Famous Failures

Hey, can we say hello to all of our campuses that are joining us throughout the city of Austin today? Good to see you guys. It's an honor to be with you, as well as our 13 correctional churches. The joy that we have is we have 13 teams that go into 13 prisons and jails and literally recreate what happens in all of our campuses so that we let people know that no matter how far away from God or no matter what's going on in your life, God is the God of forgiveness. And we are just honored to be with each and every one of you. We had an amazing day yesterday, actually Friday, we broke ground on Austin Christian University's first and newest building. I think we have a couple of pictures just from the groundbreaking, 500 people attended. Brigham Center will be a building in a classroom setting, but with all the amenities that go with reaching the next generation of those that want to be trained academically, trained for business, entrepreneurship, AI, and the various lanes that we will have as accredited degrees. But how do you carry your values? How do you carry biblical values into the world? And it's just amazing to see what God is doing. And we wanted to have with us for the groundbreaking, the one who coached me, the one who has pastored me when we broke ground for our very first building in 2005, when we purchased the property, it was John Maxwell who literally told me what to do and how to do it. And I said, well, who's going to be a part of our groundbreaking for Austin Christian University and the Brigham Center? And to the glory of God, everybody, $50 million building has already been given. It's already paid for. Can we just thank God for his goodness and his kindness? How many know God builds despite what's going on in our world today? He's a builder. He's a builder. And so someone that has built Laurie and I's life is Dr. Maxwell.

I know many of you have been built by his books and his leadership, and we could talk about the 94 books and the 40 million people that have read it. But there's another angle, another side to our story, and that is I took my pastor, Mel Davis, to be with John and Margaret at an event in California in 2007, 2008, and I watched my pastor, Mel Davis, weep. And he wept because after the meeting, I said, what are you crying about? I thought this was going to help you. And he said, Joe, I'm watching a man do what I was called to do, but I did not cross over, I did not let, I didn't let go of the religious world so I could reach the secular world. And then he said this to me. If I'm not here on this planet, the voice that I want you to hear from, in fact, I want you to stay close to Dr. Maxwell. And I will just tell you, he pastors me, and he's been our pastor. We have had opportunity to be very, very great settings, intimate settings, so that we could just frankly get better. And I think today you're going to get better. And it's an honor on this Palm Sunday, because I do believe that today is going to have an impact on inviting our friends and our family, because this is the great news. I want us to welcome somebody that I know that has not just touched the world, he's touched you in many ways. He's going to touch you if you've never met him before in a special way today. Can we stand on our feet and welcome to the stage today, Dr. John C. Maxwell. My gosh, love you, buddy. Wow. Thank you. My gosh, you're very kind to an old man. Good morning. I'm so glad to be at the celebration. What a great place.

Do you have worship like this every week? When you go to heaven, you're going to want to come home on the weekend, aren't you? You're just going to say, God, just let me go to celebrate. I'll come back. I'll come back Sunday night. I'll just come back Sunday night. I'm delighted to be with my wonderful friends, Joe and Lori, who are true champions, by the way. You know how blessed you are to have this couple, to be leading this congregation. I'm telling you right now, I've known them for years. We've traveled the world together. They love you dearly. The first time they started talking about the church here, I thought they were exaggerating because they talked about how good you were. And then I got here and I said, man, I love you. I love you. It's true. There's no place like this place. Anywhere near this place. So this must be the I love you. place, huh? That's what they told me. Let's just let Laura and Joe know how much we just love them and thank you. You just are so beautiful. Thank you for who you are and what you do. So let's get acquainted. My name is John. I'm your friend. On the count of three, give me your name. One, two, three. Nice to meet you. I'm going to talk about failure today. Really, people don't really even like to talk about it because people don't like to fail. It's kind of a negative word for most people. But trust me, by the time we're done with the teaching today, you're going to have a whole new perspective about failure. But let me just make sure that the topic I'm going to talk about is relevant. How many of you have failed at least one time today? We all fail. And it's so amazing. It's something that we do so often and no one has ever really taught us how to do it well. And I really know how to do it well because, just to be honest with you, I think failure is one of my spiritual gifts. I just do it so often. And I've written several books, but I've written three books on failure.

And the first book I wrote 20 years ago, which became a total bestseller, was called Failing Forward. And it was all about how do you fail correctly? How do you fail forward? In fact, it's a funny story. How I wrote that book, Margaret and I were getting ready to see the fjords of Norway to take a cruise. And a couple of weeks before we were going, I looked at my calendar and I realized that it was a two-week cruise to see the fjords of Norway. And I thought to myself, it seems a little long. I mean, God created the heavens and earth in six days, and we're taking two weeks to see the fjords of Norway. So Margaret and I sat down, we had a good talk about it, and then we took this great two-week cruise. Anybody that says they don't believe in compromise, they've not been married very long. Let me just tell you, we've been married for 57 years. We got this thing down, trust me. But we did do a deal, because we do deals. We've done deals all our lifetime. We really do this well. And so I said, all right, I'll do the two-week cruise if you'll let me write a book while I'm on the two-week, hey, between seeing the fjords, you follow me? And I literally write all my books with a four-color 99-cent Bic pen on legal pads. And so I took about a half a dozen legal pads, two or three pens with me. We went on the cruise. I had a table just like this, a chair like this. We were on a wonderful suite area with windows so we could look out the ship and see the fjords. And so I'm writing, failing forward, and every once in a while the captain would stop and he'd say, to the left is a fjord. And I'd stop writing and I'd look over there and, yeah, he's right, that's a fjord. We'd go along and say, to the right is another fjord. And I'd stop writing and I'd look over there and say, yeah, yeah, found another one. Yeah. You know what, baby? That fjord looks just like that fjord. Fjord vacation's over. I've written the book failing forward. 188 pages on legal pads, rubber band around it. That's the manuscript. Margaret's carried it off the ship. We're about halfway off the ship. She stops, turns around and says, John, I love the book. I said, what do you love about the book? Oh, she said, on every page you just talk about your failures. She said, you're just so open with your life that the reader's going to look at that and say, oh my, he's messed up here too. She said, you're going to connect with your readers.

just like crazy on this book. I love the book. She said, there's only one problem. I said, well, what's the problem? Well, she said, you didn't get all your failures in the book. She said, I see a series. Failure 101, 2, 301. And what makes that so amusing to me is, you know, several years later now, I really, I wrote, I wrote failing forward. Then I wrote a book called sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. And then I wrote a book that just is literally coming out right now. I think April 14th, it'll be in bookstores called how to, how to get a return on failure. And you know, when I talk about the title, how to get a return on failure, your audible expression, everybody does that because I want to promise you this book will teach you things on failure that you've never read before. I promise you, you've never heard it before. I have a chapter in that book on the difference between a good miss and a bad miss, because all misses are not created equal. After you fail, you could either have a good miss that will help you fail forward, or you can have a bad miss that will cause you to fail backward. A perfect example of that is a good miss, a good miss when you fail is that you make adjustments. That's a good miss. You think, oh, look what I learned. I've got to make some adjustments. I got to do some things. A good miss is when you make adjustments. A bad miss is when you make excuses. See, you got it. You got it immediately. See, it's when truth is good and principles are great, the light comes on for people. I'm very excited about the book. People ask me all the time, I've written 94 books, and that's not really a big deal. Honestly, if you've written 94 books, you just have to be old. If you're not old, you can't write 94 books. People ask me all the time, they say, well, what is your favorite book? When they ever ask me what my favorite book is, it's the book I'm writing. I'm so excited about this book. Tell you what I'm really excited about. If you have children, especially seventh grade up, this is going to be a game changer. My parents paid me an allowance to read books. As I grew up, I didn't get paid to take out the garbage. My father said, why would I pay you to take out the garbage unless I want you to grow up and be a garbage man? We were paid to read books. Life-changing. I'm talking to you, that book, I just mentored my grandchildren. I take them on trips. Mark and I take our kids on trips. Our gifts to them are always trips, not stuff. You can break stuff, you lose stuff. We just took my daughter and her family and our grandchildren on that side to the British Virgin Islands for five days, and I mentored them. Every morning from 9 to 10, 15, whenever we go on trips, I mentor them. I mentor

them on how to get a return on failure. Madeline, my oldest granddaughter, wrote me a text just the other day, said, Papa, I've taken all the things I've learned from you on that trip. Let me show you how I'm applying it to my life. I hope you're investing in your kids and your grandchildren. It's huge what can happen. This book is just a life changer for people, and I'm very excited about it. Anyway, there's a QR code that they'll put up on the screen. If you want to get the book, I think you can get it probably through Amazon or through the QR code. You can do whatever. There it is. That's the book. That's a nice cover. I selected that title. You see, when you have a book, the publisher owns the material, so the publisher has the right to name the book the title. In my early days of writing, I would have a suggestion for the title, the publisher would have a suggestion for the title, and the publisher would always win in the beginning. Now that I've sold 40 million books, I always win. It's so fun. I just sit at the table and I say, if you want to, you can try. I love that sometimes. Anyway, let's talk about failure. Nobody likes it. Everybody does it, but the challenge is not the problem of failure. The issue is how we view failure is how we do life. That's perspective. I want to dive right in here and really get to the essence of this. I want us to understand, first of all, that film Failure is not an asset or a liability. So when adversity comes and problems come to us, a problem really isn't a problem. A problem is only a problem if your perspective about the problem is wrong. Because if your perspective about the problem is a wrong perspective, the problem is a problem. And in fact, the way I would say it to you is, when a person has a problem, the problem isn't the problem. The problem is they think the problem is a problem. And because they think the problem is a problem, the problem that isn't a problem has now become a problem, not because it was a problem. The problem was that they didn't have

the right perspective about the problem, so now a problem that didn't have to be a problem has become a problem. Now let me ask you a question. Did you get that written down? Did you? You got the notes on that one, did you? Yeah, you may wanna show them to the person on your left and just kind of help them out, because there were 27 problems in there, okay? But it's our perspective, and what happens is we personalize failure. In fact, when I was mentoring my grandchildren just two weeks ago on our trip, one of the things I taught them is, failure is not an outfit, so quit wearing it. Man, I'm just tempted to kill the message and mentor you for the next 20 minutes on failure, because I trust, it's not an outfit, so don't wear it. And so many times we look at our failure and we begin to transfer that to, I'm a failure. Let me read this to you. This is foundational for the next 20 minutes that I'm gonna teach, and that is, if you want to see the longest list of mess-ups, don't look in the mirror, look in the Bible. Those people weren't perfect either. Count the woman from Samaria who had tried five husbands. Gideon, who set up an idol on the very spot where he received his call from God.

Sarah, who laughed at God, even though she had witnessed a lifetime of well-kept promises. And David, the adulterer. Eve, the apple picker. Zacchaeus, the crooked tax man. And before you tally up your sins, count theirs. And before you throw in the towel on yourself, read a list of every person mentioned above, and you're gonna be looking at an amazing list of divine comebacks. You're gonna look at men and women in the Bible who messed up, who failed, who didn't do it right. And yet, they turned out so good. And they turned out so good, not because they were so good. They turned out so good because they learned about God and grace and forgiveness. And they learned to not only have a personal comeback, that's where we kind of get up ourselves and pull ourselves up, but they had what I would call divine comebacks, where God really walks into their life, takes their failures, and makes it an asset and not a liability. And there are dozens of famous failures in the Bible. Let me give you two this morning for teaching. Jonah, he's in the Old Testament, and Jonah is the prodigal son of the Old Testament. We know the prodigal son of the New Testament

that Jesus teaches about, but Jonah, he was the first prodigal son. He just did it all wrong. I mean, it wasn't like he had a mess up. He was a mess up. But I love this, because you see, if Jonah were here this morning, and he was talking to us about failure, what he would say to us is, these words are so beautiful, he would say to us, God will give you a second chance. He'll give you another shot. Your last chance that was blown is gonna have another chance. In fact, there are 12 amazing words, and I love them, in Jonah chapter three, verse one. Because this is already after Jonah's been disobeyed. It says, then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Wow. See, God said to Jonah, go to Nineveh. And Jonah, instead of going to Nineveh, he went 2,000 miles the other way. God said, go by land, and Jonah went by sea. God said, go east, Jonah went west. God said, Jonah, arise and go to Nineveh. And Jonah, he went down, hid in the bottom of a ship. God said, preach, and Jonah went to sleep.

God said, live for others, and Jonah lived for himself. I'm telling you, Jonah was blatantly disobedient to God. He was extremely intentional. He wasn't having it. Oops, day, oops, oh, what did I do there? Oh, no, no, he knew exactly, he was disobedient to God. And a second chance means three things for us today. Second chance means, number one, the first time was lost. In other words, we get a second chance because we've messed up the first one. So it just means we really have to have another chance. This is life-changing once we understand that, that our God is a God of second chances. And in my life, I would have to tell you, not only of second chances, I would have to tell you he's a God of third chances, four chances. He's so incredibly patient to me. When I was a young writer, very young writer, I mean, I'm talking about just starting off writing, I was ferocious in filing. My father, who was very, very successful when I told him that I was gonna be a minister speaker, the best advice he gave me at 17, he said, then if you're going to be, he said, every day read, every day file. And then he, because my name is Maxwell. And the word Maxwell literally is a Scottish word, and it comes from filling the well to the max. And he said, let me say something to you, live up to your name.

Fill your well with good stuff, so that when you go to the well, you have something to draw from it. Fill your well to the max. And so I was filling the well to the max, but I was young, and I would just get material that I'd filed under titles, I did that right. But a lot of times, I wouldn't write down where I got it or who I read it from or whatever. I didn't do the source like I should. In fact, I was very careless. I was an amateur, I was young, I was ready to go. But I didn't do it right. And I'll never forget, David Jeremiah was a wonderful friend of mine in San Diego. And we'd have a monthly lunch, and we were having a monthly lunch. And I'd just written a book, and he came and he brought the book. And when he brought it, I thought, oh my gosh, he's just got my new book, and he's going to want me to sign it. I got all excited. And we got in the conversation. He didn't bring the book to be signed. He brought the book because he said, John, he went to a certain chapter, he said, you wrote these words here. And I said, yeah. And he said, those are my words.

And you don't mention my name at all. And immediately I was crushed. I mean, it was totally a very careless mistake, but very careless. And all of a sudden I thought, oh my gosh, I stole something from him, and I didn't aim to steal that from him. And I said, I immediately, I'm starting to kind of try to pull back. I said, David, I'll call my publisher. I'll get it taken out of the book, and I'm sorry, and I'll do a retraction. What do you need me to do? Because I'm wanting him desperately to forgive me. But I don't feel like I deserve forgiveness at all. He was the best friend. He was my buddy. Hey, have you ever been on the outside, and you just knew that you wronged somebody? Or you did something stupid, and you just wanted somebody that was in the right position to say, it's okay. I forgive you. Well, he did. He forgave me that day, and I'll never forget it. Every time, I've been with him hundreds of times. Every time I think of David Jeremiah, I don't think of a great Bible teacher. He's a great Bible teacher, great teacher, he's a great teacher, great writer, great writer.

He's all that. I don't think of David Jeremiah that way. I just think of David Jeremiah, my friend, who forgave me, just forgave me. Wow, he gave me a second chance. At the end of the lunch, he handed me the book, and said, would you sign it for me? Oh, I signed it, yeah, but oh, the joy. The joy that somebody would give me a second chance. You see, a second chance means that I messed up the first one, and a second chance means that grace is needed. I need grace, I need grace in my life so bad. We know justice is when we get what we deserve, and we know grace is when we get what we don't deserve. I don't know if you've ever read Brother Lawrence. He was a thought leader centuries ago. He was a great spiritual thought leader. And Brother Lawrence said, there are times I make failures and mistakes, and I mess up. But he said, I don't think much about it. I just confess it to God, and then I say to him, I remind God all the time that I always mess up unless I have him, that he's the only redemption of any mess up that I have in my life. You see, God's grace is needed when we do. wrong. We all get that. We all say, yeah, I need God's grace. I needed David's forgiveness. See, God's grace is always needed when we do wrong. But let me say this,

God's grace is always needed when we do right. Because there's nothing we can do to save ourselves. There's nothing we can do to get to heaven by our own merit or by our own works. You need grace when you're doing bad. And let me tell you something, you need grace when you're doing good. Somebody says, sounds to me like I always need grace. You got it. You're getting close. I love the story about the guy who went to heaven and St. Peter's there meeting him at the gate. And he said, you're going to need a thousand points to get in. He said, talk to me. And the guy said, now he says, oh, well, what did I do? He said, well, he said, I went to church every Sunday and St. Peter said, well, that's 25 points. I said, oh, wow. He said, well, I read the Bible every day. Well, he said, that's 25 points. And oh, I tithe. I said, that's 25 points. Oh my gosh, he's only got 75 points. He said, whoa, I just got to get to a thousand. He said, well, he said, I do nice things in my community. Okay, that's 25 points. Now the guy, he's just, he knows he's, he's dead in the water. And finally he says, Peter, the way you're going, the only way I'm going to get into heaven is by the grace of God. And Peter said, that's 900 points. Come on in. Isn't that beautiful? That's so beautiful. Wow. That's beautiful. We need a second chance because we blew the first one. We need a second chance because grace changes everything. And we need a second chance so we get a shot at making a better choice. You see Jonah, the second time, got on the right track. The second time he decided to do it God's way. You see, he decided to do it God's way. You see, we don't always get what we want, but we do always get what we choose. I had a wonderful mentor, John Wood, the great coach at UCLA. Heard him many times say to me, he said, John, there's a choice you have to make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make, makes you. How true that is. Wow. I'd see dad that too, sweetheart. I was just a six, seven-month-old child. My dad was a pastor. And he said, we didn't have, we had a little country church. And he said, we didn't have a nursery until you were born. I created a building program before I was born. He said, because he said, John, you never shut up. You never shut up. He said, you never, you never shut up. He said, you, he said, sleep for us was, he's not, no longer talking. He said, he said, in church, you just get up and dad, dad, mom, mom, we'd have to take you outside. And he said, finally, the board says, we need to build a nursery. We need to build a nursery. So they've been always trying to put me away.

So when I think, when I think of Jonah, he just reminds me, aren't you glad that Jonah shows all of us that, that God is going to give us another shot? Aren't we glad for Jonah? Tonight, when you pray, yeah. Tonight, when you, tonight, when you pray, you know, just do your prayer, say, oh, thank, thank God for Jonah. You know, thank you. Jonah kind of paved the way for me to get a second chance too. And then Peter, oh my gosh. When Peter looks at his mess ups and failures, what he would say to you and me is that God will give you hope. God will give you hope. Wow. Because you know, Simon Peter, he was one of the 12, as you know, he was, he was the leader of the pack. He, he was the man, big guy, strong. In fact, Jesus looked at him and I mean, it was, his name is Peter, but he started calling him Rocky. I mean, because Rocky was just, I mean, he's Rocky. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And you know what I'm talking about? I mean, he, he, he's Rocky. And I mean, it's kind of like, he is the man. And, and Jesus is talking to them right before they're getting into the upper room about the fact that this is a very crucial night for him. And basically, he basically is telling him in that thing that, that, that, that they're going to deny him. And, and. Peter doesn't at all associate himself with the other 11. Oh, I'm not gonna do that. In fact, let me take you through this, just for a moment. When you think of the denial of Peter and the rooster crowing, there were three reasons why I think Peter failed, and I think number one is he placed himself spiritually above the others. And I know that because when Jesus told him, tonight you will all desert me, Peter declared, even if everyone else deserts you, I will never desert you. In other words, he said, I'm so sorry about these other guys who won't measure up, but you can count on me. Yeah, I can't speak for them.

Yeah, you're probably right, Jesus. They'll mess up, they really are, but I'm amazing. I'm amazing, I'll just, I'll be right there. I'm the rock, I'm the rock, it's, you know. Lean on me. I got you covered, woo! You know, whenever we do this spiritual comparison ungodly game, you always can find somebody that you're a little bit better. And it's so much of a human tendency, all of us in failure, to think, we just make, I think I'm above that. I think maybe them, but certainly not me. And I can almost promise you in my life, the sins that I've committed and the mess ups I've had, so many of them came out of a little sense of, surely I wouldn't do that. Surely I wouldn't do that. I think he failed, secondly, because he thought he knew himself better than Jesus did. Because Jesus replied, he said, I tell you the truth, Peter, this very night before the rooster crows, you're gonna deny me three times that you even know me. No, Peter, even if I have to die with you, I'll never deny you. And he felt stronger. He felt stronger than he was. Because Jesus in the garden said to Peter, Peter, your spirit's willing, but your body is weak. You see, when he got around the crowd,

and he warmed himself by the fire, and he began to say, well, you're one of Jesus' disciples. You're one of his followers. No, no, I'm not the one. And in the midst of him denying and cursing and failing quite miserably in the hour where Jesus needed the rock more than any other time, it tells us in Luke 22 that the Lord turned and he looked straight at Peter. Can you imagine the eye contact? I mean, all of a sudden, Peter said three times, the rooster's crowed, Jesus looks at him, and all of a sudden, everything he'd said less than 24 hours earlier is starting to pile on him. That look. This incredibly strong, brash, boastful person, this indestructible person has now messed up. You know, disappointment is the gap between expectations and reality. We have these expectations, this is reality. This space in between is disappointment. It says Peter wept bitterly. He not only wept bitterly, but he couldn't handle his failure, and he said, I'm going to go fishing. I gotta go back to the lake. I'm not a fisher of men. I'm gonna be a fisher of fish. I know I'd say I'd follow Jesus, but I've already screwed my life up so bad,

so off he goes, he goes back to the lake. Now, here's what's so beautiful about Jesus. Don't miss this, my friend. Jesus comes looking for Peter. That's just like Jesus. Jesus wants a relationship with you more than you want a relationship with him. If you're 1,000 steps from Jesus, he'll take 999 steps right to the door of your heart. And so Jesus went to the lake. If Peter's at the lake, I know he's not doing discipleship, and he's not, he's fishing for, I know, I know, I know what's happening. Jesus said, well, I'm gonna go. I'm not gonna wait for Peter to come to me. I'm gonna come, I'm gonna go to Peter. He's got a fire going, got a charcoal fire. It's interesting, when Peter came on the beach that day, it talks about the charcoal fire. Smell, of all the senses, the smell is the least forgettable of any sense. It also says, the only two places in the Bible, that when he was by the fire when Jesus was going through his trials and he was denying the Lord, he was at a charcoal fire. A few days later, when he smelled that charcoal fire, it brought back memories of disappointment and how he wasn't faithful and how he wasn't true. All this stuff began to pile on him. And look at Jesus. Jesus said, Pete, let's just talk, you and me, buddy. Now, Jesus didn't do what I normally do, what I would normally do. I said, now, Pete, what the heck happened to

you? You just screwed up real big. Come on, talk to me. What made you do all this stuff? No, no. Jesus looked at him and said, I just got to ask you a question, Pete. Do you love me? But Jesus used the word agape for love. Agape is the highest divine love that a person can ever experience or express. It's the height of love. Peter, do you agape love me? And Peter's just failed. He's just messed up. He's not anywhere near agape. He's unworthy. He's screwed it all up. He's not on an agape level. And he takes the next level down, which is phileo, which is a brotherly love. And so when Jesus said, do you agape love me? Peter says, oh my God, I can't agape love you. Jesus, I phileo love you. Jesus said, I'll ask the question again. Peter, do you agape love me? You see, before the failure, Peter would be in the agape choir. Oh, yes, I'm agape. I'm just agape all over you, Jesus. Me and you, we're agape brothers. You can't do it. You see, failure will dumb you down and make you and I think, maybe I've done too much and I've gone too far. Maybe, maybe, I don't know. It's like the prodigal son. When he came back to the father's house, he knew he wasn't worthy. He didn't come back as a son. He said, I won't come back as a slave. I'm not going to ask for the bedroom I had in the home. I'm going to ask for a bunk in the barnyard. You see, that's what sin does to us. That's what failure does to us. It lowers our expectations. And when we lower our expectations, we somehow create this gap. Jesus said, second time, do you agape love me? Peter said, no. I can't say agape. I can't say agape. I messed up, but I phileo love you. Now, here's what's beautiful about Jesus. The third time Jesus comes back to him, don't miss this. Don't miss this. Just don't miss it. It's too good. Don't miss it.

The third time Jesus comes back to Peter, he doesn't use the word agape. He knows Peter isn't going to get there. He knows that Peter is so disappointed. And he does what Jesus always does. He'll come and find you at the lake, and he'll come into your life, and he'll go from agape. And he looks the third time, and he says, okay, Peter, I'm going to get on your ground. Peter, let me ask you, do you phileo love me? I'll come down. Don't miss it. I'll come down. Do you phileo love me? Peter says, oh Lord, you know me. I phileo love you. You see, Jesus, when you have messed up and when you have failed, he isn't going to make you climb and pull yourself back up. Why would he do that when he is divine? He'll come down to where you are. Oh, that's why I love Jesus so much. Wow. You know, this is beautiful. If Peter can come back from failure, and by the way, Jesus wanted him to come back from failure, that means you and I can come back from failure, too. Amen? Peter would say, God will give you hope. You see, the word hope is used 81 times in the Bible. It's used one time before the resurrection. We're thinking about Easter next Sunday, but 80 times after the resurrection, you see the word hope because Jesus, resurrecting from the dead, comes back. Now we've got a real hope, a true hope, a hope that can save us and take us out of the spots we're in. I just closed by saying that. I was talking to a very, very successful friend of mine, a business friend, and he was talking to me about all the decisions he had made in his life that were not good decisions, and mess-ups, and I could have done this better. He was very human and connecting with me.

And when we finished the conversation, I said, well, you've had some mess-ups, you've had some failures. I said, let me just ask you a question. Would you like to go back and do some of them over? His answer was life-changing. When people ask me sometimes how long does it take to write a book, I say sometimes it takes a lifetime. 20 years ago, his answer was the seed to the book, How to Get a Return on Failure. I said, would you like to, which ones do you want to go back and do over? Which ones do you want to erase? And his answer was powerful. He said, I don't want to do any of them over. You're kidding me. Of all the failures, you don't want to do any of them over? He said, no. He said, let me explain to you why, John. In every failure, I learned a lesson. Every failure, I learned a lesson. He said, if I went back and erased those failures, I would have to erase those lessons. And I'm not going to erase those lessons because the lessons have helped me more than the failures hurt me. And he said, in every failure, I've developed character. I've had to get back up and I've had to persevere. He said, I've become bigger on the inside

than I'm on the outside. I've developed character. And he said, if I go back and I erase those, if I erase those failures, I lose my character. Whoa. I'm not going to do any do-overs. And then we finalize it with this. And in all those failures, we get to experience the unconditional love of God and his amazing grace. There's a reason why we call his grace amazing. Now, on every campus, I'm going to ask the pastors to come forward. As you know, they'll come, they'll have a final prayer with you and they'll share maybe some thoughts with you. And as they're coming forward on each one of their campuses, I just want to share with you, this auditorium is packed today. And you may feel like Jonah, I need a second chance. You may feel like Peter, I'm just so disappointed in myself. I need hope. I'm going to pray with you now. And if you want to find God and have an experience with him, or if you just want to talk to God about some areas in your life where you've kind of messed it up and you want to kind of get back into that sweet spot relationship with him, as I pray, you just ask God to do a Jonah work in you. Ask him to do a Peter work in you. Father, thank you. Thank you for who you are.

Thank you for the unconditional love Thank you for two famous failures in the Bible that show us that we get a second chance. And no matter how much we are disappointed in ourselves because we disappointed you, there's a way back. For those who have never had a relationship with you right now, I pray that they will find you such an appetizing, awesome God that they'll say, I know this for the rest of my life, I need to be connected with God. I need to have, in my life, divine comebacks. Thank you for the congregation. Thank you for this great church that is a light on a hill, not only for this part of Texas, but around the world. May your blessings and your favor rest upon the people today and may we see failure in a way that we've never seen it before. And may we get a high return out of it because of how we see it and how you give us grace to overcome. In Jesus' name and all of God's people said, god bless you. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right.