. So she yelled for others to come, she pulled off her shoes and she jumped into the water. She knew this was a life-or-death situation, and she said, "I just had to do something." Pretty soon a couple of men jumped in to help her and together they were able to rescue that young woman. And you know what? Our friend realized the real reason she had been out on the Boardwalk that night. Much to her surprise, she had literally been placed there to save a life!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Surprising Reason You Are Where You Are."

Now our word for today from the Word of God comes from the amazing story of Esther, which is told in the book in the Bible that carries her name. Esther was a young Jewish woman who was in Persia as part of the Jews who had been brought there when the Persians conquered her people. But through an amazing series of events, she becomes the Queen of Persia, the wife of the most powerful man in the world, but no one knew she was a Jew.

When a power-mad member of the king's court engineered this royal decree to have the Jews annihilated, the man who raised Esther sent her a message, challenging her to use her access to the king to save her people. To do so, she would literally have to risk her life because the law required that anyone who came to the king uninvited - even the queen - would be put to death unless the king extended his golden scepter to spare them, and Esther had not been summoned by the king for a month.

The challenge Esther receives is in our word for today from the Word of God, Esther 4:14, and it may very well be the challenge that our Savior has for you at this point in your life. Here it is. "Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" In other words, God has placed you where you are, not just to enjoy the benefits of your position, but to save lives!

Have you considered that maybe that's the same reason you've been positioned where you are? You work where you work, you live where you live, you go to school where you go to school, you do what you do because God has assigned you there to be those people's link to Jesus!

Some years ago, my friend Gary was talking with a woman whose dad teaches at one of America's military academies. This woman was really spiritually burdened for her dad. Gary knows a lot of influential people and he offered to call the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invite her dad to an upcoming adult outreach. Or, he said, "I'll even call a Christian cabinet member I know in this administration." But to my friend's surprise, this woman said, "No, that won't work." Gary asked her what would work - who could get through to her father. Her answer? "Another professor. Someone like him."

That's probably how the people around you are going to be reached for Christ - through someone who does what they do, lives where they live, faces what they face. And for the people around you, that would be you.

I don't know what you think of when I say the word "evangelist" - probably someone preaching on a crusade platform - but I hope you'll start to think of the man or woman in the mirror. Because all that is, is someone who carries the Good News of Jesus to people who need Him. Of all of the millions of God's children, you're the one He has positioned to rescue the people around you. And where you are is your stretch of the beach and you're His designated lifeguard.

Like a young woman near the ocean that night, like that Jewish girl placed in a strategic spot, you've been placed where you are to save someone who is dying - eternally if they die without Christ. You're not there just to enjoy your spot. You are there to save lives!

My son had the privilege of playing football for one of the best coaches in our state. Now, he had six years of championship football behind him when he took over our team. And they managed to win a conference championship every season, or in some cases, they won the state championship. One of the reasons is that he was a genius at knowing what position a boy would play best. Of course the player didn't always agree with that.

I was there in the locker room on some of the days when that coach announced that he was changing a certain player's assignment. And man, there were not happy campers in the locker room. There were cries of, "Hey, I'm a tackle! Coach, I'm an end. I'm a linebacker! What's he putting me in that position for?" Well, they weren't grumbling by the end of the season. By that time they were on a championship team and very often they received honors for playing the position he had assigned them to. But at the time the change was made, it didn't feel very right.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When the Coach Changes Your Assignment."

Paul's coach changed his assignment. Our word for today from the Word of God talks about it. It's Philippians 1:7 - Paul is writing from prison. Here he had been out preaching, building churches, and the coach said, "I've got a new assignment for you." I don't know how the player felt, but I can see how he is handling it. Because he says three different things - first in verse 7: "Whether I'm in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me." First, God's grace is carrying him through his change of assignment.

Secondly in chapter 1, verse 12, he says, "I just want you to know that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel." So secondly he says, "Look, the kingdom's being advanced whether I'm doing it or not." Then in chapter 1, verse 20, he's got a third source of encouragement. He said, "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death." Even here, even under these circumstances, whether by life or death.

He's saying, "Hey, look! I've got a new platform - this prison cell is a new platform, and the people here are watching me. You're watching me here. How am I handling it? It's a new platform from which I can honor my Jesus.

Maybe the coach is changing your assignment right now! It's the coach's right to do that. Players don't assign themselves. Maybe he's assigning you to a new job, or maybe he's pushing you to take on a larger responsibility than you feel ready for. Maybe, on the other hand, he's asking you to play a background, supporting role when actually you'd like something bigger where people will see you more.

Maybe he's assigned you to a hospital bed, or a nursing home, or to some physical restrictions; to singleness. Paul handled the changes in his life with three encouragements: number one, grace enough no matter where the assignment is. The grace always equals the assignment. Paul had decided "God, it's Your kingdom come, not my kingdom come." And he knew that God's Kingdom would be advanced by him being where God assigned him, not where he assigned himself.

Then thirdly, that God can give you a platform anywhere from which you can glorify Christ. And so Paul is able to say in chapter 4, "I have learned wherever I am to be content, because I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." Don't be afraid of the coach's assignment. He knows His players; He knows just the right spot for you. So trust the coach. He's never been wrong about anyone who plays on His team."

There are few words that strike more fear into hearts in Middle America than the word "tornado." I grew up there. I mean, twisters can hit so suddenly and they do horrific damage. That was proven again when some deadly tornadoes tore through Oklahoma back in 1999. In fact, one of those was so strong it was almost classified as an F6, which would have created a whole new category of tornado. The story I saw on the evening news was pretty amazing. After hearing one of those tornado warnings for the tornadoes in Oklahoma that day, a mother and her adult daughter went into a room in their house for safety. It's called a safe room or a strong room, and it's built with concrete that's reinforced with metal. And it's built to withstand even a hit by a tornado. Well, sure enough, the tornado hit that house and there was basically nothing left except for one room - the safe room. And when it was all clear, the mother and daughter walked out unscathed in a neighborhood where virtually everything else had been blown away.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Safe Room for the Storm."

There are moments for all of us when we get hit head-on with the emotional equivalent of an F5 tornado. There are some of life's hits that threaten to blow away everything we've depended on. A divorce can do that, a disease can do that, a disappointment, boy...the death of someone you love - an anchor person. That sends everything spinning. We know that most of what matters to us is something we can lose, right? And if and when we do, there is sometimes not much left but the pieces.

We need a safe room. We need some place in our life that can withstand any blow that will still be there when the storm has moved out. In fact, we can never really be secure unless we know we have something we can't lose. Well, actually, someone. We've already lost enough in our life to know that our heart is hungry for one relationship that we'll never lose - that no storm can take away from us. A relationship like the one that's described in our word for today from the Word of God in Romans 8:39.

God Himself, the Creator of you, promises unequivocally that "nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." In fact, just before this promise, God enumerates some of the most violent tornadoes that life can hit us with - and then He says that none of those, "nothing else in all creation," can take away this one anchor love, this unloseable relationship.

It turns out that this is the relationship the Bible says we were created for, the one with our Creator God. But it's also the relationship the Bible says we've all missed because we've done our life our way instead of God's way. We haven't lived for Him, we've lived for ourselves. So we're locked out of the safe room of belonging to God forever. That's why no love has ever been enough love - why your heart's never really been at peace. But notice, God says the love of God is "in Christ Jesus our Lord."

See, that's because Jesus opened the way to belong to God. He tore the lock off the safe room door by dying on the cross to pay the death penalty that you and I deserve. He really loves you. And He's waiting to welcome you into the safe room of this awesome love relationship with God, if you will grab Him as your Savior with all your heart.

Don't you want to live in this love, experience this love forever - God's unloseable love? Then tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours." And let me invite you...urge you, really, to go to our website - ANewStory.com. Your new story can begin with the information that's there.

Ask anyone who has faced a major life storm with Jesus in their heart. They will tell you that He was still there when everything else was blown away. The safe room door is open for you, and Jesus is waiting to welcome you into the one love that you will never, never lose.

Not many parents can sleep real soundly until they know their children are in for the night. At our house, we asked our kids - big teenage guys to stop by our room no matter how late it was and just say, "Hey, we're here." Sometimes they get delayed, or sometimes they're in a situation where they couldn't call. And it's natural, I think, for a mom or a dad to be anxious until they can get a fix on where their kids are, and the great time of relief is when they come in the door and we know everything's okay. Right? I guess some of the most beautiful words in the English language are, "Mom, Dad, I'm home." Maybe you know a child who's way overdue.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mom, Dad, I'm Home."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 7, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 12. "As Jesus approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out; the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. Now, a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, His heart went out to her and He said, 'Don't cry.' Then He went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying stood still." This is truly a dramatic moment here. "He said, "Young man, I say to you, 'Get up!'" The dead man sat up and began to talk. And Jesus gave him back to his Mother. They were all filled with awe and praised God."

That's a powerful story! And the most touching words of all for me are these, "And Jesus gave him back to his Mother." You know, Jesus is still in the business of giving children back to their parents, even when it appears hopeless they'll ever come back. Maybe you or someone you know has a son or a daughter who's away right now; spiritually, emotionally, physically. My word of encouragement is this simple word from the Lord. He's still in the business of giving children back to their parents.

I don't know, for some reason, I just thought that this day should be the time when we should talk about this for someone who needs that little word of encouragement.

Maybe you know better than I do why we're talking about this today. Sometimes maybe it seems like your prayers just are not being answered for the one you love. But remember, much of God's work is invisible. Like plants getting ready to sprout and come out, and flowers blooming in the spring. We don't see anything going on all winter, looks like nothing is going on under the ground. But God is at work all the time. Much that God is doing to bring that child home, you can't see. But you'd better believe it's going on under the ground where you can't see it.

Secondly, the hound of heaven - the Holy Spirit - pursues that child wherever he goes. They can get away from you; they can't get away from Him. Thirdly, open arms do more than open mouths to bring kids home. Sometimes we can talk too much and push them so hard we actually push them away from the Lord. The Father of the prodigal son didn't chase the son. He just kept his arms open for him to come home.

And then fourthly, remember God does answer prayer. Release that child again to the Lord. Don't try to do God's job of changing that child's heart. I understand that John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace said his conversion came in a storm at sea with a mast crashing down on him as he cried, "My Mother's God save me!" And her prayers were answered.

Continue to claim that child for Jesus Christ. Do not give up! "Be not weary in well doing, for in due season you will reap if you do not give up!" Jesus is still in the business of bringing kids home to their parents and home to Him. Because of His love, I believe one day you will hear, "Mom... Dad... I'm home."

My friend, Alan, was working with a carpenter friend of his on a building project. Out of the blue, Alan sprang this rather unusual question on the carpenter, "Do you know what the most powerful nails in the world are?" The craftsman paused on his ladder for a moment and then he said, "I don't know. US Steel?" Alan said, "No. The strongest nails in the world are the three nails that held Jesus Christ on His cross." Well, then Alan just walked into the other room. A few minutes later, the carpenter called for Alan. He said, "Man, you've got to help me. Every time I drive a nail now, it's like I'm nailing Jesus to the cross." My friend said, "Well, in a way, we did."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Strongest Nails in the World."

For some people, Jesus' death on the cross is just history. For others, it's a religious event. To some of us, the brutal death of Jesus on that Roman cross is a deeply personal event. I hope it is for you, or soon will be.

Galatians 2:20 is our word for today from the Word of God, and in it there are two words that are literally life-changing. Actually, eternity-changing. They're the difference between someone who has Christianity and someone who has Christ; between someone who has a Christian religion and someone who has a personal relationship with Jesus. Ultimately, these two words are actually the difference between heaven and hell.

Galatians 2:20 - "I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." There are the two words: "for me." One of my associates was on a plane with a man in his 30s who talked pretty openly about his years of spiritual searching. He said that as a young man he moved beyond his boyhood church and began experimenting with a buffet of spiritual beliefs and experiences. Nothing seemed to satisfy the restlessness in his heart.

Then one day he came back to visit the church he grew up in. Here's what he said: "As soon as I walked in the door, I saw something I'd seen hundreds of times as a boy - the cross at the front of the church. But suddenly I was overwhelmed with something I had never realized before, and I said out loud, "For me. What Jesus did on that cross was for me." He said his search ended that day, and the hole in his heart was finally filled.

My guess is that you know about Jesus dying on the cross. You know He died there to pay for our sins maybe. But you somehow may have missed that life-changing moment when, in your heart, you walk up to that cross and say those words, "For me, Jesus. What you're doing there is for me." When my friend said that in a way we all did help nail Jesus to the cross, he was right. Because it's our rebellion against God and against His ways, all our "my way" choices that left us cut off from God and under His death penalty until Jesus came and did all the dying for all our sinning. And in reality, it wasn't the nails that kept Him on the cross. After all, He's the Son of God! No, it was His deep love for you that kept Him there 'till your bill was fully paid with His life.

If you've never had your "for me" moment with Jesus, it could be this very day right now and right where you are. Would you tell Him, "Jesus, I'm taking for myself what you died to give me. You paid for my sin so I don't have to. You died for my sin so I don't have to. Now I embrace you as my Savior; as the new driver of my life. I'm taking you for me."

Hey, our website is there to encourage you and help you make sure you've begun this relationship. Go there, spend just a few minutes at ANewStory.com.

This could be your moment. This could be your day to finally make the Savior...your Savior.

On a visit to the home area where my wife grew up, she took me to this picturesque spot along the beautiful river there. When she was a little girl, she and her whole family went swimming there with the pastor of their church and his wife. That little patch of river became the scene of a dramatic rescue that afternoon. The pastor almost drowned and my father-in-law jumped in and literally saved this pastor's life. I learned recently that that pastor was one of four people that my father-in-law saved from drowning in his life. He got very serious about that when he told me the reason why. He told me about a time when he was a boy, and he literally watched two young girls drown in a river before he even knew how to swim. Immediately after that he learned to swim and to rescue drowning people. You know what motivated him? I'll tell you what, in his own words, he said, "I saw someone I couldn't rescue and I decided, right then, that it would never happen again."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Rescue Ready."

Our word for today from the Word of God, 1 Peter 3:15 - "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." Did you get those words? "Always be prepared!" to explain that hope that you found in Jesus. So, do you feel prepared to do that, always?

Why is it so important? Because of God's command. Proverbs 24:11 says, "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering towards slaughter." If you know Jesus, you know those about-to-die people it's talking about. You know who they are. Listen to Jesus' words in John 3:36 - "Whoever believes in the Son (that's Him) has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life." That's people you know, and it says about them, "God's wrath remains on him."

My father-in-law saw dying people he couldn't rescue, so he made up his mind, in his words, "to never let that happen again." He did what he had to do to learn how to be a rescuer, and he saved four lives as a result. People who are spiritually lost don't know they're dying, but you know it if you believe what Jesus said about heaven and hell. How many times have you felt like you should have said something about your Savior but you just weren't ready and another spiritually drowning person slipped beyond your grasp?

You can't do anything about those missed opportunities, and we all have a lot of those. I do. But you can make up your mind that you're going to do what you have to do to be ready for rescuing from now on. "Like what?" you say. Like thinking through how you would explain what Jesus did in the kind of non-religious words that a lost person would understand. Talk about life's most important relationship, not a religion!

I encourage people to present Christ this way. There's a relationship you're created to have. Colossians 1:16 - "All things were created by Him and for Him." But it's a relationship you don't have because of your sin; you running your life instead of God running it. Isaiah 59:2, "Your sins have separated you from your God." But it's a relationship you can have because of what Jesus did on the cross by paying the death penalty. And 1 Peter 3:18 talks about Him dying in your place.

And it's a relationship you must choose. That's all in John 3:16 - "God loved the world so much He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." But put their name in that verse.

You also get ready for rescue when you think through your personal Jesus-story - your Hope Story. How is your life different because of Jesus? They want to know what the difference is that Jesus makes.

Finally, pray daily for God to give you a natural opportunity to talk about your relationship with Jesus. Get yourself ready. We've let enough drowning people go. We've got to get ready for rescuing. Who knows how many people may live forever because you were ready!

My friend, Nathan, was on the 61st floor of Tower Two that September day when a hijacked jetliner flew into the World Trade Center. I interviewed him for a broadcast, and I was pretty deeply moved by the story Nathan told. He was coming out of the restroom when he remembers seeing a piece of burning paper floating by the window. That was his first hint of the horror that was to follow. As people began to realize they might be in danger, they did what my friend did - they headed for the stairwell. Nathan's account took me right into those stairwells, ultimately jammed with screaming people, through the terror of first the smoke starting to fill the stairwell and then finally the quake when a plane hit their building.

Our friend finally made it to the soot-covered lobby, and that's where he saw the faces he said he would never forget. He told me, "I started seeing some of the rescue workers for the first time heading toward the stairwells and directing us out. You can still remember the looks on some of those faces. They were looking just as scared as I was, I'm sure. They're some of the people that helped save my life, and they never made it out themselves."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Only Hope Of Making It Out."

My friend told me he'll be forever grateful to those rescuers who gave their lives so people like him didn't have to. He literally owes his life to them.

I wasn't at the World Trade Center that awful day. But I understand a little of how my friend feels about those rescuers because I know someone who gave His life so I don't have to die. I owe my life to Him. He's the Son of God. His name is Jesus. He rescued me. He wants to rescue you if you'll let Him.

Just before Jesus' arrival on earth, his earthly father, Joseph, was given instructions from heaven about this baby who would soon be born. In it - even before the Son of God spent His first day as one of us - His rescue mission was announced. It's in our word for today from the Word of God, Matthew 1:21 says, "You are to give Him the name Jesus (that means deliverer or rescuer), because He will save His people from their sins." Save. That's what those courageous rescuers did for my friend. They saved him from a deadly situation he could not get himself out of.

That's what Jesus came to do for you and me. Our deadly situation isn't a burning or a collapsing building; it's the eternal death penalty that the Bible says is what our sin will cost. We have hijacked the control of our life from the eternal God who made us and that has eternal deadly consequences - eternal separation from God. But God loves you more than you can imagine. That's why He sent His one and only Son into our "collapsing building," up the stairwell to rescue us. And Jesus' death on that cross was the moment when He was taking the hell that you and I deserve. He was dying so you don't have to.

Today, Jesus has come to where you are to bring you out. But He's your personal Rescuer only if you personally reach out and grab His hand as your only hope of getting out. As you reach out to Him and say, "Jesus, I have no hope of getting out from under the penalty of my sin but what You did on the cross to take it for me. No religion can get me to heaven. No amount of goodness can get me to heaven. I can't get me there. I need a Rescuer, and Jesus, you are my Rescuer beginning today. I pin all my hopes on you."

Let me ask you, let me urge you, to go to our website - ANewStory.com. Because right there you will have all the information you will need to confirm that you really belong to Jesus Christ and you are rescued.

I am a man who owes my life to the Man who brought me out at the highest possible cost to Him. He wants to do that for you. He laid down His life to rescue you, my friend. Please don't live - please don't die - without Him.

Let's take a look at Nemoria arizonaria. I'm sure you were just talking about him at lunch, right? It's a caterpillar! That's what a lot of us know him as. Now, some caterpillars are born in the spring and some are born in the summer. The spring bunch I understand, eat oak catkins. That's the dangling flowers on an oak tree. And within days, guess what? They look as fuzzy as their meal was that they ate just a few days ago. Oh, let's take the summer bunch now. They eat smooth leaves because that's what's out then. Would you believe it? They become smooth caterpillars. It's amazing! Caterpillars exemplify that old adage, "You are what you eat." They literally are. That doesn't mean you're going to begin to look like your lunch I hope. That's a scary thought. But in another way, the caterpillar dynamic is happening to you.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Healthy Diet, Healthy Heart."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Philippians 4:8. "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things." That's dietary advice. You think it's not about eating? Well it is. It's about what you consume mentally and spiritually; what you allow to come into your mind, your ears, your eyes, your heart. And if it isn't noble, and true, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable, you've got no business listening to it. You have no business dining on it mentally.

The Bible says, "As a man thinks in his heart so is he." You are what you eat. That's why Proverbs 4:23 says, "Guard your heart. Be careful what you let in there; it's the wellspring of life." Your mind is being programmed and shaped even today by what you hear, what you watch, what you laugh at, and your music. The subtle thing is you don't feel like anything's happening. You don't say, "Oh, I am now being programmed. I am now being influenced." You don't know it.

But input is what creates thoughts, and thoughts become fantasies and attitudes. And those attitudes eventually become actions. It's too late then. You can't stop this process. You can't feel it happening, and you can't stop it any more than a caterpillar can say, "I don't want to become bumpy like what I ate." Or, "smooth like what I ate."

You keep tuning in to depressing input, and you're going to start to feel a darkness growing inside of you. You keep fueling yourself with bad news about a certain person and all the things that are wrong about them, and you're going to find a growing bitterness and criticism in your spirit. You keep letting in sexually stimulating images, and increasingly it will affect how you view the opposite sex and your own sexuality.

See, the media is a lot more than entertainment. It's ideas and it's values wrapped up in bright attractive packages. I've decided I have to fight sin at the door. James 1:15 is so revealing, "After desire has conceived it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death." You've got to fight it as a desire. Your most important choices are not so much about your actions; they're about your input. Actions all come from what you eat mentally.

For caterpillars and for Christians, diet is destiny.

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I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Warm a Hard, Old Heart."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 1, beginning at verse 21: "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to Him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man, and birds, and animals and reptiles." That's a pretty sad testimony here to the downward spiral of people getting away from God.

No one starts out real far from God; we go through stages of getting away. The Bible says, "We wander away like sheep." So, first of all, you start thinking confusing thoughts. It says their thoughts became futile, and then your heart gets darker and your heart gets harder. You hardly even realize it. And then you start to get all full of yourself. It says here that they claimed to be wise and became fools. Well pretty soon you end up worshiping earth stuff rather than worshiping the Lord. You didn't mean to get there. You know how it starts? It starts when your heart just begins to get dark and hard.

Maybe you could notice that happening to you lately. Now, your actions haven't changed that much, you're still at the meetings, you're singing the songs and you're doing jobs for the Lord. But you get more confused in your thinking and your heart is drying out like my old donuts. You're tougher and you're harder inside. You need to warm up that heart again. How do you do it?

Well, the Bible says you do that when you glorify Him as God and give thanks to Him. That's how you keep from having a hard heart. That's the way to soften a brittle heart, to review what God has done for you. Gratitude is the key to attitude. If you're not specifically looking for and saying thanks for all God is doing in your life, your spirit starts to turn sour.

Let me suggest a daily thank you agenda. First of all, you start at the cross and just review. Picture yourself there and review what was paid for you and how much you are loved. Then secondly, review the big tapestry that God's been putting together so far in your life. Go back and thank Him for the people, the provisions, the circumstances that He's unfolded so skillfully so far, that He's architected, that He's woven together. It's helpful to look at that big picture that He's been painting. Not just at today's thread, but at the big tapestry. And then, thank Him for His gifts and His interventions in the past 24 hours. Bring your thanks up-to-date.

As you get on your knees and you specifically start to review what your Father has done, at the cross, in the tapestry of your life up to this point, and in the last 24 hours, you'll find that toughness, that hardness starting to melt away.

Praise and gratitude are like a spiritual microwave. They warm the heart that has gotten hard and they make it soft again.

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Now, as a good football coach prepares his high school players for the season, he's going to bring up the dangers of what he will call playing tentatively. I know no one's anxious to get hurt, and so there's a natural tendency to hold back a little in a contact sport; to hold back when you hit, when you block, when you tackle. But the coach is going to tell you that the best way to get hurt is to play tentatively, half-heartedly. Either give it all you've got or don't play.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Winning Number - 100%."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is from Ecclesiastes 9:10 - a verse that could be one of those life-principle verses like maybe a good wall plaque. It's almost a motto that you could repeat to yourself at work, and in sports, or while you're doing your homework, while you're doing dirty work, while you're listening to someone, or you're trying to finish a job. It's one of those repeat over and over statements. Okay, why don't we find out what it is? Ecclesiastes 9:10, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."

Well, that's consistent with four words that appear over and over in the Bible, "with all your heart." Whatever you do, do it with all your heart, or in this case with all your might. One of my personal heroes is Jim Elliott, who was a missionary that in the 1950s was one of five American missionaries martyred as they went to a tribe that had never even heard the name of God. And out of that martyrdom came a flow of missionaries and people in Christian service. Honestly, I'm one of them.

Well, one of Jim Elliott's mottos went like this - you ready? "Wherever you are, be all there." Somebody may have said to you, "You're not all there." Well, yes, wherever you are, be all there. If you've got something to do anyway, why not do it with all you've got? If you've got to be there, why not be there with all your heart?

There's a little wisdom up on a plaque in our kitchen. It says, "Lord, help me do with a smile the things I have to do anyway." Got to do them anyway, might as well really do them. A Christian should be known as a 100-percenter in everything he or she does. You listen with all your might. When it's time to work, you work with all your might. When you pray, you pray with all your might. When you play, you play with all your might. When you goof off, you goof off with all your might. When you help somebody, you help with all your might. When you study, oh yeah, you know by now, yeah, you do it with all your might.

You can do that because you know that you are leading a God-planned life. Psalm 37 says, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in His way." Psalm 16 says, "The Lord has assigned me my portion and my cup." Now, you know that every situation has been brought into your life by a God who loves you and knows best. So you make every situation the best it can be. And you do that when you tackle it with all your might; not just the things you like to do or not just the things you feel like doing.

This says "everything your hand finds to do." Don't play tentatively. Do it with intensity. In football, in everyday life, playing tentatively invites injury and defeat. Either give it all you've got or don't play.

When you hear the word "superstar," you may think of some great athlete or A-list movie star or some television personality - a celebrity. I'm sorry, but I personally think that's a pretty lame use of the word when you hear about the kind of star that astronomers have been discovering. Like the largest known star in the universe! Conventional telescopes had missed it because of vast dust clouds. But the Hubble Space Telescope picked it up. It is (get this) 186 million miles wide and ten million times brighter than the Sun! That's a superstar. Don't even try to comprehend one star that enormous! Interesting footnote - according to many theories on how stars are formed, a star this large is an impossibility! It's there, it is not impossible.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Awesome God, Awesome Love."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Psalm 8:1-4. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens...When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?"

It's hard to come up with a theory big enough to contain the infinity of what's out there. But it's not hard to come up with a creator big enough to explain it all. And speaking of Jesus, the Bible further explains in John 1:3 that "through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made."

When you consider that beyond that superstar are literally millions of galaxies, your mind just goes on overload. But there is something more staggering than the size of creation...and that is the possibility that you could have a personal love relationship with the creator of it all! That's what the psalmist couldn't grasp - in light of the splendor and magnitude of all you've created, God, why do you care about us little guys and girls on this speck of dust called earth?

But the amazing truth is that this awesome God has a deep, deep love for you. Here's how you can know that. In those same verses that tell us Jesus created it all, it says that He "became flesh and made His dwelling among us" (John 1:14). The One who created that mega-star - and countless millions of galaxies - left the Throne Room of the universe to come here as one of us. And everything in us screams, "But why?"

Answer - two chapters later. "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." Why? God loves you so much. So much that even though we've defied Him by running our own life, He sent His Son to go to a cross to bear the death penalty for my sin and yours. God does not want to lose you.

And when Jesus comes knocking on the door of your heart, offering you His love and His forgiveness, it just doesn't make any sense to reject Him or postpone Him. This is the One who made it all - who loved you enough to die for you. Why would you wait another day to begin a personal love-relationship with the most awesome person in all the universe?

Have you ever begun this relationship that Jesus died to make possible? He proved that He can give it to us, because He walked out of his grave under his own power. And only the One who's proven He has eternal life can give it to you. This is your day to be born into God's family; to begin your relationship you were made for.

Reach out to Jesus and say, "Jesus, I'm tired of running my own life. I resign from running my life. You died for the sin that's come from my decision to take over a life you were suppose to run. And today, Jesus, I'm pinning all my hopes on you. Thank you for loving me so much."

I think our website would help, would you go there today - ANewStory.com?

Jesus - the one who made the stars - the biggest Star of all - has come to you. Don't miss this amazing love.

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I was reminiscing with my son the other day about when he was four and learned to play baseball. He was standing there in his little shorts, and he had his Wiffle bat and his Wiffle ball. And I stood just a few feet away from him and I gently threw the ball underhanded. And he would sort of chop at it like an ax, and I didn't know if he'd ever learn to play.

Well, of course, I gave him the Dad's typical, gentle coaching and said, "Now, don't chop at it. Swing evenly. Here's how to follow through. Here's how to plant your feet. And then times changed. It got to where I couldn't pitch it fast enough, and he was hitting it all over the place. Yeah, he was good. I enjoyed coaching him. I hope I'm one of the reasons, at least, that he learned to do it right in the early stages. Actually, coaching comes almost naturally to dads; they're pretty good coaches. And I want to be sure today, dad, that you've got your Head Coach hat on and that you're making the difference.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Head Coach Dad."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is found in Ephesians 6:4. Coaches, pay attention! It says, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Let me summarize the Hutchcraft translation of that verse. It says two things to dads. With your children, don't put them down, and do bring them up.

Let's take the first part. There's the negative, and it's addressed particularly to fathers. And I thought, "Now, why is it said to fathers 'do not exasperate your children'?" Of course mothers shouldn't do that either, but it's stated to fathers. I think sometimes dads have awfully high expectations of kids, and we just tend to exasperate our children through setting the bar so high, and then they have to clear it higher and they've got to go higher all the time. And Dad's so hard to please.

Sometimes our cutting remarks only notice what needs improving, and we don't tell them what they've done right. I know kids who have literally been defeated and decided not to even try any more because they just couldn't please Dad.

And in this call to coaching, it says here that the first thing you do is to make sure that your child is never put down by you. There's nothing so cutting, so destroying to a self-image and even your hope for your own achievement, than a dad's perceived rejection. But this is a call to spiritual coaching. It doesn't just say don't put them down, it says, "Do bring them up." Are you leading spiritually in your family? Are you the one who gets everybody together to pray, Dad; who leads the way in scripture memorization? Are you the one who gets the sharing time going around the dinner table about the God-sightings you've each had today? Are you the one who teaches the Bible stories and applies them to everyday life - make sure everybody gets to church, and who models Christian conduct?

You say, "Well, I'm not real good at that." You know, men tend to avoid what they're not good at. If we're not good at a sport, we usually don't show up for that sport. I'm good at softball and I'm not good at football. I'll play softball. I won't play football. Listen, don't wait until you're good at it or you'll never start. Start spending some time getting your family together spiritually and getting with the Lord together. Get them in the Lord's presence together. The only way you can fail at this is to not try.

Remember, God has assigned you as the man of the house, the head coaching job in your family. Do you know what that means? Yeah, don't ever put them down, and always bring them up - in Christ.

September 26, 2025 It wasn't very loud. Just three little words, softly spoken. But they were loud enough to drown out a gunshot that had...

Our son was falling in love. I mean like the big one - like the girl he ended up marrying. Our beautiful Navajo daughter now. Our son lived on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona, and the girl of his dreams lived in a remote area of the Navajo Reservation. It was about an hour drive to get out to her house to see her, but he managed - frequently. And the road? Oh, boy! It's one of those reservation roads that kills your shock absorbers, covers you with dust, and even opens up a crater or two for you to dodge. It's not that there weren't better roads around in that area; there are some nicely paved highways with some beautiful views. They even had some nice girls living on them probably. But my son didn't take any of those, for one very good reason. There was only one road that led to the destination he wanted.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I'd like to have A Word With You today about "The Only Way to Choose Your Road."

What is that? It's the same way our son chose the road he took - does it get me to the destination I want? That's especially important when the destination is eternal; the place you'll be forever. God deeply wants you and me to be with Him forever in heaven. So He makes the road very clear.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Isaiah 43:11. "I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from Me there is no Savior." How many roads? According to the One who decides, there is one. Now notice, God doesn't say "apart from Me there is no religion." There are many religions. God doesn't say, "Apart from Me there is no teacher." Again, there have been many spiritual teachers. And God doesn't tell us, "Apart from Me there is no spirituality." There's a whole buffet of inspiring spiritual experiences. If what will get us to heaven is a religion or a religious leader or spirituality, take your pick. There are many roads.

But God says what we need is a Savior, someone who can rescue us from a dying situation. Later in the same chapter in the Bible, God explains what it takes to have a relationship with Him and to make it to heaven. "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for My own sake, and remembers your sins no more." God says, "You've got to have your sins totally erased." No amount of doing good can erase my doing bad. No amount of sincere spirituality can pay the death penalty that sin requires. Only one person even claimed to do that.

In the Bible's words, speaking of Jesus, "He carried our sins in His own body on the tree." So that's why Jesus says, "I am the way. No man comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). Apart from Him there is no Savior. And apart from a Savior, you and I don't stand a chance with God.

There are many beautiful roads with many beautiful people on them. But only the Savior road gets you to the eternal destination you want, which is heaven. The only issue that will really matter forever is whether or not you took the road God provided at the cost of His only Son's life.

You've thought about it, maybe even argued about it, but maybe today your heart is saying, "I do need a Savior. It's time." If you want Jesus, the Savior, to finally be your Savior, would you tell Him that right now? "Jesus, you're the One who died for me for what I've done against God, I am yours beginning today. I'm grabbing You like a drowning person would grab a rescuer."

I'd love to help you be sure you belong to Him; to nail down this relationship and get it settled. That's why our website exists, and I want to invite you to go there. It's ANewStory.com. Would you check it out as soon as you can today?

One day, maybe unexpectedly, your earth-journey will come to an abrupt end. And then it's eternity. From then on and forever, all that matters is what road you chose to get to heaven...because the only one that goes there is the one that runs by Jesus' cross.

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Some longtime friends dropped by for a visit and they told us a moving story of what had happened to their son. Tom had been a missionary pilot in Mexico - one of those spiritual heroes, I think, who take the Gospel and God's help to places where it could otherwise never go, including a mountain village in Mexico where the pilots have been God's instruments to launch a mighty work for Christ. And then came the crash. With three missionary pilots and several passengers aboard, a defect in their plane's almost new engine caused a terrible crash. Tom was one of those who survived that crash that could very well have killed everyone. The villagers who loved them actually traveled hours to reach them and rescue them. Tom's body was really badly shattered, and his recovery was long, grueling. But then he was flown back to the area where he ministered. His parents really choked up, and so did we, when they told us what happened as he got off the plane. There to greet him was a crowd of cheering Mexican friends. And they were holding a banner that simply said "Welcome home, Captain Tom!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your 'Welcome Home.'"

I'm hoping you and I can get a "welcome home" like that in heaven someday. It all depends on what we live for in the years until we get home.

In our word for today from the Word of God, Paul clearly lays out what matters most to him about the legacy of his life. In 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20, he writes these words to the people that he's invested his life in spiritually: "What is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy." Paul is looking forward to getting to heaven and seeing a lot of people that he touched for eternity. That's the welcoming party he's looking for.

Basically, Paul says there are two things that matter in life: the Savior you serve and the lives you touch. That's your reward for the years you spend on this planet, that's your legacy, that's your joy. Well, at least it's supposed to be.

It's possible that your life's priorities have gotten a little inverted by the pressures and the people and the problems that tend to fill up your life. You've been taken over by a truckload of earth-stuff. One friend of mine summed it up pretty well the other day. When someone asked him if he's ever played Trivial Pursuit, he said, "Every day." He wasn't talking about the game. He's talking about his life.

Just hearing about Pilot Tom's "welcome home" was an important values-clarification reminder. If you've become consumed and sidetracked with a lot of stuff that's non-eternal, maybe it's time to get with Jesus and replace your agenda with His agenda to "seek first His kingdom" (Matthew 6:33).

And if you're a little weary or discouraged in your faithful service for Jesus, I hope you'll be encouraged by the thought of the reward you're building, the legacy you're developing and the lives that have been touched by your sacrifices who will be thanking you forever. The people you've risked to take to heaven with you will be there, humanly speaking, because you cared. The lives that have been touched by the ministries you've given to will, in the Bible's words, be "credited to your account" (Philippians 4:17).

All that really matters is what's going to meet you when you get to heaven. First, your Savior who will welcome you with the words you have lived for, "Well done, good and faithful servant." And the people your life in Christ has touched for eternity. Who knows, maybe they'll be holding a banner with your name on it that says, "Welcome home!"

I guess you could call it creative architecture. Or you could just call it a big stone in the middle of a high brick wall. I saw this phenomenon when I visited the new station of one of our radio partners. The front wall of the station has this big old 230-pound stone about halfway up the wall in the middle of the bricks. There's no way that could be a mistake or an accident. It is, in fact, a message.

A masonry contractor offered to do some of the work on the station, and somewhere along the way he thought about a stone like this. He thought about what the Bible says about Jesus being the "chief cornerstone." So he went to the local quarry and he found this impressive piece of rock, which he installed in a central spot in the front of the building, with the "chief cornerstone" scripture reference under it. I love the reason he gave for this unusual feature. He said, "You build everything around the cornerstone." Wow!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Build a Life That Works."

That's a builder who knows how to build a life, not just a building. And he's following the life blueprint laid out for us in the Bible, the only book God ever wrote. God is the Master Architect, not only of the universe, but of your life and mine. He tells us how to build it in our word for today in the Word of God in 1 Peter 2, beginning with verse 4. "As you come to Him, the living Stone (that's speaking of Jesus symbolically), rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house. See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame. Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. To those who do not believe, 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone,' and, 'a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.'"

These verses are all about Jesus. Your life is supposed to be all about Jesus, with Him as the cornerstone, with everything else in your life built on Him - your relationships, your marriage, your money. But maybe you're building on another cornerstone right now. Slowly but surely, you've pushed Jesus from the center of things to the edge.

He's the King of kings. He's the Lord of lords, but you've pushed Him to the margins. You can tell by how little time you spend with Him, by how little you make Him the bottom line in your decisions, or by the things you do that break His heart. But count on this: unless your life is being built on Jesus as the center, what you're building is not going to last, it isn't going to satisfy, and it isn't going to work.

The contractor who put that cornerstone in the middle of the wall found it at a quarry on the reject pile. A stone the builders had rejected. It now stands representing the Chief Cornerstone. Jesus is the Cornerstone rejected by man, but loved by those who are building their life around Him. Maybe you've made the mistake of rejecting Jesus as the center of your life. He's the reason you're here. In fact, the Bible says you were "created by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16). He gave His life for your sin so you could belong to Him...so you could live the life you were made for.

Would you let today be the day that you open your heart to the One who loved you so much He died for you? That would be God's only Son, Jesus, who knocks at the door of your heart this very day. But the handle is on the inside. You've got to let Him in.

Today, would you say, "Jesus, I've built my life around me. I'm building it around You from now on. You died for my sin, You walked out of your grave under your own power. Walk into my life this day. I invite You. I turn my life over to You."

Listen, I wish you would go to our website today. Everything you need to know about making sure you belong to Him is there. It's ANewStory.com.

Jesus is the only Cornerstone that can support everything you face in your life. Make sure that you're building that life all around Him.

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I never heard the words till I got to college. You start talking about Senior Panic. Yeah, well, if you didn't have a prospective mate by your senior year, it became pretty obvious that the odds were working against you and time was not on your side. Sadly, there were some people who got somebody in their desperation, but time began to show they got the wrong somebody. I guess you don't have to be a senior to begin to panic over your singleness. In fact, you may very well fear deep down inside never being married or never having anyone again; that you're going to be stuck eating frozen dinners alone a lot of nights for the rest of your life. In your anxiety, you can make a terrible mistake. I think we've got some good news today!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Mating Game."

Our word for today from the Word of God? It goes back to the very first couple there ever was. You remember Adam and Eve, or as my daughter said when she was a little girl when we asked her who were the first man and woman, she said, "I know! I know! Eve and Steve." Well, no, that's not quite right. It's Adam and Eve. And it says in Genesis 2, beginning with verse 20, "So the man gave names to all the livestock; the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib that he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man."

Oh, I love that story and I love some of the priorities that it teaches. God saw that Adam needed someone. He said to him, "It's not good for you to be alone." Now, in spite of the fact that he had God over him and the animals under him, he had no one to be next to him. And so, Adam slept while God worked on that need. And God prepared Adam for a partner, and then He rested. And at just the right time, God brought them together, "He brought her to the man" it says.

Now, how different that is from the frantic American dating game. We don't wait, we chase! We catch a husband; we catch a wife. I'll tell you, there is no one who knows what you need emotionally better than the God who made you. I wonder, do you think you could trust Him to meet your very deepest need as a man, as a woman? Now, that might be through a fulfilling singleness, or it might be through the marriage that perhaps you hope He'll bring about. Or are you going to have Senior Panic? Are you going to take matters into your own hands and chase, and pursue, and manipulate, and grab what you can and try to push and press?

God has unique plans. God has unique people. God has unique timing that is just for your unique life. Don't compare how He's working in someone else's life to yours. He's got a plan that's never been there before. There's never been a you. He's got a plan just for you. Right now the thing to work on is building God-glorifying friendships with both sexes without that pressure of having to think marriage with them or to push for marriage, or to put the very pressure on them that might ruin the whole thing. Don't panic!

Psalm 23:1 says, "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want." God can meet your need in the very same way He did with Adam. Adam didn't go and find his own wife and create his own situation. Let God meet your needs. And He'll do it like with Adam, when you're resting, not running.

There's a wonderful statement in Colossians 2:10 for all of us who belong to Jesus. It says, "You are complete in Him." Wow! Married or single, alone or with lots of people, you are complete in Him, and Jesus is enough.

When we secured land to build our Ministry Headquarters, we barely noticed the barn that was standing on that land, until God blessed us with some truckloads of donated materials which needed a place to be stored. Suddenly, we were taking a second look at this old pole barn filled with hay. The center was the only part that had walls - walls with rotting wood. The east and west sides of the barn had no walls, just some rotting old poles holding up a makeshift roof. We asked a contractor friend if there was any hope for the barn - especially since some folks had said just to bulldoze it. The contractor said the rafters and the foundation were actually good enough that something might be able to be done.

Well, what followed was hundreds of hours of volunteer labor, a cement floor, the old wood and poles being removed, walls built to enclose the entire area - including the east and west ends, a second story and stairs were built, and we put on the truckload of shingles and vinyl siding that had been donated. Now, little did we know when we first started rebuilding that barn, that would also become our temporary Headquarters while our new building was being completed. Today, when people see this nice, vinyl-sided building which is fundamental to our ministry and the things that are produced there going around the world, when they see how useful that facility has become, and especially when they see the pictures of the dilapidated old thing it was at the beginning, it's nothing less than amazing!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Repairing a Broken Life."

I know a Carpenter who does that with people! He takes lives that seem pretty wrecked, hopeless and too far gone, and He miraculously redeems them and rebuilds them into something no one ever dreamed they could be. Jesus is the Master Carpenter, and it might be that your life is ready for His miraculous renovating power.

In our word for today from the Word of God He describes our spiritual condition before the Carpenter comes. Ephesians 2:1-3 says, "You were dead in your...sins...we were by nature objects of wrath." See, God says all the things we've done in our life that He calls "sins" - every time we have done it our way instead of God's way - they have us under an eternal death penalty. God has to punish our sin, and the punishment is spiritual death forever.

But we're dead in our sins even before we die physically. That might be what you're feeling right now - this despair and hopelessness. Inside, you're kind of like our old barn. There are holes everywhere. You're about to give up hope of ever changing. You feel like it's all falling down. In your heart - maybe even in the eyes of others - your life seems ready for the bulldozer.

Hang on. Here comes the Carpenter. These verses from the Bible say, "But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead...By grace you have been saved, through faith." God loves you too much to lose you, so He sent His only Son, Jesus, to do the dying for all the sinning you've ever done. So you can be saved, like, rescued if you commit yourself to Jesus Christ.

The result is not just that you get rescued from hell. Jesus builds you into someone more useful than you could have ever imagined. A new you built by the Master Carpenter. It all begins the day you turn it all over to Jesus, which for you, could be today.

You can tell Him right now, "Jesus, I resign the running of my own life. I was made by You and for You. You died for every wrong thing I've ever done. Beginning this day, Jesus, I'm yours." Our website is about helping you get that relationship with Jesus started. Please go there today. It's ANewStory.com.

I've watched carpenters transform a structure that was ready for the bulldozer into something incredibly strong and useful. And I've watched Jesus transform lives that seemed so far gone into walking miracles of His grace. You can't imagine what you could be if you'll just open yourself up to the touch of the Master's hand.

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I had the opportunity to spend 24 hours of my life in the city of Athens in Greece. I was on my way home from a teaching mission, and if I only had 24 hours, well, I knew what I wanted to see. I wanted to see the Acropolis, and there it was on a hill that just dominates the entire city. That's where the ancient Greeks built a temple to their goddess, Athena, after whom, obviously, the city was named.

Even after 21 centuries, I've got to tell you it is still an impressive, imposing, dominating structure up there on the mountain. Maybe you can even see a picture of it in your mind, if you've ever seen one before. It was the most sacred, most protected, most honored place in all of Athens. In fact, it was actually a crime to violate that temple. Of course it was that way in many cultures. The temple always got first-class treatment because your gods live there. Well, those ancient people had the wrong god, but they knew what to do with a temple.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Temple In The Mirror."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. It's not about the Acropolis, it's not about the ancient Jewish temple, but it's about temples. Listen to where the temple is. "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." This is one of Christianity's most revolutionary ideas - you are the building God lives in.

You can go in the bathroom, look in the mirror and see His temple. Even pagan people knew that the way you take care of your god's dwelling place tells a lot about how you feel about your god. Now, if you know Christ, you are God's two-legged temple. He's come to live in you by the presence of His Holy Spirit. That puts a whole new significance on your body - what happens with your mouth, your mind, your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet, and every part of your body. Because in a sense, what you do with that body - everything you do with it - God is a part of. He lives in that temple. Everything you do to that body, you do to God.

Now, even people without God in ancient days recognized that you guard, and you protect, and you keep special, and you honor the place where God lives. Let me ask you, "Have you been treating your body like the temple treasure that it is?" See, if you really care about your God much, you won't let His temple get run down. You won't let it have to carry the extra weight it's been carrying. You won't let it be too out-of-shape. You won't poison it with things that should never go into it; things that will degrade your body. It's a temple you're talking about, not just your body. That's a whole new reason to take care of it.

See, that temple advertises what your god is like, and God deserves the best! Maybe you've devalued that temple with some junk you've been putting into it. Maybe you have defamed the temple of God by playing around sexually with His temple, dragging the name of God and the presence of God into things He is so much against, using His temple to satisfy your glands.

Your body isn't yours. See, it was bought with the price of Jesus' blood. Your God lives there! Keep it special.

My life was profoundly affected by the example of five American missionaries who died trying to get the Gospel to a Stone Age tribe in Ecuador who had never heard the name of Jesus. They were actually murdered by the tribe that was then known as the Aucas. We now know them as the Waoranis. Amazingly, the wife of one of those missionaries and the sister of another actually went to the tribe that had killed their loved ones to tell them about Jesus. Today, some of the murderers of the missionaries are pastors of the Waorani church. It's an amazing story.

I had the unforgettable privilege a few years ago of going to the Ecuadorian jungle to tape a radio program about what happened there. And I met Mincaye, one of the killers, one of the pastors. I learned that those missionary women had difficulty translating the Bible into the native language because this tribe literally had no word for or even concept for "forgive." But the message somehow had gotten through to Mincaye. Here's what he said: "What we did to those missionaries was a terrible thing. But one day soon I will see them in heaven because Jesus has washed our hearts."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Jesus In Their Language."

A spiritual rescuer had come to people to whom the word "forgive" meant nothing. But God's messenger to them did what effective missionaries have always done. She found a way to say it in words the people could understand. You know, we can do no less for the spiritually dying people around us.

Obviously, the need to translate Christ's message is hard to miss in a foreign setting where there is a clearly different linguistic language. But the need to translate the Jesus-story is easy to miss when our neighbors and friends speak that same linguistic language we do, but they speak a different cultural language. The words of our Christian "tribe" simply have no meaning, or the wrong meaning, to the lost "tribe" next to us. Many lost people assigned to us by God have no better understanding of "born again," or "saved," or "accepting Christ," or "sin" than Mincaye did of "forgive."

In our word for today from the Word of God, we discover one big reason thousands of people from all over the world came to Jesus in the first outreach ever held by the Christian Church. It was Jerusalem, it was Pentecost, and according to Acts 2:6, "Each one heard them (that is the apostles) speaking in his own language."

Now that was a special miracle from God, but it underscores that people must hear Christ's message in a language they can understand, which our church language - which I call Christianeze - is not. Maybe you've been transmitting the Good News about Jesus and getting little or no response. Could it be they're stumbling over your vocabulary? You can't just transmit the Good News; you have to translate it into everyday, non-religious words.

In Jesus' parable of the four soils, three of which produced little or no good harvest, we see the major difference between those three soils and the soil that produced great fruit. In each case, Jesus explains that "this is the man who hears the word." But where there was a great harvest, Jesus said, "This is the man who hears the word (and here's the one difference) and understands it" (Matthew 13:23).

We've got life-or-death information we have to deliver. We cannot afford to have our lost family and friends miss it because we said it in words they don't understand. It's time to move beyond the comfort of our Christianeze to communicate the message people cannot afford to miss. The words we use could be decisive for each of us in our personal rescue mission for Jesus.

You're God's missionary where you are. If you make the effort to translate the Good News into the language of the person who needs it, you could be part of a life-giving miracle!

People become like the environment they spend their time in. At least that's what I've been told. For example, if you work at IBM, you become amazingly well organized for some strange reason. If you live in a college town, or if you work around a college, it's amazing how your vocabulary can change; sometimes increases. Oh, and your clothing? Yeah, it becomes a little bit more collegiate. You know?

I've noticed that people who live near the ocean or resort areas, they just kind of dress, you know, more loose, more casually all year long. If you move from the North to the South, you may very well find your pace slowing down to match your environment.

When I moved to the New York area, I know my driving changed. They say in New York about the roads there that there are two kinds of people, the quick and the dead, and I decided to become the quick. You become like your environment. That seems to be a pretty consistent principle; maybe too consistent.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Drawing a Line."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Timothy 3 - one of the more amazing chapters in the Bible. If you want to read a startling description of the last days of this planet, read 2 Timothy 3 with today's newspaper or news website in your other hand. It's startling because of how it matches up with our headlines. Verse 1 says, "There will be dangerous times." And it talks about these characteristics of people that lead you to believe the reason it's going to be dangerous is because of the death of love. There won't be much love in that world.

Paul's orders to Timothy are included in this chapter, and God's orders to us. Verse 14, listen: "But as for you, you continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of because you know those from whom you have learned it. All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Now, Paul is saying if you live in a world that is racing away from God's standards, you can't afford to become like your environment even a little.

See, there's always a noticeable difference between lost people and God's people. It's kind of my equal distance theory. There's always an equal distance between the standards and lifestyles of the people of God and the people of the world.

Let's say figuratively speaking that the church, or the people of God, are always ten miles closer to God than the world is. The problem is that as the world moves to the left, away from God, so does the church. Now, we're still ten miles away from the marriages of the world, and from the sexual standards of the world, and their hardness, and their love of material things. But as the world moves faster and faster away from God's standards, so do we. We're still the same distance from our culture. So, in a matter of like five or ten years, we Christians are where lost people were only a few years ago, accepting what we thought we would never accept, doing what we never thought we'd do, watching, listening to what we never thought would be part of our lives. But we can feel pretty good about it, because we're better than the folks around us.

But see, the rate of speeding away from God is accelerating right now, and God says, "Hey, you continue where you are! Don't move! Stand still! Don't move any further." He's not saying detach yourself from people who need Him. No, you live in the world, but you don't live as part of it. You don't march to that drumbeat. You know, you feel like you're pretty good if you compare yourself to what the world is doing, or maybe even what most Christians are doing, and saying and accepting. But that's not the measure.

We're to measure ourselves by the God-breathed scriptures of the Lord himself. If you turn the light of God's Word on your lifestyle, maybe you'll see how far you've drifted. You just can't move any more. We've got to get back to God's standards for love, for marriage, for honesty, for family, our relationships.

Our environment is terminally polluted. We can't be like our environment. It's time to draw the line.

On September 11, twenty-four years ago, I saw the Twin Towers crumble to dust. And then, on September 11th this time around, I saw so many people grieving the shocking assassination of a hugely popular Gen Z influencer in front of 3,000 people.

In both cases, millions of people were devastated in disbelief and grief. Including reporters, politicians, law enforcement people - and lots of ordinary folks. And certainly the 2001 tragedy had a scope much greater, but this assassination hit many young people very personally.

I found myself praying, again, what I cried out to God 24 years ago. "God, what do You see here?"

The answer has been the same both times.

Souls. Lost souls. Grieving souls. Eternal souls.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Fatal Shot, A Wounded Generation."

Working with young people my entire life, I've seen many of them become less engaged with their world and with current events. A lot of them know more about Taylor Swift's love life but can't find Ukraine on a map or tell you the name of the Vice President. But they were drawn to Charlie Kirk, and he was dedicated to involving them in the major issues of our time.

A prime time CNN host said: "If you don't know who Charlie Kirk is, ask your teenager or your college student."

He was, in a sense, a generational prophet to many of them. He had over five million followers on X (formerly Twitter) and hundreds of thousands of listeners to his podcast and radio program. A lot of people have said that this generation is disconnected. But listen, they connected with Charlie Kirk.

To countless millions of young people, he was finally a voice they could trust. Suddenly, he was gone.

For me, this isn't about Charlie Kirk's politics or his culture war perspectives. It is, of course, about his wife Erika and their two children. I'm so glad the Bible says, "the Lord is close to the brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18). She has a relationship with Him. I pray Jesus will hold them close in His big arms.

I do see what God showed me on that dark September 11 years ago. Those souls. The emotional outpouring that has flooded social media gives testimony to the deep sense of personal loss so many young people are feeling now.

After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, there was a hole in our hearts that none of our usual "go to" answers could fill. So we turned to God. Churches were full. Prayer was everywhere. Many people opened their hearts to Jesus who died for them and beat death by His Resurrection.

For many contemporary young people, this recent loss has left their own hole in their heart. That's where it's about "souls." This trauma will be, for many, a "turning point." Sadly for some, to anger, retribution, disillusionment, despair. All destinations devoid of hope.

Or to Jesus, whose hope is stronger than death, guaranteed by an empty tomb. Which brings us to our word for today from the Word of God, which happens to be a verse that Charlie's wife posted hours before his death.

Psalm 46:1 - "God is our refuge and strength. An ever present help in trouble."

We are desperate for a generation that doesn't carry all our baggage. A spiritual awakening may well be our only real hope. And our young people may be our only real hope of a better tomorrow. I'm praying the death of a looked-to leader may lead them to the Leader whose life and hope are eternal.

Jesus called us to tell our world about His unloseable love - and then to let them experience that love through us. That was his final order.

I think about the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the guard coming on and the guard coming off exchange these words. The current guard says, "Orders remain unchanged." And the new guard says, "Orders acknowledged."

We have our orders from our Master - to be His witnesses.

No matter the loss, no matter the cost. Our orders remain unchanged.

It was one of those really special 90-degree days, when it is very humid and I was just finishing about eight miles on my bike. I was feeling all fit, and then I passed Tom running all ten and a half miles around that lake. Well, I realized that Tom did that every day. Nobody knew; nobody noticed actually.

But I knew that he'd be in the headlines back home, and he'd be in the headlines a lot. Because he was one of the county's champion track stars. And I yelled to him from my bike, "No time off for vacation?" And he reminded me that running is a 12-month sport.

Champions aren't made on the day of the race with the crowd applauding. It turns out they're made on like 1,000 unsung mornings.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Unseen Secret of Spiritual Champions."

I've never understood people who get involved in a sport or an activity or in anything and just settle for like being mediocre. If you're going to get into something, well, aim to be all you can be. Right? If that's true in sports, it's really true when it comes to serving the King - the Lord Jesus Christ.

Maybe you've looked at spiritual champions you know, or some leader, or somebody you admire as a spiritual person and you said, "Boy, I'd like to be used by God that way. I wish I could teach, or preach, or minister musically, or lead like that. I'd like to make a difference. I'd like to influence people for Christ like that person does." And you see them in a public setting at the pulpit, or you watch them on television or you hear them on radio. You read their book, maybe hear them in concert. But the ministry you see in a spiritual champion is because of something you don't see. Just like that championship runner, chugging out those miles on those back roads. Nobody noticed, nobody seeing him, but that's where the champion is built.

Okay, Isaiah 50:4, our word for today from the Word of God says this: "The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary." Now, how does he keep coming up with the words that people need? It says that "God wakens me morning by morning; wakens my ear to listen like one being taught." Okay, the great prophet of God says here, "morning after morning" there is a meeting with his Lord that nobody sees.

And while others are resting, the champion is in God's Word, he's on his knees, not going on spiritual binges occasionally to get some great spiritual insight. No, no, no, no. He does it day after day, week after week, month after month. And finally there's all these years of accumulated time with God, and how He's touched you, and how He's changed you, and how He's moved you. So, when he speaks, he speaks with a "God-instructed tongue" because he shows up for class every morning. See, there's no glory there. There's no crowds applauding. It's just Christ's personal presence, and you're there with Him.

Anything I have ever said for the Lord that has ever touched anyone has been because He touched me in private first where no one could see, no one else could hear. He wants to do that for you. He wants to do that for all His kids. Do you want to be used greatly by your Lord? Well, before you try to do a great work for Him, why don't you let Him do a great work in you? And you wake up each morning and let Him teach you before you leave.

I saw that in a young track star; a picture of any of us who would like to be God's champion, a winner who's being built on 1,000 unsung mornings.

After watching the World Trade Center as part of my skyline for many years, it hit really hard that awful September 11th to see those towers come crashing down and thousands of lives with them. The day after the first attack on the Trade Center, which was back in 1993, I was greeted by a TV crew as I got off a flight from Newark. Of all things, they asked me as a New Yorker how I felt after that first bombing. And I could only think of one word, "vulnerable." That was my answer.

Well, since the events of that September 11th, and the years since then, and all of the terrorism that has spread Iike a cancer. I think a lot of us are feeling more and more vulnerable all the time. It happens on the street, in churches, in malls, wherever! We're uncertain about what a new kind of war might mean, where the danger might pop up next, and what's going to happen economically. And some of us are trying to help our children understand this crazy world that we don't even understand. We all feel vulnerable. It's as if some of our own sense of personal security and safety started to come crashing down with those towers and it's been crashing ever since.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Safe in an Unsafe World."

Even without the constantly disturbing events in the news, we all know the feeling of having things that we counted on suddenly come crashing down - a person we love, our job, the collapse of a marriage, a bad report from the doctor. In times like these, we're hungry for something we can anchor to, for something to sustain us when the bad news is more than we can bear, for something that will make us feel really safe.

When our President, years ago, addressed the nation after that September 11th, he alluded to the one source of comfort and hope in moments like that. He quoted from that treasured 23rd Psalm in the Bible - actually, Psalm 23:4, our word for today from the Word of God. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me."

The Bible holds out to you and me a security that can keep you safe in life's deepest valleys - even the valley of the shadow of death. That security is a relationship. It's a person. "You are with me, Lord" the psalmist said. All our lives we've been looking for one "unloseable" love. And there really is one. It's the love of the One who made you, the One you will meet on the other side of your last heartbeat, the One whose love caused Him to literally lay down His life for you.

In our vulnerable moments, our moments that are more than you can handle alone, those moments when you've gone seeking God, maybe you've realized that there's something that is separating you from Him. The Bible says that feeling is right. The Bible says, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2). But Jesus came to remove that wall between you and God - the only way it could be removed - by Jesus dying to pay the death penalty for you and for me, hijacking a life that God was supposed to run and we took it instead.

Either you have this life-saving relationship with Jesus or you don't. It all depends on whether there's been a time when you grabbed the outstretched hand of Jesus like a person trapped in the wreckage would grab the hand of his rescuer. If you are ready for the kind of security, the safety that only Jesus Christ can offer, if you're ready to begin this anchor relationship with the man who died for you, would you tell Him that right now right where you are? "Jesus, you died for me. My life is yours from this day on."

I want you to know for sure that you have that anchor, that security from this day on. So I'd invite you to go where some information is that will really help that happen. It's our website, please check it out today - ANewStory.com. I'd love for you to visit there as soon as you can today.

My prayer is that you'll be able to go to sleep tonight knowing you are in the safest place in the universe - the arms of Jesus Christ - and that you'll be able to say, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil - for You are with me."

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I was sitting on our front porch, and I saw our son-in-law suddenly running full speed across the front yard, headed for the back yard with his camera in his hand. With my incredible detective mind, I surmised that he had seen something that would make a great photo; something that apparently wasn't going to be there for long. Actually, he had seen our horse running across the pasture with her mane flowing and beautifully illuminated by the setting sun. Well, having a wife who's taken some pretty amazing photos over the years, I understood this. I guess you'd call it the "seize the moment" thing. Photographers know about this, and you'd better not get in their way.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "While the Window's Open."

Photographer-types understand a life-principle that a lot of us miss - that there are moments, there are opportunities that have to be seized - or they're missed forever. And it isn't just photographs. It's precious life moments where a window of opportunity opens for a brief time, maybe just a moment, and either we stop and we take that opportunity or sometimes we lose it for good.

Thus, God's counsel in Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 15, which is our word for today from the Word of God. He says, "Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but as wise..." Okay, so what does wise living look like? "...making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is."

Apparently, knowing and doing God's will in your life often depends on seeing the opportunity He has opened up for you and seizing that opportunity. Many of life's regrets are about opportunities we missed because we let them slip by. Like the aging businessman who says, "If only I'd spent more time with my family." As many times as I've heard that lament, I have never heard anybody say, "My only regret is I wish I'd spent more time with my business." Nope, never heard it.

When your child is ready to talk, you'd better drop everything and listen. The window won't be open for long. When your child is ready to be affectionate, you've got nothing more important to do than respond. When your son or daughter has time to be with you, you'd better have time to be with them.

The same applies to your mate, your parents, others that you love. Many a tear at a funeral is over opportunities we did not take when this one that we loved was still touchable, still thankable, still forgivable, still huggable. And how many chances do we have a day to simply compliment someone, encourage someone, stop and listen to someone. Those are God-moments - opportunities to be a channel of God's love into a person's life.

Most importantly, how many times do we pass up a God-given opportunity to talk about our relationship with Jesus Christ, when the eternity of that person may depend on them hearing about our Jesus? Spirit-filled living involves making yourself available each new day to seize the opportunities that God gives you in that day. If you're the kind of person that's all rigid, programmed and inflexible, you'll probably miss or ignore the many times the Holy Spirit is saying, "This is it! This is your chance. The window's open. Do it now. Seize the moment!"

Like a photographer running to capture his picture before the moment passes, we need to capture the God-moments that He is weaving into each new day. Those scenes are just too good to miss!

Our daughter is all grown up now, but she'll never forget that very scary moment when she was four years old. My wife was shopping in a supermarket with our son riding in the grocery cart and our daughter walking with her - well, actually running ahead of her. Karen had warned her to stay in the same aisle she was in, but we're talking a firstborn here - so she had to run ahead to other aisles to explore, of course. Until suddenly she noticed how high those shelves were and how long those aisles were, and the fact that she didn't see anything familiar. And suddenly she felt that awful feeling that she still describes today as "scary" - she was lost. Not too long ago, she told me how it felt. As a grown woman, she said, "Suddenly my security wasn't there." Thankfully, her mother came looking for her. Our daughter got lost, but someone who loved her found her.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "I Once Was Lost...."

Lost isn't just a feeling that little kids know. No, a lot of us who are all grown up know it all too well. The dictionary says that "lost" means "bewildered as to direction; missed the way." You ever felt that way? Now, maybe? It could be that, like our daughter said, suddenly your security isn't there. There's been a breakup, a divorce, changes at work or in your family, a painful loss, a financial setback, some major change.

Interestingly enough, our Creator describes us as lost. We're bewildered about the meaning, the direction of our life because we've, Well, like the dictionary says, "missed the way." You and I have missed what we were made for - a life run by God - and we've wandered off into a life run by us. Like our daughter separated from her mom, you suddenly realize the person you need most isn't there - the God who made you.

You're away from your Father, your Heavenly Father. And, again, like a lost child, there's no way you can find your way back to Him. Your only hope is that He's come looking for you and that's what Jesus is all about. He's God come looking for you. In our word for today from the Word of God - Luke 19:10 - Jesus says, "The Son of Man (that's Him) came to seek and to save what was lost." Jesus literally gave His life to bring you home; He absorbed your death penalty for all your sin when He died on the cross.

And now He's coming seeking you to save you - right now through this visit He may be doing that. It's really Jesus, who knows your need, coming where you are, through this program, to bring you home. Here's a letter that I received from a man who experienced that. He tells about commuting to work one winter morning.

He says, "This hour and one half ride is really getting to be a drag - too much time to think. Thinking about one divorce and a second marriage, never enough money, can't afford a new car and this one may not even make it home." Then again, what if he doesn't make it home? Is this what life is about? Drive-work-sleep, then drink myself into oblivion to numb the monotony? He is painfully aware of a growing emptiness - something's missing - actually everything is missing!

He tells how he started surfing the radio and he landed on this program and he says, "You directed me to the One who would give my life meaning. Without that, it was quite possible I would not be here now." See, Jesus found this man through a radio. And this man finally found everything he'd been missing.

For someone listening right now, that's what Jesus wants to do for you this very day, this very hour.

Would you open up to this man who gave His life for you? You can trust Him with the rest of your days. Would you say, "Jesus, You died for me. You love me. You're alive! You walked out of Your grave. Come into my life. I'm yours." Our website will tell you how to be sure you've begun that relationship. You can go to ANewStory.com.

Jesus loves you too much to lose you. He went all the way to a cross to prove it and right now He's come where you are to bring you home. Don't miss Him, my friend.

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The attack on the USS Stark was really a double tragedy. It happened during the Iraq War, and an Iraqi pilot fired a missile into the side of our missile frigate, the USS Stark. And 37 American sailors died in an awful inferno that followed. Actually, one of the reasons for the tragedy wasn't even so much the missile. It appears now that someone had turned off a vital alarm; one that actually could have alerted the crew in time to respond. Well, there's the double tragedy. The American sailors died, yes. But none of them had to. An attack was underway and the alarm was off. Well, wait a minute! Let's be careful, because you and I might be making that same mistake.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Alarm Inside You."

At the moment you committed your life to Christ, God actually activated inside of you this flawless, internal guidance system. He's called the Holy Spirit. The guidance system is described in John 16:8, which says this: "When He comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment." So the Holy Spirit is this alarm system that lets us know when we're crossing or when we're about to cross God's boundaries.

Then in 1 Thessalonians 5:19 we find our word for today from the Word of God. It simply says, "Do not quench the Spirit." Man, this is a blazing warning! It says, "Don't turn off God's alarm!" It could be that knowing what only God knows about you, He is sounding one more alarm in your life through our visit today. This could be an alarm. That's a sobering thought. The Holy Spirit in you has been warning you about the compromises you've been making long before you tuned in today; about those things He's been trying to pull you away from; or that sin that you've been trying to rationalize or justify. He's been making you feel uncomfortable about some of those wrong choices. He knows where they're going to take you. He sees the destruction that's headed right for you, and you don't. He's sounding the alarm.

Please listen to God the Holy Spirit! The alarm has been going off as you've been telling less than the truth, or as you've been saying hurtful things in anger and frustration. That alarm's been going off as you've been flirting with that sexual sin, or maybe even as you've committed it; or as you've talked about what you never should have talked about, or you've been watching what you never should have watched, or listening to what you never should have listened to.

It could be that you have felt that alarm in the middle of criticizing somebody - backstabbing - and the Holy Spirit is saying inside of you, "Don't do this." He has sounded the alarm, and honestly, you have felt this spiritual heartburn that is trying to pull you the other way. It's a frightening thing that you can actually quench the Holy Spirit and become immune to His warnings. You say, "Oh, that's good! Yeah, I'd actually like to be immune to it." No, it's deadly! When you turn off the warning system of the Holy Spirit; when you quench the Spirit, it will lead you to spiritual death and destruction. Because you will end up going farther than you ever thought you'd go, staying longer than you'd ever thought you'd stay, and paying much more than you ever thought you'd pay.

If the missile of sin's destruction is headed your way, I guarantee you, the Holy Spirit's alarm is going off in you now. Turn off the alarm and the price will be too high to pay. Respond to the alarm, and you will be able to get out while you can.

I missed that sunset a few nights ago, but I saw something just as beautiful - the afterglow. A sky painted by my favorite Artist in brilliant hues of orange and yellow. Look, I've seen a lot of sunsets all over the country and all over the world. But the show isn't over when the sun goes down. No, the sky is still glowing, often magnificently. The sun may be gone, but its aftermath is still beautifying our horizon.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "After the Sun Sets."

I've seen lives like that. My wife was a life like that. The sun set suddenly on my baby's life. But its brilliant afterglow is continuing to light up so many lives. More than even I knew.

It's made me think about what I'll leave on people's horizon when my sun sets. And about people I've known, whose life on earth is over, but who are still "afterglowing" on the landscape of my life.

Oh, I know the kind of people who bring clouds and shadows with them. They're the gripers, the gossipers, the grimacers, the growlers, and the grumps. No glow.

But what is it about certain people that makes them a treasure to be cherished, long after they're gone? It's in a certain way, I think, that they make you feel when you're with them. They make you feel lighter. There's this contagious joy and an ever-ready smile that's like the sun on the gloomiest day. Who doesn't want to be around - even seek out - that kind of person?

My Karen had that, even when she might have been weighed down with medical, financial, or work stresses. But her joy was explained by a favorite Bible verse of hers, which is our word for today from the Word of God in Nehemiah 8:10, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." That's an unsinkable buoyancy that's independent of your circumstances and it's anchored in Christ.

These "afterglow" people also make you feel safe, unlike the many who have an agenda, can't keep a confidence, make you feel judged, or later use what you tell them against you. But there are those rare people who have been for me a harbor where I know I can run in the storm. Someone I can pour out my heart to. Those people change your life.

So do the people who make you feel heard. In a world where no one can remember what you were saying when you lost your train of thought, these people can because they're all about you. Unforgettable people really listen for your heart, not just your words.

Ultimately, the "afterglow" legacy people are the ones who make you feel important. When you're with them, you feel like you're the only person in their world at that moment. I lived with and I loved this kind of woman since I was 20 years old. Long enough to know why people of every age and race and background cherish her memory.

She made us feel Jesus. She always told us, "It's not about me. It's all about Jesus." It turns out she wasn't generating all that love and joy. She was reflecting it like the moon, reflecting the glory of the sun, or in her case, the Son of God.

She felt so totally loved by Jesus, because she could say in the words of the Bible, "He loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). You could say that too. She lived Jesus' promise to light up every life that's given to Him. He said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).

Have you ever experienced that? Do you feel safe and secure in the love of the One who loves you the most - Jesus? The only One who loved you enough to die for your sin? Today, if you've never given your life to Him, let this be Day 1 of life like it was meant to be. Tell Him, "Jesus, nobody loves me like you do. I'm yours. Replace the darkness with Your light."

Go to our website today, and find out there exactly how to be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.

I've seen this light Jesus talked about up close for many years. I called it her Jesus-glow. So radiant that it continues to light my life and countless others, as yours can...even after your sun has set.

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Our garage had gotten to the point where it was scary. Yeah, it was so scary my son used to have nightmares about it. He'd wake up and realize the nightmare was real! It was so messy there really wasn't much walking space. You could crawl around, but that was even tight. See, it had been a busy year, and we really hadn't any time to clean it up. It wasn't that it was all our mess - we had been storing things for other people too.

But we knew it was a mess and we felt bad about it. Every time we went out there we got discouraged and endangered. (There was no telling what was under all those piles!) Now, the mess was still there even though we knew about it. Oh, and we talked about it. But then we did something other than just walk by it and talk about it. We actually attempted to clean the garage, and it quickly got to the point where you could actually walk around in it. It looked twice the size! We approached it differently this time. We attacked it, and clean felt great!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Attacking Your Mess."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 7, beginning at verse 9. "Yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us." Now, they didn't stop just feeling sorry. No, they went on. As the passage goes on it says, "Godly sorrow brings repentance..." Now, that's a key, remember that. "...that leads to salvation and leaves no regret..." Maybe I could put in there leaves no mess. "...but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done."

See, these people got busy with the mess! Now, what God is saying here is sorry doesn't do it. It didn't do it in our garage. Just to be sorry about the garage didn't change anything! Oh, we'd been sorry for a long time, but the mess was still there. Look, maybe there's a spiritual mess in some corner of your life right now. And this would be a great time to be thinking about cleaning up the mess.

Can you think of a sin that you've confessed over and over again only to re-sin again and again in that area? Maybe it's your temper, or something to do with your personal purity, could be sinful talk, pride, or lust, but you just can't win it. Well, it may be that you still have the mess because you've confessed but you haven't repented. It's not enough to acknowledge the sin, feel sorry about the sin and ask for help. You've got to tackle that mess!

If you feel like we did when we started cleaning that garage, you might say, "Oh, this is hopeless! Where do I start on this mess?" Well, you start organizing. You start cleaning out your life. You start setting it up as if you're not going to sin like that again. You repent specifically by name for that sin. You ask God to break your heart and make you sad over it. You find someone who will hold you accountable, who knows about your battle and will ask you how it's going. You burn all the bridges to that old part of you - that wrong part of you - all those things the Devil has used to bring that sin into your life over and over again. You just don't allow yourself to get into the situations where you could even do this sin.

Will you fall again? Sadly, that may very well happen. Will there be a mess in the garage again? There may be. But pick it up while it's small. Get up quickly. You attack the mess when it's small, and you start a new day clean. You don't need to acknowledge that mess again - you need to attack it.

Take it from a man who finally got fed up with a mess that had been there way too long. Clean really feels good.

I was speaking for a youth camp, and I'd been pouring out my heart to those teenagers in service after service. At the end of the week, some kids came up to me and said, "Do you know what really affected us the most this week?" I was kind of waiting to hear which message, or which illustration, or which challenge had impacted them. It wasn't any of those things. These teenagers said, "You know, Ron, we've been watching you with your wife this week. We've seen how you treat her, how you put your arm around her, and how you talk to her. That's what impressed us."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Show Your Jesus."

Well, I can tell you, my wife and I weren't trying to impress those teenagers. We were just having our relationship in front of them, and it touched their hearts. You know, there's something powerful about showing people your relationship, especially when it comes to life's most important relationship-your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The relationship the lost people in your world desperately need, because their lives - their eternities - depend on it.

In Acts 16:25 and following, our word for today from the Word of God, we have a clear example of how showing your Jesus-relationship can make people want that relationship. After Paul and Silas have been beaten and imprisoned for their Christian witness it says, "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them."

Later, when crisis hits in the form of a violent earthquake, the Bible says, "The jailer rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' They replied, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.'" He heard them praying, he heard them praising-just having their relationship with Jesus in front of him, right there in his jail. And he knew where to look when the crunch came.

Over the years, I've seen unbelievers touched by a promise that believers almost always take for granted, "I'll pray for you." You know, you may have a place to start in sharing and showing Jesus to them you don't even realize. If they share a concern with you about a family member or a health issue, a crisis, a hurt they're experiencing, or a financial need, then it's time for you to promise that you will talk to God about it.

And when you're alone with them, you can actually ask them if they mind if you start talking to God about it while you're still with them. In other words, don't just pray for them, pray with them. It's just a matter of gently asking, "Would you mind if I prayed about it right here, while we're still together?" Often I have asked people who don't have a relationship with Christ if I could pray with them. No one has ever told me no. In fact, it's not uncommon to open my eyes at the end of the prayer and see tears in their eyes.

See, that person you're praying with has probably never heard their name mentioned in a prayer in their entire life. And when you're talking to God in their presence, you're actually letting that person hear you have your personal relationship with God. God might even give you a green light then to tell them what it means to you to be able to go to God like this, and how there used to be a wall between you and God and you couldn't always talk to Him like this. But you found out how you could have a personal love relationship with Him, how that wall came down - what Jesus did for you.

In hurting times, lost people are generally far more ready to be prayed for than we are ready to pray for them. Your offer to pray with them is actually a nothing-to-lose deal, even if they turn you down. Either way, you've shown them that you care. And either way, you have demonstrated your personal love relationship with your God-the relationship you so want them to share.

If you asked me to choose between a fast-food hamburger or let's say a home cooked pot roast dinner with all the trimmings, it wouldn't take me much time to decide. It probably wouldn't take you much time either. But having lived in metropolitan areas most of my life, it was great to rush into McDonald's or Burger King and grab something. See, often the choice has been between dinner on the run and no dinner at all. So, that was an easy choice.

But there was a time, believe it or not, when there weren't many fast-food places. (And yes, I can remember those.) We had to drive almost an hour where we lived at one point to get to a McDonald's. Oh, there were diners or expensive restaurants, but nothing really that fast.

Now it is always, of course, my preference to have carefully prepared, full course meals. But sometimes, hey, you need what you need fast.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Wisdom To Go."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Nehemiah 2, and Nehemiah is the cupbearer to the King of Persia. He's had his heart broken when he's heard about the destroyed condition of his home city of Jerusalem, and he has been praying about this now for several months. And he goes before the king, and this particular conversation will turn out to change the course of history.

"I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before, so the king asked me, 'Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This could be nothing more than sadness of heart.' I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, 'May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?' The king said to me, 'What is it you want?'" Now, you can almost hear Nehemiah's knees shaking here as he says, "Then I prayed to the God of heaven and I answered the king."

Well, he proceeds from here to tell all about his burden for the city. And the king responds and equips Nehemiah to go there, and miraculously that city is rebuilt in 52 days. Now, this turns out to be a decisive conversation. Nehemiah is really on the spot. Everything is riding on his answer.

Now, it's nice when you have a week to pray for something but when you have just a moment and you really need some wisdom? But there are those moments when there is no chance for you to do any of those things. You have to get it fast. So, what does Nehemiah do? He's on the spot. He taps into one of God's most practical gifts - wisdom to go.

You're faced with those kinds of crunches on many occasions. Whenever it's possible, of course, it's best to take some time to decide your next step. It's like taking time to prepare and eat a great dinner. But in some situations you barely have time to drive up to the window and say, "Wisdom to go please...with everything on it." But God will give it to you in those pressure moments, maybe like the ones you're in right now.

He promises in James 1:5, "If we ask for wisdom, when we lack it, He will give it to us liberally." Notice the kind of lifestyle, though, that gets that instant insight. Nehemiah gets it because he is already a prayed up person. He's been praying for four months about this situation. He's bathed it in prayer. He has surrendered the situation to the Lord. Back to Nehemiah 1:11 he says, "I am your servant (talking to the Lord). Give your servant success today. Lord, it's all up to you." Now comes that sudden moment of truth when the king says, "What is it you want?" Nehemiah fires off a "Help!" to heaven.

Now, your wisdom crunch may come in a moment of needing to know how to handle a situation with your child, or a situation at work, or how to respond to fast-breaking developments, or to an unexpected call. The good news is you can get the discernment you need to answer in God's will. Now, pray through the major arenas, the major relationships of your day. Bathe your life in prayer, and then pause before you answer to be sure that your line to heaven is open.

And then, fire off that prayer in your heart, and then pick up your wisdom to go.

It might have been the scariest moment of my life. I was only ten years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was with my friends in Lake Michigan. We started out just wading, but they kept getting deeper past the lake bottom where it dropped off. We started swimming. Well, not we because I didn't know how, and I was too embarrassed to tell them. And I started taking on water fast. I mean, I went under twice, and I was thrashing around. As for my buddies, they thought I was just clowning around. I wasn't! I was drinking the lake. And then he came - the man from the shore who saw my predicament and he jumped in to do something about it. He had come to rescue me. I grabbed him with both hands. I hung onto him as if he were my only hope, because He was.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One Hand Short Of Heaven."

As I've studied the Bible, I've learned that what happened to me that day at the lake is a picture of another life-or-death situation and the rescue on which a life depends. In this case, the life-or-death situation involves the entire human race. So, it's about you and me.

The Bible reveals our true spiritual condition in hopes that we'll recognize it and take the only action that will save our souls. God's book says, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2)...that we are "without God and without hope in this world" (Ephesians 2:12)... and that we are "dead in our sins."

Sin is so much more than just breaking somebody's religious rules. It's defying Almighty God by ignoring His rule over our lives and doing what we want instead. And it's all of us, even the most religious person listening today. We differ only in the degree of our rebellion against our Creator, not in the reality of that rebellion or in its awful, eternal consequences.

We are that little guy, drowning, with no hope of saving ourselves. Our only hope of avoiding certain death is the same as it was for me that day - a rescuer. And it's at that point that Jesus Christ comes off the pages of the history books and becomes a deeply personal issue for you and me. He saw we were dying, He left heaven's shore, and He jumped in to save us at the cost of His own life when He gave His life in exchange for ours on a cross.

Our word for today from the Word of God, in John 3:18, spells out the difference between those who will be lost and those who will be rescued: "Whoever believes in Him (that's Jesus) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in Him stands condemned already because He does not believe in the name of God's one and only Son."

It isn't what you do with some religion or some set of beliefs that matters. It all comes down to what you do with Jesus - whether or not you believe in Him. In the original Greek word that's translated as "believe," it means to put your total trust in Jesus, to hold onto Him like a drowning person would hang onto his rescuer. I know about that. And take it from me, that's holding onto Him with both hands.

Some people miss Him because they try to grab Jesus with just one hand - because there's something else in the other hand they don't want to let go of. But that's what the Bible calls "another god." And you can't hold Jesus with one hand and some junk He died for in the other. Believing in Jesus is grabbing Him with both hands, turning from, abandoning whatever else has been your hope. Maybe you've tried to turn to Jesus without turning from your sin, that other hope. Well, it's got to be a two-hand faith, grabbing Jesus with all your heart and both your hands.

Have you ever taken that life-saving step? It's time! Tell Him right now. He's come to where you are, and He's reaching for you with both hands - nail-scarred hands. It's time you grabbed Him with both of yours.

I'd love to help you do that today. Our website's all about this beginning with Jesus. Go there today, will you? It's ANewStory.com.

Grabbing Jesus with one hand or with both hands - that may be the difference between being saved and being lost.

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I'll bet you didn't know that Christianity is like suntan lotion. Huh? Neither did I until I was speaking at a conference, and I took my oldest son with me. He was about 12 or 13 I think (my poor kids had to listen to their Dad speak so many times).

Well, we were on our way home on the plane, and all of a sudden on this long trip from the West, my son said to me, "Hey, Dad, you know what? I finally listened to a lot of your talks this time." Let's see, was that's good news/bad news. I don't know what he was doing before. But he said, "You know what? I've figured out that Christianity is a lot like suntan lotion." I said what you would have said, "What?" He said, "You know, if you put a big, old blob of suntan lotion on your arm, it doesn't do you any good until you rub it in."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Bible - Informed or Transformed?"

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Joshua 1:8 where we have God's formula for success. "Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth: meditate on it day and night..." By the way, that word meditate is used in Hebrew to talk about a cow chewing its cud. So, chew it over and over again. Why? "...so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful."

Now, you get what God is saying to Joshua? I think it's His message to you and me today. The purpose of reading is not just to know something. It's to find something to do. When Jesus was talking to the 12 disciples about going out in the Great Commission to disciple people all around the world, He said, "Go and make disciples of all nations teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Don't just tell them what there is to know; teach them to do it.

James 1 again says that the Bible is like a mirror. When you look in a mirror, you're supposed to change something because of what you see there. Right? The one reason there's such a gap between our beliefs and our behavior is because we won't in my son's words, "Rub it in." We have these great big blobs of spiritual truth all over us. We've been hearing it forever. We went to church a couple of times this week, we've got this guy that keeps coming at us on the radio, we've got Bible studies, we've got websites. The problem is that we tend to go for information rather than transformation; for application of what God says. To answer the question, "So what? What's this supposed to do in my life." It's one thing to read the Bible; it's another thing to let the Bible read you.

God's interested in what difference His Word is making in you today, not just whether you can pass a Bible quiz. What did you read today? What are you doing differently today because of it? When God says meditate on it, what does that mean? Does that mean you stare into space blankly, kind of an Eastern mysticism thing? Not at all! You think about something you read in the Bible until you have made a connection between what you read and something you're going to face today. That's Christian meditation. It's not focusing on nothing; it's focusing on what God said and then you've meditated when you've connected that there's something you should do with it today. I think you ought to keep a spiritual journal and write down every day, "What did I read today in my own words? What did God say today and what am I going to do differently because God said it?"

If you're in a position where you teach God's Word to people, even if you're just a parent doing that, make sure you always answer the unspoken question I think people are asking, "So what? Okay, it's true. So, what do you want me to do with it?" By all means answer that question for yourself. Look, have you gotten a little lazy as you read God's Word, just sort of accumulating more Bible information? That leads to boredom, it leads to powerlessness, and the illusion of spiritual life.

Those Bible blobs? They're not going to do you much good until you rub them in.

Years ago a major art gallery sponsored a competition for painters. They were offering prizes for the best painting on the subject of "Peace." As the attenders browsed through the entries, most had decided that one certain painting was almost sure to win. It portrayed this lush green pasture under a vivid blue sky, with the cows grazing lazily and a little boy walking through the grass with his fishing pole over his shoulder. It really made you feel all peaceful. But it came in second. The painting that won was a big surprise. The scene was the ocean in a violent storm. The sky was ominous, the lightning was cutting across the sky, and the waves were crashing into the rock walls of the cliffs by the shore. No peace. But you had to look twice to understand what was going on. There, about halfway up the cliff was a birds' nest, tucked into a tiny hollow in the rock. A mother bird was sitting on that nest with her little babies, tucked underneath her, sleeping soundly. That was peace!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Peace in the Midst of the Storm."

Now, that was the title of the prize-winning painting - and rightly so, because peace is not just the absence of a storm. It's peace in the middle of the storm. The kind of peace many of us could use right now; the kind of peace maybe you could have right now if you're resting where you ought to be.

As our headlines have become more dominated with new dangers, as so many hearts have been struggling with new anxieties and new fears, I think we're ready for the incredible peace offered in Psalm 46. I call it "Good News for Troubled Times." It's our word for today from the Word of God. Maybe it should be our word for every day right now!

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." So, the more troubled things are, the more present God makes Himself. The psalmist then says, "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." Everything's collapsing here - things that have always been there for us. But no fear. Why? "God is our refuge and strength."

This psalm continues: "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where The Most High dwells." Where does God live today? Well, it's in those who belong to Him through faith in Jesus. So this might be about you. "God is within her, and she will not fall...Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall...the Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress." Then as everything seems to be melting down, God says, "Be still, and know that I am God."

OK, turn off the news, leave those other voices, and get where you can just be with God. And realize that as long as you're in His hands, there's no such thing as out of control. He is still God and you are still His!

And if you have never given yourself to Jesus, the Man who died for you to pay for your sin, I'd say there's never been a better time than this. With so much uncertainty, it's so great to know that you're safe forever in a relationship with Him.

I wonder if there's ever been a time when you began your personal relationship with Jesus. Not just have a religion about Jesus or agree with Jesus, but when you've pinned all your hopes on Him as the man who died for your sin and rose from the grave to give you eternal life. If you want that security, if you want that anchor, if you want that forgiveness, that rock to stand on, tell Him that today. Say, "Jesus, I want to belong to You. I'm giving myself to You because You gave yourself for me."

I'd love to have you go to our website today because there is help to be sure that you are anchored to Jesus Christ from this day on and forever. It's called ANewStory.com. Would you check it out?

When you are nesting in the care of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can rest through any storm, because you belong to the One who can give you peace in the middle of the storm.

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Having seen far too many traffic accidents in my travels over the years, I appreciated a story I heard some years ago from Adrian Rogers. A lady was driving down the highway when she came upon the scene of a terrible accident. She got out of the car, and she saw this driver who had been thrown from the car. He was seriously injured and he was bleeding profusely. Later the lady recounted her response to this heart-rending scene. She said, "Thank goodness, I remembered my First Aid just when it was needed the most, and I immediately put my head between my knees to keep from passing out!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Missing Your Mission."

This lady is not about to be a hero on the nightly news! No, she's oblivious to the desperate need in front of her and instead she's just all focused on herself. The question is, "could that be us?" On the scene where there are people in front of us who are spiritually dying, without Christ, without any hope of heaven and we're just standing there, worrying about ourselves.

Our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Kings 7:9 is a pretty shocking Old Testament picture of a modern spiritual tragedy. The city of Samaria is under siege, and the people of the city are facing such extreme starvation, some of them are even resorting to cannibalism believe it or not. Every morning you can hear the screams of mothers who have awakened to find that their child has starved to death during the night or the sobs of children who just watched their mother die of starvation.

Meanwhile, four lepers, who are living as outcasts outside the city wall, are also on the edge of starvation. Of course, they just depend on handouts from the city. So they choose a course that they consider their only hope for survival. They're going to surrender to the enemy and hope they'll get fed by them. Well, during the night, the Lord has done a miracle that has caused the enemy to retreat, and they have left their camp and their supplies behind. So the lepers stumble into this empty camp and a mountain of food.

The Bible says that as they sat there gorging themselves, "They said to each other, 'We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once...'" Question: how can you have what dying people need and not tell them about it?

Tragically, that's many of us who belong to Jesus Christ. We do it day after day. We keep feasting on the Jesus-banquet, filling up with more and more blessings while never telling the spiritually starving people we know about our Jesus. We can't imagine having one day without Jesus, and they've never had one day with Him. And without Him, they have no chance of heaven. They will never be in heaven with you.

God is trying to open your eyes to the life-or-death emergency that is right in front of you day after day. He's put you on the scene where you could save some lives, where you could rescue some spiritually dying people. As inadequate as you may feel, you are the one that Jesus placed in their lives so you could help some of those folks be in heaven with you!

Is it risky to step out and try to rescue someone? Sure it is. Just ask Jesus. But if He could die for those people we know, how can we not at least tell them that He died for them? Please don't let them die without a chance at Jesus. See, you are that chance.

Our daughter's got this thing about lighthouses. Thanks to her family indulging that passion at Christmas and birthday time, she's got lighthouses all over her house. She's got lighthouse stationery, lighthouse rugs, and lighthouse books; sad to say, even a lighthouse on the cover of her commode. In many places, real lighthouses are mostly reminders of the maritime past when lives actually depended on seeing the light that marked the shore and the rocks. Sometimes lives still depend on them, as in the case of a Greek ferry called the Express Samina.

There were 540 passengers aboard that September evening, sailing from Athens to an Aegean Island. An hour out, the wind came up and the temperature suddenly dropped. Five hours into the voyage, passengers felt the ferry's engines surge, and most of them assumed they were getting close to their destination. They were wrong. The crew was frantically trying to steer clear of this small, rocky island, two miles from their destination. Tragically, the ferry plowed right into those rocks. It took only thirty-eight minutes to sink. Rescue vessels got there quickly, but eighty people died that night, and you know, it didn't have to happen. There was a functioning lighthouse, sitting atop that rock, warning vessels away. It could be seen for several miles around. For some reason, the ferry just kept heading straight for the rocks.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Light Right In Front of You."

It's possible to have the light right in front of you and miss it - with tragic results. It's been happening to nice church folks for a long time. If you're a nice church folk, it could happen to you. There are a lot of great things about growing up in a Christian environment, or of being a part of a church where you hear about Jesus a lot. But there are some dangers, too; like missing the light that's right in front of you.

Jesus had some sobering things to say to some of the most religious people of His day. They are still sobering words for those of us who are Bible folks - church folks. Here are the words of Jesus from John 5:39-40, our word for today from the Word of God: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, and yet you refuse to come to Me to have life." You can have the light of the Bible, the light of the Gospel in front of you your whole life, and yet you could still miss Jesus. When you miss Jesus, you miss God and you miss heaven. Jesus made clear that many people who have lived for years in sight of the lighthouse will miss heaven's destination and sail right into the rocks of eternal punishment for their sins.

The Bible describes eternal life as "the gift of God" (Romans 6:23). You can know all about a gift, you can appreciate a gift, and you can have the gift right in front of you and still miss the gift because you never took it for yourself. Could that be you? Somehow, there's never been a time when you actually reached out and personally took Jesus into your life for yourself. For all you know, you don't know Jesus. For all you've experienced, you've never experienced Him. Don't you want to?

God, in His great love for you, has laid this on my heart so you could have this chance to know Him for real. It's probably going to be hard to admit that you've missed Jesus all this time, but it's not nearly as hard as an eternity without Him. Don't let your pride, don't let your self-deception make you miss heaven. Right where you are, tell Him, "Jesus, I've never actually put my trust in You to be my own Savior from my own sin. But today I am. Beginning this day, Jesus, I'm Yours."

I want you to be sure beyond any shadow of a doubt that you belong to Jesus for now and for eternity. That's why our website is there. Please go there today. It's ANewStory.com.

You've seen the lighthouse, but maybe you've never changed your course. This time, turn to Jesus while there's time.

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There's a 7-Eleven store owner in Texas who won my respect some years ago. Never met the man, but I really respect his creativity. He had this particular problem every night in his parking lot. A bunch of teenagers would gather there and their rock music would blare from their cars and then they kind of took over their neighborhood with decibels. And when they left, they'd leave a trail of litter and broken bottles.

Now, he could have gone out in the parking lot and yelled and screamed, and said, "You crazy kids, get out of here!" But he was much more creative and effective than that. He installed his own speakers on the roof of his store and started playing Mozart in the parking lot at night. His speakers were so big he was drowning out their speakers. I'll bet you could guess and guess correctly what happened! No more teenagers in the parking lot! They're not going to go near that Mozart stuff. His music cleared the parking lot. Now, that's a great way to win.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Drowning Out the Disturbing Music."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Deuteronomy 6. It is addressed to parents who have just moved out of the wilderness. They're moving into the Promised Land of Canaan, but it's a pagan place. They've been raising their children around people who believe what they believe. Now, they're going to have to raise their children in a pagan culture, a pleasure-mad, godless environment. There's going to be a lot of temptation for their kids, and the children will be hearing the siren song of Canaan blasting through the neighborhood.

How do parents deal with all these pagan influences? It sounds like the atmosphere in which we're raising our kids, doesn't it? Do you go out and yell and scream against all the sin? That might not be the best approach. Deuteronomy 6, beginning with verse 6: "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates."

Seems like the strategy that God suggests here is to drown out the music of a godless earth with the music of a Christ-centered home. You can create in your family an island of sanity in an otherwise insane world. We hear all the appealing voices and temptations of a sinful culture, and oftentimes we act like we're afraid of that as if they really have something to offer. We cloister our kids; we try to pretend there is no other music. But God says in essence, "You can't stop the world from playing its alluring attractions for your children, but you can play the music of Jesus louder. How do you do that? Impress His teachings on your children. It doesn't just say tell them or teach them. It says to impress them.

Now, if you want to make an impression on something physically, you've got to be right next to it, in touch with it. That's how you impress something. Well, see, this is close-up time! It's not just teaching Christian answers; it's spending lots of that close-up time with them. It's interweaving God talk and God values into their everyday activities. Wrapping them in your God stories. The best place to learn about Him, to see the reality of your faith is in the classroom of everyday life. It's debriefing your child daily from their venture into the world. The greater impression is when they see you loving Jesus, enjoying Jesus, meeting with Jesus yourself. Not so much pushing Jesus - enjoying Him; a spontaneous faith treats Jesus like the unseen member of our family; the decisive person in all the things that matter to you.

The world can't play music like that, so don't waste a lot of time trying to fight the world's blaring music. Just play Jesus' song louder, with a living faith in your family.

I was watching on TV the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and my mind raced back to this unforgettable personal visit I had to the site of what was a very deadly tragedy. My guide for my visit to the memorial made it really special and very moving, because he's a state trooper. He was one of the rescuers that day. His recollections of the joy of rescues and the heartbreak of lives lost I'm not going to ever forget.

Of course, all the traces of that bombed-out building are gone now. The site is now a beautiful lawn with a stone chair for each of the victims. What was the street that day is now a reflection pond. Nothing remains there from the day the world stopped at 9:02 A.M. - nothing, that is, except the tree. On an embankment across from what was the building site stands a big old tree, still partially blackened by the bomb blast. We stood there, my rescuer friend and I, and we prayed beneath those branches that somehow had endured the blast. They call it The Survivor Tree.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Survive When Everything's Coming Down."

One indestructible tree - that's all that survived the most powerful blast that city had ever known.

For 2,000 years, men and women who are reeling from blasts that seem to have blown apart everything in their lives, have made it - because of one indestructible tree. The Survivor Tree; the one the Bible talks about when it says that Jesus Christ "bore our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). That tree is, of course, the cross where the greatest act of love in human history took place - the one and only Son of God dying in our place, paying for our sins so we would never have to. In that cross - in the unspeakable love that it makes available - so many have found the one life-anchor that nothing can take from them.

Every one of us has seasons in our life when a massive blast suddenly rips through everything around us. You could be in one of those seasons right now. Maybe you've been betrayed by a love you thought would always be there, your parent's marriage is coming apart, or you've lost someone who has been an anchor in your life. Sometimes we are victims of the destruction that comes from our own bad choices, which leaves you devastated by the shame of what you've done. Or it may not be what you've done. It may be the wrongs that have been done against you. The blast that changes everything can be financial, medical, etc.

It is in those moments that we look for something to hold onto, something that can withstand what has rocked our life. And it is in moments like these that many of us have finally run to The Survivor Tree - the cross where Jesus died for us, where we can experience the "never leave you" love of Almighty God. That's the day you discover the miracle that's described in our word for today from the Word of God in Ephesians 2:13-14. "You who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace."

That peace is within your reach this very day; maybe at a time when peace seems so impossible because of what you've lost. It may be that very loss will finally bring you to the one love you'll never lose. Jesus stands right now with arms wide open, waiting to forgive every sin of your life, to transform your dark side, and to heal what's broken inside you as only He can. He's waiting only for you to tell Him that you're turning from the sin that put Him on that cross and that you're putting all your trust in Him.

Tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm yours." I would love to give you information that will help you secure this new beginning with Jesus Christ. And it's at our website - ANewStory.com. Would you check it out today?

Take your stand by the tree - by the cross - that nothing has ever blown away. You are one heartfelt prayer away from having in your heart the indestructible love of Almighty God.

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I approached our local McDonald's manager with an idea for using his restaurant one night. I asked him if he would let our Campus Life group have it for a candlelight dinner at McDonald's. He said, "Well, that sounds creative, but we can't close and just shut the public out. But we can allow you to come in."

Well, they close at 11:00 on a weeknight, so we thought we'd come in there late. So we did it at 9:30. We set up the tables with tablecloths and candles on every table (it was kind of cool!) and all our staff dressed in tuxedos so we could serve them formally at McDonald's. We had a strolling violinist, can you believe it? We called it The Chateau De La Mac. We had about 100 teenagers come from the local high school packed in there and they loved that event. Now, did other customers come in? Yes. Did they stay? No. We took up every seat at McDonald's. We had so packed every corner of that place there was simply no room for anyone or anything else.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Holy Spirit Takeovers."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God tells about the birthday of the church, the Day of Pentecost - Acts 2, beginning in verse 1. "When the Day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like a blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting." Then verse 4, "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit."

Now, this is actually a picture of what happens when revival, when a stirring of God, when a great work of God is about to break out. Now, Pentecost only happened one time. It's a unique event. But spiritual revival is a recurring event in the life of the church. Scattered through the history of the church are those extraordinary, unpredictable, incredible, powerful Spirit take-overs called revival. We've seen a hint of that at some Christian colleges in recent years. And the key is in that word filled. It means there's no room for anything else.

Our group filled that McDonald's that night. And even though others wanted space, we had taken over by filling every corner. Now, if you want to let that happen with the Holy Spirit in your life, or in the life of your church, then that's how revival begins; to move out everything else that could take up space. There's no room for anything now but the Holy Spirit. In fact, this Greek word that says, "The wind filled the room and the Spirit filled the people" is used a lot of different ways. It was used as a sponge that was soaked with vinegar when Jesus was on the cross. There was no room for any other liquid. It talks about people who were full of food at another place in the Bible; stuffed - no room for any more food.

The word filled is also used about being filled with an emotion like anger...a consuming emotion where there's no room for any other feeling. Saturated, stuffed, consumed with the Holy Spirit. That's a Spirit takeover, and that's the culminating experience of the Christian life. It's funny we start with no room for Christ in our life; then we make room for Him. We let Him in, and as we grow we finally get restless with spiritual mediocrity and sameness. And then we say, "Lord, would You make me so there's no room for anything but You in every corner of my life?"

Oh, look, you may not understand all the theology of this reviving take-over - this filling of the Holy Spirit. I don't either. You may not fully understand this yielding of every corner of you for whatever He wants. The question is, "Do you want it? Do you want to be totally His; to be saturated with the Holy Spirit of Almighty God?" Then tell Him that. You are ready for His revival.

Ask Him for that kind of filling 'til there's just no room for anyone else's agenda.

This is going to come as a surprise to my friends who know how technically challenged I am when it comes to building things, but over the years, my sons and I have built several houses together. Don't expect to see a pickup truck that says "Hutchcraft and Sons" on the side. No, and don't look for us in the Yellow Pages. Actually, our houses haven't fared too well. It wasn't because we didn't work hard on them - we did. And it wasn't because they didn't look good; actually they were pretty good. And it wasn't because they weren't big; we did some pretty good sized ones. But every house we built literally collapsed within hours of the time we finished building them. It might have had something to do with the material we built our houses from - sand on a beach next to the ocean.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Sandcastle Syndrome."

Jesus is involved in an incredible building project, and what He's building will never collapse. It will never be washed away by any tide or any storm. And He's inviting you to join Him in building it. Of course, you'll have to get out of the sandcastle business first.

Jesus describes His building project in our word for today from the Word of God in Matthew 16:18. Jesus says, "I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." That's some powerful words. There's no doubt about what Jesus is building. He's building His church. Are you? Well, what are you building?

We're all working on some structure. For you, it's wherever your dreams are focused, what you put a lot of your money into, what you put most of your time into. It's a subject of a lot of your daily conversations. Maybe you're building a reputation for yourself, or financial security for yourself, or a romantic relationship, a business, your income, a comfortable retirement. You may even be building a religious empire for yourself in Christian work. Problem: it's all sandcastles. Just ask my boys. A sandcastle is something you put a lot into that just can't last.

Jesus is inviting us to focus what we have on something that will last forever - building His church. Even our Christian work could be building our own kingdom which won't last. You see, that church is not about an actual physical building. It's about reaching the lost people He died for; for adding them to His family. It's about building up the lives of believers. Are those the causes that get you excited, that you're passionate about? Someone has wisely said, "In order to pray, 'Thy Kingdom come,' you first have to pray, 'My kingdom go.'"

Maybe it's time to stand back and take a candid look at your motives, at your great obsession, and at your top priorities. Is it getting lost and dying people to Jesus? Or has Jesus' building program taken a back seat to something you're building, something out of sand, something that a strong tide or a big storm can wash away?

Jesus said "the gates of hell" itself would not prevail against what He is building. Look, you've got maybe at best 70-or-so years on this planet. Don't waste those years on building something that isn't going to last. Jesus is building His church. What are you building?

There's this disease that hits college campuses in the spring every year. It's called "senior panic." You arrive at college as a freshman with this sneaking suspicion that you might just meet the person you're going to marry while you're there. And as you go through college, that suspicion becomes an expectation.

Now, my wife and I met when we went to college, where we began our education. And D. L. Moody, the man who founded our school, the great evangelist, well, he was a shoe salesman. In fact, they used to say that Moody was a shoe factory where they would take in old heels, and repair their souls, and send them out in pairs. So, you wanted to come out of there with a mate if at all possible. Right?

You started with that suspicion that you might find somebody, and then it became an expectation, and then maybe in your junior year it became a determination, "I've got to find somebody here! I might not have anybody." And then you hit your senior year; there's no husband or wife in sight - senior panic! Quick, do something! I'm going to miss it if I don't do something fast! Who says panic is only a senior problem?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Problem With Panic."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 27. I'll begin reading at verse 30. The Apostle Paul has been for two weeks in the middle of a terrible storm at sea, as he's being carried by a Roman ship to meet with Caesar in Rome. And as they begin to go aground, some of the crew starts to have, not senior panic, but sailor panic. Here's what they decide to do, listen: "In an attempt to escape from the ship, the sailors let the lifeboat down into the sea pretending they were going to lower some anchors from the bow. Then Paul said to the Centurion and the soldiers, 'Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.' So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and they let it fall away."

Okay, some background: The Apostle Paul had gotten assurance from the Lord, in the middle of the storm, that though the ship would go aground, the people would be saved. In fact earlier in the chapter, here's the message he conveys, "Do not be afraid. God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you, so keep up your courage, men. I have faith in God that it will happen just as He told me."

Well, their panic was understandable; the ship's coming apart. Looks like God's not going to deliver them in time. They panic! They scramble for a quick answer. Have you ever done that? See, if they do this, they're not going to make it. If you do, you won't make it. How many times do we look at our storm, we see the ship going down, financially, romantically, emotionally, and we panic. We go for a lifeboat instead of waiting for God's answer, God's provision.

Abraham did it with Hagar and he created a problem for centuries with the two sons of promise, because he and Sarah could not wait for God to fulfill His promise. Rebecca did it with her son, Jacob, when she lied about him to try to get the blessing for him and all she ended up with was a family split apart.

You and I do it when we settle for these patchwork solutions. Because of panic, many of God's kids have ended up with a lot of heartache, in the wrong job, the wrong relationships, the wrong marriage, a mountain of debt. The greatest enemy of God's best may be impatience. We can't wait for God to do as Paul said, "All that God said that He would do."

Those seniors who panic over singleness often get the wrong person. In their rush, they often make a life-long mistake. When they think time's running out, God is right on schedule. Remember, if you panic, you can make a life-long mistake.

"My name is Idiot." She's only four years old, but when police in Hot Springs, Arkansas responded to a report of child abuse, that's what she told them. The marks of abuse were all over her body. There were bruises everywhere, she had a black eye, she had scars on her back. Those will heal. But what about the names she's been called? So many times that she actually thinks "Idiot" is her name.

But wait a minute! What about the names we've called people? Even people - maybe especially people - that we love. How many people we know carry invisible, but indelible scars from our own devastating words? It's not that we necessarily mean to hurt. We're just angry, or frustrated, or feeling unheard or ignored. As our emotions escalate, so do our words. And words are like bullets. Once they're fired, you just can't get them back.

As the Bible says, "Reckless words pierce like a sword" (Proverbs 12:18). We all know that's true. We still feel the sting of the names we were called a long time ago, right? Even though the one who fired them at us has probably totally forgotten it.

It's our children who are most damaged by our hurtful words, because children tend to become what we call them. Label them as "lazy" or "stupid" or "worthless" enough times, and it will stick. But then, so will "princess" or "smart" or "helper" or "fun." Of course, kids also store what they hear their parents call each other in those heated moments; giving them tacit permission to speak disrespectfully in their relationships, too.

But family's not the only place our words leave wounds. Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death" at school, at work, online, in all our close relationships. If people bled physically every time we wounded them verbally, I wonder what a trail we'd leave.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Labeled for Life."

God puts it this way, "The tongue is a world of evil…it sets the whole course of life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell" (James 3:6). Personally, that's one reason I know I need a personal Savior. I've found only one person strong enough to control that fire in me, and that is my death-crushing Jesus. He's that strong.

King David was wise enough to know that we can't conquer this verbal monster without some supernatural intervention. Thus, his prayer should probably be somewhere that I can see it every day - maybe where you see it too. It's our word for today from the Word of God in Psalm 141:3 - "Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips."

I'm thankful for the lasting imprint of something my wife told me years ago - and many times since: "Ron, don't ever forget the power of your words." I suspect a lot of us need that same reminder, huh? Because long after we've forgotten our "reckless words," the person we wounded may be carrying a long and lasting scar from them.

What about all those names and putdowns that we ourselves carry from the scarring words of others? Well, I'm grateful that God has called me names, too: "God's workmanship" (Ephesians 2:10). Created "in His own image" (Genesis 1:27). God says, "My treasured possession" (Exodus 19:5). He calls us "The temple of the living God" (2 Corinthians 6:16). And then, "My sons and daughters" (2 Corinthians 6:18). And He says we are purchased by the blood of His Son (Revelation 5:9).

If you've been beat down and you have thought you were worthless, you've got to take a trip up a hill called Golgotha (Skull Hill) and stand there at the foot of a cross where Jesus said you're worth dying for; for your sins so you could be with Him forever.

Maybe you've never had that wonderful infusion of value and love that comes when you open your life to Jesus and you'd like to do that. Well take care of that right now. Tell Him, "Jesus, I am yours. Nobody loves me like you do." And if you'd like to know more about beginning this relationship, that's why our website's there. It's ANewStory.com.

You know those people who've called you all those other things? They really didn't know who you are, who God says you are.

So no one's name is "idiot." Not when God says, "You're my masterpiece."

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Five thousand miles in one month! That's not too bad if you're in an airplane, but that's how far I drove at least one summer and we've had many long trips like that. We just about ran the wheels off of our van driving from one conference, or speaking assignment, or college trip to another. Let's see, if I averaged 50 miles per hour, that means I drove for 100 hours. Oh, man!

Well, it was a great time, it really was. You know why? My wife was with me. We finally got to be together for extended blocks of time with no phone, no errands to do, no people to take us away. We didn't talk all the time, although we had a lot to catch up on. We probably could have been catching up for about 100 hours. Right?

Sometimes we just played music, or occasionally we would just spontaneously pray about something together. Or a lot of times we just enjoyed the silence or some of the beautiful scenery. And then every once in a while you'd hear the silence punctuated with an occasional comment or just an "I love you." I think my wife spoke for both of us when she described what was so nice about all those 5,000 miles. She said, "It was just so great being in your company; just the two of us."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Just the Two of Us."

You know, relationships need time together and especially times when there's like no agenda. It really enriched me to have that kind of time with my wife during all that driving. There's another relationship that might be a need, maybe a desperate need of some "just being" time.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Psalm 42, out of the heart of David, verses 1 and 2. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God; for the living God." And then he asks this powerful question, "When can I go and meet with God?" That's the cry of a believer for the greatest emotional need he has - to be intimate with his Lord. When was the last time you just sat down with Jesus and enjoyed His company? Or do you only see Him when you have a list for Him?

Jeremy was over at our house with his parents, and he'd been downstairs playing. Suddenly he came into the living room and kind of sat down in his dad's lap, and his dad liked that. His dad kind of wrapped his arms around him, started to cuddle him, and Jeremy didn't settle down; he just kept wiggling. He looked up at his dad and he said, "Daddy, you know I'm not sitting here just because I want to be with you." Great! Yeah, he needed something.

Wow! How often is that me with my Heavenly Father, or you maybe? In fact we say, "Well, I'm not here just because I want to be with You; I've got my list. I need something." But you're growing up as a child of God when you want to be with God just to be with God. You say, "Ron, I don't really feel that way yet." Well, that's okay. Tell Him that. Ask Him for the desire for His company; this passion that David had just to be with Him. "When can I go and meet with God?"

We have the indescribable privilege to cuddle in the lap of the King of the Universe, to call Him "Daddy," to let Him comfort our battered emotions, to speak new ideas and insights into our quiet heart. He can't do that while you're talking to Him. To be real, real close, you can't just run in and run through your "pleases" and "thank yous" and then run out. You can do all that, but then stay a little longer.

I think you and Jesus will feel the same way about it. It's like my wife said, "It was so great just being in your company, Lord, just the two of us."

Two roller coasters. Only one seemed like a real option to me. I should point out that I really don't ride roller coasters much. "Because you're chicken," you say. No, because I'm too short. I just don't measure up to that little height chart that they have at the entrance to the coaster. Actually, I have a friend who declines roller coaster invitations by saying, "I can't. I have an inner ear problem." I like that. I may have to remember that one. For whatever reason, my rides on roller coasters are few and far between. But at this particular amusement park that I visited a few years ago, they had two roller coasters side by side and two lines to get to them. Over one line was a sign that said, "Forward." Over the other line, a sign that said - yeah, you guessed it - "Backward." You can ride looking forward or looking backward. Like this is a choice?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Looking Backward, Missing What's Ahead."

There are two lines in life, and two cars you can ride in. One says, "Forward" and the other says, "Backward." You choose. Frankly, I don't want to ride looking back at where I've already been. I want to ride looking ahead to where I'm going. I hope you do, too.

And that's what God wants for you. In our word for today from the Word of God in Isaiah 43:18-19 - some of my anchor verses. Here's what He says: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." God wants today to be the first day of the rest of your life, not just another day of what your life has been up until now. This can be page one of a whole new volume or just another page of the same old story.

Maybe you've been riding too long looking backward. You keep rehearsing and reliving the hurt of your past, your failures, and the regrets over what you've done or what you should have done. But that's the past, and none of it can be changed. But if you don't move beyond the pain, the anger, the bitterness, the self-pity, the grief, and the self-condemnation - if you keep dwelling on that, you'll miss the part of your life that can be changed - the future.

One of God's great representatives, Paul, said, "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14). Jesus is the Lord of new beginnings, of fresh starts, of clean slates. You need to come to Him and let Him release you from being tied to the people who've hurt you, by getting His grace to forgive them. You need to ask His help to begin to define your life, not by what has happened, but by what's going to happen; what can happen because of Jesus in your life.

Just a few verses after God's call to forget the past and go for His new thing, He tells us how that's possible. He says, "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions...and remembers your sins no more" (Isaiah 43:25). That's what Jesus wants to do for you. It's why He died on that cross and why He rose again from His grave. He paid the death penalty for every wrong thing you've ever done so He could erase your sin from God's book forever, because otherwise, your sin will cost you heaven.

A new beginning. A fresh start. A clean slate. If you're at the point in your life where that's what you want, then it's time to open up your life to Jesus Christ. He's the Lord of new beginnings. You can reach out to Him right where you are and tell Him something like this, "Jesus, I'm done running my own life, I'm turning it over for You to run. I'm grabbing you with both hands because you died for my sin and I want today to be the first day of a new life; of a new me."

There's a lot more great information about this at our website and I pray you'll go there today. It's ANewStory.com.

You've been looking back long enough. There's no reason your life has to be just more of what it's been before, because Jesus has come to you today. And with Jesus, your life will never be the same again.

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When you live in the New York area, locking up your house is just second nature. In fact, it's wise to make sure that every door and every window is locked. Unfortunately, all those precautions can work against you if you forget or lose your house key. Yes, this is the voice of experience. Not only are all those nasty people locked out, you are now locked out! I've been there and done that. I can remember making a complete circuit of the house, desperately trying every window and every door. And the good news was that sometimes I actually found something was unlocked. I'd take even a window that I had to be a contortionist to get through! Anything to find a way to get in!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Open Door On a Locked-Up Heart."

There are probably some people in your world who you want in heaven with you someday - people who probably don't know your Jesus yet. Maybe people who seem to have little interest in knowing Jesus. Sometimes, it seems as if the doors to their heart are all locked up when it comes to Him. But there is a way to get in, no matter how hostile they may seem.

In our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 2:12, Peter says we should "live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us." He even says that "by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men."

A lost person might resist your invitation to Christian meetings and reject your Christian beliefs; but random acts of love and kindness? They're usually a key that unlocks even the hardest hearts. As Jesus carried out His rescue mission here on earth, He wrapped His message in concrete acts of love - touching the leper that no one would touch, going to dinner with "sinners" that the religious people avoided, going to a neighborhood where racial barriers said He should never go, or cuddling the children who came to Him.

That kind of love tears down walls between a believer and an unbeliever; it challenges an unbeliever's misconceptions about Christians being angry, and condemning and uncaring. It creates curiosity about what makes this caring person tick. And the good news is that anybody can show Jesus' love to a lost person. You don't have to have a theological education or a Hollywood personality. It simply requires that you focus on someone whose eternity you care about and you ask yourself this question: "Knowing what I know about this person, what things could I do that would make him or her feel loved?"

Maybe it's babysitting or helping to care for a live-in parent for free, filling in at work so they can have a day off, or helping with a school subject that person is struggling with, or maybe you could provide transportation, or offer to do some "dirty work" for them. Maybe it's forgiving a debt or providing work for them. You could introduce a newcomer to his new surroundings, open your home for dinner, how about repairing a vehicle or an appliance, or just taking an interest in something that matters to them.

I call it "rescue loving." It involves a conscious effort to identify what would make a lost person in your life feel loved. You can find a person's language of love by asking, "What need do they have right now that I could help with?" You literally go looking for needs into which you can pour the kind of love with which Jesus has loved you. That's how you find the open door to a life that you can't get into any other way.

My friend Don was a wonderful family doctor. But some of the greatest moments of his life were spent, not in a doctor's office, but on the river - preferably a river with some very challenging white water. He's a veteran kayaker and river rafter - with some fascinating tips for us folks who don't have his experience. He told me that, as a teenager, during his first days on the river, he was amazed to see canoes and kayaks just 'hanging out' in the middle of these raging rapids. Then he learned the secret of this amazing feat. There are quiet eddies behind some of the big rocks in the rapids. And those canoeists and kayakers had found a place to rest in the very turbulent waters - behind a big rock.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Peace In Your Raging River."

Now it could be that the current on your river has picked up recently. Or maybe you've been in turbulent water for quite a while. The stress of the rapids is taking its toll - and peace and rest for your heart have been pretty hard to find. You need to find the quiet place; the safe place you've been looking for your whole life. You need to get behind the Big Rock.

Our word for today from the Word of God begins in Psalm 62. "My soul finds rest (that sounds good, doesn't it?) in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress, I will never be shaken. He is my mighty rock, my refuge" (Psalm 62:1-2, 6). Wow! David, the king who wrote this psalm, says he has found a rock in the rapids of his life, and it's not a therapist, it's not a religion or any person on earth. The Rock where a turbulent heart finds peace is in a love relationship with an unshakable God. The things that are beyond our control are under His control.

It's this kind of personal peace that Jesus invites us to when He says, "Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). According to the Bible, peace is a person. You finally find peace when you find Jesus. He takes those who belong to Him and He shelters them with His very personal love and His unlimited power.

If there's been no peace for you in your raging current, it may mean that you've let the strong current pull you away from your rock of refuge. The pull and the pressure have caused you to neglect your time near your Rock; your relationship with Jesus. But it may be there's no peace in your heart because you've never taken shelter in that personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The current of life actually pulls us away from the God whose love we were made for. We're stubbornly trying to navigate the rapids by ourselves, actually defying God's control, insisting on my control of the life He made. The name of that defiance is sin. The price of that defiance is the eternal death penalty that sin carries. And whether we know it or not, we are moving inexorably toward this deadly waterfall called the judgment of Almighty God unless we take shelter behind the Rock; unless we place our heart and our life in the hands of Jesus, the one who died for the sin that keeps us from God.

You've battled this current long enough and you're too close to the waterfall, maybe closer than you know. Isn't it time to finally rest behind Jesus the Rock in a love relationship with Him? That relationship begins when you tell Him that the self-rule of your life is over and you are humbly putting all your trust in Him because He died for you. The peace of that relationship could finally enter your heart this very day if you tell Him, "Jesus, I am yours."

There's some wonderful information I'd love to give you about this at our website so you can be sure you have begun your relationship with Him. That website is ANewStory.com.

The best place to finally rest in a fast current is behind a big rock. For you, that Rock is Jesus Christ. Let the struggle end. Let the peace begin.

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We were zipping down the Interstate, and we saw this long cloud of thick blue smoke ahead of us. When we got close, we saw that it was belching out of the smokestack of this big old semi, and the smoke was so heavy you could hardly see as you passed it. In fact, it was a very good time to hold your breath. Now, as we passed him, I looked through the smoke into the cab, and I saw two men inside and they were just kind of laughing and they seemed oblivious to the smoke and the smell that they were spreading down the Interstate.

Now, I noticed after we passed that semi and that mountain of smoke, that there were little black spots all over our windshield. Now, I instinctively reached for my windshield wipers to get rid of the spots, and it was then that I saw the driver ahead of us who had turned his wipers on. His entire windshield was smeared with this thick, black substance. Whew! Glad I didn't turn my wipers on.

We stopped for lunch a few minutes later and when I got out I found spots of oil all over our vehicle. After we finished eating we got some great exercise cleaning off the oil. Now, that driver probably thought the smoke was just his problem, but it was actually a problem for everyone who got close to it.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Leaving an Ugly Trail."

Our word for today from the Word of God, we're in the Old Testament book of Jonah, and you know the Lord gave him directions to go to Nineveh. Jonah 1:3 says, "But Jonah ran away from the Lord." Which is kind of a humorous thought in itself (running away from the Lord, right?) but it says "He went down to Joppa where he found a ship and paid the fare, went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up."

Well, of course, now the captain goes below, wakes up Jonah, and then it says, "The sailors said to each other, 'Come with us. Cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.' They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, 'Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble? What did you do? Where do you come from? What is your country?' He said, 'I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.'"

Now, Jonah has disobeyed God, and if he thinks like most of us 21st-century types, he's saying, "Hey, I might be sinning, but it's not hurting anybody. Right?" Oh, I suppose the driver of the smoky semi could have said, "I've got a problem, but it's not hurting anyone else." Well, he was wrong, and so was Jonah. Everyone around him was suffering; not because of their sin, but because of his.

Modern morality says, "You know, it's okay if it doesn't hurt anybody." You know what? There's no such thing. I've hugged the parents who are sobbing over their son's life or their daughter's life. And while they're doing their thing, it could be breaking the heart of the people who love that person the most. I've been with the son or daughter who is waiting and watching while their parent walks away from the very truth they were taught by that parent, and they're crushed.

No man is an island. When you have premarital sex you're hurting your future lifetime partner and their future lifetime partner. Your choices affect the family name, and they sure affect your Lord. They affect the reputation of your family. And while you're on your detour, unbelievers are deciding about Jesus based on how you are living and probably saying, "I don't need Him."

See, sin twists everything around. You can't sin in a vacuum. You have an ugly trail of wounded people left behind when you're living outside of Christ's boundaries. There's pollution splattering everywhere close to you when you depart from the Word of God. The two you're hurting the most? You and a Savior who loves you very much, Who died so you don't have to do that sin.

Isn't it time to end the hurt? Do it God's way. That pollution has already left a long enough trail.

Sylvester Stallone's been in the ring for a lot of rounds. Even though he, a few years ago, hit the big 6-0 birthday, he was still doing Rocky - Rocky 6. It was called, "Rocky's final round." Sylvester Stallone is one of the millions of Baby Boomers who have hit a challenge for which some have not been prepared - aging. I was intrigued with what Stallone had to say about people he knows. He said, "You see billionaires who have everything, yet inside they're still the same lonely, insecure people." You think you've got it all figured out, but when you turn 60 or, you know, whatever age seems to make you feel like you're getting older, there's this little hole inside you. You realize you're always going to be somewhat half full...or are we.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why We Can't Find Peace."

I call the cycle so many of us go through in our life journey the "As Soon As" syndrome. I'll be happy, I'll be fulfilled as soon as I graduate, as soon as I get a good job, as soon as I get a better job, as soon as I'm going with someone, as soon as I'm married, as soon as I have kids, as soon as I'm not married, as soon as I can get a home, as soon as I retire; it just never ends. And "as soon as" never comes. It's one disappointing answer after another. Until, like Rocky's creator says, we just give up and accept "this little hole inside" us as being "unfillable."

The ancient Jewish king Solomon knew that feeling. He was so wealthy and so powerful he was able to own or experience every "as soon as" that his heart could conceive: every purchase, every woman, every achievement, every pleasure. Here's his conclusion, recorded in his personal diary, the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.

I'm reading from chapter 1, beginning with verse 8, our word for today from the Word of God. He says: "The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Pretty sad, huh? And pretty much the human experience.

But Solomon went on to diagnose why nothing and no one on earth can ever fill the hole in our heart. He said, "God has set eternity in the hearts of men. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Fear God and keep His commandments" (Ecclesiastes 3:11; 12:1, 13). What we've been looking for all our life is something that will last forever, because we've got this eternity thing in our heart. The hole in your heart can only be filled by something as big as all eternity. And that means only the God who made you can fill it. Not a religion about God, but God Himself, living in your heart.

And that's impossible because of the choice we've made over and over again to do our life our way instead of God's way. God calls it sin and He says that our sins "have separated us" from our God. But He's also acted with unspeakable love to demolish this wall that keeps us from Him. And He says in His own words, "He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Translation: I did the sinning; Jesus did the dying. Then three days later, He came back from His grave to prove that He and He alone can give us life that's eternal.

For millions, the search for what goes in that hole in our heart has ended at the cross of Jesus Christ. In a transforming moment when you say to Him, "Jesus, the wrong person's been running my life. I resign. I'm holding onto You as my only hope because only You can remove the wall between me and my God. So, Jesus, I'm Yours."

If you've never had that liberating, load-lifting, purpose-filling, hole-in-your-heart-filling experience with Jesus, let this be the day. In fact, if you go to our website you can find there a lot of wonderful information to be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com

That hole inside you is so big only God can fill it. And at your invitation, He will - today.

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Now, we had not had a major airplane crash in New York City for a long time. So, we were all pretty riveted at that particular time by the scene of the crash of Avianca Flight 52 on Long Island near JFK Airport. More people survived the crash than died in it, thankfully, but it was still a terrible tragedy. There was no fire, because they were apparently out of fuel, and that was a major reason for the crash.

We watched, especially in the New York area, the dramatic rescues of survivors; some of them live on television. Of course, because Avianca was the national airline of Columbia, many of the passengers were from Colombia and it was mentioned that en route to the U.S. the plane had landed at a city in Colombia that is known to be the center of drug distribution there.

Now, one survivor was really glad that he had survived and he had been rescued, but actually the bad news was not over for him when he was rescued. He was complaining of stomach pains. The hospital x-rayed him and they found dark spots in his intestines. Yeah, you probably guessed it. This injured passenger, it turned out, was smuggling cocaine in plastic bags inside his body. Now, who could have ever predicted when he put that cocaine inside of his body to smuggle it into the U.S. that there would be inclement weather all along the East Coast, they would be in a holding pattern over two hours in the air, there would be a missed attempt at trying to land, the plane would run out of fuel, he would survive a crash, and x-rays would expose his crime? Man, it looked like there was no chance of his getting caught! Actually there's no such thing.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "God's X-Ray Leaves No Secrets."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God comes from the book of Numbers 32:23. Some of God's chosen people, the Jews, have a choice here between a risky obedience and an apparently safe disobedience. I say apparently safe!

Now, the issue they were dealing with isn't so important today as the advice that Moses gives. He says, "If you fail to do this, you will be sinning against the Lord, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out."

I'll bet that's a verse one particular Colombian drug smuggler would agree with, "Be sure your sin will find you out." You know, it's important that you make all of your moral choices realistically. What do I mean? Well, you cannot, and you will not ultimately, get away with sin - ever. If God knows about it, you're already caught! Oh, and He does all the time. That Colombian drug smuggler probably couldn't imagine a way he would be found out. The drugs were totally concealed in his body, but he was found out. You and I will be, too.

Oh, you may be able to cover your sin at work, maybe you can conceal it from your mate, and you might be able to fool every Christian leader you know. Maybe you've found a place where you're sure no one will discover what you're doing. Hear God, "You can be sure your sin will find you out."

Oh, the Devil will wait until disclosure will do the most harm; hurt the most people. He's letting you get away with it right now. And then one day he'll yank that chain, and he'll wait until it will do the most harm and the most damage. God may wait until the seed of sin reaches the harvest stage, but be assured the bill will come for you. So, make no choices thinking that you can get away with sin. God and the Devil are both a lot smarter than you are.

Don't let the delay fool you. God x-rays every passenger, every trip, and His x-ray leaves no secrets.

We were adding onto our little house, and we were getting some help from good old Chuck. He's been a part of adding to our house; actually, he did most of the work. A wonderful Christian brother, skilled builder and handyman. He's like an everyday genius...which I am not. Now the days were pretty long and we'd be leaving the house earlier than Chuck got there and we'd return home after dark. So, I didn't get to see him much. But every day that front porch was noticeably farther along than it was when we left that morning. I actually did get to talk to Chuck on the phone one day, and I told him, in a way, he reminded me of the Lord. He was interested in how that happened. I said, "Well, I don't actually see him, but I see the difference he's made!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living Proof of a Living Savior."

There was a song years ago that said, "People need the Lord." Well, that's people you're around all the time. But they can't physically see Him, of course. They can't realize how real, how loving, and how powerful He is by seeing Him in person. But God's plan for introducing Himself to them is that, much like our friend's building work, they see the difference God makes in you.

In 1 Peter 2:12, our word for today from the Word of God, Peter says, "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they may accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God..." Here are people who may even be hostile toward you and toward your Lord. But they see such impressive living proof of the Jesus-difference in your everyday life - in what it says here your "good deeds" - that they end up glorifying God!

Jesus made this same point in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). There it is again. They can't see your Lord, but they can see your good deeds that are there because He's in you. And that living proof can turn them to Him. Especially in a world that's more skeptical than ever of religious pitches, religious systems, or religious pitchmen.

Notice, God doesn't say they'll be impressed with your arguments or your persuasive words. No, it's going to be your persuasive life. The random acts of kindness, the words of encouragement, your temper under control, the cleaned up mouth, the way you treat and talk about your mate, or your children, or your parents, your unselfishness, or the way you just put others ahead of yourself.

One clarification: You can't just show them the Jesus-difference and that alone. You do have to tell them Who is making the difference! They can watch you for the next 50 years and they won't say, "Oh, you know, Joe is such a nice guy, I'll bet Jesus died on the cross for my sins." They're not going to figure that out. You have to tell them! So, the business of taking people to heaven with you is actually kind of like first grade...show and tell.

That's why Peter says, right before his statement about them seeing your good deeds, that you are "belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and into His wonderful light." They need to see it, but then you need to tell them. They'll never guess Jesus died on the cross for them unless you tell them.

Our friend is a carpenter that I may not actually see, but I could see each day the difference he was making. You belong to a carpenter named Jesus, and whether or not the people around you will ever know Him may depend on whether or not they can see in you the difference that Jesus makes!

Our kids rode many miles in the old back seat of our car. And they had their share of turf battles over who was taking up more than his share of the seat. Pretty customary with three kids in the back seat when you drive quite a ways. They also spent some time sleeping there. In fact, I remember when our youngest was a baby. He would just doze off in his little infant seat right next to his brother who was two years older. We'd turn around and we'd see the little guy asleep and we'd say, "Oh, bless his heart."

And then a few minutes later we'd look back and his brother who was almost asleep, would peer out of one eye at us and say, "Bless my heart." I guess he wanted to make sure it got done in case we didn't bless it.

Well, some of our trips were like long distance marathons. With both my wife and I, marathon drivers. And some of those trips were in the dark and it was rainy and stormy even. And we've been through some very memorable lightning storms. Sometimes it's been snowing. Well, it didn't matter. The kids have over and over again just conked out, and then they'd wake up when we were there.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Who's Driving?"

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is from Proverbs 3:5-6. That might ring some bells. They are my daughter's favorite verses, my wife's favorite verses, and maybe you consider them to be yours. Here's what they say, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." In other words, you'll get to your destination if it's raining, snowing, storming, lightning, thunder. You'll get there if you follow this formula. Notice He says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart." That means you have taken total hands off the situation. You're going to totally relax in what God's doing. You're not going to depend on what you're doing. Don't get in the way of His will with your bright ideas; don't lean on your own understanding.

It's like our children riding in the car with their father for all those marathon trips. Actually, the situation you're facing right now leaves you three choices in terms of navigation. Choice number one: You could try to drive - maybe that's what you've been doing. In fact, the more intense a situation gets, instead of getting desperate for God's larger help, we just grip the wheel more tightly. Well, if you're trying to drive, you'll crash just as if my kids were trying to drive when they were little.

The second thing you could try to do is help God get you to your destination. Imagine He's driving. You're in the car, but you're in the front seat and you're telling Him how He should drive. It's like a backseat driver in the front seat. Or you keep grabbing the wheel because you think you're going to crash. Well, you will if you drive. Or you think He's going too slowly, so you keep putting your foot on the accelerator. All you're going to do is make the trip longer and harder.

The other possibility is that you do what my children have done. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart." Well, in a sense, you'll crawl in the back seat and you'll say, "Father, I trust you. It's dark, it's stormy and I'm not sure where we're going, but I want to fight off the urge to try and drive. You drive, Father. Good night."

Where are you in this current situation in your life? Are you trying to drive or are you trying to help God drive? Or are you simply going to sleep in the back seat? Why don't you relax and let your Father drive. You'll wake up refreshed and you'll wake up right where you are supposed to be.

Our son had just moved to an Indian reservation to work among the young people there, and for a short time he stayed rent-free at the home of a Native American family. Well, sort of rent-free. One day the man of the house asked our son to help him with a little plumbing problem. Our suburban boy said, "Plumbing? Sure. Where can I find the plunger?" He was informed that no plunger would be needed, so apparently it's going to be easier than he thought. Right? Wrong. His host took him out in the backyard and introduced him to a septic pond where his job was to try to clean out a stopped-up pipe. In order to find it, our son had to reach into the gross stuff up to his shoulder. Yuk! He said when he was finished, he had one thing and only one thing on his mind - a shower. He called and he pretty much summarized his experience, "I have never felt so dirty in my life, and it's never felt so good to be clean."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Feeling Dirty, Getting Clean."

Feeling clean - that's a feeling someone who's listening right now could use because you've felt dirty long enough. We all know those feelings because we've all done things we're ashamed of; we've done some things that we thought we'd never do, we've failed to do some things we should have done. Too many times, the people we've hurt the most are the people we care about the most. There are these dark secrets that haunt us and even some things that we're hooked on that we cannot stop doing. We feel dirty inside, and we don't know how to get clean.

That is why our word for today from the Word of God is such awesome good news. It's written to people who know what dirty feels like. In 1 Corinthians 6, beginning with verse 9, the writer describes people who have messed with sex, both heterosexual and homosexual, people who have ripped off others, who've been selfish and greedy, who've had drinking problems, along with backstabbers and cheaters. Then comes this startling statement: "That is what some of you were." Were? How does that happen? How do dirty people get clean?

Here's how. It says, "You were washed...you were justified (that means made right with God) in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." God gave them a spiritual shower because of Jesus. How can a God whose perfect just erase all my sins from His book? It says, "In the name of the Lord Jesus."

That's because Jesus had all the dirt of my life dumped on Him when He died on the cross. In the Bible's words, "He carried our sins in His body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). Just think of Jesus absorbing all the guilt, all the shame, and all the hell of every angry thing you've ever done; every dirty thing, every selfish thing, every deceitful thing, every hurting thing. That's how much He loves you. That's how much He wants to forgive you so you can have the unspeakable joy of being clean and the guarantee of being with Him in heaven forever.

As Jesus was dying on that cross, He said of those who nailed Him there, "Father, forgive them." That's what He wants to say to God about you today, "Father, forgive him. Forgive her." If you will take what He died to give you. No religion can erase your sin from God's book. Only Jesus can do that, because only Jesus paid the death penalty that we deserve. The sinless One became dirty so you could become clean. He took your hell so you could live in His heaven.

The man on the cross next to Jesus, hearing His offer of forgiveness, said to Him, "Remember me when You come into Your kingdom" (Luke 23:42). That's what you need to do - to reach out to the Great Forgiver and ask Him to forgive all the sinning you've ever done. If you do, He will say, "I will remember your sin no more" (Hebrews 8:12). Grab Him in total faith as the only One who can rescue you from your sin.

If you're tired of dirty, if you're ready to finally be clean inside, tell Jesus that. The day I opened my heart to Jesus, someone took time to explain to me exactly how to get it all started, how to begin with Him. I would love to do that for you through our website. Would you go there today? It's ANewStory.com.

There's nothing like a shower when you feel dirty. And right now Jesus stands ready to wash away the dirt of your lifetime. It feels so good to be clean!

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I can still remember my wife's excited phone call that day. She said, "Honey! The baby just turned over!" Hey! He was three months old; it was a big deal. It's hard to believe there was a time you couldn't turn yourself over. Can you imagine a time when you couldn't walk by yourself? You couldn't feed yourself?

Well, we took pictures of all these steps toward independence as all of our kids took those steps. There was a big cause for getting that old Super 8 movie camera out and getting the slide film out (come on, there was no iPhone then! You get it?). "Oh, look, he's crawling for the first time! He's walking for the first time! Take pictures! It's the first day they ever went to school." And then it happened, all three of our children were grown and out of the house, independent adults. But that's normal, right? I mean, the more you grow, the more independent you become. Right? Not necessarily.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Freedom of Total Dependency."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 9. I'm going to begin reading at verse 7 - it's the dramatic conversion of that persecutor of Christians, Saul of Tarsus. What a life-transforming day! Saul has just been knocked off his horse by this light from heaven; he knows now that it is the Lord he's dealing with, and verse 7 says, "The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything."

Now, Saul of Tarsus is an intelligent, gifted, passionate leader. He felt sufficient, strong. He's all grown up, right? Wrong. Saul's road to maturity begins the moment after his conversion when it says, "They led him by the hand." Isn't it interesting to see here that from the moment of Saul's rebirth, God drives him to a position of total dependency?

Later in this chapter God refers to Saul as, "My chosen instrument. I have great plans for him." You know when those plans begin? With total dependency. The more a child grows the more independent they should become. The more a child of God grows the more dependent he should become.

Usefulness to God begins with a heart breaking. God will do whatever it takes to show you that dependency is maturity when it comes to spiritual adulthood. In fact, He may be doing whatever it takes right now. Paul would have to learn humility and dependency throughout his life. The stronger you are, the more it takes for you to learn to depend.

In 2 Corinthians 1 he talks about hardships that they'd suffered almost to the point of death. And he says the reason was, "That we might not rely on ourselves but on God." He had to learn it again. Now, 2 Corinthians 12 - he talks about his "thorn in the flesh that was given to him to 'keep me from being conceited.'" This strong, driven leader had to be humbled and broken, and then re-humbled and re-broken.

You say, "What strong and driven person? Paul?" In this case, I mean me. It's the Master's way to bring His strong-willed child to the end of their ability to control the situation; to make that child of His, in a sense, blind to where they need to be led by the hand. Maybe you're there now. God wants to pry open that tightly clenched hand of yours, empty it of self, and fill it with His power. Maybe He's brought you to the edge. It's going to be total dependency or total defeat.

Why don't you get you out of the way? Grow up to the point where you will let your Father feed you, let your Father carry you, let your Father lead you. You're never stronger than the moment you reach up a trembling, empty hand and say, "Father, lead me by the hand."

If you'd seen the front lawn of our office, you wouldn't have been able to tell that there had been a change inside. The only evidence of that was that there was an uncustomary pile of shattered sheetrock in this big lump in the yard. The changes were on the second floor immediately above that pile where two small offices had just become one large office. A man from our staff went in, and went after that temporary wall that divided the people in that room, and ripped it out in no time. I'll tell you, it felt pretty different in there with that wall gone! Wish they were all that easy to tear down.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Great Wall Destroyer."

Let's go to another upstairs room with a lot of walls in it. This room is an upper room in Acts 2, where we find our word for today from the Word of God. In a sense, there were a lot of walls there. It tells us when the disciples arrived they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. And then it lists some of the people who were there. It mentions Peter. Of course, Peter was very different from somebody else listed there, like Thomas. Peter was sort of a walking gland; he's like all emotions. Thomas - not his type. Thomas - cerebral, the thinker - always got an intellectual question.

And then it talks about Matthew. Well, he had worked for the government as a tax collector. And then it mentions Simon the Zealot. He'd been a revolutionary, trying to overthrow the very same government that Matthew worked for. In fact, only a few weeks before, all of these guys who were in this upper room together, had been arguing over who was going to be the greatest. They were, each one, trying to win "king of the hill" against each other.

Listen to what happens. "They all joined constantly in prayer." Chapter 2, verse 1: "On the Day of Pentecost they were all together in one place." Chapter 2, verse 42 says, "The new Christians had devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." That word fellowship is koinonia; it means intimate closeness. Verse 44: "After they prayed together, all the believers were together and had everything in common." The book of Acts goes on talking about times when the people will pray together and it literally brings them together.

Listen, if you want to tear down a wall between rooms, use a crowbar. If you want to tear down walls between people, you use prayer. You can't get really, really close until you really, really pray together. Oh, sure, sometimes prayer can be a time when people still keep their masks on, keep it superficial, stick to the general praying kind of stuff. But real prayer is where people come together and express how they really need the Lord. You know, worship Him with specific thanks for specific things He's done recently. You fight together on your knees for the lives of people you care about. You come against Satan. You come against the stronghold of darkness that you both know is there. You admit your struggle, you passionately seek His strength, His answers, and walls start coming down.

Every married couple needs to pray together daily. It is the ultimate glue between people: Christian coworkers, parents and their children, Christian friends, even if it starts out feeling awkward. Go to your Father together. In fact, the person you're having the most difficulty with is probably the one you most need to be praying with.

When we go into the Father's presence sort of distant from each other, we almost always come out of His presence closer. Prayer softens hearts; prayer helps us see people and situations through God's eyes. And prayer is the great wall destroyer.

Okay, laugh if you will, but when I was in high school, I sang in the chorus. I did! Today, I'm just a backup singer; when I sing, people back up. But back in high school, we had some good times learning our parts, mastering our songs, and performing our concerts. Sometimes, if I was late for our chorus class, I could hear them warming up as I approached the chorus room. And this one warm-up was particularly monotonous: "mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi." Don't change stations. I'm done. I'm not going to do any more singing. But...

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I do want to have A Word With You today about "The 'Me' Song."

Now, the spelling is a little different, but the most monotonous chorus in the world still sounds the same, when someone's tune is (and I promise not to sing) "me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me." It is the song of our selfishness, a song we sing far too often. It's the most off-key chorus of all! It's when I'm performing as if it's all about me.

Now, we can do better than this if we follow the blueprint laid out in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in Philippians 2:3-8. We're told there, "in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." This kind of self-sacrificing rather than self-seeking is not something that we see very much. So we need an example, and we've got one.

The Bible goes on to say, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who...made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant... He humbled Himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross." God tells us to follow His Son into an attitude that is all about "you, you, you, you, you" instead of "me, me, me, me, me." And especially in those moments when, like Jesus in His hours of suffering and dying, selflessness is the most amazing.

Basically, there are certain times when we tend to enter the "Me" Zone, where we act like things should pretty much revolve around us. We slip into the "Me" Zone when we're feeling sick, when we're feeling stressed, when we're suffering, or when we're just tired and feeling shot. I know this all too well. How do I know this? Well, I have been there way too many times.

But the Bible says, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus." At the time of His greatest pain, His greatest suffering - the time of the greatest suffering any human being has ever experienced, He's carrying the sin of the world - He's dying on the cross and He's still all about others! In the middle of His agony, Jesus is making sure His mother is cared for...He's reaching out to the thief on the cross next to Him, and He's asking His Father to forgive those who crucified Him.

That's how your Savior handles being stressed, how He handles suffering, and how He wants to help you and me handle the moments when we just want to think about ourselves. It's at those times when I'm really tired, stressed, when I'm really not feeling good, that I have to reach beyond my feelings and say, "Dear Lord, give me the grace to still think about others when I feel like just thinking about me." In other words, "Jesus, would you please help me, because I want to be like You!"

My friend, Larry, was a pilot. And awhile back he was asked by a client to fly their corporate, cabin class plane from one metropolitan area airport to another. That flight should take about 15 minutes, and he thought, "Well, I could do that." His only commitment was several hours later to lead prayer meeting at his church that night, so he felt like there was plenty of time to get that job done.

He was preparing to land at the airport, and as he looked at all of his controls, he noticed that five different indicators had gone on...all telling him that his front landing gear wasn't down. Well, he called the tower at the airport, and they said, "Well, why don't you fly by and we'll take a look at it." And they confirmed sure enough he didn't have any front landing gear. So he made a second approach, worked with the switches and controls, and hoped that would work. But no, he had to report to the tower all the lights are still on; five indicators saying he didn't have any front landing gear going down.

He requested to be able to go back to his home airport, and as he did he was flipping his switches back and forth. Nothing was happening. He tried several aerial maneuvers to shake it loose and that didn't work. He called for his mechanics to be able to communicate through the tower and read slowly to him from the manual for his plane. He tried everything the manual said. Nothing worked!

Now, he had three hours of fuel when he started, but he was running low now. So he went up to a level where he could put it on automatic pilot. It was dark, it was starting to snow now, and he thought, "Should I let my wife know about this?" He said, "Well, there's really no reason to alarm her."

He looked for tools while it was on automatic pilot and he worked with those. Again, nothing worked, including nothing his mechanics read to him from the manual. He had ten minutes of fuel left. He thought, "Man, this is going to be $400,000 if I crash land. Oh yeah, and I don't know about me."

He was low on fuel, hoping there would be no fire, so he began to prepare for the crash landing. He secured all the loose items, pulled the fire extinguisher pin in case there was a fire, harnessed himself in, and made the approach for his landing. All the indicator lights still on, his landing gear still not down and what happened next is what might happen just before you are about to crash.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Our Eleventh-Hour Lord."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Exodus 14:9. The Jews are at the Red Sea, and it says, "The Egyptians, all Pharaoh's horses and chariots, horsemen and troops pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they encamped by the sea." Okay, we're in a big jam here, right? But it says, "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong East wind." You've got the Red Sea behind you, the enemy closing in. And then, just at that last moment, the waters parted.

Oh yeah, about Larry, my pilot friend, we left him preparing for a crash landing. Nothing had worked - flipping switches, maneuvering, manuals, waiting. And so, as he made that approach, he simply said, "Lord, I need a miracle." He threw that switch one more time. He'd thrown it hundreds of times, and this time every light indicating trouble with his landing gear went off. He said, "I'm coming in! I've got full gear." They said, "Fly by" in the tower. He did. They turned the high light beams on. They said, "Hey, your landing gear is down!" He said, "I know." And he landed safely. The crowd said, "What happened?" He said, "A miracle of God." Oh, and he made it to his prayer meeting, too.

Larry experienced it, Moses and the Israelites did, and maybe you will right now - our eleventh-hour Lord. He often comes through at the very last moment. There's never any doubt that He will, but it's that waiting that makes you wonder. Why? So we'll get to the end of our resources; so He can grow your faith like a muscle by stretching it. So He can demonstrate His power in a way where only God could get the glory. And so He can dramatically show His love to you.

Maybe you've got your back to the Red Sea, the enemy's closing in and every solution has failed. Why don't you surrender completely to your Savior right now and cry out to Him, "Lord, I need a miracle." And you will be a candidate for that eleventh-hour Lord.

I'd done my whole adult life with my Karen, the only woman I ever needed. Suddenly, I had to figure out how to do the rest of my life without her. That Sunday night, we sat in the bleachers at our local football stadium and we watched our grandson graduate from high school as valedictorian and he gave a faith-filled valedictory message. Monday afternoon, she was gone. Wrapped in this huddle of sobs with our three adult children, I just choked out the words, "It hurts so bad." It really does.

After some time, I'd walk into our living room, I'd still instinctively look for that beautiful hair. I called it her "crown of glory" as she sat in her favorite blue chair. I would go to make that oatmeal that she loved for breakfast. I turn to tell her about a conversation or situation and to hear her trademark laugh over my dumb jokes.

Our four-year-old grandson said it all the first time he ran into our living room and saw her chair empty. He just ran back to his mommy and said, "Mommy, you were right. She's not here." No, she's not, and she won't be again. I probably shed more tears in those weeks than I've shed the rest of my life. But I have a story to tell. Actually, it's the Story that I've tried to tell folks my whole adult life. And suddenly I was living its ultimate validation.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Shattered Heart, A Certain Hope."

Everything I've ever believed, everything I've ever taught about my Jesus is true! Everything that my death-crushing Savior promised, I can tell you, He delivers in the darkest, most devastating days of my life!

He said of those who have put their total trust in His death on the cross for their sins, and this is in our word for today from the Word of God in John 14:19. He said, "Because I live, you will live also." Because Karen's Savior is alive, so is this woman I love.

In God's own words, we have "a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). I'm not talking about some "cross your fingers" hope. This is living hope. Hope is a Person - Jesus. He trampled death as He blasted out of His grave on Easter morning.

The hope that is holding my heart together is as sure as our hope that spring will follow a seemingly endless winter. Spring is a sure thing. So is heaven for those who've pinned all their hopes on the One who died so we could go there. As much as I love Karen, she is now with the One who loves her the most.

This amazing Jesus has got my Karen. And He's got me. I can tell you that by the peace that has lasted across the years now. That peace, along with that certain hope of a forever spring after this cold winter, is a powerful counterbalance on that scale that is so weighed down by grief. Through all my darkest hours, through my loneliest moments, the peace has never been shaken.

Oh, this Jesus I've talked about, that I've written about, I've believed in all these years has come closer and become more real to me than ever before. He promised He would be, as the Bible says, "close to the brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18). He really, really is. When you walk through the valley of the shadow, you've got to have Jesus to go there. And when you walk across that final frontier beyond our death, you've got to know you belong to Jesus.

If you're not sure of that, would you please make this the day you get that settled? Tell Him, "Jesus, what you died for was me. I am yours. You're alive! I want you to live in me." Check out our website - you can find there how to be sure you belong to Him. That website is ANewStory.com.

Look, I'm in the biggest storm of my life - the Cat 5 hurricane, the EF-5 tornado. Jesus is my safe room. Is He yours? He's stronger than the storm. The Bible says, "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19).

And my friend, The Anchor holds.

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All right, what famous TV personality said these words: "I love trash." All right, Sesame Street fans, yep, Oscar the Grouch, who even lived in a trash can.

Now listen, I've got a few idiosyncrasies - not nearly as many as everybody else I know, but one of those is that it's very important to me that my trash gets picked up once a week. I try to be faithful in getting it out to the street like I'm supposed to on the day it's supposed to be there. What if the trash man doesn't come for one week? What if he didn't come for two weeks? What should I do about that?

What if my approach to that problem were to go and tell all my neighbors, "My trash wasn't picked up!" Oh, and then the guy that delivers the mail; he comes up and I say, "Do you know what? That trashman didn't come and pick up my trash!" And I call my pastor and say, "Pastor, I'm not getting my trash picked up!" And the checkout girl while I'm at the grocery store; you know, she should know about this too. Oh, and when I get gas, you know what? I'm going to tell the guy at the gas station. "That guy didn't pick up my trash!"

You'd say, "Ron, aren't you missing a pretty obvious step here?" Well, yeah. I forgot to talk to the only person who can explain why it's not there; I didn't talk to the only person who can change it - the trash man. You say, "Ron, that's stupid." Yeah, but I've just described our standard procedure for handling problems between Christians.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Going Direct."

Okay, our word for today from the Word of God about going direct is found in Matthew 5:21-24. You may recognize this as coming from The Sermon on The Mount and Jesus is speaking. "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder,' and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift."

Now, what Jesus is saying here basically is, "Don't come to Me until you've talked to your brother." That's interesting isn't it? He says, "Even though you're bringing a sacrifice in your hands, which is the holiest thing that a Jew could do at that time, even though you're coming to worship Me, you and I don't have much to talk about until you've gotten that conflict - that tension - squared away with your brother."

You remember what I said about telling everyone about the trash man and my problem with him? That's really how we handle problems with each other. We go talk to everybody else about it except the person there's the problem with. We take all sorts of evasive action to avoid confronting someone. Oh, we're subtle about it, we ask for prayer, "Lord, you know...", "Please pray for me will you?", "Ask the Lord about this." And of course we get into sanctified gossip with our prayer requests sometimes, or we just unload it on our friends. We complain, we keep score, we sputter that he should know better. Have you talked to the person who has hurt you? Have you talked to the person that you have hurt?

You say, "Well, if they'll make the first move." Jesus doesn't say that. He says, "You make the first move." You'll be surprised - if you'll just talk to them - by the reasons for their actions. Maybe you have totally misinterpreted their actions. It may clear up all kinds of misunderstanding; it could get rid of the growing cancer of bitterness inside of you. Even if they don't respond, you have dealt with the bitterness and anger that the Bible says causes you to forfeit the grace of God. And most of all, even if it doesn't resolve the relationship, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you've done it Jesus' way. You have obeyed.

One of the most disobeyed commandments of Jesus is to settle things with your brother. I think we ought to be asking each other, when someone comes to us with a problem about another person, "Have you talked to them? Have you talked to the real person involved?" Because when it comes to healing broken relationships, don't go to any more outsiders. Do it the Jesus way, go direct!

It's always hard to lose someone you love. It's especially hard when it's a child. I had friends who lost their precious granddaughter, Amy. Two years old - went to sleep with a little cold and a little fever. By the end of the night, Amy was gone from a cause, well it was still a medical mystery. As I talked with the family at the visitation, of course there was deep grief, but there was also a little comfort from something beautiful that happened right before Amy went to sleep that night. Her mother began singing "Jesus Loves Me" to her and little Amy sang along with her. Her last words, "Jesus loves me, this I know." And then she was with Him.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Eternity Insurance."

The way little Amy went into eternity is a wonderful way for any of us to go into eternity - knowing Jesus loves us and that we will be with Him forever. We all have our appointment to keep with God, and what happens there has everything to do with our response to that love. A love that little children sometimes seem to understand best.

Maybe that's why, according to our word for today from the Word of God in Matthew 18, beginning at verse 2, "Jesus called a little child and had him stand among them. And He said: 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'"

When you put that in the context of a little two-year-old's simple trust in the love of Jesus, you see some of what Jesus is trying to say here. We've got all our sophistication, our questions, our doubts, our analysis, our hardness, and our pride. You and I don't want to believe that we can't earn heaven with our goodness, that all we can do is put all our trust in the Savior who died to remove the death penalty for our sin. No, no. We're strong, we're self-reliant, we're smart, we can figure things out, we can handle things, we can fix things. We struggle with simply reaching out to Jesus in uncomplicated, uninhibited faith. But there is no other way to, in Jesus' words, "enter the kingdom of heaven."

But when our heart beats for the last time, it won't matter what degrees or positions we held, or how many people we know, or what religion we were, or what nice things they said about us at our funeral. All that will matter is whether or not you have grabbed the nail-scarred hand of Jesus Christ to forgive your sin and take you to His heaven.

Grabbing a hand in total trust is something a child totally understands and something we grown-up children need to understand again. Because if you haven't trusted Jesus to be your personal Savior from your personal sin, you don't stand a chance in eternity. He's the only One who could forgive and erase what will keep you out of heaven - your sin and its death penalty. He's the only One who died that death penalty for you on the cross so you don't have to.

You need to face eternity knowing that Jesus loves you and that you have responded to that love. You don't want to enter eternity, you don't want to face Jesus, knowing you've neglected or rejected His love for you poured out on His cross.

Have you ever grabbed Jesus' hand in total trust to say, "Jesus, you're my only hope of being rescued from my sin"? If not, why would you risk another day without Him? Why would you live another day outside His love? Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours" right where you are today.

I invite you to our website, because it's there simply to help you be sure you actually have begun this relationship with the only One who can rescue you from your sin. It's ANewStory.com. Please check it out today.

So, this little girl enters eternity, knowing that Jesus loves her and showing you and me the love we so desperately need. "Jesus loves me, this I know."

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In the fall I really got exercise in our yard. We had lots of trees in that yard, and lots of leaves. Our sons were gone, and I got to do just about all the raking. There was this one corner of the yard that was kind of nice to rake because it smelled nice. I'd be raking away and suddenly I'd smell the strong aroma of spearmint. Now, I don't chew gum and I don't wear spearmint scented deodorant usually. So, it had to be coming from what I was raking - and it was! That was my wife's herb garden, and when some of the spearmint plants got bruised by my rake that spearmint scent started to fill the air. My wife told me that's the way it is with lots of herbs, like with lemon balm, for example. If you take a little piece of that plant and you crush it between your fingers, the air will suddenly be sweetened by this scent of lemon. So I learned, crushing a plant releases its scent.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Walking Hope."

In 2 Corinthians 2, where we get our word for today from the Word of God, the Apostle Paul has just told about hardships he has suffered, great pressure he was under, even the despair he'd been feeling. In the context of a lot of pain and pressure, he says in 2 Corinthians 2:14, "But thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him." You see, God wants to spread to the people around you the experience of the beautiful aroma of what it's like to have God in your life. How does He release that scent? Oh, hardships and pressure.

The scent of Jesus in Paul's life was probably never more beautiful than when it came to what he called his thorn in the flesh - some physical limitation that he begged God over and over to remove. He called it a messenger from Satan to torment him. That's in 2 Corinthians 12. Then he comes to terms in that passage with the fact that this pain is not going away. Then he discovers the unexpected, glorious result that can be released through his crushing. 2 Corinthians 12:9 - "But God said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.'" When you can't, there's an opportunity for everyone around you to see that God can. Paul goes on, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me."

When people came in contact with the Apostle Paul they smelled power, they smelled grace. But it wasn't Paul's power or grace. People got to experience God's beauty because he had been bruised, and the bruising released the aroma of the love of God. That's what the Lord wants to do through you.

Maybe you've been going through something that has bruised you or crushed you. If you've allowed yourself to become bitter, angry, or self-focused because of it there'll be a smell coming from you - probably like the smell that comes from what my wife used to call stink weed on the farm, and no one is going to want to be around you. They'll conclude that Christ doesn't make much of a difference in the times when we really need the difference made. But you've probably met, as I have, some precious men and women who have been deeply wounded, totally crushed, and they've surrendered all that pain to the Savior and they are a joy to be around. They're like walking hope. The aroma of God is all over them.

Never do we have a greater opportunity to show the people around us the reality of our Savior than when we are in a time of great hurt. Maybe like you're in right now. If it's one of those times for you, would you open yourself up to a divine take-over of your feelings, your pain and your personality? You'll find that something very supernatural, something very beautiful will happen. The crushing you've experienced will release the incomparable aroma of the grace, and the love, and the peace of Almighty God.

The Creator who releases beauty through a bruised, crushed plant, can surely do it through one of us - his blood-bought children.

If you're a frequent flyer, as I have been in the past, they give you frequent flyer miles that eventually add up to a free ticket. Well, they give their really frequent flyers a few fringe benefits. The benefits aren't quite what they used to be, but like sometimes you can do early boarding. When one of our leaders and I were flying a lot together, it helped if we could board early. Because we could kind of get set up for a lot of work to get done on the flight. Now, he didn't have all the miles I did, but the boarding agents were pretty nice to him, because he boarded with me. My ticket, well, it has this special stamp that would indicate my high-mileage status. And on one occasion, they actually offered early boarding to us guys that they see all the time. They took my ticket and then he was following right behind me. He said, "I'm with him. Is that OK?" Yep. We went together.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why God Will Let You In."

Sometimes the one way you can get in is on the strength of who you know. "I'm with him." Well, for sure, it's the only way any of us will ever get into heaven the day we die.

That important fact is dramatically demonstrated in our word for today from the Word of God from Luke 23 beginning at verse 42. The scene is that skull-shaped hill where Jesus is dying on the cross, with a criminal on a cross on either side of him.

Now the Bible says of one of those men, "Then he said, 'Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.' Jesus answered him, 'I tell you the truth, today you will be with Me in paradise.'" When this man died and kept his appointment with God, I could just see him grabbing Jesus and saying to God, "I'm with Him."

Now we know from Jesus Himself that that man is in heaven. Not because he was baptized. He wasn't. Not because he was confirmed. There was no time for that. Not because he was religious or righteous. He wasn't. He would go to heaven when he died for one reason. He had put his total trust in Jesus to forgive his sins and take him to heaven. It's the only way that thief could go to heaven. It's the only way I can; it's the only way you can.

God puts it this way. "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men" (1 Timothy 2:5). A ransom is the price you pay to get someone back, right? When Jesus died on that cross, He was absorbing all the guilt and all the punishment, all the hell of every sin you have ever committed. He was paying the price to get you back - the ransom. And no one else did that; no one else could. That's why your eternity depends on whether or not you grab Jesus to rescue you like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard.

You might wonder if God can forgive some of the things you've done. Well that dying thief, with his life of crime, might well have wondered the same thing until he heard Jesus say of the men who had executed Him, "Father, forgive them." If Jesus would forgive the men who nailed Him to that cross, is there anything He won't forgive? He will forgive you!

Don't wait another day to make sure you're going to heaven when you die. You just don't know when your date with God is. Say to Jesus, "Lord, remember me. Forgive me. Be the Savior for my sin." Your sins will be forgiven, and your name will be entered in His book of those who have eternal life in heaven that the Bible describes.

This is the day to say, "Jesus, I'm yours. I want to be ready for eternity whenever it comes." I've laid out simply the path to begin your relationship with Him at our website. I urge you to go check it out today. It's ANewStory.com.

Let today be the day you settle your eternity. So that when you meet God, you can say, "I'm with Him." And you'll hear Jesus say, "Today you will be with Me in paradise - and forever."

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When I lived in the New York area, I occasionally spoke for the New York Giants, and the New York Jets, and the Yankees, and the Mets, and some of their visiting teams. Now, when people heard about that, guess what their first question usually was? Well, of course, they said, "Ron, what scripture verse did you speak on?"

No! What they asked was, "Who was there? Who did you meet?" And they wanted to hear who attended and who I got to shake hands with. People got excited because I had been with some star they knew about. But much more frequently than those events, I've had the opportunity to be with some real VIPs, some real very important people. But you probably wouldn't recognize their names.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why the Little People Are the Big People."

Ok, here comes our word for today from the Word of God. It's in the 10th chapter of the gospel of Mark. "Some Pharisees came and tested Jesus by asking, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'" That's in verse 2, and this ongoing conversation continues with these very important people from Jerusalem. In the middle of all of that in verse 13 it says, "People were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them." I think in the Greek it says, "Go away, kid!"

Well, "When Jesus saw this, He was indignant. He said to them, 'Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.' He took the children in His arms, put His hands on them and blessed them."

Okay, here's the scene. Jesus is with the power brokers from Jerusalem, and then He's with these little kids crawling all over His lap. The question: when was Jesus with the VIPs? Not the big shots; not the power brokers. Oh, He was with the VIPs, He said, when He was with the children. The disciples got it wrong. Maybe they were running the nursery that day. Listen, have you ever been in the nursery when the pastor preached too long and the kids are going crazy? Well, the disciples are saying, "No, no, He's with important people now." Jesus said, "Uh-uh, these are the important people."

You know, we have a tendency to really curry favor with the powerful, to oblige the rich, to try to get close to the stars in whatever our constellation is, whether it's business, or school, or church. But what Jesus models here is what I would call a VIP inversion. He says, "The little people are the big people to Him: children, the homeless, the hurting, the powerless, the misfit, the lonely, the excluded." Jesus gives prime time to those who can give Him nothing. He focuses on those who have no votes, no money, no favors to give. This must be a pretty important account, because it's recorded in three of the gospels. And we are told here that Jesus was indignant when the disciples made this values error.

So, who do you think the VIPs are in your world? Well, if you see what Jesus sees, you'll know it's the little people. You'll know that you're becoming like Jesus when you start to lose your fascination with people who are powerful, or those who can do something for you. You're becoming like Jesus when you feel yourself wanting to be with the people He thinks are important, not the ones the world says are important. The ones the world sees as powerless and unimportant.

See, when you get close to a little person, just ask Jesus, you are getting close to a real VIP.

If I'm ever on an airplane flight where the flight attendant becomes incapacitated, I think I might be able to do the safety instructions. I mean, I've heard them so many times. Actually, you know, they've now video-ized the presentation. It used to be they just kind of got up and did it. I like the part where that little yellow oxygen mask drops down from above your seat in the demonstration. In the video, everyone is wonderfully calm in this simulated oxygen problem. I'm sure that's very true-to-life. "Oh, look, my oxygen mask just fell down. That's nice." Well, the video shows a mother putting the mask on herself, and then on her little girl. The instructions go like this: "If the cabin pressure drops, get the oxygen to your face first, and then to your child's."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Breathing The Air Your Child Needs."

When it's crunch time on an airplane flight, you have to first get for yourself the oxygen you need as a parent, then you can give your son or daughter what they need. In these increasingly challenging days for parents and dangerous days for our kids, we've got to breathe deeply what our children need so we can pass it on to them.

Over the years of youth and family work, I have often been asked by a parent, "Can you help my son or daughter?" Often, the most helpful answer would be, "Can we get the oxygen to you before we try to get it to them?" How many times has our child's weakness been a mirror of our own, their failure a mirror of our failure, their baggage, their needs? It's kind of like my child, my mirror. I have to get myself fixed before I can fix my son or daughter. And how in the world do we change things about ourselves that we haven't been able to change all these years?

Hope! Yes, in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:18 God says, "You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers with the precious blood of Christ." We have all gotten these destructive hand-me-down ways of living from our parents who probably got those same hurting ways from their parents, and so on and so on. And even though we may have been determined not to reproduce some of those traits (we may have hated some of those things), here they are popping up in our generation, marking another generation. Unless their hold can be stopped in your generation! Unless I can find the spiritual oxygen needed. If I can, then I can pass it on to my children who can be victorious over this.

We've all got ways of doing things we have long wanted to change, and for a long time: my temper, my negative attitude, my lack of discipline, my critical tongue, this addictive personality, this controlling personality, this lack of affection, this dishonesty. But God injects into our lifelong struggle to change, this hope-giving word: "redeemed." We can be redeemed from it! But you can't help your child with that problem until you've breathed God's life-giving oxygen first. The bridge between the person you are and the person you need to be is spelled S-A-V-I-O-R.

We need a Savior. Christ shed His blood on a cross to pay for a lifetime of your sins and mine, and He breaks the power of sin to enslave any person who belongs to Him. And the Savior becomes your personal Savior when you tell Him you're giving yourself to Him.

Isn't it time you opened up to the One who died for you for your sake, for the sake of your precious child, for the sake of future generations? The greatest choice you could make for all of those people is to tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm yours."

I think we can help you get that relationship started if you'll just check out our website - ANewStory.com.

Jesus has redeeming grace for that son or daughter that you love so much. But first, you've got to breathe it yourself.

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When I visited the Alamo I felt the emotion of a place that was made pretty special by sacrifice. It was February 1836 when that little Spanish mission went into the history books. You remember the story. The Mexican forces, thousands strong, were advancing to crush the little Texas independence movement. Sam Houston needed time to organize his troops in order to fight back, and he did get that time because of what happened at the Alamo, and he did win, and they did get their independence.

But in the meantime, the Alamo was the key to victory. One hundred eighty-six freedom fighters took a stand in that little mission called the Alamo - a stand that is still over 150 years later synonymous with heroism. You know, "Remember the Alamo!" Colonel William Travis was in command that day. The enemy demanded surrender, and Travis's answer could not be misunderstood. In fact, it's the same answer I hope you will give to the enemy's demands on you.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Un-intimidated."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 4, and I'll begin reading at verse 24. It gives you a little insight into the battles being fought by the early church. Now, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leaders, have called in Peter and John and have told them not to preach any more in the name of Jesus. And it says, "After further threats, they let them go." They could not decide on how to punish them because all the people were praising God for what had happened. So, they basically tried to shut down the witness of these people.

The church gets together in a prayer meeting and prays like this in verse 29, "Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak Your Word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand and heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant, Jesus." Man, that's a powerful response! The Sanhedrin had organized the crucifixion of Jesus not long before. These men could have possibly arranged for the same fate for the apostles they were trying to shut down. But here this bold prayer comes back as an answer. Now, they're experiencing heavy pressure on their faith, and they seem unintimidated. They're talking about miracles; they're talking about boldness.

Reminds me of that stand at the Alamo. Colonel Travis received the demand to surrender, and he said to his troops, "There has been a demand from the enemy that we surrender, and I have answered with a cannon shot." Huh! I love that! "I've answered with a cannon shot," he says, "and our flag still waves proudly. I will live and die as a soldier."

Now, maybe the Devil's been trying to get you on the defensive lately and demanding your surrender - you're being hammered, and squeezed, maybe overwhelmed. The temptation is to back off, to retreat, to nurse your wounds and maybe to not take any risks. But would you look at your heritage in Christ? When other Christians in the first century were in that situation, they were bold; they came out asking for miracles to do the supernatural.

Where did this bold response to trouble come from? This cannon shot? It comes from a prayer meeting; one that if you read their prayer here in Acts 4, focuses on God's character, God's power, God's history, and God's promises. And when you size up your situation, your opposition in light of God's power, you are ready to go on offense. You don't need to play defense. Hey, maybe the enemy has demanded your surrender. Well, answer with a prayer-ignited cannon shot, "I shall never surrender! I shall never retreat!"

In spite of the bombardment, you can stand firm in Jesus' name, and you can be unintimidated.

Some years ago our family was vacationing on the eastern end of Long Island near a little village called Sag Harbor. It was amazing how much that village changed, though, over a period of just 24 hours. One day it was a sleepy little town of tourists kind of strolling from store to store. The next day it was a chaotic beehive with snarled traffic and anxious people rushing from store to store. Do you know what made the difference? A hurricane warning! Yes, a powerful storm was moving up the East Coast and it was expected to hit that part of Long Island. So people were rushing everywhere to get prepared. Batteries and candles suddenly appeared by every cash register in every store. And they quickly disappeared. People were suddenly living differently when there was a major storm.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Year That Everything Changed."

You might be living in a year like that right now; a year when a lot of things have changed. And times like these (hurricane times) can really change your perspective on what's important and how you should be living.

In our word for today from the Word of God beginning with Isaiah 6:1, Isaiah says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord." Now, you're probably not all broken up over Uzziah dying, but he had been king for 52 years. So if you were 52 or under, King Uzziah was the only ruler you had ever known. And he had brought his nation to an unparalleled level of prosperity and power. And suddenly he was gone. It was one of those years when everything changed.

So let's think of these words in this way, "In the year that everything changed." That's when Isaiah says, "I saw the Lord." That's when you usually do - when everything is changing - when the hurricane is blowing you around. Maybe God has shaken your world recently so you'll see Him as you've never seen Him before and so you'll live differently.

Now there are three perspectives God wants you to live by in a season when everything is changing. First, Isaiah says, "I saw the Lord, seated on a throne, high and exalted." Isaiah describes powerful angelic beings he sees "calling to one another, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.'"

Perspective #1 when everything is changing; "Lord, You are awesome." God wants you to enter His Throne Room as Isaiah did - by prayer. He wants you to see His majesty; to realize that, by praying, you are entering the Throne Room from which billions of galaxies are governed and bringing your life and your needs to the One who rules it all. When everything's changing, you need to dwell on the awesomeness of your God.

Then Isaiah tells us he cried, "Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." Then he describes how one of the angels touches his lips with a live coal from the altar and says, "Your guilt is taken away."

Perspective #2 - "Lord, I'm a mess." See, God wants all this change to be a wakeup call that shows you the sin that you haven't dealt with and to let Him touch it with His forgiveness and His cleansing. Then God asks, "Whom shall I send?" And Isaiah says, "Here am I. Send me!" God wants you to look at His awesomeness, then at your sinfulness, and then at the lostness of the people around you.

Perspective #3 - "They are dying." You've seen the King; they never have. And God has sent the storm to refocus your attention on the mission of rescuing the dying people around you.

With all that's changing in our world, the things that really matter haven't changed. In fact, the changes make the important things more important than ever. Make frequent visits to God's Throne Room, go off and to Jesus' cross to get clean, and go on frequent missions to take some people to heaven with you.

With the storm intensifying, focus on the things that really matter so this can be the time when you really see the Lord.

Honestly, I had a tough time sleeping when I was in Singapore some years ago. It was my first time overseas. It was hot all the time there; it's sub-equatorial. And I found myself lying awake almost all night long. I was there with another guy. We were ministering together there, teaching in seminars. So, since we couldn't sleep, we ended up talking and talking, and the ceiling fan over our heads made about one revolution per minute, so it wasn't doing much good.

Finally about 3:00 to 3:30, just about the time you get to sleep, a little cooler at that point, and you wouldn't know it, you just doze off and suddenly you'd hear a rooster crowing right there in downtown Singapore. The roosters didn't care; they were still crowing. You could hear right after that, all the sounds of Singapore waking up...thank you Mr. Rooster, I just got to sleep. Now, I didn't grow up on a farm. So this was my first opportunity to listen each morning to the power of a rooster's wakeup call, whether I wanted to wake up or not.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Rooster In Your Heart."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 26. It's a familiar account of the denial of Jesus by His main man, Simon Peter. And in verse 73, we come upon the third time Peter is going to deny his Lord. "After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, 'Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away.' Then he began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, 'I don't know the man!' Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken, 'Before the rooster crows you'll disown me three times.' And he went outside and wept bitterly."

It appears here that Peter betrayed Jesus twice before and didn't deal with what he had done. He managed to get through that okay. But the third time, the Bible says, "He went out and wept bitterly." In fact, the Greek means he went out and wept bitterly and loudly. You could hear this man sobbing aloud after what he had done.

And it was the sound of the rooster that triggered repentance. In a sense, that rooster did to Peter what roosters often do; he woke Peter up. Now, Jesus told us the Holy Spirit would specialize in wakeup calls. He said in John 16, "When the Holy Spirit has come, He will convict the world of sin." When you betray your Lord in some sin or some compromise, there is - in a sense - a rooster calling in your heart saying, "Wake up! Look what you're doing! Do you know how this makes your Savior feel?" It's like an arrow to the heart.

The question is, "What do you do when the Holy Spirit's conviction says, 'What have you done?'" It's possible that the rooster's been crowing in your heart lately; things you've been doing in secret or when you're with that person that maybe you never should have been associated with. Or maybe when you've compromised the truth, or you've neglected your family again, you've hurt the people you love again, you rationalize what you should be repenting of.

Peter graduated from spiritual treason to spiritual greatness after his denial. Why? He let God break his heart over his sin. He responded emotionally to the stabbing pain in his heart. Do you? Spiritual disaster begins when you begin to quench the Spirit of God, you ignore the call that should wake you up.

Today, through this program, the rooster's crowing again. It's the Holy Spirit saying, "You're breaking Jesus' heart. It's time you shed some tears over it as He is. It's the cry of a rooster that means a new day is dawning. The conviction of the Holy Spirit can begin a whole new day in your life if you'll wake up.

A while ago, my sister-in-law introduced me to this tasty new addition to my usual breakfast menu. They're called English crumpets - low fat, great taste. Then I was hooked. In fact, I decided I had to go get myself more of them. I went to where I figured something in the English muffin/bagel category would be: the bread section, right? No, not crumpets. I finally tried something really radical. I asked someone who worked there. Yeah, a guy's last resort. He said, "They're in dairy." Dairy? Well, I guess these things are supposed to be refrigerated. And dairy is where I found them...at the end of a long search!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritual Shopping."

Now in my search for what would satisfy my appetite, I was shopping in the right store, but not in the right aisle. You know, it's easy to make that same mistake when you're shopping spiritually - for something that will satisfy your appetite for meaning in life.

You only have to watch a few talk shows or look at some of today's best selling books to see that more and more people are shopping in the store that says "Spirituality." We seem to have concluded rightly that earth-stuff doesn't satisfy the human soul. Ecclesiastes says, "God has placed eternity in the hearts of men."

That's right. Earth stuff isn't going to fill that hole. But, see, earth stuff doesn't give the meaning and the fulfillment that we can only get from something bigger - something spiritual. It may be that your own search has taken you down several aisles, looking for truth, for peace, for significance. There are probably more aisles in the spiritual store than ever before. It's easy to get confused, to get deceived, then get lost.

In our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus Christ makes a bold declaration about where we will find what our hearts are hungry for. It's in John 14:6. "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" Now Jesus said our spiritual shopping comes to an end when we go to His aisle and find the way He's provided to belong to God. This 'coming to the Father' He talks about is all about finding a personal relationship with the One who created us, the One we're going to meet the moment we die.

Basically, there are three possibilities in the Spiritual Store. One is religion. You can try to fill the spiritual vacuum in your heart with the rituals and the beliefs of a religion. The second possibility is spiritual experiences from meditating, channeling, occult arts, or a wide variety of New Age spiritualities. And the third possibility in the Spiritual Store is a love relationship with our Creator.

And the world's best selling book, the Bible, makes clear in its timeless wisdom that it is that relationship we're really looking for. In fact, the Bible says we were "created by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16). In other words, we can't find our ultimate meaning until we belong to the One we were made by and made for. And the Bible goes on to point out that instead of living for Him, we have, day after day, lived for ourselves. And that has cut us off from our Creator, and left us looking to religion or spiritual experiences to fill the hole that only a God-relationship can fill.

Jesus came to pay for, to fix the brokenness that has come from our self-rule. That's why He died on the cross. That's why He said He is the way to get to our Heavenly Father - because He's the only One who paid the price to remove what keeps us from God.

A religion can't love you, neither can a spiritual experience. We need a Creator-relationship. And that begins when you reach out and trust Jesus, the Creator's Son, to bring you and God together.

The day you say to Him, as you could right now, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hopes on You and what You did on the cross to bring me into a love relationship with my Creator." Listen, if you want that, go to our website and find, there, the Biblical information that will help you get this settled. It's ANewStory.com.

Most of all, let Jesus know you want him. Maybe Jesus was the last aisle you thought you'd find answers in. But He's the only aisle where you'll finally find what you've been shopping for so long.

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My daughter was all excited about the sign she saw at the airport. It was actually over the door at a terminal, and it simply said, "Through these doors pass the greatest employees in the world." She said, "You know, Dad, that would make me feel like I was really doing a good job if I came under that every day." It gives you something you want to live up to. I hope you're posting the right kind of sign.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "I'll Become What You Call Me."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God is from Acts 4, and I'm going to read beginning at verse 36 where a man gets a name change. "Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet." Now, notice Joseph becomes Barnabas, The Encourager.

We read about him on several occasions in the book of Acts, not the least of which is when he came with Saul of Tarsus, who had just come to Christ. Now, remember, Saul had been persecuting the church. He was like public enemy number one for the Christians. But, "When Saul came to Jerusalem, (Acts says) he tried to join the disciples, and they were all afraid of him. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles." This is the kind of thing Barnabas does throughout his ministry. He goes on to encourage new Gentile believers in Antioch, and nobody's quite sure about them. He rehabilitates Mark when Paul fires him.

The point is, the apostles called Joseph an encourager, and he just kept living up to what they called him. That's a principle of human behavior. We tend to become the name we're called. That airline seems to know that, "Through these doors pass the greatest employees in the world." If you call them that, maybe they'll live up to it.

That means you have at your disposal a powerful tool for building people, or a destructive weapon for tearing them down. For example, what names do you call your son or daughter? How many times have you said stupid, or lazy, or rebel, or problem? Well, you're programming them with ideas about themselves, and they may then go on to just prove you right.

Think about what you've called your husband or wife lately, or that person who frustrates you - that person who's so irritating, so negative. You can help change a person if you'll look for their strengths and tell them what you see. Call them that good thing. Find a name you can use to bring out their best. Maybe that person, for all of their weaknesses, all of their negativeness, maybe they're obnoxious, but are they generous? Maybe they're sensitive, they fight for their family. Maybe they're a person of conviction; they're organized. Maybe they have a great smile, or a great spirit, or a budding talent.

Would you tell them what you see? Would they make a great Christian if they turned their mind and talents toward Christ? Sometimes I've said that to people. "You know what, you would make a great follower of Jesus." Then they look surprised and I tell them their qualities that would make them a great follower of His. "With a mind like yours, with a gift like yours, oh what a follower of Christ you would be!" Tell the people around you who they could be with the strengths that they have, even if you only see a little bit of it. Because by naming it, you can nurture it.

Look at those people close to you as if they were wearing a big old sign that says, "I'll become what you call me."

Years ago when I went on my first international ministry trip, I went just about as far as you can go - 10,000 miles to Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. I was going to be away for three weeks, which was the longest I had ever left my wife and our three young children. My wife mobilized the kids to put little love notes all over and all through my luggage. We had a nice meal together on the way to the airport and then some special hugs and kisses at the airport. But I did have to go. And I'm not kidding you, it was a sad moment. My wife was trying to look like she was fine. The children were obviously not looking fine. I managed to hold myself together until I rounded the bend in the concourse, then I started wiping tears from my eyes. It was hard, but one thing made it OK. It was only temporary. We would be reunited.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Good News for Our Grief."

Life's partings are tough when someone we love slips into eternity. Death rips us up inside, and the grief is sometimes almost unbearable. But because of Jesus, it's almost unbearable. I know, because I was the one several years ago burying the woman I loved - almost unbearable. Why almost? Well, I belong to Jesus, and my honey did, so that's not the termination of our relationship. No, because of Christ, it's just an interruption. I'm so glad.

God describes this hope in our hurtingest times in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Thessalonians 4, beginning in verse 13. "We do not want you to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command and the dead in Christ will rise first." That's my Dad. That's my baby brother whose death brought our family to Christ. That's my grandparents. It's more and more of my friends and the woman I loved for a lifetime.

The Bible goes on to say, "After that, we who are still alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so will we be with the Lord forever." Wow! When Jesus walked out of His grave, He conquered death for all those who would ever give their lives to Him. It doesn't mean our heart won't stop some day in this earth-suit called our body, it will die. But it means the real you, your soul, will go on forever uninterrupted in God's great Heaven.

Is it any wonder the Bible says, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory?" (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). You may be struggling with the loss of someone you love. I think I get that. The pain is very real. Death was never meant to be part of our lives. Sin brought in death. But Jesus died to pay the death penalty for our sin, and then, on Easter morning, He beat this monster that has beaten every person who ever lived.

So now, because of Jesus, the very worst death can be for a believer is an interruption of the relationship, never a termination. Hallelujah! And if you've never put your total trust in Jesus Christ to be your Savior from your sin and its death penalty, please don't risk another day without Him.

Would you tell Him, "Jesus, your death on the cross was to pay for my sin. It is my only hope of heaven. And the fact that You walked out of your grave proves that You can give eternal life that no one else can give. I'm Yours, Jesus, beginning today." If you're at that point where you want to begin that relationship and have that assurance, this is your day to check out our website and the information there that will help you know you've got this settled. The website is ANewStory.com.

That day of my long trip...the pain, the tears were real. As they are on a much deeper level when someone we love is leaving us for eternity. But you can handle the leaving if you know what I knew that day at the airport...that this separation is only an interruption and hallelujah, the reunion is coming.

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There's a stretch of nights in the fall when the moon is absolutely incredible! It's usually in October - harvest time for farmers. And when it's full moon time, you can see this huge, brilliant, yellowish moon rising in the eastern sky. It just makes you stop and almost catch your breath. I think it was in the days before electricity that farmers started calling it a "harvest moon." With so much depending on the harvest and so little time to bring it in, every hour had to count. And the days never seemed quite long enough to get it all in. So a bright full moon was more than just a beautiful view...it meant something much more important. With that extra light, God was giving them a little more time to harvest!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Little More Time To Harvest."

Maybe you and I are living right now in the light of a spiritual harvest moon - to bring to Jesus some of the lives around us that He died to rescue. Maybe that's why He's giving you a little more time.

There's a powerful illustration of this in our word for today from the Word of God in Luke 13:6. "Then (Jesus) told this parable: 'A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' 'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'"

I wonder how many of our lives this parable might be describing? Jesus comes looking for some fruit on a believer's life, especially in the form of some people that you've introduced to Him and He finds none. Why should He leave us here any longer, just soaking up the nutrients in our spiritual soil? But the answer comes, "Give him/give her a little more time to make a difference." By virtue of the fact that you and I are still here, Jesus has decided to let us have at least a little more time to take some people to heaven with us.

I'll tell you, you feel it deeply when the time for you to bring someone home runs out - when harvest time is over. I still remember my high school friend Cathy. It's not somebody I dated; we were just good friends.

One morning, during my freshman year of college, I remember waking up to a news story that mentioned her name. I woke up fast! The night before, a gunman had walked into the Student Union at the university Cathy attended, pulled out a gun, and shot her in cold blood. Suddenly, I was out of chances to tell Cathy about how she could go to heaven. We had talked about everything except Jesus! I had slept through the harvest, and time had run out.

That's why the Bible says that when it comes to talking about Jesus, "Make the most of every opportunity" (Colossians 4:4). This spiritual harvest business; this is urgent stuff. Harvest always is. You know the opportunity isn't going to last long. You drop everything to bring it in, and if you wait, you miss it. God wants us to feel that kind of urgency about telling the people we know about the man who loved them enough to die for them. We never know when their time or our time will run out.

So, like the farmer toiling feverishly in the extended light of a harvest moon, God has given you a little more time to bring in someone that His Son died for. Please don't keep putting it off. Don't let your life be so full of un-eternal stuff that you miss the mission that matters the most.

Someone you know desperately needs the Jesus you know, and Jesus has given you a little more time to bring them home.

When my wife and I pulled up late to the Bed and Breakfast we were going to be staying at, I tried to be real quiet. Not a problem. That B & B was buzzing like a beehive. Inside there were ten women huddled around the dining room table, each one with a sewing machine right in front of her. I learned that the other guests - all women - were there that weekend for a Mystery Quilt weekend. And even though I felt like I had sort of crashed a grownup slumber party, I did ask a few questions like, "What pattern are you following?" They didn't know. See, it turns out that one of the women there, Millie, does these quilting weekends with ladies, and she has the pattern. It's a mystery quilt because each woman only has instructions for what to do with the next piece or pieces. The next day, one lady said to me, "I can't wait 'till I can see what all this is going to look like when it's all put together." Good thing she didn't leave early with her pile of pieces, huh? She would have never known what it all made.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Pieces Without The Plan."

Actually, we've just talked about a description of some of our lives: pieces without the plan - because we're away from the only One who has the plan. I guess, in a way, life is a mystery quilt. All we can see is the block we're working on right now. But every once in a while, we find ourselves asking that question that has haunted us for years, "Why am I doing all this? What does all this make?"

It could be that right now the pieces aren't making much sense at all. And you're not sure of the answer to the one question you have to answer while you're on earth, "Why am I here?" You miss that and you've missed the point of your whole life. And so far, none of the things, and none of the people you thought would make it make sense have done it. Life still seems like a pile of disconnected pieces.

I hope you'll be encouraged by our word for today from the Word of God. Jeremiah 29:11 - "'I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" According to the Bible, you are a unique creation of God. Just look at your fingerprints - He's made you one of a kind. And He has plans for you - great plans. Like the lady who organized that quilting weekend, God has the plan in His hand, but if you're away from the One who has the plan, there's no way to put the pieces together right.

So much of the confusion and many of the mistakes, a lot of the emptiness, the pain in your life, may have been because you've been trying to put it together without the only One who knows the plan. God is the only One who knows why you're here. The problem is that, again according to the Bible, every one of us has tried to do life our way instead of God's way. Here are God's words, "All of us have wandered away like sheep; each of us has turned to his own way." (Isaiah 53:6) Without divine intervention, you and I have hopelessly separated ourselves from the One who designed us.

But divine intervention did come on a brutal cross on a hill outside Jerusalem, where God's one and only Son died as a substitute for you and me, carrying our death penalty for our running of our own lives. Which means that where there was once an uncrossable divide, there is a bridge now and His name is Jesus.

And today, Jesus is coming to where you are, offering you the opportunity to tell Him that you want Him to be your Savior from your sin, to connect you to the God that you've been separated from, to be the One who holds the plans and purpose for your life in His hands. When you find Him, you have found the meaning of your life.

Have you ever reached out to Him to begin your relationship with Him? Why not today? Tell Him, "Jesus, beginning today, I'm yours. You died for me." Then check out what the Bible has to say about this relationship at our website - ANewStory.com.

Maybe life has been a pile of confusing, disconnected pieces long enough. You need to come home to Jesus, the One who created you, who has wonderful plans for you. If you'll open up to Him, you'll finally start to get a look at the plan that puts all the pieces together.

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Don't you love it when someone gets a little smile on their face and they say, "We were just talking about you." Your mind starts racing, and you think, "What were they saying about me?" When they say that to me, I usually ask, "Oh, do I get a chance to defend myself?" You know that people talk about you when you're not around. That's true for just about everybody, and you've heard how folks talk about other people when you're there. So you have every reason to believe that they talk about you, and it might not be your best stuff. I know someone who's been talking about you, and it's definitely for your benefit.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When Jesus Prays for You."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 22. Simon Peter, as we look at this passage, is about to head into the most intense spiritual battle of his life. And Jesus, in an intimate moment, looked him in the eye and said, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."

I believe what was going on here is that Jesus is indicating that the difference in Peter is going to be that Jesus is going to be praying for him. The difference for you is that Jesus is talking to His Father about you today. You say, "That's a pretty good description of how I feel...sifted. And maybe Satan wants to sift you as wheat, but it says Jesus is praying for you.

In John 17:11 we find that He prays this way, "Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name - the name you gave Me. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave Me. My prayer is not that you should take them out of the world but that you should protect them from the evil one."

You know, Hebrews 7:25 says that, "He ever lives to make intercession for us." Jesus is at His Father's right hand talking to Him about you and me. I think He's praying for your protection from all the Devil wants to do. John 17:16 - "Sanctify them by the truth; Your Word is truth." He's talking about "sanctify" as in, "Keep them special, Father." It's like that sign you see in a restaurant that says it's "reserved." What does that mean? Nobody else can have it. It's reserved just for the use of the person who's asked for it. Well, that's what "sanctify" means. It's set apart for God; reserved for God. That's what Jesus does for you. He wants you to be kept separate, special, and unpolluted. He talks about using His Word to keep your body pure, to keep your mind pure, your imagination, and your sense of humor. Those belong to Jesus, and He's praying for that.

Then in chapter 17, verse 18, He says, "Father, as you sent Me, I have sent them into the world." Then He says, "My prayer is not for them alone, but for those who would believe in me through their message." Realize He is praying for your mission. He's praying that others will come to Christ. That means He's praying for us, who, years later, have come to Christ through their message. And He's praying for people that will be led to Christ as you and I declare His message.

Look at what happens as a result of Jesus' praying for Peter. Ultimately, in the short term, yeah he came under attack. Yes, he denied Jesus; yes, he disappointed Jesus. But ultimately, he ended up safe, and secure, and pure, and powerful, because Jesus was praying for him. He's praying for you, and that's the ending you will have.

You are not traveling this road alone. Someone's talking about you. Jesus is talking to His Father about you. Man, that's good to know. That will make all the difference.

Our son had just arrived in the southwestern United States to begin his work with Native Americans there. In fact, his supervisor in his non-profit work was a Native American. And our son was eager to show that he was coming with a servant spirit, you know. He had a tremendous opportunity to do just that. His supervisor needed his help in cleaning out a septic system. The job began with our son's hands having to work in that sewage. But the job got more and more involved and so did his body. Before he was finished, he was in that septic sewage up to his waist! Needless to say, he never felt more disgusting in his life. And then came the shower; that long, wonderful, heavenly shower! He said "Dad, I have never felt so dirty in all my life, and it never felt so good to be clean!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "So Good To Be Clean."

Getting really clean after you've felt really dirty is a great feeling; one that you might be ready for - on the inside. So many of us carry the awful burden of the mistakes we've made. We've got guilt and regrets that weigh us down, maybe for some destructive choices we've made or some compromises or some sin we wish we could go back and erase. Sometimes it can feel disgusting like all that dirt that covered our son that day. We wonder if there's any way to get really clean, to finally be free of the weight of it all, the dirt, the guilt, the shame.

When Mark Twain was asked what were the two most important words in the English language, he said. "Not guilty." But when we know we are guilty, how can we ever experience the freedom of those two glorious words?

There is wonderful, cleansing news today. Yes, it's in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. God is talking to people who've got a past. He mentions "the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, homosexual offenders, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, swindlers." And He delivers the bad news that those kind of people will never make it to heaven. It sounds hopeless until God turns on His cleansing shower in the next verse.

He says, "And that is what some of you were." Did you get that? Were? You mean I can be free from the guilt and shame of the past? How? Well, He says, "But you were washed, you were sanctified (which means you were made special), you were justified (that means you were made right with God) in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

The liberating message God has for you and me is this: whatever you've done, whatever you've become doesn't ever have to matter again. Jesus Christ offers you the shower of a lifetime, to forgive every sin you've ever committed, to declare you "not guilty," to open the doors of heaven to you as a new, spiritually clean person.

The forgiveness Jesus died to give you becomes yours when you tell Jesus that you're trusting Him to be your Rescuer from your sin. And at that moment the shower of God washes you completely clean for the first time in your life - and clean forever.

Don't you want that? The past erased from God's Book? It happens when you say, "Jesus, I'm yours. You died for my sin. I'm putting all my trust in You and what You did on that cross." I pray you'll go to that cross and get forgiven today. Listen, if you go to our website you will have all the information you need from God's Word to be sure you belong to Him. That website is ANewStory.com.

So many people have told me how they felt when they made this choice for Jesus. They've said, "It's like a huge weight was lifted off my back." That can happen to you right now, right where you are. And you can know how good it feels to finally be clean.

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My friend, Brian, told me that he had spent most of the day in the bathroom. No, he wasn't sick, he didn't have the flu. He was installing marble. That's what he does for a living. And he told me that he was cutting slabs of marble to size, and his weapon for this job was a diamond saw - a saw with a diamond blade that cuts right through marble. He said, "You know, this saw is amazing. You can touch your finger to that blade and it won't cut you." And he went on to explain that a diamond blade is not the sharpest blade there is, it's just the hardest blade there is. It's so hard that it cuts through what sharp cannot.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Count-Onables."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 4, beginning at verse 2. It's a statement of what God values. You'll notice that it's pretty different from what most humans value. "Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must be found faithful." Verse 5 talks about reward time. "Therefore, judge nothing before your appointed time comes; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is seen in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God."

Now, what does God reward? Success? No. It says faithfulness. We live in a world that values charisma and the bottom line. "Hey, how well did you do? What kind of results did you get?" We live in a world that values beauty, awards, and accomplishments. God says, though, that the winning trait is none of those. To Him the winning trait is faithfulness. In His opinion that's what matters. You know, it's not unlike that diamond saw. It can cut through marble because it's tough; it's hard; it just keeps coming. Nothing can stand up to its persistent, insistent advance.

Now, maybe you feel that you're just not sharp enough to really be used by your Lord. You say, "Well, I don't have the training. I don't have the skill. I don't have the personality. I don't speak very well.

I'm not that great looking. I'm just kind of average." But if God lays the burden on you, He wants you to be His tool. He isn't asking you to be successful; He's asking you to be faithful, to just keep coming: persistent, consistent, and insistent.

Be a person who can be counted on. Be the one who stays with a responsibility even while others come and go; the one who works, whether they feel like it or not; someone who does whatever he does with all his heart; the person who keeps their commitments and keeps their word.

So often the sharp blades, the ones with the great gift and the great charisma...oh, they cut for a while, and then they lose their edge and they break and they move on. But God's diamond blades are the ones who usually get the job done; they just keep coming faithfully. And what will it be that Jesus says on reward day? "Well done, good and faithful servant."

There are few things on earth that will not eventually yield to faithfulness. So, let God use you as His diamond blade to cut through marble for Him.

Our church's youth group had just been out whitewater rafting all day. I had been invited to wrap up the day with an inspirational talk. And when I arrived at the rafting facility they were using, I was expecting to see just the youth group. As it turned out, this recreational company had 1,500 people on the river that day. They were all from all these different groups! So, I wandered around looking lost until someone from our church found me. And that night we had a wonderful get-together under the trees.

Now, I didn't know that one girl at the back was there, and she had not planned to be there at all. She was a Girl Scout who had been there for the day with her troop. And they had somehow gone off and left her all alone. And she saw this group of teenagers meeting, so she wandered over to check it out. And she stayed...and she listened...and at the end, she was one of the young people who indicated they wanted to begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That's cool!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Lost No More."

That was one very happy Girl Scout, even before she found a ride home. In a very real sense, she got left so she could get found...spiritually. Actually, that could be what's happening in your life right now.

You're probably not a Girl Scout, and you're not stuck out in the woods, but it could be that you have been left, or you're feeling lost. A person you were counting on bailed out or maybe even died. Or something that has been one of your life anchors isn't there any more. You've been left out or left behind or left high and dry. And you're not sure which way home is. Because so much in life is temporary, it's only a matter of time before we all experience the pain of being left or being lost.

Which makes our word for today from the Word of God especially important. It's Jesus' personal mission statement in Luke 19:10 - "The Son of Man (that's Jesus) came to seek and to save what was lost." Now He's talking about you and me. That Girl Scout at that camp that night was lost, separated from the people who could get her home.

Well, that's the picture the Bible paints of you and me. Oh, sure, on the outside we look like we've got it all together. But inside, there's a lot of loneliness, a lot of hurt, and a lot of unanswered questions. We are, in Jesus' words, "lost" because we're separated from the one Person who can get us home - who is home for our searching heart...our Creator. In God's own words, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2).

See, we have broken God's laws and we're paying the price. It's a wall between Him and us - a wall that's there forever if we die with it still there. A wall that Jesus died on a cross to remove by paying the death penalty for all the sinning we ever did. But He has a hard time getting us to realize that He's the only one who can finally fill that hole in our heart. Maybe that's why God has allowed you to be left or to be lost - so you'd finally realize no earth-love is going to be enough. I have to tell you honestly, it isn't until our earth-anchors let us down and leave us stranded, that we finally realize we were made for Jesus and we were paid for by Jesus.

And now this Savior has come looking for you. He said He would "seek and save what was lost." That tug you feel in your heart? That's Jesus Himself, knocking on the door of your heart. Your relationship with Him can begin right where you are if you'll just tell Him that you're trusting Him to be your Savior from your sin. All the disappointments have been so you could finally find the one love that will never let you down, never leave you, and never die on you.

You tell Him, "Jesus, I'm putting all my faith in what You did on the cross, paying for my sin. I believe You walked out of your grave; you're alive. Come into my life today." Tell Him that, where you are. And please go to our website, and there I've laid out very simply the things that can help you know, from God's Word, that you belong to Jesus. It's ANewStory.com.

Jesus has allowed you to be left, to be lost...so you could get found. By the One who went all the way to a cross to bring you home.

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There are many ways to prepare food for dinner. You can bake it, boil it, fry it, simmer it, or as we've discovered in the age of radiated ravioli, you can nuke it. Yea, microwave, the ultimate symbol of the too-busy-to-cook generation! Actually, they do come in handy when your stomach is growling and your time is short. Microwave ovens cook some things better than others, I've discovered. I don't know if you've had the appetizing experience I've had on occasion. Your dinner comes out nice and warm on the outside, but cold on the inside.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Warm on the Outside, Cold on the Inside."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is sobering because it's about people who believed the Scriptures, never missed a meeting at church, and lived rigorously righteous lives. It could be us! Our word for today from the Word of God is in Mark 7:6-7. "Jesus replied, 'Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'"

You know, Jesus is describing here in modern terms what I call microwave folks in the church. He says that their lips are sounding a good sound but their hearts are cold. They might look warm on the outside, but they're cold on the inside. Oh, their faith has gotten to the outside, but it somehow never warmed on the inside. Twenty centuries later, still religious people are there who are warm on the outside but cold on the inside. You and I have to look at ourselves and say, "Hey, could this be me?"

Now, you can't judge by spiritual talk. Jesus said, "Their lips are saying the right words." They're praising, and preaching, and witnessing, but they have a distant heart. You can't judge by religious activity. I mean, these people, according to Jesus, do worshipping things. But He says it's in vain; they're wasting their time.

Revelation 2 describes Christians who are working hard, dealing with compromise, enduring hardships. Everything that men can see checks out great, but something's missing. He says, "You have forsaken your first love." Could it be you've grown cold on the inside, even though you still seem pretty warm on the outside? What you used to do for love you now do for duty. What used to be spontaneous for the Lord is kind of formal and mechanical. What used to be close is now distant, isn't it?

It's time to get back to your first love; to visit that cross with the recent sin that you need to repent of, not just all the sins of years ago. But I mean the things you need to catch up on, to catch up your repentance. To remember at that cross what it cost to pay for you - the blood of the very Son of God. To go there and confess the compromises that have crept in, and then spend some extended time to be there by your Lord, with your Lord, who gave His life there for you.

You know, you could be becoming a microwave believer. You might be cold on the inside. And cold on the inside just isn't worth it, you're missing so much of what it means to serve your Lord. That's not what He wants. What He cares about is the warmth of your heart.

The old cliché says, "Two's company, three's a crowd." That's really true when it comes to romance. Okay, guy meets girl, guy falls in love with girl, guy falls in love with another girl in addition to first girl. That's like putting a match in gasoline. That is a centuries-old formula for an explosion. It's the infamous love triangle!

Soap operas thrive on them; marriages are destroyed by them. A love triangle is usually a prescription for broken hearts unless you have the kind of love triangle that keeps hearts from being broken.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Love Triangle That Strengthens a Marriage."

Now, there's a formula in our word for today from the Word of God in Ecclesiastes 4. It's a formula for lasting bonds between people. I would call it the arithmetic of love. Here's what it says beginning at verse 9: "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up. If two lie down together they will keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."

That passage is a powerful statement about relationships, especially if you apply it to the ultimate relationship of marriage. It says two work together better than one, two walk together better than one, two stand together better than one, and then suddenly the number changes. Suddenly it's talking about three strands. Wait, I thought we were talking about two.

Enter the love triangle: a husband, a wife, and a Savior. That's the kind of love triangle that avoids broken hearts. Ephesians 5:21 alludes to it when it says; speaking to husbands and wives, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." It's the Jesus factor in a home. Now, the triangle is the strongest geometric figure there is, and a love triangle with Christ at the top is virtually indestructible.

In other words, you've got the man and woman joined together by that line along the bottom, but they both have a line going up to Jesus at the top. That bond between the man and the woman will fray sometimes. There's interference, there's disappointment, there's disillusionment, there's hurt. But if both the man and woman are connected to Christ at the top of the triangle, that bond will hold them together when the bond of human compatibility is unraveling.

The question is, "How much is Jesus Christ a real presence in your marriage?" Do you pray together about real life issues as if Jesus is right there with you? "Lord, we've got to talk to You about this together." Do you often ask together, "What would Jesus do?" Are you cultivating the habit of sharing what Christ has said to you from His Word that day with each other? Are you at church together? Do you get on your knees together and fight for your children?

Before you get married, wait for someone who is joined to Jesus as you are, because it is worth the wait. And after you marry, practice His presence daily in your home. A love triangle with Jesus as that real third person is the strongest bond on earth.

I was about nine years old when my parents took me to meet Paul Bunyan. Actually it was a giant statue of that legendary lumberjack seated on this huge chair. My dad went to the ticket booth, paid for us, and then I went through the turnstile and into Paul's big yard. And there he was in his red plaid shirt and a little log cabin at his feet that showed how huge he was. And then came the heart attack. Suddenly this big voice boomed out for everybody to hear, "Hello, Ronnie." Man, for one of those rare moments in my life, I was totally speechless! How could I know that the ticket guy had asked my father my name (little scam going on here!) and then he relayed it to a man in that little log cabin - a man with a very big microphone. I was just amazed that someone that big actually knew me!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "You Can't Go Unnoticed."

For many people, life has been a lot of not being recognized, not being acknowledged, not being known, not being seen. Until, much to their amazement, like me as a little boy with that giant, they find out that the biggest Person in the world - in the universe - really knows and cares about who they are. And there comes that moment when it's as if He seems to call you by name.

It happened to a woman in Jesus' day, and it can happen to you, no matter how you've been treated in your life. Our word for today from the Word of God is found in Luke 8:42. "As Jesus was on His way, the crowds almost crushed Him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She came up behind Him and touched the edge of His cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped." Now Jesus goes on to ask who touched Him, which surprises His disciples that He could sense an individual encounter in such a crowd of people.

Here's the part I love. "Then, the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at His feet." She was utterly amazed. This woman, who had been ignored and passed over by so many people, had been noticed by the Son of God.

So have you. In fact, you have no idea what you mean to Jesus. First, because you're His one-of-a-kind creation. In the words of the Bible, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:10). You are very special to Jesus. He made you. But not only are you His unique creation, you are His very expensive purchase. When Jesus went to that brutal cross, it was literally to die in your place, to absorb all the guilt and all the death penalty for every sin you have ever sinned. He took your hell so you could go to His heaven.

So no matter how excluded or unimportant or lonely you may feel, the most important person in the universe never stops thinking about you; never stops loving you. Every time Jesus looks at His hands He sees the nail prints left by the price He paid for you because He loves you so much.

The question isn't whether Jesus has noticed you, it's whether you have noticed Him. That woman in the Bible received what Jesus had because she reached out in faith to Him. Has there ever been a time when you reached out to Jesus and said, "Lord, You are my only hope of knowing God, of being forgiven, of going to heaven. I'm yours." You'll never experience His love or His life until you do.

If you want to begin your relationship with this One who loves you as no one else ever has? Well, tell Him that now where you are. And I'd love to walk you through how to be sure you belong to Him at our website, which is there for that very reason. Check it out today - ANewStory.com.

Even while you've been too busy to notice Jesus, He's been reaching out to you. Today His nail-scarred hand is reaching your way one more time. Please, don't miss Him.

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You know, when I was growing up, it was a pretty long trip to get to the ocean. I grew up in Illinois, so we didn't have a lot of ocean experience. Needless to say, when I lived along the East Coast for over 20 years, I became fascinated with the ocean. I still love to watch it, I love to walk along the beach, I love to romp in the waves a little, but I haven't gotten used to those big breakers rolling in. Hey, listen, I'm a lake boy, okay; a pool kid.

But those big old waves, they make me feel as if they could pick me up and carry me all the way to England, which I would rather fly to anyway than go by way of the Atlantic Ocean. But I have good friends who really know what to do with those giant waves. They've taught me that what you do is you surf on it if you know how, and they're good at it. They wait for that big old curl to come roaring down on them, they leap on their surfboard and they ride that wave. Now, I see a mega wave as a threat. My friends? They see it as a vehicle.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Surfing the Wave That Could Sink You."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 8, and it talks about the day that a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem. All except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. It really sounds like a large wave coming in against God's people. But listen to what they did with it.

"Those who had been scattered," chapter 8, verse 4 says, "preached the Word wherever they went." Now, here is this violent enemy attack on the infant church, and it forces the believers out of their little nest in Jerusalem. Probably losing their home, and their family connections, and possibly their job. What did they do? Did they sink? No, they surfed on that big wave! They started spreading the Gospel in all the places they were forced to go.

Now, that's just what God had predicted in Acts 1:8, when He said, "You'll be My witnesses in Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the earth." But they weren't leaving Jerusalem until this persecution hit. See, the attacks of the enemy often end up facilitating the plans of God (don't you love it?), because of how believers handle the heavy waves of crisis that come crashing toward them.

You could do that. It's called capturing your crisis for Christ. This type of believer surfs on a wave of trouble instead of sinking under it. Let's fast-forward 2,000 years from the book of Acts to your life right now. You've got pressure. What's the wave that's coming in at you right now? You've got stress, you've got some anxiety. Can you see it? There's a crisis that's threatening you, or maybe a disappointment, or a disease, a disaster. Capture your crisis for Christ. Do what these early Christians did. They used it as a platform to proclaim Jesus. They said, "Well, if the crisis has forced me into a place I never wanted to be, I'm going to use this as a place to proclaim Christ."

Basically, they believed that their situation was their assignment wherever God put them. See, the crises of life put us in positions where a lot of folks are watching what we do; where we meet new people, where we can find a platform for saying, "Jesus is enough, even in this; especially in this situation." Now, the enemy would love to use this wave that you see coming at you to sink you, but don't go down under it.

Remember, your situation is your assignment from God. Do what the great surfers do! Ride on top of this wave; surf on it. Capture it for Christ.

"The Mad Cleaning Man" - that's one of the nicknames affectionately given to me by my family. And I've worked pretty hard to earn that name. Let's put it this way, I hate clutter. I'm not the neatest guy in the world, but I can only function so long when mess is building up around me, you know? So, often without warning, I would go on a straightening rampage. And what was the best way to keep from having to pick something up again? Right! You throw it away! I look at things before I trash them. Come on, you should know that. I'm not irresponsible. But over the years, a family member would walk into a room that was messy when they left but had since had my magic touch. But they would say "Oh no! Dad's been at it again." Which could be followed by cries of frustration as they look for some item, "Dad, where's my such-and-such? It was right here!" Then they would see the glazed eyes of "The Mad Cleaning Man" and they gave up asking. Cleaning up is good, right? But it can be irritating.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Catch, Then Clean."

You can be that way with a house. You can be that way with people. Trying to clean them up, that is. Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 5:17. And it starts with this exciting news: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" When Jesus comes into a person's life a wonderful transformation begins. The old person we were when we were outside of Christ starts to disappear, and we start becoming this new person that only Jesus can make us when we are "in Christ." Cleaned up by Jesus Christ.

Now the passage goes on to tell us that God has reconciled people to Himself through Christ's forgiveness and that He "has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors." In other words, God's counting on you to let people know how to have peace with Him through Jesus. That's our mission - bringing a lost person to the Savior. Not cleaning them up. Jesus said we're fishers of men. And you know what? Every fisherman knows you've got to catch fish before you clean them!

But sometimes we approach lost people like "The Mad Cleaning Man" approaches our house, "must get you cleaned up." And it alienates the very people we're trying to tell about God's amazing grace. In a blatantly sinful and godless culture, we see more and more behaviors that aggravate us, offend us, and anger us. We're really bothered by their sexual immorality, their language, the things they talk about, the things they joke about, or just their disregard of one or another of God's commandments. And that should bother us. And while we want them to begin a relationship with Jesus, we also want to clean up their act!

But it's a mistake to try to clean people up before they have the Cleaner-Upper! 2 Corinthians 5:17 doesn't say that they will be in Christ when they become a new creation. It says they'll become a new creation when they're finally in Christ! We need to be stressing relationship, not reform. The message of reconciliation God has trusted to us is all about Jesus! People sin because they're sinners, and they will be sinners until they know the Savior of sinners! So stick to Jesus and stick to His cross, and don't encumber that simple Gospel with an attempt to clean up their lifestyle.

Yes when they come to Jesus there is repentance with their faith to recognize that there's someone new in charge and life is going to change. But Jesus will do the cleaning up. Even as a parent or spiritual mentor, we may have gotten hung up on someone's deeds more than their needs or on correcting their behavior which can build walls, instead of building our relationship which builds bridges.

Oh yes, cleaning up is a very important part of coming to Christ. It's called repentance. But Jesus does the cleaning from the inside out. Cleaning them up - that's not my job. Introducing them to the Cleaner-Upper - that's my job!

My microwave has this very useful ability to bring food back to life; like, oh, store bought baked goods for example. Have you ever noticed? It's just better if you pop them in the microwave. You know, nuking it? If you get some of that store bought coffee cake or donuts or muffins, you know, they may not be fresh from the bakery. But we found that they are so much better if you heat them up. What happens is the heat makes them softer. The other day I had a cookie that was getting a little on the old side, and I put it in the microwave and it was like it came right out of the oven - soft and warm. Sometimes the box will even tell you that you ought to "nuke it." And sometimes it will say, "Better when heated" or something like that. Actually, that would be true of about half of the human race.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Heat That Heals a Heart."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Kings 5:1. We're reading about a man named Naaman who it says is "commander of the army of the king of Aram. He's a great man in the sight of his master, highly regarded, he was a valiant soldier." Now, that's at the beginning of the story. At the end of the story in verse 17, he is saying to God's man, Elisha the prophet, "Your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord." Wow!

Something happened in between these two verses, something that made this man of war into a man of God. Now, what is it that makes a warrior into a worshipper? Well, I didn't read it after it said "He was a valiant soldier." Let's go on. "...but he had leprosy." So he goes, and Elisha tells him he has to wash in the dirty waters of the Jordan River seven times in order to get well. It says Naaman went away angry. He said, "I won't go into the dirty river. We've got great rivers back in our country I could get into." And his servants say, "Hey, if he asked you to do some great act, you would do it wouldn't you? Why don't you go wash and be cleansed."

Then we read in verse 14, "So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times." He's finally humble. "And his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy." Now, Naaman did not yield to God until there was something bigger than he could possibly handle. When I say that, we've probably just described about half the human race; my half of the human race, the male half of the human race. When God turned up the heat on Naaman, He softened his heart so He could save him.

You know, a man says, "Hey, I can handle it." That's our motto, "I can handle it!" And we give God money, we give Him time, we give Him belief, but we want the control. God hears us say, "I can handle it" and He says, "Oh no, you can't." And so He sends to us men something that all our ability, and our power, and our connections cannot handle: a child goes astray, something happens to our health, our job, our marriage, an injury. The breaking of the man is the making of the man. It's not because God doesn't love you, it's because He does.

One man told me recently, "God could never get control of my life until my son attempted suicide." Another man recently said, "I almost died in an accident, and finally I surrendered to Christ." See, God does this over and over again with us men, this humbling thing so we will finally let go to the Lord.

And guess what? Then we're finally complete; we're finally whole like Naaman was only after he was broken. See, God turns up the heat on us men because we get pretty hard like those old pastries, and He uses this heat to soften us up so we can finally become all we were created to be.

Maybe He's been turning up the heat so you will finally turn your heart to Jesus. Would you do that today and let Him make you a man you could never be without Him. We're always better after we've been through God's heat, because remember, the breaking of a man by the Lord is the making of the man.

It's a good thing that over the years I haven't had to wear a nametag when I went to see the dentist. Yeah, I'm doing better now. But, you know, for years I didn't really anxiously await my opportunity to spend time in the dentist's chair. I'm not sure you do either. I mean, look, we all have a tendency to avoid appointments that may be unpleasant, don't we? And, in most cases, you could put off - even cancel - meetings you don't want to have. In most cases.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Appointment You Will Keep."

In our word for today from the Word of God, God announces an appointment. It's in His Book; it's not in yours. Hebrews 9:27 - "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." God makes it very clear: we have an appointment with our Creator - or, as the old-timers used to say, "meet our Maker."

Now that final reality is something that, well, we'd rather run from than face a lot of times. One alternative idea we hear a lot about is reincarnation. Of course, that's not really a new idea. Reincarnation proposes that we can escape this day of reckoning indefinitely through this endless cycle of starting over. Of course, the only One who knows for sure what happens beyond death is God Himself. And He leaves absolutely no room for us going around again when it says man's destiny is to, "die once and after that to face judgment."

When God talks about facing judgment, He says you and I will have to account to Him for our life; a life that, according to the Bible, has been lived outside our Creator's plans. In God's own words, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Nobody has lived up to God's standards. Everybody has the death penalty of sin to deal with.

That's why so many people become religious and try to do good. We hope we can somehow pay off our sins. But again, our way of getting ready for our appointment with God is useless. The Bible says that at the time of judgment, "Every mouth will be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous (that means right with God...qualified to go to heaven) by observing the law" (or doing all the right things).

There's no way you can pay your sin-bill with your religion, your generosity, or your goodness. The only way this eternal bill could be paid was by God's eternal Son, Jesus Christ. The payment we're trying to make with our goodness was already made by Jesus when He took our death penalty on His cross. The only question God's going to ask you when you keep your appointment with Him is, "What did you do with My Son?"

Years ago when prairie fires would sweep across Indian lands, Native Americans would literally fight fire with fire. They would actually set a fire in a trench around their village. When the prairie fire hit that already burned area, it stopped. The principle of stopping the fire was simple: the fire cannot go where the fire has already been.

The fire of God's judgment for the sinning we've all done has already fallen on His Son at the cross. If you put your trust in Jesus to be your Savior from your sin, your judgment is canceled, because the fire cannot go where the fire has already been.

Other appointments can be postponed or canceled, but not your appointment with your God. Denying it, ignoring it, running from it won't change it. The only thing to do is be prepared for it! You can do that by telling Jesus right where you are that you want to begin this life-saving relationship with Him.

You say, "Jesus, I'm Yours." Listen, there's much more information about how to begin with Him at our website. Please check it out, it's ANewStory.com.

Somewhere in this country someone is going to keep their appointment with God today. And just like you, no one thinks it will be him or her. Someone will be wrong. Please be sure that you've settled your relationship with the Man who died so you could live. Then whenever your appointment with God is, you'll have nothing to fear.

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Okay, I admit it. I talk pretty fast. But maybe that's because I lived in the New York area for so long. Everyone there talks fast! Or maybe it's because I always have so much to say before the time runs out. But I am sort of a, I guess, a verbal machine gun. But I did come across someone who finally succeeded in slowing me down by about maybe two-thirds.

He's a Russian doctor who had recently immigrated to the United States. He hadn't planned to come here, but persecution and the prospect of threatened imprisonment in the days of the Cold War had driven him to America. I groped for words that he would understand, and he groped for what would be the English word to express his feelings. It was kind of a long conversation. It took a while to exchange just basic information, but it was worth the effort.

The doctor - a committed Christian, and for years he was secretly copying the scriptures and Christian literature when that door was closed in his country. He also ran a network of people who did the same - getting precious scriptures out to people. All that time he risked his secure, professional position to be spreading the Gospel. Finally, he had to leave, and he was trying to find some place to work in the United States.

And I said to him, "You know, you are one of God's heroes." And he had kind of a pained look on his face like he didn't understand. I said, "Winner! One of God's champions. Olympics!" I was trying to be understood. And then I realized that his pained expression wasn't because he didn't understand; it was because he did. Then in this one line of broken English he gave me a Christ-like perspective on all the work we do.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Champions With No Trophy."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Mark 14:3. "While Jesus was in Bethany reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar (very expensive perfume, that is). She broke the jar and poured the perfume on His head." Now, there is some criticism for that. After that in verse 8 He says, "She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body and forehead to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the Gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.'" And sure enough we just did it today again, didn't we? We talked about her.

Now, in a sense, what the doctor said about his serving the Lord at such a great price in the Soviet Union is what we all ought to say. He said in his broken English, "I only do what I could." He didn't want to be a hero. He said, "I've only done what I could. No big deal."

You know, I think the ultimate epitaph for our life would be what Jesus said about this woman, "She/he has done what she/he could." I wonder if that could be said about your life? My Russian friend knew that that's really all God expects. Now, He does expect all we have to give as this woman literally lavished her most expensive possession on the Lord. But He also wants us to know that it's no big deal to give Him all you have.

Jesus thinks it's a big enough deal to reward though. It's important that we don't think that it's that big of a sacrifice. We shouldn't think, "Wow! Look what I just did." But on the other hand, He'll never forget it. Maybe you've got a sense of inadequacy right now, you compare yourself. You say, "Well, I don't have much to give. I'm not as talented. I can't do as much for the Lord as somebody else can." Are you giving what you have for Jesus' sake? That's all He asks.

Lavish what you have...all the little or all the much on Jesus. Maybe the problem is pride. But then, how could you do any less for the Lord. Don't be proud, it's no big deal to give all the little that you have for the much that He gave for you. That Russian doctor? He didn't think he was a hero. None of us should.

But if you just give it, don't be surprised if Jesus welcomes you in heaven with a hero's welcome.

It's the word you hope you'll never hear when you're in your doctor's office - cancer. Recently, though, there's been a beautiful four-letter word that may go with that ugly word. It's the word "cure." At least they're hoping so. The possible breakthroughs have to do with one of the greatest killers of women - breast cancer. But the discoveries may turn out to open up ways to cure other cancers, too. This entirely new approach to fighting cancer - one that has so far shown promising results in lengthening the lives of terminally ill cancer patients has been described as "attacking cancer at its genetic roots."

The gene is called HER-2, and it produces this protein on the surface of our cells that ultimately helps accelerate that abnormal growth that becomes cancer. Scientists have developed a treatment that attacks this genetic malfunction that causes some cancers. One researcher offers hope to millions who have cancer or may develop cancer when he puts it this way, "If we understand what is broken in the malignant cell, we might be able to fix it." They're calling this one of the hottest areas of cancer research, and it makes sense - stop the cancer by stopping its genetic root.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Curing Cancer of the Heart."

Now you may be one of the blessed people like me who when you hear about cancer, you can say, "Well, not me so far." I wish I could say that about the cancer that infects every single one of us - the deadliest cancer there is. You might call it heart cancer. It's that spiritual cancer in the human heart that causes so much hurt, guilt, shame, and brokenness. The Bible calls it sin, with the middle letter "I."

We were created by God to live life His way. According to the Bible, we've all said, "No. No God's way. My way." That's the root of our deadly spiritual cancer. And it is always terminal. No matter how religious or how nice we are, God makes it clear, "the wages of our sin is death" (Romans 6:23) - that's death as in being eternally cut off from God, from His life and from His love.

This is the spiritual cancer that devastates our self-respect, our family, the people we love - and that's the ones we hurt the most. It takes away our inner peace, and it destroys our eternity. And like mankind's battle against physical cancer, the battle against this disease of "me" has been going on for a long time.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 7:15. "What I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do." Sound familiar? That's our losing battle against the dark disease in our heart. The writer of these words is desperate for a cure, and he asks, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24) Just like us, he's found no cure that can get at the root cause of all the dark things that come out of us.

Then comes the announcement of the breakthrough, as this fellow-sinner asks, "Who will rescue me?" He answers, "Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Jesus has pioneered the cure for this spiritual cancer that has seemed so unstoppable, so incurable. He shed His blood on the cross, absorbed all the sin, all the punishment, and attacked the root causes of the actions and the attitudes we hate - and He broke the power of sin by taking all its punishment.

So many people - maybe even people you know - have opened their lives to Jesus and they have found forgiveness and moral victory that is changing their lives and their homes. And it's within your reach today if you will say, "Jesus, I'm trusting you to be my savior for my sin."

You know our website is all about beginning to win the battle by beginning a relationship with Him. It's ANewStory.com - I hope you'll go there today.

The disease of me is a ravaging spiritual cancer and it's terminal. But the cure is within your reach. The only reason you would go one more day still dying is if you refuse to reach out to Jesus for this cure He paid for with his life.

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It seems as if the movie comes around again about once a year on TV, and we get a chance to see that charming story called "The Wizard of Oz." What a quartet! I mean, Dorothy, the little Kansas farm girl blown into the Land of Oz. She wants to see the Wizard to get help to get home. Then remember, there's a Scarecrow, he wants to see the Wizard to get some brains. And the Tin Woodsman, well, he's looking for a heart. And last but not least, there's that lovable feline, the Cowardly Lion. Now I know some people who could use some brains, I know some people who could use a little more heart; but we're surrounded by people who could use more of what that Cowardly Lion was looking for. Remember, "I need courage."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Lifting People Up."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Hebrews 10, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 24: "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Okay, so we're supposed to be in the business of spurring people on to be what they need to be, to do what they need to do. In other words, people should be better off because they've been around you. That was the effect Jesus had on the people that He was around.

How will that happen? Well, it happens when we do this: "Let us encourage one another." I was thinking the other day about what encourage means. Just reverse it - courage in. It means you're putting courage in people. It's like a gasoline fill-up except it's a motivation fill-up. When you encourage someone, you literally put courage in them. You give them courage to take a risk, to trust God, maybe just to get through a very tough day.

You put courage in someone when you stop and you pray with them. I said with them, by the way, not just for them. An arm around them says, "Wait, let's stop and pray about your situation right now." I have seen people literally change before my eyes when I would just take a moment to pray with them.

You encourage a person when you give them specific praise for something they did or more importantly for something they are. Sometimes the courage injection comes from a scripture verse you share with them, or a spontaneous note or an email you write, or a text, maybe just a minute spent honestly inquiring how they're really doing. I can't tell you how many times someone's word, or note, or prayer of encouragement has literally put courage in me on a day when courage was really needed. And the encourager could never have known how much I needed it. But they were literally the channel for God to say to me, "Ron, I love you. It's going to be okay. Take courage, man."

Encouragement restores your perspective when it's been battered and beat up by the pressures of the day. The great thing about the ministry of putting courage in people is that anybody can do it. It doesn't require any great gifts. It doesn't require any musical ability, or speaking or leadership, or a seminary degree - just a heart. It takes a genuine interest and it looks for ways to give that person encouragement, to build them up.

That Cowardly Lion finally got his courage largely from being with three other friends who carried him through the tough times. People around you don't need a wizard to give them courage. But they may very well need some courage to take the next step on the road of their life. They just need somebody like you. They need the courage-giving love of a Jesus follower...maybe you.

Dr. Henry was one of the most challenging professors I had in college. And I anticipated the final exam in his class was going to be a monumental challenge. Who knows what questions Dr. Henry could throw at us from his incredible intellect! Well, word began to leak out about his final from the first students that took it. They didn't give any details - they just shared one surprising, tantalizing fact. They said, "There's only one question on the exam!" Well, most of us took that news as encouragement as we stood on the edge of academic survival. But when Dr. Henry set the exam in front of us, we weren't quite as encouraged. This entire semester of theology class had been devoted to what the Bible says about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. The professor's question? "Describe the Person and work of the Holy Spirit." Oh come on! One question, but what a question!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Single Question on Your Final Exam."

You may have been out of school a while. I'm sure you don't miss final exams, but you still have one more. We all do. The day your heart beats its last and you stand before the God who made you. And it appears from God's Word, the Bible, that there will only be one question on your final exam. But what a question!

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 John 5:11-12. "God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." God says the human race is divided into two groups, and only two. Those who have Jesus and therefore have eternal life - they will go to heaven when they die. And those who do not have Jesus and therefore do not have eternal life - they'll go to eternal separation from God. In the words of John 3:36, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."

Now there's no question where God wants you to be forever - with Him in heaven. That's why He paid such a high price to remove what would keep you out of heaven - the sin of your life; all those countless times you've done it your way instead of God's way. You can't get into heaven with sin. And it won't work just trying to repay the wrong we've done with religion or being good. Sin has to be removed, not repaid. And that seems impossible when the penalty for running our own lives is an eternal death penalty.

But God loves you so much that, according to John 3:16, "He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." God sent His Son to carry all the guilt and all the dying of your sin - to literally die your death penalty. So you shouldn't be surprised when you stand before God and He asks you that one question on His final exam - the one that determines where you'll be forever. "What did you do with My Son?" Not, "What good things did you do?" Not, "Did you believe the right things?" Not, "What religion were you?" God is interested in only one thing, "What did you do with His Son who gave His life for you?"

The only answer that will open the gates of heaven to you is, "Lord, I invited Your Son, Jesus, into my heart and I put my total trust in Him to be my Rescuer from my sin."

Has there ever been a time when you've done that? If you're not sure, please let today be your Jesus-day. Tell Him you want to be His - you want to belong to Him. "Jesus, I believe when You died on that cross it was for me. And I'm putting all my trust in You today."

Our website exists to help you to cross over from death to life this very day. I hope you'll check it out - ANewStory.com.

The final exam is coming - God has set the time. He'll ask you, "What did you do with My Son?" I pray you'll be able to point to this very day as the day you say, "I asked Him to save me from my sin."

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A lot of what goes into winning a football game is behind the scenes. Oh, we see all the plays and all the action, and all the heroics on the field. But a lot goes on we never see.

Let's take our local high school football team that I worked with for example. Each week someone from the coaching staff was out scouting the other team during the season. And sometimes I'd show up at the locker room and I'd ask, "Well, what are we up against this week? Tell me about the team we're playing this coming weekend." Almost always I'd get a rundown on what that team was good at, who their high scorer was, and what we would have to do to contain them, where their weaknesses were, and what we needed to go after. See, those scouting reports helped our coaches know how to best play that other team. Now, unfortunately, a lot of us are playing as if we haven't heard the scouting report on the other team.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How Satan Plans to Stop You."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Revelation 12. I'll begin at verse 12: "Woe to the earth! The Devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury because he knows the time is short." Verse 17 says, "The dragon (that's the Devil) went off to make war."

Now, the book of Revelation talks about the Devil seeing time run out on the game clock. I call it panic in hell. He says, "Wow! There's not much time left." He accelerates his attacks, and I believe he's doing that now because I don't think he has much time left. You're probably on the receiving end of one of these attacks. If you're going to understand what's going on in your life; if you're going to respond in a winning way, you need to hear the scouting report.

Here's attack number one: the Devil is trying to distract unbelievers so they won't look at Jesus. 2 Corinthians 4:4 talks about "the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ." See, if you don't know Jesus, the Devil does this to keep you in his grasp; he does this blinding thing. He's got you too busy impressing other people, or busy building a career, or a family, or studying, or having a good time; believing almost anything spiritual other than being rescued through Jesus. But the longer you wait, the harder it will be for you to ever know Christ. Your heart's getting harder. The Devil wants to distract you so you will never really see Jesus.

Attack number two is to dissuade young believers so they won't live for Jesus. That's talked about in Mark 4:15, "As soon as they hear the Word, Satan comes and takes away the Word that was sown in them." See, if you're a young believer, the Devil's attack as he's feeling his panic in hell, is to get your eyes off of this new Savior before you become a threat; to put in front of you whatever could detour you: a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a job, a temptation, popularity. Do you see what the Devil's trying to do? Don't fall for this! Don't let him draw you away from the person you've spent your whole life looking for, your Jesus.

And then his third attack is to discourage God's warriors so they won't lead for Jesus. These are the people who are making a difference. Maybe you're one of those. 1 Peter 5:7 addressed to spiritual leaders says, "Cast all your care on Him, because He cares for you. The Devil goes about like a lion seeking whom he may devour." See, I think he tries to devour them with discouragement. Maybe he's trying to neutralize you because you're one of the few people who's really in the battle. He's using people; he's using circumstances to destroy your motivation and your effectiveness. Listen to Galatians 6:9, "Don't be weary in well doing, for in due time you will reap if you do not faint."

See, the Devil is luring you, he's desperately doing whatever it takes to pull you away from Jesus; to get your focus somewhere else because he can't beat Him. But if you fight back in Jesus' name, you'll be causing even more panic in hell.

"Be a man." Three words that have gotten a lot of guys in trouble. Too many of us have done too many dumb things to prove what a "man" we were. But it seems more confusing than ever to know what that even means. Being a man.

Is it changing diapers and watching Hallmark movies? Or increasing your bench press and wearing camos? Is it conquest or compassion? Tenderness or toughness? Is it hiding your feelings or feeling your feelings? "Toxic masculinity" at one pole, passive manhood at the other.

As we approach another Father's Day, I'm not feeling a great urge to pontificate on manhood.

What I do have is an urge to remember my Dad. And the man who changed him.

When I was a kid, Dad was a machinist. By the time I was a teenager he'd become a plant manager - only a high school graduate. On his own time, he was a leader at church, even chairman of a couple nonprofit boards.

Recently I was asked to write a paragraph about my dad for a broadcasters' magazine. He was strong in his convictions and honest. Mischievously funny. Hardworking. Always fair. Always there. But as I sat at my keyboard, staring at the wall for the words, one word just kept coming to mind.

"Tenderhearted." For all my dad's obvious strengths as a leader, I remember the man who wasn't afraid of tears. When he was moved, you knew it. He was moved by a son's adolescent accomplishments... when he became a grandpa... when he saw people hurt.

Most of all, he was deeply moved when he thought about my baby brother who died suddenly at six months. And he really teared up when he thought about the man he used to be and the God who changed him.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Messy Manhood and Dynamite Dads."

My dad thought of himself as very average. His priorities were anything but average. You can read it on his tombstone.

With all the titles he had in his life, on his grave it simply says, "John Hutchcraft. Husband. Father." And after all is said and done, that's his legacy. Others could be foreman or chairman or boss. Only he could be our husband and father.

So with all the craziness about manhood, this Father's Day I'll go with the one who defined the word Dad for a boy named Ronnie. He was strong but sensitive. Fighting for what is right, but still a peacemaker. Neither toxic nor timid. Achieving but putting people first.

But most of all, I think about the Man who changed my Dad into the man I've been describing. For when my brother died, my Dad was totally lost. His broken heart led him to an old rugged cross. Where Jesus died to pay for every sin John Hutchcraft ever did. John Hutchcraft gave up driving that day - his life, that is. And Jesus took the wheel. And made him the man I remember, I love, and I miss.

Our word for today from the Word of God makes me think of my dad. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

Jesus. Tough enough to single handedly drive crooks out of the temple, but tender enough that children clamored to sit on his lap. Strong enough that men would leave everything to follow Him. Yet caring enough to elevate women in a world that crushed their dreams. The Savior who has made many a man what he could never have been without Him. I'm one of them.

When a man experiences Jesus forgiving... His unconditional love... His power to change - he now has nothing to prove. Nothing to hide. And nothing to lose. He is free to lead. And free to love.

My friend, if you want to begin a relationship with Him (which I hope you do!), go to our website. There's more there about how you can belong to Him. The website is ANewStory.com.

So I'm very blessed this Father's Day. I think I know all I need to know about being a man. From the one I call Dad. And, most of all, from the One I call Savior.

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Man, when I see my grown children eat now, it surprises me they ever needed help! But they did. And, of course, they're doing great now all by themselves. But there was a time when they had to be fed. And then I watched that with my grandchildren. See, sometimes - especially the very little ones - they need help, especially when they have this big piece of meat or chicken placed in front of them.

If you're little and you can barely see over the top of the table, a piece of meat on your plate looks like this pretty daunting challenge! You can imagine as you sit there you might be going, "How do I tackle that?" So, Dads come or Moms come and cut that meat into little pieces that the little guy can handle. That's how you tackle it.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Parenting in Bite-Sized Chunks."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Psalm 118:24. It's a familiar verse, probably one you've sung or maybe memorized. But let's apply it to life's great challenge called parenting. "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." I have repeated here that scriptural impression that life is meant to be handled in days. It comes up over and over again, not just here. David said, "This is the day...I'm going to handle life as days."

But all through the Bible it talks about these 24-hour bite-sized chunks that we're supposed to do. It talks about strength that comes as your days come; picking up your cross daily, getting mercies that are new every morning. The Bible says "our inward man is renewed day by day," and then the Psalmist comes along and says, "I've got this day the Lord made." Not this year, not this month, not this life - I've got this day.

Now, that's really helpful when it comes to the challenge of parenting. Man, you look at all that needs to be done in your child's life. They need to know that they're loved by you. You say, "Oh, there's so much to learn about discipline. They've got weaknesses I really need to work on! They've got strengths they don't believe they have, and I really need to build them up. And they have so much to learn about the Lord. There's so much to learn about life, and I have so much to get done in their life." And you look at all you need to accomplish in their lives and you're overwhelmed; you're paralyzed like a little child looking at this big piece of meat on his plate.

But you've got to cut it into bite-sized chunks called days. Your mission is simply to have a good day with your child. Don't try to put a whole life, or even a whole month together. Have one good day. One day where you show your child demonstrated affection, where you debrief each other's day; one good day where you just have some laughs with each other. One day where you deal with one piece of an issue in your life or their life. One day when you give them a specific compliment. One day where you touch the Lord together and talk to Him together about something.

And then let the Lord stitch those days together into a tapestry that makes a life. See, we tend to be paralyzed by guilt over the past or anxiety over the future. Our fears. Why not trust the Lord to cover both of those, and you have a good day today. That's how you build a better future.

So, don't be overwhelmed by that whole piece of things you need to do as a parent. Just take it one bite at a time.

I was in downtown Oklahoma City, and I had the privilege to visit the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing back in April of 1995. I don't think any of us who were alive at that time will ever forget the images of the day that that Federal Office Building was destroyed by a terrorist bomb. The images of that devastated building and of the frantic rescue efforts there, a baby in a fireman's arms. It was a day of heart-wrenching tragedy and it was a day of incredible heroism. Literally, an entire city dropped everything to respond in whatever way they could to this life-or-death situation. The job was clear that day: rescue the dying whatever it takes.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Cause That's Calling You."

When Jesus came, the job was clear: rescue the dying whatever it takes. Our word for today from the Word of God is in Luke 19:10. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." God's Son came here to aggressively pursue and rescue lost people like those rescuers going into the wreckage of that building. The "save" word here isn't just a theological concept - it's a rescue word as in what those rescuers did in Oklahoma City or at Ground Zero some years later. If they didn't get to the people trapped in that building and save them, they would die.

Then Jesus says to us in John 20:21, "As the Father has sent Me, I'm sending you." Our job is clear - to rescue the dying people around us whatever it takes. Paul makes our responsibility very clear when he says in 2 Corinthians 5:20, "We are Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you..." Notice the passion here, the urgency "We implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God."

See, that's why you are where you are - in your school, in that neighborhood. Jesus put you there to be His personal representative to that group of people. It's a divine assignment. So, how are you doing? He's put you there to, well as they say in kindergarten, "show and tell" them about Jesus. You need to show them what Jesus is like by your attitude and your actions and your treatment of them. But you can't just show - you have to tell.

Look, they're never going to guess that Jesus died on the cross to pay for their sins just because you're a nice person. You have to tell them. And it really is a life-or-death assignment. See, sin carries an eternal death penalty which can only be canceled one way - by a person putting their total trust in the One who paid that penalty for them - in Jesus. Jesus took their hell so they don't have to, but chances are they don't know that. It's up to you to lovingly deliver that life-saving message. God put you in their life! Rescue the dying whatever it takes. It's easy to forget that most important mission of all.

But they didn't forget that mission that day in Oklahoma City, or that awful day in Ground Zero in New York City, because they knew the lives of dying people were at stake. They dropped everything. And I think that's what we've forgotten - that the people in hell will look just like the people we work with, we live near. They don't look like they're spiritually dying, but the sentence for sin is very clear.

You have to ask Jesus to give you His broken heart for those people; His eyes to see what He sees when He looks at the people around you. Would you dare to pray this prayer? "Go ahead, God, and break my heart for the lost people in my personal world."

Churches forget what our life-or-death mission is and all of us rescuers tend to forget it. We do what's easy - just talk to the people who are already safe. But when you realize that people's lives, people's eternities are in the balance, you put everything on hold to save them.

The job is clear, my friend, rescue the dying whatever it takes.

It is almost as if God had sent us an angel. We were coming back from a Christmas party years ago. All five members of the Hutchcraft family together with the families of the youth ministry I worked for had been there for the annual Christmas party.

Now, Joe, one of our dearest friends - our greatest helpers, helped us load up all of our equipment into the back of the car and we headed home. Well, we had only driven just a few miles when a drunk driver crossed the centerline, plowed into our car and totaled it! Well, here we were sitting there dazed with the kids crying. I couldn't even see the car that had hit us! It had spun off behind me. I just sat there going, "What happened? What happened?"

Well it became an even longer night with police reports, x-rays, emergency room vigils, and trying to rearrange schedules for the next few days. As we sat there in this total confusion in our totaled car, I suddenly saw a familiar face at the window. There was Joe, our dear friend. He had decided (without telling us) that he would follow us to help us unload when we got home. There he was, right there when the accident happened; right there to bring us comfort and to bring us help all night long. On one of the toughest, longest nights we'd ever had, Joe was the angel we needed. He was just the right man at just the right place at just the right time. So are you.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Positioned to Make a Difference."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from the book of Esther 4:14. Let me review for you the life of Esther up to the point where we'll begin reading. She was a young, Jewish maiden. She was approached to be the new queen of Persia. Nobody knew she was Jewish. Well, after all of the possible candidates that could have become queen, she is selected to become the new Queen of Persia. And now we are at a point where an evil man named Haman was plotting and prodding the king to give a decree that will cause the deaths of all of the Jews.

Now, if Esther reveals herself and goes before the king, she may lose her life. But if she doesn't, it may cost the lives of her people. She's in a position to talk to the King Xerxes. And here's a statement from God's Word, "Who knows whether you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this." In other words, "Esther, it's no accident you are where you are. God put you here to be the right person at just the right place at just the right time."

You know, God is very good at this business of positioning people to make a difference. He's done it with you. You say, "Well, I just go to this school. I just play on that team. I just work at this office. I'm just involved in this club. I just work at that plant. I just live in this neighborhood. Oh, come on! You know what? You are divinely, uniquely positioned by God. There is someone near you that God knows you can help with what you know; with who you are; with your biographical credentials. Maybe you're in a position where you can open a door for some ministry need.

There was such a man like that in a key position to dispose of the vans his company was getting rid of, and he saw our need in our ministry at just the point when we desperately needed them. He came into the job at just the right moment and provided those vans. See, just an example of divine positioning.

Above all else, God knows who around you needs to hear about your Jesus. He's divinely positioned you, like He did Esther; to be in a spot where you can save lives because of the influence He's given you; because of the shared life experiences you have with that person. They will listen to you, because you're one of them.

Wherever God has put you, you can be sure it is to accomplish His divine purposes. God has a mission for you where you are. Be the best you can be, so you'll have people's respect, and know that you're where God wants you to assist Him at this place, at this time.

Who knows? Maybe God has you there for such a time as this. So, use what He's given you to make a difference for Him.

Caterpillars are ugly. I hope none are listening. I don't mean to be critical, but let's face it, those hairy crawlers are not the beauty queens of the animal kingdom. I suppose someone could try a makeover on a caterpillar, shave off some of that hair, give him a little color. But who could ever imagine that one of the uglier critters around could actually become one of the most beautiful animals in the world - a butterfly! You don't see many pictures of caterpillars on things, but you see pictures of butterflies everywhere! A critter covered with ugly black hair becomes a butterfly splashed with these amazing colors. An animal that lives off the leaves on the ground becomes the connoisseur of flower nectar. And a creature that once crawled everywhere becomes one that can fly everywhere. We're not talking makeover here. We're talking miracle!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Transformation Miracle."

The Creator who so miraculously transforms caterpillars does something far more amazing. He does it for people like you and me. He did it for my wife's grandfather, and He changed the course of her family's history...not to mention mine.

My wife's grandfather, Bill, was a handsome, successful guy with a fatal flaw - alcohol. He'd been hooked since he was 12 years old, and no one could get him unhooked...including himself. His addiction eventually cost him his job, his relationship with his family, even his freedom, landing him in prison for a while. He was, in essence, crawling through life on a caterpillar level because of something inside him he could not change.

So, one night Bill decided to die. He was on his way to Lake Michigan in Chicago to end his life when he heard this vaguely familiar song coming out of an old rescue mission. It was a song his mother used to sing. He decided to go in for a minute - never dreaming that the caterpillar who went into that mission would emerge a butterfly. From that night on, Bill never touched a drop of alcohol again. He became a wonderful husband, a loving father, and a respected spokesman for the Man who had changed his life. That night he was planning to die, Bill began a new life by beginning a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Now, while your struggles with your own darkness may be different from Bill's, the same kind of miracle can happen to you. It's described in our word for today from the Word of God, 2 Corinthians 5:17. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" For the rest of his life, my wife's grandfather dedicated himself to telling as many people as possible about the life-changing miracle that only Jesus could accomplish. And I've had the privilege of being married to some of his heritage - a heritage of spiritual transformation that has now affected another generation in our own children, and then again in our grandchildren.

Transformation? That's what Jesus does. Bill would always tell people, "An old derelict like me could never be reformed. I was transformed by Jesus Christ!" That's the testimony of millions of people over hundreds of years, including the guy talking with you right now. We all fight our own monsters inside us - the sinful, hurtful, even shameful urges, attitudes and actions that we've never been able to conquer. And even being religious or spiritual, even our best efforts at self-improvement have only turned out to be an unsuccessful makeover for a caterpillar.

See, Jesus died on the cross to pay for the sin that enslaves you, and now He offers to begin transforming you from the inside out if you'll invite Him to be your Savior. If you have never begun that relationship with Jesus Christ then tell Him, today, that you want to be His from now on.

And I think you'll be glad to find information at our website that will help you be sure you belong to Him. That website is ANewStory.com.

Trying to be reformed can only change you on the outside. Jesus offers to transform you from the inside out - to make what had been so ugly into something so beautiful. It's time to let Jesus do what only He can do.

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The occasion was a silver anniversary buffet for our 25th class reunion from college. Of course I was much younger than any of those mid-life folks that I graduated with. What happened to them? But anyway, the location was our alma mater, Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. That was a great training place - it was founded and named after the outstanding evangelist of the 19th century, D. L. Moody.

Now, we met for breakfast in one of several private dining rooms off of the main dining room; they kind of reserve these for special occasions. And as you might expect, each one is named after a person who prominently figured in the founding of the school or the leadership of the school. But we were in the Kimball Room. So, I surveyed our group of distinguished alumni and I said, "Who was Kimball? We're in his room. Who was Kimball?" No one knew. But none of us would have been there if it hadn't been for him. Who knows, maybe you're a Kimball.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Extraordinary Ordinary."

Our word for today from the Word of God - Acts 4:13. Peter and John are in big trouble. They have been preaching about Jesus in the temple, they have attracted quite a crowd, and as a result the Sanhedrin, the governing body, calls them before them for a private hearing. They are not pleased with the preaching of Peter and John. However, it says, "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus." The Jewish leaders were astonished that such ordinary men could be living such extraordinary lives.

Now back to the question we began with, "Who was Edward Kimball?" Well, he was a Sunday School teacher in Boston many years ago, teaching this little class of teenage boys. One of those boys in particular was biblically illiterate. He was out-of-step with everybody else in the class - he couldn't find anything in his Bible, didn't know anything in the Bible.

One day Edward Kimball felt led by the Lord to go where this lost young man worked at a shoe store. He felt led to go there and speak to him about accepting Christ, and the young man did. That shoe salesman prayed to give his heart to Jesus in the back room of that shoe store. Now, hardly anyone has ever heard of Edward Kimball the Sunday School teacher, but everyone in the Christian world has heard of D. L. Moody. Because it was Dwight Moody, that powerful evangelist, the founder of a place that has trained thousands of people for Christian work, that was the young man that gave his heart to Christ that day. There never would have been a D. L. Moody if it hadn't been for the faithfulness of one of God's ordinary people.

Is that an encouragement to you? I hope so. Maybe you consider yourself very ordinary, but God loves to do extraordinary things through ordinary people. That's what Acts 4:13 is all about. But they weren't ordinary anymore, because they had been with Jesus. Daily contact with Jesus leads to a total control by Jesus, and it leads to power being released in your life through which you can really make a difference.

You say, "Oh, I'm just a Sunday School teacher. I'm just a helper. I'm just a choir member. I'm just an untrained, simple person who loves Jesus." You're not a "just a..." Stop it! Don't keep saying you're "just a..." You're not that if you open yourself up to letting the Holy Spirit make your ordinary extraordinary. Did Edward Kimball know how extraordinary that little conversation would turn out to be? No, we never do. We do these little things for Jesus that turn out to be big things.

You can count on the Lord to take an ordinary person, doing ordinary things, and if you obey Him, He will make ordinary extraordinary.

My wife and I had been staying at a friend's house at the New Jersey shore. It was a great setting to be working on a book about "Peaceful Living in a Stressful World." One night this powerful storm hit the area, and we heard the wind howling and the rain was bombarding that house all night long. By morning, the storm was over, and I wanted to go to the beach to see what the storm tide might have deposited there. Even though the sun was out and the storm was history, the sea was still churning all brown. In fact, even when there wasn't a storm that week, the ocean never rested.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Peace Deficit."

There are times when the sea is more turbulent than others - like during and after that storm we experienced - but it's never really calm. Not unlike what's going on inside a lot of people's hearts - maybe yours. There are times that are more turbulent than others for sure, but there's never any lasting personal peace. It's not that we don't try to find something that will give us peace. We try all kinds of antidotes, all kinds of anesthetics, all kinds of escapes, all kinds of experiences, relationships, or people. But still where's the lasting peace?

The Bible tells us about a condition that's described in our word for today from the Word of God very graphically in Isaiah 57:20-21. What a picture this is! "The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud." Now, we can all picture that. If you've ever been to the ocean, you can picture it. That's a human heart. "'There is no peace,' says my God, 'for the wicked.'"

Now, we don't want to think we're part of the people God calls "the wicked." But I am and so are you. Because God is referring to all those who have broken His laws, who have run their own lives, and who have missed His standard of perfection. Hello? That would be every one of us. And the Bible says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). And God's X-ray of what's going on in our heart reveals a two-word bottom line - "No peace." It may be a feeling that you know all too well. No relationship has ever given you lasting personal peace, no accomplishment, not even a religion or spiritual experience.

After golfer Payne Stewart died in a plane crash, some years ago really, a lot of us learned about a personal commitment he had made to Jesus Christ about a year before. In that last year of his life, he said "I'm so much more at peace with myself than I've ever been in my life. I don't understand how I lived so long without it." Maybe you've lived long enough without that peace. You'll find it where Payne Stewart and millions of others have found it...in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

There's no peace until you have peace with God. And there's no peace with God until that sin that separates you from Him is forgiven. And there's no forgiveness without the Savior who died to pay for your sin. As the Bible says, "The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him" (Isaiah 53:5).

Are you ready for some peace in your soul; the peace that has eluded you all these years? Then you're ready for Jesus. You're ready to begin your personal relationship with Jesus Christ - the love you were made for. And you begin it by giving you to Him. You can tell Him that right where you are, "Jesus, I'm done running my own life. I deserve the penalty for that, but you took it on the cross. And because you love me that much, I love you back and I'm giving me to you beginning today. I am yours."

At that point, I can say, "Welcome to the family of God." I want you to go to our website and there find the information that will help you be sure you belong to Jesus Christ. It's ANewStory.com.

Like the ocean that never rests, your heart may have never really been at peace. But it's about to be if you'll claim this promise from Jesus Himself, "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you."

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Every once in a while we think someone left the floodlight on in the backyard, so I look outside the window to discover the floodlight isn't on - the moonlight is! It's one of those really impressive full-moon nights. The most beautiful one that my wife and I had, was when we were on vacation in the mountains. Our cabin was nestled in this quiet valley next to a gentle little stream. Not long after dark, I noticed that the valley was ablaze with light! The full moon was rising in the eastern sky and it was casting this celestial glow over everything. It was perfectly positioned in the sky to just totally illuminate the valley we were in. But then, something made me realize what I was really looking at, and I said as we stood on the porch in admiration, "You know, that moon really isn't producing any light at all. It's just reflecting the light of the sun."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Surprisingly Competent."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 3:18. Paul says, "And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." Now as followers of Jesus Christ we're supposed to light our world. Right? God has positioned you where you work, or live, or go to school, or where you shop, to make a difference, a Jesus-difference by your love, joy, your Jesus-treatment of people. See, you're supposed to light up what would otherwise be a much darker environment.

But we are like the moon; we have no glory of our own. This verse says we reflect Jesus' glory! He says it in another way in chapter 4, verse 7. "We have this treasure in jars of clay so that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." See, anything we do for the Lord, it's all God.

Now we should be a lot brighter, I think, than we are. There are a lot of important things He wants to do through you, but maybe you're not making nearly the difference you should be making. It's probably because of one basic spiritual misunderstanding about who is the "sun" and who is the "moon." Maybe these are things you've been asked to do for the Lord, but you're afraid to say "yes" because you feel inadequate. You want people you're around to hear about Jesus, but you haven't said anything because you're afraid you'll mess it up.

God is putting before you some ways He wants you to make a difference, but you keep shrinking back. But see, you're missing something. You're not the "sun." You don't have to produce the power, or the words, or the strength, or the light to pull it off. It's Jesus who does the work. He's only asking for you to be available. He knows you and I can't produce the light - that's His job! He just wants you to be in a position to reflect His light onto the people around you. Doesn't that take a lot of pressure off? That means you can help somebody be in heaven with you someday.

In chapter 3, verse 5 in 2 Corinthians He says, "Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent." See, you can dare to step up to responsibility that would be impossible if it depended on you. It doesn't. It depends on the Son of God!

This "reflected" glory neutralizes our feelings of inadequacy and pride. Maybe you've begun to feel a little prouder of the kind of Christian you've been, or some of the things you've done for the Lord. News flash! You haven't done them! You are just - I am just - a glowing piece of rock. It's all Jesus, reflecting His glory through you. Why are you taking any credit for it?

If the sun were to go out some full-moon night, we would immediately know where the light's been coming from all along and how little the moon has to do with it. The light of the Son of God never goes out, and He chooses to reflect in your valley, through your life, your personality, your abilities, and even your weaknesses. Isn't that amazing? You can light up your world with light that doesn't come from you, but from the very Son of God himself!

The lady in the airplane seat next to me was from Norway. And I knew she had experienced something I needed to know about - winter months with very long nights and summer months with very long days. With our Native American team planning some major summer outreach among Native young people in Alaska at that point, I was especially interested in what our days would be like up there. My neighbor from Norway made the answer very clear - they'd be endless! She said that even after all the years living there, she could never sleep much in those northern days where there is virtually no dark. I thought, "O-o-o, it should be a lot of fun getting our team to sleep at night, when there is no night." But then I was curious to know about those December days when we have only about nine hours or so of daylight. She told me about a time when it was, in her words, "almost always dark" where she lives. It's hard for me to imagine weeks where you basically never see the light of the sun. It's not hard for me to imagine the way my Norwegian neighbor said many people feel during that time - really depressed.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When It's Dark All the Time."

A long, depressing darkness. You don't have to live in the North Country to know what darkness like that feels like. I mean you can feel it in your heart. It may have been winter inside your soul for a long time - maybe concealed from others. You've got this smile, this really busy life, but it's still dark inside most of the time.

Maybe it's the guilt of past mistakes you've made that has brought on the long winter. Or just this nagging sense of worthlessness that goes way back, or a chronic despair over the pain of your past or maybe the meaninglessness of the present, or it could be the darkness might be summed up in one increasingly, desperate word - loneliness. But whatever the cause, this heaviness inside, this relentless darkness has been there long enough.

The end of a long, long night can begin with a hope-filled promise made by Jesus Christ - who has never made a promise He did not keep. It's our word for today from the Word of God in John 8:12, "Jesus said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'" Jesus promises that if you belong to Him, if you stay close to Him, He will lead you out of the darkness that no one else has been able to dispel. And that's the beginning of the end of your long, dark winter in your soul.

But only Jesus can replace your darkness with what He called "the light of life." Why? Because our problem really isn't the darkness. Near the North Pole in winter, the problem is that the sun doesn't shine there. Our problem isn't ultimately the darkness of our loneliness or our despair. It's the absence of the Light! We were created to live in the light of a love-relationship with our Creator, which we have lost by running our lives our way instead of His way. In God's words, "Your sins have separated you from your God." (Isaiah 59:2)

That separation could only be healed by the death penalty for your sin being erased. And that's what was going on when Jesus Christ was bleeding and dying on a cross. He was voluntarily paying for your sin, which is the ultimate cause of the darkness in your soul. And the forgiveness, the peace, and the light that He died to give you becomes yours when you tell Him you're trusting Him to be your Savior from your sin.

If you do that, Jesus will shed His light on every dark stretch you ever walk, including the darkest stretch of all, when one day you walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Why don't you open your heart to Jesus today right where you are? It's been dark long enough. Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours."

If you really want to know that you've begun this relationship, that's why our website is there. Check it out today! It's ANewStory.com.

This wonderful promise of God will be all about you. It says, "God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves" (Colossians 1:13).

We were shooting some video footage of a group of teenagers and they were kind of surprised when they saw the result on a TV screen. We were seated in a little cluster on the floor discussing various youth issues, and what surprised them was the fact that when they saw it on the screen they realized we had focused close-up on each individual as they were commenting. Of course, they went, "Oh, no! Look at me!" See, they thought it was going to be this big group shot. We didn't want the viewers to be distracted by anyone else, so most of the time we would zoom our lens in a real tight close-up, so you would only see one person. The telephoto effect actually makes a big difference.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Love Through a Telephoto Lens."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Proverbs 5:15, and it's talking about married love. It speaks about it in symbolic terms and then gets pretty direct. "Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth."

And then God expresses here as the Inventor of sex that He is, some of the joy that He intended married couples to have, "A loving doe," it says, "a graceful deermay her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love."

This is really a passage about focused love. It's about a man who has eyes for only one woman and doesn't let his springs overflow anywhere else, who really has decided there's only one place for his love. As a result he enjoys a fulfilling and exciting relationship with her. Now, whether you're a husband or a wife, this secret of happiness is still the same. Marital and sexual fulfillment is the byproduct of focused love. Lasered love.

Notice here it says, "Let your ability to express love be yours alone" in so many words. And then in the King James Version, I like the way it says, "Rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her satisfy you always." In other words there's a choice here. Let her/let him be enough. I choose to focus my telephoto lens on one person; there's no one else in my picture. As soon as you widen your focus, the discontentment, the dissatisfaction begins. Maybe you've been allowing other fantasies into your heart; maybe some of those sites you visited have fueled that kind of mental unfaithfulness.

Where should your heart be? Focusing all your fantasies on your husband or your wife. Those sexually-oriented pictures, the ads, the videos, the movies, the websites - they let other women and other men into a place that should be reserved for just one person. That's the way The Creator made it.

Maybe you joke about having a wandering eye. That's no joke! It dilutes your focus on that one man and that one woman. The soap opera love affairs, the flirtations with that other person, all those mental wanderings erode the excitement of focused love. Don't betray your lifetime partner in your fantasies. You'll both lose.

Decide to let her or let him be enough. Ask for Christ's strength to narrow your focus and you'll see just a close-up on one person. The best of married love is for those who choose love through that telephoto lens.

Our son's first word was the name he called me, "Da!" I know it's supposed to be "da da," but it was good enough for me. Now, our grandson's first word was "mama," which he liked so much that he just kept it rolling, "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma." Sort of the opposite of "da!" The first words children learn reflect what's going on around them. If they see Mama all the time, you can expect them to say her name early on. Sometimes, those first words aren't happy words. Our friends were dedicated missionaries in a war-torn part of the Middle East for years. Not long after their daughter was born, their area became a place where frequent bombardments and violence erupted all around them. Some of her first words told the story: "bomb," "gun."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Lessons That Shape Your Child's Life."

Children learn what they live, for better or worse. For all our words as parents, it's ultimately what our children live that makes them into the people they become. And God doesn't give a human being any greater trust, any greater responsibility than the shaping of a little person that He made in His image.

God, who asks us to call Him our Heavenly Father, has left us parents and grandparents some great help in the book He wrote. The Bible passes along some valuable instructions given to a generation of parents who were trying to raise their children in a culture that had no use for the values they were teaching their children. And in a setting where their children were being given what their parents had to work for. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?

His instructions to parents are recorded in Deuteronomy 11, beginning with verse 13, and it's our word for today from the Word of God. He begins by saying, "Love the Lord your God and...serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul." Parents need to give their children more than a religion. They need to show them a personal love relationship with the God who made them and a life that makes God the sun in your universe and everything else the planets that revolve around that sun.

Then God says: "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds...teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses...so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land." In short, live your life in such a way your kids keep bumping into God wherever they turn; a real God that they see in real life situations.

It isn't enough for your child to hear the truth. He or she needs to see what the truth looks like in your life. You teach them faith by how you handle the storms and the stresses that hit your family. You teach them loving their neighbor by seeing your compassion for hurting people. They learn about forgiveness by you forgiving them and asking them to forgive you. They learn that lying is wrong from a parent who always tells the truth. They learn about managing anger when they see you always make things right before your day ends. They learn to love God's Word when they see you meeting with God with His book in your lap.

The truth is, children grow up thinking God is like whatever their parents are like, and that's scary. Especially if you know you have a dark side that all too often is what your kids see; a dark side that continually causes you to hurt most the people you love most. Honestly, your child is your mirror. And if you don't like what you see in that mirror, it's time for you to know the Savior of mommies and daddies. That's Jesus, who died for our sins so they could be forgiven, who rose from His grave with the power to help us change what we could never change about ourselves. Our children show us a truth we may have been able to run from before. We need a Savior. We need Jesus.

This might be the day to make this Savior your Savior. I'd love to help you with that, that's why our website is there. Go to ANewStory.com.

You can't begin to imagine how different your home could be - how different you could be - if Jesus lives there, in you.

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Funny things happen when church youth groups go on summer missions trips. Suddenly these comfortable American kids are facing a totally unfamiliar situation, maybe for the first time in their lives!

There's money they don't quite understand. There's a language that's different from theirs. Surroundings that are really different from their comfy little room back home. Unusual places to sleep, food they're not used to eating.

And suddenly, teenagers who seldom have quiet time in the Bible, are up early every morning for devotions. Amazing! In fact if you look, there's a teenager with a Bible on every rock. It's not quite like that back home is it? What is happening? And kids who find prayer back home kind of boring? Well, now they want prayer meetings. Some who have never prayed aloud before, suddenly find the words. What's going on here? Maybe the same thing that's happening where you are.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Personally Bankrupt, Spiritually Rich."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 1, and I'm beginning to read at verse 8. Paul is struggling. He says, "We are under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure." Maybe that's something you can relate to. He goes on to say, "so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts, we felt the sentence of death. But this happened so that..."

Okay, pause for a moment. He's finding the reason for this heavy pressure, getting to the end of his rope, this despairing even of life, why has God allowed this to happen; what's the reason? He says, "It happened so that we might not rely on ourselves but on God." And then he adds, "...who raises the dead." Wow!

Paul says, "I'm bankrupt, man! I have no resources left. Why? How did I get to this point? I had run out of me to depend on. I totally abandoned me and the situation to God." What happened? The next verse says, "He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us."

I told you about the mission trip scenario. Kids are stripped of everything they usually can depend on, and so they're forced to grab Jesus as if their lives depended on Him. Well, it isn't that you suddenly started needing the Lord when you're bankrupt. You just don't realize it until you're bankrupt. Then something very intimate happens in your love relationship with Jesus. You experience His unlimited power at the point of your total powerlessness. In a sense, you don't really know the Lord until you really need the Lord.

Our safe, predictable, well resourced Christianity insulates us from really living by faith.

And then God allows the bottom to drop out, just so He can hold you up. And you find out what He can do when there's none of you and it's all God. And then you can learn that He's enough. He fills up your empty bankrupt account and in a paradox that only God could reveal to us.

Are you ready for it? Here it is: in your bankruptcy you can finally be rich.

Ahhh, Nantucket! My wife and I had some wonderful, romantic times on that picturesque little island 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The little village of Nantucket is just full of colonial charm. And everywhere you look you find reminders of its glory days in the whaling industry. I was surprised to learn, though, that during those glory days most of the town actually burned to the ground, right to the docks. It was a tragedy that nearly put Nantucket out of business. But it was a tragedy that never had to happen. It was an ugly, four-letter word that ultimately destroyed Nantucket, and the word wasn't fire. It's a word that's still destroying things.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Turf In His Kingdom."

Turf. Yep, that's what destroyed Nantucket Village many years ago. See, when the fire companies arrived at the site of the blaze that day, the fire was still small. But the firefighters got into an argument over who got to use the fire hydrants. They all wanted to be the heroes. Duh! And while they were fighting over turf, literally, the fire spread and they lost the town. That's hard to believe isn't it? But it's true. Or is it that hard to believe? Losing the town while the rescuers fight over turf. That's still happening today, and it's not a new problem.

It's talked about in our word for today in the Word of God, 1 Corinthians 1:10-13. "I appeal to you, brothers," Paul said," in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some of Chloe's household have informed me there are quarrels among you." Sadly, this tendency for God's people to fragment into camps and different groups, to focus on their differences, to get entangled in quarrels, has infected Christ's church for 2,000 years.

And we tend to operate as if only our group, our leader, is right. Paul said here, "One of you says, 'I follow Paul'; another, 'I follow Apollos'; another, 'I follow Cephas"; and still another, 'I follow Christ'" (that was the really spiritual group.) "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?" The apostle seems to be saying, "Folks, can't you see? It's all about Jesus! This turf thing is tearing His Body apart!"

It was this turf pride that allowed a fire to destroy Nantucket Village while the rescuers argued with each other. Well, today our world is burning down. Lost people are farther from Christ than ever, but we have more means of rescuing them than ever before! So where are the spiritual firefighters? They're fighting over turf.

We're so concerned about our organization, our denomination, our church, our group's doctrinal distinctives, the agenda of our group, getting the credit so we can get the glory, or maybe the donations, or loyalty to human leaders rather than to the Lord who raised up those leaders. And meanwhile, a lost world is burning down around us. This has to break the heart of God.

There's probably 90% Bible-based Christians agree on, maybe 10% we disagree on. Why do we have to spend 90% of our energy on the 10% we disagree on? That's what makes us "us." We're surrounded by a life-or-death situation! And like the people at Ground Zero when the towers came down, we need to pull together for a desperate rescue operation! Turf does not matter when people are dying!

It's time to unite our resources to defeat a militant and united enemy; to get the attention of neighbors who know nothing about the cross, replacing "My kingdom come" with "Thy kingdom come!"

There's no stopping God's people when they're united; there's no stomaching God's people when they're divided into hundreds of little personal kingdoms. The town's on fire, folks! The firemen have got to work together!

Back when my sons were young, they were watching Saturday morning television. One morning I walked by the living room and they were watching Superman. I'll tell you, I got hooked! It brought back memories.

Superman was originally on in the mid '50s, and Fred Flintstone was there in school with me at that time. You might remember that. Television was a brand new thing! We had this little seven-inch screen in our home. I could barely put words together, but I used to watch Superman. Oh, I never missed those 30 minutes. It was always amusing to watch the crooks try to stop Superman. Did you ever see that? They'd be firing this gun as many times as they could find bullets for it, and every bullet would bounce off Superman, and they'd kind of look at their gun quizzically, and he stands there like he's not even aware of anything...like the bullets were mosquitoes bouncing off of him.

Or they would come up and stab him with a knife and the knife bent and it hits them. Or they try to break a pipe over his head, and of course the pipe breaks and nothing happens to him. They sure did waste a lot of ammunition on Superman. But once in a while a clever criminal would discover Superman's one weakness. Kryptonite! That's right; that ore from his original planet. And if you could use a little of that ore on Superman, he would fall to his knees, powerless, and he was beatable.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Wimpy Weapons for Our Biggest Battles."

Well, Ephesians 6 is where we find our word for today from the Word of God. It's a very revealing chapter. It reveals the real battle that we're fighting; the spiritual warfare that you and I are involved in. And it gives us a description of the armor that you can put on to protect your heart and your mind from what is called the Devil's flaming arrows. Then it goes on to reveal to us the only weapon he fears.

I'm reading from Ephesians 6:18. After you've got all the armor on, "pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints." Now, the comparison between Satan and Superman is pretty inadequate. Satan is no hero. He is the Prince of Death. Superman was fiction; Satan is very real, very active around us. But there is a parallel when it comes to wasted bullets and spiritual kryptonite.

Prayer in Jesus' name renders Satan powerless. But unfortunately we usually fight our battles with wimpier weapons. We try to do God's work on the strength of good management, our great plans, our cleverness, our power of persuasion, more committee meetings, human charisma. We try to get God's work done with abundant programs, new buildings and persuasion. And the Devil laughs. Those bullets bounce right off of him.

How much time and money do we throw away on wasted bullets? We're trying to win a personal battle with schemes, and endless discussions, and phone calls, and emails, and back room politics, and personal determination. Those bullets are bouncing right off our enemy.

Our last resort, usually, is prevailing prayer. The kind when we get on our knees, we confess our total bankruptcy in the situation, we surrender all our schemes, we allow a total Holy Spirit takeover, we invoke the cross and the blood of Christ against our enemy. When you do that, Satan crumbles to his knees. He's rendered powerless by the spiritual kryptonite of fervent prayer.

Hey, for once, put all the other meetings on the back burner. You need a prayer meeting. You may need many prayer meetings. Without that, all our other weapons? They're wasted bullets.

It's a well known fact that men are never lost, right? We just find alternative routes - scenic routes. I've found more than my share, but my choice of a wrong road has never led to deadly consequences. It did for Comair Flight 5191 out of Lexington, Kentucky some years ago. Somehow, the pilot went down the wrong runway; one half the length of the runway from which he'd been cleared to take off. He ran out of runway, he hit a row of trees, and tragically, 49 of the 50 people aboard died in that crash. As the investigation of the crash unfolded, we found out that the one flight controller in the tower wasn't looking when the plane turned onto that fatal runway. He had what was described as "administrative duties" to tend to, and he turned his back, and moments later - disaster.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Crisis of Control."

No matter what season of your life you're in, you've got tons of choices to make about money, your job, your family, your relationships. At any given point, you could probably make a list of at least a dozen important decisions you need to make, any one of which can significantly affect your life if you get it wrong.

We need a flight controller; someone who can see what we can't see. We're stuck looking out our little window, trying to choose a runway based on the little that we can see. The good news from the Bible is that we can have a flight controller like that; one who has promised He will never turn His back. One of His many promises to His children is recorded in Psalm 32:8, and it's our word for today from the Word of God. God says, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you."

In other words, God's offering to direct you each day in every area of your life. And face it, He's so much smarter than we are; He can see the whole picture. He has the plans that He made you for. He talks about them in Jeremiah 29:11, "I know the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." That's security. That's safety from a God who is not going to let you crash.

Here's the problem. We'd rather navigate our own life. Listen to God's statement right after the "I will instruct and teach you" verse. "Do not be like the horse or the mule which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit or bridle or they will not come to you." That's us. We'll give God money, we'll give Him time, belief; we'll give Him everything but one thing - control. We want a God who bails us out but not a God who calls the shots. So here we are, trying to call our own shots from our own little cockpit window, and missing the runway we're designed for.

If we refuse to let the Divine Flight Controller direct our path, we will die. In the Bible's words, "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). That's eternal death, as in "hell." But that's not what God wants. In spite of the fact that we've chosen to reject His Creator-right to run our life, He loves us so much that He chose to pay that death penalty Himself. His Son was butchered on a cross, dying as your substitute, taking the punishment for your sin so you could be forgiven; so you could belong to the God that you can't really live without. The God you sure don't want to die without.

He's coming to you today, down in your heart, to invite you to finally let Him be God for your life. The life He made you for, the moment you tell His Son, "Jesus, I'm Yours. You died for me. You came back from the grave to prove You can give life forever, and I am Yours beginning today."

Listen, if that's what you want I would love to help you be sure you belong to Him before this day is over. That's what our website is there for. Please go there - it's ANewStory.com.

You've tried doing it your way long enough. It hasn't taken you where you want to go. It never will. You were made to live with God as your Flight Controller, the One who will never turn His back on you. Let Him call the shots before you crash.

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If someone is a champion in sports, we tend to make them an automatic hero. Now, not every champion lives like a hero or necessarily deserves to be one. But Wilma Rudolph? Oh, she was more than a champion. She really belonged in the hero category. See, she began her life with a bout of polio.

As a little girl, she grew up in braces. And then she battled her way to be able to walk again, and she finally begged the basketball coach to give her one chance to play basketball. She did, and she got better and better. Then she started to run competitively. What an accomplishment! One day she qualified for the Olympics! She went to the Olympics in Rome and became the first woman ever to win three gold medals in track and field.

Wilma Rudolph's philosophy rings a bell with me. Here's what she said: "When you're running, you're always in the process of trying to master something, and you're never quite there." I guess that's what makes the champion," she said, "the willingness to continue to work and strive to improve your excellence every day." Well, are you tired of just jogging along with that herd of mediocre runners? Maybe you're ready for the gold.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Restless for More."

Revival - that's the spiritual gold that every healthy Christian is hungry for. It's that extraordinary, powerful, transforming visit of the Holy Spirit above and beyond our normal relationship with Him. That extra visit that gives a generation a taste of all God can do. I want revival. I'm not sure I understand all its implications, but I am finding everywhere I travel that God's people are hungry for something more. I think that's what they want. As we run our race, we have to share that Olympians restlessness. "We're never quite there," she said.

Are you tired of the ordinary? I hope you are. Is spiritual business as usual just not enough for you any more? Oh, I hope it's not. Return with me to that first spirit invasion of the book of Acts. While Pentecost is not a repeatable event, because the Holy Spirit's unique birthing of the church at that time won't happen quite that way again, there is here a pattern for being ready for revival.

Acts 1:1 talks about the fact that this is about all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Well, going back to what Jesus began - chapter 1, verse 4 Jesus says, "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised." "Go back there and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit, guys." And then in chapter 1, verse 14, you find out what to do in the waiting room while you're waiting for a visit from the Holy Spirit. "They all joined together constantly in prayer."

Now, how can we get the power and reality that we all want; are restless for and hungry for? Well, you find a group of restless runners who are restless like you; a group you can pray with, who together can say, "Lord, we're not there yet. We want your best. We want the rest of You. We want all of You." Realize that this unusual, reviving work of the Holy Spirit comes when Christians wait for it together, ask for it together, prepare for it by finally dealing with their sin.

Open up the book of Acts; read it again. Let God warm your heart with how it can be, how it ought to be. So much more powerful; so much more supernatural than what we're experiencing right now. And then go into the waiting room with some other folks who know there's more and who must have that more.

Then together let's tell our Lord, "We are restless for Your gold."

Sometimes when we travel to Indian reservations in North America, we end up on roads that go where not many go. Our Director at the time, our Ojibwe brother, Craig Smith, was on one of those roads. His destination was a remote reserve in Northern Canada. At one point in his 140-mile journey, he noticed a van coming from the other direction, proceeding very slowly. Craig decided to slow down, too. That's when he saw what the van driver had already seen - a beautiful deer by the side of the road. Sadly, one of his rear legs was broken and just kind of dangling limply when he moved. At that point, he saw the rest of the picture that had caused the van to stop in front of the deer. On the other side of the road was a wolf, stalking the wounded deer. It was obvious all the van could do was postpone the inevitable. There was no happy ending for that deer.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Escaping the Stalker of Your Soul."

If we could put on God-glasses for even a day and look at our life, we'd see a scene much like my friend saw that day in the Northwood's of Canada. And it would unnerve us. Because we'd see the one who is stalking us, waiting for the chance to have us. He's the one the Bible calls the devil, and he wants your soul. The Bible describes him, not as a wolf, but as a lion who "prowls around...looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). To ignore or laugh off that warning is to play right into the predator's hands.

However smart or strong we may think we are, that vulnerable deer is an all-too-accurate picture of us. Again, the Bible describes us as being "like sheep" (Isaiah 53:6), one of the most vulnerable animals of all. The devil's goal for you can be summed up in one horrible little word - hell. The Bible says that the people who are on that road are "many" and the people who are headed for heaven are "few" (Matthew 7:13-14). That should be unsettling for all of us.

Our word for today from the Word of God reveals the life-taker who is counting on having his way with us. But it also reveals the life-giver, who is our hope. In John 10:10 Jesus says, "The thief (that's the devil) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." The devil seems to offer you life, but he gives you only death. His plan to steal and kill and destroy you is to keep you away from the only One who can save you. That's Jesus. Because Jesus was torn apart for your sin so you don't ever have to be.

The only hope that wounded deer had that day was a rescuer. That's your only hope of ever being free from your sins, of being with God in heaven someday. The Bible says that Jesus "was pierced for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5). Like the van that temporarily stood between the killer and the deer, all our religion and spirituality can do is postpone the inevitable. There are a lot of nice things that can't save us. Sin is too expensive for religion to pay for. The Rescuer is our only hope. And the Bible says of Him, "By His wounds we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5).

The devil's plan is simple: keep you busy with anything but Jesus. He doesn't care if it's pleasure, or religion, or work, or education, or family, or people-pleasing. All he needs to do is to keep you from trusting Jesus. All he wants to do is keep you from Jesus until you breathe your last breath.

Today, the life-taker and the life-giver are fighting for your soul. That's the tug-of-war you feel in your heart. Please, would you let this be the day you give yourself to the only One who can save you; the Rescuer who refused to save Himself so you could be saved. Would you tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours."

There's information at our website that will help you be sure you belong to Him. Would you go there today? It's ANewStory.com.

I love the way the Bible describes what will happen to you the moment you give your life to Jesus. You're going to love this. It says you will literally "cross over from death to life" (John 5:24).

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We have had a wide variety of people come to our front door. The salesmen - oh they're basically asked to stay on the front steps and give us their little pitch. And then there were those neighborhood kids who, well, they were raising money. Well, they usually got inside the door - we'd let them into the welcome mat, and we'd deal with them there. And there were a lot of acquaintances and friends of course. Those people you just immediately invite into your living room to sit down and stay as long as they want. And sometimes at the door is a relative or real close friend, and they come in and they go straight to the refrigerator and help themselves. If they want to make a call they go ahead and do that and they feel very free to use the bathroom. So you can tell how close we are by how far a person is allowed into the house.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Making Jesus at Home in Your Life."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God: Colossians 2:6. God says, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord..." Now, let's stop for a minute. You remember how that was when you received Him. Jesus described it once as "knocking on the door." You go to the door, you open it and you let Him in. Well, that's how you received Him. You invited Him in; He came in by invitation.

"So then as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him." In other words, the way to follow Christ, to be a Christian from the moment of conversion, is to do what you did to get started with Jesus. And that is you keep on inviting. Not inviting Him in - He's in to stay. But you invite Him into more and more of the rooms of your life house so to speak. Continue to live in Him just the way you invited Him in.

Now, you keep on inviting. You say, "Well, right now my life house is a mess." Well, I have to tell you, I've been asked many times, "Ron, you know, I became a Christian. I invited Christ in. How come I still feel so lonely?" Or, "Why do I still feel so depressed?" Or, "I still feel so defeated by some of my old problems." One reason might be this: You might have invited Jesus in, but maybe you left Him on the welcome mat. Oh, He's in, but you're not inviting Him into any more rooms.

It's like a lot of people who have a spiritual wedding. They begin with Christ. They had a wonderful conversion and a testimony of how Christ saved them, but they haven't had much of a marriage since then. They just got Him in and thought that was it. It's more than a wedding. Well, Christ will only improve that which is consciously turned over to Him, and He only goes where He's invited.

Now, if you let Christ into let's say 10% of your life, then 90% will still be as much of a mess as if you hadn't invited Him in. You may be missing much of the love, the peace, maybe the meaning that you came to Christ to get, because you've never asked Him past the welcome mat. Remember, He only goes where He's invited.

What specific part of your life did you invite Jesus Christ to rule today? See, that's always the question, or it should be, on any given day, "Into what specific part of you did you invite Jesus today?" It's only into that percentage of your life where you actively invited Him that you'll begin to know His peace, His love, and His answers.

So, keep on inviting Jesus deeper and deeper into what matters to you. You can tell how close you are to Him by how far you allow Him into your house.

The late, great Kobe Bryant decided to set off some fireworks for his final game in the NBA. Sixty points carried his team to an unlikely and dramatic victory! That's a pretty good way to wrap up 20 seasons and five championship rings! Kobe Bryant finished that career well, and he went out of professional basketball in a blaze of glory.

But so is my friend Kenny. Not on a basketball court. It was in his hospice room. The doctors said he didn't have much more time; walking as Psalm 23:4, our word for today from the Word of God says, "through the valley of the shadow of death." It actually begins that Psalm by saying, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Yes, though I walk through the shadow of death I will fear no evil for You are with me."

His wife, Mary Ann, spoke to me about his painful journey with a strength that could only be described as supernatural. She told me, "Ron, for a long time, one of my greatest fears has been living life without Kenny." I mean, anybody who knows them knows they have had a very true and very obvious lifetime love.

But her report was amazing. She said, "Ron, we're doing so well. God has moved in amazing ways. Kenny is calm and comfortable. I feel so much peace and calm. He's ready to go with Jesus and I'm ready to let him go." Then she summed it all up in one word - miracles. As the thing she had feared so long was now looming as a reality, a peace that was not of this earth flooded into her soul. And suddenly, she had grace to say, "He's Yours, Lord. I release him to You." Miracle!

But what she told me about Kenny was what really wiped me out. She described the scene in his room: grandchildren, children singing and talking and laughing. And the hospice staff said they had seldom, if ever, seen anyone facing death with this kind of peace, confidence and even joy. Then describing what his grandchildren were experiencing, she made this very moving observation: "He's teaching them how to die." That's legacy.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Ending Well."

I had a friend who said, "Ron, if people who don't know Jesus want to know the difference He makes, let them come to our funerals." Or our hospice room. Kenny and Mary Ann's word for why death had lost its dread - Jesus. Years ago, they heard how the Son of God bled out His life so we could live forever, because there was no other way we could. The Bible sure makes that clear. It says in Isaiah 59:2, "Your sins have cut you off from God." Sinless God. Perfect heaven. Sinful us.

Kenny and Mary Ann told me that they had been religious folks. And they thought that would get them to heaven like most folks do. Until they realized that no amount of goodness could pay the death penalty that sin requires. Somebody had to die. Somebody did. In the Bible's words, "Christ died for us sinners; taking our hell so we could go to His heaven." (Romans 5:6).

So when Jesus walked out of His grave that morning, He guaranteed eternal life to everybody who belongs to Him. And my friend, Kenny? Yep, someone who belongs to Jesus forever. And he did in the face of death what he did with his whole life - radiating a living Christ.

Today if you'd like to have that assurance when you die - that you are ready for eternity whenever it comes, however it comes. To know your sins are forgiven, they've been erased from God's Book, nothing would keep you out of heaven. Well, then today you need to say, "Jesus, you are the Savior of the world. But beginning today, you are my Savior from my sin. I'm putting all my trust in You."

I would love to help you get there and make sure you got it done. That's what our website is for. I invite you to go there - ANewStory.com.

My friend was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. But as it says in the Psalm, he "feared no evil" because, "You are with me" (Psalm 23:4). Doing life with Jesus. Doing eternity with Jesus. That's what I call going out in a blaze of glory.

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I guess it was just the way the light reflected off the building, but it set the stage for one of the more unusual boxing matches I've ever seen. It was night, and there was one large floodlight that illuminated the front of the chapel in this conference center where we were. There were two teenage guys standing out in front of the chapel. One stood in just the right place to cast a giant shadow of himself on that building. It looked like some monster up there on the building. The shadow must have been at least like five times the size of the guy, and of course you know what the other guy was doing. He was boxing with a giant shadow. It didn't look like he was in his weight class, that's for sure. Well, needless to say, you can never win if you're just boxing with a shadow.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about, "Devilish Distraction."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God. We're in Ephesians 6. I'll begin reading at verse 11: "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

I think here that the Devil's schemes refers to what's defined in the next verse when it says, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood." The Devil's major scheme is to get you to think that you're fighting something earthly - something human. He wants you to forget that he's the only one you're battling. It may very well be that the battle that you're in right now is really a spiritual battle. It may also be that you've forgotten that. The Devil's been like those fellows shadow boxing at that conference center. He's been projecting shadows on the wall so you wouldn't throw your punches at him; you'd throw your punches at the symptom rather than the cause.

But James 4:7 says, "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you." He doesn't want you to directly resist him, so he's got you fighting shadows. The shadow might be a person you're fighting with that you think is the problem. Or it could be another believer or a group of believers you don't agree with. The enemy loves to have us waste our ammunition on each other so we won't get together to fight him. Hello! He's the real enemy.

Or maybe that shadow on the wall is a financial problem or a major discouragement you're facing right now, or just some very dark feelings. Whatever it is, the Devil wants to get you fighting a human enemy with human weapons. He can beat you then. Today, why don't you commit yourself to fight this as a supernatural battle, using supernatural weapons? Do some specific, bold combat praying. Cover all those involved with the spiritual protection of the blood of Jesus Christ. The death warrant of the Devil is signed in that blood. And the Bible says, "They overcame him with the word of their testimony and the blood of the Lamb."

You fight him with what Jesus did on the cross and what Jesus has done in your life. Consciously go to Ephesians 6 and go over this armor. And consciously put on each piece of spiritual armor each new morning. Don't fall for Satan's old trick of trying to get you to throw punches at a shadow.

"Resist the Devil" in Jesus' name and you can knock him right out of the ring.

I kept telling my wife that I expected Tarzan or George of the Jungle to come swinging through our house at any moment. She had set up a corner of the house as her own personal little jungle to accommodate the new guests in our house - our orchids. She found some sources for orchids that were pretty reasonable, and she really enjoyed collecting them. They were very stately and lovely flowers.

I guess I learned then that they come in beautiful shades of lavender, purple, red, and yellow. My favorite gardener did the best she could to create the kind of conditions those delicate flowers are used to. They need warmth in the day, and they need cooler temps at night, light, pure water, and humidity. Orchids are tropical plants and they're often found in out-of-the-way places; which poses a fascinating scenario: millions of these spectacular flowers over many centuries, displaying this exotic beauty, growing where no one may have ever seen them.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Unappreciated But Beautiful."

Those orchids tell us something about what the Creator of all of us is like. He's extravagant in creating beauty deep in remote jungles, deep beneath the sea, where much of that beauty is never seen. That happens with people, too. In fact, there's probably someone listening right now who is a uniquely beautiful person - even though few, if any, have ever appreciated your beauty. An orchid doesn't need an admirer to be beautiful. Beauty unappreciated is beauty still the same.

God really did do something beautiful when He created you. First, because you're created in God's own image. The Bible tells us that "God created man in his own image...male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27). The Bible goes on to say that God knit you together in your mother's womb. That's in Psalm 139 that you are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:13-14). You may not have been treated like you're a divine masterpiece (maybe you haven't even believed it yourself) but that doesn't change the fact that you are, because God only does masterpieces.

Unfortunately, we've all made the mistake of trying to find our worth in other things: a relationship, a marriage, our children, our friends, our success. But there's never enough love. There's never enough approval. Here's why. Colossians 1:16, our word for today from the Word of God, reveals that "all things were created by Him and for Him." The "Him" is Jesus Christ. And you were created by Him and for Him. The Bible also makes it clear that we haven't lived for Him. It says, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). Our beauty, our worth are rooted in the One who made us. And we're away from Him because of a lifetime of self-serving and sinful choices.

I'm so thankful that God loved us too much to leave it that way. He launched a very costly rescue mission. He sent His only Son, Jesus, to actually lay down His life in exchange for ours. To put it simply, you did the sinning, but Jesus did the dying for it so you could cross that awful canyon - the sin canyon between you and God - and experience the love you were made for and the One who gave you your worth. Suddenly, with Him in your heart, you know who you are: someone worth so much to God that He made you in His image and He paid for you with His blood.

You've been looking for a long time for a love and worth that only Jesus Christ can give you. And today you can actually begin your personal relationship with Him and finally be complete. What it's going to take, though, is your act of faith, telling Jesus, "I'm pinning all my hopes on You and what You did when You died for me on the cross. I want to belong to You, Jesus, from this day on."

If that's what you want, please go to our website. Go to ANewStory.com.

When you find Jesus, you really find yourself, too. Because you discover how very loved you are.

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There was this plant in my office that had seen some good days and some bad days. It had really seen some pretty bad days for a while, and it looked like it was about to be a memory and there was going to be a little empty spot in the corner of my office. But one of our staff very lovingly took a knife to that plant. That doesn't sound very nice, but the plant was on its last legs and so she went and pruned out some of the dead or dying branches.

I've got good news! If you're a plant lover, and I hope you're not one of those who talks to plants. Do you? I've never really understood that, but I understand there are people who do. Anyway, here was this plant that almost didn't make it and now it was coming back to life, looking good! I call it the Lazarus plant - it sort of returned from the dead, except it didn't smell quite as bad as he did. The plant was back, and you know, it was that knife that did it. Oh, it looked like the knife was destroying the plant, but it was making it more alive.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How The Cuts That Hurt Help So Much."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is from John 15:1-2. "Jesus said, 'I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch'" - whoa! Sounds like my office and that plant - "'He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.'" Notice here that God throws away dead branches. But do you also notice what He does with the branches that He likes, the ones that are bearing fruit? He starts cutting on them. God prunes what He believes in.

Now, if He believes in you, He might be showing it right now by cutting you back. Yes, it is love. Yes, it will focus all of the resources on a few branches. I think that's what happened to my plant. Instead of the life going out to many branches, by pruning some, the life and resource was focused so the plant could flourish. And right now God loves you enough to bring out your very best, so He's removing some branches so you can be more alive than ever.

But if you're a plant and you're being pruned, you would probably say, "He's killing me!" And he might be saying to you, "No, no, I'm helping you! I'm giving you life. Oh, I know it feels like you're dying, but you're growing." Maybe you can feel the hand of God cutting on you and trimming you, challenging you, stretching you. You say, "God, what's wrong?" Maybe nothing's wrong. Maybe He's just pruning what He believes in so you can be more fruitful than ever.

He may be asking you to deal with an overload that's developed in your life. You've taken on too much, or maybe you've got an attitude that needs work, or there's some personal stronghold that's dragging you down. Hebrews 12:1 says, "As we run our race we should lay aside every weight that we carry." Maybe He's trying to get you to lose some spiritual weight. But don't fear the pruning of God. Oh, it may feel as if you're losing. It might even feel like you're dying, but this is divine surgery that will soon lead to new life.

He's cutting you back so you'll be more alive than ever. You are experiencing the knife that gives life.

Someone said the best cure for the population explosion would be if men had to have every other baby. That would slow it down considerably! I'll tell you, there's something that women know about that process, though, that leads to life. A woman, particularly in her first pregnancy, is introduced to a long, sometimes very difficult life process. She knows she wants the baby; there's no question about the results, but it's the process she has some questions about sometimes: nausea, discomfort, her body's doing things it never did before. And the months sometimes feel like years. And last but not least, there are the labor pains. That day alone can seem like one of the longest in her life. But then...then the baby comes.

You know, a lot of life is like child bearing. A long, sometimes unpleasant process is often the only route to the joyful result you want.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Having a Baby, Facing Life's Battles."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is found in John 16 - it's about that motherhood experience, and I'm reading from verse 21. Jesus said, "A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come. But when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world." She was waiting for the baby, the process was painful, long, and difficult, but the baby came and erased all the bad memories of the process. A painful process that leads to a glorious result.

Now, that's what might be going on with the "baby" in your life right now. I don't mean some little infant, but for you, maybe it's the goal you've been striving for, the dream you've hoped would happen and you thought would happen, the outcome you've been praying for - you've been believing God for. Maybe it's an outcome for one of your children, or a dream related to your career, something you've prayed for in your ministry, or your marriage. Maybe it's a financial recovery that you've been counting on happening and trusting God for, or a physical recovery; an answer to some fervent prayer; a cry from your heart. But it's taking so long, just like a baby.

It's causing so much pain - you didn't know it would be this tough, just like a baby. It's causing things to happen to your feelings, and to your life that you never counted on, just like a baby. The process that will get you to that result has caused you to lose sight of that result that you were hoping for. Maybe you're questioning whether or not it will ever happen. You've prayed for it, but you've got doubts now.

Well, I'm going to tell you today, "Hang in there!" Jesus was saying to His disciples, "You're going to go through some times when the process is going to be so difficult, so long, you'll despair that the result will ever happen. Hang in there, guys! Remember, the God of the outcome is also the God of the process. You're trusting Him for the result. Well, can you trust Him for the process even though it's difficult; even though it's longer than you thought? Trust the processes of God, not just the results. He's working through this process right now.

And as confusing as it may seem to you, He's trying to prepare you, to prepare others, and to do it in a way that will call everyone's attention to His love and power. When the baby comes, there'll be no question that God gets the glory for it.

That means that sometimes it even has to get worse before it gets better. Just ask any woman who has been through labor. The process is difficult but right on schedule. And when that baby comes, well it will make the process worth it all.

Beware of the third generation! Yeah! That's an intriguing phenomenon that often takes place in a family business. The first generation starts it with nothing but a dream. They work long hours, they sacrifice, and they keep their vision alive. Then, the second generation starts to take over the business, and well, they may improve it a little; they might expand it a little bit, but they basically tend to maintain the vision of the founding generation.

Then along comes the grandchildren, and they begin to take over. Now, they've never had to sacrifice for the cause, they didn't see their parents sacrifice much. For them, it's like just an income source, not a vehicle for a vision they want to carry out. Many management people know that if the business can survive that third generation, it may make it. But often, every time you pass the torch, the flame burns a little lower, and sometimes it burns out.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Next Generation Fire."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Timothy 1. Realize that Paul is writing his last letter before he is martyred for the cause of Christ. He's concerned about the next generations of Christians, all that he bled for and all he's soon going to die for. More importantly, all that Jesus died for. The torch must be passed!

In 2 Timothy 1:14, he says to young Timothy - the next generation, "Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." Then in chapter 2, verse 2, he says, "Don't stop there." He even talks about a third generation: "and the things you've heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, you entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others."

Now, Paul is saying here, "Don't drop my life's work. Don't drop the torch, man!" See, something insidious is happening, I think, as our faith in Christ passes from one generation to the next. I had a woman tell me not too long ago, "Our grandparents reordered their lives." They just understood that you organized your life differently in order to have a lot of money to give to the Lord's work. You just live that way; that becomes the center of your financial planning. As you look at the studies now you find out that the parent's generation is giving less than their parent's generation to God's work, and the grandchildren's generation is holding on to what they've got more than ever.

See, that first generation of believers may have a lot of vision; they started things in Jesus' name. They gave to the Lord's work first. And then the next generation, just like in a business, sort of maintained the vision, the programs of the founders. Then comes the third generation, and they kind of yawn and sort of take it all for granted. Meet the spiritual minimums, and the flame starts to flicker and die. Don't let that happen.

What God urgently needs right now is a new generation of spiritual pioneers who will become a new first generation with a new vision - risk takers, people who pray for miracles again, people who think up daring new ways to reach the lost. He's looking for some modern heroes who will lead the church into a new era of boldness, who will resist the seduction of material comfort and security. We need a new dream! We need young leaders to lead it!

Has the torch started to flicker just a little in your hands; a torch passed by some folks who sacrificed to make a difference? Well, commit yourself to a holy, new fire so the flame that has been fueled by the lives of those who ran before us can burn more brightly than ever in your hands.

I was speaking for an Easter Sunrise Service in the Ozarks, and I saw something that seemed strangely out of place. In front of this church, there's a ten-foot section of a brick wall with a sign in front of it that says, "Berlin Wall." I was thousands of miles from Berlin, but here was a chunk of what used to be the most famous, and maybe the most infamous wall in the world. Many of us remember how the Berlin Wall represented for decades the Cold War division of our world into Communists on one side and free on the other. The Communists built it on the border between East Berlin and free West Berlin. In spite of that wall, many people still risked everything to scale it and escape to freedom. A few made it. Many died trying.

Then came that amazing day - a day few of us could have ever imagined - when the revolution taking place against Communist rule allowed Berliners to start tearing down that wall. All night long, they went after that wall with everything from sledge hammers to their bare hands. And then there were 100,000 Berliners, celebrating in the square, and they were chanting four incredible words over and over again, "The wall is gone! The wall is gone!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Wall In Your Heart."

For many of us, there's a wall that's still standing that is costing us the most important things in life. It's a wall between us and the God who made us. In fact, you probably didn't need me to tell you there's a wall. We know there's something between us and God. What we may not know is what that wall is keeping us from; like the meaning and purpose of your life. The only person who can show you why you're here is the One who put you here, and He's on the other side of the wall. The only love that can ultimately satisfy the loneliness in your heart is God's love. If we die with that wall still there, it's there forever. The Bible calls that hell.

The Bible describes the wall this way: "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2). The bricks in the wall between me and God are all the countless times that I've chosen to do things my way instead of His way - my sins. Every wrong thing I've ever done, every lie I've ever told, every person I've ever hurt, every mean thing I've ever said, every selfish thing I've ever done, every dirty thing I've ever thought or done, and everything and everyone I've ever let be more important than God in my life. Those are my sins. I'm cut off from God because of that sin-wall. And there's no way you or I can tear it down no matter how decent, how religious, or how sincere we are.

The only One who can do that is the very God we've rebelled against, and that's what He did the day His Son, Jesus, paid for our sin on the cross. For centuries, God's people, the Jews, had worshipped in a temple or tabernacle which had at its core, the Holy of Holies - God's place. Between them and that place was a curtain through which no man could ever go, except once a year when the High Priest entered to offer a sin sacrifice on behalf of the people. Our word for today from the Word of God, Matthew 27:51, describes the astonishing thing that happened the moment Jesus died: "At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom."

The curtain separating man from God could never have been removed by man from the bottom to the top. Only God could let us into His presence. So He split the curtain from top to bottom. There's the picture of what can happen to the wall between you and God this very day. God will tear it down forever if you'll bring the sins of your life to Jesus to be forgiven; if you'll tell Him you're putting your total trust in Him and what He did on the cross for you.

If that's what you want, I want to be all the help I can at this decisive moment in your life. Go to our website. It's ANewStory.com. Right there you can be sure the wall is gone between you and Him.

This could be the day you celebrate the greatest, most liberating miracle of your life; the day you can finally say, "The wall is gone!"

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I keep finding these notes and cards I wrote my wife. The love of my life since I was 19! She's been with Jesus for nine years now and I never stop missing her but these notes are great. All these things I wrote to her came from all the stages of our life. There's the predictably mushy love letters from our courtship and engagement. The little notes I left for her in the morning over the years. The things I wrote in holiday cards, for birthdays and anniversaries. Lots of different seasons, lots of different ages - before kids, with kids, after kids. Everything from fancy cards to stationery, yeah, scraps of paper too. Many shapes and sizes - but always the same unchanging message. "I love you, baby!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Constant Change and an Unchanging Constant."

I walked into this radio studio the other day, and I had a crowd. Usually it's me and our dedicated engineer. I think half our staff was jammed in here - and there was a big cake on the table where my Bible and notes were. Uh, I love doing these radio programs. But it's never been a party before!

I hadn't been keeping track, but they had. I was about to record "A Word With You" number 10,000! Hard to believe! But it's true! What you're listening to today is our 10,000th program! Sorry, the cake is all gone!

This is a testimony to the God we sing about often in that classic hymn - "Great is Thy faithfulness." When we'd get to the last verse of that song in church, I'd reach for Karen's hand or slip my arm around her waist when we got to these words: "Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow - blessings all mine with 10,000 beside. Great is Thy faithfulness."

I've recorded these programs before children came, while they grew, before grandchildren came, now that they're growing or grown, with Karen by my side, and in the years since she's been gone. Like all those love notes I've found, many seasons. But the message has never changed.

Our word for today from the Word of God - from Galatians 2:20.

About our Jesus. "He loved me, and gave Himself for me." The greatest news on the planet. The God I have sinned against again and again and again loves me so much that He sent His Son to do the dying for the sinning I've done. That you've done.

Good Friday was for me. Good Friday was for you. Not just a historical or religious event. A deeply personal event. He loves me. He gave Himself for me. Then, conquering death on Easter morning, He offered eternal life to me.

This morning, I heard a song that I haven't heard for many, many years. And it took me back to some of the first times I ever preached this Good News. With a Gospel team in college. I was just 18. And when I gave people the opportunity to publicly respond to an invitation to begin a relationship with Jesus, my friend Dave would sing this song. Hearing it again today, took me back to my first days proclaiming this invitation from Jesus that I've now preached across the country and the world.

The chorus simply says - "There's room at the cross for you. Though millions have come, there's still room for one. There's room at the Cross for you."

That was His invitation then. It's His invitation today. To you, my friend. Your sins forgiven, your heaven secured. Just tell him, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hopes on you to have my sins forgiven. To be in heaven with you someday. Beginning today, I'm Yours." My invitation to you today is to please go to our website, because there you'll find what you need to know to be sure you belong to Jesus from this day on. Our website is ANewStory.com.

Because, today-the day Jesus is reaching out His hand to you - there's room at the Cross for you!

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The Department of Homeland Security is a fairly new idea in American history. Of course, we live in pretty dangerous times and we need an agency that coordinates our efforts to keep our country safe from growingly hostile forces that could hurt us. But "homeland security" is hardly a new idea. It's been the job of every parent since children were invented. It's a sacred assignment - guarding our family from the things that could hurt them, and the job's never been more difficult.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Homeland Security For Your Home."

Not all the things that can hurt our children are from the outside. Some of them are from the darkness inside us; selfishness, anger, a critical or negative attitude, hurting words, praise that's really needed but never given, affection that's not shown, words that should be said but are left unsaid, and the words that should have been left unsaid. Those are some of the deadliest missiles that can hit a child's heart. And the same mom or dad who is in such a wonderful position to protect them from harm can be the same mom or dad who is in a position to inflict so much hurt.

Our families need our own Department of Homeland Security, right? Something or someone who will keep our family safe and who can make us the mom or dad that our children so need us to be.

Jesus Christ wants to be that for you. He describes the unique security He offers in Isaiah 40:11, our word for today from the Word of God; one of my favorite verses as a Dad. "He tends His flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in His arms" (you can put the names of your children where it says "lambs") "and carries them close to His heart. He gently leads those that have young." Whoa! That's you, Mom! That's you, Dad! The dark side of each of us could be the single greatest threat to the security of our personal homeland. The battle against that dark side is going to have to be won by someone stronger than we are - because most of us have tried to change the things we don't like about ourselves and we know that hurt other people, and there's still way too much dark stuff.

Good news! There are three wonderful miracles that Jesus does in the heart and life of a mom or dad who will allow Him to be their shepherd; to decide the direction they go. First, He forgives you for every mistake, every sin, every wound you've ever inflicted, everything you wish you'd done differently, and every hurting thing you've ever done. That forgiveness was not cheap. It meant paying the price to remove the huge wall that we've all built between us and God. We built that wall by our sins. And paying that price meant being separated from God himself on that awful cross. Jesus was, so you would never have to be, separated from Him again. When you open your life to Jesus, He brings with Him the new beginning of being totally forgiven and clean.

Secondly, Jesus will change you from the inside out. The Bible calls it becoming "a new creation in Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:17). If He had the power to conquer death, He surely has the power to conquer the darkness in you and me. And then, Jesus protects those who belong to Him, like a shepherd protects His sheep.

And right now, this Jesus is waiting for you to put your life in His hands. He's probably been waiting a long time. I don't know how much longer He'll wait, but I can tell you, Jesus is a Daddy's Savior. He's a Mommy's Savior. He wants to be your Savior. And He will be from the moment you tell Him, "Jesus, I'm not running things anymore. You died for me! I am all yours."

I would love to help you get started in this relationship with Him. In fact, we've set up our website just for that purpose. It's ANewStory.com.

There's no home that is more secure than a home where Jesus Christ lives, and He wants to live in your home because you've asked Him to live in you.

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One summer our daughter had the privilege of participating in a musical team that traveled to the Philippines. One of the highlights for them while they were there was to sing the Gospel on national television. They actually went into one of the big television stations to do it.

Two weeks later she was back home, starting back to college, and she heard on the news there had been a coup attempt against the government. And guess what was the first thing the rebels captured? Uh-huh, the TV station that she'd been singing at only two weeks before. You kind of wipe your brow and go, "Whew! That is too close!" It happens every time there is a rebellion there. They want to capture the TV and radio facilities. Well, it happens in many countries when a government's being toppled. They want the transmitter. That's a military principle to always capture the high ground; that's the first thing you do in a battle. Capture the high ground and move out from there. Today the high ground means the battle is for the transmitter...even in your life.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want A Word With You today about "The Message From Your Mouth."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is coming from James 1:26. Here's what it says, "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight reign on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless." Wow! Later in chapter 3, verse 2, it says, "If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check." Huh! Verse 6: "The tongue is a fire; a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." Man, this is some of the strongest language in the Bible. Verse 8 in chapter 3 of James says, "No man can tame the tongue." Wow!

The tongue is your transmitter. In the military, if they want to capture a whole piece of ground, they go for the transmitter. It's that way in the conquest of your life too. More sinning is done by our mouth, I believe, than any other part of our body.

Right now I think the battle for Christ to truly rule your life and mine may revolve around this question: does Jesus govern your tongue? Oh, you may be busy for the Lord, you may be very orthodox in your beliefs and pretty moral in your relationships, but what's today's talk like?

If we played back a recording of one day's conversation, how much complaining would there be? How much cutting other people down? How much negativity? Would there be a lot of criticizing, backbiting? Would there be some suggestive, double-meaning talk? Would there be some ethnic or religious slurs?

The people you live with probably know best how much Christ is your Lord, because they hear you when you're tired, angry, and when you're under pressure. Maybe it's time to move the front lines of your spiritual battle to the point that really counts; making Jesus Christ so real that He becomes the Master of your mouth.

All day long you're transmitting to the people around you. Does it sound like Jesus? When you have surrendered the transmitter to Christ, then He is really in charge.

Lori Piestewa was the first woman killed in the Iraq war. She was a Native American and a single mom with two children. She died in an Iraqi ambush, and her good friend Jessica Lynch was wounded, captured and rescued. You might remember that. She was determined to help fulfill Lori Piestewa's dream - to have a house for her parents and her children. Jessica Lynch contacted the TV program, "Extreme Makeover," to see if they could make it happen. Their popular program showed them doing amazing makeovers of people's homes in a very short time, re-creating them into houses that were far beyond anything the owner's ever dreamed. They did it again for a war hero's family, moving them from their deteriorating trailer home into a wonderful new home. Given the good TV ratings of the show, apparently a lot of people loved to watch those amazing transformations.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Miraculously Changed."

Bill Carroll was a hopeless alcoholic - since someone got him hooked at the age of ten. He moved from lost job to lost job, from jail to jail, from one desperate measure after another to meet his need for alcohol. One day a fellow prisoner recommended a remedy for the shakes that Bill had developed - cocaine. Bill Carroll actually ended up digging the gold fillings out of his teeth to pay for that cocaine.

Ultimately, he decided this life wasn't even worth living anymore. He was headed to Lake Michigan in Chicago to end his life. But as he walked by a rescue mission, he heard a song about Jesus that his mother had sung to him. He wandered into the meeting and he heard the liberating news about how Jesus Christ can forgive your sin and change a life. He went into that mission hopelessly addicted. He came out with an extreme makeover from the inside out. From that day, he never again had the slightest desire to touch the alcohol or the drugs that had ruled most of his life. And oh, how grateful I am because Bill Carroll was my wife's grandfather, who was here for me to love because of the makeover miracle by Jesus Christ.

For 2,000 years, the Carpenter of Nazareth has been transforming lives. Not reforming - transforming. In the words of 2 Corinthians 5:17, our word for today from the Word of God, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" It's a spiritual makeover from the inside out that only one man can accomplish - Jesus Christ, the man who died to cancel your sin and who came back from the dead with the power to give you a new life. It's not something a religion can do - any religion. Because religion tries to make us over from the outside in as we comply with its rules. What Jesus offers is a personal relationship with Him where He comes into your soul with life-changing power.

Without Him, I'd be the selfish only child who cares only about me. But He's changing me. He's given me the great joy of living for others instead of myself. He turns greedy people into generous people. He tames a temper that has inflicted so much hurt. He breaks the power of those dark things that have controlled you.

But you have to want Him in your life...driving your life...changing your life. While you've probably known about Jesus for a long time, maybe you've never given yourself to this man who gave His life for you. The good news is that you don't have to spend one more day without Him, without this life-transforming miracle. It can be today. Tell Him, "Jesus, I believe Your death was for my sin. I want that new beginning from You, I'm Yours."

Listen, go to our website today and there you'll find the information to be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.

There's power in that cross of Jesus to transform you into the person you want to be, that you need to be, that the people you love need for you to be. He's been doing extreme makeovers for a long time. He wants to do it for you. Actually, He died to do it for you.

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So, what can you do when you realize there's an accident about to happen and you can do nothing to avoid being part of it? Well, your best bet is to try to limit the damage.

My wife knows. She was driving down a snow-covered hill. Snow was still falling. She proceeded cautiously as she neared the bottom as there were cars ahead of her. She looked in the rearview mirror and she saw a car coming over the top of the hill that she had just driven over, but this one was coming at a fairly high rate of speed and he was not adapting to the weather at all. This was years ago, but man, we still remember it.

That car slammed down the brake and of course when he did that, he started to lose control. My wife knew that car was headed for her; it was out-of-control. She couldn't cross the line into the other lane. There were cars coming that way. There were cars ahead of her. What could she do? Speed up so she wouldn't be rear-ended? But then she'd lose control of her vehicle and run into the others. She made the right choice. She pulled over, gripped the wheel so she wouldn't be out-of-control and hit others. And sure enough, the car behind her hit her. But, she did not hit the others in front of her. She was smart enough to be the one who maintained control when others weren't.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Under Control in an Out-of-Control World."

Well, Our word for today from the Word of God; 2 Timothy 3, where the Apostle Paul says this in verse 1 - "Mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control..." And it continues. Then he turns to us as believers and to Timothy at that time and says, "But as for you, you continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know from those whom you have learned it." (2 Timothy 3:14)

Hang onto the wheel when everybody else is out-of-control he's saying. Yeah, don't let go of that wheel! Don't you lose control. The world's losing control! It's ignoring the boundaries. They're driving fast on slippery pavement. Don't you speed up just because they are.

You know, the world has always been, let's say, oh, ten miles distant from the church, because the world has always been farther from God than the church is. The church is always going to be a little more moral, a little more righteous. But as the world moves away from God, the church maintains that same distance. So very quickly many Christians today are where the world was only a few years ago.

You know what? It's time to grab the wheel and to say, "I'm not moving any further." Maybe you'll take some hits like my wife did, but you've got to say, "I won't be responsible for causing any damage myself." Other believers may see divorce as no big deal, as an answer. But you say it's not an option for us. Others may treat the truth lightly. I'm going to work harder than ever to hold the wheel and tell the truth.

Others may devalue sex and love by playing with sex or flirting with technical virginity, but my eyes are on Jesus and the purity He represents. Maybe others are building a material kingdom here on earth, but I'm not going to be trapped in that rat race. I want to set a level at what I need and give the rest away.

You can count on it: the world is speeding away from God's standards, but Ephesians 6:13 is still in the book. And it says, "Put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground." Yeah!

So, hold on! Maintain control! Because of your allegiance to Christ's standards, you'll be the one who is under control in an out-of-control world.

Marty McFly met a strange scientist with a machine that promised interesting results - the ability to go back in time. And he did. He went, as the title of the movie about it said, "Back to the Future." He had a most amazing experience getting to know his mother and father when they were teenagers. His dad, George McFly, was a milquetoast, bossed-around kind of guy, afraid to stand up to anybody. Marty always knew him to be that kind of a guy, until he was transported back to the night that would determine the course of the rest of his Dad's life - and his Mom's. One decision - whether or not George McFly will stand up to the bully who is attacking his girlfriend - who is to become Marty's mother - is the turning point of George's life. And Marty is there to help his Dad make the right and courageous choice. It totally changes the course of George McFly's life. He steps up, defends his girl, and neutralizes the bully who wanted her. So instead of the life Marty has known with a pretty unsuccessful, wimpy dad, he returns to his life with a strong and successful dad because of that choice. A very different life because of one decision that changed the future.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Choice That Changes Many Futures."

Some of us might wish we could somehow go back to the crossroads moments in our lives for a do-over. But that's only in the movies. What is possible is to make a choice now that will change not only your future, but the futures of many others.

The choice that changes many futures revolves around the man who made this simple but profound promise: "I am making everything new!" (Revelation 21:5). Those are the words of Jesus Christ, the man who has changed so many lives, so many families over so many years. I know I got a new dad because one day he acknowledged he had the spiritual cancer that the Bible calls sin - that he needed Jesus Christ in his life to forgive him and change him. And Jesus did change him - dramatically. I know. I lived that change. That transformed man planted seeds in me that have come up in my children, and now in my grandchildren. It all would have been so different had it not been for that day when my dad placed his life in Jesus' hands.

Psalm 102:18, our word for today from the Word of God, comments on this potential we all have to profoundly leave our mark on the future. It says: "Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the Lord." One man or one woman who gets right with God can inject a life-changing, life-stabilizing faith into many who will come after him.

For you, for those you love, and for those who come from your life, so much depends on what you do with Jesus. The miracle begins when you recognize your need for the forgiving, life-changing work of Jesus Christ, as my dad did - the miracle made possible by Christ's death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. If there's never been a time when you've opened your life to this amazing Savior, if you've lived enough days without His love, His forgiving, His power in your life, why don't you tell Him that you want this to be the day you begin your personal relationship with Him. "Jesus, I believe You are the Man who died for my sin and only You can forgive my sin and remove my sin. So here I am, I'm Yours."

I would invite you to check out our website today to help you know how to cross over into the love of Christ and to be sure you belong to Him. That's why we have it. It's ANewStory.com and it could be the beginning of your new story.

Every life leaves a legacy. Every life marks the lives of many others - including people you'll never meet. There is no greater legacy you can leave than a life that radiates the love and the power of Jesus Christ. It begins with you the day you begin with Him.

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Sometimes when I'm in a store and it's time to pay up, I'll say to the cashier, "Listen, I want to show you something from a museum." And I pull out some cash. I say, "Do you accept cash?" You should see the look! I get this bewildered kind of look, and they're like, "Well, of course we accept cash." Well, it may be the first cash they've gotten in several transactions though. It's probably a given that they see more 'plastic' money than 'paper' money these days.

I think many of us got credit cards in order to make it more convenient to buy items. Instead of being more convenient, credit cards have caused us to buy a lot of things that we can't afford. Somehow when you're shopping with a credit card you... well, you kind of lose touch with reality. I mean, there's no real sense of what you've spent. It feels like you haven't spent anything until the bill comes. And, therefore, these credit cards that were supposed to make life easier somewhat, account for massive debts and financial
bondage in a lot of people's lives.

That credit card was supposed to give us financial freedom. Instead, it's enslaved a whole lot of people. Well, credit cards, like a lot of things in life, can turn out to be an answer that only creates bigger problems.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Answers That Aren't Answers."

Our word for today from the Word of God: 2 Chronicles 25. I'll begin reading at verse 7. It's an incident from the life of the King of Judah, the Southern Kingdom. His name is Amaziah. Maybe you remember that the kingdom at one point was divided into two parts; Israel was the Northern Kingdom, Judah the Southern Kingdom. Amaziah was the King of Judah, and he had a major enemy coming against him. So he's hired 100,000 fighting men from Israel.

Here's what it says, "Amaziah called the people of Judah together and he mustered those 20 years old or more and found there were 300,000 men ready for military service able to handle the spear and shield. He also hired 100,000 fighting men from Israel for a hundred talents of silver." Well, that sounds like a good answer doesn't it if you're under military pressure? But it says, "A man of God came to him and said, 'Oh, King, these troops from Israel must not march with you, for the Lord is not with Israel. Even if you go and fight courageously in battle, God will overthrow you before the enemy, for God has the power to help or to overthrow.'"

There's a pretty powerful principle in that story. Amaziah has spent his money on what he thinks is an answer. He's depending on it, but it did not have the blessing of God. The battle's going to be lost if you don't have the blessing of God on it. See, it isn't your effort that matters. It isn't the size of the answer that you have. If you are employing a solution that God can't bless, you can't win.

Now, right now maybe you have a need for love and you are letting an unbeliever fill it. It won't work! God says, "Don't be unequally yoked." See, there are things God can't bless. He can't bless you if your way of doing it is to disobey your parents. Or if it means playing with the truth, flirting with immorality, or running ahead of God's timing. Oh, you may see what looks like an answer. It might make social sense, it might make financial sense, business sense, emotional sense, but if it will cost you the blessing of God, you can't afford it. It's too expensive.

In verse 9 it says the Lord can give you much more than that. Don't waste your time, don't waste your life on an answer that isn't an answer, because it misses the blessing of Almighty God.

If you happen to watch the Discovery Channel on cable TV, you can end up seeing some real "reality TV" - including some pretty unusual fare. How about this one, "The Search for the Giant Squid"? No, that is not an adventure flick - it was a documentary about one scientist's quest to film what no one had ever filmed - the giant squid. For the whole hour, the viewer follows this man's almost lifelong pursuit. You watch as the likely target area is identified - as an expensive expedition follows clues that seem to be leading to this elusive prey - the giant squid. But at the end, you find out you got sucked into an expedition that ultimately failed to find what it was looking for.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Long Lifetime Search."

It's disappointing - a long search, an expensive search, that ends up not finding what it was looking for. For many of us, that could be our life story. Maybe yours.

It could be that you've been on your quest since you were a teenager. You've been through a lot of relationships since then - sampled a lot of experiences - maybe enjoyed a few achievements along the way - even found a pretty respectable status quo. But you still haven't found what you hoped you would find by now. In spite of all the places you've looked, you still can't honestly answer the million dollar question, "Why am I here?" You still haven't found what will give you the love you need and fill that hole in your heart.

At the peak of her fortune and fame, Chris Evert had 146 tennis championships behind her and she was married to the man she loved, but she said this: "We get into a rut. We play tennis, we go to a movie, we watch TV, but I keep saying, 'John, there has to be more.'" Maybe you know that feeling. The good news is: there is more. Much more.

In John 4:13-14, which is our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus is talking with a woman who has been searching for a long time. In her case, her search has taken her into a series of unfulfilling relationships with men. Since they meet at a well where they have each come for a drink, Jesus puts his diagnosis of her restlessness in these words: "Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become a spring of water, welling up to eternal life."

Jesus says that all our earth-sources of love and meaning are wells we have to keep going back to for more - and they never satisfy for long. But what He offers is a relationship with Him that puts the source inside us where it can't be touched, where it will never leave us thirsty again. Those words "thirsty again" may vividly describe how you have felt after you've gotten everything that you thought would satisfy the hole in your heart...but you're "thirsty again."

That "eternal life" Jesus promises did not come cheap. We're searching because we're away from our Creator - not by His choice, it's ours. We've done our life our way, not His way. And the only way that wall between Him and us could come down was for Jesus to pay for the sinning you and I did - by dying on the cross for them.

Today, Jesus - the One you were made by and made for - is offering to be the end of your search. He's what you've been looking for your whole life - that search ends at His cross. You can tell Him right where you are - "Jesus, I'm tired of looking and I'm tired of not finding. You're right - I've blown it with God. But I believe You died to bring me to Him. I am Yours beginning today."

That wonderful relationship begins, for you, a whole new story. Which, by the way, is the address of our website - ANewStory.com. I would urge you to go there as soon as you can today. Find there the information that will help you anchor this new relationship with Jesus Christ.

You're so very close to the answers you've been searching for so long. His name is Jesus. Don't live another empty day without Him.

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Ok, question for the day. What's the difference between a melting pot and a stew? Oh, yeah, there is a difference! You see, a melting pot is where all the ingredients blend together and pretty soon you can't tell what is what. In other words, the ingredients lose their separate identity.

And how about a stew? Well, you've got the beef, the potatoes, the carrots, the onions, and whatever else might be in the refrigerator. They all pretty much stay what they are. The beef still is beef, the carrots stay carrots, the onions stay onions, the potatoes stay potatoes, and they'll make a pretty nice mixture.

Now, did you know that your church - your family - is probably more of a stew than a melting pot, and if you're not careful, the pot will boil over.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Walls Where There Should Be Bridges."

Our word for today from the Word of God is written to the saint's stew at the Church of Rome. Now, you've got to understand, this letter to the people of Rome - the Christians that we call the Romans in the book - are an interesting group of people. They're not all alike. In fact, in that church you have slaves and slave masters. You have probably the very rich of Rome and some of the very poor. You have very religious Jews from a scrupulous Jewish religious background. And then you've got people who've come from a totally pagan Gentile background who have come to Christ. It's really a saint's stew.

And guess what they're doing? They're arguing. The carrots are arguing with the beef, and the beef's arguing with the potatoes, and they are arguing over everything from what food it's Christian to eat, to what days it's Christian to take off and honor. And into the middle of this saint's stew Paul comes with his admonition in our word for today from the Word of God, Romans 14:19.

And since you live in a group of Christians who are very different, even in your family, you need this word too today. "Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification." Edification - that's a big old $100 theological word for making other people more important; for building them up, not tearing them down. Paul says you've got to work at it. He says you don't fall into this "make every effort." This is strain, this is really, you know, a lot of sweat and effort into this. Make every effort to do what leads to peace. Don't waste any energy on trying to get all of God's kids to be alike. He didn't make them to be alike; don't try to make them alike.

You know, God loves variety. That's why He created different fingerprints, different snowflakes, and that's why He makes His church a stew. The beef shouldn't become potatoes. The potatoes shouldn't become carrots. The carrots shouldn't become onions. Some of us pray loud, and some of us pray softly, and some of us are black, and brown, or white. We have different views on the 10% area of Christianity that Christians disagree on. But we're pretty much the same in the 90%. Why don't we emphasize the 90% we agree on? We worship at the same cross; we celebrate the same empty tomb. We're all family; we're going to be in heaven together forever.

Why do we let there be walls where there should be bridges? Now, you can be what God delights in - a bring-us-together person. Are you one of those? Emphasize what unites us as followers of Christ, not what divides us.

They'll know we are Christians by what? By our love. I'll tell you, there are enough people stirring up God's saint's stew. Why don't you keep it cool?

When our oldest grandson was 15 months old, he was our favorite entertainer. Who needed TV? Who needs some show you have to buy a ticket for? No, the show he put on was free! It seemed like he had a new trick every day. His parents used to throw a blanket over his head and ask, "Where's Jason?" He would pull that blanket off, flash a big smile, and his parents would say excitedly, "There's Jason!"

Now Jason took that to another level. He doesn't need the blanket. All we have to say is, "Where's Jason?" And he promptly puts both his little hands over his face. Of course, he's peeking between his fingers a little bit. I guess he thought he was hiding. Then, he pulls his hands away and shrieks with surprise and excitement. And we responded on cue, "There's Jason!" We loved it! Let me tell you a little secret. The whole time Jason thought he was hiding - we knew exactly where he was.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Secrets."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Hebrews 4:13, and it exposes our little games of hide-and-seek with God. We cover our face and we think He doesn't know where we are - and He knows all the time. God's Word says, "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account" So, there's nothing you've done that God hasn't seen. There's nothing you've thought that God doesn't know. And there's nothing you are that God isn't aware of.

In Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus has a message for each of seven churches, and in a sense, for all believers. All seven messages follow the same pattern. He reviews what people see when they look at these folks and then He tells what He sees, which is often very different from the image everyone else sees.

Take the church at Sardis, for example. Here is Jesus' blunt spiritual X-ray: "I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead." Ask anyone else about these folks and they would tell you, "Oh, they're really alive over there!" Ask Jesus and He says, "I know they're really dead."

Those two sobering words are used with every group of believers - "I know." And what Jesus knows about you, that's the real you. That's the real deal. That's the untouched photos. That's the truth. Among these people in Revelation are some who are busy for the Lord. But Jesus looks underneath and says, "You don't love Me like you used to." He sees another group who appear to be totally together and successful but He says they're settling for spiritual mediocrity and "lukewarmness." As Samuel said so perceptively, "The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).

So, hide-and-seek games don't work with God. He knows where you really are all the time. Now at first that might seem like bad news, because there are some things you're not very proud of. But the good news is there is one Person in your life with whom you have nothing to hide - nothing you can hide.

You can experience the wonderful freedom of coming to your Heavenly Father with the real you. You don't have to hide yourself in spiritual God-talk; in saying what you're supposed to say, feeling like you're supposed to feel. You come as you really are, feeling like you really feel, needing what you really need - to a Savior whose love (thank God!) is totally unconditional! And as you bring the real you to Him, you'll find Him becoming more and more real to you. And you'll find yourself experiencing His forgiving, His cleansing, His healing in parts of you you've never opened up to Him before.

This God who knows all about you, this Savior who knows all about you and loves you anyway... isn't it time that you made the Savior your Savior if you never have? By going to His cross where He died for you, to say, "Jesus, for me" - those two words, "for me" - "you're doing this for me, and I'm Yours."

Our website will help you be sure you belong to Him. That website is ANewStory.com.

Take off the mask. Quit trying to cover your face. God already knows exactly where you are and He's ready to change you.

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When you hear about the weather on the East Coast, you almost always hear about a place called Cape Hatteras. It's a barrier reef off the coast of North Carolina; it's been called the Graveyard of the Atlantic. And it's probably the storm center of the East Coast. In fact, when you look at the map or hear the weatherman in the morning he'll say, "There's a blizzard off of Cape Hatteras. There's a hurricane off of Cape Hatteras. There's a major storm system off of Cape Hatteras."

It's a place where most hurricanes coming up the East Coast make landfall. Oh, you have the ocean on the front side of this barrier reef, and then there's a quieter bay on its backside. When a hurricane hits, it can do a lot of damage. I talked to some people when I was there, and they told me a surprising reason why the hurricane does so much damage. Most of it doesn't come from the hurricane coming in from the ocean, which I would have thought; it comes after the hurricane leaves from all the water that was pushed back into the bay. It's that backlash that kills the island, not the front of the storm. It's sort of like postponed destruction.

Maybe you've faced some gale-force winds lately in your life. But because of the way you're handling it, you may face something worse than the storm, and that's the backlash from the bay.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Running From What You Should Be Facing."

Our word for today from the Word of God is about people under pressure; people who are being hit with perhaps emotional, or financial, or medical, or family hurricanes; storm centers like Cape Hatteras. Isaiah 30:15 talks about ways that we can handle that kind of pressure, "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength." Listen to what He says, "'But you would have none of it. No, here's how I'll handle it.' You said, 'No, we will flee on horses. Therefore, you will flee.' You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses. Therefore your pursuers will be swift.'"

Now, what He's talking about here is handling pressure in that time-honored way, "Run for it! Escape! Get on a fast horse and get out of here." It may very well be that trouble has hit you, and you've been trying to run from it rather than face it. You haven't resorted to horses, but there are a lot of other ways to run. To run from your family problems, from personal doubts you've been having, maybe a problem you've been postponing dealing with or a confrontation you need to have. Perhaps you run to your friends, or you just turn up the music, or get real busy, or use drugs or alcohol, maybe just deception - you kid yourself, you run to your recreation, you get lost in your work. Or maybe you've been running from the Lord's personal dealings with you.

But see, the backlash from the bay is going to catch you. That's why the Bible says your pursuers will be swift. The backlash is building. You can't postpone it. The Bible says, "Your strength is not in running from it. Your strength is in repenting, in resting, being quiet, in trusting.

Stop running from what you should be facing. You've got to face the pressure, face the storm, face the issue, and if need be, face the Lord. Trade in that false and temporary security we feel by trying to escape. Trade that for the real security of the peace of Almighty God.

Passages - that's how one author described life's major points of transition where you are moving from one life-stage to another. I remember when our daughter and son-in-law were in one of those passages. They were going to have their first child.

Actually, as our daughter experienced all the morning sickness, and afternoon sickness, and evening sickness, and as she experienced the impact of pregnancy on her body, it brought about some tender moments between her and her Mom. My daughter got real soft and she said to my wife, "Mom, I don't know how to thank you." Her Mom wasn't sure what she had done to be thanked for. Actually, it was something a long time ago. Our daughter said, "Mom, I really want to thank you because I never realized what you went through for me." Well, then there was a lot of hugging.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Realizing What You Cost."

It does something to a relationship when you suddenly realize what that person has gone through for you. In fact, when it comes to life's most important relationship - a relationship with God - that realization may actually be what starts your God-relationship.

Our son-in-law once met a man on a plane, and the man told him about growing up in a Christian church, but deciding that what he heard wasn't for him. He related his years of sampling a lot of spiritual experiences and beliefs on the spirituality buffet. But none of them satisfied the yearning in his heart. Then one day he visited the church of his childhood; he saw a cross up front. He said, "You know, I had seen that cross hundreds of times. But something powerful happened that day, because I saw it again for the first time in many years. Suddenly, I was overcome with emotion as I looked at that cross and I found myself saying two words, 'For me.'"

Finally, he realized what Jesus went through was for him, and he was ready to embrace Jesus as his Savior. One Biblical writer - a man who had once bitterly opposed Christianity - writes in our word for today from the Word of God what captured his heart. It's in Galatians 2:20 - "I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." There are those two words again, "for me."

I wonder, have you ever in your heart stood at the cross of Jesus, and said those two life-changing, eternity-deciding words, "For me. Jesus, what You are doing on that cross is for me." After years of hearing about the cross, knowing about the cross, it finally hits you; some of those sins Jesus died for are the sins you've done. My daughter's relationship with her mother deepened when she realized what her mother went through for her.

Your relationship with God begins when you realize what the Son of God went through for you. Remember, this is the Son of God - the One who created every galaxy, who made the tree He was dying on, who made the soldiers who nailed Him there. He chose to die there for you. The thorns jammed into His head, the spikes driven into His hands, into His feet, the spear rammed into His side - for you.

But much more, Jesus was absorbing all the guilt and all the degradation of your sin; this One who had never sinned in His life. He was taking all the eternal agony of a hell you and I deserve, cut off from His Father so you would never have to be.

Maybe this is your "for me" day. "The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me." Isn't it time you gave yourself to Him? If you want to begin this relationship with Jesus, tell Him that right now. Stand there at Jesus' cross. Look at what He went through for you.

Let me encourage you to just go to our website as soon as you can today and let me walk you through exactly how to be sure you really do belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.

When you stand at that cross in your mind, you'll realize how very much God loves you and how very urgent it is that you belong to Him, and why God is never going to forget what you do with His Son.

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When our oldest grandson was 14 months old, he had a ball discovering his world. I loved to take him in my arms and get him excited about something in God's world. I'd point to a tree, or a flower, or a dog, or a cow and I'd teach him the word for it. After that, whenever we'd be together, he'd start the pointing, and he'd give me his version of the word for whatever he was pointing to. But I think I saw the greatest wonder in him when he'd look up at the night sky. It didn't matter what was going on around him, he'd start looking up and pointing at the moon, the stars. Man, he loved the stars! He just couldn't miss those lights shining in that dark night sky.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Light Up Your Night."

Our word for today from the Word of God talks about lights that stand out attractively against a dark night sky. But this isn't about looking at the stars. No, it's about being the stars!

In Philippians 2:14 God says, "Do everything without complaining or arguing" - how are you doing on that one? - "so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life." If it weren't for the stars some nights, it would be totally dark. If it weren't for you at your workplace, your neighborhood, at your school, it would be totally dark! God put you in a dark place to light up the night!

These verses help us see what kinds of characteristics will really show up in the middle of a moral night. He says we shouldn't complain. If you are the positive, uncomplaining person in an environment where there's a lot of negativity, you're going to be light in a dark place. God says here not to argue. If you're the peaceable person in a setting where there's anger and conflict and tension, you're going to illuminate the night sky.

God also tells us to be pure and blameless in crooked and depraved surroundings. So, you're the one who lives and talks pure when it comes to sex, even if no one else does; especially if no one else does. You're the one who always tells the truth in a world where lying is a way of life. You'll not compromise your integrity no matter how much compromise you're surrounded by. You'll be the one who is always building other people up in an environment where people are usually tearing each other down. Where everyone is pretty much looking out for themselves, you just keep putting other people first.

Believe me, you live that way and you will be the light where you are, keeping that place from being totally dark. And you will win the right to hold out the word of life to people - the good news about Jesus and what He did on the cross for them. Which means you may have the privilege of leading someone you know out of the darkness forever! And in the words of Daniel 12:3, "Those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever."

Maybe you've been lamenting how dark it is where you work, where you go to school, where you live, or where you recreate. But you know what that means? You have an exciting opportunity! You can light up that night!

When my grandson used to look at a dusky, partially dark sky, he couldn't always see the stars. But the darker it got, the more the light showed up! The darkness around you should never dim your light. No, it should just make it show up brighter than ever!

The man in the Disney movie was an inventor. One of his inventions was a shrinking machine. There's been some suggestions that that's what happened to me - I got into a shrinking machine. Anyway, this actually did happen to his kids' baseball. It crashed through the window of his laboratory. It landed in dad's shrinking machine, turning it on as it landed, and the kids were amazed to see how their ball suddenly shrank. Thinking this machine was really cool, they started playing with it...until the machine suddenly shrank them to an almost invisible size. And the anguished cry of the father is the title of the movie "Honey, I shrunk the kids!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Chainsaw in Your Mouth."

Sadly, too many of us have a shrinking machine that is shrinking our kids, maybe our spouse, other people we love. That shrinking machine is in your mouth. It's a tongue that says things that repeatedly diminish some of the very people you love the most: angry things, cutting things, sarcastic or critical things, discouraging things.

It's almost as if we have this verbal chain saw in our mouth that keeps cutting people we care about. It may be that you've been doing this for so long you hardly even notice how destructive some of your words are. But the people who are hearing them are not only noticing your words, it's quite possible they will never forget them. We can still remember the names we were called decades ago, right? Some of us have even defined our self-worth, or our lack of self-worth, based on some of those shrinking things that someone said to us. That's how what you say impacts those you love. There's so much power in your words!

The Bible doesn't talk about a verbal chainsaw, but it does talk about a verbal sword. It says, in Proverbs 12:18, "Reckless words pierce like a sword." Proverbs 18:21 raises the stakes even higher: "The tongue has the power of life and death." Your words are either making the people around you feel more alive inside, or it's killing them inside. We replay people's failures over and over, we diminish people by constantly comparing them to someone else, we mark them, maybe for life, with the names we call them. We spew out reckless words to win the moment, but we scar someone for life.

Jesus said, "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:35). A runaway mouth comes from something down deep inside; a dark, angry, wounded heart. Until the heart gets fixed, the mouth is just going to keep shrinking and scarring people we care about. It's all part of this sin thing the Bible talks about; our separation from God because we've pushed Him out to do the things we want to do the way we want to do them. The hurt we inflict comes from a sinful heart.

God knows that. That's why He sent His one and only Son to pay the price for our sin, to rise from the dead, to make it possible to be forgiven for every hurting thing, every unholy thing I've ever done or said.

Ezekiel 36:26-27, our word for today from the Word of God, makes this incredible promise: "I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit in you. I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness." A new heart, cleansed by Jesus' forgiveness, and filled with His love. And a new beginning for any man or woman who reaches out to Jesus in total faith, admitting their sin, surrendering their sin, and grabbing Jesus as their personal Rescuer from their personal sin.

If you have never done that, today tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours." I want to invite you to as soon as you can today, get over to our website and walk with me into what it takes to actually know that you have begun your personal relationship with Jesus. Just go to ANewStory.com.

Because of Jesus, it doesn't have to be the way it's always been. He's been loving and changing people for a long, long time, and He's waiting to do that for you today. Letting Jesus into your life is the most loving thing you'll ever do for the people you love.

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It all started when my Dad helped some people lift a piano. There were not enough men to lift it, but they all thought they could handle it. And the next thing I knew, my Dad ended up in the hospital for a hernia operation, all because of lifting that big piano. He never should have tried to lift that much. You know what? I'm talking to somebody now who is sweating, and straining to lift...oh, not a piano! But it might be something you were never meant to lift.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Trying So Hard to Be Good."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God is John 15:4-5. I guess you could say it's about avoiding spiritual hernias! Jesus is probably walking through the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples. He's now in the countdown hours before He goes to the cross, and He stops and says, "Gentlemen, take a look at that grape vine over there." And in the process, He teaches them a lesson that they probably remembered every time they looked at a grape vine. He said, "I am the vine, you are the branches." And then in verses 4 and 5 He said, "Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from Me you can do nothing."

Now, what Jesus is saying here in simple language is this: You concentrate on staying close to Me, and I'll produce the results. Not you'll produce the results; I'll produce them. Don't get it backwards. You're not the vine producing the fruit. Jesus said, "I'm the vine. All you are is the branch."

When He says you'll bear fruit, I think that every follower of Christ who has any life at all in Him is going to be a fruit-bearing Christian. What does that mean? Well, it means, for example, the love that you need for that person in your family or at work that's really difficult for you to deal with...maybe somebody at school. The fruit that you need to produce is love for that person who has given you no reason to love them.

How about the patience you need? Or fruit can mean people coming to Christ. So, how do you have the love you need, the patience you need, the self-control you need? How do you lead people to Christ? It is not about you producing the results. Don't forget the vine and the branches picture. You look at that branch on that vine, it looks like the grapes are coming from the branch. But that's wrong! They're coming through the branch. They're coming from the vine. All of the good traits of a Jesus follower, all the love, all the witness, all the persuasion, all the power, all the patience that you need isn't yours. The good result oh, comes through you but not from you.

Imagine a little branch lying off on the side going, "Oh, oh, wait! I've got to get some fruit on me!" You say, "Get back on the vine! That's where the fruit comes from." Maybe you've seen the Christian experience as something where you have to sweat, and strain, and push and say, "Oh, I've just got to try harder. I've tried so hard to be a good Christian." That's why you get a spiritual hernia. All you've got is a self-improvement plan with Christian words. See, your mission is to stay close to your Jesus, and then as you do your part, He will naturally produce what you've been trying to force.

Hudson Taylor, the great missionary leader, said, "I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him, and I ended up asking Him to do His work through me." Listen, "Open your hands, open your arms and relax." Or in the words of Corrie ten Boom, "Don't wrestle, just nestle."

A listener shared a story with me that's just too powerful not to share with you. A man named George Thomas was a pastor in a small New England town. One Easter Sunday morning, he got up to speak and he set a rusty, bent-up, old bird cage next to the pulpit. You could tell by people's faces that the pastor had some explaining to do. He said, "Well, I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me, swinging this bird cage. On the bottom of the cage were three little birds who were shivering with cold and fear. So I asked the boy, "What you got there?" He said, "Just some old birds." The pastor then asked, "What are you going to do with them?" The boy said, "Well, I'm gonna tease 'em and pull out their feathers to make 'em fight. Then I'm gonna have a real good time." The pastor pointed out that the boy would soon get tired of those birds and he said, "What are you going to do with them then?" "Oh, I've got some cats," the boy said. "They like birds." What happened next is what puts you and me into this picture.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Battle In Your Soul."

The pastor had a question for the boy who had nothing but hurtful plans for those little birds. "How much do you want for them, son?" The boy couldn't believe it. These were just plain old field birds who weren't very pretty and they couldn't sing. When the pastor pressed his question, the boy finally answered, "Uh, ten dollars?" The pastor reached into his pocket and pulled out a $10 bill, and the boy took his money and ran off.

The pastor picked up the cage, he gently carried it to the end of the alley where there was a tree and a grassy spot. He opened the cage door, softly tapped the bars to persuade the birds to come out, and you know what happened. He set them free.

Now the folks at church understood at this point why there was an empty cage on the pulpit. Then the pastor began to tell a story of a conversation between Jesus and Satan, who had just come from his victory with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The devil was boasting, "Yes, sir, I just caught me a world full of people down there. I set me a trap and they fell for the bait. Got 'em all!" Jesus asked him, "What are you going to do with them?" "I'm gonna have some fun with them," Satan replied. "I'm gonna teach them how to marry and divorce each other, how to hurt and hate each other, and how to get hooked on habits that will destroy them. I'm going to teach them to deceive each other, abuse each other, and even kill each other."

When Jesus asked what he would do when he was done with them, Satan said, "Oh, I'll kill them." "How much do you want for them?" Jesus asked. The devil said, "You don't want them. They'll just spit on you. They'll just curse you. They'll kill you!" Jesus asked again, "How much?" Satan sneered, "All your tears and all your blood!" "Done!" Jesus said, and then He paid the price. Now our word for today from the Word of God in John 10:10, "The thief (that's Satan) comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

This very day the life-taker, the devil himself, is trying to hold onto you. He wants to keep you away from Jesus until your last heartbeat, and then you'll be his forever. But the Life-Giver, Jesus Christ, is fighting for your soul this very moment where you are. He paid the price for your sin on the cross. And now you are in the middle of a tug-of-war on which your eternity depends, Satan trying to keep you on his path to kill you, and Jesus inviting you to give yourself to Him so He can give you life. They won't decide whether you go to heaven or hell though - you will.

You want to belong to this Jesus? I mean, nobody has ever loved you like He does. No one has the power to walk out of his grave and give eternal life but Him. Go to our website, please. Many people have gone there and found there the assurance that they belong to Jesus Christ from that day on. It's ANewStory.com.

For 2,000 years, Jesus has been unlocking that cage door of sin and letting its captives go free. He's waiting to do that for you this very day, this Good Friday.

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You know, a hand shake just isn't what it used to be. It used to be all that you needed to guarantee an agreement between two people. There aren't very many deals done today on just a hand shake. If someone says they'll do something, out come the papers, the contract, the warranties, the fine print, the lawyers, the notary public. I've learned from following my wife around antique stores, where we've mostly just looked, that the less there are of certain objects the more valuable that one is. That's true of people too. In a world where words are cheap, you can be one of a rare and priceless breed.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Promise Keeper."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is coming from Psalm 15 - a very interesting psalm. It's a description of what it takes to be a person who is really close to God; to get God's best, to be respected by heaven and earth. What determines all this is how a person handles his tongue, his neighbor, his money, the people around him; actually five solid gold traits. I want to focus on one today. It's our word for today from the Word of God, Psalm 15:4.

The beginning of this psalm says, "Lord, who may dwell in Your sanctuary; who may live on Your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous." Then it defines that, and this characteristic of that person is this: "One who keeps his oath, even when it hurts." Wow! That's a good one, isn't it? "Keeps his oath when it hurts?" He's a promise keeper, no matter how expensive it is to keep that promise." Hey, that's a rare kind of person.

People today just get through the moment by promising whatever they have to promise and then forgetting it. Well, now, if promise keeping and commitment keeping were common, a lot of lawyers would probably be out of work today. But it's very important to God.

That's what this psalm says. It's important to God whether you keep your promises. You may forget your promises, but God doesn't. You may minimize your commitment, but God doesn't. You make it a top priority to promise only what you can do, and then to do what you promise.

See, the follower of Christ is bound to keep his promise, not by a contract but by his character. God remembers our promises, and someone else who remembers them is our children. If you've promised your child time, or help, or an answer, you deliver on that promise even if it hurts. No matter what you have to rearrange; you move heaven and earth to keep a promise you've made to your son or daughter. The issue is trust, and you've got nothing with that child if you don't have their trust.

Now, this affects every area. Meet the deadlines you said you would, deliver what you said you would in your business, even if things don't go as you thought they would, keep a commitment even if. Especially if something better comes along. Give what you said you'd give; go where you said you'd go. And then just really try to be what you said you would be. Maybe it's your marriage oath, your marriage commitment. It's hurting right now to keep it. Don't even consider quitting as an option. Put all your energy into fighting for her, fighting for him. Most important, stay true to that commitment you made to your Lord Jesus, even if it's costing you right now in some ways you've never anticipated.

God richly rewards the one who keeps his oath even when it hurts. He rewards the promise keepers. Oh, yeah, they're rare, but they are priceless.

We were far from home in Phoenix, Arizona, living in New Jersey, when my wife had a gallbladder crisis. In fact, she was going to have to have her gallbladder removed. Well, I wasn't too happy about that happening so far from home, but God was in it. Because our friend who we were there with at a conference said, "Well, I just had this surgery not long ago, and our doctor here is one of the few in the country (at that time anyway) who is an expert at doing gallbladder surgery with lasers. Really? Well, instead of the six weeks that I thought my wife was going to have to recuperate in Arizona, why she was up and around in a very few days, because of the amazing power of a laser. Think about that. I mean, lasers can penetrate steel. They can help you get better eyesight, or take care of a gallbladder that needs to come out. It's pretty amazing power. Now, diffused light can't do that; only the focused light can do it. If my wife had been under just diffused light all that time, it wouldn't do anything about her gall bladder. But it took the focused light - that powerful energy - to really change things. There's awesome power when you focus the energy on one thing.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Laser Giving."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Philippians 1 beginning in verse 4, where Paul says, "In all my prayers for you I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now." Imagine being partners with the spread of the Gospel through a dynamo like the Apostle Paul.

At the end of his letter in chapter 4 and beginning at verse 13, he writes about their support. He says, "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength, yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only: for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid again and again when I was in need. Not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account."

Now these people found a piece of God's work, the Apostle Paul, and they invested heavily in it and they received great dividends. They lasered their giving on this one missionary. All of his fruit, all the people Paul reached; all that was credited to their eternal account. See, you and I live in a world that hits us with more causes than you could ever support. Think of that stack of mail you get from Christian organizations. Now, there's a pattern. You're like, "I don't know how I can possibly support all these things." Well, you can't. Isn't it a better idea to get a lot of stock in a few eternal investments?

I remember when my wife's grandmother went home to be with the Lord. Her Grandma had all these records that we went through and we found her list of "Giving and Praying." It was all about the organizations she really believed in. It started out in real tiny script. That list probably went back to the 1940s and then the print got larger as her eyes began to fail, and at the age of 99 she was still praying for and giving to the same ministries. God laid that on her heart and here was 50 years of praying and 50 years of canceled checks to match. She was a partner in the Gospel.

Now in our self-focused generation, we've lost that excitement of sharing stock in Eternity, Inc. My friend, Jeff said, "I have decided I am drawing a line in my checkbook and that's all we really need to live on and from thereon I'm putting it into the work of God."

Would you ask the Lord for a piece of his broken heart for this broken world, for a particular need, for some group, for some area of the world? I encourage you to ask God for a few spiritual works or people who you could really believe in, and pray for them and stick with them and give to them. Laser your giving!

The way to have a winning part of God's work on earth is to have a lot of stock in a few eternal investments. See, diffused energy doesn't make much of a difference, but lasered energy changes everything. You know what? You laser your giving, you'll be reaping dividends forever.

Our oldest son was only two years old when our neighbor's daughter, Kim, broke her leg. Now, on the scale of world disasters, Kim's leg wouldn't even move the needle. But it was a very big disaster to our two-year-old son. We got the news, and when we did we stopped, and as a family we prayed for Kim. We were done, but my son wasn't. All day that day he kept coming up to Mom while she was at the sink or the stove, cleaning the bedroom, or whatever. And he tugged on her pant leg, and she would say, "Yes?" And he would say, "Pray for Kim."

So they stopped and prayed for Kim once, twice, ten times. I think they prayed 20 times for Kim that day. A couple of days later we got word that Kim was doing pretty well and we told our son. He pulled Mom over to a picture of Jesus that we had hanging next to the refrigerator, and he pointed at Him and just said, "Jesus make Kim better." We had smiled only at the way a little boy wanted to pray for Kim all day long. Maybe instead of smiling we should have been taking notes.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Prayer - Always Connected."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God, Nehemiah 2:4. The situation: Nehemiah is cupbearer to the king. He has just received word that the walls of Jerusalem are down, his native city really needs rebuilding. He knows the king has the resources to make it happen, but Nehemiah is going to use his position to get to the king and he is scared.

Well, he goes before the king, "And the king said to me," the Bible says, "'What is it you want?' Then I prayed to the God of heaven and I answered the king." Now, here's Nehemiah in his big pressure moment, and he quietly plugs into the Throne Room in heaven before he gives his answer. He prays, then he answers.

Now, as you read, you find that Nehemiah was a spiritual champion, because all through this book it says he prayed about everything as it came up. When he got some bad news at the beginning of the book, he says, "I sat down, wept and prayed." When he heard vicious things being said about him, he instinctively begins and says, "Hear us, O Lord," and starts talking. When an attack was imminent, it says, "We prayed to our God and posted a guard." And now here in the big meeting with the king he prays before he answers.

See, Nehemiah believed that prayer was a lifestyle, not a compartment. We tend to put praying into certain time slots in our life: I'm having my devotions, I'm in church, I'm in a crisis, it's bedtime. But life is happening all day long. We need to be talking with our Father and listening to Him throughout the day, entering a class, praying as we do that, praying as we answer a question, an email, as we make a stand, as we buy something, as we start a meal, pick up the phone, praying as we do our homework, as we take out the garbage, as we're running those thousand and one errands we've got to do.

Prayer isn't a religious exercise; it's your declaration of dependence on God. To look up and say throughout the day, "This piece of my day is Yours, Lord." You don't have to drop to your knees or close your eyes, especially if you're driving. It's just a quiet recognition of Christ's presence in your need. That's how you carry out what the Bible says, "In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths." Integrate prayer into your everyday life. Wherever possible, stop and pray with someone else when they bring a need to you. Let that be your response.

I can go back and see this little boy insisting on praying for Kim throughout the day and then the simple worship that resulted as he pointed to a picture of Jesus, who had answered his prayers.

That could happen to you all day long if you make prayer more than just a compartment. Prayer is a lifestyle.

"Office of Homeland Security" - I suppose there are some younger people that didn't know that wasn't always part of the United States government. It's a pretty new thing. The fact that we have, and that we need, an Office of Homeland Security pretty much tells the story of the kind of world we're in right now. I mean, we've got enhanced security at our airports, sometimes tours are curtailed at many public utilities, your bags get searched at sporting events, and business is booming at security companies.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Making Sure You're Secure."

Security is on a lot of our minds these days. We feel a lot more vulnerable, probably, than we ever have. I mean, when we think about security for here and now. Unfortunately, we tend to neglect the largest security concerns of all - our security beyond this life, beyond our last heartbeat. It's eternally important to know that you're safe then. Whether it's the awful toll we've seen in terrorist attacks, or just the death of someone in our personal world, there are constant reminders that eternity can come so close, so quickly.

I once heard about a medieval king who was on his deathbed. He called for the court jester; they called him the court fool back then. He wanted him to come and make him feel better. At one point, the king said, "Fool, I am going on a long journey from which I will not return." The court fool asked if the king had made preparations for his journey, to which the king answered "no." The jester answered, "Then, sire, I fear that you are a greater fool than I."

That sounds like a conversation God had with a very rich man in our word for today from the Word of God in Luke 12, beginning in verse 19. The man is totally involved in managing his success, protecting his financial security. He says, "I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then you will get what you have prepared for yourself.'" Tragically, this man who had made such elaborate preparations for his earth-security had made no preparations for eternity.

That man made the mistake of thinking he had many years - a mistake many have made. Frankly, we never know how much longer we have. And you're not secure until you know that you're ready for eternity...which you can be today. 1 John 5, beginning in verse 11, tells us that "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life." Now that is security! Knowing for sure. Knowing right now that when you die you are going to heaven.

And it all depends on whether you have Jesus. Why? Because He's the One, the only One, who died to remove what will keep you out of heaven - your sin. It can't be repaid by doing good. There's a death penalty for the sin. It can only be erased by putting your trust in the One who took your death penalty for you. When you commit yourself to Jesus, what's between you and God is gone and you "have eternal life"!

That is a choice you can make this very day, right where you are. Don't you want to belong to this Jesus? You can from this day on. You just tell Him you're putting your total trust in Him, you're done running your life. You are His, beginning this day, based on His dying for you.

If you'll go to our website as soon as you possibly can today, I'd love to show you, there, how to be sure you belong to Jesus Christ. It's ANewStory.com.

With eternity so close, does it make any sense to wait? Ultimate security is knowing you're going to heaven, no matter what happens here. Jesus made His move to get you to heaven when He died on the cross for you. It's your move now.

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When you're a little kid, they're pretty rough on you if you tell on somebody else. Remember? Oh, maybe that happened to you. Oh, the names they call you when you do that are not particularly complimentary: tattle tail, traitor, (depending on your generation) rat fink. Those are the nice names. It gets worse than that. Kids almost get to feeling that telling about something wrong is worse than doing something wrong. That's not true.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When You Know an Ugly Secret."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God is from 1 Samuel 3. It's about a man named Eli. He was the main man at the temple in those days, and unfortunately for Eli, even though he wasn't carrying out any gross sin that we know about, his sons were out-of-control. They would have been the media scandal of the day, because they used their position as priests at the temple to take money for themselves, and to take women for themselves. And God passes His verdict as we look at 1 Samuel 3, beginning at verse 11.

"And the Lord said to Samuel: 'See, I'm about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family - from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them."

Did you notice that? God says, "I'm going to judge Eli because of the sin, not that he did, but that he knew about." See, with God, knowledge equals responsibility. Now, that's not just in God's scales of justice. Remember way back at the Watergate hearings and how they kept hammering home the question, "What did you know?" And, "When did you know it?"

People who know about a violation of the law and don't do anything about it can be convicted of charges like conspiracy, or obstruction of justice. See, God insists that you take action if you know about wrong that's being done. The Bible says, "He that covers sin will not prosper."

Think how much embarrassment has come to the cause of Christ because of scandals involving Christian leaders, TV evangelists, pastors, and how much of that could have been avoided if people who knew about sin had acted on that knowledge. Often we just bury the secret. Why? Sometimes it's blind loyalty, but sin's going to grow like a cancer. And it will be discovered, but by then the damage will be irreparable. Sometimes it's because of vested interest; we're afraid of what we might lose. But look at Eli. You'll lose a lot more if you don't.

There's a pattern for doing this in Matthew 18, beginning at verse 15. First, you go to the person one-on-one with the sin that you know about. Talk to them about it. If that doesn't work, you go with one or two others. Then Jesus said you go to the church or whatever large group is appropriate. And finally, if they don't respond, Jesus said you cut off fellowship from them, so they'll come to their senses. You do no one a favor when you know about sin and you don't deal with it.

What happens when you don't deal with it, when you don't confront it, is that you are condemning the one who is doing it to greater consequences, and you condemn others to being hurt by that covered-up sin. Oh, and you condemn yourself to judgment from God for covering it up. The longer you wait, the worse the fallout's going to be. So, don't be guilty of obstructing justice - God's justice that is. Remember, when you know an ugly secret, knowledge equals responsibility.

Maybe you've seen those old world maps that were created when a lot of the world was still unexplored. When they reached the edge of what had been explored, they drew a line and then they showed dragons and monsters beyond it - which didn't exactly encourage exploration. The story is told of this first century Roman commander who had to lead his troops beyond the line on the map and into "dragon" territory. He sent a courier back to Rome with a straightforward message - "We have just marched off the map! Please send new orders!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When You're Marching Off the Map."

That describes how a whole lot of us are feeling since things changed so dramatically back on September 11, 2001 and all of the cataclysmic, unpredictable, unimaginable events that have come since then. We have marched off the map! Things are up for grabs with the economy; a lot of people feel their jobs are insecure. Our personal sense of safety and security have really never been the same. It has turned to a sense of vulnerability. There are prospects of bioterrorism and cyber terrorism. USA Today talked about DEFCON 1, the military's phrase for their highest state of alert - and they said a lot of us feel like we're living at DEFCON 1.

We need some certainty after covid and all the upheavals; we need some leadership. We want to hear from our national leaders, from our military leaders, from our financial leaders, but none of them can give us that sense of peace and security that we're needing in this "new world" that's off the map. What we're looking for can ultimately only be found in the leader. That would be the One who created us. The issues of our day and the questions of our heart are just too big to be answered by anyone other than God Himself.

In times like these, I am so glad Jesus described His relationship with those who belong to Him as one of a shepherd. Because with no clear direction these days, we're feeling a little like sheep. Here's what Jesus offered to people like us in times like these - it's in our word for today from the Word of God in John 10, beginning in verse 3, "He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out - He goes on ahead of them, and His sheep follow Him." Later, Jesus said, "My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of My hand."

There is someone who knows the way to go when there is no map and He's the Lord of this universe! And Jesus leads those who belong to Him, giving them daily direction and daily provision, no matter what's happening in the headlines. And He never loses anyone that's His - because, in the words of John 10, He "laid down His life for the sheep." Jesus died for every wrong thing you've ever done so you could belong to Him forever. He's not about to lose you after paying that price for you!

The Bible tells us that Jesus weeps for those who are, as He says, "sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). That might be you today. But it doesn't have to be you for one more day. He's reaching out to you right now. He's ready to be your Shepherd in these confusing times; your anchor in the stormy times we live in and the storms of our own personal lives.

Your relationship with Him begins when you tell Him you're done trying to be your own shepherd, running your own life and that you want to put your total trust in Him to forgive every sin you've ever committed, to direct your life from this day on, and to get you to heaven when you die.

That's what He's waiting to give you. He's waiting for you to say, "Jesus, I'm Yours. You are my only hope. Your death on the cross, your resurrection from the dead...I want to belong to you, beginning today." Our website is all about helping you get that relationship started. I would invite you to go there. It is ANewStory.com.

We have marched off the map. But Jesus knows exactly where we are - and what the future holds. And He can take you there safely...but, you have to grab His hand.

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When you work at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, you know there will be no physical link to the outside world for you between February and October. You are 840 miles from the nearest populated site and you're facing average winter temperatures of 80 below zero. Now, imagine being one of the women stationed there and discovering a lump that indicates you may have breast cancer. Distant medical authorities determined that this lady had to receive some emergency medical supplies. (And it really happened.) Getting those supplies though? Well, easier said than done.

A U.S. Air Force plane took on the mission, flying in driving snow and limited visibility, with just enough fuel to get back, searching in that dark polar winter for a C-shaped chain of burning barrels somewhere down there in the snow. Those barrels were marking the drop point. Once the life-giving supplies were dropped, the ground people had just seven minutes to collect those bundles before the cold weather damaged or destroyed their contents. It was an incredible true adventure, and it worked. The pilot for this amazing mercy mission said it was his most difficult mission. I'll bet! He said, "The whole thing is a loss if we don't put it where they can get it."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Putting Life Within Their Reach."

When you're bringing a delivery that can mean life-or-death, you do whatever it takes to get it there and put it where they can reach it. If you know Jesus, and you know someone who doesn't, God has assigned you to a life-or-death mission. He says, "He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." (1 John 5:12). People without the Savior who died for them are dying people according to God.

So, God clearly commands you and me to "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter" (Proverbs 24:11). God sent His Son on the ultimate rescue mission - to give His life for people you know - so they can live forever. But "the whole thing is a loss if we don't put it where they can get it."

That's where you come in. In our word for today from the Word of God in Exodus 3:7, the Lord is telling Moses about His plans to rescue Moses' very hurting people. The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of My people - I have heard them crying out - I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them." I can just hear Moses saying, "Yes! God's going to do something about the lostness of my people! All right!"

Then God says, "So now, go. I am sending you." I could just hear Moses saying, "Wait a minute here!" But God was reaching to desperate people by bringing life within their reach - by putting Moses in the middle of them - Moses, His chosen representative. Now God says to you, speaking of the people you live close to, that you work with, that you go to school with, "I have seen their misery, I have heard them crying out, and I am coming down to rescue them, and I am sending you."

That's why you are where you are. That's why you are with the people you're with. God has dropped eternal life right in the middle of them and you're the one carrying it. It's like that Air Force crew. God went to great lengths to bring them life, and He went all the way to a cross on Skull Hill. Now He's trusting you to be His connection to some of the people He died for on that cross, who He came and died to rescue.

When it's life-or-death, you do whatever it takes to deliver the life. This is eternal life-or-death for someone you know. And you are life within their reach. Don't miss your mission. Don't let them miss heaven. Look in the mirror and say, "I am someone's chance."

My phone's been blowing up for a week or more. Mostly not good news.

Lots of storms. Lots of sadness.

Severe thunderstorm alerts, tornado and flood watches and warnings. Stacked up in my texts like planes waiting to land at O'Hare. Like much of the country, it's been a "Groundhog Day" cycle of one stormy day after another. I miss the sun.

But that's just been the backdrop for days of accumulating grief. I often get "breaking news" on my phone. This week it's been mostly heartbreaking news.

One of my family members, suddenly crushed by the tragic loss of a third brother. The painful death of a coworker's dad - and a dark diagnosis for the father of another. A lifetime friend living the final days of his beloved wife's battle with dementia. Other friends, faced with brutal decisions on behalf of declining parents. And yesterday's medical emergency for a dear friend who's expecting a baby - she went from ER to ambulance to surgery.

Yes, it's been a season of storms and sadness.

But it's also almost Easter.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Easter 2025 - So Much Hurt, So Much Hope."

And, oh, what a difference that "Easter" makes! Not the holiday. The Man!

We all have seasons of compounding loss and grief. Storms that won't stop. Dark clouds that keep obscuring the sun. Times when hope seems swamped by hurt. But the Bible puts an amazing word in front of hope - and that word has the power to change every dark moment we face.

In our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:3-6 - it's talking about suffering "grief in all kinds of trials." But then it reveals the divine antidote to despair: "In His great mercy, God has given us a new birth into a" - here's that word - "living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

Not sympathy card hope or "positive thoughts" hope. Not hope, the idea or the wish. This is hope, the Person! The One who, as testified to by six historians, 12 disciples and hundreds of eyewitnesses, literally walked out of His grave on Easter morning!

In short, Jesus is alive! He's present. Powerful - having conquered the one force that has stopped every other person who has ever lived.

As the sadnesses and grievings mounted these past few days, I felt increasingly powerless to be of much help.

But since the day I put my trust in Jesus' death for my sins, I have the Living Hope Man to turn to. As I did on that shattering spring day my Karen - my love since I was 19 - was suddenly gone.

On that first Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene had found Jesus' tomb empty. She was grieving inconsolably in the graveyard garden - when suddenly she heard a familiar voice speaking one life-changing word. "Mary" (John 20:16). And on my darkest day, it was my name He called.

I have asked Jesus to speak to each weeping one on my heart - and speak their name. For Scripture promises that He is "close to brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18). And that He can go deep in the human heart where no one else can go and bring hope and healing no one else can bring.

Our times of greatest loss are the times of our greatest experiences of His love. I have lived it. I can't carry all the burdens of my wounded loved ones. But if my Jesus has beaten death, surely He can bear their burdens and bring back the sun.

Jesus can simultaneously be holding and hugging each one as if they are the only one. I have felt that hug. I have been carried by Him when I could not take another step.

If you want to have this personal relationship with Jesus, tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm Yours." Go to our website and see how to be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.

The storms keep coming. But, Jesus, You are our safe room. And hope wins.

Our local high school team won the state championship in football one year, and the coach gave at least one reason in the newspaper. He said, "We have mastered the two-minute offense. In other words, you have to know how to do the "hurry up" offense and get a lot done in a short time in order to be a championship team, like when there's only two minutes left in the first half or the end of the game.

In fact, I watched this happen in a game for the conference championship. They were ahead 13-6, and the other team was gaining momentum. There was about a minute and 30 seconds left in the first half. A minute and a half later our team went to the locker room up by 26-6! They'd scored twice. They knew how to go for broke when there wasn't much time. That's actually not a bad idea for all of us.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Going For Broke With Two Minutes Left."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the words of Jesus in John 9:4. "As long as it is day, we must do the work of Him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work." Notice Jesus says the word "must" here. "We must work the works of Him who sent me." And the must; the imperative, the "I don't have any choice" comes from knowing what time it is. It's like somebody trying to gather in the harvest and night is coming. You know the harvest is going to rot and you don't say, "Well, maybe today, maybe tomorrow." We've got to do it now because time is running out.

Now, short time brings out the best in a football team - that two-minute offense. And it brings out the best in a follower of Christ. I think we might be living in a two-minute warning time right now. You know, as we look at our world right now, it looks increasingly like the kind that Jesus said He would return to. Historic stirrings in the Middle East, the power of Russia - the biblical king of the north, many believe, is coming back again. Natural disasters - a lot of them are unprecedented in their severity and their frequency. Israel, of course the center of world attention. This is no time to be a casual Christian.

See, time is short for other reasons - our freedom to proclaim the Gospel of Christ in our own culture - that's a fragile freedom. And the people around you? Well, they turn so hard so fast. Have you noticed? You may be their only window to get to heaven, and if you don't reach them, they may never know, and they may never go where He is. Night is coming, and who knows how long this window is going to be open.

See, when you set goals and you think about your priorities, would you take a look at God's clock? You know, it could be late in His plan for planet earth. And it's certainly late in the lives of the people around you, and late and lazy don't go together. It's time to, well as they say in football, throw the bomb, go public for Christ. Have that long postponed conversation about your Jesus.

Don't wait any more. Time's going to run out. To fix that broken relationship, to get involved in the work of God's Kingdom. To deal with that hidden sin, and most of all, to live so there will be some people in heaven with you that you told about Christ. The Bible talks about this urgency when it says, "Redeem the time," "buy up the time" because the days are evil. And think of the urgency in the verse that says, "Snatch others from the fire and save them."

You know, we talk about every year A.D. being the year of our Lord. Let's go for victory to make this that kind of a time, going for broke with two minutes on the clock.

My wife always had a very full life, but not too full to keep her from exercising her mischievous streak once in a while. (Once in a while?) Like with some of the gifts that she's given me over the years. She's been known to take a gift and put it in a little wrapped box inside a little bigger box, inside a little bigger box, inside... well, you know. I had to open all of those boxes to get to my little present. You wade through several empty boxes, except for the newspaper that's wrapped around nothing, and you begin to wonder, "Is there really any gift in here?" And, "Is it really worth all this?"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Uncomplicating Christ."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 9:12. The great missionary, Paul, says this: "We put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ." This great representative of the Lord Jesus is saying, "I don't want to do anything, I don't want to say anything that might keep someone from saying yes to the gospel and saying yes to Jesus."

Could it be that we have encumbered this good news we have with some extra baggage that keeps people from getting to the cross? See, we have a tendency to take this simple gift of eternal life and complicate it with all these layers around it. I was at a seminar not long ago, actually I was teaching it, and I was talking about what it means to be young and lost. And a woman in her early twenties came up afterwards and she said, "I was the person you described just four years ago." And she went on to tell me about a Christian who didn't help her. This girl had no Christian background, and a guy came up to her in high school and he gave her this picture of Jesus knocking at the door of her heart and he said, "Do you notice that there's no handle on the door? The reason is that the handle is on the inside and you have to let Him in." And he walked away.

Well, after he walked away, she said, "Let who in?" She didn't know anything about Jesus. It was the only time in her life up until then she'd ever heard about Him, but He was wrapped in religious talk that she couldn't understand. Now, this believer intended well I'm sure, probably just thought she just didn't want to get it. Actually, she didn't know how to get through the layers around Him.

Then she was invited to church a few years later, and she said, "Well, what should I wear?" And the gal said, "It doesn't matter." Thank God that believer attended a church where it doesn't matter. She said, "I went and accepted Christ the first time I heard the gospel in a way I could understand." But everything hinged on the answer to that one question, "What should I wear?" See, she would have missed it all. But there was a group of believers who offered God's gift without a lot of boxes and wrapping paper around it.

I hope that's the Jesus that you're sharing, that your church is sharing. We can put obstacles in front of lost people by attacking particular sins and trying to clean them up before they've been to the cross. You don't clean fish before you catch them. Or maybe we bring in issues and doctrines that aren't a part of the simple gospel. We have a sin problem; that's the gospel.

Sin carries an eternal death penalty. Jesus paid that penalty in our place. We trade in eternal death for eternal life when we turn from running our life and put all our trust in Jesus. That's it! We put the gospel out of reach when we explain it in "Christianese" language that an unbeliever doesn't understand. We're making a mistake that may have life-and-death consequences when we load the gospel with extra baggage that obscures Christ's simple offer. Paul said it all, "I was determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

Listen, you may be someone who's been confused by church people. You've been confused by all the wrapping around Jesus and you've missed the fact this is all about a man who loved you enough to die for your sin, and is powerful enough to walk out of His grave. He wants to walk into your life today. Don't miss Jesus because of the wrapping paper. It's all about Jesus.

There's so much more about Him at our website that I'd love to show you. Would you go there today? It's ANewStory.com. And if you're carrying the message of Jesus, wrap it simple like God did.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger - now, that's not exactly a stage name. But, boy, he became a star! And in case you haven't been around for a while, you know Arnold Schwarzenegger became one of Hollywood's hottest properties and then the Governor of California; the bodybuilder who became a movie star. In fact, I'm often mistaken for him on the street. Uh-huh. He's made the cover of magazines, and apparently when he's in a movie it has guaranteed a big draw at the gate.

Of course, he built his reputation first as a bodybuilder, he was Mr. Universe, or Mr. Milky Way or something. But he is impressively strong. He began lifting weight to train for the local soccer team back in his home country of Austria. And he got up early to lift in the morning, and then he'd race to the gym after school. His hero, he says, was a Mr. Universe who had starred in several Hercules movies. He said, "He was everything I wanted to be; a champion, a muscle film star, a great businessman. My parents," Arnold said, "thought it was strange. Most guys had posters of girls all over their walls; I had a guy flexing." Well, you know, that's an interesting insight into how we become a certain kind of person.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "More Like Jesus?"

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Peter 2, and I'll begin reading at verse 21. "Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps. He committed no sin, no deceit was found in His mouth. When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats." This says here that we have an example, and it's the way that Christ lived His life. In fact, this word example, if you go back to the original Greek language of the New Testament, is the word "copy head." It literally was the copy head that they put at the top of a school child's slate. So when he's trying to learn the alphabet, he kept looking at how the letters should be formed until he made it just like it was on the copy head.

Now, Peter says Christ is our copy head. He's saying, "Keep looking at Jesus, and you'll start to respond as He did." Arnold Schwarzenegger said he became strong because he kept looking at a picture of a strong man; someone who was "everything he wanted to be." Well, I'll tell you this, "Jesus is everything I want to be." How about you? Everything he said was trusted, because there was no deceit in His mouth. There were no marks on His holiness. He acted in situations; He did not react. He suffered with grace that embarrassed those who caused the suffering.

How do you get to be like that? By daily looking at Him. Read the Gospels frequently in your personal quiet time, and compare your responses to your Lord's. Review your major life situations with Jesus daily and ask Him to help you see what He sees. Make your magnificent obsession this question, "What would Jesus do?" It often won't be what you feel like doing, or what our culture says to do, or what seems to be your right to do, but risk everything on doing what your Master, your model would do. It means you have to dedicate yourself to becoming an expert on Jesus. See, there's no lazy way to do this.

If you will daily, consciously, and stubbornly model yourself after Him, you'll start to make the kind of difference He made. Be sure Jesus is the picture that you just keep looking at.

I've had days when my back felt about 20 years older than the rest of my body. Ever had that? Sciatica is what I think the doctor called it. I just called it "sorebacka." I'm grateful I haven't had a bout like that for several years, but I can tell you that when I wake up crooked, I feel like just staying in bed or in any comfortable position I can find. But I got some weird advice. Someone said, "Go for a walk when your back is hurting." Now, let me tell you this, walking is the last thing I feel like doing, but I decided to try it. I walked around our lake, and by the time I returned, the pain had basically gone away. I had to force myself to exercise, but it was exercise that actually made me feel better. Now there's a new scientific study that compared two groups of people with "sorebacka" (wait a minute, oh that's sciatica) - one that took it easy and one that exercised. The exercisers reported less pain and more mobility. Now, what you don't feel like doing when you're hurting is what will actually help you stop hurting!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Healing Others, Healing You."

Exercising to help the pain - that doesn't just work for a hurting back. It works for a hurting heart. This could be a stretch of your life that's particularly painful. You're hurting from a tragedy, a broken relationship, maybe financial struggles, or medical battles, some new wounds, or some old wounds. And just like me with an aching back, you're seeking some comfort. But just like me, you might find it, not by trying to get comfortable, but by going out and actually exercising spiritually.

Here's the prescription. It's from our word for today from the Word of God in Proverbs 11:25. "A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." So, God says something refreshing happens to your spirit when you reach out to refresh others. And that's the kind of exercise that helps a hurting heart - doing something for someone else who's in need.

Is that what you feel like doing? No. When you're hurting, you feel like withdrawing from people, not connecting with them. You want to pretty much just focus on yourself. Our human nature says, "I'm hurting right now, so hey, it's all about me." But that's only going to intensify the pain or even prolong the pain.

You can actually speed up your healing by doing what you don't feel like doing; getting involved with people when you feel like withdrawing from people, getting active when you feel like being inactive, charging into some ministry or helping role when you feel like retreating, looking for someone whose need you can meet instead of someone who can meet yours. The hurt you've been through will give you the sensitivity and the credentials to minister to other hurting people.

What you've been through may cause you to pull back, and maybe now you're just nursing the pain. That's what I felt like doing with my aching back. But I had to put the hurting parts to work in order to get any relief. That may be exactly where you are right now. You're not going to break out of this downer until you get busy, in the Bible's words, "refreshing others." That's when you'll finally be refreshed.

Jesus said, "Whoever hangs onto his life will lose it." It's the person who gives his life away that will find it. So force yourself to get out of your chair, out of your bed and look for some people who need you. As you exercise on their behalf, the healing of your own pain can finally begin.

One moment they were in their apartment building. The next they were under it. Ninety people were trapped when a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar suddenly leveled their building.Fifty Myanmar children went to preschool that day. At least a dozen died there in the sudden collapse of their school.

One doctor in Mandalay said: "Wherever I looked, I saw collapsed buildings. Only dust."

It's a tragedy that's almost incomprehensible. Especially when some scientists are estimating the death toll could even go to 10,000. Not numbers. Somebody's son or daughter. Husband or wife. Mom or dad.

In spite of the ferocity of the quake, many did not have to die. As one expert explained, building codes in this quake-prone area "fail to fully consider earthquake resistance measures." In other words, unlike places like Japan, structures are not built to withstand the shock of a major quake.

It's not just buildings with that kind of vulnerability. It's people.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What the Quake Can't Take."

Cancer. Stroke. Heart attack. The death of a child. Or, like me, the death of the love of your life. It's just been a litany of loss lately among friends and acquaintances. Bad news from the doctor. Financial collapse. A devastating fire or storm. The collapse of a marriage. Mental health and anxiety issues are off the charts.

It's like we're all living in a quake prone zone. The question is not, "Will there be a lifequake?" The question is, "Is what I'm building my life on strong enough to withstand the trauma that shakes everything in my world?"

So many things we live for... we depend on... our "go to's" fail us when the quake hits. We look around and there's "only dust." What is there that the quake can't take?

That's something the Biblical psalmist addresses when he wrote these words in our word for today from the Word of God in Psalm 46: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with surging... Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall". He's saying here that literally, everything is collapsing. But listen... "The Lord Almighty is with us."

A ship in a storm can be tossed around violently. But the anchor holds. Mine did nine years ago next month. It shook my world like nothing else ever could. The Great Quake - death - suddenly took my Karen, the love of my life since I was 19.

But there's something it couldn't take. My personal relationship with the only Person who ever beat death. The one man who walked out of His grave under His own power. Jesus. The Christ. The Son of God.

Yes, the one who promised to love me "til death do us part" kept her promise. But death did us part. But, in the words of Scripture, "Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39). It's the love we saw poured out for our sins on the day we call Good Friday. A love that didn't turn its back then. A love that never will.

Millions of people for two thousand years have anchored their life to this Jesus, and found that "we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19). It seems appropriate that on that morning we call Easter the Bible says, "there was a violent earthquake" at the tomb of Jesus. For that is the day He walked out of that grave to conquer the Great Quake of death.

Listen, if you want to be sure you belong to Him in an uncertain world, our website is there to help you begin a relationship with Him. Would you go there today? It's ANewStory.com.

Someday I will face the Great Quake. But not alone. For, as the Bible says, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For YOU are with me!" (Psalm 23:4)

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I was out of the country, and my wife was visiting her father, along with our daughter and son-in-law. My wife convinced her dad to hike with them back into the woods to see the spring where they used to go to get water when she was a little girl. That spring gushing from the rocks, just beneath a cave above it.

They spent a few minutes exploring and then they headed back. That night our son-in-law pulled out the video that he'd shot of their little expedition. As the picture panned past that darkened cave, he stopped the video and rewound it to get a closer look. And there, gleaming in the darkness, were the two eyes of a big cat - as in panther or cougar. They had not seen that cat - they had been exploring right beneath that cat - and they never knew the danger they were in.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Secret of Staying Safe."

I wonder how many of those you and I have had in our lives; the things that could have hurt us or destroyed us that we never knew about - the cats that never pounced. In an increasingly dangerous world, isn't it great to know that you are under that kind of protection?

Paul wrote about that security in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Timothy 4:17-18. He said, "I was delivered from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom." Now there is a pretty powerful antidote to fear! The Lord is going to rescue me from every threat, except one - the one that's designed to take me home, right on time. That's right on time according to the life plan He made for me before there was a me.

That doesn't mean we don't take precautions, the ones that God directs us to. Paul often continued to preach boldly, even when he knew there were forces who wanted to kill him in the city. But other times he left town quickly or sneaked out of the city in a basket. When Nehemiah and his workers were threatened, he said, "We prayed to our God and we posted a guard day and night" (Nehemiah 4:9). Now, look! Our faith is not in that guard but in our God. But sometimes God chooses to protect us through practical steps that He asks us to take.

But ultimately we're safe because Almighty God is watching over us. In just six verses in Psalm 121, it says "The Lord watches over you" five times! It concludes by saying, "The Lord will keep you from all harm - He will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore."

So, when is the last time you praised the Lord for all those cats that never pounced? For all those times you've been delivered from danger and never even knew it! Wait 'till we watch the video in heaven. I think we're going to be amazed at what could have happened that didn't!

By the way, something amazing happens when we finally come to the end of trying to make it to God our own way, and understand that God had to come for us in the person of His Son, Jesus. And the only way that the sin that keeps me out of heaven could be paid for was by His Son dying for me. See, we're totally not safe. We will never be safe forever. We will pay the price for the sin against the God that put us here unless that sin is forgiven by the only One who can, and that's the One who died to pay its penalty. That's God's Son, Jesus.

What happens when we put our life in His hands is for the first time in your life and finally and forever you are safe in the arms of the Savior. Have you ever given yourself to Him? Let this be the day. Open your heart to Him. Tell Him, "I'm Yours, Jesus." Go to our website and find out how - ANewStory.com.

When our kids were little, we used to put them to sleep every night singing a little chorus: "Safe am I, safe am I, in the hollow of His hand. Sheltered o'er, sheltered o'er, with His love forevermore. No ill can harm me, no foe alarm me, for He keeps both day and night. Safe am I, in the hollow of His hand." If that's where you are, you're really safe forever. If you've never put your life in Jesus' hands, come home. It's safe there.

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Clark Kent! What a wimp! I started watching Clark Kent when he was a "mild-mannered reporter," it said, "for a great metropolitan newspaper." I was a kid then. Poor Clark! He always seemed pretty easy to push around, kind of Joe Ordinary; "Clark Can't" really. Of course there was a secret no one in Metropolis suspected. No one knew that underneath that ordinary exterior was his real identity - Superman! Clark knew that he was a whole lot more than meets the eye.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Secret Identity, a Secret No More."

For many years the ancient Jews had been sort of Clark Kent - pushed around, ordinary, powerless. They had been the slave labor force of the Egyptian Empire, exploited, they were beaten and they were stripped of their dignity. In a word, they were victims. But not any more. No, God had delivered them. They were free! Outside that is, but they hadn't gotten that message inside. The Lord was giving them a super new identity, but they were still "Clark Kent-ing."

Our word for today from the Word of God, Leviticus 26, beginning at verse 12 (you're going to like this). God says, "I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high." Man, listen to who they are! God says, "You are My people, no longer slaves. The bars that have held you have been broken. You can walk with your head held high." God's saying, "I know what you were, but you can stop living like that now. You are liberated! You're Mine!"

They were out of Egypt, sure. But Egypt wasn't out of them. They were out of slavery, but the slavery wasn't out of them. You say, "What does that have to do with me?" A lot, especially if that word victim rings a bell in your heart. Because maybe you've been carrying around a lot of hurt. Honestly, there's been rejection, abuse, maybe rape, abandonment, betrayal. In some form, or maybe in many forms you have been the victim of someone else's sin. If you've been through a lot of pain, it is very natural to see your identity as a victim. Like a business card that has your name and your position on it, except yours has a name and it says "Victim."

But it doesn't have to be that way if you have given your heart to Jesus Christ. He's called Savior, Redeemer, Healer, and if you have Christ, you have a secret identity. A secret because maybe only He knows who you really are now. You don't have to be what you have been. You are no longer a slave He says. He's broken the bars that held you. You can walk with your head held high. You've been loved by God Himself. You've been cleaned up from the sins of the past - yours and those of others because of Jesus' death on the cross. He's made you a son of the King and daughter of the King. You're a prince; you're a princess. You don't have to make the future an extension of your painful or sinful past.

Ask for His grace to turn the page on your past and not be defined by it anymore. To begin a whole new volume. Begin to act as if you are who God says you are, not a victim but a victor.

Clark, maybe your secret identity has been secret even to you. But God says you're free! You're royalty! It's not a secret any more. You don't have to crawl anymore. Because of Jesus, you were meant to fly. It all comes together the day you begin your personal relationship with Jesus. That could be right now when you say, "Jesus, I am Yours."

He'll make you "a new creation," the Bible says. And our website will help you know you belong to Him. If you can get there today, it's ANewStory.com. This is who you were meant to be - new, because of Jesus.

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If we did a word association game with the words "San Francisco," well, two things that might come up very quickly would be Golden Gate Bridge and earthquakes. Actually, both of those subjects came up a lot when we were in San Francisco for some youth outreaches and to tape some special editions of a youth broadcast. We didn't arrange for a quake while we were there, but we did do a program based on them. And we actually did originate parts of other programs from near the Golden Gate Bridge and even on it. According to some local friends of mine there, and they could just be Californians pulling the leg of an East Coast boy, but they said that the bridge might be one of the safer places to be during an earthquake. No, it's not the one that folded during the last big quake, you might have seen pictures of that. They say one reason the Golden Gate could withstand a quake is this surprising fact - it's built in such a way, that it's flexible. In other words, when the earth under it starts moving, it doesn't just stand there rigid and break. It's built to flex when things are shaking. So, apparently a quake might shake it, but probably not break it.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Flexible Doesn't Break."

The question is how do you react when things start shaking all around you? The answer may be the difference between cracking under the stress and holding together through it. There's a synergy between the plans we make and God's plans that calls for some of that Golden Gate flexibility.

Our word for today from the Word of God, Proverbs 16:9 - "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." The Bible acknowledges that we will make plans, the question is whether those plans are rigid - if we're rigid about having it our way. That "but" after the part about our plans tells me that God has the right to pre-empt my plan, or delay my plan, or redirect my plan. After all, that's what "Lord" means. Often He leads us toward a certain outcome, only to surprise us with an interruption, or with the realization that He did want us on this road, but for a destination other than the one we expected. But God's idea is always a better idea. What looks like Plan B to me may well have been God's Plan A all along. "But the Lord determines his steps."

Notice how James teaches us to make our plans. James 4:15 - "You ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" See I'm a planner by nature. I work hard on those plans, I pray about those plans. I seek God's direction. But once the plan is set, whether it's for the next few hours or the next few years, I don't like change. But change is built into the system, folks, and those who meet changes with rigidity will eventually crack like an unmoving structure in an earthquake.

This recovering "rigidaholic," is that a word?, is slowly but surely learning to enjoy the surprises of God even when they don't appear to be, at least at first, pleasant surprises. And even if it's something Satan has thrown in, my Bible tells me that even that had to be cleared first with my Heavenly Father. If God said it was OK for me, why don't I just try to roll with the quake? For the sooner I embrace His purpose for what's happening, the sooner I'll experience His peace.

I should point out that the Golden Gate Bridge, while flexible, is not made out of Play-Doh. It has solid structure and so should your life and your days. This is no excuse for laziness or lack of planning. But it is an encouragement to folks who like control to loosen up a little bit and make room for God to do His very dynamic thing. It's the ones who are flexible that survive the shaking.

I was speaking in Mobile, Alabama when I heard about this amazing phenomenon that occasionally takes place there. It's along the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. They call it Jubilee. It happens on a summer night sometime between midnight and six, and the fish, and the crab, and all the other sea critters suddenly move in very close to the shore. It's like they get so close that many of them are right up on the beach. The locals just walk along and they scoop up the fish and the crab, and they gather as much seafood as they want. Imagine what an opportunity it is for the fishermen! I mean, they can grab anything they want without going out in a boat.

Now, this is believed to be caused by the sudden release of this cold, fresh water into the warm water of the bay. I've never been able to tell whether or not that's true. I've never interviewed the crab. That's what people think happens anyway. Whatever the reason, it is a great day for fishermen. It's a great day for everybody along that shore. In fact, in years past, the first one who saw it happening would holler, "Jubilee!" And then you could hear that good news being yelled from one door to another all along the shore. If I were there I would want to know too.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Rescue Window."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 9, beginning at verse 36. It says, "When Jesus saw the crowd He had compassion because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into His harvest fields.'" Sometimes I've asked farmers in kind of a word association what would they come up with, you know when I say the word "harvest." And they usually say, "Ready." In other words, there's a lot of people ready for Jesus. And in many ways that might be never more true than it is today. Because we're living in a painful world, an uncertain world, a lonely world that in many ways has made people more ready for Jesus than ever.

Now, watch my lips. "Jubilee!" When it's Jubilee time on Mobile Bay, the fish are desperately searching for oxygen and it brings them all within reach more than at any other time. Their need makes them reachable. This is a Jubilee moment now for reaching the lost people around you with the Good News about Jesus Christ.

On the one hand they're more lost than they've ever been. They know less about the Bible and about Jesus. They don't have much sense of right or wrong. They don't go to religious meetings. But the very things that have made them lost have made them ready. Relationships are disappointing, love is hard to come by, parenting is frightening, marriage is overwhelming, stress is out-of-control, the future unpredictable, and hope is evasive. The need for real love and real peace and real security and real answers has never been more intense. People are literally gasping for emotional and spiritual oxygen.

When it's Jubilee time, people know what to do. You don't sleep through it. It's a moment when there's a short time and then it's gone, like harvest. Everyone is on the beach for a catch, and that's where we as believers belong right now. This is no time for you or your group or your church to be inside doing Christian business as usual. It's time for everyone who names the name of Christ to be actively, boldly telling the people around them about your Jesus. It's a "drop everything" time to do what Jesus came here to do - to seek and to save those who are lost. If we do, we will be God's instruments to deliver dying people the life they are gasping for.

Remember, the people around you are ready. They're reachable right now. So, get out where the lost people are and bring them home to Jesus. Bring them home to heaven. Send the wakeup call all along the shore line, "It's Jubilee!"

When my son was 16 he was quite a "hunk"! I mean, we didn't tell him that, but I think he probably was. He didn't start out that way. But he began lifting weights and he did it regularly. And he loved to report his new "max" to us...you know, the maximum amount he was able to lift - his bench press. And occasionally he'd flex and have us see how particular muscles had grown. I guess I was supposed to go, "Oooo, Ahhhh!" I didn't exactly do that, but... Now, there are a number of factors that go into making a man achieve his full strength. Of course, lifting, lots of protein, certain vitamin supplements, sufficient rest, workouts, and a woman. Yeah! Yeah, he needs a woman to be really strong where it really counts.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Strongest Men in the World."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Proverbs 31:23. It's in that famous passage where we meet what's called the Proverbs 31 woman - that's what a lot of people call it. It's about the virtuous woman, and it says, "Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land." Now, in those days, to be at the city gate was the equivalent to being kind of in the top management office today. It means that you're one of the leaders of the community, and that's where her husband is.

This guy is a strong man; he's a winner, but the rest of the passage is about his wife strangely enough. Here are some excerpts: "Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good not harm all the days of her life. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. When it snows, she has no fear for her household." Verse 26 says, "She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue." This is one strong woman!

Verse 28: "Her children arise and call her blessed. Her husband, he praises her. He says, 'Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.'" Okay, you get the distinct impression here that the reason this man is such a winner is because of the woman in his life. You know the old saying, "Behind every man is a great woman and an astonished mother-in-law."

Well, I don't know about that, but this man is smart enough to lean heavily on the woman in his life. It says, "He has full confidence in her." It says, "She speaks with wisdom." "He praises her for what she has done for him." How unlike many modern men and their attitude toward the women in their life.

I know men who just can't take advice from a woman. They think a woman's perspective isn't as strong as a man's; that they're weak if they listen to a woman. They kind of think women are superficial. We're logical, they just deal with feelings all the time. Actually truth is usually in the middle. We need the male logic and we need that unique feminine insight to get the real truth.

Sometimes because a man has felt dominated by a woman at some time in his life, he rejects any strength that a woman might offer him. Well, let me tell you, a truly strong man, like the man here in the Bible, is open to a strong, spiritual woman. Not being dominated by her, but being helped by her. I have to say over the years my wife's counsel was the best counsel I ever had in my life and it made me stronger. A wise man knows that we as men are incomplete. Our logic, our aggressiveness give us only half the story. We need the sensitivity, the radar, the attention to detail, the instinctive insight of a woman.

Listen to your mother, listen to your sister, listen to your wife...the women in your life. One measure of the strength of a man is his openness to the strength of a woman. The men who listen to and respect the women in their life? They're the strongest men in the world.

Some 16 million people saw Christopher Jones' skydive on YouTube. He bails out of the plane. Everything's going great...until the seizure. After four years of being seizure-free, he was cleared to jump.

But at 9,000 feet, Christopher suddenly rolled onto his back, unconscious. Plunging earthward at 120 miles an hour! Thank God, his instructor Sheldon McFarlane responded immediately. But as Christopher convulsed, he was falling farther out of reach. Finally, McFarlane got close enough to reach his unconscious student; just 4,000 feet from looming disaster below. He pulled his student's ripcord, the chute opened, and in Christopher's words, "He saved my life."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When Someone You Know is Falling Fast."

It was a heart-stopper for sure, and for me it was a solemn reminder. On almost any given week there is someone in my personal world - and probably in yours - who is falling fast, spinning out of control and in need of a rescue. And you're the one who's in a position to catch them if you notice them.

Maybe it's a disturbing post on Facebook, a sudden withdrawing from people, just a troubled countenance, mood swings, some angry outburst. In one form or another, what you're seeing and hearing is a cry for help. The question is, "Is my radar on for a hurting person, for a wounded person, an excluded person, maybe a lonely person, the person with the breaking heart or the broken heart?"

Or am I all wrapped up in my list, my schedule, and my troubles, too self-absorbed to notice someone who's falling within my reach? But noticing isn't enough. Next comes dropping everything to help them, because nothing's more urgent than rescuing the guy who's going down.

Centuries ago, God appeared to an outback shepherd in a burning bush - Moses. You may have heard of him. And God told Moses, in our word for today from the Word of God, Exodus 3, beginning in verse 7: "I have seen the misery of My people in Egypt (where they of course were oppressed slaves)...I have heard them crying out...I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them." Good! Now the shocker for Moses in verse 10, "So now, go. I am sending you" (Exodus 3:7-10).

That might be a conversation God's wanting to have with you - probably minus the burning bush. Because He has heard the cries, even the silent cries of the people around you. And He has a plan to rescue them - you.

It is for rescue that God came to earth; to die on a cross to rescue us from the awful eternal death penalty of our sins, to walk out of His grave to offer us a forever with Him. And He rescues us to then be a rescuer; to tell people His Good News about belonging to Him, to be His voice, to be His face, to be His hands. He wants you to deliver His message. He wants you to be the one who lifts their burden in His name. He wants you to be the one who shows them what He's like. He wants you to be the one who tells them how to be with Him forever by having their sins forgiven at Jesus' cross.

How are you doing? Because that's why you are where you are. God put you there to rescue some folks. Maybe you've never experienced the rescuing power of Jesus and you're falling fast. He has come to swoop down and grab you today. Would you grab that hand, that nail scarred hand and say, "Jesus, I'm yours." Begin to belong to Him today. Be safe forever.

You can find out more about how to be long to Him if you just go to our website. It's ANewStory.com. If you've been rescued by Jesus, then you've got to dive in for the rescue of others. It's not optional. Not when someone's falling fast. No, It's life-or-death.

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When someone in our house felt overworked or unfairly overloaded, sometimes you'd hear them say, kiddingly I think, "Hey, I thought Lincoln freed the slaves!" Well, actually, I think the members of our family might have been right about all of us. We do need an update on that Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, you might be surprised who the slaves are today, and the slave master. Spiritually, that is. The slaves are nice people, successful people - maybe someone like you.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The 'Busy' Club."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is found in Deuteronomy 5. I'm going to read from verse 12. Now, this is the second time around to a new generation of Jews that the Ten Commandments are given. In the original Ten Commandments it said that you are to keep the Sabbath Day holy - a day of rest. But notice there is a new addition this time - I'll read it to you.

"Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy as the Lord your God has commanded you." Now, that's pretty much the same as the first time around in Exodus 20. "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant..."

Now, this sort of closes up the loophole, saying, "Okay, I won't work, I'll just get the other guys to do it." It goes on to say, "no, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals." Now, just in case you had a visitor in the house and you were going to have him mow the lawn for you, it says, "not the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day."

Now, get this command here. He talks about our working life, he acknowledges that we are going to be working much or most of the time, but then He says, "It is my commandment that you get regular rest and regular worship during that time. Then He goes back to the subject of slavery. He says, "There was a time, my people, when you had no choice about working all the time. You were slaves then. There was a time when you had to work without rest, but now you can choose, and I want you to choose regularly, on a weekly basis, to stop and rest and stop all the busyness around you and bring it to a halt.

Now He's saying, "Don't lose your priorities now that you can choose to rest." You know, in our world today we are like all accelerator and no brakes. We're living lives without Sabbaths. They're supposed to be part of the created order of God. Think about your own life - the rat race, the gerbil wheel you run on. Your times off maybe are getting farther apart, they're shorter. Your family is beginning to feel your absence because you've been running to work so much. You've piled one commitment on top of another, so you can't ever stop. And you've got so many competing commitments, there's just no time to rest. There's little time left just to crash, to play, to laugh, to think, to meet your Lord. You're not doing your work - you are your work.

Stand back, would you? There's a better way to live with regular rest as ordained by Almighty God. Otherwise, the implication is, you're a slave. You're a slave to your work. Don't live in violation of God's command to rest. The alternative is slavery. And remember, Jesus freed the slaves.

My daughter and I had not been back to that camp in the Tetons since she was a little girl, like five years old. We stayed there as a family way back then, because our good friends from college ran the camp. There she struck up a friendship with their five-year-old who's named Holly. Well, the camp has grown a lot over the years, and so have our daughters who are speeding through their lives.

It was kind of fun for them to see each other again and Holly took my daughter for a little private tour of a bunk house that was there some years ago when we were there. They had to bend down for what Holly wanted to show her. But there it was, still decorating the wood, in living Crayola color, Holly's name in red crayon and my daughter's in blue Crayon; both written in distinctive penmanship that five-year-olds have, and both still there after all these years.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Lasting Mark of Life's Mistakes."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Genesis 32, beginning at verse 24. Jacob has been having a wrestling match with someone who turns out to be divine. And verse 24 says, "Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak." Finally the fight ends when that man touches the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with that man.

Later, Jacob knows who he met there. He called the place Peniel, saying, "'It is because I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.' The sun rose above him as he had passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip." Jacob struggled with God. He'd actually wrestled with Him his whole life. But at this brook he goes for God's full blessing. God changes him from Jacob, the cheat, and He changes his name to Israel, Prince with God. The whole nation will be named after him. God forgives. God transforms Jacob, and He's still doing that with Jacobs today.

But even though the struggle with God was over, Jacob carried a life-long reminder of his struggle - the limp. The sin was forgiven, the man was changed, but as happens so often, he'd struggled with God and that left a mark on him the rest of his life.

Now, my daughter couldn't get over how long the marks had lasted for what she did many years ago. In a way, that's a picture of how sin is. Even though the sin is long behind us, long forgiven, often the consequences, the marks of our sin are there for years to come. Sin is cruel. You were once its slave, and you're free now but you still carry some of the scars of how your slave master treated you. You always will.

We need to remember what sin does, because those scars, those lasting consequences will deter us from leaving God's ways again. Now, forgiveness comes quickly when we bring our sin to the cross of Jesus, but it doesn't come cheaply; it cost Him his life. But the ready availability of forgiveness should not make us forget the sometimes continuing consequences of sin - the limp that is there long after our struggle with God is behind us.

I think of four Rs that explain some of the lasting marks of sin. Reputation - the damage to your reputation can last a long time. Regrets - there for years. Relationships that were damaged that are hard to repair. Recollection - the memories that just keep coming back. It's a sobering reminder to seriously count the cost before we take any spiritual detour.

The scars of our past aren't all bad. Not if they remind us to stay away from sin because of its price tag. And it's wonderful to know that God has forever erased those sins from His book. You say, "Well, Ron, I'm not sure I've ever had that happen." Well, have you ever, in your heart, gone to His cross and said, "Jesus, You're dying for my sins there."

If you've never put your life in His hands, do it now. You say, "Jesus, I'm yours." Our website is there to help you be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.

And the next time sin looks enticing and interesting, let's not forget what our daughter was so graphically reminded of, staring at the marks she made so many years ago. The marks still remain long after what we did to make the marks is over.

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My friend was an executive at a Bible distribution society, and he told me about one of their workers in Zimbabwe. His name was Gabriel. What a great name for a man distributing Bibles, huh? Their policy was to sell their Bibles for a small price so people would value them. The problem they encountered was that some people were actually using the thin paper of those Bibles to make cigarettes! In fact, one potential customer actually said to Gabriel, "I'll take one of your Bibles, but if I do, I'll smoke it."

Gabriel gave an angelic response. He said, "That's OK, if you promise to read it before you smoke it." The man promised. When Gabriel saw the man several months later, he asked him about the Bible. The man said, "Well, I read Matthew, and I smoked it. I read Mark - smoked it. I read Luke, and I smoked it. And then I read John 3:16, and I haven't smoked since!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Power to Really Change Things."

John 3:16, of course, is that wonderful revelation that "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life." And that simple Gospel of God's love and the sacrifice of His Son for our sins has transformed so many people's lives over the years, including mine; including that man in Africa.

You and I are living at a time and in a world where there are a lot of battles to fight: pornography, abortion, media violence, racism, false religions and spiritualities, things that threaten the family, all kinds of sinful lifestyles. The list goes on and on. And it's important to stand for God's standards, God's values, and God's boundaries no matter what the culture is saying. But it's important to do it lovingly.

We need to remember, though, that there is only one weapon that really changes things, that changes people, that changes a culture. God talks about it in our word for today from the Word of God from Romans 1, in some verses that begin in verse 9. Paul talks about "God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the Gospel of His Son... I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes... for in the Gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith. "

Now, God says His salvation, His righteousness - the only transformers that really change things - come through "the preaching of the Gospel." Just look at Gabriel's African friend. He didn't stop smoking because of a campaign against smoking; he was changed by coming face-to-face with Jesus Christ! That Gospel is still, along with prayer, the most powerful life-changing, family-changing, marriage-changing, world-changing force on earth! Because it changes people from the inside out!

The early Christians knew the power was in the Gospel. Their culture was more depraved than ours, and their weapon of choice was not politics or programs or protests. It was presenting Jesus' cross and His empty tomb! Dictators across the centuries have known the power that's in the Gospel. That's why they have done everything in their power to shut it down. They understand its power to undermine the most powerful forces of darkness on earth.

Now, complacency in an ever-darkening world is unacceptable. We need to take a stand in love. But we need to lead with the only weapon that really has the power to change things - the explosive story of Jesus Christ and His cross and His resurrection. That's where the power is. That's where the change will come from. It's the only weapon of which the Bible says, "It is the power of God." The Gospel of Jesus Christ! And it's yours to share with people you love.

Spend yourself - spend what you have to get that life-giving message into the hearts of the dying men and women that you know!

My wife was like a human camera. She was able to record in her mind life experiences in living color and in full detail. I wish I could do it! And growing up on a little farm in the hills gave her a childhood full of memorable memories.

For example, on wintry nights her parents would go out to the barn to milk the cows and they had a lantern in their hand because they didn't have any electricity. And their house was in a hollow in the woods where the darkness was really dark. So my wife kept watching the lantern. She remembers one time when she heard people talking about a panther in the area. That's what a little girl wants to hear, right? And the adult said that you would know the panther was around when you heard its sound, and it would be like the scream of a woman.

One particular night she stood there with one hand on the screen door of the house and the other hand on her tiny little sister waiting for her parents to come back from the barn, watching that lantern. That's when she heard it; the screams of the panther. Well, you can only imagine the rush of thoughts in a little girl's mind; the fears racing through her little mind. But my wife said, "I knew my parents were okay as long as that light was steady. I just kept watching that lantern for a steady light."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Light in a Dark Night."

Now, at one time or another in our life we have all been that little girl in the door of that farmhouse. It's dark; it's scary and something you fear seems close. It may be that kind of time in your life right now and you need a steady light to give you something you can count on in this darkness.

Well, there's our word for today from the Word of God, John 8:12. Listen to what Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." So, Jesus said, "I am the light." And Jesus is a sure guarantee, "If I am your light, you will never walk in darkness." He said He's the steady light we're looking for.

Now, you've lived long enough to probably have other lights let you down. Right? The people who were going to be there for you? The light went out. A job you could count on is suddenly gone. A religion that maybe it met your needs but at the time when you needed answers the most, it just couldn't deliver. And now maybe in a dark place, Jesus - the light - stands before you and He's beckoning, He's extending His invitation, "Follow Me." "Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" He said.

See, those who commit their lives to Jesus Christ live under this wonderful promise, "I will never leave you or forsake you." When no one else can do it, Jesus is there. When the situation is bigger than you are, the Son of God is bigger than the situation is. When earth has no answers, Jesus will lead you through the confusion and the hurt. But you can't see it right now as long as there's a wall between you and Him. That wall separates you and it's what the Bible calls sin. You don't have any power to remove it.

But in the words of the Bible, "While we were still sinners..." In other words, while the wall was still there, "Christ died for us." He died so He could tear down your sin-wall by paying your death penalty for you running your own life. And now He waits for you to say, "Jesus, I'm putting my total trust in You to rescue me from my sin, from the penalty of my sin."

Have you ever reached out to Him in that way? Have you ever had a time when you grabbed Jesus like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard and say, "Jesus, you're my only hope"? If you've never done that, you want to be sure you belong to Him finally. Would you go to our website? It's ANewStory.com and right there I will show you how you can be sure you belong to Him.

And then you're not going to walk alone through the dark ever again. That dark and scary night on that little farm, that little girl found security because she could see a steady light out there. And there's one waiting for you. That security is Jesus Christ, our ever-living Savior. Follow His light and you will always be safe.

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I heard not long ago about a little boy who was trying to move this huge rock. He pulled, and he pushed, and grunted and strained, trying to move it with leverage from a board, but it was all to no avail. Finally his Dad said, "Son, have you used all your resources?" "Oh, yeah, Dad. I can't make it move! I've tried everything." And his Dad replied, "No, you haven't. You haven't asked me to help you yet."

Maybe you're at a point right now. Oh, you're not a little boy, but you've got a big rock that needs to move and you desperately need your father's help. But you're going it alone doing everything you can to move it. Well actually, there's something that keeps your Father right now from lifting that load of yours.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Bitterness vs. Blessing."

Our word for today from the Word of God is found in Hebrews 12:15. It starts out talking about a very sobering possibility. "See to it," the writer says, "that no one misses the grace of God." Man, there's a lot of things in your life that you could do without, but you cannot go without the grace of God. This says, "See that you don't miss God's grace."

Now, he's writing to believers here. This doesn't mean you don't become a Christian. It means that as a believer, you need God's grace but for some reason you don't have it. And maybe you're in a situation now like that little boy where you've got a big rock to move and the pressure is really heavy. And, well, maybe there's a family problem, or there's this financial boulder to move, you've got medical responsibilities, whatever is crushing you right now. But God's grace is supposed to be sufficient, right? What happened? Why is this so hard? Well, maybe you're missing the grace of God. How do you do that?

Well, listen to the second half of the verse: "and see to it that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." Wow! Think about what this verse is saying.

Bitterness blocks the grace of God. Your Father is not going to help you lift that rock if there is bitterness in your heart. Now, you may not realize it, you may not call it that, but bitterness has taken root. You've been under all this pressure, and maybe you're angry and you're resentful toward a family member because of their part in your frustration. Maybe you've got bad feelings that have grown toward a teacher, an employer, a coworker who is making your life miserable. Maybe you're even bitter toward God because you don't understand what He's doing or why He's waiting. There's somebody in your past, and they're just running your life basically because you can't stop thinking about what they did to you and how you feel toward them.

Somewhere, maybe, there's this boiling anger inside, and like a great cloud that suddenly blocks out the sun, your bitterness is blocking the grace of God just when you need it most. Ironically, you've never needed God's strength, and His closeness, and His peace more than you do now. This rock is too heavy for you, but your prayer seems hollow and you feel so alone, even at the breaking point. Maybe it's because you've got some forgiving to do, some letting go of a hurt, trusting God to meet out justice to make things right.

Your Father is standing there ready to help as only He can, but you've got to release that bitterness that's making your burden so much heavier. Why carry that load too? Your Father wants to trade your bitterness for His amazing grace.

I used to sing this little song in Sunday school. Actually, all of the kids sang it: "Be careful little eyes what you see." That was the first verse. And then we went on to "Be careful little ears what you hear." And then "Be careful little hands what you do." Of course, "Be careful little feet where you go," and so on. Actually, there is a practical truth hidden in that little song. It's about this thing called sin, which isn't just a church word or a preacher's word. I mean, it's real. I mean, your hands sin, your eyes sin, your ears sin; it's not just a concept.

I've always found it convenient to think of sin in terms of things that someone else is doing, right? Well, when I make a list of the worst sins there are, it's usually things that I don't do. Maybe you do. Then I realize the body part that should be voted most likely to sin. Suddenly I'm on the list.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Most Sinful Part of Your Body."

Here's our word for today from the Word of God. We're in the third chapter of the book of Romans. It's a very interesting passage because it's like a spiritual X-ray, and the doctor, if you want to put it that way, gives the conclusion of this X-ray and what he has discovered in chapter 3 verse 12 and then again in verse 23. In verse 12 he says, "All have turned away, all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one." Then in verse 23 it's reiterated when he says, "For all have sinned..." I mean, there is no exception here. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The spiritual X-ray shows that we all have cancer - spiritual cancer.

Then he goes into more detail between verses 12 and 23 with how that sinful cancer shows up. Listen to these statements, "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit." "The poison of vipers is on their lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood." "There is no fear of God before their eyes."

Did you notice there are six statements here that show the kind of spiritual cancer we have, and they all are really like biological; they involve parts of the body? One had to do with the eyes; one had to do with our feet. The other four had to do with the same area of the body: the tongue, lips, mouth and throat. So it would appear that most sinning is done with your mouth. Isn't that interesting? The most spiritually infected part of your body - the cancer comes out through our mouth more often than anywhere else.

The Bible says, "No human being can tame the tongue." That's in James 3:8. We tend to think of sin in terms of adultery, abortion, murder, abuse, drugs, stealing. But this brings it right down to where I live, because the greatest sins - the most frequent sins - are sins of the tongue. Think about it, the hurt that you and I inflict on people, the things we say in anger, the putdowns, the lies, the criticism, the negative comments, the gossip. They all come through our mouth.

This indictment tells me two things. Number one: I really need a Savior because if sin is mostly sin done with my mouth and my tongue, I really need a Savior. And you may have never experienced what it is to have the man who died for you on a cross forgive you of every wrong thing, every hurting thing, every angry thing, every dirty thing you've ever said or done. It's so wonderful to be clean. He can do that for you!

Secondly, I must focus the lordship of Christ on my mouth and say, "Jesus, be Lord of what I say; how I talk. The cancer of sin has poisoned our daily speech, but David said, "The Lord put a new song in my mouth."

Don't you want this transforming relationship with Jesus Christ? He'll make you a whole new creation, the Bible says. Let me show you how at our website. Check out ANewStory.com because maybe this is the first day of your new story.

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There are those moments when I make life much harder than it has to be, and in fact sometimes I wonder if I'm slipping. There was a time not too long ago when I looked frantically for my house keys. And, of course, I mobilized the whole family and said, "I've got to get out of here! I'm running late! Everybody go on a search mission; we've got to find my keys." I found them in the door right where I'd left them. I've been doing that since I was about 20.

Did you ever find your car keys missing and you run all over the place, and you find them in your own hand? Oh, you say, "Oops!" Or your glasses and they're on your face. It happens more often than you might think. The answer you've been looking for frantically might be right there in front of you. You might be surprised how close the answer is to what you've been looking for.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Answer Under Your Nose."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God about the answer under your nose is in John 14, beginning at verse 6. "Jesus answered, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you really knew Me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.' Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father and that would be enough for us.' Jesus answered, 'Don't you know Me, Philip, even after I have been among you for such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, "Show us the Father"?'"

This passage introduces us to what I call the Philip Syndrome. Philip has this problem - we read about it in the New Testament. He seems to have the tendency to miss an answer that is right in front of him. And who knows, you might be suffering from the Philip Syndrome. Remember back to the feeding of the five thousand? Philip said, "Lord, what are we going to do? We don't have near enough money, even if we go to a bank and get a loan. How are we ever going to feed all these people?" And Jesus said, "Why don't you go look for a lunch? The answer's right here. All we need's a lunch - go find a lunch."

Here He's looking for some special event. He says, "Lord, we want to see the Father. We want to have a big, spiritual event here." And Jesus said, "Look at Me! I'm right in front of you." The answer in John 14 was right in front of Philip. I wonder if the answer you've been waiting for, straining for, praying for could be right in front of you. For example, maybe you've been waiting for just the right person to come along to fill a very important slot. Why don't you look around at the people you already have right now instead of pinning all your hopes on somebody that Scotty's going to beam down from the Enterprise? Maybe the person you need has been right under your nose all along, and you haven't seen what they could do.

Or maybe you need to look again at your money and your resources, and find if there's a creative way to use what you already have instead of waiting for more. Maybe the answer you've been looking for, praying for is right there in the resources you already have if you just used them differently. Or look at yourself. Maybe you're the answer to your prayer. Maybe God wants you to do what you've been praying for somebody else to do.

Our ministry started in New York years ago when a young woman came up to me and said, "Ron, I've been praying for a year for somebody to be the first Youth For Christ staff worker." She said, "You know what? I think it's me." The answer was right under her nose.

Yeah, maybe you're the answer to your own prayer. Maybe God is leading you to stop doing something or to start doing something. You're just not obeying, you're hoping for something easy. Quit running around looking for an answer. Stand back! Maybe you've got it. Maybe the answer is right in front of you.

Back when I was flying a great deal, people would often ask me where I lived, and I would frequently answer with the name of the airline I flew on the most. Now, when I hear of airplane crashes and disasters, it kind of hits me personally. I think it does anybody who has been a frequent flyer. Whether you're a flyer or not, though, there are images of certain airline tragedies that kind of forever imprint on your memory. One of those for me was the ValuJet crash in the everglades. It's been a number of years now, but the entire plane and all its passengers just vanished in the swamp.

But to one man, there's another image related to that crash. According to one news report, he used his I.D. to help his friend purchase his ticket for that flight. That friend didn't have sufficient I.D. with him at the time. And the man who bought the ticket watched his friend and all those other passengers boarding. The man who bought the ticket simply said, "I cannot forget their faces." And then he was quoted as saying, "If only there had been some signs of what was going to happen. If only I had known to warn them."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Getting Passengers Off the Fatal Flight."

Now, if anyone had a warning of what would have happened to that fatal flight, you know they would have done everything possible to keep the passengers from going. But seldom do we have such a warning. When it comes to when the people around us will go into eternity, we have all the signs, all the warning we need. God tells us in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9, "Those who do not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord."

Without the Savior, no one we know is going to be able to get to heaven. That means hell. Now, our word for today from the Word of God, Proverbs 24:11 - "Rescue those being led away to death. Hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this,' does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who guards your life know it? Will He not repay each person according to what he has done?"

See, if you know people on a flight that leads to death, your responsibility is obvious. Rescue them! But if you look around at most of Jesus' followers today, we're not in a rescue mode. There's little sense of the life-or-death urgency about introducing those around us to Jesus. We need to ask, "Do we really believe the people we know will be lost forever if they don't know Christ? Do we really believe they're spiritually dying?"

Someone suggested to me recently, they called Christians practical Universalists. Now, in theological circles, a Universalist basically is someone who believes that everyone will eventually make it with Christ or not. Practical Universalists probably don't believe that, they believe, as the Bible teaches, that people must have the Savior to go to heaven; they just don't act like it. They act like the people who think that folks are going to make it without Jesus. Yet the Bible says, "There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Without the man who died to pay for our sins, we'll have to pay for them.

What about the people you live with, you live close to, the people you work with, you go to school with? You see some of those faces? The Bible clearly teaches that sin has an eternal death penalty and that Jesus and only Jesus died to pay that death penalty. And that we will pay that death penalty for our sins if we don't accept the payment Jesus made because of His love for us.

The people around you are on a flight that ends in eternal death and you and I have the information that can save them. Pretty clear, our responsibility, huh? "Rescue those who are being led away to death." Begin to pray daily by name with life-or-death passion for the people around you. Ask God for the words and the opportunity to tell them about your Jesus.

You know what God's Word says, and He's the final word. You know where the Christ-less flight is headed. You can see their faces. Be the one who gets them off that fatal flight and onto the one that will take them to eternal life.

Do you remember Humpty Dumpty? Well, you might be in the middle of a Humpty Dumpty relationship right now. You remember he fell down, went to pieces and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Maybe that's how you feel right now; there are pieces all around you, and there's no one to put them together. The wreckage? Well, it could be a broken relationship or maybe a breaking relationship with a parent, or a child, a husband, a wife, or a friend. If you're one of the King's men or women, there's actually something you can do to put the pieces back together again if you will.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Putting Broken Back Together."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God really has something to do with broken or breaking relationships. It says in Romans 12:17-18, "Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."

Now, this says that there is a segment of any relationship that really is up to you. And as much as it depends on you; you cannot control the other person's response of course. But your part should always contribute to peace. Now, it's very easy to hide your responsibility for the brokenness of that relationship, or the strain, or the distance.

You can say, "Oh, listen, what good would it do? They're never going to change." Or, "He/she doesn't understand; they don't want to understand." Or how about this, "If I did talk to them, they'd never listen." Or, "Listen, you know, I've tried so hard. What's the use?"

Listen, that relationship is worth fighting for. You're going to carry with you wherever you go the remains of that broken relationship, like all the broken pieces of Humpty Dumpty, carried around inside of you. I wonder, would you take one more initiative? Would you try to build a paper bridge to that person? To be able to say, "As much as I could do, I have done." You know what I'm going to ask you to do? Write a letter.

Now, if you haven't written a letter to them yet, well then maybe you haven't done all you could. You see, when you write, here's what happens. It will be much clearer than if you don't write and you try to just say it, because when you just say it you get distracted. And they'll answer and you'll answer back. And also, if you'll write it they'll consider it a lot more seriously; they'll read it over and over again and they're not going to have to be thinking of what they're going to say next. So, you sort of have their full attention.

And I'd like to suggest to you five paragraphs in that letter with that person that, well, there's a strained relationship. I'll give you the opening sentence of each paragraph, and then it's up to you.

Paragraph number one, "I love you..." Start with that; explain your love for them. The second paragraph, "Thank you for..." Just begin to reflect on some of the things you do appreciate about them. I know there's a lot of things that frustrate you, bother you, but you never would have had a relationship with them if there weren't some things you appreciate about them too. Would you start to list those? "Thank you for..." The third paragraph begins with these very difficult words, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for my part of the brokenness; for anything I've contributed to a broken or strained relationship." The fourth paragraph says, "I wish we could... Here's how I'd like our relationship to be..." "Whatever's happened in the past, here's how I'd like it to be from now on." The last paragraph, "I promise..." "Here's my commitments to you." Okay, did you get that? "I love you," Thank you," "I'm sorry," "I wish we could," "I promise," and then you get on your knees and you lay that letter before the Lord and you pray over it.

And then you talk about it with the person after it arrives. Let them read it. Ask them if they would talk with you after it arrives. Look, what have you got to lose? And maybe it will be a new beginning. For some people I know it has been. And you will have fulfilled what the Scripture says, "As far as it depends on you, live at peace."

Give God a chance to take that relationship and mend it again, using that letter as a beginning, because that relationship is going to be a part of you wherever you go.

It was quite a few years ago when I heard about this young man on Long Island who took his sister for a ride in the family car. You say, "Oh, big deal." Well, it's no big deal except that the boy was five years old. Yes, it's true! His mother was sick in bed and his little sister said, "I want to go to New York City." So he crawled up on top of the refrigerator, got his mother's car keys out of her purse, took his sister out, belted her in, put on his seat belt, and turned on the car. It's crazy but it's true! He drove to a stop light and stopped. Then he moved forward when he was supposed to.

Finally a policeman became involved. He had just seen a driverless car go by! So, he drove up behind it and turned on the siren. As soon as the young boy heard the siren he pulled the car over very neatly, got out and talked to the officer. It was pretty incredible. And fortunately, he didn't go very far.

This little amusing incident could have turned into a horrible tragedy. A five-year-old child has no business driving, and neither do you.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Never Meant To Drive."

The Apostle Paul's lifelong struggle finally led him through some of the most intense pressure of his life. And then he let go, and he learned a liberating lesson. It's recorded for us in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 1. I'll begin reading at verse 8. He talks about "the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia." "We were under great pressure..." Maybe you can relate to some of this. "...far beyond our ability to endure, so we despaired even of life. Indeed in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened..." Now, he's found out the reason for it all, "...this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God."

Paul says, "I finally turned over the wheel to Jesus." You and I were never meant to drive just like that little five-year-old boy. Oh, we'll give God a lot. We'll give Him time, we'll give Him money, we'll give Him our talents, we'll give Him attendance at His meetings, we'll give Him service, and we'll hold offices. We'll give Him everything but control; that's the last bastion. Who's really in charge? For Paul there had to be some dents, some damage, some crashes until he finally relinquished control; until he said, "I quit relying on me, it is totally up to You, Lord."

We keep trying to negotiate a partnership with God, and God insists on nothing less than ownership. If you could see your life as God sees it, you might see this little guy or girl (that's you or me) trying to see over the steering wheel of your life, doing your best to drive. You can pull it off for a little while, but you know ultimately you're going to crash. In fact, maybe things are even swerving a little bit right now. Maybe you can hear the siren behind you. Maybe you're busy serving the Lord. Paul was. Maybe you know God's Word. Paul sure did. Maybe you've really proclaimed Christ as your Lord. Well, Paul had. But Paul also was still relying on his own strength, and education, and gifts, and brilliance. Thirty years in, he finally learned to really turn over the wheel fully to the Lord Jesus.

How many crashes will it take before you realize you really are doing the driving and that you were never meant to? He's calling you to a deeper "yieldedness" than you've ever allowed before. And it could be that you have never even considered giving Jesus the wheel of your life. The Bible says that sin really is us running our life instead of God running it; hijacking it from the One who gave it to us. Jesus went to a cross to make it possible for you to have every sin of your life forgiven and for Him to take your life where it was created to go.

Maybe you've never surrendered the wheel to Him. Why try to drive any longer? Tell Him today, "I'm not driving any more, Jesus. You are. From now on, I am Yours." Our website will help you know you belong to Him, finally. Go to ANewStory.com.

Life becomes a whole lot safer when you relinquish that steering wheel that you've been clenching so tightly and so long. You're a whole lot safer when you're the passenger and Jesus is driving.

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When our kids were growing up we occasionally had our own personal emergency room at our house! Our youngest son dislocated his ankle in football, so the doctor put an air cast on his ankle for about six weeks for support. Oh, and then the oldest son, yeah he had surgery for a knee injury that he got in sports. So they recommended that he wear a knee brace whenever he played a game where he had to pivot much. So, let's see. You've got your ankle cast; you've got your knee brace. It's all based on a simple principle that prevents further injury.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Fortifying Your Weak Spot."

Okay, our word for today from the Word of God is from Luke 4 where Jesus is in the desert. "He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them He was hungry. The Devil said to Him, 'If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.' Jesus answered, 'It is written, man does not live on bread alone.'" And at that point He is quoting a Scripture that He has obviously memorized from Deuteronomy 8:3.

Okay, where was Jesus' weak spot there in the wilderness? Well, obviously after 40 days, it was His need for food. Where did the Devil aim his temptation? Well, at Jesus' need for food, of course. And you notice Jesus' response - a verse that directly addresses the point where He was vulnerable. It's about bread. It's about food. Basically a verse that says, "Life is bigger than food." Okay, I've got a feeling that wasn't the first time Jesus said that verse. I have a feeling that during those days of fasting, He'd been drawing strength from that verse frequently. It's like a brace on a weakened knee - He applied Scripture to the area where He would tend to be weak.

Now, unlike what the four spiritual laws say about God, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life," the Devil hates you and has a terrible plan for your life. He's sized up that vulnerable spot, and he's going to try to bring you down with that. So it's pretty important that you size it up, or you're going to be easy prey. Jesus knew his vulnerable spot, and He braced it with Scripture; specific Scripture that dealt with that specific issue. If the Devil is going to bring you down, what weakness do you think he'll use? Oh, you probably know. He's pushed that button many times. It's worked all too often. See, it's important for you to find Scripture that gives you God's view on your weak spot. Memorize it; repeat it to yourself frequently, not just when you're under attack. I think that's what Jesus did.

Re-program yourself by thinking Scripture where you usually think sin, and then hammer the Devil with God's Word and a response that is biblical whenever temptation comes. Temptation comes to the door, God's Word answers it. The Devil can't stand a biblical response.

So, where is the hole in your armor; that weak spot? Is it an old bitterness, maybe the tendency to think you're worthless, your sexual desires, maybe your thought life, tending to worry a lot, tending to run ahead of God. The need to be in control all the time. You know what it is. You've lived with that weakness for a long time; now it's time to cover it, fortify it with Scripture.

You're ready for the Devil when you keep covering your weak spot with God's Word about it. That's a strong spiritual brace that will help you avoid any further injury. So, support that weak spot with the strength of words from God.

I'll always remember, it was Friday in August. All of us who were landing at O'Hare Airport in Chicago that day had plans, and schedules, and things we had to do, and places we had to be. But as far as I know, none of us made it. That day Chicago had a record-breaking rain storm followed by massive flooding. And since there's only one viaduct that goes into O'Hare Airport and out, it had four feet of water. O'Hare became an island. Welcome to Camp O'Hare! It was flooded closed.

Well, many people spent the day trying to find either a way out, which didn't work very well, or a place to spend the night, but virtually no one did what they'd planned to do that day, including me, all because of one storm. No matter how rich you were or how poor, or how powerful or insignificant, how young, how old, suddenly your destiny was out of your control. You know, storms always have that effect.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Safe in Any Storm."

Our word for today from the Word of God is going to come from the sometimes obscure book of Nahum, one of those Minor Prophets in the Old Testament. Minor because the book is short, not because what they have to say is minor. Remember as we look at this verse that life's hard times are often portrayed in scripture as storms, and that's appropriate because it speaks of situations where you can no longer control your outcome.

That's what storms in our life - what they do to us. Medical storms, financial storms, family storms; maybe that's the kind of situation you're in right now. Maybe in your business, it's an out-of-control time. Maybe your marriage, maybe it's one of your children, maybe medically. Well, listen to our word for today from the Word of God. Nahum 1:3 - "The Lord is great in power. He has His way in the whirlwind and the storm."

Wow! It seems like the storm is having its way. It seems like everything's out-of-control. But God reassures us here that even when it appears that things are out-of-control, God is having His way. Paul experienced that in the incident recorded in Acts 27. As a prisoner on a ship that was taking him to Rome where he was to witness for Christ, for two weeks they sailed from Israel and they were in this violent storm, they couldn't see the sun, the moon, the stars. They didn't know where they were. They were blown way off course, they thought, and finally they went aground two weeks later. And much to their surprise, they landed on the Island of Malta, very close to Italy - their destination.

In other words, all the time they had apparently been out-of-control, they were actually right on course. So are you. See, that's what the Old Testament prophet meant. The storm may have made things out of your control, but they're in God's control. He often teaches us through those storms how much we need Him; how much we can rely on Him.

Maybe right now the winds in your life are intensifying, storm warnings are up, the flood of your frustration is rising. You're powerless to do anything about it. Let me assure you because of what God has said about storms, everything is under control. "The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and the storm." And it is often the storm that He uses to blow us home to the harbor we were made for.

The Bible says in Hebrews 6:19, speaking of Jesus, "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul firm and secure." And it often is not until things are out of our control that we understand we were never meant to run our lives. We were created by Jesus, for Jesus. He died to bring us back to Him, and maybe He is right now using your storm to blow you right into His loving arms.

If you want to begin a relationship with Him, if you never have, and find the one safe place there really is, will you go to our website and let me show you, there, how you can begin your relationship with Him. That's ANewStory.com.

See, if you let God navigate, you'll find that all the time you've been blown around, you were actually storming home.

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I wonder if someday I'm going to be banned from restaurants. I've been known to give the help a hard time. Now, believe me, that's not what I'm trying to do. And if you're a waiter or a waitress, don't write a nasty letter to me. I just figure that it can get pretty boring to be a server at a restaurant. I mean sometimes people just start to treat them like they're part of the menu or like a vending machine. I decide that I think they're people and I think we can have fun.

So, I've been known to go out to lunch with somebody and I'll tell them, "Oh by the way, he just moved her from another country and doesn't speak English." And so we have a lot of fun! Of course they start ordering in English.

I love to tell the waitress or the waiter, "Hey, you're a great cook!" And they look at me and say, "uh, I...I didn't cook it." In fact I literally have been told, "I didn't cook it, I just serve it." Yeah, I knew that.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Surprising Simplicity of Serving Christ."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 3:5. Here's what Paul says about himself and another great Christian leader of that time, Apollos. "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe - as the Lord has assigned to each his task." Now, I'm sure there were people who would have said, "Oh, Paul got me to Christ." "Apollos got me to Christ." Paul said, "No, I didn't. It wasn't from me. It was through me." That's the power of prepositions. "We are only servants through whom, not by whom, not from whom. Only through whom you came to believe."

What is it that qualifies me to visit with you daily by radio like this? These thoughts don't come from me; they come through me. That's all. It's like that server in the restaurant. It's not her recipe, it's not her effort. She just delivers what someone else has worked on; something that someone else has made possible.

That's what Jesus was saying when He said, "I am the vine. You are the branches." The branch doesn't produce the fruit. It looks like it's producing the fruit, but it comes from the vine through the branches. You know what that means to you? There are things that you can risk doing for your Lord that you thought you could not do, that were too much for you.

You can dare to open your mouth about Jesus. You can dare to step up to that leadership role He's calling you to. You could dare to start that Christian group or Bible study, or prayer fellowship. You could dare to say "yes" to an assignment for the Lord that you've been saying "no" to. Why? Because the Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5:24, "The One who calls you will do it." And then Philippians 2:13 - "It is God who works in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure." God will give you the words. God will give you the insight. God will give you the plan. He'll give you the message. He'll give you the strength.

See, any true work for Christ is Christ doing the work through you, not you doing the work for Him. Through - that's the preposition that opens up your life to all kinds of powerful new possibilities. It only comes through you. Just be available.

There are a lot of meals I would have never eaten in a restaurant if it had been up to the waiter or the waitress to grow the food and prepare the food. But there was something they could do. They could deliver it. That's what Paul says we are; we're just "servants." The ones who deliver what God has prepared. That's what God's asking you to do - to deliver to hungry lives what He has prepared for them. Look, you could serve it couldn't you?

There are lots of people digging into their family tree these days. In fact, we've done some of our own. A lot of digging around to find out where your roots are. You know, where my grandfather came from and my great grandfather, and which king or famous person I'm descended from. Of course I would be descended from someone famous, right?

Some people do find out that they are related to royalty, and then other people find out some embarrassment in their family tree - the old horse thief, you know, that they'd rather not talk about. For 2,000 years God has been developing and protecting a line for His Son to come through, and there are in that family tree some eyebrow raisers.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why Amazing Grace is Amazing."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God actually comes right out of the Christmas Story. It's the story of God coming to earth really and it's found in Matthew 1. Now, you may or may not be aware that the story of God coming to earth actually begins with a genealogy; a list of Jesus' family tree. God's been preparing this line for the Messiah; it's the most special family tree in the history of planet earth. He goes down a long list of names that starts here with Abraham, works its way on down, and I'll just read a couple of them to you.

"Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth," etc. You probably don't want to hear a whole lot more of that. But all of a sudden you stop and your eye goes back and you say, "Rahab? What's she doing in Jesus' family tree?" Now, in most of this genealogy only the father is mentioned. It's only in rare cases where God wants to make a special point of it that He includes the mother. Why Rahab?

Now, if you remember your Old Testament a little bit, some years before, the Israelites were preparing to conquer the land of Canaan. God sent in a couple of spies and they went to the city of Jericho and they found one home where they were taken in to hide, and it turned out it was the home of Rahab - the prostitute. She turned out to be the prostitute who gave herself to the Jewish God for the rest of her life.

But these aren't the kind of people you talk about in your family tree - these are the ones you cover up. This isn't the king! And yet God makes it a point to include her. You see, there's a hidden message here. A message that Jesus is for people who know they need forgiving and who know that God's grace has no limits. God doesn't use the word deserve when it comes to salvation and a relationship with Him. None of us deserves to be in His family tree. It's not just Rahab that's a surprise - what is Ron Hutchcraft doing in God's family? What are you doing there?

We're sinners who must always find grace to be "Amazing grace - how sweet the sound." The hymn says, "I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me...a sinner condemned, unclean." I hope today you still find God's grace amazing, and that you haven't been around so long that you think you belong in God's family because you deserve it. There is no one listening today who cannot be forgiven by Him. After all, Rahab was. And there is no person who doesn't still need His amazing grace today.

But maybe you've never experienced that grace for yourself. Oh, you've heard that song a lot of times - Amazing Grace. It says, "I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see." But today, how appropriate. The God who will forgive all those who come to Him, holds out His hand to you and says, "Grab My hand, my child." His Son died to pay the penalty that you deserve. And God can be a forgiver because of the death of His Son on a cross. And, because His Son walked out of His grave under His own power, what began in a manger ended on a cross, and culminated with a resurrection and becomes personal for you when you let this Jesus be the forgiver of your sins.

That's the day you're welcomed into His family. Would you tell Him today, "Jesus, I want You to be my personal Savior from my personal sin."

Go to our website and find out there how you can be sure you belong to Him. Just go to ANewStory.com. Because the story of Rahab tells us that there is no one who He will not welcome into the family of God.

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So, our whole family had to go for blood tests. It was time to check everyone's cholesterol levels, we were told. Now, as our son's blood was being drawn, he suddenly said, "I'm feeling a little weak." Well, that's unusual, because this son was probably the strongest member of the family.

But this actually had to do with chemistry not strength, and he proceeded to suddenly go limp and then he passed out. When he came to just a few moments later, his first words were of course, "What happened?" He later said that all he remembered was his eyes opening and seeing a mother's concerned face. Yep, there was Mom!

And then that made him think back to a post-operative situation he had had once. Right after surgery he was in the recovery room and he said, "All I remember is opening my eyes and seeing this really old nurse." Well, it's kind of funny how strong those like just waking up impressions are.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Best Part of Waking Up."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Psalm 17, and I'm going to be reading verse 15. David says, "And I - in righteousness I will see Your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness." Now, I think he's talking primarily here about physical resurrection after he dies. You know, "After I die, I'm looking forward to seeing You." But this can also be applied to a lifestyle like this - waking up and seeing His likeness.

There's a coffee company, you might remember, that had a commercial that said, "The best part of waking up is...in your cup." You know? We don't do commercials. Well, rather than their kind of coffee in your cup, I'd like to rewrite that a little bit. The best part of waking up is Jesus in your room. That's what David's saying, "I'm satisfied when I wake up with seeing Your likeness."

The early moments of your day kind of set the tone for the day. Is it going to be a stress day, is it going to be a worry day, a dirty day, a negative day, a go-for-it day? So much depends on whether or not you consciously spend your waking moments with Jesus. And let me tell you, that takes discipline. As soon as you've got any control of your thoughts, you come out of that fog and you're starting to be able to think, that's the time, before anything else, to acknowledge Jesus. "Lord, You're here aren't You? Lord, I'm Yours." And in those groggy, getting up and getting ready moments, talk to Him; thank Him for something from yesterday, turn over to Him whatever you know will tend to be dominating your day today.

Isaiah put it this way, "You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You." In the morning it's like 20 different characters are trying to get on center stage in your head, including the devil probably. The night before, make the choice that Jesus Christ is going to be the only one on center stage in the beginning of your day, the beginning of your morning. "Seek first the kingdom of God." Remember that? Maybe that includes seeking Him before you talk with or think about anyone else. Don't check your emails, don't turn on the television, and don't answer the phone. Get up early if you have to, but don't be in anybody else's presence until you've been in His. Seek Him first in your day, in those early groggy moments.

That Jesus focus can set your course for the whole day. And after a day begun with the Lord of the universe, you're ready for anything.

See, the best part of waking up? Yep, it's waking up to Jesus.

Stranded on the highest mountain on earth. Or buried beneath the rubble of a shattered hotel.

After the earthquake that rocked that mountain kingdom of Nepal, thousands of people lost their lives. Many more found their world, their homes, actually their lives wiped away.

There were some who survived the quake, but they faced the prospect of dying in the aftermath. Like those climbers on Mt. Everest, trapped on the mountain by massive avalanches. Or that 27-year-old man, lying amidst the stench of dead bodies, trapped for 82 hours under mountains of concrete.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Earthquake Hope."

One six-letter word. That was the difference between life and death for the men on the mountain and the man in the rubble.

Rescue. That's the "hope" word that we keep hearing in the heartbreaking news from great disasters all over the world.

In this one, 18 climbers died when part of Everest collapsed on their base camp. There were 140 surviving climbers, but when they tried to go down through the escape route, it was impossibly blocked by fallen rocks. And as time passed, their food was running out; their water was running out.

And then the choppers came. One after another they landed somehow on that mountain, saved those climbers, taking out two at a time.

Then there was young Rishi. He was running out of hope, he was running out of life. Beneath that collapsed hotel. Then, after ten hours of digging through concrete, the rescuers broke through. Rishi is alive...the climbers were alive...because the rescuers came.

Hope in Nepal depended on - as it is in so many disasters - a rescuer from above.

And that's where the news intersects my life and yours. Because hope for me depended on a rescuer from above. At the spiritual crossroads of my life.

I was trapped in a place where I would have died. Except my Rescuer came. His name is Jesus. The One called "Savior" by millions of people around the world. That's Savior as in Rescuer.

In fact, the Bible says in our word for today from the Word of God in Galatians 1:3, "Jesus gave His life for our sins...in order to rescue us." Not to start a religion. Not to be an example or a teacher. But to rescue us. So, it isn't about a religion, called Christianity, it's about a rescuer named Jesus. He came to rescue us at the cost of His life.

Because I - and a world of folks like me - was facing spiritual death for dethroning God in my life. Letting Him run the universe while I ran me. His Book makes the outcome of those sinful choices, unmistakable. It says, "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:3). Here, a life without meaning. Hereafter, an eternity without hope.

But, thank God, the Rescuer came! From above. To a cross. To die for my sin and yours so we don't have to. Amazingly, in the words of Galatians 2:20 in the Bible, "He loved me and gave Himself for me." First person singular. The death of Christ on the cross for my sins.

Then He blasted out of His grave three days later. To reach into my rubble. To reach into your rubble. To save us from certain spiritual death.

If you're ready to make The Rescuer your personal Rescuer from your sin, if you want to begin this life-saving, eternity-changing relationship with Jesus, I invite you to tell Him right now, "Jesus, I'm yours." And go to our website where you can get this confirmed and be sure you belong to Him. That website is ANewStory.com.

There was a day that Jesus reached for me. This may be the day He is reaching for you. Would you grab His nail-scarred hand, my friend? You will be safe. Forever.

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I saw this amusing commercial. This basset hound lying on the floor next to his master; his master is totally covered by the newspaper he's reading. On the floor in front of the dog is a page of the newspaper that advertises this incredible bargain airfare from a certain airline. Suddenly, the dog has a bubble over his head in which he sees himself at the kennel again while his master is off traveling. The dog quietly picks up that part of the paper that has the ad, trots over to the garbage can, drops it in, and goes back to his master's side, and his master never knows the difference. Of course, the dog has no way of knowing those great sale fares aren't always as great as they first appear. The sale fare is in big print, but at the bottom is the small print with lots of conditions. Or you call and you get some surprises. You have to fly over a certain day of the week, or there's a penalty for any changes, or there are only a few seats at that price, or you may have to book two years in advance! It looks great for a while, but the added conditions change things a bit - conditions you hadn't counted on.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No 'Yeah, But' In Obedience."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 19:27-29. By the way, Jesus knows how it feels to call - and to find out about unadvertised conditions. The Scripture says, "Peter answered Him, 'We have left everything to follow You! What then will there be for us?' Jesus said to them,... 'You who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for My sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.'"

Peter's wanting to know what's in it for him to follow Jesus. Contrast that with his original commitment to Jesus in Mark 1, "'Come, follow Me,' Jesus said, 'and I will make you fishers of men.' At once they left their nets and followed Him.'" There were no conditions, no footnotes, but now Peter's concerned about houses and fields and closeness to his family.

Peter's not alone. His mind set here uncovers a troubling tendency in our commitment to Christ. Unconditional commitment to Christ tends to become conditional. As our lives get more complex, as we accumulate more and accomplish more, we start to add little footnotes and conditions to what began as an "anything goes" commitment to Christ.

There was probably sometime in your life when you opened yourself up totally to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You said, "It doesn't matter where I live, how much money I make, what position I get, what I wear, what I drive, who goes with me..." but that can change, can't it? Now the Lord might be asking you to do something that might risk or change some of those parts of your life. Suddenly you're giving the Lord a contract with certain requirements: living in certain conditions, being near your family, keeping your position or some prized possessions, keeping a special person, being comfortable. You're saying, "Yes, Lord - but..." added conditions. The word "but" cannot follow the word "Lord."

Jesus assured Peter he was losing nothing any more than you lose the money you invest in a stock that later goes sky high. In fact, Jesus promises a reward 100 times any sacrifice you make. What a return! But that kind of reward is reserved for those who give Jesus a blank piece of paper, not a contract.

Have you added footnotes and conditions to your once wide-open commitment? Get back to where you began - following Jesus in total abandon.

Ronald Reagan led one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th Century - a life which he sadly and progressively forgot in the last years of his life. His long battle with Alzheimer's Disease acted like a cruel eraser. It removed recollections of what he had done and even who he was. After Ronald Reagan's death, we learned a lot more about what happened during his long journey into darkness. Memory of his years in Hollywood just disappeared, and then he couldn't remember being Governor of California, and ultimately he lost all that had happened in his years of being President of the United States. But one memory stayed alive almost until the end. In the office that Nancy Reagan set up for him, there was a picture on the wall, it was a picture of the Rock River in Illinois. When visitors would ask him about it, after most of his life was there no more, he would brighten and he'd say, "Oh, that's where I was a lifeguard when I was 17. That's where I saved 77 lives!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Life's Most Memorable Legacy."

After all was said and done, the one thing Ronald Reagan could remember about his life was the lives he saved. But then, there's nothing about your life that's more worth remembering. No matter how many or how few, no matter how large or how small your life accomplishments have been, that's your greatest legacy. There's nothing more heroic, there's nothing more meaningful than being someone's difference between life and death - especially if it's eternal life or death.

Our word for today from the Word of God in Proverbs 11:30 tells us what the legacy of your life and mine ought to be. God says, "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise." What you should have to show for the one life you've lived is a trail of life - people whose souls you have helped move from sin's death penalty to the eternal life that can only be found at Jesus' cross.

There's a stretch of beach that God has assigned to each of us who belongs to Him. There's a stretch of beach where He's assigned you to be His lifeguard - the one who's responsible to do all you can to rescue the people around you who will die spiritually unless someone helps them get to Jesus. You may be looking around and saying, "Me? Surely God must have someone better than me to help these people get to heaven?"

Stop looking around. You're the one He's put in their lives. Not some highly trained spiritual professional, not some professional God salesman, not someone with a more outgoing personality, not someone who's got it more together than you have. Your Savior decided you were the person they needed as their link to Him.

Look, if you're like most of us, your fear has kept you from actively trying to introduce them to Jesus. Fear is actually from one thing: it's all about me. It's focusing on ourselves - how I'm going to look, what they'll think about me - instead of focusing on what might happen to them if we don't try to tell them.

Maybe you've been preoccupied with goals and accomplishments that won't even last for your lifetime, let alone forever. But God says those who lead many to righteousness will "shine like the stars forever and ever" (Daniel 12:3). People in heaven because you cared - there's nothing you can do in this life that can even come close to that as a legacy. Lives saved forever.

The place where you work, the activities you're involved in, the school you attend, the neighborhood you live in, the people who keep showing up in your life; they are the lives at stake on your stretch of the beach. Don't fail the Savior who died for them by letting them live and die without Him because of your silence. Don't fail them by not showing them the difference Jesus makes; by not telling them what Jesus did for them on the cross.

See, you are their chance at Jesus. You're their chance at heaven.

Okay, let's do a little word association here, you ready? Persian. Ah...cat? Well, you might have thought of cat. For me, when I hear the word Persian...I think rug. I've never owned one and I probably never will, but I've sure seen them. And you know it's much more than a carpet. It's a work of art! Years ago Amy Carmichael wrote about the incredible process that produces these masterpieces. Try to picture this. There are two sets of workmen sitting on a bench on one side of the carpet which is hanging from a beam up above. The designer stands on the other side, he's holding a pattern in his hand and he directs the workers by calling across to them exactly what they're to do next. It's like a chant actually. And then the workman chants back to the designer the word that he's heard, verifying that order. Then the workman cuts from whatever bobbin has been ordered and he pushes that thread through the carpet warp and he knots it. All he can see is that thread. He sees nothing of the pattern until the caret is finished. That's all in the designer's hands. But when he finally sees what all these commands and all these threads have made, wow!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Tapestry And The Threads."

Take a peek at what The Designer is up to...our word for today from the Word of God, Romans 8:28, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him who have been called according to his purpose." Now, in His hands is the pattern - what the masterpiece will look like when it's finished and it's beautiful. But He's the only one that can see that whole pattern. He said in Jeremiah "You know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for evil." And the Bible says, "As for God, His way is perfect." Oh, it's going to be beautiful, it's going to be good. He's working out the eternal tapestry for your life. But we're just like those workmen, we can't see the pattern. All we see is the next thread. Our job, Romans 8:14, says, "Those who are led by the spirit of God, are the sons of God." Our job is to be led. How? Psalm 119:133 gives us a clue, "Direct my footsteps according to your Word." The next step, the next thread...show me from your Word where my next step is.

The designer's on the other side giving directions that will bring me one step, one thread closer to the grand design. Some of those threads are dark, some don't make sense, some don't seem to fit the pattern, some look wrong to me, but I'm just a workman. My job is to trust the designer, not to try to understand every order. Those Persian workers choose nothing; they leave every choice to the designer. Their responsibility is simply to listen and obey, and so is ours.

Today is another thread in the tapestry. Your mission, fellow weaver, is to check with the Lord frequently, consult His Word faithfully, listen for His inner Spirit promptings regularly. It's not your mission to know or to understand where all this is going. But the grand, macro will of God for your earth journey is made up of thousands of micro wills, thousands of little obediences, "Go there, call this person, write this, listen to this, take this step, read this verse." Threads that ultimately create the tapestry.

Occasionally God will let you stand back from your weaving to see a piece of the grand design and when you've had a glimpse of what He's making, it's been incredible, hasn't it? But, most days, the designer asks you to just keep weaving those threads. Some you like, some you don't like, some you're thankful for, some you would never choose. But, keep listening, keep doing what the designer says. One day you will stand back with the Master Designer. You will see the masterpiece that you have woven together with His direction and your faithful obediences.

Every New York television station you turned to had the same bold graphic, "Blizzard of '96." I still remember it. It was barely 1996; we were only six days into the new year when anywhere between 20-30 inches of snow unloaded on the Metropolitan New York area. It was like a mega-ton snow bomb hit the area, and it literally drove the Big Apple to its knees.

This is a city that doesn't shut down...except for a monster storm like this. The schools were closed for an almost unprecedented two days. City workers were told not to come in and bridges to the city were closed. Some of the busiest streets in the world were bare except for an occasional snow plow or emergency vehicle that went by. The trains couldn't make it because snow had choked the tracks. Major sporting events? They were impossible. I had never seen New York like that. The city that never stops had been stopped.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Stopped by a Storm."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 9. It's really from the life of a very goal-oriented high-achiever on his way to a major conquest. His name is Saul. This is a man, sort of like New York, who couldn't be stopped. The brightest young religious leader of his time, but deeply angered by the heresy of the new followers of a man named Jesus. Well, Saul's on his way to take care of the problem. The man who never stopped was stopped that day by a sudden storm.

Verse 3 begins by saying this, "As Saul neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?' 'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied."

Well suddenly this hard driver could drive no farther. He was knocked from his horse, he's down on the ground, and he was unable to see. Perhaps you're kind of a Saul or a Saulina (whatever the female version is). You've been running full speed. You've gotten a lot done. You're competent, you're gifted, you're doing pretty well, and you're moving too fast to think about getting right with your Creator. Oh, you've got some religious credentials maybe but there's no doubt who's really God in your life. Your god's the one who's running your life? That would be you.

And suddenly there's been this heavy storm. Maybe you've been hit with something medical or financial, or your family is in a crisis or someone you love is gone or you found yourself out of work, out of money, out of hope. Sometimes a struggling son or daughter knocks us off our horse.

Whatever the storm, would you allow me to suggest a reason it might be happening? For the same reason it happened to Saul, so you would finally be able to hear the voice of Jesus - Jesus who created you. Jesus, against whom we've rebelled as we've run our life our way, not His way. Jesus, who is the only one who loved you enough to die for you; to pay the death penalty for sin that you deserved to pay. Jesus, the one who has been knocking gently on the door of your heart for a long time, but you've always been on your way somewhere else until now.

And the storm has stopped you so you could finally meet your Savior. He's calling your name today just like He did Saul's that day. And He says, "I am Jesus." That day Saul surrendered his life to the Son of God. Maybe this day you will. Maybe it's time to say, "Lord, I've run it long enough. I need a Savior from my sin. I'm yours Jesus." This storm that seems to be blowing you off course is really bringing you home.

So, I want to invite you to go to our website, and I'll walk you through there the way you can be sure you have begun your personal relationship with the One who loves you the most. Just go to ANewStory.com.

Let Jesus step into your storm and say what He did to a storm with His disciples so many years ago, "Peace be still." And it was calm.

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I always ask for a window seat on the airplane. Usually aisle seats are more popular because you can stretch your legs a little more. Mine are so short they have plenty of room, no matter where I am. And you can get up when you want to, and when you don't want to, because the two guys on the inside want to get out. Actually, I always have so much to get done during a flight that I like to just set up a little nest there by the window where I can work without getting up or passing food. Unfortunately, I'm so busy sometimes I miss some things that are worth looking at out my window, which is right there. I was flying recently with one of our team members and I was really missing the beautiful scenery of the rocky mountains below me; I didn't even think about them being there. My colleague got my attention, not by reaching over and pointing and shouting, "Hey, look at those mountains, man!" No, he did it with a simple little observation. He said, "You know, mountains sure look a lot smaller from this perspective, don't they?" And I took a good look.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mountain Shrinking."

Growing up in flat old Illinois, the Rocky Mountains looked pretty impressive - pretty huge to me. Some of them are over 14,000 feet high! But, even the biggest ones don't look all that big when you're able to look at them from above. It can be that way with other mountains, too. Like the mountain you're facing right now. Maybe the finances look huge, or the obstacles, or the opposition, that medical situation, or maybe what's happening at work, or at school, or at home, or in a relationship. Looking up at it, it's enough to overwhelm you! You need to look at that mountain from above.

That's what they did in our word for today from the Word of God. In Acts 4, the early Christians have been told not to preach anymore about Jesus. The people telling them that are not lightweights. These are the leaders of their nation - the people who arranged for the execution of Jesus. In a sense they have the power of life or death. So, when they say, "or else!" they mean it! They can do some serious damage.

Our word for today from the Word of God begins in Acts 4:24, speaking of the first Christians. It says, "When they heard this they raised their voices together in prayer to God. 'Sovereign Lord,' they said, 'you made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and everything in them...they did what your power and your will had decided beforehand.'" They're speaking now of the people who executed Jesus. And then they go on, "Now Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your Word with great boldness." Boy, they are going totally against the opposition. When they started praying, they were looking up at a mountain that looked huge. By the time they finished praying they were looking down on their mountain and it looked a whole lot smaller. Why? Because they chose to focus on the size of their God, rather than the size of their problem.

You may say, "Well, I pray about it but it doesn't help." That might be because you don't remember who it is you are praying to - who you're with when you pray! This is the Sovereign Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. He's the Creator of everything and everyone in your situation. He's the One whose power and will cannot be thwarted - even in the crucifixion of Jesus. In other words, when you pray, you are standing in the throne room from which those 100 billion galaxies are governed. And when you look at a mountain from the throne room of God, it looks like an ant hill!

The Bible says what happened after this prayer time. It tells us the early Christians "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." They went out and they rocked their world! The mountains shrank when they prayed and they were intimidated no more! You've been looking at your mountain from down below long enough haven't you? In prayer, in the throne room of God, get above that mountain and see how small it is compared to the Lord who you have fighting for you.

We were trying to teach some young leaders the importance of teamwork. One of the exercises I used was to have them put together a puzzle. (I thought it was a bright idea.) You tear off a page of a magazine, tear it into pieces, dump it into the middle of each small group, and see who could put their pictures together first. It didn't work too well. See, I forgot one little thing. I forgot to give them a copy of the complete picture so they could see what it should look like when it was all together. Duh! Now, I've tried to work on one of those big, many-pieces puzzles myself, and I've had the same frustration because I didn't know where the top of the puzzle box was. It was really hard to put the pieces together when the complete picture wasn't there.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Top of Life's Puzzle Box."

Now, I'm not the first person to describe life being like a puzzle. There are so many pieces; family pieces, friend pieces, children pieces, career pieces; the pieces of school, work, success, failure. The nagging questions like, "Who am I?" "Where am I going?" "What do all these pieces mean?" "What are they supposed to make?"

Well, I found the top of the box. It's in God's book, the Bible, found in Colossians 1:16 - "All things were created by Him and for Him." Now, that's speaking of Jesus Christ. And there are six powerful words there; words that can finally pull all those pieces together, "Created by Him and for Him."

You can begin to put the pieces together when you put your name in that verse. I'll leave a blank. "______ was created by Jesus and for Jesus." So you want to find out how all those pieces make sense? There's going to be a terrible hole in your heart until you have Jesus, because He's the one our heart was created for. No earth thing, no earth person, no earth achievement can fill it.

You may have some great pieces in your life, or some pretty scared and fading pieces. But life is still powerless and disconnected, with often meaningless pieces in front of you. You need the whole picture, and our Creator has told us in that statement from the Bible what that is. He gave His only Son, Jesus, because that relationship that we were made by and for is missing in our lives because we've built a wall between us and our Creator by doing life our way instead of His way, pushed Him to the edge.

You know why our life seems so disconnected and confused? We're created to live for Him and we've chosen to live for us. We've run our own lives when our Creator was supposed to. And according to the Bible, "Your sins have separated you from your God." He's the only one who knows why you're here. He put you here. The only One who has the love you're looking for your whole life is on the other side of a wall. That wall's got a name. It's called sin. No wonder things aren't adding up. We're stuck with the pieces, but we're cut off from the whole picture.

But this statement out of the Bible "created by Him and for Him" tells us where the hope is for things to finally come together. "He forgave us all our sin" it says. He nailed our sins... my sins to His cross. It was our sin and its death penalty that has kept us from our Creator. And it was all those sins that God sent His Son to die for on that cross.

The pieces of your life finally start to fit together when you come to that cross and say, "Jesus, for me." In simple faith you say, "Lord, it's for me, and I want you and your forgiveness for me." If you've never done that; if you're ready to meet the One that you were made by and made for, I invite you to visit our website as soon as you can - ANewStory.com - and find out there how to be sure you belong to Him.

It's like seeing the top of life's puzzle box and the pieces finally come together. You're very, very close to finding the reason you were born, and finding the person you were born for.

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I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Following The People or Leading The People."

The captains on the Lewis and Clark Expedition had the courage and conviction to lead their crew where the crew didn't think they should go. That's called leadership. And some people you're responsible for may need you to be leading them with that kind of courage right now.

See, the troops are often wrong about which way to go. They were in Moses' day when the majority said it was too dangerous to go into the Promised Land. Two men exercised godly leadership that day, defying the popular opinion - Joshua and Caleb. And though the people refused to follow their lead, Joshua and Caleb were the only ones of their generation who did not die during the 40 years in the wilderness. And 40 years later, God gave Joshua the amazing assignment of leading His people into the land where Joshua had tried to take them before. Nehemiah steadfastly led a sometimes frightened, sometimes reluctant majority to stay on mission and finish the Jerusalem wall against overwhelming odds.

In Exodus 17, beginning with verse 4, our word for today from the Word of God, we find a revealing picture of what real, principled leadership requires - whether it's leading your family, your business, a church, a ministry, or any people who look to you. As usual, the Israelites were complaining and quarreling and grumbling against Moses. They're desperate for water, and there's none around. "Then Moses cried out to the Lord, 'What am I to do with these people? They are ready to stone me.' The Lord answered Moses, 'Walk on ahead of the people (listen to that!)...take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile. I will stand before you by the rock of Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out.'" And Moses' leadership was again vindicated as water for a nation flowed from that rock.

That's the kind of leadership I hope you and I are prepared to give. Walk ahead of the people you're leading - you can't hear the Lord as long as you're listening to the crowd. You have to extricate yourself from the fray and get some perspective, get above the fray. Then cry out to God, "What am I to do with these people?" And listen for where He is headed and do what He says. Your job is to let God show you what He is up to, and then to join Him in what He's doing by obeying Him, and then leading the people in that direction even if another way seems right to them.

Don't follow your biases. Don't follow your own wisdom. Don't follow the people that you're supposed to be leading. Follow the Lord where He's going. When you lead with that kind of courage and that kind of conviction, you can take the people to their destiny instead of to a detour.

When I was in junior high school, we usually bought one copy of the local newspaper every day. Until the day I won the County Spelling Bee! Yeah, I can do autographs later. I'm sure you're very impressed. Well, that day my parents bought about 20 copies of the local newspaper. What was the difference? Well, my name was in it this time!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Love With Your Name On It."

Actually, that wasn't unusual for my family to do, buying all those newspapers. I mean, we're all like that. When our name is in something we're suddenly a whole lot more interested. It's that way with what might be the most important statement in all the Bible. Certainly one of the most quoted.

Maybe you've seen the fans at NFL games with their banners or their signs in the end zone. It says John 3:16, or maybe back when Tim Tebow played with the black under his eyes at a football game. Well, it could be the most important statement in the Bible. Here's what it says, "For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."

Those words are probably the most dramatic answer in the world to any questions about how God feels about us. "God loves the world so much that He gave." He proved it. He acted on it. His one and only Son; the most valuable gift He could give. Why? So we who deserved to die can live forever instead. You say, "What do you mean deserved to die?" Well, the Bible says, for example, in Romans 6:23, "The wages of sin is death." That's what we'd be paid for running our own lives. That's what we deserve; the wages of running our own life. We've all built this wall between us and our Creator by taking our life into our own hands; hijacking our life. It's called sin.

Have you ever wondered why there's never been enough love? It's because of the sin wall. You can't get to the One who's got the love you were made for. There never seems to be a reason to live. Why? Because the One who knows why you're here is on the other side of the wall. If we die with that wall there, that wall is there forever. That's hell - eternal death - conscious separation and loneliness, away from a holy God forever and still enduring the pain because there are none of the sedatives we had on earth.

But God, the very One we have wronged, acted to get our death penalty paid for with the life of His own Son. Now, let's put your name in John 3:16. When I leave a blank, would you put your name there? "God loved ____ so much that He gave His one and only Son, that if ____ would believe in Him, then ____ will never die but will have eternal life."

See, it says in order to make what He died for yours, you have to believe in Him. That's not just agreeing with your mind. That's grabbing Jesus like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard. It's total trust. The gift of God's Son was all for you, but like any gift, you have to reach out and take it for it to be yours. Have you ever done that? This could be that day.

Something dramatic happens when you walk up to the cross of Jesus and say these two words, "For me. This is for me isn't it, Jesus. Some of those sins you died for are my sins." God's waiting right now to erase everything you've ever done from His book; to add your name to His Book of Life; the one He will check when your heart finally stops and you stand before Him.

But it all begins when you put your name in what Jesus did on the cross for you, and you make the Savior your Savior. If you've never done that, and you sense that knocking on the door of your heart, that's Jesus. I hope you'll go to our website. There you'll find the way to make sure you belong to Jesus Christ before this day ends. Tell Him right now, "I'm Yours, Jesus." The website is ANewStory.com.

When your name is in something, it's totally different. Today may be your day to realize that what Jesus did is not just generic, not just for the world. It was for you!

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I was at my friend Dave's house, meeting with a group of teenagers, and it happened. We had been eating together out on his porch when the sky suddenly turned really nasty. We hustled inside, just before the skies started dumping rain and thunder and lightning - big time thunder and lightning we're talking here. I wanted to continue our conversation under the dining room table, but no one wanted to join me there, so we went to the living room.

Now you may have heard that theory about the origin of the universe - the Big Bang. Well, we heard it right then and there. Not the one that started the universe supposedly, but the one that knocked all the lights out. That lightning bolt had knocked out all the electrical power in the whole area. But were we in total darkness? Oh, no. My friend Dave is a bright boy. After the last hurricane in their area, he installed some emergency lights on a battery-powered system. So we had lights; lights that reverted to internal power when everything else failed!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Stormproof Joy."

The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk was a man who felt like all the lights had gone out. He was really struggling with events that he didn't like; he didn't understand. His book opens with him asking a question many of us have asked at one time or another, "How long, O Lord?" He was having a hard time waiting for God to do what He was going to do. Nothing was going the way that Habakkuk had hoped it would.

But his heart has totally changed by the end of the book. In Habakkuk 3:16 he says, "Yet I will wait patiently." He's taken hands off and he's finally quit trying to tell God how to run things. Now - and here's where he describes a situation like that stormy night in my friend's house when everything that might produce light has failed.

Verse 17 says, "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fail and the fields produce no crops (in a farming area, this is a description of total disaster), though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls." We are talking here about the total triumph of Murphy's Law. Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. Does that sound familiar at all? All the reasons for being happy seem to have failed. The lights of joy have gone out. Oh?

Though all the external sources of joy have failed, Habakkuk concludes, "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength." This man of God says, "I've found a source of joy that is totally independent of how things are going; totally independent of my circumstances. I am anchoring myself to the Sovereign Lord who is totally in charge, whether it looks like it or not. I'm depending totally on my God who is my Savior in this situation; on my Lord who literally is my strength to handle this hard time."

We're talking Murphy-proof joy here - a light that stays on when all the external sources fail. And, as a result, "The Sovereign Lord enables me to go on to the heights." By carrying me through this disastrous time, God has put me on a high place where I have the perspective to see the big picture - to see my personal situation, my personal history through God's eyes.

So, if your joy is attached to your circumstances, when the storm knocks them out, you'll be in the dark. But if your joy is internally generated - from an unshakable relationship with your awesome, Sovereign Lord - then you have light that will be there when every other light fails.

It may be that a lot of lights have failed you in your life, and you have never found the source of joy that resides in you, not around you. That is Jesus Christ, who died to pay for every sin that keeps you out of God's love and out of God's kingdom, and out of God's family. If you'd like today to have that wall taken down and have Jesus move into the core of your very being with His unshakable peace and joy, would you go to our website and let us help you there find a simple path that will take you in a matter of minutes into a personal relationship with God. Just go to ANewStory.com. You'll find there, in Jesus, a joy you will never lose.

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I really hate it when a five-year-old makes me feel dumb, especially when it's my grandson. I mean, he didn't mean to make me feel dumb. He didn't know he was making me feel dumb. But he is really smart, and he knew a lot about a lot! Like the solar system. He had the planets down cold along with all kinds of facts about the universe. Things I either have forgotten or never knew. Another thing our grandson was really mastering was numbers. Man, could he count! He was working on thousands, millions, billions, and his favorite quantity, a google! When it comes to our universe, he was never going to be able to count that high!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "God of Galaxies, God of Our Grief."

With the discoveries of new high-tech explorers like NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, and the Hubble Telescope, we are learning some absolutely staggering new things about the universe we live in. They counted at one point over 200 billion galaxies and I think it's maybe a couple trillion now. When we look up in the sky at night, it's estimated that we can see maybe 9,000 stars. But it's estimated that the average number of stars in a single galaxy is actually 200 billion stars! Let's see: 200 billion stars times 200 billion galaxies... oh for heaven's sake, that's a mental meltdown.

If you think that the vastness of the universe is amazing, fasten your seatbelt for something much more amazing. It's in Psalm 147:4, our word for today from the Word of God. It says of God, "He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name." What? I can't even remember the names of all the people I've met! But God calls each of the 200 billion stars in 200 billion galaxies by name!

Isaiah 40:26 says, "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." Not only does He number all the stars and name all the stars, but He knows when any star goes out!

In the verse just before the one that says God numbers and names the stars, the Bible shows something else amazing about Him. It says, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Wow! This God who gives personal attention to countless billions of stars cares about your broken heart! He stands ready to heal what's broken in your life with the power that rules this mighty universe. Wow!

You may have felt very unnoticed and very insignificant in your life, but not to the most powerful person in the universe. He knows you, He cares about your wounds, He deeply, deeply loves you. For this awesome God left the throne room of heaven to come here to this little dirtball called earth on a rescue mission for you, to actually die on a cross for the sin you've done against Him, the sin that has cut you off from Him all these years. The sin no religion can remove. The Bible says of Him, He is "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

And this very day, this awesome God may be knocking on the door of your heart. He's offering to come into your life with His infinite love, His infinite power - the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Why would you wait one more day to open up your heart to a Savior like this? Tell Him, "Jesus, it makes no sense for me to try to run my life any longer. I'm sorry for running a life you were supposed to run. I believe my only hope is your death for my sin on the cross. I turn from my sin today. I am yours, Lord Jesus!"

If you want to make this day your "Jesus day," will you experience the greatness of His love in your heart, the greatness of His power in your life, would you just reach out to Him today? We'd love to help you do that. That's why we're here. Go to our website ANewStory.com.

He's who you were made by. He's who you were made for, and this very day, my friend, you can belong to Him!

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Joey's story really touched me. Joey ran in the handicapped Olympics that were held in conjunction with the Olympics in Seoul, Korea some years ago. Of course it was at a separate location, and in his particular track event there were only two people competing. Well, Joey got off to a good start, but of course because of his handicaps, his arms and legs were flailing and he wasn't very graceful. The announcer was heard to say at the beginning of the race, "I'm glad I'm not like Joey."

Well, as Joey took the lead, his coach kept yelling over the sounds of a crowd who were basically dispersing for the day, "Come on, Joey, you're a winner! You can do it!" And as Joey continued to increase his lead, he would chant and say, "Come on, Joey, that's it! You're a winner! You're a winner!" Well, Joey was doing better and better, and his coach's cheers were getting louder and louder.

And then suddenly Joey stopped in his tracks. What happened after that melted that announcer's heart, and actually mine too when I heard about it. Maybe you'll be like me. Maybe you'll want to be like Joey.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "You Win, I Win."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 9. We'll get to that after you hear what Joey did when he stopped in his tracks during the race. Much to the consternation of his coach, he turned to his opponent; the only other guy in the race and yelled, "Come on! You're a winner too! You're a winner too!" His coach ran out to the track and yelled, "No! You don't want him to be a winner! You're the winner!"

Well, no matter what the coach said, Joey waited for that other boy to catch up. And then they crossed the finish line together with their arms raised in victory. The announcer who had said at the beginning of the race, "Sure glad I'm not like Joey" at the end was heard to say, "I sure wish I was more like Joey" and so do I.

See, in a competitive, I've-got-to-make-it world; the real heroes are the people who make other people winners. Acts 9 tells us about Barnabas, who we are told was the one who when the disciples didn't know what to do with Saul of Tarsus - this former Christian Persecutor - it says, "Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles." And then we're told in Acts 11:25, "Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul." Then in chapter 13, God says, "Separate for me Barnabas and Saul for the work." And then by the end of that chapter it says, "Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue." Did you notice, Barnabas was in the front seat when we started here, and suddenly he's taken a back seat?

See, Barnabas? Well, he was like Joey. He didn't have to come out on top; he didn't care if they remembered his name. He just wanted others to win. Are you like that? Your Master was. He gave up His life for ours so we can win eternal life. Your friends need someone who's willing to put aside their own interests and to say, "You're a winner! You can make it!"

You see, your children need that kind of encouragement from you. They need to know not just what needs improving. We're really good as parents at talking about that. They need to know what they are doing right. "You can do it! You're a winner, my daughter! You're a winner, my son!" And the people at work starved for encouragement, the people at your church; again there could be a lot of shame, there could be a lot of guilt, there could be a lot of condemnation. A lot of people don't feel very important. A lot of people feel on the edges - excluded. Will you be the one who pushes other people to the front? You won't lose if you stop promoting you and start promoting others. You'll both win.

So, be like your Master. Enable someone else to be a winner. Look at the people close to you and quit trying to beat them, or use them, or to control them. Look at them and say, "Hey, if you win, I win."

It was exciting the first time I landed at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. There's the skyline of Manhattan out the window, and water all around us as the plane touched down on the runway. It was only after I had landed that my host in New York told me how they built LaGuardia Airport. He said, "Oh, they built it on the garbage of New York." Landfill in the bay created a base on which an airport could be built.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Recycling Your Personal Garbage."

It's amazing what they can do with garbage, isn't it? They recycle what seems vile and useless and they make it into something useful. That's the very kind of miracle God's been doing for people for a long time, and He wants to do it for you.

In a past summer God used the brokenness, the courage of a team of young Native Americans to bring unprecedented numbers of reservation young people to a commitment to Jesus Christ. I've seen it for like 32 summers. Some of the most powerful moments we experienced with our "On Eagles' Wings" team were when some of these young people, representing some 20 or more different tribes, stood in the middle of Indian villages and shared what they call their Hope Story. They poured out the pain of some horrific backgrounds, and then the incredible hope they have found in Jesus Christ. And kids who listen to no one listened to them, and over the summer hundreds gave themselves publicly to Jesus Christ.

One night, at a reservation outreach, Mary shared her heart-wrenching story of sexual abuse and the drugs and alcohol she used to sedate her pain. It's a story that's always hard for her to tell, but one which powerfully turns young people's hearts to Jesus. After telling her story at a second outreach, Mary came to me and said, "I can't believe how God uses the stuff I've been through to change so many lives."

That's it. Garbage, recycled by God, to help other people find life and find hope. In Genesis 50:20, our word for today from the Word of God, Joseph summarizes the perspective God has given him on the junk of his life. He's been nearly murdered by his brothers as a teenager, he's been sold into slavery, unjustly imprisoned in a foreign land, but ultimately rescued by God and made the assistant Pharaoh of Egypt, the second most powerful man in the world. In that position, his God-directed plans to prepare for a coming famine, saves many lives in Egypt and even the lives of the brothers who betrayed him many years before. No betrayal and he never would have been in Egypt. No Egypt and many would have died, possibly even his own family.

So here's Joseph's summary of it all, explained to his brothers: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish...the saving of many lives." See, that's what God wants to do with all the garbage of your life - make it into something that can touch and heal many other lives.

If you'll release all that junk, all that pain to Jesus, He alone can heal it and He alone can redeem it, and He'll make it into a magnet for some other hurting lives. If you harbor it, it's just going to make you hard and bitter and largely useless in a wounded world. But if you surrender all that garbage to Jesus, He can turn it into a beautiful compassion, because you know how it feels. And that will cause many other struggling people to identify with you, to open their hearts to you, to trust you, and perhaps to let you lead them to your Jesus. He's the One who was "a man of sorrows," the Bible says, "familiar with suffering" who "took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows." And the Bible says it is, "by His wounds we are healed" (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Or in the words of a broken young native woman who has experienced His healing, He will "use the things you've been through to change so many lives."

There are five Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, John - and the Christian. Most people never read the first four. That observation, made a long time ago, could not be more true today.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When God's Messenger Messes Up the Message."

If our world's getting darker, then something must be wrong with what folks are "reading," in the Christians - the messengers - they know. We talked about that yesterday. And then there must be something wrong with their message. No, wait! Actually, with the way they represent the message.

That message is, as the Bible says, the "good news about Jesus" - the love that died for us, the power that crushed death. So the problem sure isn't the message. But the Good News doesn't sound as good when it's obscured by three mistakes that we messengers make.

Number one, our tone. So many unbelievers I know use some unwelcome words to describe Christians. You may have heard them: "angry," "you're judgmental," "you're condemning." Did you know up to 80% of communication is tone? Not what we say, but how we say it. So is our tone drowning out our message?

Jesus' main man, Simon Peter, seemed to learn that over time. Earlier, he was brash, he was explosive. But later, he said we should "always be prepared to give an answer to everyone...with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15). Is that how people feel when they're with us - "gentled" and "respected?" Is it our message folks are rejecting or our tone? This isn't about winning an argument. It's about winning a heart.

Then secondly, our retreat may be part of the problem. Our message gets obscured. We Jesus-followers have one authority for the message that changes eternities. It's God's Word. "All Scripture" the Bible calls it. He says it is "God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16).

But as our culture moves, Christians tend to move with it. Always keeping an apparently "righteous distance" but quickly ending up where non-believers were as little as ten years ago. And reinterpreting, rationalizing, diluting their source, the Bible, to justify their flexible "truth."

When we adjust our beliefs to placate our culture, we are no longer the choice Jesus called us to be. We're just an echo of our culture; losing the power of God's voice for some wimpy blend of Christianity and cultural appeasement.

As Martin Luther essentially stood against the whole world in his day, here was his anchor verse: "Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens" (Psalm 119:89). If it stands firm in the heavens, I can't change it on earth.

Thirdly, I think our message can be obscured by our baggage. The Gospel is compelling when it's just the Gospel. But some people never get to the Gospel because of the baggage we encumber it with: politics, church, denomination, culture wars, rules, condemning people's lifestyles.

It's all about Jesus. Jesus made it all about Jesus with His simple invitation, "Follow Me" (Mark 1:17). "Come to Me" (Matthew 11:28). "Trust in Me" (John 14:1). That's why Paul, Jesus' greatest ambassador, said in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 2:2, "I resolved when I was among you to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Charles Spurgeon said the Cross is God's "magnificent magnet." Because "if they perceive, "Spurgeon said, "that He loved them and gave Himself for them, their hearts are stolen away."

That message, uncompromised, unencumbered, delivered with love, is what it has always been. According to Romans 1:16, "The power of God at work, saving everyone who believes." It's all about Jesus and His Cross. Stick to that my friend!

Messengers who act like Jesus, a message that's all about Jesus. That is a bright light on an otherwise dark and dangerous stretch of beach.

Boom! Suddenly all the lights went out in the conference center where we were staying, just as we were all making our way out of our rooms and down this long hallway to breakfast. No windows. The hallway was longer than usual that morning because it was totally dark. Turns out the entire region experienced a power failure that morning. Because a squirrel got into a relay station and gnawed through a cable. That's fried squirrel and lights out.

The problem that day really wasn't the darkness. Darkness is always dark, right? The problem was the failure of the light. A lot of us Christians have been lamenting what we perceive as the growing spiritual darkness around us: Fewer people identifying themselves as Christians, more people identifying themselves as nonbelievers, long-time moral boundaries that are eroding or collapsing.

When it's dark, the problem isn't the darkness. It's the failure of the light. And Jesus said to His followers, "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14). It appears something's wrong with the light.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Trouble With Christians."

I can think of two ways that we're failing our world and our Lord. One has to do with a flawed message that obscures the true Message. That part's for tomorrow, but here are three reasons why I think the light is so often obscured.

First, flawed messengers. Over and over, a watching world sees well-known Christians suddenly disgraced by a dark secret. You can probably think of some pastors, mega church "stars," TV personalities, athletes, politicians. And folks who don't like the message can now find another "hypocrite" to hide behind.

The sad fall of a prominent Christian is a teachable moment, underscoring three critical realities.

First, each Jesus-follower's life is either a reason for someone to check out Jesus or rule out Jesus. If I drift away from Him, I take watching unbelievers with me. That's why Paul said in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 9:12, "We would rather put up with anything than be an obstacle to the Good News about Christ." And Peter said, "Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then, if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God" (1 Peter 2:12). So, my little "sin fling" or spiritual detour will cost me God's blessing. It could cost those watching me their eternity.

Then secondly, every time a public Christian is discredited, the importance of the everyday Christian is elevated. The Christian who is in a seeker's life every day has far more impact than any Christian in the spotlight. I am the face, the voice, the proof of Jesus to the unbelievers in my personal world for better or for worse. It's always important that I walk the talk. It's exponentially important that I'm consistent when there's been a public Christian disgrace. When they see me, they've got to be able to see Jesus all day every day.

Here's one other very vital reality. The failure of the messenger does not change the truth of the message. Jesus said, "Follow Me." Not follow My followers. He said, "I am the Way" (John 14:6). Not, "I will show you the way." He told us, "I am the resurrection and the life...he who believes in Me will live, even though he dies" (John 11:25). Not, believe in someone who practices the Christian religion. No, He said, "Believe in Me. Follow Me."

Jesus made it all about Jesus. So while a hypocrite might provide an excuse for not believing, they don't provide a valid reason. Because it's what we do with Jesus that determines our eternity. In fact, that's the question you will face when you see God. "What did you do with My Son who died on a cross for you?"

If you've never taken Him for you to be your Savior from your sin, this would be the day to do that. If you want to begin your relationship with Jesus, we would love to walk you through that. You can go to our website: ANewStory.com.

You know, in the end, it isn't about Christians. It isn't about Christianity. It's all about Jesus. That's such good news! Because He's the Man who loved me enough to die for me; who's powerful enough to walk out of His grave. Jesus - He is the unfailing Light.

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The Indy 500 is probably the most exciting American automobile race of the year. I mean, you can almost feel the anticipation growing during the time trials and the qualifying events that lead up to the big race. And then, on the day itself, the engines rev, and the fans and the promoters cheer, and the cars make their first drive around that legendary track in Indianapolis. But there's really no race until that first lap.

They're all going the same speed, led by some guy with flags flying out of his car window. Who is that guy? He's the pace car, and everyone starts the race at the pace he sets. You know, everybody's race has a fellow like that.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When a Man is a Man."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God goes right back to the beginning of time - the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3:6. "And when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it." Verse 8 says, "The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to the man, 'Where are you?'"

Notice here that God comes looking for the man. The woman sinned first, but He comes looking for the man and He addresses only him. Why is this? Because Adam is meant to be the pace car for Eve. See, God gave all the instructions about the tree to Adam. There is no record, though, of Adam giving them to Eve. Apparently Adam transmitted them to her, and I don't know if he got them across or not; she watered them down.

God seems to say, "If Eve is having a problem, I'm going to go looking to Adam for the reason. Adam, where are you?" Now, there's a principle here that really goes throughout creation: if Adam isn't right, then Eve isn't right. Maybe there's a man listening today who is wondering why his wife is nagging so much. Maybe it's because he isn't listening and she's doing everything she can to be heard, to get your attention.

Why is my wife so bossy? Maybe it's because you're not leading. Why is she so detached? Maybe you haven't had time for her. If the pace car isn't pacing, then Eve's car starts veering, and sliding, and going too fast or going too slow. If Adam isn't right, Cain and Abel aren't right either. The kids act out of either not enough love or not enough discipline, if Dad neglects his leadership in their lives. He's their pace car too. God just made it this way.

If Adam isn't right, the garden isn't right either. There's stress, conflict, confusion, decisions not made if the man who is supposed to be leading isn't doing it. Think about it today if you happen to be on Adam's side of the human race. Could some of your frustrations be because you've been neglecting your God-given responsibilities to your wife, to your children, or to be the spiritual leader?

See, throughout the Bible the buck always stops with the man. If the cars around you are speeding, and swerving, or crashing, take a good look at the pace car. That's you, man!

Well, several years ago it was our turn again for the cicadas to pay us a brief visit. You can't really complain; they only drop by every 17 years. What a life these critters have! They suck on a root in the ground for a while, they finally emerge, they climb a tree, they make a lot of noise for about three weeks, and they die. You talk about "get a life!"