Think about what you looked like in seventh grade. You say, "Oh, no! Please, I'd rather not." Are you thinking, "Man, what a hunk I was! What a Miss America!" Probably not.

Our daughter had a funny experience in her senior French class in high school. There was some down time and some girls were comparing their wallet pictures, including our daughter. She had her senior picture and she also had her seventh grade picture. The teacher asked what everybody was laughing at. Now, my daughter has always had a beautiful smile, but I've got to tell you in seventh grade it was decorated with braces. She had glasses. Her hair was kind of kinky and curly, and she looked like a seventh grader.

Well, her French teacher looked at that picture next to the very beautiful senior in her graduation picture; no glasses, long hair, carefully curled hair, big, blue eyes not concealed by glasses. And that teacher had a simple two-word reaction. I think it was the French words, "La Miracle!" Well, my daughter was laughing with her friends and her teacher at that seventh grade picture because, it wasn't her anymore.

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

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 6:9. It starts out with very bad news and ends with some really good news. We read about people with a past here, with a reputation - a record. "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." That's a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of pain there.

But listen to 1 Corinthians 6:11. Stand by for the very good news. "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified." That means made special again. "You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." People who are cleaned up, made special again, made right with God; only one possible way, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's like my daughter with her seventh grade picture. She couldn't laugh at it when she was that person, but she sure could as a senior because that photo represented who she was then, not now. That's the "la miracle" of being a new creation in Jesus Christ.

Here's what the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 - "When you're in Christ you're a new creation. The old is gone; a new life has begun." He not only changes your eternal future from hell to heaven and makes your present meaningful and satisfying, but He miraculously makes your past sins irrelevant. It may be that you're sometimes pursued by a past you wish you could do over or erase, but the question is, "Did you honestly bring it to Jesus' cross and repent of it?"

Well, if that's so, Acts 3:19 says, "Repent and turn to God and your sins will be wiped away and times of refreshing will come from the Lord." It's gone! God is treating you as if you're a whole new person.

Listen to this: "He carried our sins in His own body on the tree that we might die to sin and live for righteousness" (1 Peter 2:24). He's dealt with your past. It's all paid for on His cross. It's all part of the sorrows He carried and the sin He was crushed for.

This very day you can have every one of those sins erased from God's Book if you would come to Jesus and say, "Jesus, you died for my sin, I'm putting my trust in You." That miracle could take place for you this very day. I would love to show you how. Just go to our website - it's ANewStory.com.

You can tear up the old photo. That was you. It won't be you any more because of Jesus.

There are few words that strike fear into the heart of a student like the word "test." Now, I'm informed that some are to be feared more than others. For example, an essay test is a 10 on the anxiety scale. You have to know your stuff. True and false, well, that's not as bad. And multiple choice, oh man, that seems to be especially popular among students. See, there's the right answer right in front of you; just pick the right one. Now, occasionally multiple choice tests are complicated by those confusing words: All of the above, or none of the above, which makes it a little tougher. Actually, academic tests are pretty good preparation for the real test that you take for the rest of your life.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When Marriage Is a Multiple Choice Test."

Now, when you go into training on how to counsel people, one of the first things they'll tell you is to ask this question when you're counseling someone, "What are all your options?" And I've often done that when I've tried to help someone...to list all of the choices that they have in a given situation. So, get your multiple choices right in front of you. It's especially good advice when it's your marriage that's being tested. And, by the way, every marriage is tested some time or another.

Maybe it happens in all those expectations you had, or suddenly confronted with the reality and what you expected him or her to be, or what you expected marriage to be. Well, reality is almost always different. And maybe that's hitting you.

There's conflict that doesn't seem to be resolved. Maybe there are secrets about your spouse that you never realized before like you do now. Maybe you've been very wounded by this one who's closest to you. Or communication is like totally broken down. Maybe your mate is very busy and you're very lonely. Maybe you've even been violated by the ugliness of unfaithfulness. But when your marriage is hurting, what are your choices?

Well our word for today from the Word of God is in Malachi 2, beginning in verse 13. "Another thing you do..." God says, "...you flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because He no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, 'Why?' It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you've broken faith with her. Though she is your partner - the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the Lord made them one? Do not break faith with the wife of your youth. "I hate divorce," says the Lord God." Now, in a world where divorce is considered one of your multiple choices, God says, "I hate divorce." He doesn't say, "I hate divorced people." He says, "I hate divorce."

One of the most important choices my wife and I ever made was this: Divorce is not and never will be one of our options. You know what effect that has in a marriage? All your energy goes into fighting for your marriage. It's like a house you know you're going to stay in for the rest of your life. You put all your energy into making that one work and fixing it up. None of your energy should be converted into considering a divorce possibility. As soon as you acknowledge that possibility, you make it much more likely.

Now, there are a lot of multiple choices: To pray in faith that God will change things, to seek counsel, to talk to other couples, to schedule time to talk it through, to fight it through, to admit you've been wrong, to choose to forgive. But it strengthens that marriage to eliminate ending that marriage as an option.

Now, while the Christian world opens the door wider and wider for believers to choose divorce, God hasn't changed. He still hates divorce. Again, not divorced people. When marriage becomes a multiple choice test, use every choice there is to fight for your marriage. And don't divert energy into how to end it. Jesus' first miracle was at a wedding, and He's still doing marriage miracles.

Rwanda - it was the centerpiece of a lot of news attention back in 1994. Bloody civil war; tens of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered there. There were nightly images of emaciated refugees, dying of disease, dying of starvation. And children; oh, you just couldn't forget the children. Many of those kids had lost everything in the carnage.

Billy Graham's son, Franklin Graham, took a medical team to try to help there, and I heard him tell about one little girl he said he could never forget, and I don't think I will. He was in this rebel camp and he was walking by an army truck. He noticed this one little girl sitting in the back of it and she was just rocking back and forth, and she was singing something very softly but in a language Franklin couldn't understand.

There was a soldier standing by there paying no attention to the girl, and Franklin said, "What happened to this little girl?" And he said, "Oh, the same as all the others. She's got nobody left." Franklin said, "Well, would you do me one more favor? Would you tell me what she's singing?" The soldier seemed a little annoyed, but he listened for a minute and he said, "Yeah, it's..." Then he went on to translate it. When he translated the song, it was clear that this little Rwandan orphan hadn't lost everything.

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

The soldier, after hearing this song sung by that little Rwandan orphan girl said, "Yeah, it's something about Jesus loving her." Franklin said, "Is it Jesus Loves Me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so?" "Yeah, yeah, that's it." With her world torn apart, with every human who loved her gone, this precious little victim had one unloseable relationship. Do you? They couldn't take Jesus away from her.

Our word for today from the Word of God - Romans 8. It begins by talking about the worst things that could happen to you in your life, and in verse 37 it says, "We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nothing in the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." A love you can never lose; a love that will never lose you.

Jesus is the unloseable person we've looked for all our lives. Actually we're built to belong to our Creator. If it weren't for Jesus, we would never have the possibility of that heart-satisfying relationship because of the gap between God and us. It's called sin. That's basically the self-rule of our lives. It could be summed up in those words "I did it my way." So the God that we're built by and for is out of our reach until that sin bill is paid. Talk about love! God's only Son came to remove the only thing that could keep us from His love - the death penalty for our sin. From the moment you say, "Jesus, I'm putting my total trust in you and what you did on the cross for me" you belong to God. You always will. Nothing in heaven, nothing in hell, nothing on earth can end that relationship. God has guaranteed it.

Quite some time ago, my wife and I spent a week at a little house at the Jersey shore; it was like a mini-honeymoon. And two weeks later she came down with a life-threatening case of hepatitis. I'll never forget the night when she almost died. I realized that this one person who would never choose to leave me might not have any choice about it that night. I'm so grateful God spared her. But that night I realized that the closest thing I have on earth to an unloseable person is loseable. But you know what? Since that day, came the day that I did lose her. But I was still able to sing "Jesus loves me, this I know." I hope you can too.

You probably never thought you'd learn anything from a little Rwandan orphan girl, but she was hanging on to Jesus with all her heart. Maybe it's time for you to do that. I'd love to help you know how. Join me at our website ANewStory.com.

Isn't it time you grabbed Jesus' hand? Because that's the only hand that won't ever let you go.