Wednesday, November 9, 2016
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After watching the World Trade Center as part of my skyline for many years, it hit really hard that awful September 11th to see those towers come crashing down and thousands of lives with them. The day after the first attack on the Trade Center, which was back in 1993, I was greeted by a TV crew as I got off a flight from Newark. Of all things, they asked me as a New Yorker how I felt after that bombing. And I could only think of one word, "vulnerable." That was my answer.
Well, since the events of that September 11th, and the years since then, and all of the terrorism that has spread Iike a cancer, I think a lot of us are feeling more and more vulnerable all the time. Look, we've watched everyday people like us, doing things we do back on September 11th, passengers on a jetliner, folks at their jobs – suddenly wiped out en masse. We're uncertain about what a new kind of war might mean, where the danger might pop up next, and what's going to happen economically. And some of us are trying to help our children understand this crazy world that we don't even understand. We all feel vulnerable. It's as if some of our own sense of personal security and safety started to come crashing down with those towers.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Safe in an Unsafe World."
Even without the constantly disturbing events in the news, we all know the feeling of having things that we counted on suddenly crashing down – a person we love, our job, the collapse of a marriage, a bad report from the doctor. In times like these, we're hungry for something we can anchor to, for something to sustain us when the bad news is more than we can bear, for something that will make us feel really safe.
When our President addressed the nation on this generation's "day of infamy" that September 11th, he alluded to the one source of comfort and hope in moments like these. He quoted from that treasured 23rd Psalm in the Bible – actually, Psalm 23:4, our word for today from the Word of God. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me."
The Bible holds out to you and me a security that can keep you safe in life's deepest valleys – even the valley of the shadow of death. That security is a relationship. It's a person. "You are with me, Lord" the psalmist said. All our lives we've been looking for one "unloseable" love. And there really is one. It's the love of the One who made you, the One you will meet on the other side of your last heartbeat, the One whose love caused Him to literally lay down His life for you.
In our vulnerable moments, our moments that are more than you can handle alone, those moments when you've gone seeking God, maybe you've realized that there's something that is separating you from Him. The Bible says we're right. The Bible says, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2). But Jesus came to remove that wall between you and God – the only way it could be removed – by Jesus dying to pay the death penalty for you and for me, hijacking a life that God was supposed to run and we took it instead.
Either you have this life-saving relationship with Jesus or you don't. It all depends on whether there's been a time when you grabbed the outstretched hand of Jesus like a person trapped in the wreckage would grab the hand of his rescuer. If you are ready for the kind of security, the safety that only Jesus Christ can offer, if you're ready to begin this anchor relationship with the man who died for you, whose love you will never lose, would you tell Him that right where you are? "Jesus, you died for me. My life is yours from this day on."
I want you to know for sure that you have that anchor, that security from this day on. So I'd invite you to go where some information is that will really help that happen. It's our website ANewStory.com. I'd love for you to visit there as soon as you can today.
My prayer is that you'll be able to go to sleep tonight knowing you are in the safest place in the universe – the arms of Jesus Christ – and that you'll be able to say, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil – for You are with me."