A Word With You

Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
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Daily A Word With You

  1. 15h ago

    There When You Fall - #10350

    I happened to be there when my friend, Rick, tried a jet ski for the first time. Now, you may have seen those little water machines that look kind of like a baby snowmobile, and they’re a lot of fun. But it takes some skill to stay balanced on them as they start to take off across the water. Rick actually handled it pretty well for a while; he’s a good water skier, and that didn’t surprise me. But it was inevitable that he would eventually fall off. I expected that when he hit the water, that jet ski was going to take right off without him across the water. I wondered how he’d ever get back! It didn’t happen. That jet ski is designed to start going in a circle near you, and it did, and it circles until you can get back on. Well, that’s exactly what you need when you fall off. I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “There When You Fall.” Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Lamentations 3, and we’re going to begin reading at verse 19. Now, you probably were not discussing Lamentations over breakfast this morning, but Jeremiah wrote it. It follows this long book that’s named after him. Of course, he’s a great man of God, but he’s a great man of God who knew about failure too. In fact, here’s what he says; maybe some things you and I can relate to. I’m sure we can. Beginning with Lamentations 3:19 and then ending with a phrase that you may have sung in church many times. “I remember my affliction in my wandering…” Can you relate to that? He says, “the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them.” See, his mind is playing back failures. “My soul is downcast within me,” he says. “This really gets me depressed,” in other words. “Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope.” Okay, the sun’s coming up now. “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.” Jeremiah is reflecting on times when even the most committed of us believers fall off, so to speak, as my friend fell off that jet ski. And he captures the feelings very well. “When I fail my Lord I feel discouraged, I feel depressed, sometimes like, ‘What’s the use?’ But every new day, every morning His compassions do not fail, His mercies are new every morning. Every new day I find my Lord circling near me to pick me up even though I fell off.” The prophet Zephaniah says, “Every new day, He does not fail.” Yes, when I looked at how that jet ski operated, I couldn’t help but think of how our Lord deals with us. It could be that even now you’re feeling crushed by a feeling of failure; you’ve let your Lord down, you’ve let yourself down, and you’ve let other people down. And maybe you feel like you’re just going to stay down. In fact, at times like these your feelings are telling you, “Hey, you fell off! And you know what? The Lord’s going on without you, buddy!” Wrong. “His mercies are new every morning.” Jeremiah said, “My hope is every new day is a new start. Great," he says of God, "is Your faithfulness.” Not great is our faithfulness; great is His faithfulness. So, no failure needs to last more than 24 hours. Because there’s a new day, and there’s new mercies. Today your Lord is there, circling faithfully. See, He stopped when you fell off, and He’s been lovingly waiting to pick you up and to get you off to a fresh new start.

  2. 1d ago

    The High Price of Neglect - #10349

    It was the house Grandma and Granddad built with a little help from their granddaughter, who happened to turn out to be my wife. That was many years ago. Grandma and Granddad are gone, and the house was in the hands of renters for a number of years. And the landlord, my wife's dad, lived hours away, and his age and his health prevented him from keeping up with what was happening. And man, I'll tell you, the house and the land around it, not good stuff was happening. When he deeded that house to the rest of the family, they weren’t really pleased with what had happened over the years. The house was run down; the carpet was infested with bugs; fences had been moved. And nobody in the family had to do anything to accumulate this mess. All we had to do was do nothing. I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The High Price of Neglect.” And who is that silent thief? He has a name. His name is neglect. He doesn't make much noise, but he sure steals a lot from you. Since the family began to own the house, they've been working very hard to recover what that silent thief stole. Our word for today from the Word of God is a warning against this silent thief. Proverbs 27:23-24 say, "Be sure you know the condition of your flocks; give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations." So God's saying, "Take good care of what's important to you. What you don't take care of, you may very well lose." People end up with major health problems; not always because they do terrible things to their body, but because they just let their body go. But neglect is even more damaging in your important relationships. It may be that in that spinning gerbil wheel of your busy life, someone you love is suffering from neglect. You haven't done anything bad to your mate or child, or maybe your parents. You just haven't done much. Remember, neglect is the silent thief. Slowly, but very surely, intimacy is lost, trust is lost, communication, closeness. Believe me, we saw what neglect did to a house. The longer you let things go, the harder it's going to be to get it fixed. It may be time for a priority check; time to bring those that you love and those you need the most back from the margins and back into the center. Tragically, the most important relationship in your life can atrophy through neglect - your relationship with God. You may not have done something awful. You're just slowly pushing Jesus to the edges of your schedule and your life. And on that day when you go into eternity, as we all will, if you miss heaven will it be because of the silent thief? He will have stolen from you the greatest treasure of all—eternal life. By getting you to miss a personal relationship with Jesus just by never getting around to beginning that relationship. That's why God's book says, "How shall we escape if we neglect such great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3). Many people will spend eternity away from God, not because they rejected what Jesus did on the cross, but because they simply neglected it. They put it off, they made excuses. They postponed God. This "great salvation" is what Jesus did by loving you so much He died to pay your death penalty for your sin. But that salvation isn't your salvation until you tell Jesus you’re putting your total trust in Him like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard as their only hope. So, let me ask you, "When did you do that with Jesus?" If you never have, and you don't want to risk losing the heaven that Jesus died to give you, would you give yourself to Him today? Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours." This would be the day to go to our website and get that information that will help you secure that relationship with Him. It's ANewStory.com. I’ve known too many people who waited one day too long to get to Jesus, and that neglect stole their eternity. Don't walk by Jesus any more. No, run into His waiting arms.

  3. 2d ago

    The Healing Power of Making a Difference - #10348

    Bob was one senior who was a tremendous blessing to our ministry. He’d been the kind of volunteer who had been there for every kind of project you could imagine. His whole life—it seems like he’s been a warrior for the Lord. But then, he had some illnesses and an accident that slowed him down—even to the point of walking with a cane and honestly looking a little more stooped than usual. We asked him if he could help oversee this important remodeling project at our Headquarters. Before we could finish the tour of the area that needed work, Bob was spouting out ideas about how it could be done. Later I actually saw Bob in the hallway—walking tall, walking fast, without his cane, like a man half his age! I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Healing Power of Making a Difference.” A new spark, a new spring in his step–what made this almost overnight difference in our friend? At least in part, I think it was the prospect of making a difference again! He was re-energized by having a mission. You know what? That might be just what the doctor—I mean, The Doctor—ordered for someone who’s listening right now. In Proverbs 11:24-25, our word for today from the Word of God, the Bible spells out this healing power of making a difference for other people. Here’s what it says. “One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” When you’re all focused on yourself, your world is small, your hurts are big, you’re claustrophobic, you’re sometimes bitter and self-pitying. But when you’re focused on people who need you, on things you can do to make a difference, it’s literally life-giving. Jesus described this strange but ever-true equation: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it” (Luke 9:24). Hold onto your life, you lose it. Give your life away, you find it. I’ve seen that proven true from teenagers to people way up in years. We all need a mission. It begins by looking around your world and asking this great question, “Who needs me around here? Who can I help with what I know? Who can I help with what I’ve been through?” Often we’re looking for someone to help us instead of someone to help. We’re focused on who could meet our needs instead of whose needs we could help meet. And we’re miserable. Nobody wants to come to our pity parties, and life looks ugly because we keep looking through a dirty window, and that window is called “It’s all about me.” Maybe it’s time for you to think more about “giving your life away”—about a mission you could become involved in. You might have some very real limitations, some hurts, some handicaps. But there is someone you can help with what you know; whether it’s in person, or letters, or emails, or texts, or with the phone. At least you can tell them about your Jesus and help them be in heaven with you. A young man once wrote to Mother Teresa, and he was asking how he could have the kind of significance with his life that she was experiencing as she ministered to dying people in Calcutta’s worst slums. She wrote back just a four-word reply: “Find your own Calcutta.” That’s the answer. Find a place where you are needed, where you can pour yourself into someone other than yourself, into something bigger than yourself. And, when you do, prepare to experience the awesome healing power of making a difference!

  4. 3d ago

    You, God, and the Wall - #10347

    I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but there were a lot of rumors in college that I was behind some practical jokes and pranks that happened while I was there. That’s hard to imagine, huh? I mean, it probably wouldn’t come as a total surprise to some of those folks if finally I ended up in the penitentiary. Fortunately, my sentence was only about four hours, because I did end up at Alcatraz. Yep! Now, we had taken some young people out to that famous prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay to do a special radio program. Of course, it’s been some years since any prisoners were held there on what they called The Rock, but it is still quite a place to see. While we were there, we experienced this awful claustrophobia of being locked in one of those little cells; the isolation of being in solitary confinement. For the closing segment of the program, we walked out of one of the prison gates and down to the rocks outside that overlook the bay. One of the young people with us was walking out with me, and he made quite an observation, because it was really a tremendously commanding view. He said, “Just think, there was only a wall between them and all this beauty.” I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “You, God, and the Wall.” Our word for today from the Word of God is about just such a wall; one which may be keeping you from the beauty you were made for. Our word for today from the Word of God is Isaiah 59:2. It says, “Your iniquities" - that’s all the times that we’ve done things our way instead of God’s way. "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you.” Separation—that was the feeling we felt so strongly at Alcatraz. A person there was, in simple words, cut off from love, from freedom, from a beautiful world. In a sense, God is saying here that we are all prisoners in our own personal Alcatraz—cut off from Him, from His love, from His peace, His heaven, which may account for an incurable loneliness you’ve experienced over the years. It turns out we’re lonely for God, because our sin has built a wall between us and our Creator. In fact, you may very well have not needed me to realize that there’s a wall between you and God. You knew that. You can feel it. You’ve felt it for a long time. Well, if that wall doesn’t come down in time, it becomes a death sentence; separation from God that is irreversible and eternal. The wall that separates you from the beauty that God wants you to have can come down, but not because of anything you or I can do about it. Somehow, our sins have to be removed and forgiven, and the death penalty has to be paid by someone who takes our place. In 1 Peter 3:18, the Bible says “Christ died for our sins…the righteous" - that’s Him - "for the unrighteous" - that’s you and me - "to bring you to God.” What Jesus did on the cross was to take your rap. You did the sinning, Jesus did the dying. Which means the wall can come down the moment you put your total trust in Jesus to erase your sins from God’s book and give you eternal life in place of eternal death. When the door opened that day in the prison we were in, we were so anxious to leave behind that darkness and that loneliness and to finally step out to where we could breathe free and enjoy the beauty just beyond the wall. That’s exactly what God wants you to experience today. He wants the wall between you and Him to come down, and it can upon your invitation. This could be the day when you say, “Lord, I believe that some of those sins you were dying for on that cross were mine. I turn from the running of my own life. You were meant to run it, and you will from now on. You came back from the dead, You are alive, and Jesus, because you died on the cross for me, I am Yours.” That’s the moment the wall will come down and you will experience all God has for you. Our website is here and it is prepared for you to go to right now and be sure you belong to Jesus Christ. Would you check it out? It's ANewStory.com. Today you’re at the door. Jesus is on the other side waiting to lead you out. Follow Him, because it is really beautiful on the other side of the wall.

  5. 4d ago

    Getting Things Ready for God to Come - #10346

    God blessed the Hutchcraft home with three very unique children. Anybody who knows them, nod your head now. Good…okay. I realize that’s three more than a number of families, some of whom would love to just have one child. We’ve had some friends tell us, “Ron, we’ve been trying to have children for three years,” or five years, or ten years. And today doctors do all they can to increase those possibilities. They’ll suggest times of the month when the baby would be most likely conceived; sometimes they’ll give you fertility drugs. And many a childless couple does all that they can to conceive a new life, and the way that they do that is just to create the conditions, to the best of their ability, in which the miracle could happen. Even though they can’t make it happen, they do their best to prepare for a life to begin. I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Getting Things Ready for God to Come.” Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 2:1-2, and it records for us the most dramatic visit - Holy Spirit visit - in history. “When the day of Pentecost came,” it says, “they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.” And you know from there it became even more exciting as the Holy Spirit changed the city of Jerusalem and launched a movement that has reached you and me today. Maybe today you have a longing deep inside to have a special, personal touch from the Holy Spirit. You know you need one; maybe a touch of what they call revival. You don’t even know what the word means, but you’d love to experience some. You know you need a reviving work for the Holy Spirit, something new and fresh and more powerful than you’ve had before. Maybe it’s a supernatural provision for a God-sized need right now. It’s a healing touch, or a restoring touch. Well, if you need a little personal Pentecost right now, you’re in the same situation in a way as the couple who wants a child. You can’t make the miracle happen; that’s up to God. But you can create the conditions that the Holy Spirit can respond to, and that’s exactly what these people did when this great Spirit visit happened at Pentecost. In Acts 1:12 it says, “They returned to Jerusalem from a hill called The Mount of Olives and waited there.” And that’s exactly what Jesus had commanded them to do - to wait in Jerusalem. Verse 14: “They all joined together constantly in prayer.” See, the way you create the conditions for the baby to come, for the baby of revival to come, of healing, of God’s restoring touch, is first to obey: to do what the Lord told you to do, to wait patiently, to be in the place God has placed you. Be sure you are where He wants you to be. Second step, you’ve got to pray. You obey and then you pray. And you notice it says, “They prayed constantly.” That means through the day, dialoging with God, and often saying to Him as you ride, as you walk, and as you’re in the middle of your responsibilities, “Lord, please give me that special touch.” Cry out to Him often, pray constantly for it. “Seek the Lord continually,” David said. And thirdly it says, “They stayed together.” You obey, you pray, and you stay together. And you eliminate any walls between you and any other believers. Usually these kinds of Spirit-touches come from praying together. God comes to places where His kids are all together, persistently asking Him to come. It’s not a microwave revival. It’s from people who will wait, who will pray, who will stick together, who will pursue Him together passionately. Who will pay the price. Pentecost doesn’t begin at a public meeting; it doesn’t begin at a planning meeting. It usually begins in a prayer meeting. So if you’re hungry for a new spiritual life to be conceived, create the conditions in which it happens and expect God to respond with the visit you sought. Only you can create the conditions. Only God can send the revival.

  6. Sep 4

    Orphan in Your Heart - #10345

    As your parents get older, they love to tell those stories again, and again, and again. We’ve enjoyed hearing some of the family stories that my wife’s dad had to tell. And, you know what? It filled in a lot of blanks, as we tried to put together the history of the last couple of generations. We asked him once about that little girl named Ada. My wife’s grandfather, Granddad Glenn, had one child – her dad. And he wanted a sister! So, Granddad Glenn traveled from their small town to a major city to check out the adoption possibilities at an orphanage there. I don’t know if he was prepared for the reception he got there. Everywhere he went, children asked him if they could go home with him. But there was this one dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl who just would not leave his side. Her name was Ada. She wouldn’t let go of Granddad’s hand, and she kept looking up at him with her big brown eyes and begging him, “Please let me go home with you. Please take me.” He did. And my wife’s dad got his sister. I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Orphan in Your Heart.” The heart of an orphan desperately reaching for someone to love and take care of her. Maybe that’s a feeling you know even though you’re not physically an orphan. But life can get pretty lonely; relationships that were supposed to bring you love and happiness ended up bringing disappointment and hurt. You live enough years, there’s a good chance you end up feeling abandoned at some point, left out, rejected, alone – even with a lot of people around you. And the biggest mistakes we make in our life are often mistakes we make for love. We keep reaching for a hand that might offer love and saying, “Take me. If you do, I’ll be OK.” But we’ve never really been totally OK. No love has ever been enough love, and sometimes we’ve paid too high a price to get someone to take us. It’s this orphan feeling in the human heart that Jesus Christ speaks to in our word for today from the Word of God, recorded in John 14:18. He says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus says, “I can give you the ‘never leave you’ love that your heart's always been hungry for.’” Actually, He’s the only one who can finally bring us spiritual orphans home. The loneliness we just keep feeling is ultimately cosmic loneliness. We’re lonely for God. Why? Well, He made us for His love and we’ve left Him. It isn’t that we don’t have a Father. We feel like emotional and spiritual orphans because we’ve never begun a relationship with this Father who loves us so very much. In Isaiah 53:6, God describes how we have missed His love. It says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” Our sin – our "my way" living has cut us off from the love we were made for, and only Jesus could bring us back. The rest of that verse says, “The Lord laid on him (that’s Jesus) the wrongdoing of us all.” In other words, Jesus died on the cross, carrying all the guilt and all the hell of all your sin and mine. That’s why He cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) Reason: He was cut off from His Father so you would never have to be cut off from Him again. And now He’s reaching out His hand for you to offer you the relationship – the love you were made for. The question is, “Are you going to reach back?” Won't you grab the hand of Jesus and tell Him, “Lord, take me. You’re this orphan’s only hope. You died for me. I am yours. I want to be a child of the Heavenly Father, born into His family this day because of what You did on the cross for me.” Listen, if that’s where your heart is, go to our website. It has all the information you need to confirm that you belong to God through Jesus. That website is ANewStory.com. Your Heavenly Father has come to where you are today to bring you into His family, to bring you home to His love. Like a little orphan many years ago, reach up and say, “Take me.” Oh He will. And you will be an orphan no more.

  7. Sep 3

    Spiritual Spectators - #10344

    I guess I’m just too sensitive. I feel guilty when I walk in a store, knowing I’m not going to buy anything. And some bored salesperson sees me come in, and then you see that look of hope, that look of expectancy on their face, “At last I can justify my existence. At last I’ve got a customer! At last I can accomplish something. At last I can sell something.” And so they very pleasantly ask, “May I help you?” And then come those two most hated words to the ears of a salesperson, “Just looking.” Suddenly they lose all interest in me and they retire dejectedly back to their corner. Did I say I’m too sensitive? Well, I’ll tell you this, nobody ever gets very excited about someone who is just looking. I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Spiritual Spectators.” Our word for today from the Word of God comes from John 9. I’ll begin reading at verse 13. It’s the story of the man who had been born blind who Jesus healed. Now, Jesus has always been troubled by people who are just looking. For example in this passage, “They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was the Sabbath. Therefore, the Pharisees also asked Him how he had received his sight. ‘He put mud on my eyes’ the man replied, ‘and I washed and now I see.’ Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath.’” This is amazing! You want to say to the Pharisees, “Guys, wake up! A man who could never see before was just healed! Do you understand what just happened?” And they are busy doing their theological analysis of the situation. They have no intention of buying into what Jesus is doing. They’re just looking. Everywhere Jesus performed miracles it seemed that there were two groups of people: the "expectors" who had faith, who wanted to get in on the supernatural and who did, and the "dissectors" who stood off with their arms folded and said, “What shall we call this? Where does this fit in our theology?” And they saw no miracle. What bothers me is that the dissectors were the religious folks, the spiritual veterans, the Bible people. That’s me. That might be you. And they were always so busy analyzing the miracle, they missed the miracle. You know, as you get more settled into Christian things and you know more Christian ideas, and hold more Christian jobs, a subtle numbness can start to grow inside of you. You go to church to watch God speak to others. You make spiritual events happen, but you stop letting them happen to you. You start to become a discusser of God’s working rather than an experiencer of His working. You used to have an experience now you just have knowledge. You start to become critical of His leaders and their methods. Can you see that creeping sleep in your soul? Somewhere you stepped out of the middle of God’s life-changing work and you moved to the edges to watch, to analyze, to categorize, to criticize. Hey, it’s cold out there. You show up at God’s store, you look around, but you don’t buy into the wonder of it all. Why don’t you get back into the mainstream where the miracles are? Let God happen to you again, not just happen around you. When Jesus is offering such supernatural merchandise, it would be a shame if you were just on the edges and just looking.

  8. Sep 2

    Running Out of Ammo in the Battle for Lives - #10343

    For many years, it was an inspiring book. Then it became a hit Broadway musical. Then it was made into a movie several times. The story is Victor Hugo’s classic, Lés Misérables. One of the many dramas in the book portrays the efforts of this group of valiant young men and women to fight to free their fellow Frenchmen from a tyrannical government. They make their stand against a massive French army at a makeshift wall they have constructed. They call it the “barricade of freedom.” They fight bravely, but their cause is threatened by a major problem that develops. They begin to run out of ammunition. Well, this one little boy realizes that their fight for freedom can only continue if they can find more ammunition. So, he risks his own life to crawl across the battle zone, picking up bullets from wounded and dying French soldiers. Because you can’t win the battle when you’re running out of bullets. I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Running Out of Ammo in the Battle for Lives.” Right now, there’s an ammunition shortage in the most decisive battle of all—that would be the battle for human souls, the battle for human lives. It began at the cross where Jesus died to make eternal life possible. It moved out across the planet at Jesus’ command and in the power of His resurrection, and it continues this very day in cities and towns across this country and in every country of the world. It is a fight to liberate people Jesus died for from the penalty and the power of their sin, from an unspeakable eternity, and from Satan’s chains. But on so many fronts in the battle, Jesus’ forces are running out of bullets. In many places God’s soldiers are beating back the enemy, taking prisoners from the enemy and pushing back the darkness. But they’re running short of bullets. The money just isn’t there to keep pressing the battle. All those letters and appeals you get asking for money for ministry—they’re about a lot more than money. For ministries that are really making a difference, it’s all about ammunition to keep fighting the battle for lives. But something’s gone wrong. It can’t be that God isn’t giving the money to people through whom He wants to meet these needs. It must be that some of us are sitting on the ammunition instead of sending it to the front lines. And when we lose one of these battles, it’s lives we lose—maybe forever. Our word for today from the Word of God lays out how the supply line for God’s army is supposed to work. And thinking of the economic battles and struggles and sometimes the downturns of our time, it seems particularly relevant to go back to those Macedonian believers that Paul cited as an example for all of us. Here’s what Paul says, “Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity…they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability” (2 Corinthians 8:2-3). It was sacrificial giving so the believers in Jerusalem would have the ammunition they needed to fight their battles. Why? It goes on to say, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that through His poverty we might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Jesus impoverished Himself to make us rich, and He’s the Son of God. So, how can we hang onto what He’s given us so we can stay in our comfort zone? The battle for a lost and dying world is every believer’s battle, not just the battle for a few spiritual daredevils who take all the risks, exercise all the faith, and make all the sacrifices. For those who are fighting on the front lines, it’s our responsibility to make every bullet count, to stay on mission, to always take the high road of integrity, and put our faith in Jehovah Jireh, not in our contributors. And for every one of us, we need to hear the cries from the front lines, “We’re winning, but we’re running out of ammunition!” Listen, while there's time, let’s throw everything we can into this battle for which Jesus gave everything He had!

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Daily A Word With You

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  • Creator
    Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
  • Years Active
    2009 - 2026
  • Episodes
    587
  • Rating
    Clean
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    Copyright © 2026 Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
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