My friend, Ed, thought he had the perfect hiding place, and he told me about it. Now, Ed's not really his name, but it is a true story. The incident happened this way. Some years ago when he was a teenager, and he came from a nice Christian family - nice Christian boy, except for some of his reading material. Now, it was before Internet days but there was a magazine called Playboy. He had a habit of going out and buying Playboy and some other magazines like it, and he hid them in an old, unused icebox where no one ever went. And he was sure no one knew the place. Well, when he went to get his dirty magazines one day, they were gone. But that's only part of it. In their place there was a Bible. He knew his dad had to leave it there. There was never any yelling, his dad never talked to him about it, but he bought no more magazines because of that little switch his dad had made.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Royal Switch."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 10, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 3. "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

Now, this talks about weapons that will tear down strongholds. And as you study this passage, it becomes obvious that spiritual strongholds are sinful ways of thinking that, well, maybe they've been part of our personality for a long time. Maybe they're wrong ways of thinking about the opposite sex, about depressing feelings in your life, or about a relationship with someone who's hurt you, maybe it's lust, or depression, or bitterness, or self-pity. But it's got a strong hold on us. And then it goes on to say, "We can take captive every one of those wrong thoughts to the obedience of Christ."

Now, until you can master the source of sin, which is your wrong thoughts, that sin will master you. How do you do that? Well, Ephesians 6:17 talks about the spiritual weapon that will work. It says, "Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." learn a lesson from a friend's wise father. Where there had been dirt in the form of those magazines, he put God's Word. He didn't just remove the dirty; he replaced it with a Bible. Now, if you want to beat sin...if you want to beat those wrong thoughts, then you've got to have two strategies working for you. First, take out the garbage - the garbage thoughts - and don't collect any more. That means turning your eyes away from the magazine rack. It means flipping the channel when something comes on that has no business going into your mental computer. It means not ever clicking again to go to those places on the Internet. It may mean, as it did for some of my friends, of putting a picture of Jesus on their computer, or another man who said, "I can't even afford to have a computer at home. I've got to beat the monster inside." It may mean avoiding negative conversations that fuel the dark side of you; canceling a subscription to a magazine, or a streaming service, or monitoring the music you listen to - whatever it takes to be free of the bondage.

Secondly, you have to put the Bible where the dirt has been. You take a Bible bath daily. You dwell on what you read. You write it down in a journal so you remember it. You use it that day so it becomes part of your personality. There's no substitute for memorizing the Word of God.

D. L. Moody said it so well, "Think sin - think scripture." I like what someone wrote in my Bible one time, "Either sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin." Now you have a weapon that can tear down a stronghold of sin and tame the most sinful of thoughts.

"Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee." Put God's Word in the same hiding place where you've been hiding that sinful stuff. That is the royal switch.

There's this beautiful spot on the coast of Maine called Bar Harbor, because there's a bar in the harbor. It's a sandbar that's totally exposed at low tide and totally submerged at high tide. The bar goes from the mainland to a little island called (you'll never guess) Bar Island. The island's okay, but you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time there. Although some people do - a lot more time than they had planned to spend. When our family walked across the bar at low tide, we made sure to check that tide chart to see when the tide would be coming back. As we were walking back from the island, the tide had started coming in. Then there were those intelligent tourists who waited a little too long to start back, and suddenly there was no way back! Now, you know what? No one has to be stranded on that island. There is a way off, if you take it!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Escape From Lonely Island."

Lonely Island is not on any map that I know of, but it's an island we've all spent time on. Loneliness is like an emotional island and we can get stranded there when we've been isolated, or ignored, or left out, or forgotten, maybe misunderstood, abandoned. Maybe even today finds you in the middle of another one of your lonely times.

The good news is you don't have to be stuck on Lonely Island. Loneliness is ultimately not a prison sentence. It's a choice! Feeling lonely is unavoidable. It's part of being human, but staying lonely is a choice. Just like Bar Island, there are some steps you can take to leave that island.

One way to make a lonely time a short time is to find somebody who needs you; to reach out from your loneliness, even if you don't feel like it, to make a difference for someone else. At a time when loneliness leaves you thinking mostly about you, it's important to decide to look beyond yourself. Another antidote to loneliness is to expand your world, especially your circle of friendships. If you take the risks to reach out to more people, you can reduce your trips to Lonely Island.

But even with all our efforts to cope with the lonely times, a lot of us carry this gnawing sense of loneliness with us most of the time. It isn't necessarily that there aren't people there for us, it's just that those people have never been enough to fill us up inside. It's like there's always something missing. Actually, like someone missing. Well, there is - the One you were made by - the One you were made for.

The incurable loneliness in the human heart is ultimately cosmic loneliness. We're lonely for God. No earth relationship has ever been able to fill the God-shaped hole in your heart. In the words of the Bible, in Isaiah 59:2, "Your sins have separated you from your God." Your sins are all those thousands of choices you've made in your lifetime that disregarded God's way for "your way." So here we are, away from the one person who has the love we're looking for. The only person who knows why we were created; the person we will meet the moment we die.

For our word for today from the Word of God, consider this promise from Jesus in light of the loneliness you know all too well. Hebrews 13:5 - "I will never leave you. I will never forsake you." Think of it - unloseable love, unconditional love. Jesus' love for you took Him all the way to a brutal death on a cross, where He gave His life to pay your sin-bill with God. The one whose love you've been looking for all these years is yours the moment you say, "Jesus, I'm Yours." You are one step of faith away from the world's only "never leave you" love. Would you take that step today? "Jesus, I'm yours. I'm pinning all my hopes on You."

Our website is there to help you get started. I hope you'll check it out today. It's ANewStory.com.

Your anchor relationship could begin this very day and it will never end. Never, no matter what else changes and no matter who else leaves. And you will have just spent your last day alone.

I think every kid loves a circus. And there's probably a kid inside of all of us. I still love the circus, too. I've always been personally fascinated by those death-defying artists from the high trapeze. They leap, perfect poise, have grace, from one trapeze to another, until they end up safe on that platform all the way across the arena from where they started. And I guess you could eventually get used to hanging onto a trapeze, and you'd feel comparatively secure as soon as you reached the next one. My problem would be the time between trapezes. Yeah, that would bother me. Actually, it bothers all of us.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living Between Trapezes."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Jeremiah 29. And you might, like God's people in this passage, be living between trapezes right now. One phase of your life is behind you, and you're counting on a new one up ahead. But right now you're in one of life's great like in-between times. We all go through those. Well, so were the people of God that he was advising in Jeremiah 29. The Jews were in a temporary spot, so to speak, between two permanent spots. They had started out in Israel, they will end up back in Israel, but right now they're between trapezes. They are in-between in captivity in Babylon. It's a temporary place.

Here are instructions given by God for people between trapezes. He says, "Build houses, settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage. Increase in number there and do not decrease. Also, seek the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Now, the message seems to be this: When you're in-between, don't hold back. Live as if you're going to be there the rest of your life. He uses words like build, settle, plant, increase, work for the good of that city, improve where you are. I can hear you saying, "But Lord, this isn't where we want to be. We just want to ‘get by' until we, you know, get to where we want to be." Well, Jeremiah 29:11 is that great verse that so many people quote, where God says, "I know the plans I have for you..." (Now remember, it just follows everything I read before about their in-between status.) "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future."

See, God's good plans for tomorrow come from you living whole-heartedly today between trapezes. Today maybe you're not where you want to end up, you're between jobs, or you're in one that's just a stop-gap. Or you're single, waiting, wanting to be married. Maybe you're living in a temporary situation or waiting for some breakthrough. Well, like the Jews of old, it's just an in-between place. But like them, God expects you to build there, to plant there, to increase, to improve that place. Someone once said, "Bloom where you're planted." And as you do, you give God the attitude that He can use to ultimately bring you those great plans, to bring you His very best.

If you're in between trapezes right now, remember, this is a terrible place to lose your concentration. Be all you can be right where you are. Actually that's the best way to get safely to the destination that you want so much.