One August night every member of our family got a new name. It was the night our daughter gave birth to her first child - a little boy. And that tiny eight-pound bundle made our daughter "Mommy," and our son-in-law "Daddy," and our boys were suddenly uncles, and my wife became "Grandma." And I became "Husband of Grandma." It was quite a night - and my wife and I were privileged to be able to be with our little grandson right in the birthing room only minutes after he was born. Those are moments I'll never forget. Seeing our daughter, the baby we once held, holding her first baby. And his Daddy, not knowing what other children would come, held that little guy in his arms and said five precious words: "My one and only son."

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

I'll tell you this, our son-in-law would not have given up his only son at that moment for any cause, any person on earth. Thinking about that makes our word for today from the Word of God all the more amazing. Maybe it's the most famous, and many would say most important, statement in the Bible. It's found in John 3:16. Maybe you've heard these words a thousand times. Maybe you've never heard of them before. But would you listen as if your life depends on them, because ultimately it does.

"God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son." Now why would God make this sacrifice that any of us human fathers would consider unimaginable? It says, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." As I watched our son-in-law holding and loving our new grandson - his "one and only son" at that point - the love that God has for us seemed greater than ever before.

If you took the message of the entire Bible and summed it up in three little words, here's what they probably would be: God loves you. Maybe you think God is mad at you. Maybe you think God condemns you or He's far from you. But the giving of His one and only Son settles once and for all how God feels about you. God so loves you so much that He would sacrifice His Son for you. He doesn't want to lose you.

The Bible tells us that we're all away from God and we were made for Him, we were made by Him, but all of us have basically run our own lives. And the life with "I" in the middle is sin. That's s-I-n. And that kind of rebellion against our Creator carries the eternal death penalty. God's Book says "we all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." All those "my way" choices have put a wall between us and God; a wall that no religion, no spirituality, no morality can remove.

But listen to the rest of that "gone astray" verse. "And the Lord has laid on Him (that's Jesus) the wrongdoing of us all" (Isaiah 53:6). See, God in His great love for you and for me took our sin and its death penalty and placed it all on His Son when He died on the cross.

And now God is standing ready to give you not the death penalty you deserve, but the eternal life in heaven you could never deserve. If you will put all your trust in His Son to be your Rescuer from your sin, that life is yours. This very moment, God stands waiting to see what you will do with His Son.

This could be your day to have your death penalty canceled, to have the wall between you and God removed forever, and to experience the most awesome love a human being can ever experience. Please reach out to Him now. He's tugging on your heart now. Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours from this day on."

Our website is there to support you, encourage you, and give you the information you need to get started with Jesus. Would you go there? ANewStory.com.

God has only one Son and He gave Him to die for you. That's how much God loves you. And He will never forget what you do with His Son.

The old wisdom is that the way to a man's heart is, yeah, through his stomach. Actually I think that's true, but I believe that the way to a parent's heart is through their children. And I have to admit that I'm one of those who feels that way. I mean, you really have a warm feeling toward people who are kind to your children and grandchildren. You know, when our kids were young, that was especially true. It was important to me when people remembered my child's name or maybe their birthday.

Most of all, I really felt warmly toward those people who didn't just act like my kids weren't there; they took time to actually talk with them like they were people. I guess I noticed the people who didn't treat my kids right too. You know, it was hard to have warm feelings toward them. I didn't have a grudge but it would have been nice if they'd at least noticed them. Actually there is a Heavenly Father watching you and me too, and He's responding to our treatment of some people He really loves. So, I wonder if you're giving your Father (capital F, Father) those warm feelings?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Father, The Poor, and Your Heart."

Proverbs 19:17 is where we will find our word for today from the Word of God, and here's what it says: "He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward him for what he has done." Well, that's pretty clear what God is saying. There is a group of people that are very special to Him, and He's watching how they're treated, as I watch how people treat my children. We're told here that the poor are special to God.

That's not just in this verse. In fact, all through the Old Testament over and over again, righteousness is actually equated with how you treat the poor. The Old Testament law is very careful in providing for the care of the poor. And in Luke 4:18, Jesus preached His first sermon and He says, "I have come to preach good news to the poor."

It's pretty clear from this verse that our Heavenly Father is watching how we treat the poor. And not only that, but He takes it personally. It says that the person who was kind to the poor, lends not to them but to the Lord. That's interesting. It tells you something about your commitment to the Lord and your unselfish love when you do something for the poor. Do you know why? Because they can't do anything back for you. You're really giving. There's nothing in it for you. You know what? We're surrounded today by people who God the Father has His eyes on. They're the homeless people that might be within our reach, or that family out of work right within your circle of influence, a struggling single parent who's having a very difficult time making ends meet. There are some hungry people maybe near you and a world away from us.

If you are attuned to God's heart, you're going to be involved in treating the poor like Jesus did. Maybe you need to be looking for an inner city ministry working among poor people. See, the hardest ministry to support in America is work in the inner city or on Native American reservations. Well, everybody seems to care about their turf, and not so much about what's beyond your own personal world.

Put your money, your time, mobilize your church to do something about needy people wherever they are. I'm talking about getting your hands dirty, personal involvement, family involvement. Teach your kids how to have a heart for the poor. Work first hand with some less fortunate people; help lift their burden. Do the work of God on earth. By the way, those folks have a lot to teach you. Pray this: "Lord, it's so easy just to drive by; to write people off as lazy or just to care about what's done to me. But I know, Lord, You have Your eyes on the poor. Would you give me Your heart for the poor and a way to take a piece of that action in my world? And a way to do something about it in my world?" You know what the Bible says will happen? "He will reward you."

Embracing a poor person or a poor family? Seems like that's the way to your Father's heart.

I know voicemail can be efficient, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Sometimes they're entertaining. I have friends who have major productions or comedy monologues that greet people. But, you know, voice mail doesn't respond. It records, but doesn't respond. One friend captured how I feel in what he recorded tongue-in-cheek. You call, then you know, you get the little click and you hear the friend's voice saying, "In a world of cold and uncaring humans, isn't it refreshing to be greeted by a warm and friendly voicemail?" No! You just can't automate a personal response!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "An Answering Person or An Answering Machine?"

Actually, when it comes to the needs around you, you're probably one or the other: you're an answering person or an unresponsive person like an answering machine. Jesus was trying to point that out in Luke 10:30-34. It's our word for today from the Word of God. You know the story. He says, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, they beat him, they went away, leaving him half dead."

"A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So, too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine..."

It's a great story, huh? Yeah, but it's a troubling story. It's the professional God-lovers - the priest and the Levite - who don't stop for this obvious human need. And it's a Samaritan, one who's considered a spiritual reject by the Jews, who responds as Jesus would with above and beyond love.

Like me, you may be pretty busy in Christian activities and programs, and that can become a trap. I believe the priest and the Levite knew about meeting needs. I believe they knew about helping wounded people. But they may have confined their response to programs for helping people, to meetings to plan programs, to theological concepts about love and mercy and compassion. Tragically, the longer you've been around Christian things, the more you can replace personal acts of love with programs and structures to do it.

You know, it goes like this: "We have a program that ministers to the poor, the homeless, the brokenhearted, and the hurting. We have meetings that present Christ to lost and dying people. We're having a seminar on reaching people for the Lord." Answering machines - machines to answer the calls of men and women in need. Now I'm very much in favor of organized, large-scale efforts to respond to the needs of desperate people around us. But they're just no substitute for you being the Good Samaritan yourself, for the natural flow of love and mercy that stops for someone who needs money, or a listening ear, a word of encouragement, a chance to hear about Christ's love or to see it in action.

Like the Good Samaritan, I hope you don't lose that beautiful characteristic of your Master. A breakable heart. You got one? Sometime this week, you'll almost surely encounter someone who is wounded or someone who is without Christ. Will you excuse yourself because you're busy in a lot of Christian activity - your answering machines? Or will you stop and be the answer with your loving, personal, above-and-beyond response? That's what Jesus commands and commends.

When the people around you call, they don't need an answering machine, they need an answering person!

The driver pulled up and dumped it in my driveway, but I was very happy to see it. It was my cord of wood - a winter of warm fires in our fireplace! See, we had ordered it during a special sale, which others apparently took advantage of big time. The driver told me some people had ordered five cords of wood. When I asked why, he said, "It's for their wood stoves. They're depending on it to keep their house warm this winter!" No wonder they ordered a lot of wood for the winter. And when they run out of fuel, they run out of fire. When they run out of fire, it gets very cold.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Keep Your Fire Burning."

For somebody listening right now, it's winter spiritually - maybe for you. What used to be a warm and passionate relationship with Jesus has turned cold and practiced. Your fire for the Lord and for His work is burning pretty low, or maybe there are just the embers of a fire that once blazed high. The problem isn't the fire; the problem is a shortage of fuel.

See, spiritual fire is like those fires in people's stoves or fireplaces: you have to keep throwing another log on the fire. You can't just get it burning high and then expect it to stay that way indefinitely. Jesus obviously knew what to do to keep the fire going. He knew where the fuel was.

He demonstrates that in our word for today from the Word of God, beginning in Luke 4:40. "When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying His hands on each one, He healed them...He rebuked demons and would not allow them to speak. At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for Him and when they came to where He was, they tried to keep Him from leaving them. But He said, 'I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.' And He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea."

Now after a very full day and a very late night, Jesus gets up early to go to the spiritual woodpile - time with His Heavenly Father. He went for that spiritual fuel regularly. In Luke 6:12, we are told that "Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God." At another point, Luke tells us "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." Notice in Luke 6 that Jesus comes back from His Father-time refueled for His work and refocused on what His work is supposed to be.

Now if the fire is burning low in your heart right now, it could very well be that you aren't spending the heart-to-heart time with God that you once did. That's where you find the logs to rekindle your fire because the flame of serving Christ has to be a deep love relationship with Him. See, it isn't all about Bible study, it isn't all about church or theology or ministry or living the Christian life. It's all about Jesus! And the pressure and stress of each crazy day make it so easy to forget that this is all about Jesus, it's all from Jesus, it's all for Jesus.

It could be that your time with Him has been more and more abbreviated, postponed or even canceled. You need to get back to what fueled your fire in the first place - belonging to Jesus, being with Jesus, loving Jesus. Without that regular time, that sweet relationship is replaced with a stressful rat race.

When Jesus had Father time, He came away knowing He couldn't just stay with the people who had already experienced Him. He had to move on to the unreached. So do you and I. Making your Father time the anchor of your daily schedule will not only fuel your fire for the Lord, but also for the lost people He died to rescue. And you'll feel again the excitement of joining Jesus in His eternal rescue mission.

Those who depend on a fire make sure they have plenty of fuel - and that they add logs to their fire regularly. For us to live as we were created to live, we need a blazing spiritual fire in our heart. So make sure your fuel supply is strong and consistent. Christian living and Christian service are all about Jesus! Staying in heart-to-heart contact with Him will give you all the logs you need for a fire that never goes out!

It was when the Star Wars movie "The Force Awakens" came out. It was a great story, I'm sure, in that great record crushing movie. I wasn't expecting to find a mirror reflecting the lives of so many people I've known. In the story, it's Rey's story. She's a young woman on a desolate planet, surviving by scavenging parts from a space junkyard. When she's asked, "Who are you?" she just zero-sums her life this way: "I am no one" until she discovers the truth that changes her life forever.

She's made for more. She finds that she's here for something much greater than just scavenging. She's destined for greatness as a warrior for a better world. And that's the image in the mirror of so many of us who've settled for just surviving, for just doing life, one predictable, one purposeless day at a time. Not a bad life, just an insignificant, too-small life - scavenging.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Made for More."

You know, maybe that's why a light has gone on inside millions of people when they've met a man named Jesus. He said in John 10:10 in the Bible, "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." To the full, implying that we've been settling for less than full. Maybe we've been settling for empty, for less than we were created for.

I think we know that something or someone is missing. No matter how far, or not far, we may have climbed up Mount Happiness. No friendship, no scholarship, no championship, no relationship has filled the hole in our heart. They can't, because we're made for more. The "more" the Bible reveals in this statement about Jesus Christ: our word for today from the Word of God from Colossians 1:16 - "All things were created by Him and for Him."

So, I am created by Jesus, for a relationship with Jesus, just as the earth is created to revolve around the sun - its source of life. Anything less is, in reality, spiritual scavenging. It's not God's fault I've lived beneath my destiny. I, along with all my fellow humans, decided to live for me with God on the margins at best; maybe a compartment, but not my reason to live.

God had every right to let us have the life without Him that we seem to want. But He loves us too much for that. He proved it by sending His one and only Son not from "a galaxy far, far away," but from heaven to become one of us. And this takes my breath away - He sent Him to die for us; absorbing on a cross all the pain, all the penalty for all our hijacking of our life from Him.

I still can't get over it. From the day I trusted this Jesus to forgive my sin and pilot my life I've been discovering the "more." I was searching, and I finally found it. If you've never experienced the "more" of a relationship with Jesus...you know all the relationships, all the things you've been and done, have not filled that hole in your heart.

Well, with the love of Jesus and His grave-conquering power that He proved when He walked out of his grave, I've graduated from scavenging to being a warrior. He wants that for you - unleashing the force of His love in your family, and your work, and your personal world.

It doesn't have to be the way it's always been because of Jesus. But you take the initiative to begin that relationship with Him. He describes it as knocking on the door of your heart. I believe He may be in your heart, today. And if you feel that tug in your heart, would you take an action step and say, "Jesus, I am yours from this day on. I'm pinning all my hopes on You."

Check out our website and make sure you belong to Him. You'll find it at ANewStory.com.

Finding Jesus. Finding your destiny. Never "settling" again.

Now, if I said I was going to give you the great secrets of hitting a baseball, I don't think you're going to go right out and try them. You're going to be skeptical, and you should be. But if one of the game's greatest hitters were to tell you the secret of hitting a baseball, well now you should pay attention.

Pete Rose actually was one of those, and he was once interviewed for an article in Sports Illustrated, and I like the title. It was called Good Wood. And he said that he liked a heat-treated bat. Now, I didn't realize this, but he said that you put the bat through an intense heat and that the heat would seal the pores and it actually made the bat hit harder. Well, it worked for him! I guess it's true, heat-treated bats hit harder. Well, you know something? So do heat-treated people.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When Your Pain is Your Friend."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God is found in Romans 5:3-4, and it talks about, well, heat treating. Here we go. "We, also, rejoice in our sufferings because we know suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope." Those are curious words. "We rejoice in our suffering?" This doesn't mean that Christian suffering feels any better than non-Christian suffering. It doesn't. It feels about the same, whether you're a Christian or not. But if you're a believer, pain is just as painful, unemployment is just as demoralizing, and pressure is just as stressful.

But you rejoice, not because it feels better, you rejoice because in Christ, pain has a point. A minus can be made into a plus. Suffering can be made into perseverance, character and hope. Just ask Pete Rose's bat. He said that heat heals up the holes in the bat and makes it more solid. Well, could it be that the heat that you're undergoing right now is heat-treating you and the holes in your life are being healed up by it and you're becoming more solid because of it? The heat you're feeling is not to burn you up, even though it feels like you might not make it through it. It's to make you strong; to build into you great perseverance, great character, great hope.

Right now you are in a position to learn more about the resources of God than any person who's in a comfortable setting. Sure you'd like to be comfortable again. I hope you will be. Sure you'd like this insecurity, this pain to pass. But right now you have a chance to know the resources, and the power, and the grace of God more deeply than you and those around you perhaps have ever known. You are learning, or you can learn, how to wait, how to overcome, how to really, urgently, desperately pray.

Perhaps you're being forced to close up some of the holes in your life; weaknesses, unconfessed sin, broken relationships that have been called to your attention by this hard time. Things you might not have given attention to any other way. And you can, because of the fire, be forced to deal with the weaknesses that you might otherwise still tolerate. And when you do, you have added a new kind of strength.

The fire turns spiritual wimps into spiritual warriors. So, rejoice as you see what you are becoming or can become through heat-treating, and only through heat-treating. You are becoming a heavy hitter in the hands of Almighty God.

Be encouraged! You're becoming good wood.

Kissimmee, Florida is right in the middle of some of Florida's most exciting tourist attractions. So, it's usually associated with happy times. But in February of 1998 the headlines were about tragedy in Kissimmee; 38 people killed in the deadliest tornado outbreak in the state's history up to that time. In its lead front page story, USA Today told about one couple who cowered in horror. And it said, "The wind sucked like a vacuum cleaner, pulling their five-year-old daughter, Elissa, away. Her Dad said, 'She was horizontal, and my wife was holding onto her legs. There was all this glass and everything started to disappear, all the furniture, and the insides of the walls. If my wife had let go of Elissa, we wouldn't have been able to find her." USA Today said, "But Judy's grip held. And in a few moments, the tornado had passed and Elissa was safe in her arms." Wow!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Holding Onto Your Child In The Storm."

If you're a parent, you may know that feeling because there are unusually stormy times right now in which to raise a son or daughter. And sometimes you feel like all that's swirling around them threatens to take them away. There may be days when you feel like you're hanging on for dear life.

Our word for today from the Word of God, though it isn't addressed specifically to parents, is a great parent scripture. 2 Timothy 1:7 says this, "God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline." God doesn't want your parent-heart to be a fearful heart. In fact, He has made this strong promise to parents in Isaiah 54:13, "All your children will be taught of the Lord; and great will be the peace of your children."

You can keep your child from being torn away by the storm. Take time to casually debrief each day with them; helping them interpret what they have experienced that day. Give them boundaries, but with positive reasons - not just boundaries. Focus on today - not the problems of yesterday or the prospects of tomorrow. Make your home an island of sanity in an otherwise insane world, where when they close that door, they know they're safe, not on another battlefield. And each new day, give that child back to the God who gave you that child in the first place.

The ultimate secret of holding onto your child in the storm is - in a sense - letting go of your child. After the writer talks about having a spirit of power and love instead of a spirit of fear, he tells how that's possible with so much at stake. Speaking of his personal relationship with Jesus he says, "I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what (or who) I have entrusted to Him" (2 Timothy 1:12).

There is a relationship that provides a life-anchor - for anyone, but especially for parents raising children in stormy times. If you have begun that personal love-relationship with Jesus, you can commit your precious child to Him and He'll hang onto them as you never could.

But first Jesus has to be hanging onto you. There is nothing like being a parent to make you aware of your need for help, for the power to change, of your limitations, your need for forgiveness and for inner healing. And Jesus is a Mom's Savior, a Dad's Savior. He died on the cross to pay for all the sinning you and I have ever done, to tear down the wall between God and us and to open up all of God's love and power to you as a Mom or Dad.

If you've never put your personal trust in Jesus Christ to be your Savior, don't wait another day for your sake; for the sake of the child you love. Our website is there to help you get this settled. It's ANewStory.com.

In a world that is so dangerous and confusing, it isn't easy to keep your child from being taken away by the storm. But you can hang onto your son or daughter if you have the Son of God hanging onto you.

It's amazing how quickly you can get 300 college men to change their plans on a moment's notice. It happened several times when I was in school. Oh, it's late at night; we're all up in our rooms studying, sleeping, or goofing off, and we're certainly not planning to go out. Yet, within a matter of minutes all three hundred men are out of their rooms and out of the dorm. It's amazing what one fire bell can do, huh? Oh, there was no fire, just an occasional fire drill. But the call summoned us from whatever we were buried in, brought us out of our rooms, and out into the night.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The People Who Need You Are Outside the Building."

Now, you can't read the book of Acts without marveling at the explosive impact of those first Christians. They saw thousands come to Christ. And they saw people coming to Christ daily. They made such an impact it spread across the world and twenty centuries, and guess what? They had the same Savior we have, and the same Holy Spirit living in them! So what happened? Well, let's look at one of those keys to life-changing, city-changing, world-changing Christianity.

Our word for today from the Word of God, Acts 4:31, it says, "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the Apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all" If you compare this chapter with chapter 2, it says in just three verses, they were together, together, together. Three times it says that. See, these people had a life or death message to deliver. They realized the urgency and the enormity of getting the Gospel out to an area that was unreached, and they knew they had to work on it together.

C. S. Lewis suggested that Christianity is like this big house. And I'm going to borrow from his example and add to it a little. Everybody enters the house through the same long hallway. In that corridor you've got the cross and the empty tomb. We all went there to get our sins forgiven, and that's how we came to Christ. Now, off the hall are a lot of little rooms. Not long after we come in the center corridor we find that we like one of those rooms and we go in it, and we stay there like college students on a busy night of studying.

In one of the rooms off the central corridor they're sprinkling people to baptize them, in another room they're dunking them, in another room they're speaking in tongues, in another room they're talking about people who speak in tongues. You know, in our rooms, we spend a lot of time on our group's distinctive features; the things that make us, us; things that tend to divide us from the folks in the other rooms. Meanwhile, just outside the front door thousands are dying without Christ!

There is one call that has the power to do what the fire alarm did in our dorm that night and summoned us from our individual rooms to go out together. It is the call of Jesus to seek and save those who are lost. They need to be brought to the center corridor that we all claim, to get to the cross to have their sins forgiven, and the empty tomb to meet their living Savior. While we've been busy building our Christian subcultures we've lost our culture. One third of Americans say they've had no religious training. Most of the people around you know almost nothing about our Book or our Savior. Could it be because we've lost one of the most powerful words of the early church - together?

This is a time for ordinary believers to look out the window and see the urgency and the enormity of reaching the lost out there and to begin to pull people out of their little rooms, out of their denominational and doctrinal silos, to join in urgent prayer together for the lost, and to make aggressive plans to work together to reach them.

The Lord is sounding the alarm! If we hear His cry for harvest workers, we'll be out of our little room and pulling others out of theirs to rescue the people who are dying just outside the front door.