I'm not sure if it's harder for a baby to have major surgery or adults like us. Little Jamie? He was not even a year old, but he had to undergo heart surgery; which I associate kind of with older people. Jamie was the nephew of one of our team members, and she was from Australia. The miles made it pretty tough on her, so we all joined her in praying for this little guy so far away. And thankfully, Jamie came through with flying colors. His heart was fixed. It was a tough operation, but it had to be done. You see, Jamie, they said, had a hole in his heart, and you can't just leave it that way!

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

It's understood that a hole in the human heart is serious business and that you have to take corrective action to get it fixed. Thank God, there are surgeons with the ability to do just that. But when it comes to emotional holes and the spiritual holes in the human heart, it's amazing how many people are walking around with that heart condition totally untreated. But, like its physical equivalent, a hole in your heart spiritually will greatly limit what your life could be, and one day it will cost you your life. The good news is there's a surgeon who repairs the spiritual hole in the human heart. He's done it for many people. He's done it for a long time.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from John 4. It's a story out of Jesus' life. It's noon, it's hot, and Jesus stops at a well for a meeting that it turns out God has arranged. A woman arrives at the well with her water pot to get another day's water supply. She has no idea Jesus knows all about her. She's a woman with a past, a reputation, with a lot of mistakes, and a lot of men in her life. As the conversation proceeds, she's forced to admit that she's been divorced five times and she's currently living with another guy. Her life has been an endless search for love and fulfillment in a series of unfulfilling relationships. She's got a hole in her heart that's never gone away. Maybe like you.

Jesus addresses it in a disarming way by comparing it to the physical thirst that brings her to the well that very day. Verse 13 of chapter 4, He says, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." Thirsty again. You know, that's a word picture for our lifelong search for something that will quench the thirst in our soul - to fill the hole in our heart. It could be that every relationship, every accomplishment, every religion has left you "thirsty again."

Listen to Jesus' offer: "But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Who needs all these trips to wells that never fill you up when Jesus could put a spiritual and emotional spring inside you that will finally quench your thirst.

All our lives, it's our creator we've been thirsty for, because all of the me - first, sinful choices of our life have cut us off from the One who made us, whose love we were made for. But all the garbage was heaped on Jesus when He went to the cross to pay for your sin and mine so we could finally find that peace-giving relationship with God we've needed all along.

It's a relationship that's within your reach right now; if you'll tell Jesus you want Him to be your Savior from your sin. That woman we just read about did not have "meeting the Savior" on her list for that day, and you probably didn't either. But Jesus met her where she was, which is what He's doing with you right now. So today could be your last trip to wells that never satisfy.

Would you tell Him, "Jesus, if you died for me, I know I can trust you with my life. I need my sins erased from God's Book. Come into my life today I'm putting all my trust in You." Our website, ANewStory.com, can help you land this for sure.

See, Jesus is the only Heart Surgeon who can finally repair the lifetime spiritual hole in your heart. Why go one more day with the emptiness inside, when the Son of God has come to fill it forever?

Let's go see the meteor shower! Man, when it happens, it's all over the news. It's one of the few times astronomers make the front page. I mean, earth moves into this dust trail of a comet that passes through, and this thing happens about every 130 years. When that happened the last time, we went out at the prescribed time with our trusted binoculars. My son got out his telescope. He found a place where he could get away from as many lights as possible, because at that point we were living near a major city. And others went too; apparently they had read the same stuff we had. And they were in various chiropractic poses with their necks, bending back trying to see this spectacular meteor shower. Everything was in readiness, and they said on the news that there were some meteor fireworks that night. Of course, we didn't see any. Oh yeah, just about show time, the clouds decided to roll in.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Clouds Covering God."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Joshua 7. After the incredible victory at Jericho, the Jews have lost in a smaller, far less challenging battle at a city called Ai. They'd been told not to take any loot or plunder anything from the city of Jericho or God would judge them. Well, they've just now lost at Ai. Joshua couldn't figure out what happened.

It says, "Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell face-down to the ground before the ark of the Lord, remaining there till evening. The elders of Israel did the same and sprinkled dust on their heads." "What's happened, Lord? What went wrong?" "And Joshua said, 'Ah, Sovereign Lord, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? If only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan!" Oh, Joshua, you don't know what the problem really is.

"The Lord said to Joshua, 'Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned.'" See, God's people had been experiencing God's power; they'd been experiencing victory; they'd been experiencing obvious closeness to the Lord, but something was wrong, and Joshua was thinking of everything,

"Maybe it's this. Maybe it's that." He's complaining, "Why can't we see Your brightness any more, Lord?" Feels a little like that night we looked for the meteor fireworks. They were there, but there was something between us; something keeping us from experiencing it. We couldn't see that.

Well, God says, "Joshua, get up! You're going down the wrong trail here. The problem is that Israel has sinned." Same Joshua, same Jehovah at Jericho, but God's blessing has been withheld because there is besetting sin. When it is dealt with aggressively later in the chapter, the blessing of God returns. Maybe you have that feeling right now. "Something's wrong. It just doesn't feel like it used to between God and me." Maybe you're not feeling the power and the victory; the supernatural things you were seeing. And like Joshua you're wondering where the blame goes. While you're trying to reason it out, God is saying, "It's sin. There's a cloud that's come between you and Me. You can't see Me. You don't have a clear look at Me because of that sin."

Think about it. Have you dealt with the thing that might be causing God to withhold His blessing? Have you even asked Him about it? It could be a broken relationship, a resentment that's slipped in, the return of an old habit or an old way of thinking. Maybe it's a compromise you've been making. Or you've returned to self-managing things that you had surrendered to Him. Or you've been shoving your mate or your family aside or compromising your integrity. I don't know what it is, but the Lord's saying, "That's the reason. That's where the clouds are. That's why you can't see Me."

It's the last place you like to look for an answer for what's wrong. But could it be that sin has crept into your camp? Could it be that the clouds of compromise have come between you and the Lord, who once blazed so dramatically through your life? You see, the Lord Jesus is still producing spiritual fireworks.

What He's done before, He wants to do again. But those fireworks can only be seen by those who don't let sin block the view.

Sometimes during pro football games, the camera focuses on a single player on the sidelines, the guy who just made that great play. And he'll look at the camera and he'll say those two words they almost always say, "Hi Mom!" See, it's just an indication of the debt that a lot of people owe to the love of their mother.

Six-year-old Stephen will owe a debt to his Mom that he can never repay. He was horseback riding with her and with his older brother and sister and they were near this ranching town in western Canada. A cougar ran right in front of Stephen, spooked his horse, and Stephen was thrown to the ground. Well, the cougar immediately pounced on that little boy. And his mother, Cindy, leaped from her horse, grabbed a stick and started hitting that cougar knowing that that cougar would turn his fury on her. Stephen's brother and sister dragged him to safety and then they rode for help as fast as they could. Stephen lived. His mother, Cindy, didn't. She took all the fury of the cougar so the son she loved wouldn't have to.

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

It's pretty incredible love, isn't it? Well, you have been loved like that. Except the deadly animal that's tearing us apart lives inside us. It's that part of you that says those things that deeply hurt the people you love even though you don't really want to hurt them. It's whatever produces the dark side of you, that bitterness, the self-destructive thoughts, the adulterous inclinations, the anger. There's this side of us that we hate. The people we love hate it, God hates it - it's the animal inside. We seem powerless to fight it off. I mean, if we could have we would have by now.

Jesus named this animal. He said in John 8:34, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin." Sin is that untamable monster inside of us and the Bible is very blunt when it describes what this animal ultimately will do to us. It says, "Sin when it is full grown gives birth to death." The wild animal of sin is a killer. It kills our relationships, it kills our self-respect, it kills our reputation, it kills our future, and ultimately it will take us to hell.

We are like little Stephen. We're helplessly at the mercy of this killer animal except that someone intervened; someone who loves us like no one ever loved us. In God's own words in 1 John 4:10, "This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin." In other words, Jesus knew that you would not survive the fury of the animal called sin, so He turned all the fury of that animal on himself, on the cross. He basically said, "Take me, I will die so this one I love doesn't have to." But the one who died was not a mother. It was the only Son of God. The death He took on Himself wasn't just physical, it was the agony of an eternal hell; an eternal separation from God. That's what He was absorbing when He died on the cross for you and me.

This incredible rescue could be your rescue this very day if this would be the day that you would put all your trust in this Savior to be your Savior. Has there ever been a time you did that? If you're not sure there has been, there probably hasn't been. Don't wait! Don't risk another day without this Savior. Open your life to Him and say, "Jesus, you are my only hope. Not my religion, not my goodness, nothing else I could ever depend upon. Jesus, I put my hope... all my hope on you. Beginning today, I'm yours."

There's a reason we call our website ANewStory.com, because it could be page one in a new story of your life. Would you check it out today? It's ANewStory.com.

Look, you know the power; you know the fury of this horrible animal called sin. It's time that you experienced the rescue of the One who loved you so much that He willingly turned the fury of your sin on Himself so you could live.