Tuesday, August 28, 2018
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Well, we're not going to forget for a long time, even as the years pass, the images of the World Trade Center attacks and those heroic rescue efforts that followed them. One moment still sticks with me. It hit me. It was this interview with a big guy who was helping the rescuers. He was sitting on a curb at Ground Zero, talking with a reporter from a cable news network. He told how he had been delivering food to the rescuers, and then he was making his way back through the rubble when he decided to reach into that rubble just on the chance someone might be there. Unbelievably he suddenly felt this warm hand grabbing his arm. Immediately, he went and got helpers who pulled a firefighter out of there alive! And then that's when he lost it in that interview, and he choked out these words, "He touched me first."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Nothing Like a Rescue."
That man at Ground Zero had been part of one of the most moving experiences a human being can have-being involved in the rescue of someone who otherwise would have died. It's an experience that God intends for every one of His children to have, except the rescue isn't the physical kind that might give a person 30 or 40 more years on earth. No, it's spiritual rescue that will give a person heaven!
Wherever you live, wherever you work or go to school, wherever you shop or wherever you recreate, you've been assigned as God's rescuer in your circle of influence. Listen to the incredible position God has entrusted to you. It's described in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 5:19-20. "God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation." Translation: it's up to you whether or not the people in your personal world find out that what Jesus did on the cross was for them. Verse 20, "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us."
So you are Jesus' personal representative to the people you know. Yes, to show them Jesus by your life, what Jesus is and how real He can be in a life. But that's not enough. They can only get God's message about Jesus if you tell them about Him. And it's life-or-death information that you've got locked up inside you. You're going in for the spiritual rescue of someone whose only hope may be what you know about Jesus!
Now, how do you begin your rescue work? By praying by name, faithfully, for people who don't know Christ. Pray for God to open up natural opportunities for you to explain your relationship with Jesus. Look for an opportunity to pray with them about something that's bothering them. Invest some time in being with them, doing things with them, building bridges to them. Don't just spend all your time with people who are already going to heaven!
D. L. Moody, the great evangelist once said, "There is no greater honor than to be the instrument in God's hands to lead one person out of the kingdom of darkness and into the glorious light of heaven." And may I add, there is no greater thrill. Just ask a man who has been the first to touch someone who otherwise would have died.
When it's rescue-when it's life-or-death, you drop everything, you risk everything, you do whatever it takes to bring that person out. For some person you know, you are that rescuer. You are their chance!