The Scary Picture of the Real You
It really wasn't fair. But some friends of mine in youth ministry used to carry out these dreaded Saturday morning raids on teenagers from the local high school. By the way, those raids got those kids to an event that they eventually ended up enjoying, but they didn't enjoy how it started. A few leaders would show up early on Saturday morning at the house of one of their student leaders. When a parent came to the door, they would tell them what church group they were from and asked the parents' permission to "kidnap" their son or daughter to a "come as you are" breakfast they were having for student leaders. Most of the parents actually went along with it with a bit of amusement. The invaders went to the door of that teenager's room and gave them one minute to throw something on before they came in for them. Sixty seconds later, people of the same sex went in to that room and snapped a picture of the Saturday morning self back in the days with Polaroid cameras, before digital. Well those pictures were of course posted at the breakfast to the horror of those kids, especially the girls. No makeup, bad hair, your real skin, they didn't seem to be too excited about everyone seeing what they were really like.
There's the dressed up, fixed up version of ourselves that everyone sees. And then there's the not-so-beautiful picture of what we really look like. A lot of us struggle with that one. One of the writers of the Bible, actually a man named Paul sure did. But as you hear his description of the gap between the person he wants to be and the person he is, he seems to speak for all of us.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 7:18, "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing." There's the picture of how I want to look and then this candid picture of what we are. There's this dark side, I guess. It may be anger, selfishness, or a bitterness, or prejudice that's in there. The ugly picture may be something sexual, or an addiction, a past that continues to haunt our present - a dark secret. God calls it by that one ultimately ugly word - sin: rebellion against our Creator's ways, and against our Creator.
And these sentences from the Bible capture how powerless we are to change the picture. The Bible goes on, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" He's sick of being this person he hates. One mother I know, who has been agonizing over her teenage daughter, recently confronted her with the ugly things that she knew her daughter had been doing. The daughter said, "Mother, I'm not like that!" And she sure didn't want to be like that, but she was like that! We're all caught in between the person we want to be and the person we really are.
But then comes the hope, "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" There is hope of changing the picture, but only one. We don't need a religion, we don't need a self-improvement program, we need a Savior. We need a rescuer who will do for us what a lifeguard does for a drowning person, deliver us from the thing that we cannot deliver ourselves from.
That is what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about. God's one and only Son loving you enough to absorb all the guilt and all the hell of all your sin, so you can finally go free, if you grab the lifeguard with all the faith you've got.
Maybe you've never made this awesome Savior, your Savior and you're ready to be rescued. I hope you are. Would you tell Him that right now? He's alive; He came back from the dead. He's walked out of His grave. He's where you are now waiting for you to put all your trust in Him. There's some help for you; some great information to help you at this important moment if you'll go to our website. And I would invite you to go there as so many others have. It's www.yoursforlife.net.
The Bible promises that, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone; a new life has begun." That miracle for you may be one prayer away.
Ron Hutchcraft
It really wasn't fair. But some friends of mine in youth ministry used to carry out these dreaded Saturday morning raids on teenagers from the local high school. By the way, those raids got those kids to an event that they eventually ended up enjoying, but they didn't enjoy how it started. A few leaders would show up early on Saturday morning at the house of one of their student leaders. When a parent came to the door, they would tell them what church group they were from and asked the parents' permission to "kidnap" their son or daughter to a "come as you are" breakfast they were having for student leaders. Most of the parents actually went along with it with a bit of amusement. The invaders went to the door of that teenager's room and gave them one minute to throw something on before they came in for them. Sixty seconds later, people of the same sex went in to that room and snapped a picture of the Saturday morning self back in the days with Polaroid cameras, before digital. Well those pictures were of course posted at the breakfast to the horror of those kids, especially the girls. No makeup, bad hair, your real skin, they didn't seem to be too excited about everyone seeing what they were really like.
There's the dressed up, fixed up version of ourselves that everyone sees. And then there's the not-so-beautiful picture of what we really look like. A lot of us struggle with that one. One of the writers of the Bible, actually a man named Paul sure did. But as you hear his description of the gap between the person he wants to be and the person he is, he seems to speak for all of us.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 7:18, "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing." There's the picture of how I want to look and then this candid picture of what we are. There's this dark side, I guess. It may be anger, selfishness, or a bitterness, or prejudice that's in there. The ugly picture may be something sexual, or an addiction, a past that continues to haunt our present - a dark secret. God calls it by that one ultimately ugly word - sin: rebellion against our Creator's ways, and against our Creator.
And these sentences from the Bible capture how powerless we are to change the picture. The Bible goes on, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" He's sick of being this person he hates. One mother I know, who has been agonizing over her teenage daughter, recently confronted her with the ugly things that she knew her daughter had been doing. The daughter said, "Mother, I'm not like that!" And she sure didn't want to be like that, but she was like that! We're all caught in between the person we want to be and the person we really are.
But then comes the hope, "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" There is hope of changing the picture, but only one. We don't need a religion, we don't need a self-improvement program, we need a Savior. We need a rescuer who will do for us what a lifeguard does for a drowning person, deliver us from the thing that we cannot deliver ourselves from.
That is what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about. God's one and only Son loving you enough to absorb all the guilt and all the hell of all your sin, so you can finally go free, if you grab the lifeguard with all the faith you've got.
Maybe you've never made this awesome Savior, your Savior and you're ready to be rescued. I hope you are. Would you tell Him that right now? He's alive; He came back from the dead. He's walked out of His grave. He's where you are now waiting for you to put all your trust in Him. There's some help for you; some great information to help you at this important moment if you'll go to our website. And I would invite you to go there as so many others have. It's www.yoursforlife.net.
The Bible promises that, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone; a new life has begun." That miracle for you may be one prayer away.
Ron Hutchcraft
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