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.

If you consider yourself a religious person, boy, have I got good news for you! Recent research indicates that those who consider themselves religious tend to have lower blood pressure than the rest of the population, they are less likely to be obese, to have cancer, to be hospitalized, and they have a 29% greater chance to live longer! And religious people (it says) tend to have lower rates of depression, less suicide, greater sexual satisfaction in their marriage, and overall a greater sense of well-being. What do you know, Jesus was right when He said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness" and "Blessed are the pure in heart" (Matthew 5:6, 8). Lots of good news if you're a religious person, and some very disturbing bad news.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Bad News About Being Religious."

That bad news comes through loud and clear and it's in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in Matthew 7:21-23. Jesus is describing some horrible surprises when some religious folks stand before God.

Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you.'" The unsettling bad news is this: some very religious people will be stopped at the gates of heaven!

These are clearly people who know a lot about Jesus...who've done a lot of things in Jesus' name...who are, no doubt, considered to be Christians by the people who know them. Except for one thing - Jesus says, "I never knew you." Somehow, in the middle of lots of Christianity, it is possible to miss Christ. It's possible to be very religious, very involved with Christian things, and to miss Jesus and to miss heaven!

How does this happen? Jesus said that what these people missed was "doing the will of my Father in heaven." Well, in John 6:40, Jesus tells us exactly what that is. "My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life." That's what God the Father wants. That's what He demands as the only way to get into heaven. It's not doing Christian things or believing Christian beliefs or observing Christian rituals. It's putting your total trust in His Son as your only hope of having eternal life.

That's the problem with some of us church folks - we're actually counting on our Christianity, our church attendance, our spiritual track record as the thing that will make us right with God. But none of it can do that. That's why Jesus came. Your sins and mine carry a horrible, eternal death penalty in hell; one which can't be paid by any amount of human goodness, but only by Jesus' death on the cross.

It may be that for all your years of being around Jesus, of agreeing with Jesus, you've never grabbed Jesus like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard. You've never told Him you're abandoning any trust you have in your religion or your goodness and you're putting your total trust in Him to be your rescuer from your sin.

If you've never taken that step, if you're not sure you've taken that step that makes all the difference, would you do it today? "Jesus, I abandon all hope but You. I now come to you totally on the basis of your death on the cross and your resurrection. I turn from my sin to You controlling the rest of my life." I hope you move Him from your head to your heart today.

You know what? I'd love to help you make that commitment to Christ and cross that line to belonging to Him. That's actually why our website is there. It's ANewStory.com. Would you go there today?