Description
LIFE’S TOO SHORT…
To Be Negative
Ed Young
September 28, 2003
[Before giving the message, Ed comes on stage with a cup of espresso. He takes a drink and spills espresso all over his shirt.]
Oh, man, can you believe that? I’m sorry, excuse me. [Ed calls back stage for Owen Goff, an assistant pastor at the church] Hey, Owen, do you have something to wipe this up with? I spilled this crazy coffee. Thanks. Can you believe I spilled this coffee and we just did a song called “Dirty Laundry.” [Ed is referring to a song that Rob Johnson sang before the message] Wow! I’ve got it all over me. The espresso was good, though. I’ll tell you that. Is that a horrible stain? I got this shirt at American Eagle, man, for like $24.00. This is a great shirt.
NEGATIVITY WILL SOIL YOUR LIFE
You know, looking at that stain here kind of reminds me of tonight’s subject matter, negativity, because negativity will soil your life. It will mess our lives up. It will ruin a relationship, ruin a marriage, ruin a family, ruin a company, ruin a team, and it will even ruin a church. Life is too short to be negative. But there is something about us, something in our nature that loves dirty laundry. We like to sort through it, look at it, and hang it up for everybody to see–dirty laundry.
Do you work with someone who always sees life like it is half empty? Do you live with someone that looks at life that way? Do you maybe live next door to someone like that? Are you married to someone who is negative? When you pulled into the parking lot tonight, and one of our parking crew members directed you to a certain section, did you kind of roll your eyes? If you answered yes to any of those questions, tonight’s talk is tailor-made for you. We are going to talk about how to negotiate, how to navigate around negativity. We are going to talk about how to get clean because a lot of us have this spot, this stain, on our wardrobe called negativity.
When I say the word “negativity” what comes to mind? Negativity has many different nuances. Say these words with me … [the following words are displayed on the side screens for the audience to see] slander … gossip … secrets … sarcasm … cynicism … pessimism. You guys sound like a bunch of snakes. S-S-S. Speaking of snakes, last night, I killed a big copperhead right outside of my door. I had to put out my snake eating dog before I took this snake out. [Ed is referring to an incident that was caught on tape in which his dog ate a snake]
Negativity is all about those words. It disguises itself in different terms, but we love negativity. There is negative news. There are negative people. There is negative stuff in the sports world. The media is all about negativity. But before we point the finger of blame at the media, the media is simply a reflection of what we want. They are simply peddling what we like—dirty laundry, negativity. Do you find yourself soiled? Do you find yourself wanting to get clean? Do you find yourself saying, “You know, I’m tired of this attitude. I’m tired of this demeanor that is messing me up and I just have this propensity toward negativity. I can’t really deal with it. I can’t really process it.”
CROSSED WIRES
A long while back, I drove a dilapidated Cherokee Chief. It was the third car I ever owned. This Cherokee Chief broke down all the time. It broke down so much that I had to carry some jumper cables in the back seat. One night, I parked the car beside my father’s brand new midnight blue Lincoln Continental. I got up the next morning, tried to start the Cherokee Chief, but it wouldn’t start. I said to myself, “Okay, I’ll just take out my jumper cables and use Dad’s car to jump it.” I jumped in Dad’s car, pushed the release and hood does that slow, mechanical life—really fancy. I hooked up the jumper cables to his battery, and hooked up the jumper cables to my battery. I started his car and it was purring. I go to the Cherokee Chief and I began to rev the engine, and to my horror, I watched the jumper cables catch on fire and melt into my father’s brand new midnight blue Lincoln Continental. It was terrible! You know what happened? I got the wires crossed. I put the positive on the negative and the negative on the positive. And because I did that, we had a serious meltdown.
I thought about that this week, because that is the problem in my life and that’s the problem in your life when we go negative. We get the wires crossed, don’t we? We put the positive on the negative and the negative on the positive and we have a meltdown. Life is too short to get the wires crossed. Life is too short to live in meltdown land. Life is too short to advertise and sort through dirty laundry.
COUNTRY MUSIC
Year’s ago, I use to listen to country music. I appreciate country music a lot today, but I don’t listen to it that much any more. But years ago, I did. Country music is a little bit depressing. It can be a little pessimistic. It’s the blues, isn’t it?
[Ed begins to sing some popular country songs…]
[“A Country Boy Can Survive” by Hank Williams, Jr.] “The preacher man said it’s the end of time and the Mississippi River, she’s a goin’ dry. The interest is up and the stock market’s down, and you’re only getttin’ mugged if you go downtown!”
[“Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnnie Cash] “I hear that train a coming. It’s rolling round the bend. I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when. Stuck in Folsom Prison as the time keeps dragging on.”
[“Luckenbach, Texas” by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings] “Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys. The successful life we’re livin’s got us feudin’ like the Hatfields and McCoys.”
We’re like those songs, aren’t we? A lot of us have got that Country Boy Can Survive, Folsom Prison Blues, Luchenbach, TX, dirty laundry mentality. We do. We have it. We’ve got to admit it. You get people together and they are going to go negative—negative people, negative news, negative stuff, what’s bad, the glass is half empty, the squeaky wheel gets the grease…. You know what I am saying.
THE ISRAELITES
The great thing is that the Bible talks a lot about negativity. The Bible gives us example after example about how to come clean. God tells us through the Bible says, “Hey, those of you who are soiled with negativity, I want to show you how to live a positive and awesome life. Because life is too short to be negative.” Think about it. We only have, what, five or six decades to really make a difference in this one and only life? Life is too short to destroy the decades with negativity. We’ve got to be positive.
Whenever I think about negativity, I think about a group of people who had their doctorate in negativity. I’m talking about Gods’ chosen people, the Israelites. You remember them, don’t you? The Israelites? Think about it.
They were miraculously delivered from Egyptian slavery. God parted an ocean so that they could cross on dry land. He guided them during the day by a cloud and at night, with fire. He fed them manna burgers from heaven. He gave them an incredible piece of real estate. Scriptures says right before they entered and claimed the Promise Land, God did a quick time out and said, “Moses, why don’t you go ahead and choose twelve spies from the twelve tribes of Israel and have these people go out and do a secret reconnaissance mission on the land. Check out the land. I am going to give you the land and you will claim the land because,” God said, “I am going to be with you.” So Moses said, “Yes, sir, Lord.” He picked twelve spies and they went out and checked out the land. When they came back, you won’t believe what happened. When they came back, ten of the twelve spies had that dirty laundry mentality. Their wires were all crossed and they experienced a meltdown.
Let’s pick them up in Numbers 13:27-28. You won’t believe this. The Bible says, “They (that’s ten of the twelve spies) gave Moses this account. ‘We went into the land to which you sent us and it does flow with milk and honey. Here is its fruit. But, (those transitional phrases will mess you up) the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large.’”
NEGATIVITY RUNS IN PACKS
Negativity always runs in packs. You show me someone who is negative around your office and I can look at their friends, and their friends will be negative, too. You show me someone coaching a team who is negative, and I’ll show you that the teammates around this person are also negative. Negativity breeds negativity. Negativity always runs in packs.
They gave this account to Moses. “Yeah, Moses, the land is pretty awesome. Here’s its fruit, but, man, the cities are fortified. The people are powerful. The inhabitants are very large.”
That’s what ten of the twelve spies told Moses. These ten spies should have kept their negativity just between themselves and Moses, but they couldn’t. Negativity just begs to be shared. Negativity says, “Oh, look at this dirty laundry!” Why do we have this tendency, this proclivity toward negativity?
There are a couple of reasons. One reason is that a lot of us are lazy. Whenever I get lazy, I get negative. Whenever I say, “Well, I don’t want to step up. I don’t want to take the risk. I want to go ahead and play it safe. I want to live in the mundane,” you watch. Ed Young will get negative. You are the same way. Also, (I’ve discovered this all by myself) when I’m negative, I’m fearful. That’s why I wrote a book called Know Fear. For about 300 pages, all it talks about is the fear that we deal with. We get fearful.
The unknown: “The cities are fortified. The people are very large. I’m fearful, so I better not do what I should do. I better not claim the land that God has given me, because you know, I might have to battle something. I might need some discipline and some real endurance.”
God told the Israelites, “Hey, I’m going to be with you. I’ll give you the land. Go out and claim it.” And God is saying the same thing to you and me. If we could see the real estate that God has in store for us, we would not believe it. He is going to be with us. He is going to give us the courage and the strength to do it, so we should not cower in fear. We shouldn’t get lazy. We should step up and be like Joshua and Caleb—Joshua and Caleb were the two of the twelve who were courageous. They were two of the twelve who were visionary. They were two of the twelve who were positive. If you keep reading, you see that Joshua and Caleb said, “Hey, guys, we can take these people. God has given the land.” They stood up.
Negative people, though, will mess you up. Let’s keep reading. Look at Numbers 13:32-33, “And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored.”
[Ed sings a line from a song sung at the beginning of the service, “Dirty Laundry”] “Kick ‘em when they’re up, kick ‘em when they’re down, kick ‘em in the shin, kick ‘em all around.”
NEGATIVITY STARTS AND STOPS WITH YOU AND ME
The West Nile Virus, have you heard about that? That’s stuff is scary, isn’t it? The AIDS Virus, Ebola virus, SARS—all this stuff will take you out. Those diseases, though, pale in comparison to negativity. Negativity is a highly infectious disease and it spread among the Israelites. Negativity, though, starts and stops with you and me. When we hear some negative junk, if we see dirty laundry and we stop it, it will not spread. But what do we do? We just spread it because there is just something about dirty laundry that we like.
[Numbers 13:32] “And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said,” look at this last part of verse 32, “’The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.’” The Amalekites were there, the Hittites were there, the Jebusites were there, the termites were. [Laughter] All these “ites” were there. Look at what they say in verse 33, “We seemed like grasshoppers.” That’s hilarious! The Evil One can take our mouths and, with negativity, make them sound like megaphones. That’s the power. The Evil One can make negativity sound like a megaphone. The ten other spies spread a bad report. They began to exaggerate stuff. When I’m negative, when you’re negative, what do we do? We exaggerate.
“Oh, there’s no way our company can do that. That client base over there, we could never penetrate that!”
“That church could never start in Grapevine. That’s pasture land. 160 acres—- you can’t buy that.” [This is in reference to the land that Fellowship Church is built on and the negative attitude that some people had about building the church where it is when the building began]
NEGATIVITY IS LOBBED AT LEADERS
Isn’t it amazing how we have this proclivity toward negativity, to see the glass is half empty, to be the squeaky wheel? They began to spread negativity. It began to infect a lot of people. Look at Numbers 14:2, “All of the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron.” It started with just the spies having a conversation with Moses, but it spread until all of the Israelites grumbled against who? Moses and Aaron. Whenever you lead, people will grumble.
All of us are leaders in certain areas, because leadership is all about influence. If you are a parent, you are a leader. If you are married, you are a leader. If you are a manager, you are a leader. If you are a coach, teacher or whatever, you are a leader. People will grumble about you. That’s just the way it is. Grumbling, backbiting and negativism will happen. The deal is not that happens. The deal is what do we do with it when it does. That’s the situation.
[Ed goes back to the verses] “All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, ‘If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this desert!’” Are you believing this? Now they are going retro! These days everything is going retro, “Back in the day.” The Israelites were doing that.
Look at Numbers 14:3-4. They are entering the moan zone here. “Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?”
They were saying, “We’d rather be in slavery, Moses and Aaron, than here.” Negativism always leads to slavery. It will become your master. You will become a slave to it and you will never get out of its bondage until you do what God wants you to do.
[Verse 4] “And they said to each other, ‘We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
Not God. They were saying, “We should choose a leader. We know more than God. Let’s kind of move God out of the way. You know, God, when you picked Moses, you kind of didn’t know what you were doing there. So we will choose a leader and then we’ll go back.”
It’s so sad. It’s so tragic, because check this out—all of the Israelites who were in the moan zone, all of the Israelites who were into the dirty laundry thing, all of the Israelites who were singing “A Country Boy Can Survive,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and “Luckenbach, TX”— all those people died off. For forty years, they had wandered in the desert. They didn’t claim the land. They just wandered around and around and around. All of them died off and take a wild guess at who led the new Pepsi Generation, the new bunch of Hebrews into the Promise Land? You guessed it—Joshua.
Negativity. The Bible is so amazing and so penetrating and so powerful in its usage of negativity. It uses people who are positive and people who are negative to show us how to live.
JONAH
Remember Jonah? What a life! God said, “Jonah, go to Ninevah.” Jonah said, “No.” And a fish swallowed him. The fish barfed him back up on land and gave him a second chance—God did. So Jonah went to this land, this city, and he preached. And the entire nation repented and turned toward God. Now, one would think that Jonah would be giving people a high five, “Yeah! Oh, it was incredible! I was used by God in a great way!” Well, the Bible records God’s man, Jonah, sitting on a hillside in the “moan zone.” He was sitting on a hillside sorting through dirty laundry, praying a prayer like this, “God, go ahead and nuke the Ninevites. I can’t believe it! They have turned towards you.”
OUR OWN DIRTY LAUNDRY
Why did Jonah do that? I’ll tell you why he did it. He did it because, so often, we are negative in people’s lives about the stuff that we have problems with in our own lives. See, the Ninevites had the same thing happen to them that happened to Jonah. God gave them a second chance. And Jonah probably didn’t like that, so he just began to rip them apart and cut them down. It’s really something how much we like to do that. We will pick out that one thing in another person’s life that we struggle with, that negative thing in their life that we are negative about in our own life.
DON’T CHASE DOWN NEGATIVITY
Remember Nehemiah? Nehemiah is a great example because Nehemiah tells us that people who are negative have no vision whatsoever. The Israelites had no vision, no endurance, no discipline. Nehemiah was doing something that people said could not be done. He was rebuilding city walls around Jerusalem. What did he do? Did he deal with the dirty laundry? People began to throw rocks at him and go negative on him. They were cynical and pessimistic. What did he do? He just kept building the wall. He was up there building the wall while people were hurling insults at him. You mess up when you chase down negativity. Don’t chase negativity down. You are wasting your time.
Don’t think, “Oh, I better talk to this person at the office. They are saying this about me. I better talk to this person around the neighborhood. I better chase this person down.”
You are wasting your time. Do what Nehemiah did. Pray and stay above the fray. Stay at your task, stay at your purpose, stay at your goals, stay at your focus and God will take care of the rest. Negative people who go after leaders are like poodles barking at freight trains.
Maybe you’re asking, “Well, Ed, is there any hope for me? I’m dealing with this negative person or I’m struggling with negativity in myself. Is there any hope for me? I’ve got this stain on my wardrobe, Ed.”
COME C.L.E.A.N.
Yes, there is hope for all of us, because we can come clean. We can become pure before God. Here’s how we come clean. Do you have a pen or pencil? Take it out and write this down on a piece of paper or maybe your worship guide, C-L-E-A-N, clean. Fellowship Church is the church of the acrostic, you know that. A little humor there.
CONNECT
“C” stands for connect. We’ve got to connect and we have got to come clean with the dirty laundry. So, as we connect, we have got to understand who we run with. We’ve got to take a long look at our relationships.
Let me say something about relationships that I have told you before, but please don’t miss this. There are three types of relationships that most of us have. The first kind is the kind that will drain your battery dry. I’m talking about energy suckers. I truly believe the Evil One puts about ten energy sucking people around every effective Christian because he wants to keep us neutralized and totally drained out by these energy suckers. How do you define an energy sucker? Well, if you see somebody coming and you go, “Oh, no. Not again. This person is going to drain my battery dry,” then you know what an energy sucker is. You don’t have any juice anymore to start the car; to do the stuff that God wants you to do. I’m not saying that you should never have any energy suckers in your life. I have them and you have them. Most of us have too many and that’s why we struggle with negativity.
Another kind of relationship we have, a second one, would be those people who are the neutral people. Neutral people give you some juice but they also suck some. So, they are kind of neutral. It’s kind of a level playing field.
The third kind of relationships are those relationships like I experienced last Sunday afternoon—the replenishing re-charging, re-calibrating relationships. I mean, when you hook up to these people, you cruise. There are people who just take the stain of dirty laundry away.
After I speak five times, I am drained emotionally. I’ve told you this before. It’s weird. You can’t understand it unless you do it. It’s a freaky thing. Last Sunday, I was tired. I was just kind of lying in bed and going, “Oh, man, I just feel down.” So I thought, “You know what? I will call a friend of mine who is an encourager.” This guy is positive and uplifting. He’s not this phony baloney “Hey, yeah, you’re great and the world is perfect” kind of uplifting. He’s the real deal. So I called him up and after about fifteen minutes of talking to him, I was ready to go. That’s what I am talking about. Do you have replenishing people in your life? Do you have neutral people in your life? Do you have energy sucking people in your life? Is there a balance there? Connect.
LOOK
“L” stands for look. We’ve got to look at the past, the present and the future. We’ve got to look at the past. Look at what Jesus Christ has done for us in the past. He died on the cross for our sins. He rose again! Yeah! That’s why we have a positive life. Look at the present. Look what he is doing in your life. Look at the future. Look what he is going to do. [Ed holds up his Bible] I mean, I’ve read the last page and guess what? We win! And that should cause us to be positive. Every situation I face, I should look at the situation through God’s eyes. We win. I’m living forever with the Lord. Look at the past, present and the future.
ENJOY
“E” stands for enjoy. We’ve got to enjoy stuff. Do you enjoy stuff? We should. Everything we have is a gift from God. And people who are spiritually mature, I’ve seen this, they enjoy stuff. They are appreciative of stuff. They say, “God, I thank you for this breath I can take. I thank you just to be able to speak to others, to listen, to hear, I thank you for being a part of a great church. God, I want to just thank you. I want to enjoy life.” You show me someone who is positive, and I’ll show you someone who is thankful. Conversely, you show me someone who is negative, and I’ll show you someone who is ungrateful. The Israelites were ungrateful. They had seen major league acts of God—deliverance from slavery, parting an ocean, a cloud in the sky, a GPS system at night, Manna Tacos, water coming out of rock. I mean, come on… But no, they were negative, in the moan zone, and ungrateful.
ACTIVATE
“A” stand for act or action you might say. We’ve got to activate our lives. We’ve got to do some positive things. For example, I’ve read that it takes ten positive statements to negate one negative statement. Isn’t that wild? Do you remember negative stuff said about you? I do. Think back in our past and think about words people said. I mean parents, coaches, teachers, and friends.
Maybe they said, “You’re too fat, too slow, not big enough, you made that?” All this stuff. “You’ll never amount to a thing.”
We remember that stuff. It sticks to us like Velcro. That’s the soil, that’s the stain of negativity. To reverse it, we as believers should be the most positive people out there. So, we should look to compliment, we should look to be positive in every situation. Not this false phony baloney stuff. But the real stuff. Show appreciation, show action because of who we serve and because of whose team we are on.
NAVIGATE
“N” stands for navigation. We have got to navigate through negativity. I almost said around negativity, but we are going to deal with negativity. Here is something I have discovered about the Christian life. It’s very important. For example, when God wants to build more patience in my life, do you think he puts me around patient people and patient situations? No. You know what God does? He takes Ed, this impatient guy, this impatient Senior Pastor, and says, “Bam! Ed, there’s about four or five situations that will cause you to be impatient. But, if you follow me, defer to me, allow me to live my life through you, and do the stuff I have talked about in Scripture, then you can use these impatient situations as a stepping stone, as a part of maturity to grow and have me fully formed in your life.” That’s what God tells me. So, when God wants to build positivity in your life and mine, he will put us around people sometimes who sing “A Country Boy Can Survive,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Luckenbach, TX,” and “Dirty Laundry” 24/7.
And it’s so tempting, isn’t it, to go negative? But God is using it as a test. He is using it as a tool to build us, to build us up so we can glorify him. That’s a great thing about God.
Is your life like this shirt—a ruin? Is it soiled with negativity? We can take the stuff and get it clean by God’s grace and mercy and power. Because: Life is too short to be negative.