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.

The snowstorm hit Chicago on a Saturday, and many of the people stranded at Chicago's O'Hare Airport didn't get out of there until Tuesday. That scene was not unique for O'Hare, of course. I've sat in a plane on the runway for three hours just because brief thunderstorms went through. The fact is, O'Hare Airport is a hub for so many connecting flights to so many places. And because it's in the Midwest, it's near one of the Great Lakes and it can get hit with all kinds of weather, which sometimes shuts down one of the busiest airports in the world. Someone said, "When O'Hare sneezes, the whole airline system gets pneumonia." It's true that when bad weather makes the hub close down, nothing can get to where it needs to be.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Storms That Stop Us."

Stormy weather doesn't just shut down airports. It can shut down people, too. If you've been through a stormy time in your life recently, you know that tendency to sort of pull back, turn inward, and stop delivering what you usually deliver. And there's a problem with that. Just like O'Hare Airport in Chicago, you are a hub - you are a hub through whom God sends love and encouragement and leadership and help to the people around you. If bad weather shuts you down, the people around you are hurting.

In our word for today from the Word of God, we see Jesus being battered by the most severe storms any human being has ever faced. He's in agony on a Roman cross. He's abandoned by most of the people He counted on. He's suffering unspeakable pain, physically and spiritually. Jesus has been for so many the hub through which God has sent His love into their lives. Now, going through such awful turbulence and damage, will Jesus shut down and be all about himself?

John 19:25-27 - "Near the cross of Jesus stood His mother, His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw His mother there, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, 'Dear woman, here is your son,' and to the disciple, 'Here is your mother.' From that time on, the disciple took her into his home."

Here in the stormiest moment of His life, Jesus is still delivering God's love into people's lives. At a time when any of us would have been thinking totally about ourselves and the excruciating pain we were going through, Jesus is still thinking about the needs of others. Even then, even from the cross, He's thinking about His mother's needs. He's thinking about the needs of the man on the cross next to Him. He's calling for forgiveness for His executioners. With every reason to shut down, Jesus is still asking what He asked every day of His life, "Who needs Me here?"

And that is the model He has left for you and me, for those of us who have answered His invitation, "Follow me," to still be delivering His love even when we are being battered by the storm. When we're hurting, when we're tired, when we're stressed, our tendency is to think mostly about ourselves, isn't it? We go into survival mode, "Everybody get out of my way. I don't feel good," or "I'm really busy," or I'm really tired." And we get shut down, not by the storm, but by our self-centered, self-pitying response to the storm. Life is tough, so suddenly it's all about me, right?

But Jesus calls us, Jesus shows us something better, something higher - a more supernatural way to live, to draw on His grace, to keep giving out His love even when we feel battered, to be all about others when I feel like being all about me; because I will find my life by giving it away.

You are a divine hub for delivering God's resources into people's lives. You just can't let the storm shut you down!

We were traveling a good distance and it took a couple of days. We needed to get there at a certain time, so we had a lot of drive-through meals, and therefore a lot of fast food. That means our eating decisions were pretty simple. We didn't make them on the basis of flavor, or nutrition, or elegant surroundings. No, they were based on whoever was the fastest, the closest to the road and whatever we could eat the most quickly while traveling. Now, our sons have a really high tolerance for fast food. But even they have their limits. After a couple of days of fast food, when it was time to get dinner, even they said, "Please, let's stop at a restaurant and eat. We know we'll have to slow down a bit. We know we'll lose time. But we'd had enough fast food. It's time for real food."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Prayer That Waits."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 18. "Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, 'In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the pleas, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"

Now, even though the judge didn't care, she just kept coming and she just kept asking. This was Jesus' parable, and let's make it very clear that the judge is in no way a picture of our God. That's not the God we know, the one who cares deeply enough to have His Son die for us. He actually welcomes us coming to Him. See, this widow is sort of a picture of what we ought to be. Jesus wants us to keep coming, "Always pray and don't give up" He says.

Maybe you feel like giving up because it looks like nothing is happening. He says, "Don't give up." He doesn't want us to give up. That might be the word He knew you needed to hear this very day. See, it could be why you're listening right now. He's telling us to keep coming to Him, not based on how we feel, or what's happening with our circumstances, but on the strength of His unchanging Son.

Listen to 1 John 5:14-15. "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we have asked of Him." He hears, He responds as long as it's in the boundaries of His will. He's promised that. He wants us to ask Him; to keep coming to Him with our need. In fact we should ask more what He wants actually than what we want. And He wants us to keep at it.

God's not keeping an account on how many times you come. But He knows that our relationship is more important than we thought if we continue to develop that relationship by continually seeking His presence. He wants to give a closeness to us, and He often uses a waiting time to develop Christ like faith that we would never have if we had the answer right away.

Now, you and I don't want to take time for God to cook up a real answer. We'd rather pick it up at drive-through. But the quick answer is seldom the one that's the best answer. Keep bringing your requests to your Father, asking Him to change you while you're waiting for Him to change your circumstances. He's preparing you for His answer.

As my tired of fast food sons will tell you, the good stuff takes a little longer, but it's worth the wait.