Sun Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

In 2006, Alitalia Airlines, the official airline of Italy, made a slight mistake on its website regarding international airfare from Toronto, Canada, to the island of Cyprus. They advertised business-class seats for $39. It was supposed to be $3900, but somebody left off two zeros. Two thousand tickets were immediately snapped up and it cost the airline $7.7 million. Somebody messed up.

.In 1990, 75 million phone calls across the United States went unanswered after a single switch at one of AT&T’s Switching Centers suffered a minor mechanical problem and shut down. Like a domino, it sent a message to other centers around the country, which also caused them to shut down. The cause was a simple data entry, of one error, in a single line of code. American Airlines alone estimated they lost 200,000 reservations in that one-day. Somebody messed up.

.In 1961, DECCA Records sent two executives in charge of evaluating new musical talent to London to check out a local rock-n-roll band. They spent two hours listening to this group perform 15 different songs at the DECCA studios. The band waited for several weeks to hear whether DECCA would sign them or not and finally their manager got this now famous response. “Notto mince words, Mr. Epstein, but we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out, four-piece bands with guitars particularly are finished.” That group was the Beatles, who became the most popular band of all time. DECCA lost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, because somebody messed up.

There are two things that I know are true of anyone I meet anywhere at any time on this planet. First, we have all messed up at times. We have all made bad choices. We've all made poor decisions. We've all taken the wrong path and we either all have learned or one day will learn that mess-ups are costly. It can cost you your marriage, your job, your virginity, a friendship, or piece of mind.

The second thing I know is that we all mess up, because to some extent we are all messed up, because of sin. We were all born spiritually messed up. People are stressed out, because they are messed up.
If you are one of those who would admit that you have messed up and if indeed you are living under the crushing burden of that mess up, and you are still stung with the guilt of that mess up, and you wonder whether there is a way out of your mess up this is what I want you to learn today. Just because you have messed up, doesn't mean you have to stay messed up. In fact, Jesus specializes in dealing with messed up people.