I think I've been on a diet since I was about three days old, and I've become somewhat of an expert at what works and what doesn't work at losing weight...or putting it on.

Frankly, I find it very difficult to lose weight, especially during times when I'm under pressure. Oh, many of you will understand this unless maybe you're one of those people who are terminally thin. But maybe you're the one who does understand about losing weight and gaining it; my thorn in the flesh I think is my metabolism. Well, when things are calm and normal - status quo - it's a lot easier to maintain your diet disciplines. Then the crunch comes - extra stress - and out comes the crunch of cookies, and chips, and candy, and an attack of the munchies to help you get through the pressure. Pressure gives you this strangely expanded desire to eat. Now, usually, that's a bad response...usually. In some cases, it's actually a good idea.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hope When the Pressure's On."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 1, and I'm going to begin reading in verse 8, where we hear about Paul under pressure. I mean a lot of pressure. Listen to his words. He said, "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so we despaired even of life." Boy, if you've been under pressure, maybe you know that feeling of "beyond my ability to take any more." Then he goes on to say, "This happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God."

Well, in a sense, Paul's response to pressure in his life was to eat. Not physically, but spiritually; to download spiritual resources he needed to make it through. He ate spiritual protein, not spiritual snacks. See, when you're pushed beyond your ability to take it - to handle it - it's more than you can do, more than you can solve, more than you can provide for. OK, you understand? Well, then it's time to load up on two resources.

In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, he talks about "the father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles with the comfort we have received from God, we are able to comfort those who are in any trouble."

Notice He's the God of all comfort in all situations. It's like a comprehensive insurance policy. You will always have comfort as big as the pain or the hurt. You'll never fully learn the comfort of God though until you're really uncomfortable. That's interesting! So, if you're uncomfortable right now at this time in your life, load up on a heaping helping of the comfort of God; even enough to serve others.

The other resource you eat very aggressively at this time is God's power. That's why he says, "This all happened to us so we could taste God's power and not rely on ourselves." "The God," he says, "who raises the dead." Now, you'll never fully learn the power of God until you're at a point where you're fully powerless. Then comes that sweet surrender to God's working; you've run out of options. And all of a sudden there's a lot of Him and almost none of you. So, you get a big helping of the power of God; working where you're powerless to do anything. And what kind of God? A God who raises the dead! This is a death-reversing, resurrecting, life-giving God in the moments when there's so little you have to give.

Maybe you're in one of them right now. Is that pressure on you right now? Spend quality time in your Lord's presence, even though it may be harder than ever to do it, you've never needed it more. Feed on His resources. Download them. Partake of it. That's why He's brought you to this point. Get the resources you would never experience if the pressure didn't drive you to it.

When the pressure's on, eat heartily from God's shelves. You know what you'll get? You will get stronger than you've ever been!

Usually a total eclipse of the moon seems to happen when I'm counting sheep in the middle of the night. But this one started about 9:00 at night, and this one I got a chance to see. It's a pretty amazing sight to watch that shadow slowly move across the moon until it eventually covers it completely. I said to the friend who was assisting us with ministry that weekend, "I just wish we had binoculars." "Me, too," he said. Then it dawned on him, he said, "Hey, I do have binoculars in my truck!" All of a sudden we moved from seats near the back to something like front row seats on this eclipse. Those binoculars revealed the craters and all the fascinating details of that disappearing moon. What a difference it made to see it up close!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Knowing You, Seeing God."

Whether it's watching the heavens or watching some faraway wildlife right here on earth, binoculars really do make a difference. They make it big by bringing it close, which is exactly what you're supposed to be doing with the God you belong to - making Him big to the people around you by bringing Him close. I guess that would make you binoculars for God.

The famed Westminster Catechism of the Christian faith opens with this powerful summary of why we're all here: "The chief end of man is to glorify God." That's really clear in our word for today from the Word of God in Ephesians 1, beginning with verses 5 and 6. Like the Hubble Telescope, this passage shows us things about our spiritual universe that we could never see without it. Like the purpose for our lives, for example.

The Bible says: "He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." Before there was a world, before there was a you, God had a plan for you to rescue you through His Son, so you could live as it says, for "the praise of His glorious grace."

Verses 11 and 12 talk about His plan, "the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will..." And what is His purpose that guides His plan? "...that we might be for the praise of His glory." Later, it says He bought us with blood to be for this ultimate outcome: "To the praise of His glory."

Okay, God believes in what management consultants call MBO - Management By Objective. Since before there was a world, right up to you and me this day and right on through to eternity, God's running His plan by one objective, "the praise of His glory." Since God's the source of everything that exists, our life makes sense and makes a difference when we bring people back to that source. So, what does it mean to "glorify God"? Well, think binoculars. It's making Him look as big as He really is to the people we meet.

They have no idea what an awesome, loving, totally powerful Father He is. We're to live in such a way that we draw attention to the greatness of our Father. And how do we do that? By living in such a way that we bring Him close to people who otherwise might never see Him or never touch Him.

Jesus said we were to be a light shining so "people will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). So here's one good way to see if you're carrying out the purpose you were made for: When people are around you, do they end up being impressed with your God? If not, you must be filling their view with something else, like with you...how great you are, or how many problems you have, or how stressed you are, or just the trivia of your life.

They may know you as a happy person, a caring person, a strong person, but have you ever told them it's because of what Jesus has done for you? Have you ever prayed with them when they share a need with you so they can taste that relationship with a miracle-working God? Do you ask in every situation, "Lord, how can you use this to draw people to you?"

That's the mind and heart of someone who knows why they're here. God's looking for some human binoculars - like you - that will bring Him close so people can see how very big and how very close He really is.

You don't have to watch TV very long to find out how to be a beautiful woman. They will tell you about hair, skin, mascara, teeth, and all the rest. But every once in a while, you meet a woman and there is this very special kind of beauty about her. There's a quality that is hard to put into words but really makes her special. It's kind of like a beach ball I saw the other night. You say the other night? Yeah. Actually you can use this beach ball in the dark. It has a light inside of it. It's pretty cool! It's the light inside that makes it distinctive.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Lit Up From the Inside."

There is a manual on beauty from the Inventor of men and women. And it tells us guys a lot about what it means to be a guy. As the inventor of man and woman He should know a lot about what He considers the beauty He's built in right? He knows what looks best on a man, He knows what looks best on a woman, and He knows what most appeals to a quality man. And He talks about it in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 3. I'll begin reading at verse 2. He talks about - and in this case He's speaking to women - people seeing the purity and reverence of your lives. "Your beauty," He says, "should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair (which I guess was big then), and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead it should be that of your inner self (that's that light inside); the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."

There's an echo of this in Proverbs 31 - the description of a woman who has everything going her way. It says, "Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised." Every once in a while you'll meet a woman who has more than just lip gloss beauty or mascara beauty. There's a glow, there's a freshness, there's a radiance that comes from deep down inside. She's lit up from the inside, you might say, and it's hard to mistake that glow. They're rare. But you know when something's rare, it's valuable, and that's almost irresistible.

But you know what, there's something wonderful about an outward beauty that is backed by a beautiful spirit. That inner glow - that magnet on the inside - first of all comes from purity this passage says, and then a sense of softness and innocence that sometimes we find less and less. There's a hardness that comes in men and women from using and being used. And then there's the glow that comes from reverence; a woman who starts her day in the presence of Almighty God. There is something, for a man or a woman, that happens inside of them over a consistent time, being with Jesus every day. You start to be like Him.

And man or woman, there's something beautiful about being a person who makes other people feel important instead of calling attention to yourself. You live to give attention, not to get attention. When Jesus takes over your life, there's a beauty treatment on the inside.

When we let Christ do a makeover - He's really good at those. And many a woman with Christ in her heart has a radiance, a magnetic glow that comes through her. That is genuine beauty. It is timeless beauty. It is unfading beauty. A solid gold woman, beautiful, not because they're made up on the outside, but because they're lit up by Jesus on the inside.

I don't think I've ever "teared up" during a President's State of the Union Address to Congress - until that unforgettable moment during President George W. Bush's State of the Union early in 2005. For me, it had absolutely nothing to do with politics. It was just an intensely human moment that almost transcended politics.

At one point in his speech, he paid tribute to the Iraqi people for their courage in going to the polls in the face of incredible danger. Then, the President introduced a guest that was sitting in the gallery next to the First Lady - a woman who had been an Iraqi freedom activist for eleven years at that time - since Saddam Hussein had her father executed. She stood with her index finger in the air, still tinted with that identifying purple dye of someone who had voted. She was very moved by the standing ovation from everyone in that chamber.

And then a few moments later, the President paid tribute to the soldiers who had died in Iraq and then to their grieving families. At that point, he introduced a couple seated behind the woman from Iraq - their Marine son had died in the Fallujah campaign. They stood as representatives of all those families who had lost a son or daughter in Iraq. And then that mother leaned over to the front row and embraced the martyr's daughter from Iraq. They remained there just crying together, buried in each other's arms as the elected national leadership of the United States stood to their feet in a long and thunderous ovation. That's when I lost it.

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

What a picture! The one whose son died embracing one he died for. I think one reason I found that so moving is because I can see myself in that picture - embraced by the God whose Son died, and I'm the one that He died for, and so are you. The question is have you ever acknowledged the sacrifice that was made for you? Have you ever stepped into your Heavenly Father's waiting arms? He's got so much love He's been waiting to give you. He's got the love you may have spent a whole life looking for.

God's welcoming embrace cost Him the most precious thing He had - His one and only Son. Listen to these beautiful words from 1 John 4, beginning with verse 9, our word for today from the Word of God. "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him." Why don't you put your name in that verse? "He sent His one and only Son that (there's your name) might live through Him. He loved (there's your name) and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Like that mother at the State of the Union Address, God's the One whose Son died. But God's Son chose to die, because it was the only way your sins could be paid for other than you paying for them forever in hell.

The cross was for you. To ignore that sacrifice will cost you heaven. To depend on the good things you try to do for God instead of the amazing thing God did for you means you will pay the death penalty for your sin that Jesus already died to pay.

And now the One whose Son died waits to embrace the one He died for. In fact, He's been waiting for you for a long time. Let today be the day you finally experience His awesome love for yourself. Tell Him you know you've broken His laws and you've run your life your way, and that you want to change. Tell Him you're pinning all your hopes for eternity on the Savior who died for you. What an unforgettable day this could be for you.

I would love to help walk you through beginning that relationship. That's what our website is there for. Would you go there today? It's ANewStory.com. I want you to know when you go to bed tonight beyond any shadow of a doubt that you belong to Jesus Christ.

God gave His very best for you. Don't walk away from His waiting arms. Not after the price that He paid to love you.

It's amazing how creative parents can become when it's time to explain the facts of life to a child, and they really get creative when it comes to the vocabulary they choose. Now, we tell our kids that an ear is an ear, a leg is a leg, an elbow is an elbow and so on. But when it comes time to explain the more private parts of the body and the facts-of-life talk, we have a hard time using the right words. Frankly, I've heard some pretty weird names for human anatomy. Words invented, I guess, by a red-faced parent, but not recognized by any doctor on the planet. You know, it's good to use the right words when it comes to sex, especially the one that really counts - the Bible does.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Right Word For Sex."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the very beginning of man and woman, Genesis 4:1. It says, "Adam knew his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain." Now, the word "knew" obviously is referring to their sexual relationship - sexual intercourse between a man and a woman - Adam and Eve. We are looking in the book of Genesis at sex before it got spoiled, and ruined, and devalued; sex as it was meant to be, still unspoiled, still the best. And the word that's used for a sexual relationship between a man and woman is the word "know"... "Adam knew Eve."

When two people join themselves together physically, it's designed by God to be the ultimate "knowing" of two people. And when two people have sex that isn't based on a deep, intimate friendship and commitment, they don't go all the way. They don't go one-eighth of the way, because they don't have a lifetime of knowing each other that they're expressing through this awesome language of love. The Hebrew word is "yadah." It speaks of an intimacy of two people who know each other as they really are; a deep, personal, intimate, experiential knowledge of another person. That's why God designed sex for a lifetime commitment. He put a fence around sex called marriage.

And ironically, when you take sex out of marriage, outside the fence, it actually slows down or even eliminates the "knowing" process. It keeps you from getting to know a person, because the physical just takes over. The relationship becomes more self-centered. Couples stop talking, and often they end up marrying a stranger, because they've never really had a friend of the opposite sex. It's not knowing, it's using. The result is lonely relationships and even lonely marriages; people who have never had a friendship with the opposite sex and maybe never will.

And when the physical starts to be strong in a relationship, it will often mask the weaknesses in that relationship. Many people have married the wrong person because their passion blinded them. They were kept from really ever knowing the other person, and they made a life-long mistake. Remember, the Inventor always knows best, and the Inventor of sex knows best: two people in a lifetime committed knowing experience.

Anything less is a cheap, twisted, disappointing counterfeit. The Bible says to know someone as your best friend forever... now, that's the right word for sex.

There's no greater gift our daughter and son-in-law could have given us than the little guy that was our first grandchild and the ones that have come since. From the night he was born, our hearts were all wrapped around that precious new life and they still are for all our grandchildren even though they're grown up. We would jump at the chance to babysit, and believe me; our rates were well below the market. But eventually, we took him home, and it was our turn to relax. That's the cycle of life. I had my chance to be the father of a child when my children were born. A grandchild is grand, but he's really not your child.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "God's Got No Grandchildren!"

Now, I love being a grandfather. God doesn't. Well, He loves being a Father, but the Bible reveals the startling, unsettling truth that God has no grandchildren. Lots of children, but no grandchildren.

There really is no more critical, life-or-death issue in our lives than whether or not we belong to God. Not whether we believe in Him; whether we belong to Him; whether or not we have a personal relationship with Him. So much in this life and everything after this life depends on whether we are in God's family.

Our word for today from the Word of God can really help us determine if we are or we're not. It's found in John 1:12. God says, speaking of Jesus, "To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." Now, notice we're not automatically born a child of God. We're all His creation, but we're not all His children. There's got to be a spiritual birth for that to take place. And apparently a lot of people who know a lot about Jesus, who have been around Jesus a lot, who are in a religion about Jesus can miss Jesus. These verses tell us that Jesus "came to that which was His own, but His own did not recognize Him."

God makes it clear that you don't belong to Him unless you have personally been born into a relationship with Him as His child. He has no second-generation people in His family. You won't go to heaven because your mom or dad belongs to Jesus, or because your son or daughter does or your husband or wife. You're not God's child just because you've been around God's children your whole life, even if you've been acting like one of God's children.

My daughter is my daughter by one simple fact: there was a day she was born into my family. Without that birth, there's no relationship. Without a personal spiritual rebirth, there is no relationship between you and God, no forgiveness, no heaven. And God tells us exactly how and when you can be spiritually born. His children are those who it says, "received Him (Jesus)...those who believed." That means the day you reach out to Jesus in total trust and say, "Lord, You are my only hope of having my sins forgiven, of belonging to God, because You are the only One who died to pay for my sins, to pay the awful death penalty; to take my hell to go to Your heaven." In short, "Jesus, I'm Yours."

You may be surrounded by Christianity, but missing Christ. Well, today could be your day to change that. It could be your spiritual birthday forever. If you want to begin this incredible relationship with Jesus Christ and know that you have, then let's have a definite beginning. Let Him know that. Tell Him that right now, "Jesus, knowing about You is not enough for me. I want to know You. Having a religion about You is not enough. I know that it will never be enough to get me into heaven or You would have never died on that cross. But, Jesus, I see now how personal that was and I embrace You, I grab You like a drowning person grabbing a lifeguard. You are my only hope, Jesus. And beginning today, I'm yours."

To help you know you belong to Him, would you please go to our website today? You'll find some things there that will really help you be sure. That website is ANewStory.com.

All these years beneath all the Christian words and Christian activities and maybe masks you've known in your heart that someone was missing, and it's been Jesus all along. But that's about to end if you'll give yourself to Him. Then when God opens His family album on Judgment Day - the one with no grandchildren - there you'll be: a child of God, born this very day.

When Walt Disney animated the story of Snow White, he created seven memorable, even if short characters - the seven dwarfs. I'm not one of them! Now, I'm not going to ask you to name them; we'll save that for a game of Trivial Pursuit or something. But I always loved that little song they sang on the way to work.

And well, they didn't exactly work in an environmentally controlled office building. They worked in a mine all day. Not the greatest place to work! But each day they would merrily march off to work singing, (I won't sing it for you, but here we go.) "Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it's off to work we go." Well, what a great way to approach your responsibilities. I'll tell you, anyone who does that is a giant.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about a "Prescription For a Weary Worker."

Now, I attended a meeting of people who are very busy in Christian ministry, and one woman expressed a feeling that, as it turned out, everybody in the room agreed with. She said, "You know, people are working for the Lord around here, and they get very discouraged or they quit because of one word - weariness." And I watched a lot of heads nodding in that room.

Now, there are a lot of men and women who have spiritual responsibility and they struggle with a deep weariness, and it's far beyond physical. They're just tired of pushing, and of being sometimes the one of the few who care. They're tired of little results for a lot of work, and maybe not being appreciated. Some of you might say, "Well, how did you know?" Because there are a lot of us that serve the Lord that start to feel that way sometime or another.

Okay, our word for today from the Word of God, Hebrews 12:2-4 - "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning it's shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men..." And then notice this, "...so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

And then the writer goes on to say, In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." Okay, there's this weariness that we talked about that some people who are listening can identify with; that deep, emotional kind that saps your physical strength too. And there's discouragement; the kind that results in a mechanical kind of service - just kind of crank it out. And honestly, more and more frequent thoughts of quitting.

Weariness, according to Hebrews 12, seems to result from taking your eyes off Jesus. Maybe you're weary because you've been doing God's work in your strength. You know better, but you've gone from God working through you to the crank-it-out weariness of you suddenly working for God. Oh, you're doing the same things, but it's not Him through you. It's you for Him. Or it could be that you've been looking at the results you're getting instead of the Savior you're serving. He gives the results, He gives the rewards - people don't.

Is it time to get your eyes back on the Jesus whose love compelled you to serve in the first place?

You know, when Jacob had to work seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel, I love what the Bible says, "They seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her." See, love makes the difference. Then you'll be able to join that saint who served the Lord for 70 years and who sang that song, "Since I started for the kingdom, since my life He controls, since I gave my life to Jesus, the longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows."

This is going to come as a surprise to my friends who know my handyman abilities or my lack of handyman abilities, but my sons and I have built several houses together. Uh-huh! Yeah. Now, don't expect to see a pickup truck around town that says Hutchcraft & Sons on the side; that's not going to happen. See, our houses... Well, they haven't done too well.

It wasn't because we didn't work hard. We did. And it wasn't because they didn't look good; they looked great. It wasn't because they weren't big; we built them pretty big. But they literally collapsed within hours of the time we finished building them. It might have had something to do with the fact that we built those houses out of sand on a beach near the ocean.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "So What Are You Building?"

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 16. I'm going to begin reading at verse 16. "Simon Peter said, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Jesus replied, 'Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by My Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." Did you get that? "And on this rock I will build My church."

That's what Jesus is building, and the tide is not going to affect it, the gates of hell He says will not overcome it. Now, there's no doubt about what Jesus is building. He's building His church. Are you? What are you building? We're all working on some structure; some kingdom of some kind. It's that in which you are putting your dreams, quite a bit of your money, the best of your time, a lot of your daily conversation revolves around whatever kingdom you are working on.

Maybe you're building a reputation for yourself. Maybe you're building a romantic relationship, and that relationship is actually getting most of your best. Maybe you're building a business; I will build my business. I will build my income. I will build my personal dream. I will build my retirement. I will build my own little kingdom, maybe even within Christ's church. It's all sand castles; it's all going to collapse. And our master said, "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you" (Matthew 6:33).

Jesus is calling us to focus what we have on building His church. Do you know what that means today? It's not building a building. It means reaching the lost and building up believers. So, is that where your best is going? Someone has said in order for us to pray, "Thy kingdom come" we first have to pray, "My kingdom go." All these other things are all right if they're around the periphery, if they're the planets revolving around the sun of Christ's agenda. If Christ is at the center and calling the shots in all of them.

In the Old Testament the Jews were supposed to be rebuilding God's temple in the book of Haggai and God asks this penetrating question: "Why is it that you are rebuilding your own house while My house remains a ruin?" Once again, neglecting God's agenda and marginalizing it for our own.

I wonder if you'd stand back and take a candid look at your motives, at what is really your great passion right now, your great focus, your great obsession. Where are your energies going? Is it getting people to your Jesus? Or has Jesus' building program taken a back seat to something you're building; something out of sand; something a strong tide is going to wash away.

Jesus said, "The gates of hell will not wash away what He is building." Don't waste your few years on earth on a building that's not going to last. Jesus is building His church. What are you building?