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!