You don't have to watch TV very long to find out how to be a beautiful woman. They will tell you about hair, skin, mascara, teeth, and all the rest. But every once in a while, you meet a woman and there is this very special kind of beauty about her. There's a quality that is hard to put into words but really makes her special. It's kind of like a beach ball I saw the other night. You say the other night? Yeah. Actually you can use this beach ball in the dark. It has a light inside of it. It's pretty cool! It's the light inside that makes it distinctive.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Lit Up From the Inside."

There is a manual on beauty from the Inventor of men and women. And it tells us guys a lot about what it means to be a guy. As the inventor of man and woman He should know a lot about what He considers the beauty He's built in right? He knows what looks best on a man, He knows what looks best on a woman, and He knows what most appeals to a quality man. And He talks about it in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 3. I'll begin reading at verse 2. He talks about - and in this case He's speaking to women - people seeing the purity and reverence of your lives. "Your beauty," He says, "should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair (which I guess was big then), and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead it should be that of your inner self (that's that light inside); the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."

There's an echo of this in Proverbs 31 - the description of a woman who has everything going her way. It says, "Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised." Every once in a while you'll meet a woman who has more than just lip gloss beauty or mascara beauty. There's a glow, there's a freshness, there's a radiance that comes from deep down inside. She's lit up from the inside, you might say, and it's hard to mistake that glow. They're rare. But you know when something's rare, it's valuable, and that's almost irresistible.

But you know what, there's something wonderful about an outward beauty that is backed by a beautiful spirit. That inner glow - that magnet on the inside - first of all comes from purity this passage says, and then a sense of softness and innocence that sometimes we find less and less. There's a hardness that comes in men and women from using and being used. And then there's the glow that comes from reverence; a woman who starts her day in the presence of Almighty God. There is something, for a man or a woman, that happens inside of them over a consistent time, being with Jesus every day. You start to be like Him.

And man or woman, there's something beautiful about being a person who makes other people feel important instead of calling attention to yourself. You live to give attention, not to get attention. When Jesus takes over your life, there's a beauty treatment on the inside.

When we let Christ do a makeover - He's really good at those. And many a woman with Christ in her heart has a radiance, a magnetic glow that comes through her. That is genuine beauty. It is timeless beauty. It is unfading beauty. A solid gold woman, beautiful, not because they're made up on the outside, but because they're lit up by Jesus on the inside.

I don't think I've ever "teared up" during a President's State of the Union Address to Congress - until that unforgettable moment during President George W. Bush's State of the Union early in 2005. For me, it had absolutely nothing to do with politics. It was just an intensely human moment that almost transcended politics.

At one point in his speech, he paid tribute to the Iraqi people for their courage in going to the polls in the face of incredible danger. Then, the President introduced a guest that was sitting in the gallery next to the First Lady - a woman who had been an Iraqi freedom activist for eleven years at that time - since Saddam Hussein had her father executed. She stood with her index finger in the air, still tinted with that identifying purple dye of someone who had voted. She was very moved by the standing ovation from everyone in that chamber.

And then a few moments later, the President paid tribute to the soldiers who had died in Iraq and then to their grieving families. At that point, he introduced a couple seated behind the woman from Iraq - their Marine son had died in the Fallujah campaign. They stood as representatives of all those families who had lost a son or daughter in Iraq. And then that mother leaned over to the front row and embraced the martyr's daughter from Iraq. They remained there just crying together, buried in each other's arms as the elected national leadership of the United States stood to their feet in a long and thunderous ovation. That's when I lost it.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Hug of a Holy God."

What a picture! The one whose son died embracing one he died for. I think one reason I found that so moving is because I can see myself in that picture - embraced by the God whose Son died, and I'm the one that He died for, and so are you. The question is have you ever acknowledged the sacrifice that was made for you? Have you ever stepped into your Heavenly Father's waiting arms? He's got so much love He's been waiting to give you. He's got the love you may have spent a whole life looking for.

God's welcoming embrace cost Him the most precious thing He had - His one and only Son. Listen to these beautiful words from 1 John 4, beginning with verse 9, our word for today from the Word of God. "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him." Why don't you put your name in that verse? "He sent His one and only Son that (there's your name) might live through Him. He loved (there's your name) and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Like that mother at the State of the Union Address, God's the One whose Son died. But God's Son chose to die, because it was the only way your sins could be paid for other than you paying for them forever in hell.

The cross was for you. To ignore that sacrifice will cost you heaven. To depend on the good things you try to do for God instead of the amazing thing God did for you means you will pay the death penalty for your sin that Jesus already died to pay.

And now the One whose Son died waits to embrace the one He died for. In fact, He's been waiting for you for a long time. Let today be the day you finally experience His awesome love for yourself. Tell Him you know you've broken His laws and you've run your life your way, and that you want to change. Tell Him you're pinning all your hopes for eternity on the Savior who died for you. What an unforgettable day this could be for you.

I would love to help walk you through beginning that relationship. That's what our website is there for. Would you go there today? It's ANewStory.com. I want you to know when you go to bed tonight beyond any shadow of a doubt that you belong to Jesus Christ.

God gave His very best for you. Don't walk away from His waiting arms. Not after the price that He paid to love you.

It's amazing how creative parents can become when it's time to explain the facts of life to a child, and they really get creative when it comes to the vocabulary they choose. Now, we tell our kids that an ear is an ear, a leg is a leg, an elbow is an elbow and so on. But when it comes time to explain the more private parts of the body and the facts-of-life talk, we have a hard time using the right words. Frankly, I've heard some pretty weird names for human anatomy. Words invented, I guess, by a red-faced parent, but not recognized by any doctor on the planet. You know, it's good to use the right words when it comes to sex, especially the one that really counts - the Bible does.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Right Word For Sex."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the very beginning of man and woman, Genesis 4:1. It says, "Adam knew his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain." Now, the word "knew" obviously is referring to their sexual relationship - sexual intercourse between a man and a woman - Adam and Eve. We are looking in the book of Genesis at sex before it got spoiled, and ruined, and devalued; sex as it was meant to be, still unspoiled, still the best. And the word that's used for a sexual relationship between a man and woman is the word "know"... "Adam knew Eve."

When two people join themselves together physically, it's designed by God to be the ultimate "knowing" of two people. And when two people have sex that isn't based on a deep, intimate friendship and commitment, they don't go all the way. They don't go one-eighth of the way, because they don't have a lifetime of knowing each other that they're expressing through this awesome language of love. The Hebrew word is "yadah." It speaks of an intimacy of two people who know each other as they really are; a deep, personal, intimate, experiential knowledge of another person. That's why God designed sex for a lifetime commitment. He put a fence around sex called marriage.

And ironically, when you take sex out of marriage, outside the fence, it actually slows down or even eliminates the "knowing" process. It keeps you from getting to know a person, because the physical just takes over. The relationship becomes more self-centered. Couples stop talking, and often they end up marrying a stranger, because they've never really had a friend of the opposite sex. It's not knowing, it's using. The result is lonely relationships and even lonely marriages; people who have never had a friendship with the opposite sex and maybe never will.

And when the physical starts to be strong in a relationship, it will often mask the weaknesses in that relationship. Many people have married the wrong person because their passion blinded them. They were kept from really ever knowing the other person, and they made a life-long mistake. Remember, the Inventor always knows best, and the Inventor of sex knows best: two people in a lifetime committed knowing experience.

Anything less is a cheap, twisted, disappointing counterfeit. The Bible says to know someone as your best friend forever... now, that's the right word for sex.