Monday, March 4, 2019
Download MP3 (right click to save)
So what was the greatest song of the Twentieth Century? That was the question they asked on a major survey that was taken early in the twenty-first century. And the winner: Judy Garland's signature song from The Wizard of Oz believe it or not "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Let me sing that for you...no, I won't - blessed are the merciful. The tragedy is that Judy Garland herself could never seem to get there. She was an international star at the age of 17 and she remains one of the towering entertainers of the last century. But tragically, her search for health and happiness led her down a road of drug addiction, disappointing relationships, psychiatric hospitals, and a physical collapse. She died of a drug overdose in a London hotel. It's just painfully ironic, huh? The voice that tried to take us "over the rainbow" could never make it there herself.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Stranded On This Side Of the Rainbow."
"The rainbow" means something a little different to all of us, but it ultimately represents the fulfillment, the worth, the love that we all want to have to fill us up inside. But Judy Garland's inability to ever get what her heart craved is not an isolated exception. You know that. In a sense, maybe you feel stranded on this side of the rainbow.
It isn't for lack of trying. It's just that every achievement has left you feeling hollow afterwards. Every relationship's left you still feeling unexplainably lonely. Every great experience, even spiritual experiences, has left you strangely unsatisfied. In a sense, you've been searching for as long as you can remember, but so far never really finding. The "rainbow" is still beyond your reach. It always will be until you belong to the person who gave you your life in the first place. Every other "rainbow" in our life is a terribly inadequate substitute for a love relationship with the God of the universe.
In our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus is talking to a woman who's been looking for the end of her search in relationships with men. You can fill in the blank and you can put in there whatever your "rainbow" has been. Jesus has run into this woman at a well where they were both looking for water, and in John 4:13-14, He says, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." Just a minute here, that's the problem with every "rainbow," every "well" that we've thought would do it for us. We end up like "thirsty again."
Then Jesus goes on to say, "But whoever drinks the water I give Him, it will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life." Jesus is offering to her and to you a spring inside that will never leave you thirsty again, a relationship with Him that will literally give you life here and life forever in heaven. We've cut ourselves off from our source because we've stubbornly lived our way instead of His way. And there would be no hope of belonging to the One we were made for, except that Jesus died on that cross to absorb the death penalty that you and I deserve for hijacking our life from God.
And He's coming to you today to offer you the relationship with Him that will end your search once and for all. He's reaching out to you, but you have to reach back. You have to like grab His hand as your only hope of being forgiven - your only hope of going to heaven. Would you like to belong to this Jesus, who loves you like no one loves you, who has power to walk out of His grave under His own power? Who's got power like that to give? You want to belong to Him from this day on, tell Him that right now where you are, "Jesus, beginning right now I'm yours. I'm pinning all my hopes on you."
Look, you're going to want more information, and it's available right there at our website - ANewStory.com. I want to urge you to go there as soon as you can today. Can you remember that? ANewStory.com. There I think you will find out how you can be sure before this day is over you belong to Jesus Christ.
If you're tired of seeking and you're ready to find, then make this your Jesus-day. He's everything your heart has always looked for and never found...until today.