Whenever we cover sin, here’s what we do: We tend to blame others. You know, “I’m the way I am because of my family of origin. I’m the way I am because my mother was meanpirited; my father was domineering. I’m the way I am because of my friends. You know what? I’m the way I am because of my spouse. “The reason I’m sleeping in the wrong bed is because of you. You’re not meeting my needs. You’re not doing it for me.” And we play the blame game.
Have you ever played that when you’re trying to cover your sin? And then something else happens when we’re under here: We invite others under the blanket with us, “Come on, come on.” And I’m talking about those sinful sympathizers—those people who are also covering up stuff in their lives, and they help us be sinful sympathizers, “I would sleep around on your spouse, too, if she acted like that or if he did that. And you know, yeah, man you have to smoke weed at least three or four times a week.
That’s just what you do. You’ve got to frequent those places. And yeah, it’s good to gossip and rip people apart.” Sinful sympathizers. Then on top of that, when we play the cover up game we begin to lie. Think about it. When we’re covering, we can’t walk in the light. We can’t discover the amazing things that God has for us. We don’t know which way to go. And we begin to lie. We lie to God. Our lives are a lie. It’s like, “Oh man this watch is expensive. Oh, yeah, I’ve got it together.” We lie. We lie to God. Then we lie to others. We just live this lie and then we lie to ourselves.
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
These candidates will walk up to maybe an automotive plant and they’ll put on this hard hat and these protective goggles and they’ll try to awkwardly screw a bulb into a car or a truck. And the whole time they’re smiling for the cameras. These people aren’t really identifying with those on the assembly line. It’s an illusion. It’s a smoking mirrors thing, a façade. What’s interesting is that we accept that as fact. We say, “Okay, they’re just like me.” When really they’re just giving us an illusion.
Well, what did God do? God walked down the staircase of heaven with a baby in his arms to save us from the stairs, to be with us. Jesus crawled out of the crib, lived perfectly, died sacrificially, and rose bodily. Jesus didn’t just pose for the cameras and put on a hard hat and goggles and screw some bolts into a car or a truck. He didn’t give us an illusion of identity. He identified with us. Emmanuel, God with us. He lived on this earth to save us.
Have you ever thought about this? Jesus had a family. He had brothers and sisters. He had aunts and uncles. He knows what family drama is all about and those issues.Jesus also had a job. In the corporate world, what did they call him? They call him a carpenter. Study carpentry in the ancient days.
If you were a carpenter and you took up the trade, you were responsible from the foundation to the finish out. He understands pay disputes. He understands weather delays. Jesus is with us. How about on the emotional front? He understands stress and anxiety. He knows what it’s like for those who know him best to bolt on him in his deepest point of need. One time Jesus was so stressed, the Scripture says, he sweated drops of blood.
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
I have done that for you and that’s your assignment. You either receive me or not.” Most people of the world, we have heard the assignment, but we are busy working on our sketches. We are busy doing our own thing. We say, “Yes, I hear the assignment but you know what? I really like scientology. I really enjoy Buddhism or humanism and this is what I am going to do.”
You might think that everything is cool right now and you might feel like everything is fine. But one day, the Bible says, you are going to face the Lord. He is going to ask you for this specific assignment. Some of us are going to say, “Well, here is my sketchbook.”
God is going to look at people who matter to him and say, “You know what? You knew what I wanted you to do. You knew the choice that was hanging in the balance but instead of doing that deal and making that choice, you went your own way. You had your own way on earth, now you are going to have your own way in eternity.”
A very pluralistic and relativistic world does not like to hear that. Truth is specific, friends. It’s very specific. It’s like this morning. I told our three youngest to make up their beds and clean their rooms. That’s specific. Truth is narrow. I went down and checked the rooms and the twins had cleaned their rooms okay. I walked in E.J.’s room, and E.J. is just standing there playing some computerized game, some advanced whatever gameboy. I said, “E.J., I asked you…no, I didn’t ask you, I told you to clean your room and I told you to make your bed, very specific.
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
God knew we would say, well, give me an example! Show me the importance of rhythm. God said, I’m it. I’m your example. I made the heavens and the earth; it took me about a chapter. Six days; Genesis 1. That was kinda funny. In Genesis 2, God said, he looked at everything then he rested on the seven. We’re to get into God’s groove. We’re to feel his rhythm. Six and one; six and one; six and one; we’re made for rhythm.
I’ve got to ask you a question; are you taking a day of (Ed beats symbol) rest? God knew the tendency that we’d all have to relegate and orbit our lives around work. He knew the tendency that we would have to become obsessed with the market place; obsessed with our careers. Workaholicism is an accepted addiction. People brag like, “man, I’ve not taken a vacation in like three years”. Macho, macho man! I wanna be a macho – what is up with that? (audience chuckles) You’re out of beat; you’re out of rhythm. You’re making noise, you’re not making music. This is foreign to a lot of people. Wait a minute, Ed, you mean, you mean God wants me to recalibrate; God wants me to reconnect; God wants me to take a day of (Ed hits symbol) – yes!
Today’s message is more about your concept of God than it is a certain day. Because a lot of us have a hard time realizing, understanding the fact, that when I take day off (Ed hits symbols) – God smiles, his heart beats fast, we’re in his rhythm and we can do some great stuff between the notes. In those margins.
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
How many times have you heard that? A squillion times. And here is what is dangerous about some of the false teachers in our world today. All they do is talk about just quality of life. I’m talking about people who say they’re Christians. The quality of life. Well yes, when we meet Jesus Christ we will have quality of life, but quality emerges from what? It emerges from security. We can’t have quality until we have security. You can’t have quality, my friend, until your security is locked, until it’s down cold, until you know you’re heaven bound.
You can’t have it. So don’t talk about quality without talking about security. It is all about security. You have never locked eyes with someone who is not an eternal creature. Every person you see at the coffee shop, on the golf course, in the gym, here at Fellowship Church is an eternal being. They’re going to either heaven or hell. Hell is always growing. Number seven, hell is repentant. People are repenting in hell. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I missed it.”
It is that forever feeling of you had the chance, you had the opportunity, you had the window but you said no. And in hell we simply receive a greater measure of what we desired on this earth. If we said hell yes here on earth, we live a hell yes existence separate from God. With that forever feeling of knowing that we could have been in heaven. Hell is repentant.
Do you live a life of repentance? I’m talking to believers now, do you repent? “Lord, forgive me for me selfishness. Lord, forgive me for wanting comfort. Lord, I’m sorry that I have not built relationships with people in my life who were saying hell yes. Lord, forgive me for my attitude of not stepping up and stepping out.”
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
You know what I feel like doing? I feel like drawing for Barbara. That’s what I feel like doing. So I’m going to take my sketchpad and I’m going to sketch the student building at Florida State University. That’s what I’m going to do. Because I want to major in art and that’s what I’ll do.” Let’s say when the day the assignment hits, and let’s say when I walked in class, I didn’t have with me the short story. Let’s say I turned in my sketchbook.
Let’s say I said, “Barbara, here is my work. Here it is.” She would probably go, “Ed, I didn’t know you could draw. This is pretty decent, nice shading there, pretty good contrast, nice composition; but where is your short story?” “Well, Barbara, you know, I didn’t feel like it. I know you said that and you were specific. But I did not feel like it. I felt strongly about sketching for you.”
She would have probably picked the sketchbook up and gone, “That’s a nice sketch but, Ed, if you don’t have the paper, you get an F.” She could do that because she was the professor. It was her class. She had the credentials to make that choice and she gave me the assignment and I balked at the assignment.
Jesus has the credentials. He has the stroke to make the statements because Jesus is the Son of God. He has given us this assignment. He said, “Here is how you get to God. You get to God through me because I love you so much, I died on the cross for your sins and my father sent me to take care of this business for you.
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
It was taught by a woman named, “Barbara.” That’s the only part of her name I will give you. Let’s just call her Barbara, all right? Barbara was a young man and she was into, and I’m into health food and stuff, but she was one of these granola type chicks. She was really into the earth. I could tell on the first day because when she lifted her arm to write on the board, she had like three ponytails, one in her hair and one under this arm and one under that arm. I hate to be gross but I just wanted to describe to you what I was talking about. You can email me this week.
Barbara, though, on the first day of class—and I really love Barbara, and it must have been an easy English class because all of the athletes were in there—anyway, Barbara gave us this first assignment ever as a college freshman. It was to do this; it was to write a short story about anything you wanted to say or express about your life. I thought that was a cool assignment. She gave the assignment on a Monday and then she said we had to turn it in the following Monday. Well, you know, everybody went to their respective dorm rooms and apartments and cranked out the short story.
Let me stop right here for a second. What if I would have done this? What if I instead of writing the paper, what if I would have said to myself, “You know, I don’t feel like doing that work. I don’t feel like following Barbara’s assignment. I don’t really feel like doing that. I’m taking some art classes.
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
God wants to bless you and bless me. But he’s not gonna do it until we obey him with the first 10% as we bring it into the local church. Those things motivate me to teach and to preach and to vision cast. We should get angry when, when someone is mistreated. When someone is taken advantage of because of the color of their skin. Or because they’re, they’re poor. That, that anger should boil up inside us and cause us to do great things and beautiful things and wonderful things to serve others to help one another. So anger’s good. It’s not all bad.
Well, why do we get angry? Think for a second about, just for a second in your minds; think about the surface of the water. The surface of the water. And now see anger floating on the surface, your anger and mine. You got that picture? Surface of the water; little bit of waves; not huge swells to make you sea sick just pretty calm but there’s anger. What I do, I’ll see anger and I’ll go okay, I’m angry. Here’s the question. What pushed the anger to the surface?
We never, we never go there. What pushed you to the surface? Why am I getting angry? As I said, anger is usually your secondary emotion. Here’s anger, we like anger. Anger’s our friend. I can go off on you. I can yell at you. I can bit. I can spew that lava all over you. I can tornado you and torch you and hurricane you and snow storm you and all that stuff and then strike lightning the thunderstorm I can do all that, that’s easy. But what is driving the anger? How about fear? Could fear be driving your anger?
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
Let’s bow our hearts for prayer together. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this moment of worship where we can see your Word before us, when we can sing to you, and now Father, as we listen to your Word, I pray that you would open my heart and every heart here so that we could respond to your message, so we could apply it in every area, in every facet of our lives and Father, we give you the glory in advance for what you’re going to do. In Christ’s Name we pray. Amen.
At the end of a typical day, do you ever sit back and wonder, “Did I accomplish anything? Where did all the time go?” If you can identify with that, would you please raise your right hand. I surely can. /a recent U.S. News and World Report articIe^stateTTHat over a lifetime, check this out, the average American will spend six years eating, for some of us, a * little bit more, maybe seven or eight/five years waiting in line, (four years doing housework.
I love this one…two years unsuccessfully returning phone calls; one year looking for misplaced objects, eight months opening junk mail and six months sitting at stop lights. Folks, that causes stress, wouldn’t you agree? The National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety reports workforce in this_giiinir^^p^tsusan_esiimated $100 billion a year.
I think we would all agree that every person in this Arts Center, we live, we drive on a boulevard called busyness. We live on Busy Boulevard. We have places to go, things to do, people to see. We’re busy. We’re over-scheduled, our boat is loaded and we have anxiety, we have pressure and the popular thing to say now when someone asks you, “How is work going?”
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
See this painting right here in the center? See this girl’s eye? Look very closely because I painted a cross in her eye. No matter what you’re going through, remember, if you keep your eyes focused on the cross, you’re going through. It might be dark and it probably is. It might be difficult.
You could be lonely or whatever, with bitterness and anger swirling around you. You keep your eyes on Jesus and you’ll see that light in the darkness, and it will get brighter and brighter. Scripture says it will illuminate a path in our darkness to lead us to greatness. Our great God can and will and wants to even use those moments of betrayal in our lives, the darkness in our lives, to take us to a new level of living.
I think it’s interesting to notice something else about betrayal as we see the analogies between the lives of Joseph and Jesus. Betrayal doesn’t necessarily need to end that relationship. Now, sometimes it does. Sometimes when someone betrays you, the relationship is over and I understand that and so do you.
Yet, if you look at the life of Jesus, you read for example Judas. Anytime Judas is mentioned in the New Testament, it says, “Judas the one who betrayed Jesus,” “Judas, the betrayer.” The other disciples—what do they do at Christ’s deepest point of need? They bolted. I guess you could say they betrayed Jesus, too, didn’t they? When you read about Thomas, when you read about Simon Peter, when you read about John, it doesn’t say, “The betrayer, John,” “The betrayer, Simon Peter,” “The betrayer, Thomas.” It doesn’t say that. Why? Because the other eleven turned back to Jesus. They came back.
Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Blog, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Fellowship Church, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Ministries, Ed Young Ministry, Ed Young Pastor, ed young tv, Fellowship Church Ed Young, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Pastor Ed Young
