I hope you’ve seen the wasted potential.  We want to see children and students and young people to step up and say, “I have lived a pure life my whole life.  I have been set apart my whole life.  I’ve done the deal my whole life.  I’ve been to church my whole live.  I’ve only dated believers my whole life.  I’m only marrying a believer my whole life.  I’m staying in the marriage my whole life.  I’m going to hook up with a local church for my whole life.  I’m not go down to Timnah.  I’m not going to look around.  I’m not going to be found and I’m not going to be bound.”

Well, last time we talked about the power of saying yes, and yes is a very interesting word, a word that we all need to say intentionally and strategically, yes. There’s a freedom in saying it. Today I’m talking about no. When you hear the word no, at least when I hear it, I think about negativity. I think about finality. When you think about the word no, that two-letter word no, it just doesn’t sound that cool. Yes, on the other hand, sounds pretty good. No does not sound that great. But today, we’re going to find out that no is huge.  It’s a major, major thing in all of our lives. It’s great to talk about yes, but you can’t say yes unless you’re saying no. And I believe we need to say many more nos to every yes that we articulate.

For example, people ask me often about my schedule or about the growth of Fellowship Church. They ask, “What are you doing today different today than you did 16 years ago? What are you doing different today, now that you’re 45, compared to when you were 28, when you began Fellowship Church?”

Earlier this summer I was invited to Florida to do some speaking. I spoke about 3 times there.  After one of the services, the pastor took Lisa and I out to eat at a local Carrabba’s.  I love Carrabba’s—incredible Italian food!  Anyway, we were sitting there enjoying the meal and Lisa looked across the restaurant to the bar area where there was a television. And she said, “Ed, I think that is the Stanley Cup playoffs.”

I looked back, and I go, “Yeah, I think it is.”  And she said, “I think Tampa Bay is in the playoffs.” And I thought, “Well, yeah.” And then she goes, “That’s Daryl Sydor!”

And then it hit me. Daryl Sydor, Dallas Stars.  He was a vital part of Fellowship Church when he was playing with the Stars. He had been traded and subsequently had ended up in Tampa Bay.  I was kind of clueless; Lisa knew more than, of course, I did about hockey.  And I thought, “Man, that’s pretty wild.  We’re two or three hours away, and there he is playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs.”

So we thought, you know, we’ll just give him a call the next day and tell him we’re thinking about him.  So we called Daryl and his wife Shar. And we talked for a while, caught up a little bit, and then they asked us this question.  They said, “Hey, would you and Lisa like go to the 7th game of the Stanley Cup playoffs right here in Tampa?”

I said, “Let me think about… YES!  Yes!”  And they gave us the serious hook up.  We made the drive to Tampa, two hours, we fought traffic for another hour, and we had some incredible seats right there with the players families, the wives, and all that. And the electricity was unbelievable watching Tampa Bay Lightning take the Stanley Cup.  It was a cool deal.

One time Rip was going out for a pass, he caught the ball, and I kind of just gave him a little elbow. Nothing too hard. And he lost his balance and fell.  I picked up him real quick, because I didn’t want the game to end.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard this, “That’s all for today.  That’s all for today!  Ed, Ben, go home! Rip, Fred, Lawton in your rooms immediately!

We were thinking, “Man, we will not play football for a week!” That was my first interaction with the caramel popcorn parent, overprotective, overindulging, over the top.

Here’s the problem with being a caramel popcorn.  We cover our kids to such a degree that we stick, you know, to them so tightly that we can’t stick to our mate.  We can’t go on a date night.  We’re stuck in a marital rut.  We’re even stuck spiritually, because we can’t even go to church, many times because we can’t bring our kids with us. And then we’re scared to leave our kids at Children’s Church or an age appropriate teaching, because you know, after all, “My kids can’t leave my sight.”  Caramel popcorn parents have bought into the attention myth.

In the 60’s a bunch of parenting experts came out with this attention myth.  It said, “Kids need our attention all the time.”  That’s true in the first, you know, several months of life. But after that, there needs to be boundaries built in the families.  But I want to ask you, “Are you a caramel popcorn parent?”

.  I’ve known them for 16 years very, very closely. And Preston had said a long time ago, “Cameron needs to be a baseball player.”  And he exposed him the baseball. And that’s cool. But after a while Preston said, “Ed, Cameron likes music.”

Now, Preston doesn’t know jack about music.  The guy’s tone deaf.  He said, “Ed, help me man. I like baseball; Cameron likes music.”

But I watched Preston as he supported Cameron’s uniqueness, and I’ve watched him get into Cameron’s world.  I’ve watched him get outside of himself and applaud Cameron’s uniqueness, and this past Wednesday night I watched Cameron on stage in the Apex student ministry lead worship to over 1,200 high school and junior high students. And I said, “God, that is it!  What an incredible example of supporting someone’s uniqueness.”

Are you always trying to make people like you?  “I would have done it that way and well, I don’t understand what you’re doing, so forget you.”

Our kids and the people who report to us are dying to hear an applause.  Their dying to hear, “You’re one of a kind.”  That’s what God tells us.  So we have to be mirrors and reflectors of that and do the same thing.  See and support their uniqueness.

INSPIRE THEM WITH RESPONSIBILITY

“I” – Inspire them with responsibility.  Inspire them with responsibility.  Let’s go back to parents again.  Parents, it could be swimming in the deep end.  It could be saying, “Here’s the car keys.”  It could be the first baby sitting job.  Inspire them with responsibility.

How about the managers, and the coaches, and the teachers and the pastors?  We need to give the people who work for us responsibility.  When we give them responsibility, what are we doing?  We’re saying, “You matter.  You can make it.  You can do it.  You’re unique. You’re one of kind.”

That’s a doggy downer.  Wait a minute God, you’re telling us to cross the Jordan and it’s at flood stage.

Have you ever felt like that before?  Okay God, I’ve stuck myself to your dream and its high tide, flood stage, I can’t cross that.  I knew I shouldn’t have done that.  It’s not worth it.  That’s what we do but here’s the deal.  When you see an obstacle, that obstacle can be an opportunity for God to move in a supernatural way.  We should look at an obstacle as an opportunity for the grace and the power and the mercy of God.  It is going to cause hope; it is going to cause strength.  We are going to see who are the players and who are the posers.  It is great stuff.

So the Jordan is at flood stage during this harvest yet as soon as the priest who carried the Ark reached the Jordan and their “feet touched the water’s edge the water from upstream stopped flowing.”  So check it out again, “when their feet touched the water’s edge,” they had to step out right? “The water from upstream stopped flowing.”

Now this is a very interesting fact because if you look back, when the Israelites 40 years ago, 40 years ago from this situation crossed the Red Sea, Moses took the rod of God, put it out over the water and you know the story, they crossed through the Red Sea.

Well here God takes them to a level that most people don’t want to live on.  He says “Now, forget the rod of God, I want you to wade in the water.”

Wade in the water.  Anybody know that song?  Wade in the water, children.  Anyway.  I want you to wade in the water.

Several years ago I was talking to a couple and they were thinking about divorcing.  They had no reason whatsoever to divorce, and finally after talking to them for about an hour the lady looked at me and said, You know, Ed, God just wants me to be happy and I’m not happy.  I said Ma’am, God does not want your happiness. Do you know what God wants?  He wants your obedience.  That’s what God wants.  Because when I am obedient, the feelings will follow.  The Bible says I will have joy and my joy will be made full.

Parents, know what?  If you said to yourself, “You know what, I just want my kids to be happy.  I don’t care about obedience.  I just want them to be happy.”  Man we would have a wild family dynamic, wouldn’t we?  Parents, we want our children to obey us. Kids, remember mom and dad know more than you do, and when you obey them you will be joyful and your joy one day will be made full.  Because you’ll look back maybe years from now and say, wow, mom was pretty smart.  Dad had it pretty together.  Now I understand why she told me that.  Now I understand why he had that rule.

The same is true with our perfect heavenly parent as well.  In the book of Judges, chapter 21, verse 25, it has one of the most penetrating and powerful verses in all of Scripture that talks about where we are as a nation.  It talks about relativism, it talks about pragmatism, it talks about subjectivity.  Let me read it to you.  “There was no king in Israel.  Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”  Wow, is that where we are or what?  There’s no king so everyone does these days what’s right in their own eyes.

I love Kentucky Fried Chicken when I want to cheat on my diet.  At KFC there are two recipes—original and crispy, right? Original and crispy.  Do you want your marriage original or crispy? It’s your choice.  But there is a verse in the Bible that I call the KFC verse, and I want to challenge every relationship here.  When I say relationship, I’m defining it this way: the engaged relationships and the marital relationships. Every relationship here. I want you all to be a KFC thing.

It is Ephesians 4:32.  Here is what it says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other just as Christ God forgave you.”

I hope you saw KFC.  K, kindness; F, forgiveness; C, Christ.  Kindness and forgiveness come from who?  Jesus.  It’s all about Jesus. It’s all about the gospel; it’s all about the door.

Christ lives in us and through us. And then and only then can we truly be kind and compassionate and forgiving. And that is what it means to have this agape love, the phileo love, and the result of that will be this eros love.

You might be thinking, “Ed, this is all good and everything, keep the vows current and work, but what does it mean to put application to that? So what?”

Well, today I’m really excited because we are rolling out something that we have been working on for about a year. Christian attorneys from across the country have been working on this.  That’s not an oxymoron; there are Christian attorneys. Also, several licensed family marriage therapists and I have worked on it. Some other pastors have.

This is, right here, marriage on an HNL. [Ed holds up a copy of the C2 Marriage Agreement]  It’s called the C2 Creative Covenant Marriage. And here’s the deal. I can’t force you to do this, but here is the deal: this document right here is legally binding.

This document right here helps prevent divorce.

Yet in our sinfulness, in our self-centeredness, what do we do?  We deviate from God’s plan and we go our own way.

Here’s what Scripture says about your tendencies and mine.  Look at Romans 1:22, “Professing to be wise, they became fools.”  So every time in my life I have deviated from God’s plan and I’ve said, “God, I know you want me to do this, but I know what’s better God.  I’m going to deviate because, you know, I have my Master’s degree I’ve done some doctoral work and I’m just going to do what I want to do.”  The Bible says, Ed, you’re a fool.  Professing to be wise, you’re a fool.

So when we deviate from God’s plan, it’s just a matter of time before our structures, our foundations are just washed away by those waves of relativism.  Because if we are not anchored in moral absolutes, everything is relative, everything is subjective.  Everything is just pragmatism.

Look at John 15:10-11.  Jesus said, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

Isn’t that great?  The joy of the Lord, that your joy and my joy may be made full, overflowing, and abundant.  Well there’s this thing going around these days, I hear it now and then, that’s totally not in Scripture.  People skip around and say, You know, Ed, God just wants me to be happy. God wants me to be happy.  That’s what God wants.” God does not want us to be happy. It’s not in the Bible. It’s not in there.

And we like that and that desire has been given to us from God himself. Because God being God could have made everything taste like Styrofoam, but he didn’t. I’m glad that God has given us this desire for delicious, aren’t you?

Illus: I had something wild happen to me Wednesday. Do you mind if I tell you? This story is crazy. And it really begins several weeks ago. We got a phone call at Fellowship Church from a producer in Hollywood of this television show, that if I mentioned the name of the show pretty much all of you I think would watch this show. And you’ll find out what show it is later.

But anyway, he called and talked to some of us and then he talked to me. And he said, “Hey Ed, the other day, I was in our studio and we had different monitors on and I saw you preaching from a bed in church. I’d never seen that before.”

I said, “Yeah, I did a series called Sexual Revolution.” And I basically said, “At Fellowship Church we talk about sex a lot because God talks about it a lot in his Word. And I talked about the fact that we don’t want to be shy to talk about what God was not shy to create and discuss. I said, “for far too long the church has kicked the bed out of church and the church out of bed, and we want to bring the bed back in church and the church back in bed.”

And he said, “Well, that’s fascinating that you do that. I’ve never seen someone do that before.” And I just told him, as I told you earlier,

Then he sticks out his hand and says, “Oh, by the way, I want to meet you.  I’m Tom Hicks.”  Wow.  If Tom Hicks said that, I don’t know about you, but I’d think Hey, I can count that money.  Tom Hicks!  This guy is loaded.  He is a heavy hitter, he’s a player, he owns the team.  He owns the Rangers, too, so I mean he’s good for the cash.

What do we do?  In this life we look for vendors.  We look for vendors and we look for pleasure and we look for fun fixes and trinkets and toys that vendors are selling—from vendors who have no authority, who have no resources, who have no bank account, who have no stuff, to make our lives happen and we miss talking to the source.  I’m talking about the One.  God has got the stuff to equip us to live the kind of lives that we’re designed to live.  That’s what we do.  And we miss the revelation of God.

It’s About Obedience, not Deviance

So it’s about revelation, absolute truth, it’s not about legislation.  So if we believe, now watch this, if we believe that the Bible is the revelation from God, it reflects the character and nature of God, what’s the next step?  Well the next step is very simple.  If we believe it we should do what it says.  Revelation should segue into obedience.  The second thing is we should understand is that it’s about obedience, not deviance.

Now, throughout this series on uncertainty we have talked about the fact that God has a plan for our lives.  Remember last time I said, Awesome!, awesome!  If you missed it, pick it up.  Buy the tape.  We talked about God having an awesome plan for everybody’s life.  An awesome agenda.  And if we could see God’s agenda we could not believe it.