Friday, August 22, 2014
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Some friends said, "How would you like to use our condominium down by the ocean in Florida?" It was a very hard decision, but it took us ten seconds. I'll tell you what, it was really a great place. I never thought I'd stay in a place like that. It had some very distinctive furnishings. Well, yeah, the mirrors! They were everywhere. And they were very strategically placed so you could see the ocean from almost any spot in the house.
I was the first one up that first morning. I was alone. Now, I'm not familiar with this place, okay? I'm puttering around in the kitchen for breakfast. I went over to the kitchen table. I leaned over to get something and suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw this hand reaching for me. It scared me! Of course I spun around to see who was sneaking up on me. It was me. I hadn't realized that there was a mirror on the wall right next to me reflecting everything I did. Everywhere I went in this place I kept running into me.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Running Into Yourself."
One of the writers of the Bible kept running into himself everywhere, and he didn't like what he saw. He wrote words that people have been able to identify with very closely for a long time. His name is Paul. He wrote much of the New Testament, and it says in Romans 7:18, "I have the desire to do what is good, but I can't carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing." Oh for goodness sake, who can't relate to that, in our marriage, with our kids, with our friends?
Then he says in verse 21, "I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me." And finally he is desperate. In verse 24 he says, "What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death?" Then he's got an answer. He says, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
In spite of being a very religious man, Paul kept running into this dark side of himself that was selfish and sinful. Is that unique to him? No! Like that condo we were in, we've got a lot of mirrors that show us some things that scare us. If you're married, your spouse is probably a mirror for you. Your parents are a mirror; showing you things that you may not like about yourself; you may not like to hear.
Our children - man, are they our mirrors! They reflect our inadequacies, our weaknesses, our baggage, our mistakes, and our pain. And even our critics; they're mirrors. Even if we throw away a lot of what they say as being bias, they still show us things we'd rather not see. And a crisis - now there's a mirror. Where things are coming apart - that's where you see the real you.
Now, when our dark side is suddenly staring us in the face, we try to run from it, we try to rationalize it, blame someone else until one day we finally get honest and say, "You know what? There is a darkness inside of me that scares me. I can't change the ugly parts of me. If I could have, I would have." And that's where Paul was here, "Who will rescue me?" And then there's the answer: God would through Jesus Christ. See, life's mirrors all seem to say the same thing, "You need a Savior." And we do.
That's why the Bible says in Romans 5:8, "While we were still sinners (That's means running our own lives that God was supposed to run.) God proved His love for us by Christ dying for us. We have this killer disease called sin, and God's Son came to break its' power, to die for your sin and mine to be our Rescuer. And then He showed His power over the most powerful force on earth - death, by conquering it on Easter morning.
Couldn't you use that power in your life, in your relationships, in your family? There's a new beginning that comes when you get every sin and every mistake forgiven by God. This all happens when you go to the cross of Jesus and you surrender to this wonderful Savior. Have you ever done that? Have you ever started your relationship with Him? If you haven't and you want to, can I ask you to take the next step on that journey and go to our website ANewStory.com? I want to help you get this going.
Maybe you are even running into yourself in life's mirrors recently and you don't like what you see. Look again. Right behind you, just over your shoulder, there's someone there. That's Jesus extending His hand to you. Grab Him right now. He's helped you run into yourself so you'll run into Him.