Lincoln Brewster: The Power of Weakness

[Music] you you [Music] well you guys are probably aware we're in the middle of a message series called stronger and so I started thinking about what what do I think of when I think of strong or getting stronger strength and and I started to go back to my childhood and I went who was that really into when I was a kid and one of my favorite characters growing up that reminds me being stronger was this guy Popeye you guys remember Popeye and this is true story the first time I ever saw a Popeye cartoon I begged my mom to go to the store and get me a can of spinach I thought man that's going to be amazing I just did spinach and I'm good and and on the same trip to the store I was this gullible I said mom and will you please get me some of the Prell shampoo because it said your hair would get curly and I just want to see if it'd work of course neither thing worked and I ended up looking more like olive oil than Popeye so and then I was into this other guy when I think about strong like really good like you guys more with Incredible Hulk like you think about strong right and and did anybody in here ever watch the original Incredible Hulk TV show okay a whole bunch of you you remember this but then I I started think about I was gone maybe that's not the kind of strength that God's Word is talking about right maybe that's not so good maybe that's bad strength like a guy who loses his cool and turns into a giant green monster and smashes a bunch of stuff and then feels horrible about it later not so much I don't think that's what we're going for I'm gonna write who who comes to mind who's like the perfect picture of strength who everybody wants to be more like where you go I'd be so cool if I had that and without a close second this is my guy we got a Superman fans in the house okay check this out Superman is a living solar battery his iPhone will never die in the middle of the day he has superhuman strength he can stop a locomotive with his bare hand invulnerability he's a thing called the healing factor he's immune to all forms of human or earthly diseases illnesses viruses toxins he can fly superhuman speed x-ray vision awkward superhuman intelligence Total Recall memory he has heat vision my wife has that when my kids don't mind [Music] superhuman hearing this is something that every mom is equipped with superhuman vision superhuman smell he's a master combatant and he has superhuman breath i sat next to somebody on the plane ride home who had that how many here would like to be a bit more like Superman would you like to have some some awesome strengths like that but we know that obviously that's not real strength that's what we call Hollywood strength that's Hollywood strength so you might be asking yourself the question then why is your message called the power of weakness I'm glad you asked if you have your Bibles I want you to open them to second Corinthians chapter 12 we're going to be looking at verse 9 and 10 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 verse 9 and 10 I'm going to talk about the power of weakness now before I read this to you I want to give you a little background what was going on so Paul's writing this letter to the church at Corinth and he's been having some issues with the church in Corinth and some challenges now the people who have been put in charge of the church they start criticizing Paul and they start telling they want to compare pedigrees and and tell him that he's not fit to lead this church so he's dealing with that he has a deep care for the people who were there he's very concerned about it and he strived for how to deal with it and then while he's been away he's been thrown in prison he's been beaten publicly he's faced some issues been shipwrecked almost died and and then he's got some physical issues some physical illness or infirmity and and and it doesn't tell us what it is we just know a Bible calls it a thorn in his side and he has asked God to take it away and this is the Lord's reply to him he says but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for and this stuck out to me my power is made perfect in weakness my power is made perfect in weakness and then Paul says therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses anybody know anyone here who boasts about their weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me that is why for Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses in insults in hardships and persecutions in difficulties and I was doing ok with reading this until the last phrase for when I am weak then I am strong I was like wait a sec that's like saying when I am dumb that I am smart they're kind of opposites right so I'm going okay how can I explain this what's the best way to explain this and I thought you know I came up with a visual illustration I'll show you kind of how this works alright so if you look up here now this is what I came up with so this is like a see this I can get this work in here there we go it's just like a teeter-totter of sorts all right you guys tracking with me okay good cuz this is all I guess okay so weak and strong and then this up here I'm going to write me and God alright here's how this works remember that we talked about I must decrease so he will increase so here's how this works I get weaker he gets stronger when I am weak then I'm strong you get it when I'm weak in me I'm strong in him so we're going to say this all throughout this morning and it'll be a good reminder of this picture which is this not my strength but and you'll say God's strength in me all right that's what we're going to be talking about so don't hear this message as me telling you to go get weak that's not God's endgame here the end game is he wants you to be strong but he wants it to be his strength not ours and get it all right so not my strength but that was not a 9:45 response not my strength but but God's strength in me let me give you three reasons why Biblical weakness is important you can jot these down your notes we left you kind of open notes so you can take the ala carte approach if I say something that resonates with you you think is good go ahead and write it down and if I don't let's just pretend like this never happened number one biblical weakness allows God's strength to work in and through me biblical weakness allows God's strength to work in and through me number two biblical weakness keeps me dependent on God biblical weakness keeps me dependent on God and number three biblical Biblical weakness changes my perspective it changes my perspective now we talk about Superman a minute ago and I don't know if you've ever seen the original Superman movie has anybody ever seen the original Superman movie there's a scene out of that movie where he goes on a date with this lady named Lois Clark Lois Lane that's right what I'm thinking of Lois & Clark goes on a date with this lady named Lois Lane and how many ladies how many know that if you go on a date with Superman it will be a little different than going on a date with most guys you would meet on like say Christian mingle or something and Superman is he cheats when it comes to the dating game because he ends this date by taking Lois Lane flying over the city but like not in a helicopter he's just carrying her he's got her flying through the city and ladies how many know that would that would be like wow this guy's awesome so I want you to notice I want to play the scene I want you to notice what happens as they're flying when when she lets go of his hand so check this out [Music] Oh [Applause] now how many know that Lois Lane will be happy to never let go of Superman's hand again see she had a powerful revelation in that moment she realized one of her weaknesses she can't fly but she was holding on to someone who can now jesus said this he said in John 15:5 I am the vine you are the branches if you remain in me and I in you you will bear much fruit and then this next phrase he doesn't mince words and he's not subtle or vague he says apart from me you can do nothing not most things a little bit some stuff the stuff that you're personally good at he says nothing you can do nothing apart from me and just like we saw with Lois Lane she thought she could fly for a moment and she decided to disconnect from the source that she was really getting the strength from and she plummeted to earth and she realized I can't fly but I need to hold on to somebody who can not my strength but God's strength in me that was kind of kind of lame I'm not gonna lie I want you to write this down strength apart from God is an illusion strength apart from God is an illusion and then add this weakness apart from God is useless weakness apart from God is useless see God wants to use our weaknesses to make us stronger he wants to use all kinds of weaknesses to make us stronger but it's up to us to choose to give him our weaknesses now I wrote down a just one note here that it's important and it relates to bad weakness so is there a bad weakness yes there's bad weaknesses and it's going to be a bad weakness can used to weaken bad weakness continues to weaken if it's something you're facing and you never give it to God he never is able to make you strong in his strength through it it's bad weakness it's up to us to give it to him now sometimes in life we face weaknesses that are out of our control completely out of our control and Paul faced this Paul talks about this in that scripture facing insults and criticism persecution obviously when he was getting beat up getting thrown in prison shipwrecks he had this physical issue those were things that were out of his control and all of us faced those to varying degrees at times in our lives and you know Paul prayed and asked God to heal him and it didn't happen it didn't happen but he said my grace is sufficient for you and my power will be made perfect in weakness and you know sometimes God will deliver us from the fire right and sometimes God will choose to make us fireproof instead and he will sustain us in the fire and through the fire my father-in-law recently became very ill about four and a half months ago we got a phone call said he's being rushed to the hospital and my father-in-law is very dear to me he's the best dad I've ever had he's an amazing man he's an amazing grandpa he's an amazing dad to my wife he's an amazing husband it's a very godly man and it would be devastating if we ever lost him so we found out when he got to the hospital that he's he's recovering now from a condition called pancreatitis and if you don't know what that is you don't ever want to have it but it can be fatal and there was a lot of question marks and I got a chance to talk to him about this and just kind of said what did this what was this what's it been like for you and and give me your perspective because he's walked this and you already said he said I got to tell you I've never prayed so much in my whole life said I would wake up in the wee hours the nurses would come and have to wake him up several times a night and he said I would just pray and I would pray isn't it interesting that he got hit with this physical issue that could have killed him but yet he chose to pray he got stronger he got closer to God on the inside even though his flesh was failing him I watched my wife get stronger through this I watched God strengthen my wife in ways I never thought possible and my wife's amazing and she's a very strong woman but I watched her just go to this level where I was going this is amazing what God is doing in her and so here my father-in-law is ill we don't know if he's going to live or die we don't know what's going on and by the way I just I want to tell you he told me the other day two days ago he said I'm darn near 100% which is really really thankful that God has done a miracle in his life but he said you know when I prayed you know what I mainly prayed for he said I did pray that God would heal my body but I mainly prayed for the family like who does that he's he's nobody's gonna live or die he's like a god can you make me well but I want to pray for my family I thought he's until I finish to make him stronger but God also strengthened my wife through this write this down God wants to use your weakness to strengthen others it's not always just about us God wants to use your weakness to strengthen others not my strength but God's strengthen me come on not my strength but God's strength in me DL Modi once said this I love this quote he said whatever your burden is that caused you to search for strength give it up to him now do not let another minute go by without completely surrendering your burdens to him God wants to be your strength surrender to him in your weakness and let himself let him show himself strong remember if God brings you to it he will bring you through it isn't that good if he brings you to it he will bring you through it and I realized after kind of the more I studied on this I realized that getting stronger will always require some level of discomfort now I started I started working out I don't know if you can tell yeah yeah and I realized in the middle of the first workout that I was doing and I felt like I was gonna die at first I was going did I choose this I don't know if I choose if I chose this am I having a nightmare is this real do I have to pay I signed up to pay for this how dumb is that and then and then I was like and I started thinking about I'm going oh we were doing some lifting right and I thought oh wow you know what we're doing we're weakening ourselves when you when you lift it actually weakens your muscle actually tears your muscle fibers down so that you can get stronger and that crazy we become weak so we can become strong right and oh just a little little wisdom bit if you do workout if you ever go in and you're just going to do an arm workout you're just going to focus on arms never ever put your keys in your wallet on the top shelf of your locker as a freebie little bonus today you end up at the end of the workout going in like okay and I'll be home in a minute it's got nothing so as I started thinking about this whole concept the power of weakness and how important it is and how the Bible says that we cannot be biblically strong without biblical weakness they don't it doesn't happen God requires it I thought okay well I'm proactive I'm a go-getter I'm just going to make a list of stuff I want to be weaker at let me get out in front of this bad boy so I started thinking about okay what do I want to be weaker at so that says I got to have this this is the key to getting stronger what I got okay so this was like a clear number-one for me without a close second you ready I want to be weaker at worrying come on somebody I want to be weaker at worrying so that I can be stronger at peace now I I could have made a career out of worrying and before I came to Christ man that was like my deal and you never hear anybody brag about being good at that do you even though people there's people who are awesome at it but I was like I want to yeah I want to be horrible at worrying like I just want to be able to not do it I want to be that bad at it can you imagine going you know um I know it's so frustrating all my friend I've got these friends and they're so good at it and I just like can't do it but you never hear people going dude I could out worry you any day it smells like nah dude I could totally out worry you it's like all right it's on me and you after church out in the parking lot it's on it's like okay let's do it I worry that I might get attacked by a shark and target okay that's good I'm gonna be honest that's good but nobody argues about that but we don't celebrate those things even though we're strong at them sometimes first Scripture I ever learned was Matthew 627 and I felt kind of goofy after I read this scripture because it's so still clear and Jesus does that thing he does where he says a few words and they dismantle all these ideas that we come up with sometimes and here's what he said the disciples were kind of freaking out and they were all worried about stuff and this is what he said he said can any one of you by worrying at a single hour to your life I was like oh right how how good is that can any one of you by worrying at a single hour to your life you can't change it worrying is just going to make you miserable now let me show you the the second one I came up with and this one that kind of teeter totter thing I showed you earlier this works with that too so up here this is the second thing I want to be weak at pride so that I can be strong in everybody say it humility weak so that I can be strong weak and pride strong and humility as a worship leader I've realized that humility something that you have to have in order to worship God the way that he is worthy of being worshipped so we all can come into church and sing songs and do our thing it doesn't mean it's worship you got to know that just because you sing alongs does not mean you're worshiping God looks at the heart he wants to know that you mean it right I mean when you if you've looked at your spouse if you're married if you look at your spouse and you're like I love you it doesn't mean anything if you don't mean it isn't that right okay so there's a great scripture I want you to jot this down Jeremiah 29:13 it says this the Lord says you will seek me and find me which is great when you seek me with all of your heart when you seek me with all of your heart we'll see we tend to seek things that we feel like we need but whenever we admit we need something there's some humility involved I need you I need you Mark God shall sent me this awesome quote that I want to read to you and I says this it says we tend to equate pride with self strength how many no self self strength can be dangerous we tend to equate pride with self strength you'll hear people say things like I can do it I can get myself out of this mess without God or anyone elses help anybody ever act like that or know somebody who acts like that so then we think that the opposite of pride which is humility must be self weakness isn't that crazy we think pride I can do this I can do it on my own that's strong look guys strong I don't anybody's help due to my own that were strong the Bible says that's pride but conversely saying you know what I need help I can't do this on my own I need help with this we think that's weakness and the Bible says that strength that's humility Jesus was the most humble man who ever walked the face of this planet right everybody agree on that and he could thrash Superman so so humility obviously is a strong position we want to be weak in Pride strong in humility I'll give you a few more of these and I want to encourage you with this you could after you go home think about this on your own and go what do I need to be weaker at because my list got so long I would take five services to cover this bad boy what we we curette needing to be right so I can be stronger in teachability and understanding I want to be weaker in being rigid I call myself a recovering perfectionist and if you're a perfectionist in here I'm just curious anybody is a perfectionist in here okay is a bunch of you so if you're perfectionist then you know this you know who you make miserable everybody around you and you because when you're a perfectionist nothing is ever perfect that's why I am say I'm recovering right but I realized how important it was to lose some of that and gain some flexibility it was a affecting my relationship with my kids and with my wife and I went this not a good thing ray told me this he thinks that some people think that in San Francisco if it ever had another really really bad earthquake or if it was just a huge disaster over there the last thing standing would be the Golden Gate Bridge because its foundation is deeply rooted down in the bedrock underneath the sea but the top of the bridge is really flimsy kind of moves around do you guys remember when all the people got on the bridge years ago and the bridge started to do this and everyone started screaming get off the bridge nothing happened because the bridge was flexible that's actually why it stands that's actually why it will withstand so much was that its foundation is firm but up top it's very flexible I want to be weaker at being thankless so I can be stronger at gratitude weaker at selfishness so I can be stronger at self-sacrifice weaker at apathy stronger at compassion I mean honestly the list weaker at anger and blame stronger and grace weaker at deception stronger and honesty weaker and irritability married people hey stronger at patience weaker at greed stronger at generosity I want to be weaker at being fake stronger being authentic weaker it being fake stronger being authentic I told this story at Mother's Day my brother my older brother Tristan he's he's now been sober for almost nine years which is an amazing thing I'll make sure to tell him you golf clap for him but he I had the privilege of leading him to Christ years ago when I worked at the church in Modesto and he promised he would come to church this one evening and he came in and in the middle of worship he started to leave and I said where you going you said you'd stay and come to church and he said I'll be back just read this card and and he had filled out a card the kind of a newcomers card and fills it out and he said read it after I leave and he leaves and I read the card Annette says I'm ready to give my heart in my life to the Lord I was going I start crying he leaves and I'm like oh I hope he doesn't get in a car wreck before he gets to come now I realize it was fine yeah I was worrying his right so he comes back I pray with them lead him to Christ which was just the coolest thing and he starts coming to church and he started his recovery program well after about three months he stops coming to church and so I called him and I said Chris why did you stop coming and and I'll never forget what he said he said well a couple reasons but the first one is I don't have nice enough clothes and that was the last day that I ever dressed up for church as you can tell then he said the other reason is I just can't live the kind of life that those people live I said what kind of life is that and he goes you know they're they're all like perfect was like what dude you bought into it but into one I'm like the face you bought into the face what face he could the church face you guys know that the church for letter F word right fine how you doing fine he's fine he's fine my brother stopped coming to church because of that because he thought he couldn't measure up and I realized I want to be weak in being phony and fake I want to be strong and being authentic and just saying you know what this is me this is who I am this is how it's going I want to be weak at being a loner now I'm not talking about being alone sometimes all of us need to be alone need a little space Jesus showed us that what I'm talking about is insisting on living life apart from a community insisting a living life out of relationship and I want to be strong at relationships and community this is a big deal this is why we talk about small groups around here we're big on community here at Bayside that's why we we encourage everybody to get involved and make sure that you're connected fact Galatians 6:2 says bear one another's burdens sometimes we can't handle things on our own now the other night in the in the pool my kids and I went for a night swim and we took a short break from underwater ninja that's what they call it see how you did karate moves underwater it's much easier to defend because it's slower motion so we took a break from that and we're kind of hanging by the edge of the pool and Levi my 11 year old my oldest he looks at me and he said just out of the blue he goes dad so is there gonna be like is it like two guys in heaven or three like what you mean he goes you know like is it is it gonna be like Jesus and his dad and then like the other guy or I was like okay how do I climb in here and then Liam chimes in my eight year old and just matter of fact he goes it's three and one it's three and one Levi grandma Levi looks at me and I'm like yeah what what he said and I said kids let me tell you something you know how cool God isn't there like how cool how cool and I went here's how cool God is God is a small group thank you thank you thanks for coming [Applause] please II asked these for 12 you can ja the stem if you want to though one may be overpowered two can defend themselves a cord of three strands is not quickly broken community and relationship is a big deal to God I want to give you two more I want to be weak at bitterness and be weak at bitterness so that I can be strong in forgiveness and some of you know my story and how I grew up but I grew up in this little fishing town called Homer Alaska I was born in Fairbanks raised in Homer and my mom was 19 years old and had three kids and she was a hippie and we lived in a cabin with no running water no electricity out a road called the East End Road which is 16 miles outside of the middle of nowhere and here's a picture of the cabin I grew up in that was our cabin we had an outhouse I don't know why I wanted to tell you that we just had my house so this is our front yard is our front yard now it's no Granite Bay but we didn't have an HOA and then I want to show you a picture of Christmas morning 1973 and that's me on the left that's my sister Stephanie my brother Tristan and that's me on the left a little girl named Lincoln now my mom had no money we had we had nothing in fact we were snowed in and even if she had some money she wouldn't have been able to buy us gifts and this is a story I'll hopefully get to tell you sometime about just kind of this Christmas miracle we had that that we were able to get some gifts but we didn't have a lot of stuff but there was a lot of love in the house you know and that part was good and my mom's an amazing woman still very tight with her well my mom ended up starting to date this guy named John Hillstrand and if you don't know this about my story there's a show on Discovery Channel right now called The Deadliest Catch and there's a boat on that show called the Time Bandit and it's run by a family called the hillstrands Jonathan and Andy are the two captains and Neil is one of the guys who works on the boat as well those were three of my five older step brothers grown up so their dad was my stepdad for ten years I recently saw on the newest season they had a special called The Legend of the Time Bandit where they kind of unpack how the boat was built and they talk about my stepdad what they don't tell you on there and they didn't mention this in the book that they wrote see my mom ended up dating him then eventually married him and they got divorced years later it was a very ugly divorce and part of that was due to the fact that he was an abusive alcoholic I watched my mom get beat up pretty regularly for my whole childhood and I was always too small to do anything about it and years later after we moved away we moved down to Modesto years later my wife and I went back and I left there when I was fifteen and I came back when I was probably I was 27 so I was a lot taller it was a lot bigger and I decided that I wanted to go see him I wanted to go see John I didn't know what I was gonna do I just felt like I needed to go see him and I didn't know if I was gonna shake his hand give him a hug or punch him and I mean it I didn't know I didn't know and I was a Christian and all that but this guy beat up my mom and I had to watch it and I was too small to do anything about it and now I was big enough to do something about it and I finally went and found him late one night out on the spit I said Lord let's go out there I mean out to the end of the homer spit I just had a feeling he would be there and he was and I walked up to him and as I walked towards him he looked up and he said that can I help you and I said John it's Lincoln and he kind of stopped what he was doing he looked up at me and he said pardon and I said John it's Lincoln and as I got closer to him I'll never forget the look on his face it was sadness regret sorrow and I realized in that moment how important it was for me to be weak at bitterness and to be strong in forgiveness in the same way that Christ forgave me that I would identify something someone did to me and I would choose to dismiss it and I felt compassion for him can you imagine Church if I had taken the road of being strong at bitterness and we get forgiveness what I may have done I probably wouldn't be standing here today but I chose to be weak in bitterness so I could be strong in forgiveness the last thing I want to cover with you is being weak at holding on to hurt and this is different than forgiveness the strength that comes from being weak and holding onto hurt is you're strong at grieving strong at grieving and I had forgiven him I let that go and some of you in here need to do that for some people there there are people in here who are harboring unforgiveness towards people who aren't still alive that's how strong that thing is but Jesus is real clear in the Bible and he he says let it go so that you can be free when it comes to hurts and those things so I grew up without a dad I grew up without a dad and that's incredibly painful to me I've realized since I've learned how to grieve it's not more pain than God will give me the strength to deal with but if I could change it I would Jesus modeled this very clearly in God's Word John 11:35 the sort of shortest scripture in the whole Bible but it's very powerful it says this it says Jesus wept why did he weep his friend who was called Lazarus he died his friend died and he cried now did Jesus know that he was gonna raise Lazarus from the dead I don't know nobody knows maybe maybe not maybe he was in a moment of being 100% human in that moment when he found out and just went a friend died he was devastated but if he did know and all the more importantly he actually cried about something he grieved over something that he knew was temporary maybe he didn't know maybe he did we don't know but he showed us what to do when sad things happen that we we grieve somebody said this to me once I'll never forget they said it requires a lot of software to carry around ungrazed grief it's exhausting a couple years ago something started to change inside of me I didn't know what it was I didn't know what was going on I just knew that something was wrong I had forgiven my stepdad I'd forgiven him but I had never grieved growing up without a father and this starts to well up and build up inside of me and I'm going what is wrong I don't get it something's very very wrong and so I sought out counselling I thought I need to get down to the bottom of this and it was one of the best things I ever did and I realized we all do counseling all of us every one of us just most of us do it with really bad counselors called friends so as I started to work through this I started to learn how to grieve I started to learn how to get it out the only way to get grief out is to grieve it I remember being on I was on a short tour with a guy named Matthew West and we would do these meet and greets before the concerts and Matthew would get up and he would share and people would ask questions on both of us and at the first meet and greet you know what he said he said yeah I'll never forget when I when I was growing up I played baseball and and I'd always hear my dad's voice from the stands and he'd always yell out remember Philippians 4:13 and and my dad he's our he's our Road pastor and I'm sitting next to him right at the beginning of this grieving process about growing up without a dad just choking back tears and going it's right here I got to get this out it's right here and it's messing me up so I would go off before we would play and I would cry I just just get a little bit of it out I remember sitting with my wife watching a show called Undercover Boss I'm watching Undercover Boss for crying out loud there's a guy who works for Baja Fresh and and they're having some issues apparently things weren't so fresh they're having some issues and and he goes you know whatever have problems and whenever I don't know what to do and things are going south I call my dad I can't tell you how bad in that moment I wanted to be able to call my dad but it wasn't gonna happen I had to get up leave the room I walked into the other room and I just sobbed my eyes out for about 10 minutes and then I came back in learning how to do that has strengthened me God's strength in me not my strength but God's strength in me the Bible says that we grieve but not as though though not the same as those who have no hope because we have hope God wants us to grieve things so that we can become stronger I want you to bow your heads this morning the ultimate example of choosing weakness over strength is Jesus and his work on the cross how many know he he could have done things differently when he was being beaten and spit upon and criticized when they pierced his hands in his feet how many know he could have done something about it but he chose to be weak so that the father could be strong through him and we all sit here as beneficiaries because of it want to read this to you I'll close with this we often think that without human strength we are destined to fail and without personal courage we are bound to falter yet as good as these are such qualities tend to push us to self-sufficiency and away from God dependency human strength is like the flower of the field that has its day in the Sun but then shrivels up and dies enduring strength lies in God alone not my strength but God's strength in me if you here this morning as I read through this list of weaknesses or if you thought you know either someone need to add to that for me I want to pray for you today I'm going to ask nobody leave we're going to end the service with worship and let's honor God's time here today but that's you here today you say you know what I need you to pray for me I need to become weaker at some things so that God can become stronger in me I want you to slip your hand up I just want to pray for you awesome there's a whole ton of you out there a whole ton of you out there if you're here this morning and you say you know what Lincoln I need to grieve some things I need to I need to get them out I need you to pray for me maybe I need to seek some counseling I need you to pray for me would you slip your hand up I know you're out there a whole bunch of you awesome let me pray for you God I want to pray for those who raised their hands and even those who did not raise their hands who felt the need to raise their hand god I pray for strength your way I pray that you would help us to be weak the way you would have us to be weak so you can be strong through us I pray for healing of hearts and minds bodies Lord thank you for each person here today may your mercy rest on all of us God and with no one looking around if you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Christ but you'd say you know what I need that I need I need another power in my life other than my own my own strengths not cutting it I'm ready for God's strength I'm ready for a relationship with Christ I'm ready to have a new start I'm ready to not just know when I was born but why then today is your day I'm gonna ask you to pray with me silently as I pray out loud let's pray lord thank you for drawing me here for bringing me here this morning thank you for your love I believe that you died on a cross so I could have forgiveness and I received that forgiveness and I believe that you rose again so that I could have new life I receive that new life now make all things new give me a fresh start be the Lord of my life [Music]

Channel: Bayside Church

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Keywords: Bayside Church, Lincoln Brewster, christian, church

Id: 0nQSdac02UU

Length: 48min 18sec (2898 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2013