We were trying to teach some young leaders the importance of teamwork. One of the exercises I used was to have them put together a puzzle. (I thought it was a bright idea.) You tear off a page of a magazine, tear it into pieces, dump it into the middle of each small group, and see who could put their pictures together first. It didn't work too well. See, I forgot one little thing. I forgot to give them a copy of the complete picture so they could see what it should look like when it was all together. Duh! Now, I've tried to work on one of those big, many-pieces puzzles myself, and I've had the same frustration because I didn't know where the top of the puzzle box was. It was really hard to put the pieces together when the complete picture wasn't there.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Top of Life's Puzzle Box."

Now, I'm not the first person to describe life being like a puzzle. There are so many pieces; family pieces, friend pieces, children pieces, career pieces; the pieces of school, work, success, failure. The nagging questions like, "Who am I?" "Where am I going?" "What do all these pieces mean?" "What are they supposed to make?"

Well, I found the top of the box. It's in God's book, the Bible, found in Colossians 1:16 - "All things were created by Him and for Him." Now, that's speaking of Jesus Christ. And there are six powerful words there; words that can finally pull all those pieces together, "Created by Him and for Him."

You can begin to put the pieces together when you put your name in that verse. I'll leave a blank. "______ was created by Jesus and for Jesus." So you want to find out how all those pieces make sense? There's going to be a terrible hole in your heart until you have Jesus, because He's the one our heart was created for. No earth thing, no earth person, no earth achievement can fill it.

You may have some great pieces in your life, or some pretty scared and fading pieces. But life is still powerless and disconnected, with often meaningless pieces in front of you. You need the whole picture, and our Creator has told us in that statement from the Bible what that is. He gave His only Son, Jesus, because that relationship that we were made by and for is missing in our lives because we've built a wall between us and our Creator by doing life our way instead of His way, pushed Him to the edge.

You know why our life seems so disconnected and confused? We're created to live for Him and we've chosen to live for us. We've run our own lives when our Creator was supposed to. And according to the Bible, "Your sins have separated you from your God." He's the only one who knows why you're here. He put you here. The only One who has the love you're looking for your whole life is on the other side of a wall. That wall's got a name. It's called sin. No wonder things aren't adding up. We're stuck with the pieces, but we're cut off from the whole picture.

But this statement out of the Bible "created by Him and for Him" tells us where the hope is for things to finally come together. "He forgave us all our sin" it says. He nailed our sins... my sins to His cross. It was our sin and its death penalty that has kept us from our Creator. And it was all those sins that God sent His Son to die for on that cross.

The pieces of your life finally start to fit together when you come to that cross and say, "Jesus, for me." In simple faith you say, "Lord, it's for me, and I want you and your forgiveness for me." If you've never done that; if you're ready to meet the One that you were made by and made for, I invite you to visit our website as soon as you can - ANewStory.com - and find out there how to be sure you belong to Him.

It's like seeing the top of life's puzzle box and the pieces finally come together. You're very, very close to finding the reason you were born, and finding the person you were born for.

When historian Stephen Ambrose wrote the bestseller about their amazing adventure, he appropriately titled it Undaunted Courage. It's one of the many accounts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the daring group who explored America's new Louisiana Purchase 200 years ago. As they made their way along the Missouri River, traveling from St. Louis all the way to the Pacific Ocean, most every bend in the river revealed sights and wildlife that no white man had ever seen. One of the many critical moments on their two-year expedition was the point in Montana where they encountered a fork in the Missouri River. There was no map to guide them, and a wrong choice could exhaust their resources for a very long journey. The river to the right was muddy like the Missouri had been. The crew wanted to go that way. But Captain Lewis and Captain Clark assessed the situation, and led their reluctant men down the left fork. When the expedition reached the massive waterfalls that Indian friends had told them they would find, they all knew they had chosen the right way.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Following The People or Leading The People."

The captains on the Lewis and Clark Expedition had the courage and conviction to lead their crew where the crew didn't think they should go. That's called leadership. And some people you're responsible for may need you to be leading them with that kind of courage right now.

See, the troops are often wrong about which way to go. They were in Moses' day when the majority said it was too dangerous to go into the Promised Land. Two men exercised godly leadership that day, defying the popular opinion - Joshua and Caleb. And though the people refused to follow their lead, Joshua and Caleb were the only ones of their generation who did not die during the 40 years in the wilderness. And 40 years later, God gave Joshua the amazing assignment of leading His people into the land where Joshua had tried to take them before. Nehemiah steadfastly led a sometimes frightened, sometimes reluctant majority to stay on mission and finish the Jerusalem wall against overwhelming odds.

In Exodus 17, beginning with verse 4, our word for today from the Word of God, we find a revealing picture of what real, principled leadership requires - whether it's leading your family, your business, a church, a ministry, or any people who look to you. As usual, the Israelites were complaining and quarreling and grumbling against Moses. They're desperate for water, and there's none around. "Then Moses cried out to the Lord, 'What am I to do with these people? They are ready to stone me.' The Lord answered Moses, 'Walk on ahead of the people (listen to that!)...take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile. I will stand before you by the rock of Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out.'" And Moses' leadership was again vindicated as water for a nation flowed from that rock.

That's the kind of leadership I hope you and I are prepared to give. Walk ahead of the people you're leading - you can't hear the Lord as long as you're listening to the crowd. You have to extricate yourself from the fray and get some perspective, get above the fray. Then cry out to God, "What am I to do with these people?" And listen for where He is headed and do what He says. Your job is to let God show you what He is up to, and then to join Him in what He's doing by obeying Him, and then leading the people in that direction even if another way seems right to them.

Don't follow your biases. Don't follow your own wisdom. Don't follow the people that you're supposed to be leading. Follow the Lord where He's going. When you lead with that kind of courage and that kind of conviction, you can take the people to their destiny instead of to a detour.

When I was in junior high school, we usually bought one copy of the local newspaper every day. Until the day I won the County Spelling Bee! Yeah, I can do autographs later. I'm sure you're very impressed. Well, that day my parents bought about 20 copies of the local newspaper. What was the difference? Well, my name was in it this time!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Love With Your Name On It."

Actually, that wasn't unusual for my family to do, buying all those newspapers. I mean, we're all like that. When our name is in something we're suddenly a whole lot more interested. It's that way with what might be the most important statement in all the Bible. Certainly one of the most quoted.

Maybe you've seen the fans at NFL games with their banners or their signs in the end zone. It says John 3:16, or maybe back when Tim Tebow played with the black under his eyes at a football game. Well, it could be the most important statement in the Bible. Here's what it says, "For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."

Those words are probably the most dramatic answer in the world to any questions about how God feels about us. "God loves the world so much that He gave." He proved it. He acted on it. His one and only Son; the most valuable gift He could give. Why? So we who deserved to die can live forever instead. You say, "What do you mean deserved to die?" Well, the Bible says, for example, in Romans 6:23, "The wages of sin is death." That's what we'd be paid for running our own lives. That's what we deserve; the wages of running our own life. We've all built this wall between us and our Creator by taking our life into our own hands; hijacking our life. It's called sin.

Have you ever wondered why there's never been enough love? It's because of the sin wall. You can't get to the One who's got the love you were made for. There never seems to be a reason to live. Why? Because the One who knows why you're here is on the other side of the wall. If we die with that wall there, that wall is there forever. That's hell - eternal death - conscious separation and loneliness, away from a holy God forever and still enduring the pain because there are none of the sedatives we had on earth.

But God, the very One we have wronged, acted to get our death penalty paid for with the life of His own Son. Now, let's put your name in John 3:16. When I leave a blank, would you put your name there? "God loved ____ so much that He gave His one and only Son, that if ____ would believe in Him, then ____ will never die but will have eternal life."

See, it says in order to make what He died for yours, you have to believe in Him. That's not just agreeing with your mind. That's grabbing Jesus like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard. It's total trust. The gift of God's Son was all for you, but like any gift, you have to reach out and take it for it to be yours. Have you ever done that? This could be that day.

Something dramatic happens when you walk up to the cross of Jesus and say these two words, "For me. This is for me isn't it, Jesus. Some of those sins you died for are my sins." God's waiting right now to erase everything you've ever done from His book; to add your name to His Book of Life; the one He will check when your heart finally stops and you stand before Him.

But it all begins when you put your name in what Jesus did on the cross for you, and you make the Savior your Savior. If you've never done that, and you sense that knocking on the door of your heart, that's Jesus. I hope you'll go to our website. There you'll find the way to make sure you belong to Jesus Christ before this day ends. Tell Him right now, "I'm Yours, Jesus." The website is ANewStory.com.

When your name is in something, it's totally different. Today may be your day to realize that what Jesus did is not just generic, not just for the world. It was for you!