Description
PRONOUN
You
Ed Young
January 14-15, 2006
You might not believe this, but I can predict the future. That’s right, I can predict the future. If you have a cell phone I can predict your future with amazing accuracy. No, this is not Las Vegas; this is Fellowship Church. If you have a cell phone, let me see your cell phone for just a second, please. Oh, here we go. You guys have got some nice cell phones, man. All right. I can predict your future. All I have to do is open up a cell phone and scroll down the numbers and check out the names and make a few calls and I can discover who “they” are in your life that you talk to a lot.
I can ask them some strategic questions and I can find out all about you from they, from the people that you have on your cell phone. And I can find out about you. And more importantly, I can predict the future with amazing accuracy because of what they say about you.
What did they influence you to do that you would not have done if they hadn’t been around? Let me throw that question at you emphasizing another word. What did they influence you to do that you would not have done if they hadn’t been around?
They reflect you. And you reflect they. It’s like you’ve got some mirrors going on. If you want to see who you are, look at the “they” in your life, because “they” reflect back to you and me who we are. We have this desire for significance and value. We have this passion for props. You do, and so do I. There’s something in us; we want to stand out. We want to be unique. And the reason is we’re made in the image of God.
When God made you and me, he made us different. And being different is a good thing. If I compare myself to the wrong “they,” I lose my significance and I become one of them. If I compare myself and look at the right “they,” then I can possibly discover who I am—if the right “they” are really the “right they” and they point me vertically to God. Because for us to discover our DNA, our thumbprint, we’ve got to look to God first.
We’re not an accident. We’re not taking up space on a planet spinning into eternity. We are here for a reason. We have a purpose. We have an agenda.
The Bible says that we are the crown and glory of God’s creation. Isn’t that amazing? We’re made a little lower than the heavenly beings. So, God, through His word, tells us to be who we are.
And I say it this way: you be you. If you aren’t you, there’s going to be a hole in history, a gap in God’s creative genius. When we die, God’s not going to say, “Ed, why weren’t you more like Frank?” Or, “You should have been like Lisa.” He’s going to say, “Ed, you should have been more like you.”
Who are you? Do you know who you are? Do you understand your identity? You’re saying, “Well, yeah, man, I know who I am!” Do you really? Because I talk to so many people who are existing as opposed to living. I talk to so many people who don’t understand their significance and their uniqueness and what they have to offer in this one and only life.
You be you. Who are you? Who are “they?” I can look at the “they” in your life and discover who you are. If we hang out with the wrong “they,” we’ll end up living in the fray and will become prey. I don’t want to live in the fray. I don’t want to become prey, do you?
However, I can choose to surround myself with the right they, and the right they will give me the ability to live above the fray and to understand my uniqueness and what this life is all about.
For a long, long time I’ve said that to have a healthy self-esteem you’ve got to see yourself the way God sees you—nothing more and nothing less. In fact, I’ve written a book about this called “You.” It’s vital that we understand that. As a parent, our biggest role is to do what? To build self-esteem in the lives of our kids. We can give them something that money can’t buy. Now when I say that, parents, I’m not talking about 24/7 it’s like “I love you. You’re awesome. Just do what you want to do.”
Of course we do love our kids, but it’s a balance. There’s also discipline involved. There’s endurance involved, isn’t there, parents? But, parents, what a huge role, what a massive responsibility we have to build self-esteem in the lives of our kids.
People ask me often, “Well, Ed, what are you about? What are the goals in your life?” My goals are very simplistic, yet, I believe, profound because they’re from God. My number one goal is to introduce people into a relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m not talking about religion. I’m against religion. So is Jesus. I’m talking about a relationship. Religion is just man made systems of dos and don’ts. It’s a manmade system of “I’ve got to do this,” or “I can’t do that,” and “If I do that, I’m better than them and so I’m religious.”
No, a personal relationship is what I try to communicate. And also, I try to communicate the implications of that of following Jesus. I say following Christ is like marriage. You say, “I do,” and you don’t realize the implications of that decision until later on. I’ve been married for almost 25 years, and I’m still discovering the implications of that decision. The same is true with Jesus Christ. You receive Christ and you realize the implications of that as you walk and talk and live in sync with him.
The second goal in my life is to show people that they matter. You matter to God. You’re not an afterthought. You’re not an accident. You’re a one of a kind. You have unique gifts and abilities and aptitudes and talents that no one else has. You have something to bring to the table that I can’t bring to the table. I have something to bring to the table that you can’t bring to the table.
Well, how do I discover that? I discover that by this vertical thing. I have a passion for props. When I get my primary props from God, I’m on my way. But let me add to the definition.
A healthy self-esteem is seeing myself the way God sees me, but it also is surrounding myself with the right “they.” Because the right “they” give me the secondary props. God gives me the primary props. The right “they” gives me the secondary props. And the right “they” reflect Jesus back to me and they encourage me and support me to look vertically to Jesus.
Who are “they” in your life? You reflect they; they reflect you. If you’ve got the wrong “they” in your life you don’t know who you are. You have no clue about your identity. If you’ve got the right “they” in your life, I’ll bet cash money that you know who you are because they’re pointing you to Jesus Christ.
Do you remember back in the garden? God made Adam in his image and everything was perfect. Adam saw himself vertically the way God saw him. And God said—he was talking about his creation—“It is good… It is good… It is good….” And then he said, “It was good that I created man.”
But then he said, “It’s not good for man to be alone.”
Isn’t that great news, guys? It’s not good for man to be alone. So what did God do? God made woman. Eve became Adam’s secondary prop. His primary prop was from God. God didn’t stop after Adam and say, “Okay, there’s Adam. Okay we’ve got this vertical vibe going on and that’s it.” It’s more than that. It’s vertical. Our primary props are from God, but our secondary props happen in relationships in the right “they.”
THE SEARCH FOR SIGNIFICANCE
Well, Genesis keeps going on and on about the story of the first man and woman and I think you probably know what happened. They sinned. Well, what was going on when they sinned? I’ll tell you what was going on. For the first time they looked away from God to another source for their security. They looked away from God and, you could say, to the wrong “they” to get their props.
And once man sinned, once we fumbled the ball, once we committed the turnover, what happened? We lost our secure status with God. We lost our uniqueness. And from that moment on we’ve been on a search for significance. “Man, I’ve got a passion for props.” And we’ve looked to this, and we’ve looked to that, and we’ve looked to that and we look to this to find our props. What did God do? Did God say, “Well, too bad. You blew it. You messed up”?
No. God devised an ingenious plan so we could get reinstated, so we could understand our value and dignity that we lost in the garden. He sent Jesus Christ—something we don’t deserve—to die on the cross for our sins. And because of Christ; because of God’s love and grace; because we have a freedom of choice, we can receive that and we can be brought back into a secure status with the Lord.
This passion for props that you have and I have, this deep yearning and burning desire for significance, is all about God. That’s what it’s about. It’s about God. I want to matter. I want to have value. It’s all about God. Look up vertically. “God, I see myself the way you see me.”
Then we have to surround ourselves with the right “they” to support that. Who are “they”? Take your cell phone out and just scroll through the names and the numbers. Are they the right “they” or not? I can predict your future, you can predict mine, by looking at the names and calling numbers on our cell phones. It’s crazy. My primary props are from God and my secondary props are from others.
A while back I took a stress test. Have you ever taken one of those before? This technician led me into this room and he showed me this demonic device called the treadmill. He said, “Pastor Young, step on the treadmill, please.”
I said, “Okay.”
Then he hooked all these electrodes up with a blood pressure device, and he pushed the start button. I’m like, “Man, this is no problem. I mean we’re barely going.” I said, “This is it? Come on, come on.”
He said, “Just wait. I want you to walk, Pastor Young, until you drop, until you can’t go anymore.”
I said, “Okay. No problem. We’ll be here all day.”
Well, the intensity started increasing and I’m going, “Whoa, this is a pretty good workout, you know.” And then the incline increased! Whoa! I’m gasping for air! And minutes burn off the clock and I’m burning up calories and energy and finally he says, “Pastor Young, are you moderately tired or very tired?”
I said, “Very tired! Stop the machine!”
He pushed the stop button and there was great relief to get off the treadmill. Whoa!
Treadmills are interesting. You go to a health club and there’s a sea of treadmills. And people are on the treadmills. Some with the slow jog, some with the power walk, others running real fast. We burn all this energy up on treadmills. We burn all these calories, but we’re not going anywhere. You don’t go anywhere.
“Hey, man, I ran ten miles.”
“Really? Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. I was on the treadmill.”
When it comes to our self-esteem, when it comes to your view of you, a lot of us here, I believe, are on a treadmill. We’re just running and we’re competing and we’re comparing and contrasting our lives with others.
“Man, look at my treadmill. My treadmill is nicer than yours and I’m going faster than you are.” And we think, “Okay, the next deal, the next $100,000, the next degree, the next bed I sleep in, the next person I date, the next car, the next, the next, the next….” And then we get tired of that, but we stay on the treadmill.
And then we throw our kids on the treadmill. “You better run, son! Honey, you better run! We’re faster than them. Look! Go!” And we try to achieve through our kids what we couldn’t achieve ourselves. And we get all messed up on the status thing. I like that word “status.” We keep stats on us.
Are you tread-militant? Do you have a white-knuckle grip on the bars of the treadmill and you say, “I’m not getting off this thing. I’ll just jump from treadmill to treadmill; from treadmill to treadmill.” Maybe you’re playing treadmill hopscotch, just going from one to the next. If you stay on that, what’s going to happen? You’re going to go horizontal. You’ll die! You’ll clock out! When you’re horizontal, you can’t do very much, can you? “I’ll go run. I’ll go chase you.” But you can’t do it.
A lot of people are like that. Some of you are like that. Some of you have been thrown off the treadmill onto one knee. You’ve got injuries and scars and stuff. Put the other knee down. Look up and say, “God, I want to turn from this treadmill. I want to trash the treadmill and turn to you. God, I want to know you vertically. My primary props need to come from you, God.”
Some of you are just one decision away from making that choice. Are you on a treadmill burning and churning and wasting energy? Some of you are saying, “I’m on it, Ed. I’m horizontal.”
Don’t go horizontal because when you’re vertical, when I’m vertical, I’m quick. I can move. I can fake the camera out. I can do the spin move, and it’s unbelievable when I’m vertical. When we’re horizontal, we get our props from the wrong “they.” We’re chasing infinity. We say, “Okay, there’s some kind of standard out there and I’ll chase it.” And we’re not sure what the standard is because it changes all the time. When we chase the wrong they, we don’t know where we are or where we’re going. We can’t move.
But once we go vertical and say, “Lord, I understand now. I see myself the way you see me,” we’re vertical. And we can move around. And we have the ability to surround ourselves with the right “they” that give us secondary props that reflect Jesus and reflect us to look at Him, the ultimate reflection.
Have you ever been into a fun house with the mirrors that give you a distorted image of yourself? Those things are hilarious. When I was a kid there was one fun house where I grew up in the deep south called Cromer’s Peanuts Funhouse. There was this one mirror that gave me a distorted view of myself. And I would stand there for hours and look and it would break my body up in different parts. My head would be here and my arms would be over here and the legs there. It was a distorted reflection of myself.
I was thinking the other day, when I grew up, let’s say in the formative years from birth to 11 years of age, what if my parents had installed fun house mirrors throughout the house? What if they had replaced the regular mirrors and put in fun house mirrors? Every time I looked in the mirror I was like, “Whoa! What’s up what’s up with that?” I would come to a whacked conclusion about myself. And so would you.
When I look to the wrong “they” for my props; when I go horizontal and look to the wrong “they,” when I look into their life, into their heart, into their mirrors, I’m going to get a distorted reflection of who I am. Some of the time? No. All the of the time.
And some of you are looking to the wrong “they” and you’re becoming them and you have a distorted view of yourself. You’ve never seen the real view of you because you’ve never, ever looked up. You’re horizontal instead of vertical.
The first mirrors that our children look into are the eyes of parents, wouldn’t you say? That’s kind of scary. Think about your parents. When you looked into their eyes, what kind of mirrors did you see? What was reflected back to you? Looks of “You matter”? Looks of “You’re one of a kind”? Looks of “God made you in his image and he has an awesome agenda for your life”? If you had those reflections, you probably have a great self-esteem.
But maybe, just maybe, you grew up in a home where when you looked into your parents eyes reflected back were distorted looks; looks like “You don’t matter. You’re an accident. You’re an after thought.” And maybe you tried to find Mom or Dad and there was no mirror at all.
Now I’m not here to parent bash because all parents are fallen and fallible. But I want to show you the importance of seeing the “they.” Because the Bible says that the friends that we choose are mirrors into who we are. They’re reflections of our true selves. This is powerful.
Yes, we are to see ourselves the way God sees us. But who are “they”? Who are “they”? What did they influence you to do that you would not have done if “they” hadn’t been around?
The book of Numbers is over in the Old Testament. Numbers 13 and 14—here’s the story. The children of Israel were on the edge of claiming The Promised Land. God had released them supernaturally from Egyptian slavery. Moses and Aaron, they were the leaders. God told Moses to pick 12 spies before they took the land to do a secret reconnaissance mission on the land to check out everything. Let’s read what happened.
The spies have gone out and now they’re coming back and reporting to Big Mo what all happened. And here’s is what “they” said. Are you ready? Numbers 13:27-28, “They 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 the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.’”
Twelve spies—are you with me?—twelve spies all agreed. “It’s beautiful land, but the people in there are big and bad. The cities are fortified. We’re going to have to go toe-to-toe.”
They knew it. Everybody agreed. Here is something that you need to understand. Whenever we step out and claim land that God wants us to claim in our marriage, with our friends, around the office, on the team, at the company, at Fellowship Church; whenever we step out and take turf for God’s kingdom, the right they and the wrong they will always be right there. It’s so obvious to see the right they and the wrong they. The right they and the wrong they.
THE WRONG THEY
Well, 10 of the 12 spies become the wrong “they.” Check them out. Numbers 13:31-32, “But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.’ So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out.”
The wrong they are always negative. They always see the glass half empty. The wrong they, they’ll mess you up. We don’t have time and energy to hang out with the wrong they because when we hang out with the wrong they, we become one of them and we never discover our uniqueness. We never take the land that God wants us to take.
Now, Numbers 14:1-4. So they spread a bad report and check out what’s happened now. “Then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. All the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them …Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword?”
Let me stop here for a second. The wrong “they” are negative, and negativity is an infectious disease. The wrong “them” began to spread and grumble all this junk and funk about what God wanted them to do. And now the whole nation is like, “I can’t believe it!”
And then they say “Why?” Why? The wrong they are “Why” people. The wrong they are “Why” people. The right they are “Why not?” people. Just add a not to why. I don’t mind why, neither do you. Why is good. It’s good to question. But why not?
“Why not take the land? Why not join the church? Why not step up and step out from the wrong they to the right they? Why not build the building? Why not start the company? Why not? Why not?”
I want to be around why not people. Why not? Because why not people are the right they and they’ll give me the secondary props and point me to the primary props of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the wrong they go on in Numbers 14:3-4, “Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?’ So they said to one another, ‘Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.’” They want to vote. All in favor?
You know, I studied this in the Bible. Nearly every time they voted in the Bible, they voted wrong. Nearly every time they voted in the Bible, they voted wrong.
So we’ve got the wrong they—ten of the twelve spies. And the wrong they are the majority. The wrong they are the majority. Not the minority. The wrong they, ten of them, are the majority. The right they, Joshua and Caleb, and then also we could say Moses and Aaron, were the right they. They were in the minority.
Study World History. Usually, the majority is wrong. You see, we don’t understand this about Christianity. And let me sit down and explain it to you because this is a huge, huge principal.
God always works through a remnant in the Bible, a small group of people—the right “they.” I’m talking about the Joshua and Caleb people, the Moses and Aaron people. The majority, many times, are whack. They’re wrong.
When I went to high school, I lived the Christian life by God’s grace and power, at Spring Valley High School. It was a humongous high school; the biggest high school in South Carolina. I had the right “they” in my life. They were a small group. We were the minority. When I went to Florida State University, I had the right they in my life. We were the minority.
I would rather have a little of the right they than a lot of the wrong they. Wouldn’t you? So students, listen to me very, very carefully. You’ve got to own this and download this. Walking with Jesus Christ is a radical thing.
All these young people say, “Man, I want to step up and step out. I want to be the man or the woman.” Walk with Jesus! Walk with Jesus. He will bring the right they around you, the minority that will give you the props to look at him. And you will not believe the adventure and the excitement and the uniqueness that will occur in your life once it happens.
But we have got to realize this. At the office, the right they is in the minority. Around the neighborhood, the right they is in the minority. At the country club, the right they is in the minority. The minority. The minority. The right they.
But see, we have to choose. You know I can’t force you to do this. You’ve got to do it. God wants you to, because God wants you to be you and he wants me to be me. But to do that, we’ve got to surround ourselves with the right they.
THE RIGHT THEY
So let’s talk about the right they, because Joshua, Caleb, Moses and Aaron, man, are going to step up here.
Numbers 14:7-9, “And they spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, saying, ‘The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. ‘If the LORD is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us-a land which flows with milk and honey. ‘Only do not rebel against the LORD; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.’”
The right they and the wrong they. See the right they, Joshua and Caleb, they’re talking about the Lord. The wrong they, you don’t see God mentioned one time. “Oh, they’re big. They’re powerful. The city is fortified. We can’t do it. Ahh!”
But the right they are going, “Yeah, they are big. They are bad. The cities are fortified. But the Lord God has given us the land and it’s time to step up and step out and take the turf God wants us to take.”
Do you know who you are? I’m not playing. Just ask yourself the question. Scroll through those numbers and those names. Do you have the right they in your life.
Now, you know I’m not saying to diss the wrong they. I know a lot of people who are in the wrong they camp and I love them and I hang out with them in areas that don’t cause me compromise. But the right they will be a small group in my life. And they are a small group in your life. They give me and they give you the secondary props. And they point us to the primary props, which is a vertical relationship with Jesus Christ. Vertical, horizontal. And that’s the shape of the cross, isn’t it?
Who are the they in your life? Ask yourself these questions, and I think you’re bold enough to answer them:
Do the they in my life cause me to love God more or less?
Do the they in my life cause me to love His church more or less?
Do the they in my life cause me to have pure relationships more or less?
Do the they in my life applaud my uniqueness more or less?
Do the they in my life fire up those greed engines and envy engines more or less?
Answer those questions. Add to the list, because if there is some kind of negative response there at just some of the basic questions that you’ve asked about the “they” in my life, you’re probably running with the wrong they. But here’s the great news; God will give us the ability to bring the right they into our lives.
They reflect you. You reflect they. What did they influence you to do that you would not have done if they hadn’t been around? Surround yourself with the right they and you’ll live above the fray because that is the only way.