Monday, September 17, 2007
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For a while, it seemed like it was just a head cold. But suddenly my wife's chest started to hurt, and a serious almost uncontrollable cough developed, and minor activity even made it hard to breathe. I had suggested she see a doctor earlier in the week, but she's about as good at taking those suggestions as I am. But eventually she got so miserable, she called for an appointment. "You've got pneumonia, girl!" That's what the doctor said after the chest x-ray. Sure enough, there was this dark stuff, camping out in her lung, causing all this trouble.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Getting Worse So You Can Get Well."
Thankfully, the doctor knew what to give my honey to cure this condition. Her problem really wasn't the coughing or the chest discomfort or the breathing difficulty. Those were just the symptoms, and all the little treatments for those symptoms didn't solve the problem, believe me. It took a cure for the condition that was causing the problems to finally make her well. But guess what it took to get my wife to the person who could cure what was really wrong? She had to get worse to get to the point where she'd go to the one who could make her well.
Maybe you've had to get to that point, too, to get a cure, that is, for the spiritual condition in your soul that's causing so many of the symptoms that have plagued your life for so long. Sometimes our symptoms have to get so acute, so painful that we just have to finally go to find what's wrong, and to be healed by the only One who can heal us. And that's very important, because our condition is terminal - forever.
In our word for today from the Word of God, the ancient Jewish King David tells us what finally cured his symptoms; what showed up on God's spiritual x-ray of his heart. It may be a key to you finally finding some relief from that loneliness, from the crushing stress you feel, from that restlessness in your heart, the never-answered frustrations over why you're even here, or from symptoms like struggling over your worth, your failures, or the pain of your past.
In Psalm 32, beginning with verse 1, David says, "Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him ... When I kept silent, my bones wasted away, through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer." All kinds of symptoms: heaviness in his soul, groaning over how his life was going, total inner depletion. Then the breakthrough: "Then I acknowledged my sin to You and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and You forgave me the guilt of my sin.'" Like my wife, he finally got bad enough that he went to the only One who could heal what was really wrong.
Sin is what's really wrong with you and me. Many of the things we call our "problems" are really there because God isn't there. And He isn't there because we've pushed Him out and we've run the life that He was supposed to run. Since we're out of the orbit we were made for, nothing's really working. If we die away from Him, we'll be away from Him forever. And that is called hell. But the Bible tells us that Jesus, God's Son, "bore our sins in His own body on the tree" ( 1 Peter 2:24). You and I do the sinning, but Jesus did the dying for it. He's your only hope of having every wrong thing you've ever done forgiven. He's your only hope of ever going to God's heaven. And the reason your symptoms have gotten worse is so you'd finally go to Him and get well. As one man said about Jesus' death for Him, "His wounds have healed mine."
Jesus is waiting to administer the miracle cure of His forgiveness to you this very day, but only if and when you completely trust your life to His hands. You can have all He died to give you by telling Him, "Jesus, I am Yours." That is the beginning of the relationship you were made for. If you want to get started with Him, you want this relationship with Jesus Christ, I'd urge you to go to our website which is really all about getting started with Him. It's yoursforlife.net. Or you can call for the booklet called Yours For Life just by calling 877-741-1200. You really need Him, and you can have Him today.