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© 1997 Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
Last Update: 03/09/1997
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My Grandpa John lost his hair -- not all of it, but enough to expose a sizeable portion of the top of his head. Then there was my dad, faithfully following in his father's footsteps. He was bald in most of the same spots that his dad was. Hello third generation! My forehead seems to be growing. Now behind me are two sons with great hair - for now. But the other day in church, our Pastor said something unsettling. He said, "One day you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and suddenly there is someone else there". You are looking at someone a lot like your father. I glanced down the pew at Brad, he had this anxious look on his face as he felt his forehead and checked his hair.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have "A Word With You" today about "Fatal Family Resemblance".
It's true we all know about family resemblance, whether it's hair, or height, or face, or cholesterol, metabolism, or even health problems, but there are family resemblances that are less obvious and much more damaging. They damage our marriage, our kids, our close relationships, our future, our worth. We pick up from our parents ways of talking and acting that we didn't like in them, and suddenly we hear ourselves sounding like Mom or Dad -- treating others as our parents did, reacting, communicating, living as they did in ways we never meant to repeat. Of course, if we are parents, we are marking another generation who will have to go through the same pain we have unless something changes which seems unlikely.
If we could change some of these things, we would have by now. It's almost as if there's this man or woman we would like to be, that we need to be, and then there's this person we really are. There's a hugh gap in between.
Well, here's good news from our Heavenly Father. Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Peter 1:18. It says this, "Christ has redeemed us from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers with the precious blood of Christ".
Did you hear that word "redeemed"? That's a hope word. You and I don't have to be what our parents were and maybe all the generations before that. These family germs can stop in your generation, but not with your power. There's a six-letter word that bridges that gap between the person you want to be and the person you are: SAVIOR -- a rescuer from this spiritual cancer called sin. It's not so much the breaking of some religious rules. It's much deeper than that. It's the issue of who's really God in your life. See we've made the choice Frank Sinatra sings about - I'll do it my way. And that's led to thousands of little and big choices that have ignored God's way and made us slaves to the dark side of us.
But there's a Savior and our redeeming has something to do with the shedding of His innocent blood on that cross. I Peter 2:24, a little later in this same book, explains it. It says, "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness". He took the power and the penalty and the pain of every sin on Himself. It means you can be forgiven, every sin erased from God's book. The beginning of your liberation. It means you can be changed. As the Bible says, "you can be a new creation in Christ".
I have experienced it. Thousands I've known have experienced it. What we could never change, Jesus has been able to miraculously transform. If you were to give yourself to this Jesus today, you could finally say of all that sin baggage, "It stops here. It's hurt me long enough. It's hurt enough people." You would have the power of the only Man who ever conquered death, changing you from the inside out. If you want to be sure you belong to Him, let me know via e-mail and I'll send you a little booklet. It's called "Steps to Peace With God".
The physical family resemblance is like Dad's baldness - well I can't offer you much hope on those But where we really need hope is on the kind of person we are on the inside and there's a powerful Savior for that. You can stop those ugly family sins so that no one in your family will ever have to look like that again.
If you would like to know more about what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, or if you want to know for sure that you belong to Him...
Read YOURS FOR LIFE!.
OR, you can return to more LIFE ISSUES.
Copyright 1995 Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
© 1997 Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
Last Update: 03/09/1997