It was a major turning point in the life of the Hutchcraft family when our firstborn went to college, and it was a major turning point for my checkbook, too! There was a lot of talk before our daughter left for college and even during orientation week about choosing a major. Of course, that's pretty heavy stuff for freshmen; they're lucky just to find their classes, let alone find their major. But they tell you during that orientation week to pick a major that will be useful later on.

Now, students might tend to follow their interests or their glands and major in football, or major in social life. Some do. Or major in practical jokes. Of course, I would never do that. Now, I heard a lot during orientation week saying, "Now, what are you going to do with that major?" "What are you going to do in your future?" That's mom and dad speaking. "Think about your future. Hey, this is costing a lot. Major in something that will be valuable in your future, not just something that looks good today." You know what? That's actually pretty good advice for all of us at Kingdom University.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Majoring on What Will Last."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 24, and here is Jesus describing a time when a lot of folks' majors won't be marketable anymore. It's called "the last days" in Scripture, and He says in verse 7, "It's a time when nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there'll be famines and earthquakes in various places." Then he goes on to say, "Then there will be a great distress unequaled from the beginning of the world until now and never to be equaled again. Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken."

Man, that is a lot of upheaval, and it's happening at a time when the world will look much as it seems to look today. Many Bible scholars believe that increasingly the stage is set for this to be maybe the generation that precedes the coming of Christ. And at that time, those who have majored their lives on business, or houses, personal empires, or money, or anything earthly, are going to find it totally useless, totally unmarketable, easily destroyed. Like a naive college student, many folks today are majoring on values that look good from here but will not support them in their spiritual future.

Then comes Jesus' counsel as to a major that is worth investing in. Verse 35 of Matthew 24: "Heaven and earth will pass away..." Okay, so those things are not majors, they're minors. "...but My words will never pass away." He's saying His words are the only major that will ever withstand every recession, every depression, every crisis, every illness, every emergency, any bomb a man can build. Could it be that the minors of life have left you little time for the majors? You've got to set aside some time to dig into God's Word. Maybe that's slipped into becoming a low priority in your schedule. Make it a high priority for your family if you want them to be ready for the future. We learn volumes of data from what we learn on Internet websites to remembering batting averages, but we don't learn the Bible.

Whether you're a PhD, or you never made it through high school, major in the Bible. It shows up the lies; it shows you what God wants today; it shows you the big picture.

Minor in what you will, but major in what will be there when nothing else is: the never lying, never dying Word of Almighty God.

Jessica's all grown up now. She almost didn't make it past eighteen months. You might even remember when, as a curious toddler, little Jessica fell down a deep shaft in her aunt's backyard in Midland, Texas. The shaft was far too narrow for any rescuer to go down, and she was wedged in a position that virtually immobilized her. If you remember that incident, it's because we all watched the drama unfold on television for three nerve-wracking days. By the time it was over, Jessica was like America's little girl! When the rescuers realized there was no easy way, no conventional way to save little Jessica, they devised a whole new way of getting it done: by digging a wider shaft parallel to the one she was trapped in, and then a tunnel connecting those two shafts. That's pretty ingenious! Finally, a rescuer was lowered into that second shaft. Minutes later, we smiled and we cheered as the rescuer emerged from that shaft with an armful of Jessica, holding onto him for dear life.

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

That seemed to be the attitude of Jessica's rescuers, wouldn't you say? That has to be the mindset of anyone who hopes to rescue someone who's going to die if they don't. You've got to do whatever it takes. Like the rescue God commands in Proverbs 24:11, "Rescue those being led away to death." Or in Jude 24, "Snatch others from the fire and save them." In other words, you got rescued from the fire, now don't just leave the people you know in the fire. God put you where you work, where you live, where you recreate, where you go to school to take some of those people to heaven with you! How are you doing?

But it probably is not going to happen if you insist on it being easy or safe, or on rescuing someone you care about by conventional means. Let's look at the guys portrayed in Mark 2, beginning with verse 2, our word for today from the Word of God. These guys are some of my heroes. I love this story.

They have a paralyzed friend, they know Jesus is his only hope, and they are his only hope of getting to Jesus. He'll never get to Him on his own. That could well be you and some folks you know. The house Jesus is teaching in is so crowded they can't possibly carry their friend in through the door or even through a window. Those would be the conventional ways, right, of getting into a house - a door, or at least a window. So they give up, right? "I guess my friend will never get to Jesus. It's too hard. That's so sad." Wrong! No!

Here's what the Bible says: "Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on." Minutes later, Jesus had forgiven their friend's sins and enabled him to walk for the first time in his life.

The point? The lost and dying people you know will probably never go through the front door to Jesus. They may never come to a meeting you invite them to. They may never go to hear a speaker you want them to hear. But guess what? You're already with them. It's up to you to tell them about Jesus who has changed your life and changed your eternal destination.

And all of us, from individual believers to churches to ministries, will have to realize if we keep on doing what we've always done, we'll keep on reaching who we've always reached. And dying people all around us will just go on dying! Like Jessica's rescuers, we've all got to be willing to try new methods, to get out of our comfort zone to rescue the dying, to go beyond what's easy, what would be convenient for us, to explain Jesus without all those religious words that only we understand. We've got to go to the places where the dying people really are instead of waiting for them to walk into the rescue station.

Whatever it takes, that's what it's got to be when the situation is life-or-death. Would you say it to Jesus today, "Jesus, I'll help some of the people I know be in heaven with me; whatever it takes, whatever it costs! Because that's what you did."

I spent my seventh through tenth grade in a small town in Illinois. So I went to junior high there and my first two years of high school. And I hadn't seen my friends from there for 28 years!

I was speaking in a city not too far from that town, and one of those old friends called and said, "Do you have time to get together with us before you go speak?" Well, we did. And after we figured out who everybody was, because, you know things have changed: hair, teeth, figures, we had a great time! There was a lot of the old "remember when" stuff, and "Hey, where's good old..." You know?

Well, they all remembered when I weighed quite a few more pounds, for example. After we've gone through all those memories, we all want to do it again. But one thing, well, I've got to tell you; it became very clear by the end of the afternoon. If you want a real ongoing relationship, you've got to have some new experiences together. You can only go so far on memories.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritual Memories Are Not Enough."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from perhaps the ultimate Christian life of all time, that of the Apostle Paul. And yet he says after 30 years of following Jesus, Philippians 3:13 - "Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

I like the spirit of that, don't you? I mean, it's like an Olympic runner who says, "I don't care about the ground I've already covered. What matters is the ground ahead of me; what I haven't covered yet. The best is not behind me; the best is yet to come." And look! Paul had some great memories of some wonderful miracles, great sermons preached, and churches founded. But all he's focusing on is the new ground that he has yet to take for Jesus.

See, the key to a living relationship with Christ can be summarized in four words that Paul uses here. "Forgetting what is behind." So many believers are like me and my old high school friends, trying to have a relationship today based on things that happened in the past. "Oh, remember the time I committed my life to Christ? I remember that meeting so well." "Remember, Lord, when I did that job for You?" "Remember when I was really out on a limb; I didn't know where it was going to come from, and I prayed and all kinds of miracles happened?" "Remember those answers to prayer?" "Remember those people I influenced?" "Remember when we used to have those intimate times together?"

Come on! You can't base a relationship with Christ on a scrapbook, no matter how impressive the past is. Sure, we can draw encouragement for the new things in front of us from looking back. You just can't let the old missions satisfy you. You need some new experiences with Jesus. You need to be part of some new exploits for the King, places where you experience Christ's lordship in things that matter to you now. You need a daily rendezvous with Him where you have new encounters, new discoveries all the time from His Word; something new that you just talked to Him about today. You need a new mission, a new vision for what you could be doing for Him; a new reviving work better than all the others you've had in the past, a new intimacy, closer to Jesus than you've ever been before.

Isn't it time to say, "Lord, I've been living too much on memories. I've been living on old victories, old experiences. Let's do some new things together! Today, Lord, let's start making some new memories."