Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - Hurricane Heroes - #6599

Thursday, April 26, 2012

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As Hurricane Irene took aim on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I flashed back to an old white frame building there. And to the story I heard there that has followed me ever since.

Our family vacation took us to those beautiful Hatteras beaches and to the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station. That's where I heard about, and saw demonstrated by re-enactors, the heroism of the United States Life-Saving Service.

They call that stretch of shoreline the "Graveyard of the Atlantic." Hundreds of ships have gone down there, victims of that Cape's violent storms; it's treacherous shoals. But many who would have been buried in that "graveyard" made it out alive. Those people survived, because of the men of the Life-Saving Service. They call them the "surf men." They risk their lives again and again, heading into deadly storms in these little boats, to do whatever it took to save the people on a sinking ship.

The motto of the Life-Saving Service is tattooed on my soul: "You have to go out. You don't have to come back."

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

Those guys have shown me the meaning of rescue - the life mission of my Jesus, because He came "to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10 ) He said. And in our word for today from the Word of God, John 20:20 , Jesus says, "As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you." So, if you belong to Jesus, He is sending you into the surf and the storm to do what He did; to risk whatever you must to save a life.

The life-saving station is a great place to get strong for the rescue; to bring people back to when they've been rescued. But, you know, never in the history of the Life-Saving Service did anyone ever knock on the door and say, "I'm drowning. Could you please come and save me?" No! No, in every case, the rescuers had to leave the comfort of the life-saving station and go where the dying people were. Just like our Jesus. He left the greatest Comfort Zone in the universe to come to our "graveyard" to die.

So how can I, for whom He sacrificed so much, let my comfort and my fears decide what I will do? He has commanded me in Proverbs 24 , to "rescue those who are being led away to death" (Proverbs 24:11 ).

And how much longer can we, as His Church, just keep waiting for the dying people to come to us? They're not. We have to take the life-saving Gospel of Jesus outside the walls of the life-saving station; to the street, to the office, to the plant, to the campus, the neighborhood, our service club, that nursing home, take it to the jail, take it to the gym. How can we be content any longer to sit inside our stained glass cocoon while just outside so many are dying in the storm?

We have to go out. We don't have to come back.