Monday, April 2, 2007
You can read about the Grand Canyon. You can see pictures of the Grand Canyon. But you can't begin to comprehend how grand a canyon it is until you're standing right there at the edge of it, trying to drink in how massive it really is. The moods, the colors, the vastness - it was really something impressive for our whole family that first time we went there together. You stand on the South Rim and you look at the North Rim in the distance - the far distance, realizing you can only look. It averages at least ten miles across! There's no way to get across that canyon. There's no bridge that will take you to the other side.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Crossing the Grand Canyon."
You stand looking at something you'd like to experience, but there's no bridge to get you there - just a very grand canyon between you and what you're looking at. It's a feeling all of us are much too familiar with; looking at where we are, then looking at the kind of person we need to be and realizing what a grand canyon there is in between.
Sometimes it's getting married, or having children, or going through one of life's valleys that makes us see our dark side; that makes us realize the great gap between the person I am and the person I want to be, the person I need to be, the person the people around me need for me to be. We don't want to be selfish, but selfishness seems so natural and so hard to change. We don't want to be enslaved by this habit, or by hurting people with our angry words, or by constantly succumbing to negativity or depression. We see our worst come out, and it's often hurting most the people we love the most. We want to be different, but it's a long way to the other side. I know what I want to be, what people who count on me need for me to be, but my dark side keeps winning.
This is not a new struggle. One of the writers of the Bible talked about it in Romans 7, where we find our word for today from the Word of God. He says, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do." That sounds all too familiar, doesn't it? "I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out," he says. "For what I do is the evil I do not want to do ... who will rescue me?" This man has stumbled on the way we can bridge the gap between the person we are and the person we need to be - a rescuer. He answers the question "who will rescue me?" this way: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
All our efforts to improve ourselves seem to fall short. And according to Romans 3:23 in the Bible, our best falls way short of getting to a perfect God. We have only one hope of crossing the grand canyon we've never been able to cross, and that is literally being carried across in the arms of Jesus Christ. He can rescue you from your dark side because He died to pay the penalty for all your sins, and then He rose from the dead to prove that He has beaten everything that has beaten us.
The arms of Heaven's Rescuer are, in fact, open to you this very day. But He won't grab you. You have to grab Him. Has there ever been a moment when you've come to the end of yourself, placed all your hopes and all your trust in Jesus Christ and in Him alone? If not, this would be a great day for you to finally take that step of faith. Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours - depending totally on You."
I would love to help you and encourage you at this very important crossroads moment in your life if you'll go to our website where there's a simple explanation of how to be sure you belong to Jesus. The website's yoursforlife.net. I'd be glad to send you my free booklet called Yours For Life if you'll just call and let me know you want it at 877-741-1200.
Jesus stands ready to do for you what you've never been able to do for yourself if you'll walk into His waiting arms.