Ed Young Fellowship

You’re being honest with God.  There is nothing like that.  You’re being honest.  You’re agreeing with them.  You’re telling the truth about your whole deal.  You’re being honest with others, “Here I am, warts and all, tax, title, and license, here’s my mechanism.”  Yeah, I am made of cheap veneer. Those are fake diamonds. The whole thing is fake.  And church is a place where we have to take our masks off. Church is a place for imperfect people.

This is the perfect place for imperfect people.  I’m not perfect, nor are you.  And so often the devil will go, “Don’t share your junk with others.  Don’t share what you’re dealing with with these encouraging empathizers because they’re going to laugh at you, they’re going to trash you, and they’re going to say, ‘I can’t believe you’re dealing with that.’ ”

Well, that’s a lie.  Just call the devil what he is. He’s a liar.  He’s the father of lies.  Whenever I share what I’m struggling with with my encouraging empathizers; whenever I share my secrets and stuff that I think, “Oh man, they would freak if they knew I was dealing with that because I’m a pastor.” Whenever I do that, I get encouragement.  I get support.  I get prayers.  I get help.  I don’t get lashed.  See, it’s a lie.

So we cover up and God will, I’m telling you, uncover it one day.  So don’t mess around with that.  You go ahead and uncover, and what you uncover God will cover with his forgiveness and grace and mercy. “Ed, you don’t realize what I’ve done, brother.  You don’t know.” And you know what?  I don’t.  You’re exactly right.  I don’t know what you’ve done.

You know, when people say that, they’re advertising their ignorance.  I don’t belittle them when they tell me that.  I say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.  Before you make that statement, please study the major world religions because you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Obviously, the major world religions have some commonalities, but there’s one thing that separates Christianity from all the other world religions.

It’s the staircase from heaven to earth.  You see, God constructed this.  God built this. And God did something that we can not do for ourselves.  On my best day, on your best day, we can’t do this.  God did it.  It’s called grace and mercy, his unmerited favor.  He did it to be with us and he did it so we can experience his irrational unfathomable love.

God built the staircase to man.  He gave us Jesus.  Jesus performed it perfectly. And God says, “If you’re perfect, you can build a stairway to heaven. If you’re perfect.  But once you have one bad mood one off day, commit one sin of omission or commission, you better go ahead and destroy the stairs, because your stairs won’t get you to where you want to go.”

If you’re perfect; if you’re just absolutely pristine and perfect, you can do it.  I don’t about you, but I’ve messed up a lot.  So God gave us Jesus, who was born, who lived this perfect life and who died and rose again. And right before Jesus breathe his last breath, you know what he said?  “It is finished.”  Do you know what that means?  The steps have been built.  It’s been done.

It’s frustrating to be someone’s Pygmalion project, isn’t it?  It’s agonizing.  Every time you live, every time you do something, this other person is kind of sending you signals saying, “You don’t quite measure up.”  You see, I have no problem loving people like me, but I have a severe problem loving people who are “abnormal”.  I wish everyone was normal like me.  Have you ever thought that before?  If only that person would change, if they could kind of come up to my standard of “cool”, or they could be a clone of me, then I could relate to them and they would be my Pygmalion project, no relational hassle, I could love them.

Look at our songs over the last four decades:  “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.”  Then the Beatles proclaimed, “All you need is love”, and now Tina Turned hits the stage and she belts out “What’s love got to do with it?” Beginning today, we’re going over a five-week study answering the question, “What’s love got to do with it?”  In fact, the goal of this series is to help us learn how to love people who are different than we are.

How to love people who are different than we are; and that could be and it probably is your spouse, your children, your boss, your co-workers, your teacher, your fellow classmates, and Jesus cut to the core of this issue when He proclaimed in John 15:17, three radical words.  Three radical words.  Jesus said, “Love one another.”  He said, “This is my command; Love one another.”  When I see the word “love”, I have no problem with that.  In fact, if I were to take a brief poll here, all of us would agree that we try to love people.

The goal of Genesis 1 is for us to be fully human.  That’s huge to download that.  That’s God’s goal—for us to be fully alive, to hit on all cylinders, to experience an abundant life.  That’s what Genesis 1 is driving at. The goal is for us to be fully human. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden, they didn’t run behind some bushes and make love for the first time, and then emerge and say, “Hey God!  Guess what we did?  It’s incredible!  Guess what we discovered?”

And God didn’t say, “Whoa!  You can do that?  The parts fit?  I had no idea!” It didn’t happen that way.  Sex begins in heaven.  God thought it up.  He’s the designer.  Our God is pro-sex.  Sex is primarily for pleasure and secondarily for procreation.  If you have a problem with us talking about it in church, you, my friend, have a problem with God.  It’s time to get the bed back in church and the church back in the bed.  But for far too long, we’ve taken the bed out of the church and kicked the church (like Chuck Norris does) out of the bed.

Why do we have this weird vibe?  Why do we get all nervous and tense when we talk about sex, especially in church?  I can tell a lot of you are wigged because this bed is on stage.  Some of you are saying, “Wow!  That statement you made, Ed, I’m not sure about that. Sex starts between the ears before it goes between the legs?  I’m not sure about that.  I just don’t like that.  I have a problem with that.  I have a push-back to that.”

They become our master and we become slaves to our desires. So in our independence, we end up being dependent on the desires. Conversely, if we stop in our tracks and turn to God and depend on him; if we have total dependence on him, then we will discover true independence. What happens, though, when we go Gomer? What happens? What are the stages? What does that predictable path look like?

Several years ago, my family and I were hiking near a lake. And as we were making our way through the woods, we came upon this hill. I was leading the way, which was hilarious because I have a horrible sense of direction. And as I began to make my way through the woods, I looked around and found myself surrounded by briars. These briars were ripping my clothes, and then I looked back and saw that Lisa was in the same predicament. Then, my son EJ’s shirt was so ripped that he had to take his shirt off. He had to strip right there just to get out of the briars. And then, very carefully, we turned around and made our way back. We retraced our steps to get out of the predicament.

Here is what God said about this whole situation, this whole scenario with Gomer cruising away. Hosea 2:6-7; “Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.” God loves you and me enough to build a barricade of briars around us when we start cruising away from him. It’s out of God’s love.

So we dominate, we incarcerate and we infiltrate.  And guys, warriors, masculine men, are you in the battle?  Are you in the game?  Or are you going to spend the rest of your life living vicariously through pumped up football players and fighters and other athletes and actors?  That’s fine and dandy, but are you playing in the real game or have you mailed it in?  Have you said, “You know what, I’m just weak, I’m just effeminate, I can’t do it.

Lust is too strong.  I’m just a deer in rut.  I’m a dog in heat.  I’m a salmon ready to spawn.  I just can’t help myself.” How pathetic is that?  And you are going to allow the enemy to continue to rob you and to keep you from being the best that God wants you to be because of money and honey?  Give me a break! Because guess what, your body is not your body.  You think it’s yours?  Oh, really?  My body is not my body.  I will be talking about this more and more.  My body is for God.  It’s God’s.  Your body is for God.  And if you’re married, a holy notha’ level.

Do this with me, a salute.  All the married men with me.  Your body and my body is God’s, number one.  Number two, my body is not by body.  My body is Lisa’s body. The Bible says the wife is in charge of the husband’s body.  The husband is in charge of the wife’s body.  So what are you doing looking at this and that and surfing this and that?  You’re dragging God’s body into the game of lust?  You’re dragging your wife’s body what?

I admit to you, God, that I have turned my back on your assignment and that I have been sketching my own life.  I have been doing my own deal.  But now, God, I have put the sketchbook aside.  I make a U-turn.  I turn from my sins and I turn toward you.  I do this 180.  I ask you, Jesus Christ, to infiltrate my life, penetrate me, save me and forgive me.”  Just say that, “penetrate me, save me and forgive me, Jesus.”

If you say that and believe that, I’m telling you right now, he is coming into your life and he is taking residence there.  Because he has already paid the price on the cross for all of your sins.  You are simply receiving what he did for you.  Just say that.  “Jesus Christ, I receive what you did for me.  Penetrate my life, forgive me, cleanse me.”

I don’t care where you are, how far away you think you might be, just call out to him right now and say, “Jesus Christ, I want to pray with Ed and I want to ask you to come into my life.  Yes, I have got some questions and doubts.”  And that’s okay.  Jesus wants to meet you where you are.  Just have that faith, that trust, and follow him because he is truth.  My life is an evidence of it and many others’s lives are evidence as well.

You’re wondering if there really is such a thing.  You see the problems in the world, but you say, “Hey, it’s just because of a lack of education, a knowledge situation.” Balance is the key, because I don’t want to lose the ear of either side.

Author Steven Covey writes that we must have the strength and the power to say “no” non-apologetically because we have a bigger “yes” beneath the “no”. Have you ever done this before? I have. So, “You want us to do this? Oh yes, I would love to!” and the person leaves, “Oh, why did I say that? I did not want to do that. You are so stupid”. Some people do that constantly, over and over. You say “yes”. You can’t say “no”. “No” is like the “No Monster”. “Aah! I can’t say the word.

They might not accept me. But it will devastate your priorities if you don’t learn how to say “no” and many times, without an excuse. We don’t have to say, “No, but I really want to go” and we begin to lie, “My daughter’s sick and the gerbil Jim, he’s tired from the trip. Millie’s got to go to the orthodontist” and on and on we go.  Say “no”.  It’s an enemy.

Another enemy of priorities is the word “good”…the word( “good\ Do you realize that good is the arch-enemy of the best? Satan wants us to get involved in a lot ofgoocfthings, but he doesn’t want us to find out God’s best for our lives, and that’s Satan’s main agenda when he tempts, when he taunts those of us who know Jesus Christ. He wants me, he wants you to settle for second best.   “Yes, it was pretty good”.

It was good, but we can get so involved in doing good things and good things and good things and good things and good things that we never do the best! The reason I stress this point so vividly is because I had a beautiful illustration, a true illustration of this particular subject, talking about adjusting your priorities this past week.

Some young families began to join Fellowship Church. And when we hit around 250 people, there was this young couple who really caught the eye of a lot of us because they were so energetic, positive, serving and helping. And we watched this guy just do some great things at Fellowship Church for years and years.  One day he came to me and said, “You know what Ed, I really feel a leading to go into ministry.” We talked about it, we prayed about it and we brought this guy on staff.  And at the time our staff was very small.

The Resolution Trust Corporation was dumping a lot of real estate.  We heard about this monstrous track in Grapevine and in Coppell.  We heard about this track of land where the Tarrant County line and the Dallas County line split the property. But we couldn’t afford it; yet, we began to bid for this land.

And some of you real estate people know what I’m talking about. It was a sealed bid type scenario.  The government chose us, so we had the opportunity to put a down payment on the land.  The land cost about $2.5 million, and we put a down payment down.  We barely had enough money to do it.  We owed $1.875 million on 160 acres.

A year later, without any marketing, without a sign on the property, we sold 22 of the 160 for $1.875 million.  Now, don’t even sit there and tell me that God is not in the real estate business!  I hope you’re not even entertaining that thought.  So all of the sudden, we own this land free and clear. So, we began to build.  We began talk about designing, and we met with architects, contractors and things. Our church was growing so much that we thought, “Okay, we need to build a worship center that seats over 4,000 people, and we need to will these big children’s ministries.”  But there was one problem. We could not afford it.

Dallas/Fort Worth has a number of Bible studies and churches that are diet driven.  Diet driven churches and Bible studies.  In other words, they concentrate on the word of God. And they concentrate on studying the Bible. And they feed on Scripture, which we have to do.  Oh, we have to dine on Scripture.  Yet, what’s so odd is, these churches and Bible studies are diet driven.  Okay, hold that thought for a second.

What does the medical community say?  If you want to live a long life, do what?  Eat well, diet and… What?  I can’t quite hear you up here.  Exercise! Diet and exercise!  God began to show that to me about 15 years ago. Diet and exercise.  So, it’s more than just diet.  Yet, for so many of these churches, even around our country, and Bible studies it’s all about just the Bible.

And [they say] if you, you know, eat the Bible, eat the Word, dine on the word then  that’s enough.  Just a diet, diet, diet, diet, diet.  Well, the Bible says from cover to cover its diet and what?  Exercise! Diet and exercise.  We have to eat the right food.  Oh, we’ve got to get into the Word, we’ve got to study, we’ve got to break it down; we’ve got to know this stuff.  But we’ve got to do it.  We have got to do it.  And here is the call of our church and every church out there.  Every church, every Bible study should be a diet and exercise entity.  A diet and exercise.  Feed on it. And then the food will give you the energy to do what?