You Can Begin Again

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Nelson Searcy: Well, good morning once again and welcome to The Journey Today, we’re talking about You Can Begin Again.

Go ahead and find your message notes in your program and you’ll see at the top of those notes is Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11. It’s our key verse for this entire series. Let’s begin today by reading today by reading this verse out loud together. It’s also up here on the screen. Here we go. “‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

Would you go ahead and find your pen and circle the word “hope”. God wants to give you hope for the future. God said that there is hope that you can begin again. God has a plan for you and it is a plan that’s full of hope.

You, know, when I was a kid, it was pretty common for us to get together on Sunday afternoons and play backyard football. Have you ever done that on a Sunday afternoon? Now, when we would get together and play, we would kinda make up the rules as we went along, because that was the key. That was what made it fun. You could just kinda make up the rules.

For example, we had a rule that if you ran into the ditch, well, that was out of bounds. We had another rule that said if you hit a car, then you could do it over. Do you remember that famous clause from backyard football, the “do over” clause? The way this would work is if you went to kick the ball and it went three or four inches, you could just simply yell out, “Do over.” And you could kick it again. If you went to throw the ball and it hit the power line, you could simply yell out, “Do over.” And you did the whole play again. If you dropped the ball and it went into that are of the grass that was a little wet because it was over the septic tank, then you could simply yell out, “Do over.” And go back. If you threw the ball and it went through the neighbor’s window, you could do a “run home” as the case might be and this.

I thought about that idea of a “do over.” I mean, wouldn’t it be cool if we could reach back into our childhood and bring that into adulthood. What if we could get a “do over” today? I don’t know about you, but there’s been times in my life, when I just wanted to yell out, “Do over.” I remember in college, long before I was married, I was working on this babe in calculus class for about two weeks. Well, she was as much of a babe you could find in advanced calculus in those days and I’d been working on her for about two weeks and I finally get up the nerve to call her on the phone and I lay on the charm as heavy as I can. I put the pitch on her and say, “Will you go out with me on Friday night?” And she simply says over the phone, “No.” And I wanted to yell out, “Do over!” Can we just do it again, one more time?

I remember in marriage, it wasn’t too long ago, when Kelly and I got into what you might describe as a nice, polite, civilized discussion. And I said something really stupid and she mumbled something about how I don’t listen and then I stormed out. And as I was walking down the hall, I was thinking to myself, “Do over.” Can we just start this again? Can we go back and run the play one more time?

Maybe you’ve faced situations in your life when you’ve wanted a “do over.” Maybe there was a relationship or even a marriage that didn’t turn out as planned. Maybe there was a new career or a new job and three or four hours into it, you wish you could just stand up and say, “Do over.” Let’s try it one more time. Maybe there’s been a health issue in your life. Or maybe an accident that changed the course of your life and you wanted a “do over.”

I mean, we all from time to time need to begin again. And I’ve noticed in life there’s really three times when we kinda want to yell this out. Three times that it happens. Number one, we want a “do over” after we’ve sinned big. Anybody here want to stand up and give a testimony? We’ve all sinned big. There are times in our life when we knew it was wrong but we did it anyway and it turned out really bad and we just want to stand and say, “Do over.”