In this sermon, the speaker begins by discussing the unchanging nature of God and how He is always able to do things perfectly. However, the speaker emphasizes that it is us who change. The speaker then shares their personal experience of growing up in a church that had a heart for worshiping God and being all that He wanted them to be. They also talk about having dreams as a child. The sermon concludes with the speaker expressing gratitude for the opportunity to be at Cottonwood Church and encourages the congregation to continue praying for New Zealand.

Paul Dion. Thank you, Pastor Baylis. Give you a hug. Haven't you got a great pastor? Everyone say pastor. Pastor. Pastor. How close is that pastor? It's a real honor to be here and I hope, I often say this but you don't take and I'm sure you don't Pastor Baylis and Pastor Janet and your whole team because what a great church it is here at Cottonwood Church. Amen. Great, great, powerful, powerful men and women of God and every time I come I get inspired, encouraged and I hope you're still praying for New Zealand. Anybody love New Zealand? Little planet off the far end of the earth there. It's great to be here and I'm on my way to Texas and it's just an honor to be with you today. Why don't we stand together? Come on, Parker, why don't you play something and let's just again engage our hearts. We've been sitting for a while and I know there's a real sense of expectation here and a sense of God's presence but where God's presence is there are miracles. Not there might be miracles, there are miracles and when we come to church every time we should not just thank God for the feel-good but we should thank God that in His presence is fullness of joy, that He is able to give us a word and season that's the birthing of a whole new year. 2009 is a whole new year. I'm thankful that we have seasons. I mean in California you don't know what seasons are really like. You just got one long, happy, sun-filled season. People go it's so cold. I say it's not cold. But you know God designed seasons because in seasons there's an end and there's a beginning and for some of us we need to look back on last year and say thank God it came to an end. I'm one of those. I mean people say do you have a good year? I said yeah it's a good year. We had some real highlights but boy we had some real lowlights. Anybody else like that? You say well as a Christian you mean to have all highlights. No, not New Zealand anyway. You have some challenges, you go through some things but the thing is with God everything you go through God can use. And if 2008 was your hardest year, it may well have been, listen it's not a failure, it's not a loss, it's something that God can use to set you up for where He's taking you this year if you allow Him. And we're going to believe that you know God is going to keep on elevating us, keep on lifting us, keep on teaching us and taking us to a whole new level and you know you might be here today you've come because a friend invited you or you've come now and again and you might feel a million miles from God. I want to tell you how He feels about you. He doesn't feel a million miles from you, He feels completely in love with you. His love never changes, never fades, never loses its capacity to love. He's always there. All He needs is an invite, all He needs is an open heart and then He can reach you and fill you with what you need to be the air and the breath, the oxygen for your soul. So come on let's pray. Father we thank you as we stand in your presence today. We thank you for the freedom that we have here to worship you. We thank you for the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit we honor you today as the one that brings us into a relationship with the Father. You teach us, you guide us, you lead us, you open our hearts to new things, you give us a renewed capacity for more of God and we honor you for that. We pray today that even as we look at your word and the thoughts that I'm going to bring miracles of healing will happen while your word is preached that there will be breakthrough that the enemy would be blown out of the water and God your name would be lifted higher than every other name and every other challenge in front of us. We pray that you'll touch our own hearts, give me a capacity to share what's on your heart for us within this context. We thank you for it in Jesus name. Can you say amen? Now turn around give someone a hug or a handshake and just say hey so awesome to be with you in church. Thanks Paco. You're a top man. You know I heard a story in December this year and I thought it was kind of cute. It was a little granddaughter sitting on her grandpa's lap and he was reading a bedtime story to her and the storybook had little pictures and she'd look at the pictures and listen to grandpa as he'd read this incredible story but now and again she'd reach up and she'd pull grandpa's face and touch his face and push and prod and then she'd listen to the story and a few minutes later she'd reach up and push and prod his face again and she was kind of listening but thinking and then she said grandpa can I ask you a question and he said sure honey what do you want to ask and she just looked at him a bit puzzled and she said did God make you and he said honey God made me a long long time ago then he continued to read the story and she began to play with her cheek and feel her cheek and slid her hands down listening to the story she said grandpa can I ask you another question sure honey what do you want to ask and she said did God make me as she rubbed her face and grandpa said yeah yeah God made you just a little time ago he continued to read and then she said grandpa do you reckon God's getting better at what he's doing now the Bible tells us that God doesn't change so God is able to do whatever he's able to do perfectly all the time but the fact is we change and today I want to talk to you about something that the latter part of last year and I felt it very much on my heart as I came for this weekend I want to teach you about a subject that nobody ever preached or taught me and I grew up in a church a church with a heart like this church a heart to worship God to be all that God wanted us to be in fact I was often inspired about what God could do through me and as a little boy I had many dreams I had many times of prayer many times of worship where I said God you know what I don't want to live a mediocre life I don't just want to make the great I don't want to just kind of do what other people have done I want to take your word and I literally want to become the man of God that you've destined me to be God I want to be the kind of individual that's going to love everybody have everybody love me you know a little heart that didn't know much just had a simple faith and God I used to pray I don't want to make a mistake I don't want to miss out I don't want to fall short I don't want to do what I shouldn't do I want to do everything right I want to be one of those people that really do everything that you've called me to do but I didn't realize back then that for me to do all that God wanted me to do would include the truth that many times I'd fail and no pastor that I can recall I certainly didn't pick it up ever said to me Paul if you're going to do what God wants you to do if you're going to be what God wants you to be your future is going to be filled with failure all I heard was success destiny breakthrough rather than realizing as I reached for what God wanted me to reach for I actually would suffer a whole lot of failure think about it for a moment I think if you are at all like me there would be many people in this auditorium in this service today that are still captured by failure think about it there are things that happen in our life we never expect it to happen and when those things happen particularly if they are major they can so impact us that they may shut down a part of who we are not just for a day but sometimes a lifetime there are at times things that we end up doing that we never believed we would do things that we actually make it made a decision about that we thought we would never make a decision about and feel so condemned and feel so under the shadow of what's just happened that actually we never become who God wants us to be because of the failure we know we've been I call it failure freeze see I reckon there are many of us today in this auditorium because I'm going to tell it like it is that are frozen at a failure that maybe goes back not just a week but potentially more than a year potentially a lifetime you know they tell us today that in the western world there are one in four some of the western countries one in three children now that are molested as children interfered with well nobody talks much about that because of the gravity of the pain of what happens in a little kid when an adult interferes with them when violate something and there is the sense of guilt even in the little kid that they don't understand what's going on if we don't address the failure that's happened to us at that point you know what it shuts something down for some of us the rest of our lives we're frozen at that point and because we don't talk about failure we don't have a theology of failure we so often come into a new season and we don't learn the things we should have learned from the previous season we're actually frozen at a point of failure rather than realizing we need failure freedom the enemy wants us not to talk about failure so that failure can dominate us whereas i believe that god wants us to understand that actually failure is something that a lot of the world understands but the church doesn't i want to suggest this morning that if you are really serious about reaching god's will and purpose for your life failure is a quality you should seek for rather than try and avoid you say what do you mean well if i was to be an olympian champion if i was to be somebody that would train this body to heights i'd never reached before you know what i would be taught is that i would have to go to the point of failure many times to enter into a new level of living and achievement and yet the church we think we're gonna get a breakthrough but we're not gonna ever have to suffer failure and when failure comes the enemy says see you're a failure and we go oh no i'm a failure and and man i'm never gonna try that again and so i look back in my life as i said a healthy church background i reckon i have lost 10 to 20 potential years that doesn't mean i didn't i had 10 or 20 years where i didn't do anything no i did things in that 10 to 20 years but i reckon overall i've lost 10 to 20 potential years because nobody taught me that failure is okay come on theodore roosenvelt said these words and i think they're pretty powerful he said it is not the critic who counts it's not the man who points out to the strong man how he stumbled always looking for the little thing that went wrong or where the doer of deeds could have done better no the credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena come on whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly yet continues to err come short again and again who knows the great enthusiasms and great devotions who spends himself in a worthy cause who at best knows achievement who at worst if he fails at least he fails why daring to do great you know i'm going to get you if you were to come with me to a chapter in the bible that again i don't think we spend much time meditating on it's in romans chapter 7 let's go to romans 7 and if you don't have a bible i'm sure you can look on with somebody close by but romans chapter 7 is of course a book written by the apostle paul and if you're anything like me i love the champions of scripture i mean if there was someone i wanted to model my life on not just because he had the name paul it was like the apostle paul because he was a radical he was somebody that brought new paradigms of thinking to the new testament church he had a relationship with god and he was somebody that you would think would have it all together let's have a look at what he teaches the church he says in verse 14 he says for we know that the law is spiritual how many can say amen in other words we know that god's word is spiritual we know that god's ways are right then he says but i am carnal i'd like to paraphrase that a little bit and i'd like to word it like this he says for we know that the law is spiritual and we know that we are carnal because i reckon most of the church is not prepared to accept that the carnal because i reckon we all want to be spiritual and so we don't take enough time to think about the reality of who we are yet paul says i'm carnal he said well what do you mean paul if you're carnal there's not much hope for me no you need to read the whole chapter he says i'm carnal because i'm sold on the sin for what i am doing verse 15 i do not understand because you see what i will to do that i do not do or i do not practice but what i hate that i do anybody felt down on themselves because what they know to do they don't do come on let's be honest well it's a good thing to know that paul was the same he said what i said as a new year's resolution for 2008 i didn't do and what i hate to do i find myself at times doing it verse 16 if then i do what i will not to do i agree that the law is good but now it is no longer i who do it but sin that dwells in me wow can you get this just park there for a minute if i will not to do it it's no longer me who does it but sin that dwells in me and the picture he gives is the fact that yes he's born again yes he has a new spirit yes he is a new creation yes he is now a son of god yes he is a daughter of god yes he is an heir of the kingdom yes he has his name written in the lamb's book of life but he has an outer shell a human side and so when his heart says i want to do what's right and i don't do it i know that the law is good but i'm not doing what's wrong there's something that's a part of me that's doing it it's sin that dwells in me verse 18 for i know that in me in my flesh nothing good dwells for to will is present but how to perform what is good i do not find you got to get this this is the apostle paul he says when i set out to do good i can't find out how to do good a lot of the time for the good that i will to do i do not do but the evil i will not to do it's not just a bad attitude the evil i will not to do that i practice and then he repeats himself because he's trying to make a point verse 20 now if i do what i will not to do it's no longer i who do it but it's that sin nature it's that old man that's still a part of who i am that dwells in me i find in the law verse 21 that evil is present in me the one who wills to do good for i delight in the law of god according to the inward man but i see another law in my members warning or against the law of my mind brings me into captivity oh wretched man verse 24 that i am who will deliver me from this body of death i thank god through jesus christ how many are thankful for jesus so then with the mind i serve the law of god but with the flesh the law of sin there's this picture of this tension the struggle through the two parts of who he is then verse one of chapter eight there is now therefore because he speaks of christ no condemnation to those who are in christ jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit for the law of the spirit of life in christ jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death i suppose what i'm wanting to draw your attention to is that you know in our lives and our pilgrimage sometimes we expect that if god's in it that we're not going to fail that if god's in it we are always going to succeed that if god's in it we're going to come to a point where no longer will we trip but i reckon failure is something that focuses our finiteness it teaches us that we still have a human man a fleshly sinful man that we will carry with us until jesus takes us home and if we could understand it the enemy then would not have the realms of condemnation see i reckon a lot of us are frozen in failure because we are living condemned by where we failed or what we failed in or what happened to us that was a failure we received whereas i'm suggesting this morning that at the birth of this new year i'd like to encourage you this year to make failure one of your closest friends that instead of saying i'm not going to fail this year say hey there is a part of me that is natural but thank god for jesus in me that's the real me and when i fail and if i sin i have an advocate jesus christ i repent of that sin i get right but when i will to do what's right and i don't do what's right it's not actually even me that's doing it and we find that hard to get our head around it see we don't want to get our head around it because it actually causes us to say well then we've got a whole lot of excuses well the fact is you are a human the fact is you are living like i'm living with a limited me if i was to rewrite the dictionary i would write this failure definition valuable lessons embraced by champions so instead of going into this year and saying you know what i've stuffed up i've lost so much of my life why don't you look and say you know what paul stuffed up but let's learn from those failures and let's allow god to take the new man into a new place of revelation i want to give you three thoughts under the subject of failure the first is this failure is a human certainty you see if you really believe what paul's writing in romans 7 not only are we born again but we are also human are you a human how many humans do we have here i mean just sort of nudge the person next to you and see if they respond and if they don't they're sleeping or we need a miracle but the church and i'm talking generally now because i've been in the church my whole life the church sometimes is very plastic like you go into some churches and you think dear god these people are all angelic now that's not the case here nor in the case in our church in life but you know it's like can i suggest that failure is a human certainty in other words as long as you're human failure is going to be a part of your world i reckon the world is looking for more real people we're saying god would you save the world but god's saying well how can i save them because you're the light through which i shine and yet you're pretending to be what you're not have you ever been to work and you're under pressure and some attitude slips out that shouldn't have slipped out does that happen in america does that happen on church staff does that happen on your way to church and what do the people do that you're working with i thought you were a christian and you go oh god oh lord i'm sorry you're under your desk under your breath you're praying in tongues god i repent i'm sorry you know you've already possibly created a perception that's wrong with the people you work with stop pretending to have it all together be real a christian doesn't mean that you are perfect a christian means that you have a new you in an old body you got a sin nature that is still contending with the will and the purpose of god and the new man and i reckon if we could just get a whole lot more real we'd have a whole lot more impact it's true you say oh that kind of teaching is going to cause people to lower their standards no we still reach for god's plan but we realize along the way we're going to fail because we're human all of us look at life so often from a human perspective james writes in james three in verse two he says we all stumble in many things did you notice that we all stumble in many things not some of us all of us why because that's what paul writes and i think you know the challenge is that the devil doesn't want us to deal with failure because if we start dealing with failure and realizing that we all fail on the process and the purpose of god in our lives we're going to be a lot freer we're going to have a whole lot more creativity we're going to start doing things we never did before because we thought failure was wrong you know you know think about this who was the disciple that walked on water peter peter walked on water but what do we think about him well mate good attempt but you're a failure because you saw no he was the only recorded disciple to walk on water has anybody here walked on water has anybody here actually attempted to get out of the boat and yet we say you're a failure then god says no he walked on water but he had to learn a lesson and so i'm going to use it as an illustration to teach you that faith is not perfect faith is when you take the word the call of god you activate yourself but as you do that so often you'll take your eyes off jesus you shouldn't and you're going to look at the natural you begin to sink get your eyes back on jesus he'll pick you up and keep going it's a part of the journey because you're a human so we go okay god this year i'm never going to fail and god says you're a human failure is going to be a part of your process and i understand in fact i'd go as far as this supernatural significance demands a failure positive environment in other words if you're not prepared to get wet i don't think you'll ever walk on water i could stand here all day and tell you about the failures in my leadership but we don't get leaders standing up and talking about failure why because if we think that the leader fails then how could we trust them or how could they mentor us and i say it's a whole religious spirit that's got inside of the church we've got to realize that leaders are failures just like any other human being but by god's grace they're reaching higher learning from the lessons where they've failed and moving forward so you don't just arrive at a perfect marriage we've been married for 28 years have we had some hard times plenty but we're learning from that and it's getting better is that okay you're saying oh i don't want to listen to you anymore you got no answers have you well i got good news for you you are all a pack of losing winners you say what do you mean that's a negative no you're a winner you'll win in the end but along the way you're gonna lose a little bit get used to it wake up tomorrow morning say fantastic first monday in 2009 guess what i'm a failure what will that do the enemy's got very little to work with now is he because every time he goes you're a failure so i know that that guy from new zealand told me on sunday i'm in the conference and i'm leading the conference and one of the speakers gets up with a golf club and he has a little plastic golf ball with holes in it he says if you're going to be a good leader you need to get everything in alignment you can't play golf unless everything's in alignment not just your head your hands your whole body and he chips the ball into the crowd end of the session i'm doing the next session and the golf club's still at the front of the stage most of the people are left there's about 300 ready for the next session because we had a breakout session the ball's down there so i go down i pick up the club and i'm gonna hit it across a couple of the young guys say pastor if you're gonna hit it hit it into the screen just in case i said i can hit a golf so i hit the ball it's about seven years ago but i didn't hit under the ball hit in the middle of the ball and it went at head height across the stage and there was a lady who was about 60 sitting on the front row smacked straight into her cheek now it's worse than that she screamed like i've never heard a woman scream it was like and as i looked to her and i walked over there was this picture perfect round mark on her thing three millimeters raised purple in color and she is screaming oh my face he hit my face my face the whole 300 people did not move i went bright red everybody's eyes are on me and i'm trying to hide and i'm going god i don't know what i believe about the rapture but now it would be a good time and she's screaming out oh my face my face and i'm walking over to it and i had staff there they wouldn't even get up and identify themselves with me i was alone still got inner healing that needs to happen because of that whole event and i walked over to it i had nothing could pacify her in the end took her arm and i helped her out just to get out of the crowd looking there's a there's a guy three rows back and this is what he was doing arms folded hey hey hey who was the last person that did that to you you know who i'm talking about and from that point you never had another go and yet it was the critic in the stand who never got off his backside and had a go at anything the thing is hit the golf ball again but listen to the young guys and hit it in the right direction but if you want to stay if you want to stay human and you will it's a certainty that you'll fail don't let that stop you don't let that be the thing that's going to hold you back can i say this fear of failure is amongst our greatest failures if you fear failure that's your already greatest failure in fact you've got to start to embrace failure as a stepping stone to the second thought is this failure has a need to be confined not just defined but confined you see when failure happens it often happens in the most unexpected ways and yet we allow failure to rob us so often i love what proverbs 24 16 says it says a righteous man a righteous woman may fall seven times but they'll rise up again but the wicked they'll fall by calamity in other words when it happens to the wicked they've got nowhere to go but we're going to confine failure so let's just talk for a moment about something that you did that you wish you never did let's talk for a moment about something that happened to you maybe that you never expected to happen to you and it was a failure and today you're living under the shadow of that failure and god saying you can come and worship every sunday you can read your bible every day and that will be a key to bringing the purpose of god about your life but you're going to understand that you have got to confine the failure in other words so there's a guy just recently very close friend of mine 30 years ago had a girlfriend that i know really well great christian young couple anyway course of events not all the details but slept together before they got married once and she fell pregnant was completely completely demoralized completely broken both of them made a decision to get married not because they had to but because they loved each other but repented like you wouldn't have seen many people repent not just once but repeatedly just saying so sorry 30 years on listen to this just recently i heard them bringing it up again with a state of saying you know what we so stuffed up and what i want to say to them as i did i say you guys are doing god a disservice and your future disservice by bringing it up again because either it's in the sea of his forgetfulness or it's not it's either in the past it's you who allow it to come into the present and today may be the day at the beginning of 2009 where you've got to allow the fact that it is your job to confine your failure to the past and so that you can allow god to begin to thaw the freeze that's keeping you from all that god wants you to move into you see whatever we go through has big consequences in our lives but here's the thought failure only exists in the present tense when it comes to god see why do we allow what happened 20 years ago to still shadow us that's what the enemy wants he wants us to become condemned and yet god saying come on you're gonna let that go if you've repented of it failure may have past references but it has no future hold outside of what we give it wow that's why paul goes on and says my grace god said to me is sufficient for you for my strength is made perfect in your weakness therefore most gladly i will boast in my infirmities that the power of christ in other words i realize that whatever i'm weakened and wherever i'm failed i can bring it to christ and his power has set me free from the law of sin and death it's his power is broken you know even here in the u.s i remember one of the first times i came i went to a baseball game and in the baseball game there was the batter up and the guy with me said this is one of our best batters and he had a batting average of points three six seven and i said because i'm a sports nut but i hadn't been to baseball i said what does that mean point three six seven he said that means he's a very good bad i said well yeah what does point three six seven mean he says that means for every 1 000 attempts to get on base he gets on 367 times so wow is that all you know in america today in the baseball league there's about 30 batters that are more than a point three average so that's less than a third i want you to stop there for a moment and you know what the world says let's pay the millions multiply millions because that champions less than one in three attempts make it and the church has gone i never want to make a mistake and if i make a mistake i'm never going to try again well the batter doesn't get up after he's struck out go oh well what's the point you can say what we struck out let's hit the sucker out of the park see we laugh but i reckon the greater percentage of us today in this service is still are letting what we failed in our past to define our today and if the world says one in three is a champion imagine what god wants to release the church and you see the church has lost its creativity it's lost its freedom it's lost its ability to reach into what god has for it and we don't realize that when we're weak in christ we're strong and i want to say to you today i want to really share out of my heart that hey don't you let what happened yesterday cloud you today if you failed in 2008 you learn from that failure you're a human you will fail you take that failure and you begin to launch into this year striking the ball like the first time you got up to the plate and don't you give up and don't you stop swinging and don't you stop believing that god can take you further the final thought is this that failure succeeds when we don't make the attempt failure is a human certainty the fact is that failure has a need to be confined you've got to leave the past in the past but failure also succeeds when we don't make the attempt you know i loved pastor harrison up here with asher on the phone that's quite amazing i said did you really do that did he really do that or did he fudge that american kids that bright he said yeah americans get my kids that right it's an amazing thing you know because i reckon he was saying that and when kids are growing how many know we don't look at the kid and go idiot because they fell over when they attempted to walk we don't go that was not real words that was going in gary harrison didn't go you asha learned to talk he goes they were words what do you think god looks at you he says why do you give up so easy failure is a part of you humanity you need to leave the failure in the past it's the past but you know failure will succeed if you don't make the attempt if you don't get up and try talking you'll never learn to talk you don't get up and have another you say well god spoke to me but i didn't work so get up and have another go if god spoke to you yeah but i felt god called me to business i had to go and it didn't come to pass and so god can't have been in it no get up and have another go learn from what you learned from the experience and then the second one fails get up and have another go you still maybe paid millions and called a champion because you'll have better than a point three average you hearing me this year i wonder how many in this room will get up and have a go god has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the why god has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty god is an amazing god you know i love what winston churchill says i'm gonna get parko and the team to come and join me but listen to this winston churchill one of the great leaders of recent era he said success consists of going from one failure to another failure without loss of enthusiasm i don't know if i've had more failures the more i've walked with god i think the truth is yes why because i'm pushing harder in fact i teach our team now i teach our staff if you're not failing you're not doing what god called you to do modern science teaches every experiment is a victory because we learn from every failure and yet the church doesn't have a theology on failure so therefore we don't want to fail we think failure is bad we don't realize we're still housed in a human body see failure is the unseen stepping stone of lasting success and i just want to say as somebody that loves people don't give up god understands your weakness to corinthians 4 verse 9 says we are cast down but we're not destroyed this is what philip's paraphrase says it says we might be knocked down but we're never knocked out i like that so you failed a few times that's cool my definition of failure is this failure is like a knife choose which end you're going to hold if you think failure is bad it's like taking the sharp end and you cut yourself when you see failure is okay it's good it's part of the process you grab the handle and it becomes an aid see we go really quiet when we have teaching like this because we like all the victory stuff but we don't like the fact that to get to where god wants us to get to we are housed with this human body and if we see failure is final it's fatal god says it's okay you're going to trip you're going to fall it's part of the process i understand who you are you know i love the story of peter i don't know why i love it so much maybe because some of what's in his heart was in my heart it's like it's all or nothing can you imagine jesus saying to you after three years of bible college mate you're going to fail he said not me he says you will deny me three times before the cock even crows one he does it and the cock crows remember what did he feel like after all i got after all jesus invested in me look at how i respond he runs away bible tells us he goes fishing that's what happens when we don't understand failure we go back to where our security is here he's fishing what does jesus do after he's resurrected he goes back to where peter is he says you think you're a failure but i don't you're going to be the man that's going to birth the new testament church failure is a human certainty man don't let that failure of a few moments ago rob the potential of your future get up and have another go that's the god we serve and this morning all across the church listen there are people here you've never connected with god you may have a belief in god you might believe that there is a god most of america does but to believe in god doesn't change the thing that separates us from god is sin and the fact is i have a sin nature but i cried out to god as a five-year-old boy jesus come into my life forgive my sin at that point i was born again so what does that mean it means i became a new creation on the inside there's a new me now that has the power of god on the inside and if you've never prayed that prayer you have yet to experience the greatest miracle you could ever imagine because you become alive you're free forgiven you're not religious religion won't change anybody a relationship with jesus changes everything and if you've never given your life to jesus i'd love to pray a prayer for you just where you're seated it's the most powerful prayer and you'll remember it the rest of your life it guarantees forgiveness of sin it guarantees a relationship with jesus it guarantees an eternity with god it guarantees an understanding of how life works as you begin to read the bible or secondly you're here and you say paul you know i've let failure rule me in the sense of i've allowed sin to come into my life i believe in god i've prayed that prayer but i'm not walking with god today you know the enemy says you failed so many times there's no more answer to you god says there's a full answer to you all you need to do is ask for my forgiveness if you put your hand into my hand i will bring a miracle your life begins all over again i'll restore you completely and all across this building in a moment i want to pray for you just where you're seated i'm going to ask you in a moment to lift your hand and by lifting your hand you say paul i'm not right with god and i want to get right i want to start 2009 with god on my side i want to start with a relationship with god i don't deserve it but jesus paid the price you can never win the natural battle outside of the power of jesus there are people here you know where you're at with god you know what's going on in your life and i want to tell you you can break the power of sin and condemnation just by asking for god's forgiveness i want every head to be bowed just for a moment come on right across the building in a moment i'm going to get you to lift your hand and by lifting your hand you're saying paul i want to have a relationship with jesus i've never had one or secondly paul i've had a relationship with jesus but i'm not right with god today i want to get right with god today i want to put my hands in the hands of god come on if that's you we're going to pray together and a miracle is going to happen i want you right now to lift your hand up high all over the building there are literally scores of hands going up keep them up don't put them down all across the building there are scores of hands god knows your heart you see it's not just about lifting your hand for me but your hand is an indicator to god that today you're asking for god's help because you can't do it sin has captured you and today's going to be the turning and are turning that's going to be radically different come on other hands need to go up join maybe the hundred or so that are up just lift them right now you're saying today is my day i've got to make my peace with god i've got to get right with god and we're going to pray and pray it i'm going to ask you with your hand lifted don't put it down because you're really making a decision that's an eternal decision i want you to pray this out loud and get the church to pray it but say it together say god today thank you that you love me enough to forgive me and i repent of my sin and i invite you as my lord and savior and with your help i'm going to follow you every day of my life in the name of jesus i'm born again i belong to jesus amen come on let's thank god for every one of those miracles come on let's really thank god for every one of those just before we sing that listen pastor bayless is going to talk to you that lifted your hand because this is so important but i do want to do one more thing and that is this if while i've been speaking listen don't move for a moment if while i've been speaking you say paul i'm still frozen it's something that happened to me i love god and i'm not sinning per se is going out to sin i love god i'm walking with god but i'm frozen by something that happened to me i'm still frozen i'm under the shadow of something i did that haunts my today because i believe that this year is going to be a year of breakthrough and i want to pray for you i want to believe that this will be the beginning of opening that you're going to start talking about that failure in the sense of instead of hiding from it you're going to say hey i need some help with that talk to someone say pray with me because i'm going to smash the stronghold that's over my life because i'm not going to allow what happened to me five years ago 10 years 20 years ago last week to stop what god can do today and if that's you i want you to stand on your feet come on be bold all over the building if that's you saying you know that's me you're talking to me there is something that is holding me back come on down in the section up the top all over the place you say tonight this morning i mean i'm going to believe that god is going to begin to turn this around and as you stand i want you to lift your hands come on and we're going to believe god all over this place and miracle father we pray for breakthrough we pray for your power and your glory to release every person begin a process this year that will be awesome and amazing in the name of jesus in the name of jesus come on let's all stand together and we're going to sing that song chains be broken come on sing it with all your heart now chains be broken if you're believing for a breakthrough sing it out of your spirit eyes be come on eyes be open come on let's really sing it out of our spirit eyes be open aren't you thankful that god is a god that can take us and move us forward amen you know this bell may well not be for you but i did a whole series on failure in our church i taught how failure creates wisdom failure makes us less judgmental failure creates that foundation a platform for faith you want faith failure creates that platform and we've got to understand the positive nature of failure i've got three teachings in that series i know that will bless you and then i did a series on prayer do you know that prayer is the wireless link to heaven and yet we know we should pray but my question is why don't we pray second corinne chronicles chapter 7 verse 14 it says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray listen first revelation i give six out of that couple of verses first revelation if my people who are called by my name god doesn't call you by your surname god drops your earthly surname god calls you by his name when you know he calls you by your name his name rather you have access into all that he is and when we get a revelation is who we are in god we begin to pray like we've never prayed before but there's five messages there on prayer and what it'll do to bring us close to god amen so god bless you look forward to seeing you tonight if you can come back