And automatically I knew he was reading my journal. And I write some pretty intimate stuff in my journal as I pray, so I was angry, “WHAT?! You read my journal without asking me?” He said, “Yeah, man, just wait.” Then he said, “There’s something different about you. I’ve been watching you—the way you handle yourself, the way you treat Lisa.” And he looked at me with tears in his eyes and he said, “I want what you have.”
I was blown away. I just prayed for this opportunity the night before. So that night in Scott’s dorm room, through my stutterings and stumblings, I found the opportunity to lead him into a personal relationship with Christ. And that Sunday, Lisa and I took Scott to our church. And for the first time I saw church through his eyes. It was horrible. The music, the words—he couldn’t connect with it. The pastor was using Christianese and Scott was lost. He didn’t understand what was going on.
When Lisa and I were 19 years old, I didn’t realize it then, God was planning the vision and the style of Fellowship Church in our lives. What could have happened in Scott’s life if Fellowship Church had been in Tallahassee, Florida? I don’t know. I think his life would be different than it is today. Why do I live? Because God made me to live.
GOD HAS MOLDED AND SHAPED ME THROUGH A KALEIDOSCOPIC RANGE OF ENVIRONMENTS AND INFLUENCES
Why do I live? Because God has used a kaleidoscopic range of environments and influences in people to give me the impact that I’m having now in my life.
Even our coaches were crazy. I’ve talked to a number of people who have played college athletics and the weirdest thing is that we had no training rules at Florida State. We’d take road trips and we’d have rent a cars at our disposal. Can you imagine turning our team loose on Bourbon Street when we played the University of New Orleans with no curfew the night before the game? And I had to keep Rodney calm? Ugh. I can’t believe I was there. I really can’t. Only by God’s grace did I make it out.
Well, then this pastor said, “Not only do I want you to pray that God will bring a non-Christian into your life, I want you to ask God to give you the words to say to them about Jesus Christ.” I thought to myself, “Now that’s a good challenge. I’ve never really shared Jesus with someone. And that’s pretty stout.” So that night I went back to my dorm room, in Cash Hall, hit my knees, rested my elbows on that air-conditioning unit, looked out over a darkened parking lot, and I said, “God give me the words to say to these people you’ve brought into my life.”
The next day I walked into class with a friend of mine, let’s just say his name was Scott. We’re walking together and this guy goes, “Hey, Ed, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” I said, “No.” He said, “Man, you might get kind of mad, but I was in your room the other night and I took this notebook thing you had and I began to read through it.”
The people were all pressing in because when the Apostle Paul came to town, man, people showed up. And don’t you know that Paul was talking about the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ; the death, burial and resurrection. The place was standing room only. You know it was hot, it was humid. And the Bible said the lamps were there. Did you read that? Did you hear me talk about the lamps? Why would the Bible talk about the lamps? Well, back in the early church the church wanted everyone to know what was going on. They didn’t want people to think that something freaky or funky was going on.
So everything was lit up so everyone could look around and see that’s what they’re doing. They are talking about Jesus, the resurrected Son of God. There were a bunch of lamps in the room. And the lamps were swinging back and forth, and maybe a breeze that would blow through now and then. Don’t you know as people hung on Paul’s every word they could see the scars on his face from the persecution? They could see the stress, the anxiety, the urgency that he had to communicate Jesus to all of the people.
There was a guy there, a young man named Eutychus. He definitely makes the all-name team. And the name Eutychus means fortunate in the original language. Eutychus found a really good spot. He found himself perched on a window sill listening to the Apostle Paul preach. Now back in the day, back in the early church, they didn’t put a clock on the services. I mean, time just flowed. They were just in it for the long haul. And the Bible says that Paul continued his message until after midnight.
Every day I am stepping, I confess, I repent, I do what God wants me to do because as my mind is renewed, my thoughts will be renewed and then my behavior is renewed and then I will discover God’s good and perfect and pleasing will. Galatians 5:25, it says, “As we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” What a verse!
So really, the only thing that can block the Holy Spirit’s power in you and me is you and me. That’s it. ILLUS: You’ve got an infection. The infection won’t go away. What do you do? You take some antibiotics. Have you ever been on a Z-pack before? I love the Z-pack.
Now when you start a Z-pack, don’t just start it, but you better finish it because I have made this mistake before. I have taken two or three for the first few days and left the others in the cute little pack and that infection has turned and hit me harder; it’s not a pretty sight when you don’t take all of the pills. So take all of your antibiotics. Take them all.
Don’t stop short and just say, “Okay Lord, I will confess. That’s enough. I have blown it. I feel sorry that I have messed up.” Don’t stop there. Go to repentance, but don’t stop there. Do what God wants you to do. Walk by the Spirit of God and realize that God is changing you, because change comes from the inside out. It’s all about God, and it’s a decision followed by a process.
And you say in your mind, “No way. They’re wrong. They’re like 65 percent wrong, man. I’m not gonna swallow my pride and—” We need to acquiesce to defer to him or not. You’re in a situation at the office or school, you have an opportunity to cheat, the exaggerate, to lie and part of you is like, “I can lie and get out of this. I can exaggerate. I can make myself look good. I could take credit for this idea, and it wasn’t my idea.”
And you begin to do it and the Holy Spirit goes, you go “Whoa! You’re getting ready to lie. You’re getting ready to exaggerate. You’re getting ready to falsify.” What do you do? Do you defer to him, or do you just say, “You know what, I am going to lie. I am going to exaggerate.”
That’s how the Holy Spirit of God leads us and guides us. Where you’re going, the place you’re going, the Holy Spirit is telling you it doesn’t honor the Lord. “What are you doing walking in there? What are you doing buying a ticket to that? What? What?” We either all forget we need to do that or we defer to the Holy Spirit of God.
The Holy Spirit of God will nudge us to the house of the Lord. He will convict us and tell us, “It is time to step up and step out and serve.” That is why the Christian life is all about a walk. How do I walk? Well, I have to take a step to walk. The first step is the spiritual metamorphosis.
That’s why, when someone says, “Well, Ed, that’s just my spiritual life,” I say, “Like there’s another one?” As a believer, everything we do, say, touch, and feel should be an act of worship. Big sex, small sex. Fully human or fully animal. Romans 12. Read this chapter today, because this chapter is all about a revolution. What’s a revolution, a sexual revolution? It means a sudden change for the better. And that’s what Romans 12 talks to us about.
Let me read the first two verses, because these two verses really summarize how we can think right. Because the way I think determines the way I feel; the way I feel determines the way I act. If I think like a dog, I’m going to act like a dog, and I’m going to behave like a dog. If I think like a child of God, I’m going to feel like a child of God, and I’m going to act like a child of God.
Romans 12:1, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God…” In the Old Testament they took animals, killed animals, cut them in half and put them on the altar. The writer here says, “No, don’t do that! God’s after a living sacrifice.”
We’re not animals. Humans aren’t hounds. We’re different. So, we can crawl up on the altar, crawl in the offering plate and say, “God, I yield everything to you, even my sexuality.” Have you said that? Have you said that? God wants it. You’ve got to trust him. You’re made to live, and I’m made to live to have big sex.
The sad thing about all this is this particular fact. So many men and women will become so wrapped up in trying to have it all, know it all and do it all, that they will dance around the bloodstained cross, and they will say, “I’ll deal with that later, God. I’ll deal with that at a more convenient time. I’ll have my security nailed in a couple of months”. However, they never really get around to it.
We’ve talked about heaven. Let’s look at the flip side. Let’s talk about hell. I don’t like to talk about hell, but Christ talked more about hell than any other person in the Bible, and the problem in a lot of our churches is we’ve “air-conditioned” hell. Hell is a real place. In heaven, it’s a city. We talked about that. Community. We are together. In hell, there’s no community. Isolation. A man named Jim said, “Ed, I’d rather spend eternity in hell because all my friends will be there”. If your friends are in hell, you won’t know it. Isolation. We said in heaven, walls, security. In hell, vulnerability. Maybe a good explanation would be if you could live in South Central Los Angeles without any locks on your doors, windows.
No security system whatsoever. I think you would feel a little violated. No rivers in hell. New discoveries every day in heaven. In hell, vast wasteland. Garbage. Isolation. Nothingness. No roads. You will be your naked, ugly, sinful self. How about music? No music. There will be sounds though. The Bible says, “Weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I’ve been at the hospital before, late at night, when I’ve heard someone cry out through the corridors and it echoes back and forth, and that’s just a taste of what hell’s going to be like.
When I put on the Lord Jesus Christ’s eternal lenses, when I look at things from an eternal perspective, it changes the way I look at individuals, the way I see the future, the way I treat you, because the decisions I make on this side of the grave affect where I will spend eternity on that side of the grave, and that’s why I became a Christian at a very young age. I came to the profound conclusion that I’m going to live a lot longer in eternity than I am here and I made a decision for Christ. Put on those eternal lenses.
Second, I’ve got to own the fact that I’m going to live happily ever after if I know Christ. It doesn’t matter what situation you are in, how much you’re suffering, whatever you’ve gone through, it’s going to get better. Say that with me. “It’s going to get better”. Did you hear me? If you know Christ, it’s going to get better. That’s right. It’s going to get better!
The third way to set our hearts and minds in heaven with our bodies here – we’ve got to live each day like it’s the last day of our lives. We don’t know when we’re going to be called home. We don’t know when Christ is coming back. The Bible says He will come as a thief in the night. No one knows. Is there anything in your life that you would be embarrassed about if Christ were to come back while you were involved in this particular activity? Anything? If there is in your life or my life, we need to get rid of it and replace it with something good.
Not that, no, no, you’re disturbing God doing a work, doing transactions in people’s lives when you get up in your selfishness and walk out of these doors early so please don’t do that. Let’s pray together. Wow. That is love. That is the true covenant and foundation, and that’s that HNL marriage that God desires for all of us to have. I went fishing several years ago, and I saw an alligator. I’ve messed around with alligators before because I am a risk taker. I’ve spent a lot of time in the wild, and I had a plastic worm attached to my rod and reel.
So I threw the plastic worm right by the alligator and began to reel the worm by the alligator. He ate it. I fought him for a while, then he spit it out. You know gators are stupid. I threw it out again, fought him again, he spit it out. Third time, you guessed it, the big reptile leaped on it, he threw it out. I looked at my son and friend in the boat, I said, “You watch this. I’m going to catch this alligator because I’ve caught one before.”
I threw it out again. And the big ole monster jumped on it. I let him swallow it, gave him some line, and I let it get down in that sinister snout, then I set the hook. The thing went bananas! Lily pads were flying, moss was going everywhere. I reeled this thing all the way to the boat. He was hissing, and we’re like, “Wow, look at the alligator!” I said, “Take my rod.” And my friend held the rod. And I said, “I’m going to whack this gator with a paddle.”
Js God your first target? Is your second target family? Is your third target the marketplace? You answer the question, you see. So, that’s A, adjust your priorities. What’s B? B, we have to balance our attitude. If I’m going to have sanity in my schedule, if you’re going to have sanity in your schedule, we’ve got to balance our attitude and here’s what happens…we jump in our car, start it up and the car is cruising down Busy Boulevard.
We’re on Busy Boulevard and the rpms for many of us are pegged in the red and we’re flying and we see a pothole, “Pop, pop!”, hit another pothole, “Pa poom!” and all of a sudden, our tires need adjusting but we don’t pay attention and we’re on Busy Boulevard and one day because our tires are out of whack, they’re not adjusted, they’re out of balance, we end up swerving and hitting a building or getting in a serious accident. Our attitudes.
Think about attitudes like tires, they hit potholes and they need adjusting and the Bible says we must balance our attitudes. Here’s what Proverbs says again, (Awaety^Prowerbs 12:25, “in a man’s heart weighs it rfown^XWhat’s this verse saying? This verse is saying, “Chill out. Relax. Ease up. Lighten up. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Have a good time with life”. But anxiety, the Bible says, weighs a person’s heart down.
I’ve been with people who are full of anxiety and tension and you see, tension and stress are events, they are not a person. A person, you put them in any particular circumstance or situation or event, he’s either cool or stressed out. So it’s the event you know, that really gets a person down and it really brings us this way and that way.
