SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL FROM SOMETHING UGLY

"Something Beautiful From Something Ugly"
II Corinthians 1:3-4

Not long ago, we went on a guided tour of this large cave near us. You walk through these winding and really narrow passageways, admiring the
wonders that God has created from stalagmites, stalactites, and underground rivers. Now we entered this one large chamber, the guide turned on the
light and directed our eyes to this high vaulted ceiling. You can probably guess what animals we saw hanging out up there - bats, lots of bats. The
guide told us that the early explorers of this cave had found large quantities of what she called "bat guano." If you don't know what that is,
never mind. It's gross, that's what it is. But they made lots of money selling that stuff. I thought, "What good could bat dung possibly
be?" Surprise - they make gunpowder out of it! And even more surprisingly, they can turn that gross stuff into makeup, they said - like
mascara and lipstick! Makes me think twice about kissing my wife.
Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about
"Something Beautiful From Something Ugly."

It's amazing how people can turn something seemingly useless and ugly into something useful and even beautiful. It's much more amazing how God does
that with our lives! In fact, He's wanting to do that for you - to make something beautiful and useful of the ugliest things that have happened in
your life. And only He can.
One way He does that is described in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. "The Father of compassion and the God of all
comfort . . . comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God." I
don't know what kind of "troubles" you've been through - it could be anything from sickness, to abuse, to addiction, to grief - but whatever the
trouble, I know it's made you need the Lord more than ever before. And so you experienced His compassion, His comfort, His strength, and His support
in deeply personal ways.

Now, in a sense, God wants you to be for other hurting people what He has been for you. That's how He takes the worst things that ever happened to
you and makes them into something beautiful. Scott was listening to my youth broadcast one night when he was desperately lonely - desperate enough
to be considering suicide. Instead, he gave his life to Christ that night. Later, he told me that he decided to have a ministry to people like
himself for the rest of his life - he knew how to help lonely people because he had been lonely.

Jane was sexually abused by two different family members. When she brought that awful garbage to Jesus, He began to give her a ministry to
abused girls and she has helped a lot of them. Her history of abuse became her strange credentials for caring for abuse victims. My friend Don has
had a tremendous ministry to young people that others would call rejects. He's so tender and compassionate toward them. You know why? He
says it because he remembers the hurt he experienced as an illegitimate child in a terribly dysfunctional home. God has recycled his wounds into a
life-changing compassion.

God wants to do that for you - if you'll bring Him all that pain, all those wounds, all those memories. He wants to take all that ugly stuff -
stuff that looks like its useless - and He wants to turn into something very beautiful - a tender, compassionate, helping heart in you. Because of
what Christ can do with the waste of our lives, the ones who have been hurt the most turn out to be some of the greatest healers in the world.