MAD Live Event in NJ today

We completed the last MAD Live Event of the month today in Whitehouse Station, NJ. One person gave their life to Christ! Praise God!

In my reading today....

In my daily quiet time with my God, I read through the Bible in a year. Today's Old Testament reading takes me to the book of 2 Kings. In the introduction to the book, the Life Application Study Bible says this about the time:

"The current of society's river is flowing fast and furious, pulling downward everything in its way, It would be easy to float along with the current. But God calls us to swim against the flow. It will not be easy, and we may be alone, but it will be right. In the book of 2 Kings, we read of evil rulers, rampant idolatry, and a complacent populace - certainly pulling downward. Despite the pressure to conform, to turn from the Lord and to serve only self, a minority of chosen people moved in the opposite direction toward God."

Doesn't this speak so much to us today?

Salt Storage

It was the early winter of 1994 - the one the Sanitation Department of New York City would not forget for a while. Much of the East Coast got hit big time with this parade of snow and ice storms. At one point, they were coming about every other day. You take a hard freeze and frequent storms; well, it just created layers of frozen precipitation on the ground. Kind of like geological strata except slippery. Olympic skaters could have practiced on Broadway or Fifth Avenue.

Needless to say, the sand and salt trucks were working around the clock, and drivers worked such long hours they had to wear name tags when they got home because it was so late when they finally got there! But, ultimately, the slippery stuff wasn't the biggest problem. No, the real crisis was a salt shortage. Now, snow and ice are bad. But no salt on the snow and ice? Well, that's terrible. People were saying, "Hey, they ran out of salt!" Actually, one city official explained that was not the problem. He said, "There's plenty of salt. The problem is we can't get the salt from where it is to where it's needed."

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

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 5, beginning at verse 13, "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt looses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again. It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men." God goes on to describe us, then, as "the light of the world, like a city set on a hill." And then He says, "Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

If you're a follower of Jesus, there are two things you need to know that your Savior says you are. You are salt and you are light. Now, it doesn't take a lot of salt to change the environment. I mean, you don't need a pound of salt for a pound of meat, right? You don't have to have as much salt as there is ice. But in order for salt to do any good, it has to be in contact with the thing it is needed to change; on the street or on the meat. It doesn't do anything in a salt shaker or piled in a salt mountain somewhere in a big storage yard.

God's problem with getting Jesus to lost and dying people is the same as that winter emergency in New York; the salt wasn't getting where it was needed. We - who know Christ - often are not in enough meaningful contact with the people who need us most. It's as if there are these great mountains of spiritual salt in a very cold and frozen world. We salt people spend so much time in meetings with each other, doing programs for each other, having concerts with each other, serving on committees for each other, and doing books and music for each other. We're disconnected from the people who are dying without our Jesus.

Isn't it time for the salt to get out where it's needed? We need to leave the comfort of Salt Mountain and dare to risk getting involved in places where lost people are; to look at the unbelieving people around us and start building some bridges into their lives; building intentional rescue relationships. More than picketers, protestors, politickers, or promoters, God needs some of His people to just move close to some people who are not His people.

Would you dare to ask God today to lay some lost person on your heart? Maybe He already has. Ask Him, "God, go ahead and break my heart for the people within my reach who do not have You." And then invest yourself in what Jesus did. He came "to seek and to save those who are lost."

Too many people are slipping away, falling, crashing because there is no salt making a difference where they are. Please, if you know Jesus, be where you are needed the most.

7th Annual Smoky Mountains Motorcycle Adventure is complete!

We had a small group of guys attend this annual event. God blessed us with incredible weather. Skies were clear, temps in the 80s and an incredible place to stay. Lord willing we'll do the trip again next yearend stay at the Smoky Mountain Christian Village in Pigeon Forge. We were able to share the Gospel with a number of people as we traveled about. The fellowship was awesome and we thank Ron Woudenberg for doing a daily devotion for us each night.

MAD Live Event completed

Completed a MAD Live Event today in Maryville, TN For a small group of people. Smoky Mountains Motorcycle Adventure is next on the ministry agenda!

Hands to Hold a Torch

I think barbers ought to get like honorary degrees in psychology. I mean, they end up listening to everyone's problems and oftentimes they end up giving counsel. Every once in a while I get to hear some of a barber's feelings, and that's when you kind of get the psychology degree. You see, we sort of turn the tables, or the chair as the case may be in the barber shop.

One day my barber was sounding his very frequent lament. He was telling me that no one wants to learn barbering any more. The hours are too long, the pay isn't enough, you've got to be on your feet all day, and it requires a skill that takes time to learn. He said, "When this generation of hair cutters dies off, there won't be many young barbers to take their place." Well, if that happens, we'll probably figure out something to do with our hair - what's left of it - and some of us will solve the problem by losing it so we don't need a barber any more. Well, the barber was worried about not having the next generation of hair cutters. Okay, well there's a much greater concern that's life-or-death.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hands to Hold the Torch." Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ezekiel 22:30. "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before Me in the gap on behalf of the land, so I would not have to destroy it." And then these sad words, "But I found none."

A century ago, D. L. Moody would say, "God is looking for gap men." And I would say the same thing today. God says, "I am looking for men and women who will stand in My gap on behalf of the lost." I hope He doesn't have to say, "I found none."

It was 1956, and five American missionaries landed by the Curaray River in Ecuador in their missionary plane. Nate Saint was their pilot. Their objective was to take Christ to the unreached Auca Indians, known for their murderous ways. No one had ever really survived being with them. And those missionaries never came back. They were murdered by the very people they were trying to reach; martyred by them; their bodies left in the river. That news flashed around the world.

The quotation of Jim Elliott, who was one of those martyred missionaries, has now come down to our day, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." That story was told and retold again and again, and hundreds of young people like myself gave ourselves to Christian service and that generation has reached who knows how many people for Christ across the years. And perhaps the greatest miracle is that all of the men who murdered those missionaries came to know Christ as their Savior, and one of them even baptized one of those missionary's sons. Virtually their whole tribe was reached.

The sister of one of those martyrs, Nate Saint, was Rachel Saint. She continued her brother's work with the Waoranis, or the Aucas. She passed away in 1994 at the age of 80 and one of the things she was most concerned about and was very emotional about was, "Who will carry on the work?" You know, that's the cry from aging missionaries around the world. They're dying or retiring, and there just aren't enough to take their place. The torch is about to be dropped in places where some have given their lives to establish a beachhead for Christ.

Other religions in certain parts of the world grow much faster than Christianity. And we can feel Christ's return in the air. Could it be that God is calling you to be a gap person, to pick up the torch; maybe your child or maybe your grandchild? Don't stand in their way. Charles Spurgeon said, "If God has called you to be a missionary, don't stoop to be a king." There's a gap. I even know Christian parents who are discouraging their children from going into God's service today. But God is asking, "Who will carry on My work in these days before My Son returns?" Maybe it's time for your heart to say, "Well, send me, Lord. If you want me, you've got me."

Four Lessons From the Search for the Missing Plane

Where is Malaysia Air 370 and its 239 passengers? That question obsessed people around the world and in the news for day after day after day. I can't remember a time when so many nations (I think there were 26 at some point) mounted such a huge search-and-rescue effort across such a wide swath of the world. It was incredible. Why?

Well, to search for and, if possible, try to save the people who were lost.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Four Lessons From the Search for the Missing Plane."

As I was watching the unfolding news...and praying at that time, God seemed to say to me, "There's something else I want you to see here, Ron." Suddenly I was hearing in my heart the words of Jesus. He said, "I've come to seek and to save what is lost" (Luke 19:10).

Then it hit me. Jesus has launched a search-and-rescue force from every corner of the globe to seek and save hijacked lives heading for an unthinkable destination. His worldwide rescue force is His Church; His people from "every nation, tribe...and language" (Revelation 7:9).

As ships and planes and computers were searching for that missing plane, they were looking by "grids." In other words, each one had its own assigned stretch of ocean or land to cover. That's like the rescue forces of Christ. Each of us who follows Christ has our assigned "grid." And it's the spiritually dying people who are in our own circle of influence. There's so much ground to cover; so many eternities in the balance. The only way every unbeliever is going to have a chance at Jesus is if every believer is a rescuer.

Now our word for today from the Word of God asks these haunting questions in Romans 10:14. "How can they believe in Him if they have never heard about Him? And how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them?" The life-saving mission of my Jesus compels me to consider those questions in light of the people I know. "How can __________ hear about Him (in my case) unless Ron tells them?"

Neighbors. Coworkers. Facebook friends. Family. Social acquaintances. They're the "grid" where the Great Rescuer has assigned me and you to "seek and to save." And the desperate search that dominated our headlines for that missing plane has a lot to teach us about our rescue assignment from Jesus.

1. Seek them - We can't expect those who are lost to show up where we are. We have to go where they are, taking that eternity-changing news of Jesus outside the walls of the church. Showing up with Jesus at the office, the gym, the club, the store, the game, and the hospital.

2. Deploy every means possible. They put out ships and planes and computers to find the missing plane - every conceivable tool for the mission. We who know the eternal stakes of our life-saving mission can do no less. Social networks. Websites. Acts of kindness. Fervent prayer. Intentional relationships. Paul said, "That by all possible means, I might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:23).

3. Work together - The Malaysian Air search depended on people from different backgrounds coming together for a cause larger than their differences. Our failure to do so as the rescue force of Jesus is costing lives.

4. Time is lives - That's what a Chinese official said about delays in that search. You know, that must echo God's heart as His rescuers focus on themselves while lost people just keep slipping away into an awful eternity.

I answer and you answer to the Final Orders of Jesus - as does every child of God. "Go and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere" (Mark 16:15, NLT). It's the passion of His heart. It must be mine.