Monday, March 17, 2008
Download MP3 (right click to save)
I'm a city boy. Where I grew up, kids were about the only things that grew. We didn't even have grass in the backyard of the apartment building where I lived - just dirt. So I've had a lot to learn from the farm girl I married, as well as my many friends who are or were farmers. I was traveling in the heartland with one of our leaders recently - a man who spent years in farming, and he taught me a pretty memorable lesson as we were driving down a country road just past a cornfield. He was explaining how a farmer harvests his corn and how the end row may get knocked down when he turns the corner from one row to another. That leaves some corn stalks knocked down, lying horizontal and broken. And they're often in the shade of a stalk that’s still standing near it. But don't count that stalk out just yet! The pollen from the overshadowing corn stalk filters down onto that broken corn. And amazingly, that plant that has everything going against it starts developing another crop and eventually you'll be able to pick corn off that old boy!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Missing Your Destiny."
My friend made a point that day that I haven't been able to forget. Cornstalks do what cornstalks were made to do - produce an ear of corn, even when those plants are wounded and beat down and in the shadows. Actually, everything God made does what it was made to do: the sun lights our solar system, cotton plants produce cotton, bees pollinate flowers, water evaporates and then condenses to give us rain. Everything does what God created it to do except us. And we humans do what we want to do.
The single question on that great life quiz is this: "Why am I here?" If you flunk that one, you flunk life. The truth is the only One who knows why I'm here is the One who put me here. And God tells us what we're here for in just six simple but revolutionary words. They're in Colossians 1:16, our word for today from the Word of God. It says, speaking of Jesus Christ, "All things were (here are the six words) created by Him and for Him." You were created by Him; you were created for Him. Your life will never be fulfilling, and it will never know its purpose until you have Him. Like the earth was created to revolve around the sun, you and I were created to revolve around our Creator.
But we've made another choice. We treat people like we want to treat them, we say what we feel like saying, we do what we want to do, and one day at a time, we drift farther from the only One who can make our life mean anything. We are the earth away from the sun it was made to have at the center and it is not working. That's why your life, in spite of all the relationships and experiences and religion you've tried, feels so lonely, small, unsatisfying and full of regrets. You're away from the One who gave you your life. And if you die like this, you'll be away from Him forever.
Our only hope was the rescue that Jesus came to give us. The Bible says, "He brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have...the forgiveness of sins" because Jesus "made peace through His blood shed on the cross" ( Colossians 1:13-14, 20). Only the death of Jesus in your place, for your sins, can erase a lifetime of going against God. You don't need to waste one more day of this life being away from Him. You don't need to risk an eternity without Him. Not if you'll grab Jesus like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard and say, "Jesus, you're my only hope. I'm yours!" In that moment, you can find the God who made you. You can finally find the reason you're here. If that’s what you want, I want to invite you to visit our website where you will find there a blueprint…a simple blueprint for how to be sure you belong to Jesus Christ; how to make today your day of a new beginning. Just go to yoursforlife.net. Or I can send you my booklet, Yours For Life, if you just call for it at 877-741-1200.