The second reason that God sent Jesus Christ is often overlooked, underestimated and seldom discussed.  The second reason that God sent Jesus Christ to this earth was for the purpose of our identification.  It is as if God said, “You know, it’s great that you are saved, great that you are going to heaven, but I am going to send someone to you who you can relate to, someone that you can lean on, someone that you can talk to, someone who will be there with you.  I am going to send you my Son.”  A lot of us have some misconceptions about Jesus.  Some people see Jesus as a pale, frail, meek and mild human being who walked across the stage of earth kind of like a Star Trek Vulcan, showing no emotion, unflappable.  Read the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they will blow that picture right out of the water.  Jesus was a person who had so much charisma that He could hold audiences spellbound for three days and three nights without food.  Here is a man who showed perfectly and modeled perfectly every emotion possible.  He got angry at legalists.  He got mad when they were turning His father’s temple into a Galleria.  He was happy.  He was sad.  He cried in front of His disciples.  He showed patience and long suffering with the downtrodden, the destitute, the prostitutes, the tax collectors.  No public figure in history has ever had such a wide variety of friends.  Read about Him, get to know Him.  He was a man’s man.

I am beginning a series today called Picture Perfect.  Over the next four weeks we are going to look at four specific snapshots of the Savior.  I am going to promise you something.  I am going to give you a challenge right now during the hustle and bustle of the holidays.  If you hang out here for the next four sessions, your life will never, ever be the same.  George Gallup recently told us that 84% of Americans believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  We acknowledge this, we believe it.

Ed Young Pastor: A lot of you right now are breathing a big sigh of relief.  “I thought I was the only one!  Man, that frees me up.  You mean a man of the cloth deals with doubt?”  The answer is yes.  Yes, I do.

The Bible says in Hebrews 2:7 the following words: “God has crowned us with glory and honor.”  When I was a child, one of my favorite restaurants had to be Burger King.  My mother would take my brother and I to Burger King.  We liked to go, not only because it was the home of the Whopper, but also because they gave us those crowns.  You know, those crowns, those paper, flimsy crowns?  We would take the crowns and put them on our heads.  I have a bucket-head, a huge head, and after a couple of hours of wearing my crown, my crown inevitably would break.  Then Ben and I would fight over his crown.  Even though wearing those flimsy crowns caused pain and remorse and bitterness and conflict, we still loved for mom to take us to the local Burger King.

I believe our search for a self-esteem, in fact, for the supreme self-esteem, is man’s blind desire to find his lost crown.  We’re looking for our lost crown.  We can’t seem to find it.  Most of us are satisfied spending our entire lives trying on Burger King, flimsy, perishable, paper-like crowns, instead of God’s crown that He has tailor-made for you and for me.  We try the crown of appearance on, don’t we?  We’ve talked about that.  If I can look good, if I can dress right, if I can have that physique, then that will surely give me a proper self-esteem.”  It doesn’t work.  Others try the achievement crown, and that leads to frustration.  “If I can only achieve, if I can only climb the ladder.”  Then we slip on the acquisition crown, which says that if I can gain these symbols of success, that will do it.

Today, however, I don’t want to talk to you about symbols.  I want to talk to you about substance.  I want to talk to those of you who are tired of trying on flimsy crowns.  If we had the eyes of God, I believe in front of all of us would be piles and piles of littered, Burger-King-type temporary crowns.  But God says, in fact His love blasts into your life and my life and proclaims, “I don’t want you to put on those flimsy crowns anymore.

Ed Young Ministries: I could barely speak.  Finally, I flew back to the Dallas Ft. Worth area, did the Saturday evening service and I talked to my doctor who attends Fellowship.  I said, “Doc, my uvula is messed up.  Look at this thing.”

Do you eat to comfort yourself during times of crisis and tension?  Do you lie to others about how much or when you eat?  Do you stash away food for yourself?  Are you ever ashamed about how much or what you have eaten?  Are you embarrassed by your physical appearance?  Have important people in your life expressed concern about your eating habits?  Do you sometimes think your eating is out of control?  Now I am not a clinical psychiatrist, but I have done enough research to tell you that if you answered yes to four or more of these questions, you are a prime candidate as someone who has a serious control issue in the area of food that you need to deal with.

Thursday of last week the US Government released some alarming statistics.  One out of three American adults are overweight.  One out of eight American children and teenagers are overweight.  Ninety to ninety-five percent of all eating disorder victims are female and a vast majority of them are overachievers.  Between the years 1980 and 1994, the percentage of children that were overweight or obese rose 6%.  In that same time period, the percentage of adults rose 9%.

Despite the advent of Fit TV, Jenny Craig and a fitness industry that rakes in over 10 billion dollars a year in this country alone, we are still making desperate attempts at control in our lives.  Folks, we can’t do it.  I can’t do it.  You can’t do it.  We must relinquish ownership of this house, our bodies, to the God who created us.  The issue of control.

Once that issue is dealt with, we are ready to move on to the second.  We have to identify the purposes of the house.  Now every house is built uniquely and differently.  Some homes are built to be show places.  Others are merely shacks of shelter.  But most fall somewhere in between.  To illustrate this I want to do something a little bit out of the norm.

The first dimension of courage is spiritual courage.  Take out your outlines.  They are in the bulletin.  We provided all the scripture verses for you. – Ed Young Ministry.

Hosea pursued Gomer.  Gomer didn’t turn.  She kept going.  She kept running.  What does God do?  When God pursues people who run from him, what does he do?  Does God give up?  Does God say, “Well, boys will be boys and girls will be girls.  Just go on ahead.”  No.  God does not say that.  God does not do that.  Here is what God does.

Maybe you are running from him right now.  God does several things when someone runs from him.First of all, God barricades us with briars.   God barricades people who matter to him with briars.  We run.  If we don’t respond to God, then he suddenly puts up this big honking wall of briars.

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I went up to Lake Grapevine.  I parked my truck on this steep embankment  and we made our way down  the woods down this path.  We were hanging out on Lake Grapevine, skipping rocks and the whole deal.  We even had our dogs  with us and our dogs are the size of cattle.  It was a fun time.  As the sun set, we realized that we had to get back to the truck. Being a guy, I said, “I’ll show you the way.”  Well, I am directionally challenged.  I thought I could find the path, but I didn’t find the path.  I led my family into a briar patch.  I’m talking about thorns that were scratching the kids, the dogs, and me.  I still have scars from them.  The dogs were howling.  We were in trouble.  It’s not fun to be stuck by these thorns and all this underbrush.  It’s a bad thing.  Well, we had to turn around and go the opposite way.  Finally, we found the path and we made it back to the truck.

Ed Young Blog: The blanks are there, fill them in.  There is something about blanks we don’t like.

You have to go through the valleys to get to the mountaintop.  I don’t know about you, but God has shown me more and given me more nourishment and refreshment in the valleys than on the mountaintop.

A while back I was going through a dark valley in my life, a difficult time.  I walked into one of our Saturday evening services and sat down front.  And as I looked at the words of the worship songs on the screen, as I took in the drama, it was like those words gave me spiritual calories and nourishment and refreshment that words cannot describe.  Tears began to roll down my checks.  I said, “God, you are so gracious.  Here I am in this valley and you are feeding me.  You are talking care of me and I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death.”  The Bible didn’t say that we should camp out in the valley or chill out in the valley or stop in the valley or have a rest station in the valley.  It says that we should go through the valley.  No matter what you are going through, remember, if you shadow the Good Shepherd, you are going through.  And sometimes when you are in these valleys, you can’t see any still or quiet water.  You can’t hear any streams.  You can’t even see any grass.

If you study about a shepherd, you will learn that when the going really gets tough for the sheep, he would take his rod and staff and knock fruit off a tree, open it up and even if there wasn’t any grass or water, he would feed the sheep by doing this.  He would feed them while leading them.  Well the Good Shepherd does that in our lives, doesn’t He?  If we stay faithful to Him, He will feed us along the way.

Ed Young said, and most people like to fill those blanks in, and you can save these outlines and refer back to them.

When we do life shepherdless, we are distressed and downcast.  We are not connected to a flock.  We don’t have a shepherd.  So we are out there alone.  A sheep is designed for a shepherd.  A sheep will not last very long by itself doing its own thing, forging its own future, paving its own path.  It is not going to happen.  You might be OK for a year or two or maybe a decade or two.  But one day, when you least expect it, the evil one will devour you.  The scripture says that Satan is like a roaring lion looking and seeking to devour shepherdless people.  Are you doing life shepherdless?  God doesn’t want you to be doing life shepherdless.  He wants you to become a part of His flock.

Over the last several weeks, as we have been preparing for this series, we have been praying like crazy that many of you would bow the knee, that many of you would say that you need a shepherd, that you are designed for one, that you want to admit the obvious to God and go His way.  We are praying for that to happen.  The moment that we establish a personal connection with the living Lord, here is what happens.  He becomes our Shepherd and He tells us to shadow Him.  We have got to shadow the Shepherd.  When we shadow Him, three things will happen.

The Lord will give us direction.  He will give us direction.  John 10:27, Jesus speaking, “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow Me.”  We can hear the voice of God.  I have never heard the audible voice of God.  Eight years ago I didn’t hear God say, “Ed, Ed, go to the Fellowship Church and become the founding pastor.”  I have never heard God speak like that.  God speaks to my spirit, though, in ways that audible words can’t touch.  He speaks through the Bible.  He speaks through Christian friends.  He speaks through private worship and public worship.  He speaks through events.  And we have got to stay sensitive to God’s voice.

Fellowship Church Grapevine talks the Three dimensions of courage.  The first dimension is spiritual courage.  Let’s talk about the life of Daniel, 605 BC, Babylon.

Teenagers were asked in a poll, what do they think about when they see their parents? Over 90% said they see a giant Mick Jagger mouth. They are always being bombarded with statements like, “You’re no good. You need to do better,” but they are never being listened to. Most of the teens who were surveyed said they wish they could see giant Dumbo-sized ears when they looked to their parents.

Parents, if you listen to your children when they are young, you will begin a strong foundation for their self-esteem. Then when they are older, they will continue to talk to you. It all starts by listening to what they have to say. Become a good listener.

Managers, when someone in your workplace makes a mistake, listen to them. Sit them down and ask them what went wrong. Then, listen to their side, their story, their point-of-view. Don’t just fly off the handle. Listen. Then you can take the chance to correct. And yes, there may be times when you have to terminate someone’s employment, but don’t destroy their self-esteem in the process.

Touch Their Hearts

The University of California in Los Angeles conducted a study that concluded that people young and old, in order to maintain emotional and physical health, need at least eight to ten meaningful touches a day. Now, husbands, don’t get overly excited and run to your wives and say, “See, the research shows that we have to have sex more often! I need it to stay healthy!” The touching that the study refers to is non-sexual, but meaningful, touching. There is certain power in a touch. One-third of the five million feeling receptors in the human body are located in our fingers. So, it is important to touch.

Ed Young Jr said the Babylonians were really a bad people and they decided to boldly walk down to Jerusalem, surround Jerusalem and take back with them the best and the brightest young people from that city.

As I’ve said several times, money is a powerful, powerful thing. It represents who we are, a piece of us, a slice of our self. Because we spend so much time and energy trying to make it, save it, invest it and spend it; money is a part of us. Money is so mesmerizing that it can, if left unchecked, become your master. It wants to rule us and dominate us. Money is looking for servants. It’s seeking worshippers. Our goods can quickly become our gods.

There’s a deceptive side to money, however, that most of us miss. Money always over-promises and under-delivers. It promises us those things that only God can give—security, significance, identity, independence and freedom. But it always leaves us asking for more.

One place that Jesus talked about money is in Matthew 6:24. He said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Jesus was basically saying that no one can have two bosses. The business world didn’t come up with that philosophy. Jesus did. It would be mass confusion if, in the professional world, you had to directly report to and serve two different bosses.

From a spiritual standpoint, the same is true. All of us must choose whom we will serve. We can either choose to serve ourselves in the Land of Ing by pursuing wealth, materialism and selfish pleasures. Or we can choose to serve God by managing our money according to his instructions.

Christ was saying that we can only have one master. But we live in a materialistic society where many Christians try to serve God and money at the same time. They spend their entire lives collecting, storing it, investing it and spending it—basically doing deals—and then dying and leaving it behind. Their desire for money and what it can buy far outweighs their commitment to God in spiritual matters.

Ed Young Fellowship  – we talked about those guys last week, you know the faithful firemen, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  So they all hung tight.  They were in Babylon together.

Men are from Mars.  Ladies, the next time you are tempted to say, men are from Mars, just remember that the word Mars spells out the four basic needs of a man.  Dr. Willard Harley is a Christian psychologist from Minnesota and he directs a network of mental health clinics around the state.  Dr. Harley has interviewed thousands of couples about the needs of a man and the needs of a woman and he has written a classic book entitled, HIS NEEDS AND HER NEEDS.  I highly recommend that book.  His research will be used in today’s message because he has lifted out the four top needs of a man and the four top needs of a woman.  Let’s dive right in ladies, are you ready?

See the M word.  It stands for managed.  Write the word managed.  A managed household.  A primary need that a gentleman has is a managed household.  A home is a man’s castle.  He must seek refuge there.  It should be a place of tranquility.  And Dr. James Dobson talks about this need over and over in his writings.  The Bible tells us in Proverbs 17:1  “Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.”  Titus 2:4-5  “Women are to love their husbands and their children, to be sober-minded, to keep themselves pure, to manage their households well.”  And ladies, it doesn’t say to keep a spotless household or to have a Good Housekeeping household or a Southern Living household.

Some women freak out over this and think everything must be perfect, pristine, germless, odorless, and that is not the real world.  It does mean, though, to do the best you can with your time limitations and your family situation.  But make sure it is a refuge.  The Bible then says, “Women to be gentle.”  And look at this next term, it is one of your favorites, the S word.  Submitting.  “Submitting themselves to their husbands.”

Ed Young Fellowship Church said to take a wild guess who was one of the best and the brightest.  That’s right, our man, the Dan man himself, Daniel.

Are you ready for this one.  Recreational companionship.  That is a major need of a man.  Recreational companionship.  I had a lady tell me one time, I was talking about this in a seminar, “Well, Ed, if I grew antlers, fins and if I could hit a golf ball 375 yards, my husband would really spend time with me.”  Let me talk to you about recreation here.  I love this verse, Ecclesiastes 9:9, it is kind of the “rap” verse.  “Enjoy life with your wife”, spoken in rap tempo.  It doesn’t say tolerate life does it?  It says enjoy.

Enjoy life with your wife.  I have heard this before.  I have heard pastors say this.  “The couple that prays together, stays together.”  I want to add something.  The couple that plays together also stays together.  Colossians 3:18  “Wives adapt yourselves to your husbands.”  That is your Christian duty.  What I am saying is this.  Designate something that is your sport or your pastime or your thing, couples.  It could be from stamp collecting to snowboarding.  Make sure whatever it is that you have a shared like interest in something.  What is it?  I don’t know, that is for you and your husband to decide.  Also, there needs to be some give and take in this realm.  Your husband might really be into golf.

Even though ladies you are clueless about golf, why don’t ride around in the cart with him now and then or try to play at least putt putt with him sometimes.  Men, your wives could love to go antique shopping and you despise even walking into an antique shop but because it is a shared interest and you want to develop this you begin to do this.  And I want to tell you something, once you begin to stretch in this realm, you will learn to appreciate other and new adventures and aspects of life.  Adapting yourself.

Fellowship Church Ed Young they take Daniel back.  He is sixteen years of age, he just finished his sophomore year at Jerusalem High School, they take him and deport him all the way back, 500 miles to Babylon, a very decedent, a very perverted culture.