The second give. Give 10% to yourself. I give God 10%, then I give 10% to myself. Save 10%. That is giving it to yourself. And put this 10% in some sort of investment, a conservative investment that will make money for you, an interest-bearing account. We move on to Proverbs 13:11. “…he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” Little by little, we make it grow. The book of Proverbs also talks about the ant. We have no problem seeing ants around here, living as we do in Texas. Fire ants are all around us. Fire ants work.
They store stuff all the time. And this is the picture of someone who saves money. Saving money is different than spending money. Let me illustrate. If you walk in, ladies, and say, “Honey, I saved $100 on this coat, how do you like it?” That is not saving money. Saving money would be if the store put $100 in this interest-bearing account. Saving money is keeping money close to you, like in your wallet or in your purse. It is not allowing the money to leave you. So technically, you are not saving money when you buy that boat, men, even though you say that you have saved $2,000. He who gathers money little by little makes it grow. So give God 10% and put 10% in a savings account and everything is going well. Here is what happens. Here is the result of saving money. First I learn to live on a margin. I am living on 80%. Secondly, I learn commitment. This is a value that God wants us to live by. The world says to save money for security. God says to save money for stewardship.
I also save money because it has a great payoff.
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We owed $1.875 million on this property when we tied it up. Without a sign on the property, a year later, we sold 22 acres for $1.875 million. Now don’t sit there and tell me that God isn’t in the land business! Don’t even try to tell me that.
But, the whole thing happened because of questions. “What does this confirm?” And I asked, and we asked the right person the right question and he gave us the right answer.
COPY
Here’s the next question. The copy question. “What should I copy? What should I copy?” We need to copy stuff from people’s lives, especially the people who are walking the walk and talking the talk. I should copy stuff.
When we first started Fellowship Church I met someone you might have heard about, Rick Warren. He’s written an incredible book called “The Purpose Driven Life”. I read in the New York Times where it sold like 20 million copies. Rick has been very, very kind to me, and very kind to Fellowship Church. And early on I listened to some tapes from Rick and these tapes talked about the focus of the church. And I said to myself, “Man, this is brilliant. It’s simple, but not simplistic.”
So I began to think about two chapters in the Bible. Specifically Matthew 22 and Matthew 28. Matthew 22:37 you find the great commandment. What is the great commandment? Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And then he said [verse 39, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Vertically, we’re with God. Horizontally, with our neighbor.
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First, of all it means that we are to satisfy our spouse sexually. Second, it means that we will be held accountable to how we fulfill their desires. One day Lisa and I, both, will stand before the Lord and He will ask each of us how we fulfilled our spouse. Now, I want you to look at your spouse for a second. Third, You are looking right now at your only sexual option. When you said, “I do”, you said that meant your spouse was it, together forever.
So we are to fulfill one another’s desires. “The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband.” In other words, we are never to use sex as a weapon, a reward or for leverage. It goes on to say, “In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.” Now it gets very descriptive. “Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent…so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.” When the husband wants to have sex and the wife is not in the mood, most of the time, biblically speaking, you are to fulfill your husband’s desires.
And if you passively participate, you are also rejecting his advances. You are to willingly and creatively participate even if you do not want to have an orgasm.
Now many times you are going to say no and sex will not occur that night. Wives, if you do say no, don’t just say no.
Ed Young Blog – Say no with an appointment. No, tomorrow morning. No, tomorrow night. When you reject your spouse’s advances, you are hurting them deeply. Don’t reject them very often, but when you reject them do it with a contingency. And notice that the Bible says the only time that you are to abstain is not due to fatigue.
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But here is the deal. We are not really prepared to live until we are prepared to die. Are you prepared to die? If you died right now, do you know where you would go? Is your eternal destination secure? Are you riding on the back of your heavenly Father, or are you trying to do life solo?
James 4:13-14 talks about the frailty of life. It says, “Now listen, you who say, “‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” You are one germ away, one drunk driver away, one blood clot away from eternity. We will spend more time on the other side of the grave than on this side of the grave. Yet, the choices we make on this side of the grave affect the destination of where we will spend eternity.
We are creatures who have a free will. I cannot force this down your throat. You can’t force it down mine. You have got a choice to make. This tragedy brings us back into reality. This tragedy is a wake-up call. It’s a wake-up call for those of us who call ourselves believers. It’s a wake-up call for us to get serious about understanding the implications of walking with the Lord. It’s a wake-up call for us to capture those kingdom moments, when so many people around us who don’t know Christ are asking those deep questions, questions of the soul. It’s a wake-up call for believers.
Ed Young Blog – It’s also a wake-up call for many of us here who maybe are not Christians. We have many. Many of you have been testing the waters. Many of you here have been drawn to church today just because you have this hole in your heart that you can’t explain. You have been questioning it. You have been trying to find the meaning to life.
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Maybe you grew up in a family that handles conflict “Frappachino style.” Have you ever had one of those icy Frappachinos at Starbucks? They are incredible! They are great! They have a lot of calories, but they are good. Maybe, when you are involved in conflict, you do the Frappachino thing and just ice the other person out.
They may ask, “What’s wrong, baby?”
Then, you respond by saying, “Oh, nothing,” and you just sip your Frappachino. You could ice the person out for hours, days, and sometimes weeks. Maybe you handle anger Frappachino style.
Maybe you handle anger “trash bag style.” We have a lot of trash bag people here. It reminds of what happened when Lisa and I moved from a rent house to a house that we had built, years ago. We pulled a U-haul trailer into the garage of our rent house. I was hauling the last bit of junk into the U-haul trailer to take it over to our new house. I saw all these trash bags lined up and I figured they were full of clothes. Little did I realize, there was chicken from the previous night’s meal in the trash bags. I threw the trash bags with the chicken in the U-haul trailer, locked it, drove it to the new house, and let it sit there in the boiling sun for hours and hours in triple degree heat. Several days later, when it came time for me to unload the stuff, I opened up the trailer and the stench just about knocked me over. It was horrible!
Ed Young Blog – A lot of people here handle conflict that way. You get angry, upset, and your feelings get hurt. You stuff it in the trash bag, throw it in your U-haul and lock it. Then, one day, your spouse or the person you are dating is walking along, they unlock the U-haul and you verbally explode. Those are major issues. It’s all hazardous cargo.
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Then he decides, “You know what? I can find someone else a little more worthy to save.” And, up he goes, back to the helicopter without the victim.
Not only would that be a very sad and tragic happening, but it would not be a very good demonstration of an unconditional rescue.
Let me show you another verse about our God — Romans 5:8. It says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Christ came to this earth, suspended from heaven. He hung on a line, not a cable line, but a wooden line. He hung on a cross. As he was hanging on this cross, he had your name, your face on his mind and in his heart.
As he looked down, he didn’t say, “I don’t want to rescue you because of the way you look or how successful you are.”
He said, “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you have done. I don’t care what you look like. I just love you and I want to have a relationship with you.”
With that, he gave his life to rescue us from the sin that was keeping us from God’s unconditional love. The true measure of love in our lives is how much someone is willing to sacrifice for us. Christ went the distance. He held nothing back and left us with no question that his love was capable of filling that hole in our lives.
Ed Young Blog – God initiated and demonstrated his love. We can accept Christ’s love and invite Christ into our lives. Just as I was in the boat, with the plug in my pocket all along, we can have Christ in our lives. But what good does that unconditional love do for us if we don’t take that plug and apply it to the hole. We need to put the plug, Christ, into the hole in our lives.
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I couldn’t wait for church to get out. It ended about 6:30pm. Lisa and I hopped in the station wagon and I began driving her home. I thought to myself this would be the night I’d kiss Lisa for the first time. I had my Jovan musk oil on. You know, it was kind of a joke, but this year for my birthday Lisa got me a little bottle of Jovan musk oil. Anyway, that is another story.
So I get Lisa home and we are sitting in the driveway while I try to get up enough courage to kiss her. I looked at my watch and suddenly it was 7:55pm. My home was 16 miles away! But I didn’t really worry. About 8:05 we kissed. It was a magical moment because the next thing I remember was looking at my watch and finding it was 8:20pm. I told Lisa I had to go, I was breaking the law and breaking my parent’s advice. I gave her a quick kiss, jumped in my Mom’s station wagon, which by the way, had a 455 under the hood. Do you remember back when the speed limit was 55, you know, when Jimmy Carter was President? I was just flying. I wasn’t that worried because my Dad was a pastor. Since it was Wednesday night, I knew that he would have meetings scheduled after church. I knew that I could easily get past my Mom. She was so sweet, genteel and nice. There I was just advertising my autonomy driving along at 85 miles per hour.
Ed Young Blog – Now we lived kind of out in the country and I pulled into what would be considered our neighborhood. I went around a rather sharp turn and suddenly I passed a car that looked amazingly like my father’s car. But then I reassured myself that was impossible. My father never comes directly home from church. It did scare me enough to say a quick prayer. I prayed to God that was not my father. I prayed it in Jesus’ name.
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Also, God’s provision. I Chronicles 29:11b. “Everything in heaven and earth is yours.” What I do, though, is look at my lack of supply. God tells us that His resources cannot be exhausted. “Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.”
Now, it is great to know about God’s power and His provision. But the bottom line is His partnership. Are you spiritually linked with Him? Are you a partner in His firm? David says in this verse that he is in the firm by grace, that he doesn’t deserve it, it is a one-sided deal. I Chronicles 29:14. “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this?” David knew that God is the initiator of all gifts, that he was to be a channel to pass them on. “Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.” Whoa.
That kind of reminds me of an elephant. In fact, I read a story this past week about an elephant and a mouse. They were partners, tight. They were connecting every day. The mouse would ride on the back of the elephant everywhere he would go. The mouse would direct him. “Turn right.” “Turn left.” One day the elephant walked up to a giant ravine and stopped. The little mouse said, “Let’s go for it.” There was a little bridge crossing the ravine. The elephant wasn’t sure he could get across. But the little mouse urged him on. So the elephant walked across the bridge with the mouse on his back. The bride was shaking and quaking and rocking and rattling.
Ed Young Blog – They finally made it to the other side and do you know what the mouse said? The mouse had the audacity to say, “Boy, we really rocked that bridge, didn’t we.” That is a crazy story, isn’t it? That mouse was nuts. He didn’t do hardly anything. He was just along for the ride. Who did everything? The elephant.
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They asked Rockefeller one day how much it would take to satisfy him. He answered, just a little bit more. We have got to learn to be content. Paul learned the secret of contentment. Paul was not into the when and then thinking. A lot of us are into when and then thinking. When I get the job, then I will be happy. When I get the raise, then I will be happy. When I get the house, then I will be happy. When I get married, then I will be happy. Learn to be content.
Number four. Practice giving in faith. Here is what it says in Proverbs 3:9 & 10. “Honor the Lord by giving Him the first part of all your income and He will fill your barns.” This is the principle of multiplication. The Bible says that if you give God the first part of your income, He will multiply your finances. You give God the first part of your day, spending time with Him, He will multiply your time. We still say to God, though, that when He meets our needs, then we will give. God tells us that is backwards. We give and then He will meet our needs. Practice giving in faith.
Number five. Trust Him with my financial life. It always blows me away how people will trust God with their eternity but they won’t trust Him with their finances. The Bible says that your heavenly Father already knows perfectly well what you need. And He will give it to you if, and here is the premise, you give Him first place in your life and live as He wants you to. People who are having sex outside of marriage or people who are disobeying God in other ways and are expecting to claim Philippians 4:19, I’m sorry, it won’t work.
Ed Young Blog – If Jesus Christ is Lord, He is to be Lord in all areas. You have got to live a pure and holy life, not in some legalistic fashion but because you love Him so much and realize what He has done for you. So trust Him with your financial life.
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According to Ed Young you have got to realize and understand that they are probably making the stuff up. Number two. You have got to realize that they are a walking billboard advertisement of a poor self-concept. When they are talking about the people that they know or the things they have done, they are saying, oh look at me, I need a pat on my back. I have talked to people who have made up so many past accomplishments and say they know so many celebrities that I have wanted to stop them in the middle of their power lying and say, “Hey, someone needs to write a book about your life. I mean Forrest Gump, he didn’t hold a candle to what you have done.” Power lying. Do we have any power liars in the house?
The next is the vigilante type of lying, the revenge lying. Pastor Ed Young when someone has hurt you, damaged you, maybe a co-worker, maybe an ex-spouse, maybe a “friend”, you may get into vigilante lying. You can trump up a lie as quickly as a tabloid reporter. You will make up something and kind of float it out there. You will advertise it, put it out in headlines. And it hurts and damages the other person.
In the book of Genesis a man named Joseph is described as an individual who loved God. Ed Young Jr saud Joseph was also described as someone who was handsome in form and appearance. In our modern vernacular we would say that Joseph was buff, was ripped. One day, Mrs. Egypt, Potifer’s wife made sexual advances toward Joseph. Her name in Hebrew is rendered Cindy Crawford. That’s a lie, its just a little joke.
Ed Young Blog – As Joseph pushed away from her sexual advances, as he left the scene, she became so upset that she got into vigilante lying and trumped up a lie about God’s man. It caused Joseph to spend some serious time in prison. Do we have any vigilante lying happening in your home, at the health club, in school?
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