Acts chapter 17, I left the verse out, I think it's verse 6. It says, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers to the rulers of the city, crying out, these people that have turned the world upside down have arrived here also. There's some questions you might want to ask as we come to the end of another year. And I'm going to ask you these questions and I don't expect you to answer them to me, but I want you to consider them.

Question number one, what impact have you had on your surroundings during the past year? How about the past five years, 10 years? Number two, what do people around you think of you? And number three, who even knows that you exist? Ouch. These are painful questions if they were to be answered. Honestly, sometimes I think, huh? It is known of the early disciples, as we read, that they were those who turned the world upside down.

I believe God wants us as his followers, and particularly those of us who have a call of God in our lives, and all of us as believers have some degree of call, some more than others. God has called you to bring change in this world, to turn it upside down, or as somebody said, the right way up. Jesus did so much in about three and a half years that John says, if they were to write it down in books, there wouldn't be space.

Okay, those days the books were these big scrolls. They didn't have much storage. Today we've got the internet.

I'm sure we could have fitted it on, but in John's time, he's saying that if we were to write down, in detail, everything that Jesus did, for just three and a half years, we wouldn't have place to store all of these scrolls, because that's how much it would be. Well, if we were to write down everything you accomplished in the last three and a half years, would it fill a book? You say, well, you know, I'm not Jesus. Aren't you? As he is, so are we in this world, the scripture says.

Jesus wants to relive his life in and through you and me. Jesus wants to do again in you what he did when he walked this earth. And if you let him, it could be said of you, if we were to record every single thing that he did or that she did, wow, it's going to be a whole library of books.

Gospel records were actually only written much years, many years later after Jesus was dead, and the disciples were starting to get old, and they felt we need to start putting down a record, because until then, it was word of mouth record. So by the time they wrote the gospels, they had to kind of wreck their brains to think back on what happened back there. So the gospel records actually don't give us a lot of detail of exactly what Jesus did.

They just give us highlights. Sometimes they even emphasize different things. Sometimes some people have thought that the scriptures not inspired because, you know, the writers sometimes seem to contradict each other.

They each emphasize different things that they could remember, but it all dovetails together. Now, if somebody were to write your biography right now, what would be in it? He was born the 2nd of October, 1950. He lived for 68 years, and then he passed away.

Pretty short book. I hope my book's a bit longer than that. At least I've written about 70 or so books.

I've got something to leave behind. I'm not bragging. God's given me that opportunity.

But what would be written in your book? What would be worth recording? What would be noteworthy that people would say, now, that was something special that he or she did? Well, I don't want you to feel bad. There's nothing in your book yet. I'd like to give you hope because this year could change everything.

It all lies in your hands. It lies in your hands. See, your future must be planned.

Nothing in this world happens by accident. This whole world didn't come into being by accident. I don't believe in the Big Bang Theory and all that nonsense that the science is trying to tell us.

The human body didn't develop by accident. If you've studied any degree of anatomy to see the fine details and the amazing, amazing functions of the human body, who could say, well, it just evolved? No, no. No, it was planned and laid out.

Now, there are two main influences planning your life right now. Because, you see, God has a plan for you, but Satan also has a plan for you. And if you don't choose the right one, you know what's going to happen? The wrong one's going to win.

It lies in your hands whether God's plan is going to be fulfilled in your life or whether what Satan wants you to experience is going to be what you experience. You have a choice. You can choose to follow God's plan and you can choose to change.

I've been emphasizing this in the previous two messages. It's all building up to something big. You can change or you can remain just the way you are.

And if you remain just the way you are, guess what? Your circumstances will remain just the way they are. Your influence will remain just the way it is. Your failures will continue just the way they are.

You can choose. You can choose to lead or you can choose to be led. The leaders of this world are the ones that are going to bring change.

The leaders of this world are the ones who are going to tap into all that God has for them. The followers are going to get what somebody else decided for them. Well, aren't you tired of getting what somebody else decided for you? I don't want what somebody else has decided for me.

I certainly don't want what Satan has decided for me. I want what God's decided for me. The truth of the matter is nobody can override your will.

God will never ever impose himself on you. He offers to you all that he has and is to help you accomplish. Now, Satan will try to impose his will on you, but even he cannot do it unless you give him permission.

At the end of the day, it lies with you. Your will and your choice is going to decide what your future is going to look like. Now, there's always a time of preparation.

It doesn't just happen. Even when you finally decide, okay, there's a time of preparation. Now, we make two mistakes in life.

We try to run ahead before we're ready. We drag our heels and we miss the moment, the opportunity. That is offered to us.

Sometimes we kind of swing the pendulum from one to the other. Kind of like old Jonah. You know, he was either running ahead of the Lord or dragging his feet, and neither of them were good.

Now, you've got to be made ready first before you can accomplish your destiny in life, before you can fulfill the plan that God has for your life. You must be made ready. And that, again, lies in your hands.

For a start, you must recognize and see and open your eyes to see what's available to you. Now, when you see it, you must embrace it. You must take it.

You must employ it. You must use it. And you can choose your own pace.

Expressives are very zealous. They want to run ahead. They've been known to run ahead.

They've also been known to run over the problems without even seeing them. Because of that, they often succeed where others don't. Analyticals see the problem and haggle over it, and try to decide and wonder whether they should do it or not.

And they go at a much slower pace. Now, you can both reach the destination, but some are going to take longer than the others. Now, God's not forcing you to become an expressive if you're an analytical.

Although you can change your temperament if you want to. I grew up as an amiable analytical, and I struggled. While other people were rising up and running ahead of me.

The Lord gave me an opportunity to become an expressive by getting into sales, and I changed my temperament. I began to accomplish far more than I ever did before. You see, nobody forced me to.

God offered an opportunity, and I took that opportunity. Open your eyes to see the opportunity that God is giving you, because you must change for things to change. So firstly, you must be made ready.

Until you're ready, you cannot step into your destiny. You cannot even begin to fulfill the plan that God has laid out for you, and the things that you desire to accomplish. And then circumstances must also be in place.

Now, making yourself ready is very much in your hands. Circumstances are not always in your hands. This is one that you can't totally control.

But you can do something. You can change your circumstances. You could immigrate, move house, change your job.

Don't try changing your gender. That's just not the right thing to do. There are some things we should just keep like they are.

But you can change your circumstances up to a point. You do have some degree of change, or power in your hands to do that. See, but there's always going to be change.

Ultimately, you need to learn to be led by the Spirit of God. Because He knows the end from the beginning. He knows the circumstances that are going to face you.

And He isn't always a creator of those circumstances. We do have an enemy that tries to mess things up. We have people in this world who spoil our plans, and get in the way of our plans, and compete with us.

But if you are led by the Spirit, God will be able to warn you of some of the pitfalls. And you can be led, and then come to the place where you can say, Lord, it's in your hands now. I've done everything in my power, and now it's over to you.

And Lord, whatever happens from now on, I am trusting you. Then you're going to have to wait. But I'm afraid you're going to have to wait until these are all complete.

If you are not ready, and you try and move ahead, you will fail. If circumstances are not right, and you try to move ahead, you will fail. But there's a timing.

There's a right time. And God works very much to a timing. Sometimes it looks like the Lord's dragging His feet.

Somebody said the Lord's never in a hurry. But He's always on time. Galatians 4 verse 4 says, But when the time of waiting was over, God sent out His Son, made from a woman, made under the law.

Jesus was destined to be born right back there in the garden when Adam and Eve failed. How long did it take before that day arrived? But that day arrived at the right time, at the right place, when all the preparation that was needed was complete. And when your time of preparation is complete, the time will be there for you to step into what God has for you.

Now, if you miss the turn, driving along on the freeway, breaking the speed limit, some of us do, some of us don't. I'm not condemning you. And suddenly you see the turn.

Hey, there's the turn! There's the turn. I just missed it. And the next turn's another 10, 15 k's.

And from there you've got to try and somehow find your way back. You know, something was waiting for you on that turnoff. Something was all set up for you.

And if you'd taken that turn at the right time, you would have stepped right into the plan. God had set up, but you missed your moment. You missed your opportunity.

And you do that, it could take you years to get back to it. It could take years for the angels to rearrange the circumstances that were set up for you right there. Now, some of you listening to this today, you're there right now.

You know that you missed God. You know that you were offered an opportunity, and it may have been a long time ago. And because you missed your moment, you failed to move into all that God had for you.

You've probably been kicking yourself since and saying, what a fool I was. But you know God's never caught by surprise. He knew you were going to miss it, and he already started to make a new plan.

And every time you miss it, he'll make a new plan. He'll never get fed up with you like we humans being saying, I'm tired of making plans for you, you always miss it. Thank God, thank the Lord for his grace.

So don't give up hope. Don't despair. God has a new plan for you.

The year ahead is a new plan. God has already laid it out and prepared it for you. And he wants you to step into that plan now as you move into this new year.

You must keep your eyes and your ears open. Because these things can come upon us so suddenly. You know, when I was younger, I kind of wondered whether I was ever going to get married.

I never planned and prepared for it. And then suddenly there this future wife appeared. And I realized I didn't even have enough money to go on honeymoon.

I had to take a loan from the bank just to go on honeymoon. Perhaps you've given up hope. I think it's never going to happen.

And you've just allowed yourself to fossilize and just drift. You don't know what lies just around the corner. You do not know what lies just the other side of this river that we cross as we step into this new year.

You don't know what lies ahead for you in just the first month of the new year. But you must be prepared and expecting that God has got something awesome lined up for you. And you must be ready when you see it to embrace it and grab it and run with it.

Yeah, well, we'll just wait and see, huh? We'll wait and see. That's how so many of us approach it. Lord, I hope this is going to be a better year than last year.

Oh, we'll wait and see what happens. I can tell you what's going to happen. What's going to happen is what Satan has planned for you.

That's what's going to happen. Don't get bogged down, folks, with the busyness of life. You know, we've got to go to work to earn a living.

We've got family to take care of. We've got responsibilities to carry out. We get so busy with life, we miss God's plan to show us what he's trying to offer us.

Well, what can you do right now? The first thing you need to do is to make a decision. You need to decide what you want. Hopefully, by now, you've come to a place where you do know what you want in life.

If you haven't, I can tell you right now what your life looks like. It's pitiful. Have you decided what you want? Well, you know, I will just leave it to the Lord.

What will be, will be. Tesserah. Like I said, I'll tell you what will be.

It's what somebody else had planned for you. Decide what you want. Be very clear on what you want.

You say, well, you know, I will just do whatever God wants me to do. Now, you start by deciding what you want and then be honest with the Lord. Tell him what you really want.

That's arrogant. That's rebellious. Is it? My kids never had a problem telling me what they want.

Huh? Come on. Do you have a problem telling your parents what you want? Scripture says we must become as a little child. Tell him what you want and then look to him to give you what you want.

You know what we do? We say, this is what I want, but obviously God's not going to give that to me. Maybe it's unspiritual. It's too carnal.

So I go and look somewhere else to get what I want. I turn to the world instead of to him. Come on.

We've all made that mistake one time or another. Tell the Lord what you want. Do you know what? He's more than willing to work in your life to help you get what you want.

Unless. I knew it was coming. Is that unless? Unless it's not the will of the Lord, right? Come on.

That's what you think. Unless it's not his will. No, no.

Well, yes and no. What is his will? You want to find out what the will of God is? He wrote it down in about 66 books. Have you ever read his will? Well, you know, it's a big book.

And now you're struggling to find the will of God, but you won't even read it? Check it in the word. Well, Lord, I'd like to dump this wife of mine and get a new one. Check it in the word.

You won't find it there. Sorry. You'll have to throw that one away.

Yes, there are things that you may want which are contrary to the word of God. They're easy to find out. But you know, most of what we desire is not that way.

Most of what we desire are the things that God planned for us. For us to walk in health. For us to walk in wealth.

For us to have good relationships with other people. For us to have joy and peace and happiness. God wants us to have these things.

If you can get into the word and you can find scriptures which support what you're wanting, something magnificent and powerful takes place. You see, you can never do anything in faith if it's not in the word. There should always be that doubt.

Does God really want me to do this? Is it right for me to do this? While you have that doubt, the scripture says, whatever is of doubt is not of faith. And God is a faith God and he's only moved by faith. Oh, where does faith come from? It comes from God's word, doesn't it? As that word which you fill yourself with begins to come out, God speaks his word to you through the rhema.

But once you have his word on it, nothing can stop you. Nothing. Satan can't come and lie to you and say, yeah, but maybe God doesn't want you to have that.

You say, yes, he does. His word says so. Stand on the word.

God will give you additional words. He'll give you prophetic words and other revelations to confirm his word. But stand on his word.

You do, nothing can stop you. Then you must recognize what you can do. You see, you can never be passive.

You can never sit and wait. You must make the right choices and you must take the right actions. It lies in your hands.

If you make the wrong choices, you're going to miss it. If you do the wrong things, you're going to miss it. Your choices and your actions are going to determine your future.

So start by looking at what you can do. What can you do right now? I'm not saying that's what you should do. Make a list of what you can do.

At least you know what's in your power to change. Because change is the key word, remember. Well, I tell you what's in your power to change right now.

Go look in the mirror, you'll see it. You. You are in your power to change.

You must change, you. Then you must recognize what you cannot do. Because you're not Superman.

You're not Wonder Woman. You're just little old me. And I can do some amazing things.

But there's some things I just can't do it. See, I can't play basketball. It's stupid.

I'm too short. See, just let it go. See, just be honest.

There's some things you can't do. But I'll tell you something. There's always going to be other people involved.

There's always going to be somebody else who can do what you cannot do. There are things that are outside of your control. And some of those things, you have to just let them go.

And place them in the Lord's hands. And leave them to Him. And some of them, you're going to have to be prepared to humble yourself.

And admit you need another human being to help you. To accomplish that. Because nobody's an island.

We're a body. And the body functions together. All the members complementing what they are good at.

If you're a loner, you're going to lose. So, start with what you can do. And come to the place you say that's as far as I go.

Okay, Lord, the rest is over to you. Now, who, Lord? Who have you brought into my life? Who is in my life right now that I can rely on and depend? Who is it that you've sent to me to help me accomplish that plan that you have for me? Once you reach that place, it's time for action. And as I heard a famous speaker say once, we're talking about massive action.

Massive action. Not a little. I'll give it a bash.

See if it works. You've been giving it a bash for years. Give it up.

It's not going to happen. It's going to take more than a bash. It's going to take a kick and a punch.

And then do it now. Well, I'll get to it once things are right. Once I feel in the right mood.

Once we have enough money. Once I'm feeling happier. Once my health's a little bit better.

We've always got some excuse, don't we? Procrastination. Analyticals have a terrible case of procrastination. What can you do right now? Firstly, don't overanalyze.

Well, if we do this, then that could happen. And if that happens, then that could happen. And if that happens, then that could happen.

You know where you're going. No way. Because you're waiting for something to happen.

It's never going to happen. See? Now, women have a problem with being over-elaborate and finding out all the details. They don't even have to be of analytical temperament to do it.

So, a lot of women need a man in their life to think logically and to look on the broader scope. Sometimes men need a strong woman to make the decision for them. Each of us is different.

If you want to go from here to the other side of the sea, a good place to start is to put your boat in the water. If you're like the kids who are sitting playing car, there's no car. You can sit and steer your ship and the rudder is going, sitting on the land, going nowhere.

You've got to put your boat in the water. So, stop the dithering and waiting and overanalyzing and trying to get it all right. Yes, there's a time for that.

There is a planning phase. But once God says, now is the time, there's no more planning phase. There's no more delay.

There's no more waiting. Get your boat in the water and set up your sails and head for the destination. Do it now.

Well, what can you do right now? Number one, you can improve yourself. Number two, you can change your circumstances. And number three, you can make some clear plans.

And once you've made those plans, you can start putting those plans into action. Now, it is important at times to wait. You need to wait sometimes for new openings and new opportunities.

As I said earlier, keep your eyes open. Now, I'll tell you where we miss it. We ignore inconveniences.

You know, I don't like anybody to rock my boat. You know, I've got my life planned. I like to do things in a certain way.

And it is so annoying, so inconvenient when somebody comes and messes it all up. Don't you get fed up when people mess up your plans? And make it so inconvenient that you have to waste time doing something you weren't planning to do? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe that little diversion was God saying, hey, change needed you? See, that's why we've got to learn to praise the Lord in all things. That when things don't go our way, when we have inconveniences, instead of complaining, we say, Lord, are you trying to tell me something here? Are you trying to tell me something? That could be your turn in the road right there.

You missed it because you got all uppity. Don't ignore oppositions. Oh, you know what, if that person would just drop off the end of the earth, life would be much better for me.

You know, Lord, can't you just take him home early? You know, Lord, tell him to immigrate or something. Just get him out of my face. Huh? Come on, we all have people like that, don't we? Again, could God be trying to tell you something through that very opposition that's coming your way? Could God be saying, hey, you're going the wrong way.

Stop. That's the only way I have. Did you take time to look? Now, you're too busy going down this road.

Now, suddenly, here's this big wall, this big obstacle, this big person standing in your way. Better be the Lord wants you to stop long enough to look around and say, you know what, I should be on that road, not this one. See, you gave it into his hands, didn't you? And he's going to steer your boat.

He's going to steer your boat sometimes in directions that just don't make any sense. You're traveling down the road and you can see the city in the distance there. Yay, we're almost there.

And suddenly, the road goes there. And you think, why? My destination's over there. See, there are a few things in the way there that if you'd gone through, would have caused a problem for you.

It seemed so close, but you had to do a roundabout route. See, God sometimes has to take you on a roundabout route you didn't expect. You're going to have to trust him.

Then, when those opportunities come and finally manifest, grab it with all you have. Oh, the Latin had good phrases. Carpe diem.

Seize the day. You know, just touch it a little bit and see if it feels like that. Grab it, seize it, hold on to it, hang on to it with all you have.

Say, this is God's opportunity. He's given it to me, and I'm not going to let this thing go. And then, of course, we have the others who go to the opposite extreme.

Probably the expressers again. Here's the opportunity. Let's run full tilt and run ahead of the Lord again.

You know, I've been waiting 20 years for this to happen. It's finally here. I'm not going to wait another 20 years.

I'm going to make this happen in the next six months. Oh, you know, the Latin people had a phrase for that, too. It was called festinalente.

It means make haste slowly. Make haste slowly. By all means, go as fast as you can, but do it a step at a time.

So many places we can go wrong in this, isn't it? But, you know, if we are led by his spirit, if we hear his voice, and we've shared already in previous messages how you can do this. I'll be sharing a lot more in the future as we expand this into a full training course. And what you can do to continually be aware of what's happening around about you.

And to recognize the voice of the Lord. And to recognize what's not of the Lord. The New Year lies before you now as a clean page.

What you write on this page will become your biography. Don't wait and see what happens. You make a decision and you decide what is going to happen.

Place your boat in the water and make Lord Jesus your captain. He knows the journey. He knows how to calm the storms.

He knows how to get you to your destination. Just launch your ship and go forward and keep moving. Don't ever let yourself come to the first quarter of the New Year thinking, man, where did the time go? It was just January the other day.

And now it's April already. Lord, you've done nothing. You've accomplished nothing.

Most people start off with a big bang and just fizzle out. That's why you're going to have to learn to do it the right way. That's why you're probably going to have to need somebody to work with you.

You're going to have to learn how to do things God's way, not your way. Because you've done it your way in previous years and you've failed. Make up your mind that this year is going to be different.

You are going to do it the right way. You're going to succeed. And as you go through the year, you should be ticking off each thing as it manifests.

There we go. That's what I was planning to do. That's what I was hoping to accomplish.

You get to the end of the year, instead of complaining about what a tough, busy year it was, you should be saying, these are the things that I accomplished with the Lord's help in the year. And you can face the next year again, with all the learning experience that you had last year. So as you come to the new year now, what experiences did you gain in this year that's passed? That can stand you in good stead and help you? Mistakes that you made, that you know, I'm going to avoid making those mistakes again.

Things that you got right, that you know, I can do that again because it works. What have you added to your learning? What have you studied? What have you read? Somebody once said, you know, our lives will continue in the same path, except for the people we meet and the books we read. Well, I'm not much of a reader.

Yeah, I can see that. Just look at your life. You think it's time you change that a bit? I'm not much of a people person.

I like to kind of just keep to myself. Yeah, I can see that. You're going to be lonely the rest of your life.

You're going to be a failure, a nobody, a loser. Oh, yeah, I know I've hit a lot of things today and a lot of different ones. We've all been there.

See, I preach from experience because I've been through all of these. I've made all of these mistakes. Yeah, I'm still making some of the mistakes because I haven't arrived.

But you know what? With God's help, I'm going to learn from the mistakes. I'm going to learn from our successes, and I'm going to push forward. And 2019 is going to be the best year of my life.

The year that lies ahead will be the most successful year in this ministry, and in my life so far. This year, I will press into new ground and new territory and accomplish new things that God has laid out for me. How do I know that? Well, firstly, he's told me that.

I'm not being arrogant. I'm not being proud. He's told me what he wants.

I made up my mind. I made a choice to say, if you want that Lord, then I want that too. And he said, you know what's going to cost you? And I've said, well, yeah, I think so.

Because, you know, I didn't arrive where I am without paying a price. Nothing that you accomplish in this life is for free, folks. It's always going to cost you something.

What are you prepared to pay? What price are you prepared to pay? What are you prepared to give up? To be all that you desire to be. To be all that God desires you to be. We enter into this new year.

Make the right decisions. Step forward boldly. Be ready.

To make this year the best year. From all of us here at GBM, we want to wish you all a happy new year. In two days time when it comes.

Maybe you're only listening to that then. We wish you a happy and prosperous year. And I pray that you will rise up and accomplish this year so many more things than you've ever accomplished before with his help.

Father, we thank you for your word. For your word is sure and it's true. We come now submitting ourselves afresh to you.

Lord Jesus, you are our captain. You are our king. And though you've called us to be kings also, you are the king of kings.

And so we come to you. We come before your throne and say, Lord, this is what I want to do this year. I want you to help me to accomplish it.

I want you to make whatever changes you want to make. I want you to interrupt what I shouldn't be doing. I make it available to you because I want you to be Lord in my life.

Thank you for this, Lord. Submit it all to you now in the name of Jesus. Some of you are thinking, you know, I'm too old now.

Life has passed me by. I missed the turn so many times. When I was younger, I had the energy.

I had the mindset, the ability to accomplish so much more. But what's the point now? Why should I go and learn new things now? I've only got a few years left. This life is over.

I might as well just settle down and retire and enjoy the few years that I have left. The Lord says, if you do that, you will only have a few years left. But I don't plan for you to have only a few years left.

I plan to give you a long life. Long life that will satisfy you, says the Lord. Long life that will be filled with many good things and with much accomplishments.

And if the Son of Man could, in the space of a few short years, accomplish so much, how many years do you need, says the Lord? If you'll give them to me, I will turn your life around and I will change it. You will exit in a far greater condition than you entered. You shall go out with a bang, says the Lord.

You will leave behind a heritage that many will follow and embrace because you made a choice to follow me fully and to do what I've called you to do. Therefore stop the excuses, says the Lord. Stop the excuses.

Don't look at your weakness. For my strength is made perfect in weakness, says the Lord. And I will give you all that you need to accomplish everything that you desire to accomplish in this life.

So ask of me, says the Lord. Ask of me and I will do amazing things. Ask of me and I will give you the desires of your heart.

Ask of me and I will give you wisdom. Ask of me and I will show you the way. Ask of me and I will lead you in the way.

Ask of me and I will bring into your life people to help you. Ask of me, says the Lord, and I will bring into your life influences. Ask of me and I will transform your health.

Ask of me, I will transform your financial status. Ask of me and I will bring new relationships into your life that you never had before. Ask of me, says the Lord, for I desire to give you all of these things.

As you receive them, go forward boldly in my name. For the year that lies ahead of you shall be one of much blessing. For that is my desire and purpose for you, says the Lord.

Amen. Hallelujah. Let's go take the land.

Let's go put our foot on the land. The devil's been running it for long enough. Let's chase the enemies off.

Amen.

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