October is really beautiful in a lot of parts of the U.S. It's fall; it's the time, as I told my kids, that the angels come out at night and paint the leaves red and yellow and orange. Pray for my kids. Forget the angel part. The trees really do put on a fantastic show of color in the fall, and spring isn't bad either. I love that fresh green of spring's new life. But in between fall and spring, there's this long stretch where the trees are just basically colored "dead." Well, not all the trees. There's life all year long; there's green all year long. They don't lose their color, however dead and barren the rest of the world around them may be. Hello! They're EVERgreens! I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Permanent in a World of Temporary." It's not just trees that turn color in our lives - it happens to relationships, too. A relationship that was once blooming beautifully, giving color to our life, starts to turn, to lose its color, to wither, even to die. Sooner or later, every "I love you" seems to include a "goodbye" to some people. Some relationships die with a whimper; some with a bang; some slowly, some suddenly; some, not by choice, but by death. My first realization of that was the night my parents left me alone in our Chicago apartment to go to a funeral. They were gone longer than they had predicted, and that's when I heard the wail of sirens nearby. Well, I have to tell you, a young boy's fears kicked in at that point and I thought, "My parents are late. There's a siren. Maybe they were killed in an accident." Well, they weren't, but that was when I first realized that what you love you can lose. And ultimately, I have buried my mom, my dad, and the love of my life. And a lot of other people (some old, some very young) who would never have chosen to leave. Often what hurts even more are the loves that do choose to leave us. Like winter's leaves; they wither and blow away. What we need is an evergreen relationship - one that can't be touched by desertion, by divorce, by distance, even by death. There is such a relationship, but only one. In order to be our evergreen, it's going to have to be a love that will never turn on us and never die on us. That love is celebrated in our word for today from the Word of God in Romans 8:38-39. These words literally have the power to lead you to the one anchor relationship your heart has always yearned for. Here's what it says. "Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither 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." There it is, my friend, evergreen love. It's God's love, found in His Son, Jesus Christ. Here's why God's love is the love you can't lose. Even though we were made for that love, we're missing it because we've chosen to take our life into our own hands instead of putting it in God's hands. We've chosen "my way" over God's way in thousands of situations throughout our life. And the Bible says, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2). That separation could only be bridged one way; a way that seems unthinkable. That God's Son, the only One without any sin, will come to earth and do what only He could do - do the dying for our sin against Him. Pay the penalty so the sin could be erased so we could experience the love that our sin has cost us. And today, the man who loved you enough to die for you has come looking for you to offer you a life, an eternity, filled with His evergreen love. But it can't be a one-way love affair. You've got to respond to His love by placing your life in His hands and turning your back on the sin that cost Him His life. And your love response might be just three words, "Jesus, I'm Yours." If you want to pursue that love relationship with Him, then I'd invite you to check out our website today. That's ANewStory.com. God Himself has said