That’s why I am so thrilled about Fellowship Church.  We are a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church.  This is our only authority. [Ed holds up the Bible]  No denomination is our authority.  The Bible is.  Isn’t that great?  That’s why we have so many people from so many different walks of life.

I met someone the other day.  He came up to me and said, “Yes, I have heard about Fellowship Church, but I’m Catholic.”

I told him, “Do you know what?  We probably have more people from Catholic backgrounds than any other background at Fellowship.”

My wife grew up Lutheran.  Many people here grew up Baptist or Bible Church.  Some people grew up nothing and that’s a cool thing.  It’s thrilling to see people who are dating say, “God has led us to Fellowship Church.  This is our church home.  This is a great bridge church and this is our place.”

So, settle on a place before you walk down the wedding runner.  I’ll stop now and change to something else.  That was very important.

Maybe you are a “why” person.  I am a big “why” person.

“Why?  Why would God insist on all this stuff?  Why would God give us the urge to merge, put the wrong way sign there and then say you have got to have yielded like the other person should have yielded – to Christ?  Why?”

I’m glad you ask, because I asked that question a long time ago.  And the answer is, “Because God wants our marriages to go to the next level.  He wants our marriages to always be on the up tick.  He wants us to hit higher ground, and he knows we can only hit higher ground if we are yielded to Christ.”  If we are both yielded to Christ, then we can share that which is the most near and dear to our spirits with each other.

Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Pastor, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Sexperiment, The Sexperiment

Man, he had a great set of wheels, and they would get in that chariot and they would just ride all over.  Chapter 4 talks about how they took exciting trips together.  They went to Lebanon, they went through the deserts, they went to the valleys, and they would go to the garden and talk.  As you read all of that, it begins to make sense.  I can see why they would talk creatively — because they had fun stuff to talk about.

If we’re going to jazz up our marriage, we need to be a little more creative.  What are you doing in your marriage that causes creative activity that leads to creative communications?  How about taking a vacation together?  I mean, Solomon and his bride did.  They would go to Lebanon, to the mountains, and to the city.  Now let me just say this: vacations do not include children.  I just want to make that clear.  That’s a family trip and that’s OK.  You need to do family trips, but we’re talking about a vacation between a husband and a wife to a unique place that you have never been before.

Dido and I, a couple of years ago, went to Hawaii for the first time.  Talk about some exciting communications between us!  It just jazzed up the whole experience, because we were in a unique location.  How about taking up a hobby together — doing something that maybe you’re not doing as a couple?

The Sexperiment – And as you do it, you begin to enjoy it, you start to talk about it, and then the creativity just starts to flow out of your marriage.  You need to find some creative activities so that you can creatively communicate with each other.

Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Pastor, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Sexperiment, The Sexperiment

I am unclean God, on my best day, I don’t measure up.  Is God your shepherd, your guide?

I will tell you what this study of the names of God has done for me.  I just scratched the surface but it has done two things for me.  First, it has brought into my life a true sense of awe.  It has ushered in a sense of awe.  You cannot study the names of God without being awed.  Read the book of Acts.  It said people in the early church were filled with a sense of awe.

Every time I hear the word awe I think about LeeBeth.  LeeBeth was five years of age when she went to the pet store with her mom and bought a little turtle.  She named him Mr. T.  She took T home and put him in a giant aquarium in our garage.  Every night she would toddle out and feed Mr. T.  He never grew but remained the same size.  Then one evening I was driving home and spotted a huge alligator snapper crossing the road.  You know I like reptiles.  So I stopped the car and grabbed the snapper, threw him in the trunk and drove home.  I snuck into our garage, took out little Mr. T, put him in a tiny jar and replaced him with the alligator snapper.

The Sexperiment – I wedged him down, opened the door and asked LeeBeth if she had fed Mr. T yet.  She got her turtle food, walked out and soon came running back.  “Oh, Daddy, Mr. T. has been eating a lot.  He is huge.  It is a miracle, Daddy.”  That is awe.  Astonishment.  And I am astonished by the nature and character of God, that He would love someone and reveal Himself specifically to someone like me.

Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Pastor, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Sexperiment, The Sexperiment

This series is called GET YOUR FEAR IN GEAR.  There is no way, with fear, that we can change our own gears.   But God can.  That’s our prayer throughout this series — that we would allow God to put our fear in gear, because that is the only way we are going to cruise and understand what this life is all about.

Loneliness – it’s relevant, it’s real and it hurts.  A lot of us deal with layers and layers of it.  I want to talk to you about several layers of loneliness right here.

According to Ed Young Pastor that the first layer I want to talk to you about is something that we can call inner core loneliness.  A lot of us right now are dealing with this “inner core loneliness.”  This could be known as the spiritual layer.  The Bible says that we are born lonely.  We are born sequestered, separated from God.  The prophet says, in Isaiah chapter 59:2, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God.”

Right now, a lot of you have a gnawing sense that something is amiss in your life, something is sideways, or something is missing from your core.  I’m telling you, “It’s the spiritual layer.”  We are lonely.  God uses our loneliness as leverage to drive us to know him personally.  Because God saw that we were facing an eternal loneliness, he commissioned his son, Christ, to die on the cross for all of our sins, which causes our true inner core loneliness.  God says, “If you ask my son to infiltrate your life, you will never be lonely again.”

Once we make that decision, we become followers of Christ.  But I think it’s interesting that there is no way that I would have ever become a Christian, there is no way you would have ever become a Christ-follower, if it had not been for the loneliness that we felt.  God used that loneliness in order to bring us to our knees.  I’m talking about inner core loneliness, the spiritual layer.

Tags: Ed Young, Ed Young Church, Ed Young Fellowship, Ed Young Jr, Ed Young Pastor, Fellowship Church Grapevine, Sexperiment, The Sexperiment