I always ask for a window seat on the airplane. Usually aisle seats are more popular because you can stretch your legs a little more. Mine are so short they have plenty of room, no matter where I am. And you can get up when you want to, and when you don't want to, because the two guys on the inside want to get out. Actually, I always have so much to get done during a flight that I like to just set up a little nest there by the window where I can work without getting up or passing food. Unfortunately, I'm so busy sometimes I miss some things that are worth looking at out my window, which is right there. I was flying recently with one of our team members and I was really missing the beautiful scenery of the rocky mountains below me; I didn't even think about them being there. My colleague got my attention, not by reaching over and pointing and shouting, "Hey, look at those mountains, man!" No, he did it with a simple little observation. He said, "You know, mountains sure look a lot smaller from this perspective, don't they?" And I took a good look.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mountain Shrinking."

Growing up in flat old Illinois, the Rocky Mountains looked pretty impressive - pretty huge to me. Some of them are over 14,000 feet high! But, even the biggest ones don't look all that big when you're able to look at them from above. It can be that way with other mountains, too. Like the mountain you're facing right now. Maybe the finances look huge, or the obstacles, or the opposition, that medical situation, or maybe what's happening at work, or at school, or at home, or in a relationship. Looking up at it, it's enough to overwhelm you! You need to look at that mountain from above.

That's what they did in our word for today from the Word of God. In Acts 4, the early Christians have been told not to preach anymore about Jesus. The people telling them that are not lightweights. These are the leaders of their nation - the people who arranged for the execution of Jesus. In a sense they have the power of life or death. So, when they say, "or else!" they mean it! They can do some serious damage.

Our word for today from the Word of God begins in Acts 4:24, speaking of the first Christians. It says, "When they heard this they raised their voices together in prayer to God. 'Sovereign Lord,' they said, 'you made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and everything in them...they did what your power and your will had decided beforehand.'" They're speaking now of the people who executed Jesus. And then they go on, "Now Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your Word with great boldness." Boy, they are going totally against the opposition. When they started praying, they were looking up at a mountain that looked huge. By the time they finished praying they were looking down on their mountain and it looked a whole lot smaller. Why? Because they chose to focus on the size of their God, rather than the size of their problem.

You may say, "Well, I pray about it but it doesn't help." That might be because you don't remember who it is you are praying to - who you're with when you pray! This is the Sovereign Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. He's the Creator of everything and everyone in your situation. He's the One whose power and will cannot be thwarted - even in the crucifixion of Jesus. In other words, when you pray, you are standing in the throne room from which those 100 billion galaxies are governed. And when you look at a mountain from the throne room of God, it looks like an ant hill!

The Bible says what happened after this prayer time. It tells us the early Christians "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." They went out and they rocked their world! The mountains shrank when they prayed and they were intimidated no more! You've been looking at your mountain from down below long enough haven't you? In prayer, in the throne room of God, get above that mountain and see how small it is compared to the Lord who you have fighting for you.

We were trying to teach some young leaders the importance of teamwork. One of the exercises I used was to have them put together a puzzle. (I thought it was a bright idea.) You tear off a page of a magazine, tear it into pieces, dump it into the middle of each small group, and see who could put their pictures together first. It didn't work too well. See, I forgot one little thing. I forgot to give them a copy of the complete picture so they could see what it should look like when it was all together. Duh! Now, I've tried to work on one of those big, many-pieces puzzles myself, and I've had the same frustration because I didn't know where the top of the puzzle box was. It was really hard to put the pieces together when the complete picture wasn't there.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Top of Life's Puzzle Box."

Now, I'm not the first person to describe life being like a puzzle. There are so many pieces; family pieces, friend pieces, children pieces, career pieces; the pieces of school, work, success, failure. The nagging questions like, "Who am I?" "Where am I going?" "What do all these pieces mean?" "What are they supposed to make?"

Well, I found the top of the box. It's in God's book, the Bible, found in Colossians 1:16 - "All things were created by Him and for Him." Now, that's speaking of Jesus Christ. And there are six powerful words there; words that can finally pull all those pieces together, "Created by Him and for Him."

You can begin to put the pieces together when you put your name in that verse. I'll leave a blank. "______ was created by Jesus and for Jesus." So you want to find out how all those pieces make sense? There's going to be a terrible hole in your heart until you have Jesus, because He's the one our heart was created for. No earth thing, no earth person, no earth achievement can fill it.

You may have some great pieces in your life, or some pretty scared and fading pieces. But life is still powerless and disconnected, with often meaningless pieces in front of you. You need the whole picture, and our Creator has told us in that statement from the Bible what that is. He gave His only Son, Jesus, because that relationship that we were made by and for is missing in our lives because we've built a wall between us and our Creator by doing life our way instead of His way, pushed Him to the edge.

You know why our life seems so disconnected and confused? We're created to live for Him and we've chosen to live for us. We've run our own lives when our Creator was supposed to. And according to the Bible, "Your sins have separated you from your God." He's the only one who knows why you're here. He put you here. The only One who has the love you're looking for your whole life is on the other side of a wall. That wall's got a name. It's called sin. No wonder things aren't adding up. We're stuck with the pieces, but we're cut off from the whole picture.

But this statement out of the Bible "created by Him and for Him" tells us where the hope is for things to finally come together. "He forgave us all our sin" it says. He nailed our sins... my sins to His cross. It was our sin and its death penalty that has kept us from our Creator. And it was all those sins that God sent His Son to die for on that cross.

The pieces of your life finally start to fit together when you come to that cross and say, "Jesus, for me." In simple faith you say, "Lord, it's for me, and I want you and your forgiveness for me." If you've never done that; if you're ready to meet the One that you were made by and made for, I invite you to visit our website as soon as you can - ANewStory.com - and find out there how to be sure you belong to Him.

It's like seeing the top of life's puzzle box and the pieces finally come together. You're very, very close to finding the reason you were born, and finding the person you were born for.

When historian Stephen Ambrose wrote the bestseller about their amazing adventure, he appropriately titled it Undaunted Courage. It's one of the many accounts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the daring group who explored America's new Louisiana Purchase 200 years ago. As they made their way along the Missouri River, traveling from St. Louis all the way to the Pacific Ocean, most every bend in the river revealed sights and wildlife that no white man had ever seen. One of the many critical moments on their two-year expedition was the point in Montana where they encountered a fork in the Missouri River. There was no map to guide them, and a wrong choice could exhaust their resources for a very long journey. The river to the right was muddy like the Missouri had been. The crew wanted to go that way. But Captain Lewis and Captain Clark assessed the situation, and led their reluctant men down the left fork. When the expedition reached the massive waterfalls that Indian friends had told them they would find, they all knew they had chosen the right way.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Following The People or Leading The People."

The captains on the Lewis and Clark Expedition had the courage and conviction to lead their crew where the crew didn't think they should go. That's called leadership. And some people you're responsible for may need you to be leading them with that kind of courage right now.

See, the troops are often wrong about which way to go. They were in Moses' day when the majority said it was too dangerous to go into the Promised Land. Two men exercised godly leadership that day, defying the popular opinion - Joshua and Caleb. And though the people refused to follow their lead, Joshua and Caleb were the only ones of their generation who did not die during the 40 years in the wilderness. And 40 years later, God gave Joshua the amazing assignment of leading His people into the land where Joshua had tried to take them before. Nehemiah steadfastly led a sometimes frightened, sometimes reluctant majority to stay on mission and finish the Jerusalem wall against overwhelming odds.

In Exodus 17, beginning with verse 4, our word for today from the Word of God, we find a revealing picture of what real, principled leadership requires - whether it's leading your family, your business, a church, a ministry, or any people who look to you. As usual, the Israelites were complaining and quarreling and grumbling against Moses. They're desperate for water, and there's none around. "Then Moses cried out to the Lord, 'What am I to do with these people? They are ready to stone me.' The Lord answered Moses, 'Walk on ahead of the people (listen to that!)...take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile. I will stand before you by the rock of Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out.'" And Moses' leadership was again vindicated as water for a nation flowed from that rock.

That's the kind of leadership I hope you and I are prepared to give. Walk ahead of the people you're leading - you can't hear the Lord as long as you're listening to the crowd. You have to extricate yourself from the fray and get some perspective, get above the fray. Then cry out to God, "What am I to do with these people?" And listen for where He is headed and do what He says. Your job is to let God show you what He is up to, and then to join Him in what He's doing by obeying Him, and then leading the people in that direction even if another way seems right to them.

Don't follow your biases. Don't follow your own wisdom. Don't follow the people that you're supposed to be leading. Follow the Lord where He's going. When you lead with that kind of courage and that kind of conviction, you can take the people to their destiny instead of to a detour.