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FC TRUE FELLOWSHIP STORIES

Episode 1

Ed Young

March 18, 2001

It’s amazing to look at all the documentary shows out there.  You know those shows that go behind the scenes and lift out the facts among all of the fiction.  We are drawn to them: reality, nothing contrived, nothing made up, no smoking mirrors, the real deal.  We want to watch real people wrestle real animals.  We want to watch real cops arrest real bad guys.  We like reality.  I guess that is why a show like “The Crocodile Hunter” is so popular.  That is why a show like “Headlines and Legends” are really the rave, or shows like MTV Cribs, and you can go on and on.  But I have to say my most favorite of all the documentary type reality based shows has to be “E: True Hollywood Story.”  I mean, that is real journalism, isn’t it?  No smoking mirrors, nothing contrived, the real deal.  I love to watch that.

A couple of months ago, I was thinking you know, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do the “E, Hollywood Story” thing here at Fellowship?  I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could take people who attend Fellowship and do brief biographies on their lives and to see what has occurred over their spiritual pilgrimage.  Then my mind rushed to the Bible.  I thought to myself that the Bible has been doing this for thousands and thousands of years.  You want the real deal?  Here it is, nothing contrived, nothing manipulated, no smoke and mirrors.

I want to ask you just for a second to do something for me.  I want to ask you to close your eyes and to use your imagination.  Imagine your life if you could live a no-holds barred existence.  Imagine if you could try and taste and test every vice and venue this whole world has to offer.  Just think about that.  You got a picture of it?  Now look at me.  Over the next few moments that remain during this worship service hour, we are going to rub shoulders with a couple of people who had that ability.  One, in a limited sense, the other, in an unlimited manner.  We are going to follow their pursuit of pleasure.  Basically, we are going to see where it ends.

I know all of us here are in a search.  Some of us are just beginning a search, a few here are in the midst of a search, and it has been our prayer, as we have been preparing for this series, that many during the course of this series would end their search.  For there are people out there who are searching, who are looking for the meaning of life.

Years ago, my wife and I met a young woman and her children who began attending Fellowship.  Little did we realize, though, how intense and how focused this woman’s search was.  Let’s look behind the scenes at her true story.

Video of Roxanne Phillips

Ed:  Roxanne, tell me about your spiritual pilgrimage in your life.

Roxanne:  Well, Ed, I was raised in a Christian home and my dad died when I was very young, when I was seven.  At seven, I used to have conversations with God and say, “Well, I guess you are my father now.”  I had a real close relationship as a youngster.  After awhile, after a series of real difficult things in my life, I was filled with a void, I was lost, I was trying to do it on my own.  I didn’t think I was important enough for Him to deal with.  I was just a little nothing in His life.  So I tried all solutions, drugs, alcohol, men, you name it.  None of it worked.  In fact, that hole was getting worse and worse.  You know, I met Gene on Valentine’s Day, and Gene seemed to be a solution, a financial security.  Gene lived in Dallas, and that is what brought me to Dallas.

Ed:  So you moved to Dallas in what?

Roxanne:  1986.

Ed:  ’86.  Here, your new husband is an extremely successful businessman and you are living at this time, Roxanne, a life that every woman would dream to live.

Roxanne:  Oh, yes.  We were living in this incredible house, driving a Rolls Royce with more diamonds than a girl could have any use for, closets full of designer clothes and there was a vacuous, just emptiness inside of me, and I was just full of despair.  I didn’t know why I was unhappy.  I started using drugs and alcohol again, one for courage because I was very insecure still, that insecure little girl who was seven and lost her dad, was still insecure.

Ed:  So, you turned to the drugs and alcohol to try and fill that vacuum, you are telling me.

Roxanne:  I couldn’t fill that vacuum.  There weren’t enough clothes at Neiman Marcus.  There weren’t enough jewels.  There was nothing.  I was so empty and Gene and I ended up getting divorced. We remarried again.  I just couldn’t get it right.  I just didn’t know what.  All this time, God was still working in my life doing amazing things.  One day, at Fellowship, when I came in really hung over, and on the stage for the drama, you had the Vietnam Memorial Wall.  My dad’s name was on that because he was one of the first men to be killed over there in ’65.  I knew in that sermon, it was as if God were talking just to me in that room.  I raised my hand to be baptized and was baptized, but still was relying on my own solutions after that, for a couple of years after that.

It got to point in my life, I was in such despair, even though I was baptized, I was still drinking.  I got to a point where I knew my life was empty, just so empty.  There was nothing I couldn’t buy, not a drug, not a dress; there was nothing I couldn’t obtain materially.  I had beautiful children.  I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  I attempted suicide.  I was in this house.  People driving by, I was thinking how ironic.  They must drive by, look at this house, and see the Rolls Royce and think these people are the happiest people in the world.  They have everything.  And there I was in my bowling alley length closet, curled up in a ball wanting to die.

I wrote a suicide letter, had all these pills lined up, and Alicia, one of the nannies who was working part time for us, who brought us and all the nannies to Fellowship was on the third floor practicing a dance routine.  She had asked if she could borrow the third floor because we have plenty of room.  I had my door double-bolted.  No one in thirteen years has knocked on my door when I have a “Do not disturb” sign on it.  She was crying and carrying on, and I had already laid out the pills and written the suicide letter and she was sobbing. Of course, as messed up as I was, I was still kind-hearted.  I always cared about others.  So I thought and I go, “Alicia, I don’t feel well.  Can you come back tomorrow?”

She was like, “No, no, Mrs. Phillips, please open the door.”  She threw her little body, she is this tiny little like eight-nine pound tiny thing, and so I thought, “Okay, I’ll open the door and let her in, see what she wants, fix up whatever the problem is and then I will finish whatever I was going to do.”  She threw herself against me, threw me on the bed, was sobbing, she goes, “I feel you are in danger and Satan is present.  I have to pray.  We have to pray.”   She prayed and I guess I went to sleep.  The next morning, things always look different in the morning light.  I looked at the pills on my countertop and the suicide note and I was like stunned.  I knew then.  I just knew without a doubt that God did still care.  All these years, I thought I was insignificant.  But that was truly His letting me know that He cared about me.

(end of video)

Obviously, Roxanne Phillips searched in a spectacular way.  However, her way was limited. You might be saying, “Limited?  Limited?”  Yes, limited.  There has only been one person on the planet who has ever been given a blank check to search and search like no one could ever search.  God granted this man an amazing amount of gifts, a skill set like few have ever obtained here on this planet.  This person was a powerbroker, a leader of a nation at the peak and pinnacle of its existence.

The person I am describing wrote three books of the Bible.  The first book is called “The Song of Songs.”  It’s basically a story about a husband’s love for his wife.  It tells married couples how to make love to one another.  I see some guys going, “Now, where is that?”  During his midlife years, this person penned the book of Proverbs, a very practical text.  It is almost as if he took his palm pilot around with him and recorded life and wrote it down inspired by the spirit of God.  He had it going on.  But as he got older and kind of crusty, and sort of jaded, and bitter, he penned the book of Ecclesiastes.  Some of you know who I am describing.  Some of you don’t.  I am talking about Solomon, a man who had so much, yet he also had his PH.D. in pursuit.  He tried to find the meaning of life away from God.

I want to go behind the scenes right now and do a quick true story about the life of this engaging personality.  Let’s look at his search, a search that Roxanne was on, and if we are honest with ourselves, a search that many of us are on as well.  Before we do so though, I am going to tell you a story.

A Danish philosopher talks about a spider who spun a single strand on a rafter in the top of this old barn and the strand kind of hung down.   On the strand, this spider constructed this magnificent web.  This web was so awesome that it was the envy of the rest of the spiders in the barn.   They would say, “Wow, I wish I could have a web that beautiful, that big, that neat, that intricate.”  This web served the big time spider well.  It caught him all these insects.  He would chow down on the insects.  He was big and bad, the man.

One day, this philosopher writes, this spider was cruising across his web, admiring his handiwork, and he came upon this single strand.  He looked up and it went up into the rafters.  He said to himself, “Why is this single strand here?  It doesn’t catch any food.  What is up with the single strand?”  So the spider climbed a little bit and snipped that single strand.   With that one snip, his web and the spider came tumbling down to the floor of the old barn.

Solomon, at the peak and pinnacle of his life, Solomon, with his days before him, cruised across his web and said, “Look at what I have.  Look at what I have done.”  And he took that single strand that tethered him to God and Solomon snipped it, and began a four-decade free-fall into the pursuit of pleasure, sin and rebellion.

Well, let’s check him out.  I am in Ecclesiastes 2:1.  This first verse sounds like an interview on VH-I, all of the personal pronouns.  Have you ever watched VH-I, Behind the Music?  I, I, me, me, me, my, my, my, I, I, I, me, me, me, my, my, my.  Look at Solo-man.   I call him Solo-man because he did it his way.  He clipped the strand that tethered him to God and said, “I’ll do it my way.”

Verse One:  “I said to myself, come now, I will test you with pleasure so enjoy yourself.”  Can’t you see Solo-man cruising across his web, forgetting that God built it, forgetting that God blessed him, forgetting that God had given him this skill set.  Can’t you see him; can’t you hear him just clipping that strand?  I guess he had forgotten that he had written years earlier Proverbs 19:20 which says, “Listen to counsel and receive instruction that you may be wise in your latter days.”  Solomon, pay attention to your own words, I want to say.  Where is your accountability?  Where are people who love you enough to tell you the truth?  Solomon, think about your dad, David.  This is what messed him up.  Don’t do it.  But he did.

See, this is going to shock a lot of people, especially the women here, you see Solomon had the first case of PMS.  He had true PMS Distress.  He chased after power, money and sex.  A lot of people who are hearing my voice right now have PMS.  We are trying to chase power, money and sex.  We think it can give us the answer to life.  We have clipped the strand that has tethered us to God and we say, “You know what?  I am going to do life my way.”

Let’s look at PMS.  How about Solomon’s power trip?  The Bible says this, Ecclesiastes 2, Solo-man talking, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure.”  What was he doing here?  He was making himself God.  I’ll run the show.  I’ll call the shots.  I’ll determine my own destiny.  I’ll carve my own course.  Thank you very much, God.  I know what’s best for me.  “So enjoy yourself,” he said, “and behold it too was futility.  I said of laughter,” this is Solomon speaking, “it’s madness and of pleasure, what does it accomplish?”

He was calling the shots for the most powerful place and the most powerful land around.  Kings and queens were converging upon Jerusalem just to hear this guy talk.  He wrote over 3,000 proverbs, over 1,000 songs.  The Queen of Sheba said, “Not even the half of the story has been told about Solo-man.”  He was the toast of the town, the man of the hour.  He had it all.  Talk about a powerbroker.  This guy was it.  Yet it didn’t bring him what he thought it would.  See the word “laughter” I read?  He was so wealthy, he brought in the best magicians, the best acrobats, the best comedians of the day, the Seinfelds, the Chris Rocks, but it didn’t do it for him.

So after power, he thought, “You know what?  I’m just going to try money.”  I mean, money is out there.  A lot of us chase money.  We think money will satisfy.  Let’s see what Solo-man did. Verse 7, and you can feel his search engines really start to get stoked here, “I bought male and female slaves, and had other slaves who were born in my house.”  This guy’s search was so skewed that he began to make his own people slaves.  Some of the slaves’ sole responsibility in life was to hike up mountains, collect ice, and bring the ice back to Solo-man just to chill his adult beverages.  That was their agenda.

Verse 4, “I undertook great projects,” Solomon said.  Boy, that’s an understatement, “I built houses for myself.”  If they built Solomon’s house today, it would cost over two hundred billion dollars.  Bill Gates couldn’t carry this guy’s wallet, friends.  Solomon’s residence was sixty feet wider and eighty feet longer than the temple.  The precious stones in this puppy, I am talking about his house, were over twenty feet tall.  The whole thing was covered in gold.  We are not talking about a tract home here.

I think it’s funny.  You read the book of Ecclesiastes, and Solomon talks about all of his great projects, the one hundred foot long moats with the exotic fish that needed 16,000 gallons of water a day.  And all of this sadly, though, never mentioned his greatest architectural accomplishment, the building of the Temple.  Do you know why?  Solomon’s house was built for the glory of Solomon and the Temple was built for the glory of God.  He had clipped the strand that tethered him to God.

Verse 7, he goes on, “I also own more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me.”  Twice in the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, “You know what?  I have more than Daddy had.”  Sounds like a lot of modern day men, doesn’t it?  “I’ve got more than my Dad.  Man, I’ve got a lot more than him.”  Insecurity, poor self-esteem, it goes on.  Verse 8, Solomon says, “I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasures of kings and providences.”  I love this last one.  Don’t miss it.  “I acquired men and women singers.”  Man, check this one out.  Solomon had the best musicians of his day to serenade him.  By the snap of his fingers, they were singing to wake him up in the morning, to put him to bed.  Can’t you imagine Solomon rolling over and saying, “Honey, how about tonight, what do you want?  N Sync?”  “Oh, it’s a beautiful day.  That reminds me of U2’s song.  Bono, hit it!  It’s a Beautiful Day.”  Power didn’t do it.  He had ultimate power.  Money didn’t do it.

He tried sex.  Verse 8, “I acquired a harem as well, the delight of the heart of men.”  Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, the most beautiful women in the world.  Can you imagine his dealings with his in-laws?  That is the only thing I thought about when I read that verse was the in-laws.  That didn’t do it for him.  One of the saddest verses in this text is verse 9, “I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me.”  Solomon was experiencing PMS Distress.

Let me say something.  You will never have the bank account or the power base to search like Solomon did.  You will never have it.  Furthermore, you don’t have the bank or the power base to search like Roxanne.  It’s not going to happen for you.  You will not search like those people.  It’s not going to happen.  So, why are you wasting your time, “If I get this position, if I am really a powerful person, if people know me, if people recognize me, that will do it.  If I get this money in my portfolio, if I can stack it up, that will do it.  If I can sleep with this and have this, that will do it.  Surely that buzz, that fix, that high, that accomplishment, that deal, that will do it.  But it always takes one more, doesn’t it?  That is the way it is when you pursue pleasure the way Solomon did and the way Roxanne did.

Verse 11, Solomon said, “Yet when I survey all that my hands had done,” and this lasted for forty years, friends, “and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”  Solo-man was flying solo, and he hit a wind sheer, didn’t he?  Then he said, “Nothing was gained,” let’s say this together this last phrase, “under the sun.”  One more time, “Under the sun.”  This little phrase is the key to the book of Ecclesiastes, “under the sun.”  Solomon clipped the single strand that tethered him to God above the sun, and because he clipped that strand he tried to find the meaning of life under the sun.  It is mentioned twenty-nine times, under the sun.

That is the problem with a lot of our lives.  We are trying to live out life under the sun.  We are searching under the sun.  When you search under the sun, you have got a space limitation. You are just looking at your little finite world, your little deal, this limited perspective.  Conversely, when you are connected and tethered to God, what happens?  You can rise above the sun, and you have a different and unique perspective.  Then you understand what life is all about.  You have the wisdom, the power and the intelligence of God.  Also, when you try to search for things under the sun, you have a time limitation.

Poor old Solo-man, just looking at his little life from birth to death.  That was it for him, just his life experiences, just what he could see, what he could observe.  I laugh, people who think they are so wise and so intelligent, scripture says, are really dumb.  At the end of time one day, we will think all these wise people, all these brilliant people; they really had it going on.  Oh, really?  They are going to look stupid.  Why?  They are doing life under the sun and they are getting sunburned.  We need to be tethered to the Son, S-O-N, who is above the sun, s-u-n, don’t we?  That’s the meaning of life.  That’s what it is all about.

PMS Distress.  Do you have it?  As you scroll through your life, can you say, “You know, I am not searching like Solomon did, or Roxanne did, but I am feeling some PMS distress.”  Well, Solomon did not leave us hanging.  He didn’t say, “Well, that’s it.  It’s all vanity.  There is nothing new under the sun.  It’s meaningless.”  No, no, no.  Solomon tells us what to do.  I want you to remember something.   Anytime you ever hear an effective message, it should answer two questions.  What do I need to know and what do I need to do?  Too many times we hear messages and talks and they are just about knowing.  The Bible is not a book of knowledge.  It’s not a book of just knowing.  The Bible is a book of doing.  Most of us don’t need to attend another Bible study.  We need to apply what we already know.  I am all for studying the Bible.  We have got to know it.  But let’s do it.  Solo-man says, “Don’t waste your time on what I did.  Don’t burn up this precious life.  Don’t waste four decades.  You will never search like I did so here you go.  Here is what you need to do.”

Ecclesiastes 12:1, “Remember,” Solo-man says, “your creator in the days of your youth.”  This word “remember” is not like saying, “Okay, tip your hat to God.  Okay, God, I remember you.  Thank you, God.”  No, no, no.  It means to actively pursue God.  Remember, the Christian life is a decision followed by a process.  You don’t just say, “I’m going to actively pursue.”  No, you have got to have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.  You have got to have that strand that tethers you to God and that strand is through Christ.  Then the process begins.  “Remember the creator in the days of your youth,” when you are young.

Over spring break, I had the privilege of being with someone at the peak and pinnacle of their life when they committed their heart to Christ.  I cannot tell you how fired up I was and am today just to be a part of that experience.  I am thrilled because this guy made this decision at the ultimate time.  His life is before him.  He can do so many wonderful and mighty things for the Lord.  Don’t put it off.  Do it now.  We have a young church.  People ask us, “Why do you put so many resources and manpower behind the children’s ministry and the youth ministry?”  It’s right here.  “Remember the creator in the days of your youth.”

How many of you work out?  How many of you are a member of some sort of health club?  Have you ever noticed that these body builder guys don’t call it “health club,” they call it “the gym.”  “I go to the gym to train, man.”  Women call it the “health club.”  Whenever you walk into a gym or a health club, there is always a bunch of treadmills there.  Treadmills are wild.  When I walk in the place I workout and see all the treadmills lined up, I see some people like running on the treadmill, others walking, some talking, a few trying to figure out how to work the crazy thing, you know?  Treadmills are weird because we get on them and burn up all this energy, perspiring, out of breath.  But when we get off the treadmills, we haven’t gone anywhere.  We are at the same place we started.

We burn up all that energy and all that effort and a lot of us become tread militant.  We say, “You know what?  I am not going to get off the treadmill.  I am going to seek power.  I am going to seek money.  I am going to seek sex.  That will do it for me.  Surely it will.”  If, and I pray when, you finally get off, you are going to realize you are in the same place you started.  That is what Solo-man did.  That is what so many people are doing right now.  “Remember the creator in the days of your youth.”  We only have a limited amount of time.  Only when we are wired to God, only through his intelligence do we know what life is all about.

Soloman tells us something else to do.  Ecclesiastes 12:13, he says, “Now all has been heard.”  He is saying, “You won’t be able to top this. Just give it up.”  “Now that all has been heard, here is the conclusion of the matter.  Fear God.”  This word “fear” is not, “Oh, God is a cosmic killjoy.”  It is not that.  Fear means to reverence God, to allow God to be God.  “Fear God and keep his commandments.  This is the whole duty of man.”  It’s about obedience.  We are to reverence God, to let God be God.  Then that is to segue out into everything we touch.  Worship is not something we do in this little confined place on a weekend service or a First Wednesday.  It is part of it but it is just a little bitty slice.   Everything we do should be an act of worship.  Everything.  Because ultimately, we are doing it for the glory of God.

PMS is weird, though, because PMS is about sin.  Sin carries with it a bunch of myths.  I will just hit two because we are limited.  The first myth is, people say this sometimes, “You know sin is not really enjoyable.  Sin is not really fun.  It is bad.”  That is not true.  Sin is fun.   If sin was not fun, we would not participate in it so enthusiastically.  Don’t ever think sin is not fun.  Sin does not satisfy.  If sin satisfied, we would just sin one time and go, “Oh, that’s it.  I am satisfied.  One time, you know.”  The consequences of sin, this is what will mess you up, are not always immediate, but they are always inevitable.  We will go, “Okay, that person is messed up but I don’t see anything bad happening to them.  I don’t see them really reaping the consequences.”  They are always inevitable.

Here is another myth going around.  People say this, “You know, I can do whatever I want with my body as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.  As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, I can do whatever I want.”  We have all heard that before.  “I can just do whatever I want.”  That is a joke because whenever you sin, whenever you miss the mark, you are always hurting several people.  You are hurting yourself, innocent bystanders and you are also hurting God, every single time.

Do you know why we die?  It is because of sin.  The Bible says, “the wages of sin is death.  But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  If we know Christ, if we meet him, if we are tethered to him with that single strand, we have peace that surpasses all understanding here, we will live forever and ever, and we will know the meaning of life under the sun because we are connected to the SON.  But if we don’t, we don’t.  I pray, I pray, folks, that many of you today will say, “You know what?  I am going to end the search.”  I pray that many of you today do what Roxanne did.  Let’s look at Part Two.

(Video continues)

Roxanne:  I would say things started turning around.  I had a DWI after that.  I was still drinking, but I knew God cared about me and I was really trying to be a Christian.  But on the bottom of a jail cell floor with my head on a cot, I prayed, really prayed, and I said, “God, my life is a mess.  I am losing another marriage.  I’m going to lose my kids.  I am going to lose my life if you don’t help me.  Please help.”  Everything that happened from that moment on is a miracle, and my journey for the last seven years has been a miracle.

After that DWI, because it was in California, and because we have money and lawyers, I was able to get in-house arrest, which meant I had to wear this ankle bracelet around my ankle and it would buzz if I left the premises, the house.  I only had written permission, I asked, to go to AA meetings and to go to Fellowship.  But I had to have someone sign that that is where I was when I left.  I remember walking in over there to the Irving Arts Center, and I was filled with a little bit of shame.  But I knew that I was going somewhere that I always got comfort, when I heard you speak, and I always felt more whole.  So with that bracelet on, and I had a long dress on to kind of disguise it, I walked up to Doris and explained to her, “Doris, I am under house arrest.”  I showed her my ankle bracelet and I said, “I need to have someone endorse that I have actually been here to Fellowship.”   She was as sweet, she didn’t even blink an eye and she just said, “Well, of course, sweetheart, or darling or honey,” or that Texas, whatever it was.  I felt like I was totally accepted and not shamed at all.

I have to tell you that one gesture there made all the difference in my embracing that church, even more because I felt that no matter how embarrassing what I had done, or where I had come from, how broken I was, that it was okay, that they wanted me.  I embraced Fellowship with all my heart, and I have to tell you my life since then has been a roller coaster ride.  The joy and the just satisfaction God has given me I can’t even describe.  It didn’t come from the things I have, but from having a personal relationship with Him.

Ed:  But the life people, I mean, just even fantasize and dream about, like if I could live that life, people think, that would be the answer.  I mean, to have all that.

Roxanne:  They would.  In fact, when I was pregnant with Ashley, I went to Monte Carlo to produce a movie for Princess Caroline on the Monte Carlo Ballet.  So I was still I had my Beverly Hills movie star connections and money and glamour.  You name it, royalty, everything was thrown into the pot.  Of course, we lived in one of the nicest homes in Dallas, that was the old Hunt mansion.  We flew around in our own DC9 with pilots and airlines hostesses–world travelers, Paris, Rome, full set of Louis Vuitton luggage.  I guess that says you really arrived, and I still attempted suicide after that because it didn’t give me any sense of happiness or peace.  There was no peace.  Life was just empty, with all those….

Ed:  With all of that.

Roxanne:  I call them trappings, because once you have all those things, too, you are enslaved to your trappings.  It is like you have a lot to take care of, a lot to worry about, a lot to protect.

Ed:  It is amazing to hear that, Roxanne, because we hear so much of the opposite, you know.  The media tells us if you have those things, then that equates to happiness.  You are going, “Man, I had those things that a lot of the movie stars and Hollywood crowd do not have, yet I was still empty.  I did not have peace.”

Roxanne:  It is with anything you try to use as a solution, whether it be shopping, pills, alcohol, there is never enough.  There won’t be.  There isn’t enough out there for you to buy or use to fill that hole.  Nothing can.  There is no $8000 dress that can do it.  It can’t.  I know it’s easy to say because I have it all, but I had it all and I had nothing.  There is no piece of jewelry.  There is no fancy car.  There is nothing that is going to fill your heart like God, and make you happy and make you whole.

FC TRUE FELLOWSHIP STORIES

Episode 4

Ed Young

April 8, 2001

We have been in a series called True Fellowship Stories.  It’s kind of a take-off on the popular series on television called the E True Hollywood Story.  It’s been amazing to see what all has transpired during this whole session.  We have interviewed many different people from many different backgrounds, those who are connected to Fellowship Church.  It’s incredible to see the change and to see what God is doing.  I thought I would sort of give you a mini montage, a review if you will, of the interviews; because, during these sessions, I think we have seen one common thread.  I am going to see if you can pick it up.  Check it out.

(Video)

Roxanne Phillips:  I know it’s easy to say because I have it all, but I had it all and I had nothing.  There is no piece of jewelry.  There’s no fancy car.  There’s nothing that is going to fill your heart like God and make you happy and make you whole.

Henry Alayon:  But we were not put on this earth for us.  I’m sorry, but that is just the way it is.  We are here to tell people about Jesus Christ.

Darryl Sydor:  Something just came over me and took action, and took control of me.  I just turned and said, “Would you like to go down there?”  It was a great feeling, and I can say from that day forward, it has been great.

Sharlene Sydor:  The best decision we ever made.

(End of Video)

Did you pick up that common connection?  Commitment.  Commitment.  The Alayons’, Roxanne Phillips, Darryl and Shar Sydor, they all talked about commitment.  What does it mean when you say that word “commitment?”  It’s thrown around a lot these days.  Commitment means to pledge yourself to a position no matter what the price tag.  It means to obligate, to put yourself on the line, to give your word you are going to do something now and in the future.

Sadly, though, commitment in our culture is a sort of convenient and collapsible commodity, wouldn’t you agree?  We talk about it a lot, but do we really do it?  For example, how many of you own a laptop computer, you have a laptop?  Go ahead and confess it.  You’ve got one.  I do too.  Laptops are wild.  You carry these puppies around in a briefcase or whatever, and when it is time to use them, when it is convenient, you take them out, plug them in, open them up and you type away.  When it is inconvenient, what do you do?  Unplug them, close them up, and put them away.

Commitment is like that.  When it is convenient, we say, “Oh, yeah, I’m committed.  I’ll open it up.  Plug it in.  Here I go.”  When it’s not, we shut it down, put it away, and say, “Shh.  It’s not going to serve me well right now.”

I think a lack of commitment has reached an epidemic in our culture.  I think we would all agree with that.  Think about it for month to month apartment leases, to prenuptial agreements in marriage, from free agency in athletics to escape clauses in contracts, we kind of pride ourselves in not really keeping our word.  If the truth were known, most people in our world today have that decision faking, work shaking, vow forgetting, job quitting, church hopping, spouse shopping mentality that runs from commitment.  We would rather bail out than blast through.  We’d rather leave than last.  We’d rather throw in the towel than stay in the game.  A lack of commitment.

A lot of us are committed, but I think we are committed to the wrong things.  Author Jay Grant Howard says that Americans are overly committed, overly stimulated, overly challenged and then he adds overly in the wrong areas.  I think all of us could ramp up on our commitment quotient, don’t you?

As many of you know, about eleven years ago, we began Fellowship Church with several hundred people in a small rented office complex in Irving, TX.  One of the first couples to commit to membership and to our vision at Fellowship were some people that Lisa and I had known from the Houston area who had moved up to Dallas.  Little did I realize it but when they committed to membership, their commitment to our little church was but a microcosm of their commitment to God and to each other.

(Video)

Mark Skinner:  We were skiing in March of 1997, snow skiing, and Pam noticed that her left leg was not quite as responsive as it had been.  She thought she might be tired or maybe have a muscle spasm or something like that.  She got to thinking, “Physiologically, something is not right here.  I am not lifting my leg properly.  I’m not stepping properly.”

The first week of June, 1998, we went to Rochester, MN.  We spent about three days there with their neurological staff at which time they diagnosed Pam with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.  Typically, death is the result of this disease via the lack of oxygen that is circulated to the brain.  Pam and I spent probably the next six months grieving about that, but at the same time we both grasped hold of the concept that God has a plan for our lives.  We don’t know in our finite wisdom how all of this works out for the long run.  We do know that God knows.

She has progressed over the past two years to the point now where she is completely bedridden and completely dependent upon others for her health care and hygiene and things like that in general.  There is probably no one that had any more energy than Pam.  Pam was typically up about 4:30 in the morning.  She was just hyperactive, always involved in anything the kids were doing, coaching t-ball.  She was just tremendously active, tremendously well respected in her job at work.  So for her to come from that point right there, to virtually putting the brakes on her life as she knew it, that was very difficult for her to do.

Ed:  You and Pam, correct me if I am wrong here, I know you guys would have gone to, you guys attended Fellowship Church in it’s earliest embryonic days.  We had several hundred people.

Mark:  Yes.  We first started visiting up here the weekend you came up in view of a call, when you preached.

Ed:  And all my hair was dark.

Mark:  All your hair was dark and we were a whole lot younger back then.  We felt led to join the church and become a part of it.  We have since that time been a part of it.  For the past twenty years, I have been involved in the corporate real estate business as a real estate broker, commercial real estate broker.  It’s a commission only job.  If I don’t spend the time in the business, you know, the income is directly related to the amount of time I spend in that business.  This whole thing having to spend time away from that business now, Ed, in dealing with Pam and the things that we are having to go through as a family has been difficult on that aspect of my business.  There just seems to be always the next deal around the corner.  Even though I may not have as much time to spend looking for that deal, the Lord has really blessed our family by providing for us during this time.

Ed:  I think about a lot of things when I think about you and Pam knowing you through the years.  But definitely the suffering thing is huge, but also the commitment level from you.

Mark:  When we got married, we made a commitment before our friends, before our God, that we would be with each other no matter what happened in life, until death do us part.  To take that commitment, as you said, it’s easy to do when things are going well, but when life throws you a curve like we have got right now, you have to rely on something to serve as the cohesive glue in that commitment.  That glue has been our relationship with Jesus Christ.  I feel like that it is my responsibility to take care of Pam.  It’s my responsibility to see that my kids are raised in a Godly manner.  It’s not an overwhelming responsibility.  God has lifted that burden from me.  God has helped me deal with that burden and provided exterior influences through our friends and acquaintances that have allowed me and helped in dealing with that.

Mary Ann Skinner:  I remember looking at Mark and saying, “You know, Mark, what I really think Pam needs more than ever from you is to know that you are going to be there for her from now till whatever it takes.”  I remember him looking at me and saying, “Mother, I will never leave her.”  That was a really great comfort to me to realize that he was committed to the end.  I have tried to help Mark as much as possible with the boys by coming on Sunday afternoons or maybe sometimes on Saturday afternoons and helping him with laundry.  I spend the nights during the week so that I can help get the boys up for school and see that they are dressed and off for school, lunches packed, whatever it takes.

Not that we ever doubted God’s grace and his sufficiency, but it’s in times like these when you experience it.  And anytime that we have had a need, God has provided for that need in so many different ways.  The boy’s school, they have provided meals for two and a half years now, five nights a week every single week.  People have prayed and lifted us up, and without those prayers, I know we would not have been able to have dealt with this at all.

Ed:  Mark, what have been the most difficult times for you, and what were you going through, what was going through your mind when you felt like these were the darkest days for you?

Mark:  There are days, Ed, that I wish I didn’t have to do what I know I have to do.  I don’t want to get Pam up.  I don’t want to bath her.  I don’t want to have to feed her.  I don’t want to have to dress her.  I just want to go out in the yard and work or I want to go fishing with my friends or play golf.  But I know that my commitment first and foremost is to my wife, Pam.  My wife is my inner being right now.  I take care of her to the best of my ability.  It’s not like I can walk away from it.  It’s just something inside me that motivates me to get up each morning to make sure that she is taken care of.  I have been committed to that and committed to her.  That takes love to another level.  There is not a physical intimacy in our marriage, other than the fact that I kiss Pam.  But God has taken the commitment level to another level.  It’s beyond the base physical, emotional level.

Ed:  Tell me, Mark, about your children.  Tell me their ages, etc.  Talk to me about them.

Mark:  Joshua is fourteen, just turned fourteen this past month.  Jacob is nine and a half now.  But they’re great kids, actively involved in sports and their school programs and doing well.  They simply enjoy life.  They all understand that Lou Gehrig’s is a terminal disease.  They do understand the finality of it all and it remains to be seen ultimately how they are going to take the final aspects of it.  They seem to have a pretty good grasp on it.

Joshua:  We talk to her.  We tell her about what we did at school or how we did at our baseball game or what the Rangers game was like, or Stars game.  Since she can’t really talk, she smiles.  Sometimes we tell her a story and she laughs.

Jacob:  I walk in there everyday after school and tell her what I did.  When I come home, I have so much stories to tell, me and my brother, just sit there for hours telling.

Mark:  Ed, we have from the Fellowship Church, the Home Teams group that we participated with, have gotten together, and there are several women within that organization, within that Home Team group, that come and read to Pam for about an hour a day each day.  Pam can’t respond back to them, but she can smile and acknowledge their presence.  She knows that they are there.  Her mental faculties are all still there, so she understands that they are reading to her.  She enjoys their visits.  It’s just a time for her to interact in her own way.

Dedo Mitchell:  Well, our Home Team first found out that Pam had a need.  We knew that she was ill.  We just wanted to be able to do something.  We found out that she wanted to have somebody just to come and visit her.  So our Home Team decided that a great thing for us to do is to just take some women everyday of the week, one day a week, and just go over and read and just visit with her.  We joke and laugh a lot, give facials, paint nails.

Debby Wade:  I think God just spoke to my heart to be there.  There is something to be gained in this but you can also do some giving.  It was amazing how I would speak to the women and they would just talk about the way Pam had blessed their life.  To see the desire and the pleasure on her face, it’s just a wonderful blessing, a real neat experience.

Dedo:  Every time I call Mark, he is here in an instant.  I mean, if we have ever needed him when I have been here, he talks to me, asks me if there is a problem, what he needs to do and then he is here.

Ed:  I will never forget the time, Mark, when I was fortunate enough to participate in your son’s baptism.  Pam could not come up to the church due to her physical limitations, so we baptized out in your swimming pool and they wheeled Pam out there.

Mark:  You baptized Jacob and Pam got to be a participant in that because it was there at the house and she was out there by the pool.  And she had a grin ear to ear.  She had almost lost her voice at the time, couldn’t really speak clearly.  But I knew from seeing the look on her face and the glow that that was one of the things that I think…one of the major milestones for her was to see her kids both become Christians.

It’s a part of spiritual growth to give things up.  I have had to learn to give things up, to simply go to God and say, “I can’t do this.”  God never promised us that life was going to be easy, but he did promise us that he would give us the tools to go through life and to make life as good as he can possibly find for us.  I know in the depth of my heart that God has a plan for what we are going through and I rejoice that someday I am going to get to sit with him and see how all of this transpired over time.  Even though we are going through what we are going through, life is still fun and there is a lot of new and exciting things out there.  It’s by the grace of God.

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If the only thing you get is, “Wow, I should be thankful for my life because I don’t have to deal with what the Skinner’s have to deal with.  Or, wow, my deal is pretty easy compared to theirs.”  If that is what you are thinking right now, you have sadly missed the point.  It’s all about commitment.  That’s the overriding theme.  That’s the octane that is driving it all, commitment.  So the question hangs out there, how do I ramp up my commitment?  Against the backdrop of the life of the Skinners’, what are the criteria of commitment?  Let’s run through them in the few moments that remain.

I am talking about how to ramp up your commitment level.  Right up front, if we are going to be people of commitment, people like the Skinner’s, people like God has wired us up to be, we have got to contemplate the character and the commitment of Jesus Christ.  We’ve got to contemplate his character.  God says in Hebrews 13, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  In Luke, chapter 22, Jesus, a few hours after he was arrested falsely accused of a crime, a few hours before he was crucified for your sins and mine, he was on his knees in prayer and here is what he said, “Father, (pick up his commitment now) if you are willing, take this cup from me.”  Jesus saw what was going to happen on the horizon of his life and he said, “Lord, if it is your will, let it pass, if there is any other way.”  Then he said, “Yet, not my will but yours be done.”

Christ’s commitment was based on his Father’s will.  My commitment, your commitment must be based on the same thing.  We have got to say, “God, not my agenda, yours.  Not my will, yours.  Not my plan, yours, God.  I commit to you.”  Look what happened in the next verse.  “An angel from heaven appeared to him, and strengthened him.”  See the progression?  Jesus prays.  Jesus commits to the will of the Father.  Then, once he did that, once he committed to God, to his Father, then an angel strengthened him, then an angel gave him the octane, the power to do what he had to do.  The same will happen in your marriage.  The same will happen at your job.  The same will happen in your friendships.  Whatever it is, God will do it.

Think about how Jesus was committed.  He died on the cross for all of your shortcomings, for all of my shortcomings, for all of our sins.  When Jesus was hanging there on the cross, he could have just snapped his fingers or winked and the heavenly hosts could have come down and taken him off the cross; however, he didn’t.  Why?  Because of commitment.  I am sure all hell whispered in his ear, “Hey, Jesus, come down.  It’s not worth it, Jesus.  Throw in the towel.  Bail out.  Leave.  Take the easy way.”  Yet he was so committed, he pledged himself to a position no matter what the price tag.  He obligated himself by spilling his precious blood on Calvary to secure our redemption.  He was committed.  He had you and he had me on his mind.  Just think about if you had been the only person to ever live on this planet, Christ would have done what he did on the cross.

A man in the Old Testament, named David, knew a lot about commitment.  David committed.  He took on that Behemoth, Goliath, and took him out.  As a young kid, he was committed to spending quality time with God in prayer.  A musical genius.  A poet.  A leader.  They still study his military strategies today at West Point.  The guy is a total package.  He messed up on commitments, yet God called him a man after the heart of the Lord.

Here is what David said about commitment, one of my favorite verses in scripture, Psalm 37:5, “Commit your way to the Lord.  Trust also in him and he will do it.”  And you thought Phil Nike was the first one to coin the phrase, “Just do it.”  See Nike stole this right here.   “Commit your way, commit everything to the Lord.  Trust also in him and he will do it.”

I want to ask you a question, “Why when we are struggling with commitment, why when we are having a hard time, why when we are thinking about bailing, do we usually seek counsel from people who are not really committed, instead of counsel from people who are committed?  Why do we do that?  The evil one loves to come after our commitment.

You can trace his agenda all the way back to the garden.  Adam and Eve were there in this perfect environment.  God was committed to them.  He put his cards out on the table.  They were committed to him.  Everything was perfect.  Everything was pristine.  Enter the evil one, that fallen angel who had been kicked out of heaven because of his lack of commitment.  He attacked Adam and Eve’s commitment.  “Hey, Adam, Eve, did God really say don’t mess with the Sunkist orange on the tree?  Did God really say that?  Did God really say this?  You see, Adam and Eve, if you eat the fruit, you will become like God.”  Satan is always attacking, always undermining commitment.

The next time you are thinking about bailing out, or throwing in the towel, or leaving, contemplate the commitment of Jesus Christ.  He’ll give you the energy.  He’ll give you the ability.  He will do it.

There is something else we have got to do.  We have got to contemplate the stuff, but also we have to surround ourselves with people who have those commitment chromosomes.  You know what I am talking about don’t you?  We have got to rub shoulders with people who have a commitment level that challenges us and holds us accountable.  I don’t care who you are, what your name is, how spiritually mature you are, you are who you run with.  You are who you hang with.  You are who your best friends are.  Without even meeting you, I could meet your best friend and in a nano-second I could tell you what kind of a person you are.  Who are your best friends?  Are they people who have a real big commitment to God, to their spouse if they are married and to relational integrity?  Are they?

I’ll never forget meeting a young man about ten years ago, great guy, a man of commitment.  I watched him grow in his commitment.  I watched him sort of flourish here at Fellowship.  Then after a while, I began to see some door dings in his character.  I began to go, “That’s odd. I can’t believe he is hanging around that group and doing this and that.”  I talked to him several times.  After a while, I remember telling a close friend of mine, I said, “You know what?  It’s just a matter of time before this guy blows off his commitments.”  Sure enough, he found himself in some deep relational reeds, so deep the reeds were covering him.  The reeds were so high, he couldn’t even see God’s plan, God’s agenda, or God’s vision for his life anymore.  He pretty much bailed.  He lost it.

Maybe you are in the reeds.  Weeds are one thing, but I am talking about reeds now.  Maybe you are in the relational reeds and you are going, “Man, I can’t get out, these things are strong.  These things have me hemmed up.  I can’t see who God wants me to hang out with.”  Let me put it to you this way.  I met a man from Houston, TX , years ago who invented the weed-eater.   I had to perform the wedding of his son.  It was a weed-eater wedding, I like to say.  If we call on God and say, “God, I want to commit to you.  You do it” he will take out, I believe, a relational weed-eater and take out the weeds and the reeds, those big towering honking reeds so we can see who to hang with.

“Now, Ed, wait a minute.  Are you telling me I should diss my friends?  Are you telling me I should turn my back from my buddies and all of that?”  No, I am not saying that.  We have got to have relationships with people who are outside the family of God, but and I say this over and over again, our best friends must be those who share a Christ commitment, the same commitment structure that we do and that we go after.  If they don’t, we will never, ever achieve the greatness that God has in store for our lives.  Never.  It’s not going to happen.

I took my four kids to Imax to see N’Sync.  You know N’Sync, don’t you?  I like the Backstreet Boys better than N’Sync.  I’m not really a big N’Sync fan.  Anyway, don’t laugh.  They are talented.  I love the Backstreet Boys.  But a lot of us in this place, we need to do the Imax thing.  We need to look at this giant panoramic view of our relational world and say, “Whoa, I need to back away from that deal.  Whoa, I need to improve in that area.  I need to have a whole new set of friends because they are tearing me down.  They are pulling me away.  They are messing me up.”

That’s why I talk over and over again about our Home Team ministry here at Fellowship.  You want to meet people like that?  Walk into a Home Team.  If you are just showing up to Fellowship here on the weekends, that’s good.  I’m glad you are here.  Take the next step.  See what our church is really about.  Get to know people who share the same commitment level, who have those commitment chromosomes, who are fellow strugglers.  It will help you.

Just a while back, I was talking to my wife and I said, “You know, honey, I am so thankful for the great relationships we have built here at Fellowship.”  One of the major reasons that we have grown so much spiritually here at Fellowship Church is because of our friends.  I don’t care if you are fifteen, forty-five or seventy-five, it will hold true for you.  So surround yourself with commitment chromosomes.  Every time I think about commitment chromosomes, I think about one of my favorite Bible figures, the 27th book in the Old Testament, the book of Daniel.

You are probably saying, “Oh, Ed, I knew that: 27th book, Daniel.”  Well, Daniel, you are talking about an old figure with a modern-day message.  Daniel was one of the best and the brightest in Jerusalem and this crusty old evil-driven king named Nebuchadnezzar took Daniel and some of the best and the brightest and deported them from Jerusalem all the way to Babylon.  Check this out.  Daniel was by himself with a couple of friends in this ungodly pagan culture, temptations galore, and he could do whatever he wanted to do.

What did he do?  He was committed.  A man of commitment.  Everybody else around him was eating all this junk food, Krispy Kreme donuts, big Macs.  Not Daniel.  Vegetables and water.  Why?  He was committed to God.  He said, “My body is a temple.  It’s a dwelling place for the Lord and I am going to do it.”  The king, King Nebuchadnezzar, he was like, “Wow, Daniel, you are something else.”  Daniel’s commitment kind of rocked him.  It caused his head to snap and he thought this guy has something about him.

Well, some people, some homeboys from Babylon, these guys were jealous of Daniel.  They were jealous of the king liking him and helping him.  These palace plotters played up to King Nebuchadnezzar’s ego.  I am giving you the Cliff Notes.  You can read the whole thing later.  They said, “King Neb, listen, you are the man of the hour, too sweet to be sour, the tower of biblical Babylonian power.  Why don’t you, King, why don’t you set forth this edict that no one can worship anything else except you?  What do you think?”

Now, the palace plotters knew that the Dan man was so committed, he would still continue to worship God and they could trap him.  That is what they were thinking.  The King said, “Um, yeah, sounds pretty good. Yeah, I like that.  Everybody has got to bow to me.  I am the man of the hour, too sweet to be sour, the tower of biblical Babylonian power.”  So the King set forth an edict.  Once he set forth an edict, he couldn’t back up, couldn’t take it away, couldn’t take a Mulligan.

Daniel, the next day, was praying.  The palace plotters said, “King Neb, look at your boy.  Look at your boy.”  It was like you stabbed him in the heart.  King Nebuchadnezzar knew what would have to happen.  He knew that Daniel would become an appetizer for Simba.  Didn’t have F. Lee Bailey or Johnny Cochran back then.  No, no, no.  No Crocodile Hunter back then.  You go to the lions, jack.  They threw Daniel in the lion’s den and Daniel was so committed to God that God performed a miracle.  He shut the mouths of the lions and Daniel emerged from this situation.

What a man of commitment, a man of purity, a man who followed God.  Unbelievable.  I ask you, why did Daniel have such an incredible run? Why did he leave such a legacy of commitment?  “Well, Ed, he pledged himself to a position no matter what the cost.  He committed himself to God.  It’s a biblical deal and everything transcended and that was what happened.”

Well, that’s right.  But there’s something that God showed me several years ago about this story that just hit me in the face.  Do you know one of the reasons why Daniel was so committed?  His friendships.  He was best friends with those asbestos boys, the faithful firemen, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego.  Remember those guys?  Those fire walkers?  They challenged him. They held him accountable.  If it’s good enough for Daniel, it’s good enough for you and me.  You could be a modern day Daniel or Danielle.  How about your relationships?

Well, we talked about contemplating the character, the commitment level of Christ.  We talked about rubbing shoulders with those committed chromosome type people.  There is something else we need to know too.  We have got to beware of something.  This is huge.  We’ve got to beware of the emotional sabotage factor.

How many of you are married?  Here’s how the emotional sabotage factor works in marriage.  Husband and wife will say, “Well, we’ve been married five years, ten, fifteen, twenty years and, you know, I don’t know, we have just kind of fallen out of love.  I don’t know.”  Fallen out of love?  “Yeah, we have.  It’s just not the same.  I don’t feel that infatuation or that ecstasy twenty-four/seven, that romance every minute of every day and I just have fallen out of love.”

What is love?  Do you like fall into it like you have fallen into a pool?  “Oh, I am in love now.  I guess I will now fall out of it.  Now I am out of love.”  Adults say this.  If you have a view of love like that, let me do a song for you.  “And they called it, puppy love.”  If you are not laughing at that, you are too young.  I just imitated Donny Osmond.  Love is not that.  Yes, you have got to be attracted.  You have got to have a chemistry going and flowing.  Love, though, is the commitment, the commitment of the will.

Speaking about love and all that.  Ladies, if you are single, listen to me very carefully.  Guys too, if you are single.  You know that the Bible says that sex is a great thing.  There is an entire book of the Bible about sex.  God is pro-sex.  He thought it up.  He invented it.  However, he says we must practice sex within the confines, within the parameters of the marital bed: one man, one woman, having sex in a mutually committed relationship.  If you have sex outside of marriage, you are messing up. I don’t want to get into that right now, but just trust me.  The Bible says so.

Ladies, you make a huge mistake, listen to me now, a huge mistake when you play house, when you have your boyfriend live with you.  Because I know what you think.  You think, “Oh, he’s not really committing to marriage so if we play house, I’ll move him and nudge him closer to the alter.  He will love it so much, he’ll just say, ‘Honey, will you marry me?’  And then wedding bells.”  Hey, ladies, let me share something with you right quick, okay?  Living together for the guy is the best of both worlds: free sex, with no commitment.

You hear laughs, but we cannot rely on our emotions.  Our emotions lie to us.  We say, “Well, I had this feeling.”  Well, you could have had some bad sushi last night.  If I just did what I felt like doing, I would be a sick puppy.  “Yeah, but I have got a feeling everyday.”  It’s just a feeling.  That’s what it is, just a feeling.

I want to sit down and just tell you something.  Let me explain to you.  Let me tell you what makes God gag.  When you hear this, God gags.  People say this, “You know, God just wants me to be happy.”  Say what?  “Yes, God wants me to be happy.”  God wants you to be obedient, alright?  It’s obedience.  And then, as we are obedient to him, the feelings will follow.  You will have feelings there.  You’ll have emotions there.  But it’s about commitment.

You can tell I am very passionate about that.  So is the Bible.  Beware of the emotional sabotage.  Commit, don’t quit.  “Well, Ed, man, you don’t understand.  I’ve gone through a marriage or two.  I have messed up on this commitment.  I’ve done this and that.  I’m just messed up.”  God specializes in taking people like you and me, people who have messed up, and restoring us and making us whole.

Case in point, Simon Peter.  He said, “Jesus, I’ll never forsake you.  I’ll never diss you.  I’m the man of the hour, too sweet to be sour, tower of biblical power, blah, blah, blah.”  What did Jesus say?  “Simon Peter, you are going diss me three times over the next little while.”  Sure enough, he did.  He backed off his commitment.  Was it curtains for Simon Peter?  No, Jesus reinstated him and Simon Peter became one of the most committed men to ever walk on the planet.  Why?  He committed his way to the Lord.

Well, let’s change gears now, okay?  Our great God gives us some benefits, some rewards of commitment.  Once we ramp it up, here is what will happen to us.  Strength: we will become spiritually buff.  Is that cool?  We will have strength, a supernatural strength.  The Bible calls it grace.  2 Corinthians 12, “My grace is sufficient for you.”  If something tragic happens to you, like it happened to the Skinners, I am telling you something, God’s grace will be sufficient.  “For my power is made perfect in weakness.”  So I will have strength.  That’s a benefit of commitment.

Also the Bible says I am going to have endurance.  Isn’t it great to have endurance.  We can have that perseverance, that endurance to run a long race.  As we look back in the rearview mirror of our lives, yeah, we see some carnage caused by our lack of commitment, but once we commit our way to the Lord, commit ourselves to Christ, to our mate, to others, then we have this endurance thing happening, this longevity thing happening.  We become people who are known as folks of commitment.

Another benefit is perspective.  We can have God’s perspective.  Have you checked this doctor out on the radio?  “Hi, I’m Dr. Booth.  I perform Lasik surgery.  I have a steady hand.  And I’ll slice your eyes and you can see 20/20.  And I am really excited about it.” Now, I am sure Dr. Booth is a great guy.  I don’t know him, but I want a guy like that cutting on my eyes.  Level headed, I mean the guy just is a flat-liner, you know?  I don’t want someone like “Oh, yeah, okay!  I’ll cut your eyes up!”  I had Lasik surgery a while back.  A good friend of mine in South Carolina did it.  I love it.  It’s given me a whole new perspective on life.  I still sometimes instinctively go for my glasses on the bedside table but I don’t need them. We have a lasik-type perspective on life, when we commit, given to us by God.

There is something else, integrity.  The word integrity comes from the word integer.  That means a whole number.  We have a wholeness when we commit.  That’s why when people like Owen Goff speak, that’s why when people like Dean West or Carolyn West talk, that’s why when people like Doris Scoggins say something, people go “Shhh…When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”  They have had a long track record of working with the Lord, of living with him, of living out their commitments.  And because they have kept them in such a great way, they have influence, they have power and they have some real spiritual stuff.  “I want to make a difference, Ed, in the world.  I want to leave a legacy.  I want to be a leader.  I want to be an influencer.”  Integrity.  It’s about that track record, that commitment level that God will give you.

Do you really want to be a vow-forgetting, work-quitting, excuse-making, decision-faking, church-hopping, spouse-shopping person?  Or do you want to be a life-making, character-quaking, word-keeping, relationship-reaping, individual who says, “God, I want to do life deeply with you as I walk in commitment.”

LIVING ON A PRAYER

Temptation Island

Ed Young

February 25, 2001

Temptation Island is yet another show to satisfy our voyeuristic desires.  “Committed” couples are dropped off on some Belizean island, split up, and then tempted by buff and beautiful members of the opposite sex, all while millions are memorized to their televisions during prime time viewing hours.  It’s Gilligan’s Island on steroids.  Personally, I think it’s a sad commentary on our culture.

A lot of us have a Temptation Island situated in the seas of ourselves, that place, that area that carries with it the potential for great destruction.  The psychological world says that two things usually trip up most people, a bad environment and a tainted heredity.  The man we have been studying lately, Jabez, this Old Testament figure who lived four thousand years ago, had both of those things going against him.  He should have lived a messed up life but he didn’t.  Why?  Because he prayed a high-risk, high-yield prayer, a prayer that I have been challenging you to pray over the last several weeks.  Today, as we conclude this series, we are going to look at the hinge of this prayer.  All of the other things we have talked about, pretty much, encompass this foundational principle.

If this is your first time here, if you are saying, “Ed, who in the world is this Jabez guy, let me do the rewind and give you the quick Reader’s Digest version of this interesting personality.  In the book of 1 Chronicles, chapter 4, six hundred genealogies are listed, name after name, after name.  Suddenly, though, in verses nine and ten of 1 Chronicles, chapter 4, God gives two verses, that’s right, two verses to this man who makes the all-name team.  When God gives a thumbnail sketch of someone in the seas of all these genealogies, we better take notice.  We better watch out.  This man, Jabez, must have lived a life of greatness, because historians tell us that a city was named after him, people followed him, and he was a true man of God who morphed his pain into prayer.

Let’s check him out and I will read this brief bio to you.  “Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.”  In other words, he stood out.  “His mother called his name, Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’  And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying,” now, here is the prayer, “’Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory.”  Expand my coastlines, God.  So far, we have Jabez, a man named pain, I would hate to have that name.  “Hey, pain, come here.  You are a pain.  Pain. Pain.”  That was his name.  For some reason, he was able to take this pain and morph it into prayer.

He prayed something unique. He said, “God, bless my life.”  We said that God wants to bless us.  The word to bless simply means for God to pour out his supernatural favor on our existence, and that’s a cool thing.  Sometimes that blows people away, like “What?  You mean God wants to bless me?  He wants to empower me?  God wants to expand my influence, my client base, my personality, my leadership?”  The answer is “yes.”  If, and we have learned this, if we say, “God, not my will, but yours.  God, not my agenda, but your agenda.  God, it’s your deal.  You work through me.”  As long as we understand that, then God will bless us the way he wants to bless, and he will expand our territory the way he wants to expand it.

The next part we talked about last week, we said, “That your hand would be with me.”  The hand of God.  The hand of God refers to the presence, the power and the protection of God.  So if we pray this Jabez-like, high-risk, high-yield prayer, if we say, “God, bless me according to your desires.  Expand my horizons.”  If we do that, the third piece of this prayer will be that God will have to show up.  God will have to act.  He will have to move because we will be so outgunned, out manned, over our head, that he will have to lead and he will have to guide.  Notice the progression, blessing, expansion, then we are out of control, over our head.  That’s when God shows up.  When was the last time, I ask you, when was the last time God supernaturally did something in your life?  When?  If you have to think a long time, then you better check your spiritual pulse.

Well, now, we move to this last line in this one-of-a-kind prayer.  It’s the Temptation Island piece of the prayer.  Here is what he said.  “That you,” you being God, “would keep me from evil.”  Did you download that?  “That you, God, would keep me from evil.”  Now, for far too long, I have prayed a one-dimensional prayer concerning temptation.  I say, “God, give me the strength to withstand temptation.”  I’m sure you have prayed that prayer too, and that’s good.  Good for you.  Let’s give ourselves a big round of applause.  However, that is a one-dimensional deal.  This prayer is the multi-faceted, multi-dimensional deal.  This “keep me from evil” stuff is on another planet.  More on that in a couple of moments.

If God blesses me, which he wants to, if God expands my coastlines, which he wants to, if God’s hand is upon me, which he wants it to be, then God wants to keep me from evil, keep me from Temptation Island.

Every year, we usually take a beach retreat with our students.  We take a week for junior high and a week for high school.  When you take students to the beach, what happens?  They hit the water.  They swim.  When kids swim, safety is our number one priority.  We have buoys that we put out and we tell the kids, “Hey, stay between the buoys.”  We have bullhorn-toting lifeguards in the water and on the beach.  We also initiate something called the buddy system.  You pick a partner and, every five minutes or so, we blow the bullhorn and you are supposed to raise your hand with your buddy, “Okay, here he is, here she is.”

Constantly, though, the bullhorn-toting lifeguards are saying, “You’re drifting.  You’re drifting.  Get out of the water.  Walk up the beach.  Stay between the buoys.  Stay between the buoys.”  What happens when you swim in the ocean?  You don’t realize it but the current can carry you away.  All of a sudden you look up and you see, “Wow, I’m way down the beach.  I didn’t realize it.”  The same happens in our lives.  This drift can occur.  After God has blessed, after he has expanded, after he has shown up in a supernatural way, we have a tendency, don’t we, to shut the motor down, kick back, open up the cooler, drink a cold beverage, and catch some rays, just to float along.

If we are not careful, the currents can carry us into Temptation Island.  I think many of us need some buoys, some buddy systems, and some bullhorn-toting lifeguards in our lives, don’t you?  That’s where prayer comes in.  That’s where the local church comes in.  That’s where accountability comes in.

How many of you know Owen Goff, one of the pastors here at Fellowship Church?  Owen, would you come out here for a second?  Owen, where are you?  Owen is one of the most Christ-like men I have ever known.  He is a true servant, a wonderful Christian, except when Owen does two things.  He is a great Christian, a wonderful Christ-like, Christ-honoring guy, except when he does two things.  Number one: when he walks into a restaurant.  Watch out.  Number two–you think I am kidding you?–when he jumps behind the wheel of his candy apple red Dodge Durango.  Owen will tailgate you.  He is an aggressive driver.  The first time I ever rode with him, I thought, “This is Owen behind the wheel?  This is out of control, man.  Unbelievable.”  He loves to tailgate people.  I said, “Owen, if that guy stopped, and we are going like 70, we are going to plow into him.  You’ve got to give people at least three or four seconds, so you can stop the car.”  There he is, right there.  Now Owen, I am telling you, he is a risky driver.

Okay, so I want you to think about Owen.  Owen stand right here for a second.  When you think about Owen, I want you to think about someone who tailgates, just for a second.  Some of you are saying, “Where in the world is he going?”  Right now, using Owen as an example, I am going to lift out several powerful principles from this keep me from evil prayer that Jabez prayed.  Just that one line, “Keep me from evil, God.”

Here is the first one, thinking about Owen now.  Remember SUVs always tailgate blessings.  SUV stands for Susceptible, Unapproachable and Vulnerable.  Whenever I am blessed, whenever you are blessed, whenever God really shows up, whenever good things are happening, after a spiritual highpoint, after a victory, after a windfall, after selling the company, after bagging the client, after the big game, after helping someone come to know Christ, watch out because the evil one revs up that all terrain, four-wheel drive, candy apple red Dodge Durango, that SUV.  We are usually more susceptible, more unapproachable and more vulnerable, and we get a skewed view of our strengths.  We’ve got to realize and remember that SUVs tailgate blessings.  Owen, thanks very much.  Stay away from Owen.  If you ever see that car coming, just try to avoid him.

Have you ever noticed that?  After a great time, after a strengthening area, you have got to watch out for the SUV.  That’s a Biblical principle.  Adam and Eve, way back in the book of Genesis, at the pinnacle of the creation, everything was going perfectly.  They had just been made in the image of God.  Everything was humming along and what happened?  Satan rumbled onto the scene and began to tempt them.  Why?  They were susceptible, unapproachable and they were vulnerable.

Remember David? He was at the top politically, economically, materialistically, militarily, you name it, he was there.  That is when the SUV drove onto the terrain of his life.

Elijah, this man of God, he took on hundreds of prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, the Mt. Carmel confrontation.  He won.  God showed up in a big way and helped him out.  You would think Elijah would not have had problems with the SUV–Elijah, not this guy, a patriarch.  You know what he did right after that great victory?  He put his tail between his legs like a scalded dog and ran from one woman who was mad at him.  SUV.

Ultimately, the evil one drove an SUV up to Jesus after his baptism, after he began his public ministry, after a spiritual highpoint, and tried to get him to do evil.  It’s a principle.  We have got to understand it and apply it.  The SUV is always tailgating those blessings.  Once we realize it and understand it, then we are way ahead of the game.

I was having dinner; I guess it was September, here in Dallas with an outstanding Christian leader.  Over dessert and coffee, he looked at me and said something I will never forget.  We were talking about temptation and sin and stuff like that.  He said, “Ed, you know what I have noticed about people?  People usually don’t fall when they are climbing the ladder.  They usually fall when they are at the top.”  I said, “Man, that was a great statement.  I am going to use that.  That is awesome.”

Here is the next principle.  Watch out where you lean your ladder. Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”  The problem in a lot of our lives is that we have our ladder leaning against the wrong thing.  We have it leaning against human understanding, leaning against this bit of wisdom from this armchair expert, instead of leaning our ladder against the grace and mighty arm of God.  That’s a big problem for us.  If we don’t lean it against God, here is what will happen.  We will one day get to the top of this ladder.  But, if we lean our ladder against God and especially pray this one of a kind prayer, our ladder will always be extending, always.

God is in the extension business, the vision business.  Remember, if we pray this one of a kind prayer — “God, bless me,” blessing means expansion, “God expand my territory.  Make my coastlines bigger.  God, may your hand be upon me,” again, that’s expansion, that’s the vision thing.  “God, keep me from evil.” — If we do all of that, we don’t have to worry about reaching the top.  There are always goals out there.  There are always dreams.  There is always something else.  Why?  We are bowing the knee to a God who is always moving us, who is always taking us out of our comfort zone, who is always extending our ladders.  Where do you have your ladder?  What is it leaning against: your own understanding, or God?

I guess it was in 1993 to be exact.  I was with four men from this church in a single engine plane, and, as the plane touched down on this dirt landing strip in this third world country, I knew what was going to happen when we got off the plane.  What was so deceptive about this country was the fact that, on the exterior flying in, it looked magnificent: the swaying palms, the sugar white beaches, the beautiful water.  Once we got off the plane and walked through a couple of pretty areas, we saw the real thing: a dilapidated polluted country and poverty that would break your heart.  It was kind of weird, though.  On the exterior it looked cool, on the interior it was horrible.

When we pray this keep me from evil type prayer, we have got to ask God for discernment.  We have got to, and here is the next principle, look past the palms to the pollution.  Temptation and sin looks good.  The first look, the first initial glance at it, is thrills and chills, excitement and enticement.  Satan tells us, “Oh, no one will find out.  No one will ever know.  You deserve this.  It looks great.”   But we don’t realize that right behind the exterior, right behind this beautiful stuff is something that is polluted and ugly and dilapidated and can mess our lives up.

Let me go back to our boy, Jabez.  In 1 Chronicles 4:10, Jabez said this, “Keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me.”  I hope you didn’t miss that.  “That it may not grieve me.”  I’ll say it again, the first look at Temptation Island is not one of grief.  If that was my first look, and if that was your first look and first response, we would never ever mess around on Temptation Island.  The first look is something enticing, “Oh, it looks great!”  But right behind greatness is grief.  It’s pollution.  It’s something bad.

Remember Jabez, remember the context, he was part of this real estate deal that God had orchestrated called the Holy Land.  God had all this territory he wanted Jabez to claim, but some of the territory was occupied by Canaanites.  Canaanites were evil people.  Obviously, Jabez knew they were involved in serious evil, and he would be tempted in this area.  So he said, “God, keep me from evil.  Help me to steer away from it.”  He knew the currents were very strong.  That friends, is this multi-dimensional prayer.

It’s great to say, “God, help me and give me strength in temptation.”  But the multi-dimensional, multi-faceted prayer is what Jabez prayed.  He said, “God, keep me from it.  Help me to steer clear from it, to take a wide berth around Temptation Island.”  Most of us don’t pray that way.  Most of us are tethered to too many temptations, or tethered too closely to Temptation Island.  If we pray this keep me from evil type prayer, we would stay away from most of the stuff that causes a lot of problems in our lives.

Proverbs 5:3-6 back up this whole principle of Temptation Island, how the first look is one usually of greatness: “For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.”  Wow.  Do you remember the Lord’s Prayer that we talked about in this service?  Twenty-five percent of Christ’s fifty words have to do with deliverance from evil.  What did he say?  Matthew 6:13, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  I challenge you to make that petition before God.  I challenge you to say, “From this day forward, I am going to adopt this keep me from evil, take a wide berth around Temptation Island type deal.  I am not going to shut the motors down.  I am not going to drift.  I am not going to sip a cool beverage and catch rays.  No, no.  I am going to be alert, watching for those Owen Goff type SUVs.  I am going to take a wide berth around it.”

The staff gave us a cool Christmas gift recently.  They gave Lisa and I a down comforter for our bed.  I love comforters.  During those cold wintry Texas nights, to sleep beneath a comforter, there is nothing like it.  It warms you up.  It makes you feel great.  It just envelops your body and you can sleep very well.

Here is another principle.  We need to get under “the” comforter.  In John 14:16 here is what John said, “He shall give you,” (he, being Christ) “another comforter.”  This word in the original language is pronounced par-a-cle-tos, which means “alongside.”  It refers to the Holy Spirit of God.  “That he may abide with you forever.”

Let me sit down here, if I can, and just talk to you as plainly and as openly as I can.  I will be forty years old in a couple of weeks.  I have lived a pretty long life.  Part of life is being tempted.  The Bible says “when you are tempted.”  Now, being tempted is not a sin.  Sin becomes sin when you sin.  Temptation is not a sin.  Usually, I discovered for my life, when I feel the temperature of temptation kind of turned up on my life, usually, and I guarantee you that you feel the same way, usually, I feel depleted in some way.  Usually, when I am tempted, I am seeking comfort in some area.  I am seeking satisfaction and so are you.  What do you do?  Sometimes you are going to feel tempted, and you are going to feel like, “I need comfort.  I need satisfaction.”  What do you do?

If you are a believer, if you are a Christian, the Bible says what?  The moment Christ comes into our lives, he places the person of the Holy Spirit there, the comforter.  So I have discovered this.  When temptation is tough on me, if I will just say to the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, I want you now to be my comforter.  I want you to envelope me.  I want you to satisfy me.  I want you to calm me down.  I want you to envelope me, to cover me up.”  Here is what will happen.  Put a watch to it next time you feel tempted.  In about sixty seconds, as you face the temptation with the comfort of the Holy Spirit, in about sixty seconds, the temptation will slither back into the shadows.  Call on the comforter.  Isn’t that great?  That is what the Holy Spirit is there for.

But sadly, if you are not a believer, if you don’t know Jesus, I hate to say this but I will, you are going live on Temptation Island.  Now and then, you might have enough courage to turn from temptation, but, for the most part, you are going to get hammered with temptation after temptation, after temptation.  You are going to live a powerless life.  But, because of the Gospel, because of Jesus, because of his power, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, we can have victory.  We can live a life on another level.  We can steer clear of Temptation Island, and, even when we are tempted, we can look at it in the eye, because of the Holy Spirit, and turn from it.

1 Corinthians 10 says, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.  But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.”  Now remember, this is just for Christians.  “But with the temptation, will also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.”  We have that kind of power.  The Bible says in the book of Acts, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”  The word power in the original language is pronounced du-nam-is.  We get the word dynamite from it.  I used to love the show GOOD TIMES with Jimmy Walker.  “Dynomite!”  I love that.  We have that kind of power.  The majority of us walk around not realizing, “Well, I’m a Christian and I’m…”  You’ve got the comforter in you.  You’ve got dynamite in you.  Deal with it.  Talk to him.

Remember, too, that God has given us a brain.  You can’t live as a believer on Temptation Island and expect to do this keep me from evil thing.  I remember as a kid, I grew up watching Gilligan’s Island.  It’s a funny show, but it’s a frustrating show.  How in the world can the professor make those satellite dishes with bamboo shoots yet couldn’t get them off the island.  I will never understand that.  That happened week in week out.  It was always frustrating.  Gilligan was always doing these dumb things to mess up the whole deal about getting off the island.  Sometimes I look at those of us who call ourselves Christians, and I say, “Man, you are doing like Gilligan.  I mean, you are like bumbling, stumbling around.”  “Well, I live on Temptation Island, but I can’t believe I am all messed up in this sin.  I don’t know what is wrong.  I’m just looking for a boat.  If God will send me a boat, on the island, or a leer jet, then I’ll get off the island.”

Hey, if you are living on Temptation Island, jump in the water and start swimming away.  Just start swimming, because once you start swimming, God will bring you off the island and you can live a life of victory.

My twins are six years of age.  They are little girls and they sometimes mispronounce words.  They don’t mispronounce words now as much as they did when they were four, but they still do.  Some of the mispronunciations are hilarious.  Any time you talk and mess up words, that is part of it.  Our twins, though, they mispronounce words and it’s hilarious.  I don’t correct them, because I want them to do it as long as possible, just for the laugh.  Here is what they do.  They have been doing this for a long time.  We will be driving in the car and we will pass like a playground or something, and they don’t call it a playground, they say, “Look Mom and Dad, a prayground.”  Is that cool, a prayground.  I thought about that against the backdrop of this one of a kind, high-risk, high-yield prayer.  We need to hit the prayground in our lives.

Throughout this series, I have been challenging you to pray the prayer of Jabez for thirty days.  I also challenged you to start a Jabez journal, to write down God’s miraculous acts in your life, as his hand is upon you, how he has blessed you, how your territory has expanded.  But today, I want you to say, “You know what?  I am going to establish now a prayground.  I am going to establish a spot where I talk to God, where I do business with him.”  Once again, this is a Biblical thing.  Look throughout the Old and New Testament.  They were always having certain spots where they prayed, maybe a mountain or along a seashore.  When God would show up in a great way, they would make a little altar or a little reminder of what he did.  Do that.  That prayground will become Holy Ground.

Because Jabez prayed this high-risk, high-yield prayer, here is what happens, 1 Chronicles 4:10, the last part of it, “and God granted him what he requested.”  God wants to grant what you request and what I request, too.  A lot of us don’t have because we don’t ask.  He is our loving, blessing, keep me from evil, Heavenly Father.  Ask him.  Because when you ask him, and when you get serious about the prayer of Jabez, all heaven will break loose in your life and in mine.

To conclude today’s message, I’m going to ask you to pray, and I am going to ask you to repeat the words after me as I pray this prayer of Jabez.  This is not my prayer, this is yours.  Just say this after me, “Oh, God, that you would bless me, indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me and that you would keep me from evil.  God I look forward to seeing how you are going to grant us these requests according to your will, according to your way, following your agenda for our lives.  I thank you, God, for the greatness that will occur because of people who are surrendered to you.  Give us the strength and discernment God to stay away from Temptation Island.  For Christ’s sake, Amen.

PARENT MAP

The Big Decision

Ed Young

May 21, 2000

It’s one of the most critical calls in life.  Some make the choice without so much as a thought.  Others mull over it and debate it for years.  Some have made the call, yet strangely, nothing has happened.  Hundreds of couples right now who are hearing my voice are even thinking about it.  Since I’m taking my fashion cues from Regis Philbin today, and since the flavor of this message will be along the lines of his hit show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” I want to stop and ask you this question: do you want to be a parent?  Or, as Regis says, [Regis impersonation] “Do you want to be a parent?”  Before you give your final answer, listen to the following information.

If you haven’t discovered it already, I’m in a series called the Parent Map.  Record numbers of people are checking this map out.  They are wondering whether or not they should take this journey that leads to this ultimate destination of parenting children, of being a mother or a father.  If you’re called to do it, there’s nothing like it.  But I want to say this: before you get into the baby business, make sure you take care of your business.

Speaking of considering parenthood, people these days are talking a lot about the environment, aren’t they?  Environmental issues are huge—holes in the ozone layer, pesticides on produce, the cleanliness of our drinking water.  People love to talk about the environment.  This sign right here pretty much says it all: Hazardous Waste.  Hey, pre-parents, those of you who are married, who are considering doing the mommy or daddy deal, you must think about hazardous waste.  You must consider the environmental issues.

This was hammered home to me this past August.  My youngest brother and I were wading in one of the most remote and beautiful bays in the world, Asunción Bay in southern Mexico.  While we were walking through this bathtub-like water, enjoying the scenery of God’s beautiful creation—the wildlife, the mangrove trees, the different flowers— something caught my eye.  Something stood out: a large piece of trash.  I said to myself, “Is this something?  Here I am in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from any real civilization, and here is a piece of pollution.”  Pollution has permeated our planet, physically and with child-rearing challenges as well.  Smart pre-parents consider the hazardous waste quotient.  They consider how much pollution their children will have to deal with on this planet that’s packed full of violence, rebellion, chicanery, and debauchery.

Just four decades ago, you could pray in classrooms, and rebellious kids got in trouble for chewing Bazooka Joe bubble gum.  Today, they’re handing out condoms in classrooms, and rebellious kids are firing off real bazookas.  When I was young, a popular song on the radio was by Three Dog Night, called “Old-Fashioned Love Song.”  When you’re going home from church a little bit later, turn on the radio.  You’ll probably hear the hit song by Sisqo called “Thong Song.”  How times have changed.  This isn’t the Brady Bunch or the Jetsons anymore.  We’re talking about South Park.

We’re talking about situations like the one some friends shared with me last week.  I know a husband and wife team who are in the hair care industry, and they said that a client of theirs—a single forty-something-year-old woman—had installed cameras at strategic points in her house and, via the Internet, people could go online and pay a fee to watch her shower, undress, and perform other unmentionable acts.  This lady was bragging about the fact that she was raking in tens of thousands of dollars per month.

Pre-parents, this is not the same environment, this is not the same hazardous waste that you dealt with or that I processed when I was growing up.  It’s a different world.  Children, your children and mine, will cut their teeth on this toxic tract of land known as Earth.  I don’t tell you this to scare you; I don’t tell you this to discourage you.  I tell you this so you can do a reality check.  Jesus made this bold statement in Matthew 10:16: “Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

“Snake!  Snake!  Snake!” my children said.  I ran out to the front of our house and looked around, and on the second step leading up to our front door was a copperhead.  I got down and said, “Kids, get back!  Get back!  [Australian accent] Oh, isn’t he a beautiful boy; what a snake!”  No, I didn’t do that.  I tried to take care of the snake.  Right when I made the move to take the snake out, this crafty creature slithered into a crack.  He’s nowhere to be found.  The snake is now living underneath the steps of our front door.  Snakes are shrewd; they’re crafty.

Pre-parents must be shrewd and crafty.  We need to think about the culture in which we find ourselves.  We need to think about the challenges.  We need to pray like we’ve never prayed before.  We need to be intentional, and really process all of this environmental stuff so that we can be the best parents possible.  But we must do the work before we decide to become parents, as opposed to afterwards.

I have a good friend who has a company that cleans up hazardous waste from tracts of land.  The other day he was explaining to me all the processes and procedures his leadership team goes through before they clean up hazardous waste.  What a word to you, those of you who are thinking about parenthood, whether it’s a biological child or you’re thinking about adoption.

Several nights ago, I found myself doing something that I didn’t really like to do.  I found myself wading through tall weeds around our neighborhood and nailing up a sign on a telephone pole.  Here’s the sort of sign that I was nailing to the telephone pole: Garage Sale.  I hate garage sales.  I despise them.  My wife loves garages sales.  I want to bring to you, on this stage, some of the junk we did not sell.  We made a whopping forty dollars; it was a windfall, man.  We had so much extra junk that we packed it in our garage, and I can’t even pull my truck in.  A garage sale….

I just don’t like people looking at my junk, and I’m sentimental.  Look at this little cart here that our kids used to use.  Yeah, our giant bullmastiffs have torn it up, you can see that.  But I kind of like having it around.  People donated stuff, like this very fashionable jacket.  What a statement!

We all have junk in our lives: generational junk.  I have junk that was given to me by my flawed parents; so do you.  Pre-parents must do a garage sale.  Pre-parents must step up, nail this sign to their lives, and say, “You know what?  We are going to deal with the junk.  The junk stops here.”

For example, let’s say you were given the generational junk of anger.  Let’s say you wear this anger and you rage on your children because you were just given this anger and that’s you.  You don’t want to take it off.  You give it to your kids; they grow up and give it to their kids.  Who is going to break the cycle of sin?  Who is going to do the garage sale?

Abraham, a patriarch of the faith, had some generational junk.  He tried to pass his wife off as his sister to save his rear.  Isaac, his son, did the same thing.  Jacob, in the Hebrew, means “supplanter” or “con artist.”  Jacob’s sons?  They were horrible.  You’re talking about dealing with generational junk?  Someone, though, broke the cycle.  Someone, though, had a garage sale.  Joseph.  Joseph stood up, and Joseph said, “It stops here.  No more of this stuff.”

Maybe you’ve been given anger; that’s your junk.  Maybe you’ve been given materialism.  Maybe you’ve been given a wounded self-esteem.  I don’t know what you’ve been given, but don’t play with the junk!  Don’t get sentimental—I’ve got to ride this thing [gets on the dog-eaten toy cart]—sentimental, whoa, with the junk.  Don’t do that.  Don’t say, “No, I’m not going to do a garage sale.  I’m just going to keep this stuff.”  Get rid of it.  Once you get rid of it, you’re talking about freedom, joy, and peace that surpass all understanding.

Years ago I met with a man who did a garage sale.  This man was the father of several children, and his life was spinning out of control because of the junk.  It was so garaged in his life, it was so intricate and piled on top of itself that his life was messed up.  But with tears streaming down his face, he came clean and he did the garage sale deal.  He looked at and labeled everything in his life.  Everything that was given to him he dealt with, and now this person is walking in joy, in freedom.

Hebrews 12:1, “Let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  Locate it and label it.  Maybe you’re a person who is marrying a single parent, and the single parent has two or three children.  Do a garage sale.  Or maybe you’re saying, “Well, Ed, you don’t get it.  I’ve got junk, it’s garaged, I’m wearing it, I’m riding it, I’m messing around with it, I’m sentimental.  What do I do?”  Allow our Heavenly parent, the perfect parent, God, to parent you.  Talk about your garage sale stuff with a trusted friend or a Christian counselor.  Hey, you get help on your golf game.  You talk to accountants about financial challenges.  You go to the doctor when you’re sick.  Why not a Christian counselor?

I also—I’ll say it one more time—I also beg you to hook up with a Home Team.  Our small group ministries, we call them Home Teams, are the most important little enclaves in Fellowship Church.  It’s great to come to corporate worship—we’re commanded to do so in Hebrews 10:25—but also, we’re commanded to get together in groups of community.  They’re little healing huddles.  They’re little areas where we can process our stuff, discuss the Bible, pray for each other, get to know one another, and have a garage sale.  Pre-parents, think about the environment in which you’re living.  Think about your junk.

How many of you have built a house recently in the Dallas/Fort Worth area?  If you’ve built a house recently, would you lift your hand?  Don’t be shy.  That’s all, about five people?  Okay.  People are afraid: “He might call me up!  I’m not raising my hand!”  The most important part of a house is the foundation.  A builder friend told me Thursday morning at 7am at Starbucks, “Ed, the deal is the foundation.  Your house is as good as your foundation, and the soils here are terrible for the most part.  They shake and bake and rock and roll.  You’ve got to get serious about, and pour a lot of money into, your foundation.

This winter we’re going to break ground on a children’s and adult training facility right where I’m pointing: right out there, north.  It’ll be about 90,000 square feet.  Then we’re doing another structure: we’re going to quadruple the size of our atrium, and make a food-court type situation where we can meet and greet and eat and hang out before and after services.  It’ll be wonderful because we don’t have a family room.  We’re a church family without a family room.  That’ll be it.  But I’m going to tell you something: just the foundational work is so intricate and so expensive.  Before you consider parenthood, check the foundation of your marriage.  Is your marriage strong enough, is it stable enough, to have children?

Now and then I’ll hear this: pre-parents will say, “You know, Ed, we want to have children because it will bring us closer together.”  On that one I don’t hold back.  I say, “Excuse me?  Children complicate, they don’t simplify.”  When Lisa and I were childless, we thought we were really busy.  Now we look back and go, “What were we thinking?”  How solid is the foundation of your marriage?  Is it solid enough to withstand the movement of the soils that childhood brings?  Is it solid, I mean rock-solid enough to withstand the strain and the pressure of what we’re talking about, of what you’re signing up for?

In the opening installment, I talked about the spouse-centric home.  If you missed that, please pick up the tape.  The most important part of a family is the marriage.  Everything rises and falls on the marital foundation.  If you have a strong marriage, children benefit.  That’s where children learn about love, that’s where they learn about processing anger, that’s where they learn about conflict resolution, that’s where they learn about Christianity and how it’s lived inside and outside the walls of the church, that’s where they learn about handling money.  If you are giving your children a solid marital foundation, I’m talking about a rock-solid, pier-and-beam foundation, they will be launched with great trajectory.  They’ll have a healthy self-esteem; they’ll have confidence; they’ll have an aim that the world cannot offer.  Conversely, if you have a poor marital foundation, you’re going to have some trouble.  A poor marital foundation, I’m talking about a foundation that’s cracked, can really be treacherous.

You see, we oftentimes deal with teenagers and children who are cracked because, simply put, the marriage was not strong enough to support a little one.  The good news is that we serve a God of grace and forgiveness.  The good news is that God can take the pieces and put them back together and remold your marriage and remake your marriage, but it’s going to take work.  Don’t—I beg you—don’t jump into the childrearing thing until you have a solid marital foundation.

Some tightwads are saying, “Well, Ed, we’re not going to have children until we can afford it.”  Guess what?  You can never afford it.  If I would have waited that long, I would still be childless.

This past week, I was having my quiet time.  When I say “quiet time” I mean my time when I read the Bible and pray and talk to God.  Knowing God is just like a marriage: when you say, “I do,” you don’t realize the full implications of it until after you say “I do.”  You grow in that relationship; the same is true with the Lord.  You say “I do” to Him, and then you realize the depth and the beauty as you spend time in His word and time in prayer.  Check this verse out: Proverbs 24.  “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it’s established.  Through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.”

I never cease to be amazed at how our children mimic Lisa and I.  It’s scary sometimes.  Just like yesterday afternoon.  I’m sorry, yesterday morning.  Saturday morning I usually do the same thing.  I’m not a morning person, but I get up early.  I stagger into the kitchen, grab a cup of coffee, and I walk into our family room.  I like to be alone for about thirty minutes and just watch a fishing show.  Just thirty minutes alone, sipping coffee, watching a fishing show.

About five minutes into the show, I look over and I see E.J., my eight-year-old, walking in with a cup of “coffee.”  Seventy percent of it was sugar and milk.  He sat down and said, “Dad, look.  I’ve got coffee like you, and we’re watching a fishing show together!”  Now, to you, that might not mean that much.  But for me, it really spoke to me.  If he’s doing the coffee and fishing show deal, just think what else he’s picking up because values are more caught than taught.  What a challenge we have.  So before you have children, you need to think about the cost.  Jesus said, many times, “Count the cost.”  The financial sacrifice, the relational sacrifice, the recreational sacrifice, the occupational sacrifice.  Pretty important stuff.

Some of you right now are probably really going through a difficult time just hearing words about parenting because you are one out of the three couples who are dealing with infertility.  Maybe you’ve been trying and trying to have children, but nothing is happening.  Maybe you’re tired of going from doctor to doctor.  Maybe you’re tired of intimacy being dictated by a temperature chart.  Infertility is a crisis of control.  Oftentimes couples who are infertile say, “Is God punishing me?  Why can these dope addicts crank out kid after kid after kid, and we’d be great parents, and nothing is happening?”

I want to talk to those of us who have children or those of us who make stupid comments to those of us without children.  Don’t ever say these words to a husband or a wife without children.  Don’t ever say this: “When y’all havin’ kids?”, or “Oh, you’re infertile?  Just relax.  Go to Hawaii.”  “Hey, infertility?  My wife and I never dealt with that; all we had to do was wink at each other and we’d get pregnant.”  Stupid comments.  Those comments pierce infertile couples’ hearts and souls like knives.

If you are infertile, remember this: a child does not constitute a family.  Adam and Eve were a family unit without children.  You must set, though, a financial and emotional limit.  I don’t know what that is for you; only you and your spouse can make that call.  But I do know this: you’ve got to make it.  There are some wonderful resources in our bookstore about infertility that you can pick up right after this message.  But also, there’s an adoption option out there.  There are millions of children that need to be adopted.  If adoption is for you, you’ve got to come to the point where you realize that an adopted child is not the consolation prize.  You’ve got to come to the point where you and your spouse say, “You know what, it doesn’t matter if our child is a biological one or an adopted one: we’re going to love him or her just the same.”  Parenting is not a biological thing, it’s a love thing.  If you’re adopted, you’re in good company because Jesus was adopted by his earthly father Joseph.  Also, the Bible uses this whole concept of adoption to talk about what occurs when someone becomes a Christ-follower.  The moment I receive Christ, I’m adopted into the family of God.  God has done the adoptive work.  We’re not automatically born children of God.  People say, “I’m just a child of God.”  No, you aren’t.  You’re not a child a God until you have received the adoptive work God did for you through His very own son.  Many of you right now are outside the family of God, and today, you can take that step and become adopted.

A couple days ago one of our twins had a friend over.  She is six years old and she was recently adopted from Russia.  She’s been over here for maybe 24 months.  When we were dropping her off at her house—and she has some wonderful Christian parents—Lisa and I looked at each other and we said, “You know, where would this little girl be had these parents not adopted her?”  Adoption is great.  Don’t throw it out.  It’s wonderful.

Hazardous Waste: think about the pollution.  The Garage Sale deal: get rid of all your junk, the generational junk.  Check out your foundation regularly.  I’m going to stand here and do the Regis Philbin thing one more time.  Do you want to be a parent?  Do you really want to be a parent?  Maybe this message, this information, assisted you in making your final answer.