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Recently, Mercy Ships celebrated an incredible milestone.

Why should you believe that Jesus was, and is, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament when even members of His own family didn’t believe in Him? What does Jesus’ work on earth say about who He is and what He commands of you? The Bible clearly answers those questions, as you’ll see in John MacArthur’s lesson.

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Dr. Kathy Koch explains why your child’s character matters more than his or her intelligence.
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What if your child’s biggest challenge is actually their greatest strength? Dr. Kathy Koch explores life-changing insights from her book 8 Great Smarts, revealing how every child is uniquely wired with different kinds of intelligence – from the nonstop talker to the deep thinker, the music-maker to the curious questioner. Learn how to recognize your child’s natural strengths, nurture what makes them come alive, and stop unintentionally paralyzing their "smarts."
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God sees the needs of tomorrow and, accordingly, creates the training of today.

He did so with Agnes. As a young girl she was on fire for her faith.  She left her home, her family, and country and became a missionary. She gave God everything, and God gave her a test: loneliness. She felt as if God had left her. On and off for fifty years, she battled a secret pain. Only late in life did she come to see her suffering as a way to understand the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all the people who feel unwanted. It was only then that Agnes—Mother Teresa—saw her test as part of her call.

Your test is a part of your call as well.

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Our friend had a medical procedure to repair what the doctor called "a hole in her heart." Then he told her that everyone is born with a hole in their heart. That got my attention. Really? I called a longtime friend of mine who is a highly experienced and respected heart surgeon. He told me that before we are born, there's a hole that is this passageway for blood to enter our pre-natal heart. In most people, and I'm glad I'm most people, the hole heals up within a few days after birth. But for a few, it doesn't go away, and it really needs to be repaired.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Hole in Your Heart."

So everyone is born with a hole in their heart. Not just physically, but spiritually. But unlike that physical hole in your heart, the spiritual one doesn't go away unless you let the greatest physician of all fill that hole.

That spiritual hole in our heart keeps letting us know that it's there through the loneliness that no relationship seems to remove. The emptiness that never goes away for very long, no matter what we do to fill up our life. The "what's it all for?" questions about life that make everything seem so ultimately meaningless. It's like there's this voice inside us that seems to be saying, "Something's missing." We keep thinking the next relationship will be what we're missing, or the next thrill, or the next accomplishment, the next spiritual experience, the next "toy," the next milestone. But every time we get to the top of the hill we think has what we've been looking for, we find there's another hill to climb.

After a while, we assume that this hollowness inside, this hole in our heart is just how it is. The Bible describes King Solomon as the richest and wisest man of his time. And he had the resources to do it all. Here's his conclusion: "I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." But just accepting that hole in your heart is ultimately deadly. It needs to be treated. It needs to be healed by the only One big enough to fill that hole in your heart; the God who made you to belong to Him. The brilliant physicist Blaise Pascal concluded that "inside every man is a God-shaped vacuum."

The hole in your heart is there to tell you that you really need God and that He isn't there because of something that makes it impossible for God to live there - all the sinning you and I have done; all the wrong things. Until that's forgiven and removed, the God you were made for has to remain outside.

In John 4:13-14, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus is at a well, talking with a woman who has tried to fill the hole in her heart with one relationship after another. Jesus says to her, and to you, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst ... the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Wow, those words, "Thirsty again" - that's the hole in our heart. "Never thirst" - well, that's the hole in our heart finally filled as Jesus erases every sin of your life with His amazing forgiveness. He can do that because He did all the dying for all the sinning you've ever done. It's paid for. Which means your heart can be clean today and the God of the universe can finally move in; your lifetime search over. But you have to reach out to Jesus. You've got to tell Him that you're done driving your life, and that you're trusting completely in His death for your sin.

Would you tell Him today, "Jesus, you made me. You've got me. You paid for me with your life on the cross. I'm yours." He's alive. He walked out of his grave. He can walk into your life right now.

You know, there's great information about how to be sure you belong to Him at our website. I want you