Adult Children

“Baggage”

1/14/18

Ed Young

Every time we take a trip, we pack our bags and load up our luggage. When we arrive back home, we empty the bags and put them away. But how often in life do we refuse to put the ‘baggage’ away? The fact is, too often, we carry baggage from our past that weighs us down and keeps us from experiencing the freedom God wants us to have. In this message, Pastor Ed Young helps us examine the baggage we carry, and he teaches us what it takes to unload the luggage and instead allow God to transform and change us so we can experience true and lasting freedom.

Transcript

ILLUS: You know, every time I look at a SUV, especially like this one with all of the luggage on top, I think about a vacation that Lisa and I took years ago with our family. Our adult children were children then. The twins were a year, EJ was three, Lee Beth was eight. We went to the Hyatt Hill Country in beautiful San Antonio, Texas, to Sea World for a vacation. And I found out that it's impossible to take kids on a vacation. I found out you never call it a vacation when you take your kids. It's a family outing. So let's just lose that word. Family vacation? No, it's a family outing. Because when the kids are small, when you get back from the vacation, you need a vacation. Am I right?

Well, here's what happened. We had this big SUV, I think we had a Suburban at the time and four kids, so there was no way the luggage would get in the car. So we piled the luggage on top of the car. We had these cheap luggage carriers, and it was like a CrossFit workout just to put all the paraphernalia on top of the car. It was unbelievable. It was like in August, triple-degree heat, and I had to take like two showers after I packed the car.

So we all loaded up and we headed out to beautiful San Antonio, Texas, to see Sea World. When we pulled up, the bellman at the hotel just stood there and he was like this. He said, "I've been doing this for eight years," he said, "I've never seen this much luggage from one family on one car in my life." That started our vacation.

So during the vacation, we had a good time. We had some conflict, arguments, you know, because everyone's in close quarters, but it was good, it was good, really good. We were there for awhile, and then it was time to go back to Dallas. I was so excited. I got up early, went through the same drill and packed the car, and loaded up all of the baggage. I mean, we had portable playpens and strollers and Power Ranger duffle bags, we had it all. And I packed it up, and we headed out to the big D.

When we turned into our neighborhood, I was like, “Hallelujah!” I said to myself, “I will never do this again.” I turned into our neighborhood, there's our house. Yes! Turned in the driveway, and instinctively, I pushed the garage door opener. And in my excitement, in my elation, I forgot about the baggage on top of the car. I pressed the gas, and boom! Drywall flying, boards, nails going everywhere. I ripped off the top of our garage. I was like, “Oh my goodness. I forgot, just for a second, the bags were up there!” Tore the garage to smithereens, and it was expensive to fix.

I think if the truth were known, a lot of us here would sort of identify with that story. A lot of us here have some serious family baggage. We're carrying around a lot of baggage on top of our lives; yet, most of us are unaware that we have the baggage. We're just sort of used to it. Now, we think it's normal, we think it's healthy. Yet, if we stop and look, we see the carnage, we see the destruction that the baggage is causing. And also, we're discovering if we really take a look at our lives, that it's expensive. And if we keep on driving the way we've been driving, if we keep on forgetting about the baggage, we'll keep on destroying stuff, messing stuff up, and it'll be very, very expensive. Life is too short to go through life like that.

Adult Children

“Will-Barrow”

January 21, 2018

By Ed Young

Life comes with baggage. Some of the baggage is emotional. Some is relational. Some may be spiritual. But no matter what the baggage looks like, we all have some. Why we carry it and how we carry it may vary. But we all carry it. In this message, Pastor Ed Young helps us take a look at the baggage we carry. And more than that, he helps us to come to a point of handing it all over and experiencing true freedom in Jesus!

Transcript

It’s a pretty sweet SUV, isn't it?  Pulling a boat?  Well, the boat’s next week.  You don’t want to miss the boat story because it’s something that we need to deal with.  If this is your first time here you might be going, why in the world do you have an SUV on stage?  I mean, why the car on stage?  Well, last week I told a little story about what happened.

Well last week I told a little story about what happened when our adult children were children.  We took a weeklong vacation in beautiful San Antonio Texas.  Really, though, when you take little kids, I said last time, on a vacation, it's not a vacation it's a family outing.  OK? And many times after the family outing the parents need a vacation, so don't call it a vacation.  Anyway, we had and we have so many kids we had to pack the car.  We packed the suitcase and luggage on top of the car using a luggage rack.  So we finally made it back to Dallas and I drove into our neighborhood.  And I was like, oh man this is so great to finally be home again.  Our driveway was on an incline so as I approached the driveway and garage I instinctively pressed the garage door opener.  The garage door opened.  Then you have to kind of, you know, mash the accelerator, kind of push the accelerator kind of strong because you have to climb up this incline to get into the garage.  Well, in my excitement I forgot about the fact that we had these giant piles of luggage on top of our SUV.  So when I pressed the accelerator we flew into the garage and I heard this explosion!  Drywall, and Nels, and bags were everywhere.  Lisa and I looked at each other and we go, the luggage!  The garage!  Oh my gosh!  We got out of the car and assessed the damage and it was very, very costly.  I had forgotten about the luggage.  I had forgotten about the fact that it wouldn't fit into our garage and it caused a lot of destruction.

Last week we looked at each other and we said, hey, we can't change.  We said we all have baggage, we all have family baggage we are lugging around on our lives.  And if we stop,  and look around we see some of the destruction, some of the collateral damage that this bag which has caused.  We admitted that.  And for some of us it was like a wake-up call.  For some of us it was the first time we had ever really thought about the baggage that we are carrying around in our lives.  We also established the fact that every one of us is dysfunctional.  We have dissed God's function for our lives in some way, shape, or form.  Oh, my family is dysfunctional.  We are all dysfunctional now, I understand that.  True dysfunction can be traced all the way back to the origin of our family of origin, Adam and Eve, because in the soils, in the toils of the Garden, Adam and Eve did their own thing their own way.  They wanted to be the boss.  They wanted to be like God.  They wanted to simply say, you know what God? I'm going to run the show.  You know what, God? I'm going to drive the vehicle.  You know what God? I am going to have a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel of my life.  Yeah, there are dashboard warnings.  Yeah, the fuel light is on.  Yeah, I have a couple of flat tires, but I'm going to do what I'm going to do.  And the Bible calls that attitude sin.  It's our depravity, it's our dysfunction.  We diss the function that God has for our lives.  God wants us to function in a certain way, the best way, as a student, as a husband or wife, grandparents, as a manager, as a CEO, as a coach, as a nurse, as a physician.  God wants us to function in a certain way.  Yet, too many of us carry around bags of dysfunction.  We forget we have baggage.  The baggage has caused destruction and we don't realize the cost of it.  Dysfunction.

Adult Children

“Dive Deep”

January 28, 2018

By Ed Young

At one point or another, we have all dissed God’s function for our lives. Thus, we all have a level of dysfunction in our lives. However, to get the most out of the life God has given us, we must do more than recognize the effects of our dysfunction. In this message, Pastor Ed Young helps us dive deep to discover the cause of our dysfunction, and he helps us realize what it takes to experience true freedom and continue pursuing God’s purpose for us.

Transcript

ILLUS: I tell you, being in this car brings back memories of a boating trip I took years ago.  I was with a good friend of mine and we were launching a boat like this one in a beautiful, beautiful lake.  This lake had the coffee-black water, the lily pads, the moss.  We’d seen some crazy creatures on the banks.  We’d seen the water moccasins, the nutria, we’d seen the big alligator snapping turtles, and just kind of a swampy lake.  We launched the boat and we’re motoring across this body of water.  <boat motor sound effects>  You know how you do when you’re in a boat.  You can look around <boat motor>.  All of a sudden… <boat motor… poowsh!>  we hit something.  Now that’s a common occurrence, especially in kind of a swampy lake, to hit something.  And I thought to myself, we’ll just keep going.  But everything stopped.  So we rocked the boat back and forth, nothing happened.  We paddled, nothing happened.  Cranked the motor up, nothing happened.  I thought, man, we’re stuck.  Something is up.  So I decided to do something and I acted like it was no big deal but in my mind I was thinking, <shuddering sound effect>.  I curled my toes over the transom of the boat, dove into the coffee-black water, and I swam up underneath the hull of the boat feeling around for what was messing with us.  I was trying to feel around and find that object or something that was keeping us stuck.  And I touched it and you think, is it a snake?  Is it - I don't know - an alligator?  No, no, no!  Wow!  It’s a massive stump.

This stump had literally impaled our boat.  We were like a floating shish kabob.  It had penetrated the fiberglass into the Styrofoam so the more we rocked the boat, the more we tried to get off of this, we were boring a giant hole in the hull of our boat.   Had we continued doing what we did we would have sunk.  But we were stuck out in the middle of this beautiful lake because of an underwater hindrance, this stump.

Maybe, just maybe I just described your life.  Maybe, just maybe, I mean you don’t look like it but maybe you’re stuck.  Maybe you want to move along and you know you should function in a different way but because of your dysfunction and the reason we all have dysfunction is because we dissed God’s function for our lives.  Because of our dysfunction, because of your dysfunction, to personalize it, you’re stuck.  You can’t move.  And you think, well, maybe it’s due to my family of origin.  Maybe it’s due to my marriage.  Maybe it’s due to the cards I’ve been dealt.  Maybe it’s due to my genetics.  I’m stuck.  And you’re trying to get off of this stump but it’s not working.

I’m in a series called Adult Children.  We’ve been saying around here that we treat our children like adults and yet when we become adults we act like children.  Children learn at surprisingly young ages how to live in Denial.  This was a Denali but we had someone to change it because we live in Denial.  And growing up, a lot of us lived in denial and it served us well.  Now that we’re adults we still are in denial.  Maybe you grew up in a family where divorce occurred.  Maybe you grew up in a family where you had an addict.  Maybe you grew up in the family of a narcissist.  Maybe you grew up where there was some sort of emotional, physical, or even sexual abuse.  I’m here to tell you that those issues can keep us from cruising.  Those issues can cause so much commotion, so much mayhem that we can’t really do what God wants us to do because we haven’t dealt with those underwater character stumps that have us stuck.  So what is that character stump?  What is that thing in your life?  Are you man enough, are you woman enough, to curl your toes over the transom of the boat to dive down deep in the murky, black, critter-infested water and feel that stump?  To name that stump?  I know it’s weird.  I know it’s kind of freaky but I want to challenge you to do so.

Adult Children

“Take Out the Trash”

February 4, 2018

By Ed Young

When it comes to dysfunction and character defects, we all deal with them. They infiltrate our lives at a young age, only to manifest themselves years later. Too often, we reserve ourselves to the fact that we just have to deal with them. But God has something better for us! In this message, Pastor Ed Young shows us what it takes to get rid of the dysfunction in our lives. It’s all about learning how to take out the trash.

Transcript

ILLUS: Seeing this trash up here reminds me of moving up to Dallas/Fort Worth 27 years ago to kick off Fellowship.  Lisa and I drove up, I like to say, with 1 car, 1 kid, 1 dog.  We were in a rental house and we started this church with 30 families.  We had no idea it would turn into what it’s turned into but what an amazing journey.  Anyway, when we moved from our rent house to this new house we rented the ubiquitous U-Haul trailer.  We were excited about that.  So we were packing all this stuff in the U-Haul, throwing all the stuff in the U-Haul.  And there were like, I guess five or six bags, trash bags, full of clothes, I thought, left in our garage.  We had some people to help us move.  I was the last one there, sweating profusely.  So I’m looking at these clothes, I’m just tossing them.  I’m kind of angry, you know when you get tired, like uh!  Like that.  I’m just tossing them in the U-Haul.  And I’m tossing, I’m tossing, I’m tossing.  I failed to remember that one of the trash bags was full of a week of trash.  And we had had this massive chicken dinner the night before, feeding the people helping us, etc.  So I threw all of this in the back of the U-Haul, locked it up, drove the U-Haul to beautiful Irving, Texas.  We were living in a little neighborhood at the time, Hackberry Creek.  Drove up to our home in Hackberry Creek, parked the U-Haul trailer, it was on a Friday afternoon.  So we didn’t really start the moving process into our new house until the following Monday.  Because, you know, Saturday/Sunday I have to work so, you know.  That trash sat out there in the boiling sun in that U-Haul trailer for days.

So, we get up bright and early on Monday.  Lisa is so excited to move into the new house, so am I.  And I go to unlock the U-Haul trailer… <blowing sound effect>  and I’m talking about the smell singed the nostril hairs.  It like blew you back.  I thought, is there a dead body in there or something?

Trash stinks, doesn’t it?  It has an odor, it’s rotten.  I read this past week that American’s produce 4.3 pound of trash a day.  Think about that, a day. And if you eat healthy, if you eat gluten-free and organic and, I don't know, Paleo or whatever, you do all that you will produce over 117,000 pounds of trash.  I’m talking about you!  You!  So turn to your neighbor and say, “You’re trashy, man.”  Yeah.  And that’s some serious trash talk, is it not?

So we hung out in the house in Irving.  Really loved it.  There’s no place like Irving.  All roads lead to Irving.  It’s amazing how many people I meet, “Oh yeah, I started in Irving,” or “I’m from Irving.”  Lee Harvey Oswald, Irving.  Jack Ruby, Irving.  The Dallas Cowboys used to be in Irving.  Man, I wish the Cowboys hadn’t moved all the way out there.  I mean that’s great, I love Arlington, but come on!  What happened to Dallas and Irving?  Where there is no vision, the Bible says, the people perish.

Anyway, the Bible also says be fruitful and multiply to Lisa and I began to multiply.  We had three more children, we had the twins in Irving.  Brought them home and all of that.  So when you have twins and especially when you have 3 kids in diapers under 3 years of age, when you have that you’re going to produce a lot of trash.  I mean, a bunch of trash.  Now the houses were pretty tight where we were on our street.  I could, like, reach out and touch the fence of my neighbor.  Well, many times at night I’d put it off, procrastinate guys, as far as taking out the trash.

Adult Children

“Unleashed”

2/11/18

Ed Young

God wants all of us to experience a life free from the collateral damage caused by unforgiveness. Yet, so often, we resign to being tethered to anger and resentment because of what happened in our past. In this message, Pastor Ed Young unpacks the power of being unleashed and shows us how the unbelievable nature of forgiveness is just one step away!

Transcript

ILLUS: A while back I was putting gas in my car, which is something that everyone does. And while I was gassing up my car, I looked and I saw a man with a giant Doberman on a leash, and he was walking across this busy intersection. And I watched this happen while I'm, again, at the gas tank. And the guy walked right near me, hooked up his Doberman to a bench that was cemented in the ground in front of the convenience store, then he walked in.

So I'm still at the car checking the Doberman out, because I love dogs, and for some reason, something startled this dog. I don't know what happened, but the dog began to freak. And when he freaked, he bolted toward the traffic. He pulled with such force that it tore out the park bench from the cement. This giant Doberman was dragging this park bench, sparks flying, right toward the sea of traffic.

I thought to myself, “I'm going to see a collision that's going to be absolutely epic. It's going to be horrible!”

I was closing my eyes, but I had one eye open, and the cars were stopping, they were skidding, horns were blaring. And I watched this dog weave in and out of traffic ,slinging this park bench into the vehicles, totally destroying like three cars.

Is that amazing or what? I mean, I still can't believe I saw it. And in fact, several days later, the paper did a story on it and I need to get a copy of it. It happened in Colleyville of all places. If you're in Miami or southwest Florida, you're like, “Where's that?”

Well, I know it sounds like that old town, Hooterville. Remember the Green Acres show back in the day? How many people remember Green Acres? This is going to age you, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yup. You know my father grew up with Eb. You remember Eb, one of the characters? Yeah, Tom Lester, what a great guy. Spoke at our church many times. But, it happened in Colleyville.

So today I want to talk to you in this last session of Adult Children. I want to talk to you about something that swims against the current of every desire we have. I want to talk to you about something that is totally and completely unnatural. I want to talk to you about something that ruins lives, that wrecks marriages, that blows up companies, and schools, and sports teams. I want to talk to you about unforgiveness. Unforgiveness.

Now when I just throw that term out, you're like, “Whoa!” Well, I think if the truth were known, if we really got down to brass tacks, I think a lot of us are like that Doberman. A lot of us are leashed up to unforgiveness. And we're dragging, that's right, not a park bench, but people sitting on a park bench behind us. And it's causing major collateral damage in our lives.

Are you like that Doberman? Could it be that you're leashed up to unforgiveness? Or whoever's on the park bench, maybe it could be a parent. Maybe it could be a teacher. Maybe it could be a coach. Maybe it could be someone who took advantage of you. Maybe it could be someone who hurt you. Maybe your ex-spouse is on this park bench. Who are you dragging around? Who, that's right, who, is sitting on your park bench?

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