You know, most of us have heard words like this when we're going through a hard time, "Oh, I understand how you feel." Maybe you have muttered under your breath, "You have no idea." One situation in which those words should probably never be spoken, are a man to a woman in labor. Yeah, that's right! Now, I've been through labor with my wife three times, but I can not say I understand how she felt. Labor is easier for some women than others I understand, but having a baby is not easy for anybody. I still remember vividly our first time around the maternity track. My wife's increasingly frequent contractions and the trip to the hospital, and then the hours of intensifying pain, and then the last most intense pains of all. And suddenly, a baby girl! Now, I know it's easy for me to say, but I know my wife would have always agreed. It was a painful process with a glorious result. And you know, the result has lasted a lot longer than the pain.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Good In the Pain."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 8. Here we're going to meet a man with the credentials to talk about pain, about hard times. Paul has been brutally slandered, he's been beaten, he's been attacked, he's been left for dead, he's been arrested on false charges, he's been in prison unjustly, been ship wrecked, deserted. What a list!

In Romans 8 he talks about "our present sufferings." And he even speaks symbolically of this world "groaning as if in the pains of childbirth." And then later on in the chapter he mentions trouble, hardship, famine, sword, and then he says this, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." How can that be with all the worst pain in life? It goes back to a God-given perspective on the pain of your life. And that's in Romans 8:28. He says, "And we know that all things are working together for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to God's purpose."

So, what's the good in the pain? Well, it says, "For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son." In other words, the good that comes out of the pain is to make you what this world needs so desperately; someone who is more like Jesus.

Now, God doesn't send all the pain; some of it He allows. But it can't come to you unless your Heavenly Father okays it. And how does God decide what He will allow to come into your life? I think He's asking, "Could this make him or her more like Jesus?"

My consistent experience has been that the hardest things I've gone through have been God's most powerful tools in my life: faith, humility, compassion, mercy, learning the power of prayer, closeness to Jesus. They have been the blessed results of pain that made me know and trust God as never before. And like the pain of our daughter's arrival, my wife has enjoyed the result a lot longer than she had to endure the pain.

Because God's agenda in our lives is eternity, not just 70 years. The payoff will always be much greater than the pain. You may be in a hurting time right now and you don't have a choice. But it really matters what you focus on. If you focus on the pain you're going to become bitter and self-focused, burned out, and worn out, and negative. But if you focus on how God can use this pain to make you more like Jesus, you'll have the baby that the pain is supposed to give you. The tragedy will be if you get the pain but you miss the point.

If you're hurting today, remember that your loving Father, who sent His Son to die in your place, is using your hurt to bring about a beautiful result, which you will be enjoying long after the process is a distant memory.

When you're little, your parents seem immortal. They're not. Sooner or later, most of us get the kind of call that I got, and maybe you've gotten - a parent is gone. In my case, the hospital called to say my Mom had been admitted due to a medical emergency, but her body gave out and she was gone. No matter what the circumstances, the death of someone you love is always a shock, even if you knew maybe it was coming. When you're the only living child and your other parent is already gone, there's this numbing list of arrangements that you suddenly have to make. Thankfully, that wasn't the case with my Mom. Mercifully, funeral arrangements had been made and paid for years in advance.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Most Important Arrangements You Will Ever Make."

It was a real blessing to have funeral arrangements made in advance, believe me. But my mother had made much more important pre-arrangements for the day she died, and those arrangements were the greatest blessing of all. Years ago, my Mom had made a choice that guaranteed she would be in heaven for all eternity. These are the most important arrangements you will ever make - or fail to make.

God knows we're so busy living that we don't give much thought to dying. In fact, we generally try to avoid thinking about death as much as possible. Until we're looking in the casket at someone we've just lost. It's hard to look face-to-face at death like that and not think, "Where will I be when it's me there?" This isn't about being morbid. It's about being ready. If I know I'm prepared for something that's coming up, I don't have to keep thinking about it. It's settled. There's nothing more critical for you to settle than your eternal destination. Avoiding those arrangements carries a price too high to pay.

That's why the Bible says in Amos 4:12-13, our word for today from the Word of God, "Prepare to meet your God...He who forms the mountains, creates the wind...and treads the high places of the earth - the Lord God Almighty is His name." It is this awesome God who will decide when you and I will take our last breath; when eternity will begin for each and every one of us. The Bible says that you and I actually have an appointment with our Creator - the time when the old-timers used to say you "meet your Maker." God's Book says, "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). A divine appointment, the nearness of which we cannot know, and judgment for every wrong thing we have ever done.

When you face God, it's too late then to make your arrangements. That's got to be done here and now. So many people think they'll get to heaven by being good. They're wrong - they're eternally wrong. The Bible clearly explains: "It is by grace (that's undeserved love) that you have been saved, through faith - and this...is the gift of God - not by works" (Ephesians 2:8-9). All our good can't possibly cancel our sin because sin has this eternal death penalty, and a death penalty cannot be paid by somebody doing good. Somebody's got to die, and someone did. Jesus did - so you don't have to. Your only hope is grabbing Him like a drowning person would grab a rescuer.

If you've never done that, you are not (in the Bible's words) "prepared to meet your God." But you can be, beginning today. You can actually know from this moment on that you are going to heaven when you die, because the sin that would keep you out of heaven has been forever forgiven by the One who died for that sin. Your spiritual rescue begins the moment you say, "Jesus, I'm putting my total trust in You and what You did on the cross for me. I'm Yours."

Our website is basically there to help you be sure you belong to Jesus. Let me give you that web address. It's ANewStory.com.

There is no greater peace, there's no greater security, than to know your arrangements for eternity have all been made. This very day you can prepare to meet your God.

No one could have ever guessed the outcome. It was the first round of the playoffs for Illinois' high school football championship. There was this one team, we'll call them Goliath. They were ranked sixth in the nation; first in the state of course. When they beat teams they didn't just defeat them, they buried them. In the first round they were matched up with the team most likely to be eliminated in the state playoffs. This team had lost three games; they had just squeaked into the playoffs. We'll call them David. Final score: 14 to 13. Yeah, you guessed it! The number sixth team in the nation was defeated that day by a team few people had ever heard of. The sports writers seemed to agree that the problem with the champions had been overconfidence. Well, that's happened to number one ranked teams in college football and many other sports. It really can be dangerous to be a winner.

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

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Peter 5:8. God says, "Be self-controlled and alert..." In other words, stay awake! "...your enemy, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." Now, we need to find out how he attacks and what his opening is so we're not the one he devours. When you want to do that, you've got to go back to chapter 5, verse 5. Here's what it says, "All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand that He may lift you up in due time."

So God is talking about pride and humility in the same passage where He talks about the Devil being able to bring you down. See, I think you're never more vulnerable than you are after a major victory. The sports world has plenty of evidence of that; the spiritual world proves it to us. God is warning against the pride that sets you up to be a lion lunch. When it's in sports, you win, you think you're good, you lower your guard, you under-prepare, you lose. There were pictures in the papers of defeated players of that Goliath high school football team, and the young players were in a state of shock and depression. In the wreckage of their championship hopes they're asking, "How could this happen to us?"

That's happened to a lot of men and women who could have been spiritual champions. We start out very dependent on God when we start doing things for Him. We know how much we need Him. We're scared to death. And then He trusts us with some success, and we begin to think that the success is achievement. It's not achievement. It's a gift from God. We begin to think, "Aren't I something?" Instead of, "Isn't He something?" And we begin to get spiritually careless. That's all the Devil needs to bring you down.

You see, as long as you're trusting Jesus, he can't get to you. The Devil can't beat Jesus. But as soon as you start trusting in you, he can beat you. You're ready for a fall. Often when we're facing a spiritual challenge we draw very close to the Lord don't we? But as soon as it's over, there's a tendency to let down. I've experienced it. Then you let your time with Jesus start to slide, and you let proud thoughts begin to creep in, and you compromise a little since you sacrificed so much before, right?

So we are never more vulnerable than after major victories. That's when we really, really need to keep our guard up. We need to pray much. We need to get others praying for us. If you understand this simple principle of post-victory danger, you can build a wall against it. God sees in you a champion for the cause of Jesus. The question is can He trust you with some victories? Defeat will drive you to the Lord. Just make sure that victory drives you to Him as well.

And if you'll guard against the dangers of victory, then it won't be you sitting in the pain of a sudden and stunning defeat saying, "How could this happen to me?" See, if you can handle winning, you're really championship material.