Joel Young Blog.com

As I have been preparing for this week’s sermon on the temptation of Jesus from Matthew 4 I have had to flip my thinking on a lot of things. It is very easy for us to look at the scenario in Matthew 4 and focus on only Jesus’ reactions, but miss the motives and methods of Satan. Furthermore, It’s easy for temptations to become so common and casual in our lives that we never realize what they truly are.

Simply put, temptations are the devil’s way of challenging God’s place in our life and our devotion to him. Even though it doesn’t often take much to challenge our devotion, when we start thinking about temptations in this light we should become more aware of what is really at work. Look at it this way.

Tonight I’m taking my wife out to dinner. What if in the process of our night out together, a smooth-talking, bad-intentioned, slime-ball of a man approached my wife and tried to pick her up? How would I react? Well, my guess is that this dude would be picking something up, but it would be his teeth off the ground after I introduced them to my fist, and not my wife! I hope I would be able to handle it in a more appropriate manner, but my initial reaction would be severe and over the top. Why? Because it would be extremely offensive for someone to challenge my wife’s devotion to me, or the importance she holds in my life. When we’re out together it’s obvious that we’re “together”. Not to mention she’s currently eight months pregnant! So, I would take GREAT offense at someone challenging the validity and stability of our relationship.

Now, with that being said I had to ask myself this question. How do I react to Satan, who daily challenges much more than just my devotion to my wife, but my devotion to my God, my Lord, and my Savior? How often do I even get upset enough to want to knock his teeth out? Let alone take any kind of action to distance my life from him? I mean, if you’re not a physically violent person and someone hit on your wife AT THE VERY LEAST you would walk away from the person. Yet, so many of us allow Satan to live in our lives when he is challenging and standing against what should be the most important relationship in our life.

Maybe it’s time our reaction to Satan and his temptations became proportionate to the offense he creates in our lives.

It’s been really challenging, exciting, and frustrating for me to study the life of John the Baptizer for the last couple weeks of sermons at Horizon. There is so much about his life that I need to mimic, and so much of his attitude that I need to absorb. The humility that he lived with seems unprecedented in so many ways, but the way God worked through that humble attitude is undeniable. Even from the perspective of his biggest critics.

So, here’s what I’ve been praying for over the last month as I prepared to preach these messages.

“God, decrease my ability so that it becomes impossible for me to do anything without you. Keep me from relying on my talent, and force me to rely solely on your Spirit to communicate your message.”

Admittedly, this has been a pretty tough corner for me to turn. You see, nearly everything I have done in my life has relied heavily on talent. Everything that I do comes very naturally to me. If I don’t seem to have a talent or knack for something, then I quit doing it. That way the things I do can be done very well with, if necessary, very little effort. I’m not advocating this philosophy for life, but simply stating a realization that this is how I have operated for over twenty-six years. And yes, even in the last seven years of my ministry.

Public speaking comes naturally to me, and preaching is as natural for me as swimming is for a fish. But, as with many of the other things I do I have spent a large amount of time concentrating on increasing my ability in order to increase my effectiveness; when all along I should have been doing the opposite.

The mark of God’s ability to use a person is not that person’s talent, but their ability to rely on Him. I will become a more capable and effective preacher for the Kingdom of God when my abilities have decreased to the point that I simply cannot complete the task without being full of God’s grace and Spirit. If I’m full of myself there’s no room left for God, but where there is an absence of ego there is room for God to work.

So, are there areas of your life where you need to decrease your ability?

I ran across a quote while I was doing some sermon writing and studying this week that I thought was worth sharing. Check it…

“The most destructive element in the human mind is fear.” -Dorothy Thompson

Not knowing who Dorothy Thompson was off the top of my head lead me to do some digging. What I found proved that she knew a thing or two about fear. Dorothy was an American journalist who spent much of her career in central Europe. in 1931 she actually sat down and interviewed Adolf Hitler. She later wrote a book book based on that interview called I Saw Hitler. After her book was published, and no doubt because of the content of the book and other related publications, she earned the dubious distinction of being he first American journalist to be kicked out of Germany. The German government considered her work to be “offensive”. In 1939 TIME magazine named her one of the two most influential women in America, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt , for her journalistic work.

You talk about staring fear in the face and speaking out against tyranny in a way that could have ended your life, and you’re talking about the career of Dorothy Thompson. It is amazing to think about the perspective on the emotion of fear that she must have had.

Then I think about the lives that most of us live. Fear is an emotion that most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about or interacting with. Or so one would think. You see, even though we may never stand face to face with the kind of fear that Dorothy Thompson did in her day most of us live with the constant presence of a self-induced fear. We worry about what our actions or proclamations to the world might say about us. We worry about how our actions might affect others opinions of us, and for most of us all it does is lead us to complacent inactivity.

This week I’m preaching on the “Miraculous Conception of Jesus” at Horizon. One of the key aspects of this story is the fact that Jesus’ adopted father, Joseph, almost allowed his fear to keep him from accepting who Jesus really was.

I don’t want to preach my whole sermon right here on my blog, for those of you that will be at Horizon, but let me ask you to do this. Think about the fear in your life that is keeping you from accepting who Jesus is. Think about the fear that is standing in your way of REALLY following him, REALLY giving him your life, REALLY making him your source of strength. Think about the fear that might be paralyzing your faith and squelching your passion, and very purposefully CRUSH IT!

Last Sunday we wrapped up a two month look at the book of Malachi at Horizon. With this conclusion I thought I would share some of my favorite points from the pages of this prophetic book. This series turned out to be one of the most challenging to prepare sermons for, but the truth of this tiny book never failed to rock my world.

• God is STILL worthy of honor no matter what society may tell you.
• We can’t make up our own version of what it means to honor God based on any trend or any person. We have to base what it means to honor God on Scripture. What a novel idea.
• As Christians it is our job to proclaim the Gospel message to the world. But, in many ways we have let that take a back seat to other things in our churches. There is a need for some swift and immediate changes in the American church. Let’s be a part of the solution.
• God doesn’t want us to be robots programmed to be mindlessly obedient, he wants our obedience to be the result of a heart that has been transformed.
• In the end it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have accumulated, we will all stand before the great God of justice on the day of his coming. And guess what…there will be judgment, which will result in punishment and reward. ((Oh, no he didn’t. Oh, yes I did.)) Maybe we should start living like that’s the reality of our world and let it change our interaction with those who are far from God.
• I’m sure Malachi was not a wildly popular guy for communicating this message to the nation of Israel, but most of us need to stop pretending that he should have been. Proclaiming the full truth of God’s word rarely makes you popular, but it will always make you a bearer of truth.

Can’t wait to crack open a new book this Sunday at Horizon.

Alright, here’s the deal…at Horizon I would guesstimate that more than 75% of our regular attenders are smart phone or iPod touch users. Because of this I am VERY excited to say that starting this Sunday we will be taking advantage of one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in recent church history called YouVersion LIVE.

In case you’ve haven’t heard, YouVersion started as a free online Bible created by the guys at LifeChurch.tv where you could offer insights and perspective to the world as you study scripture. From there they have created apps for many different smart form platforms and many people, including myself, now read their Bible almost exclusively through YouVersion. It’s a great tool for everything from deep study to casual reading and browsing.

So, to ramp it up a notch they decided to launch a platform that would put this same idea of sharing to use during a church service. With YouVersion LIVE churches and organizations will be able to upload outlines for each service that include things like: Bible references, notes (with a special place where you can take your own and email them to yourself when you’re done), twitter feeds, polls, questions, links, videos, online giving opportunities, and prayer request forms. I’m sure I’m missing a few, but you get the idea.

Point is, this is a HUGE breakthrough in the way the modern church will be able to rely information and Biblical teaching to people. If you have a smartphone or even a phone with internet access you need to check it out and encourage your preacher to utilize this great tool. If you’re a part of Horizon, check it out now because it will be available to you every Sunday from this point forward.

Check out YouVersion LIVE

Sign up for Horizon’s YouVersion LIVE Group

This has been one crazy week for me. It went something like this.

Had a REALLY crazy Sunday with some unexpected problems, but got to end it with one of our most unique and exciting Sunday Gatherings yet at Horizon. Got a filling on Monday morning. It was my first one ever and it was less painful than I had expected, but walking around drooling with numbness all day was just weird. Got my butt kicked, in the best possible way, by my team of overseers Monday night (these guys REALLY love Horizon and REALLY care about every detail of what we do). Spent Tuesday with my two year old son who hasn’t quite gotten the hang of using the “big potty” yet, and found out that evening that the windshield of my car had been completely cracked by some highway debris as my wife drove home from work.

Now it’s Wednesday and all I want to do it take it easy. I just want to spend the day watching back episodes of “Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory,” but I know I have a job to do. And in case I had forgotten that, God reminded me this morning as I again went over the text I’ll be preaching from on Sunday.

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”
2 Timothy 1: 7

Ouch! Talk about a 2X4 to the forehead. Ok God, I get it.

You see, even though my week as been completely insane and filled with out-of-the-ordinary-craziness I don’t have the time to slip into a life of timidity. God doesn’t have time for me to become a wimpy, waning, wannabe. He needs me to live out my calling with the “spirit of power” that he has given me, just as he did to Timothy and everyone else who claims his name.

What are you being timid about, and what are you going to do to get over it and get to work?!?!

As I preach through the books of 1 & 2 Timothy at Horizon it never ceases to amaze me how the simple principles laid out in the book have transformed my thinking. A lot of what is said in these letters is old hat for me. They’re things I already know and have been trying to do my whole life, but as it has many times before God’s Word has renewed itself for me again.

Chapter five of the first letter speaks about honor in relationships and family relations. The thrust of Paul’s words to Timothy indicate that how you treat others and how you take care of your family is the mark of how real your faith is. If faith isn’t revealing itself in your life then it’s probably not there at all. This is a harsh reality when you think about what honor, family, and our attention to similar concepts have become in our culture. They seem to be forgotten principles that need to be renewed in our nation and world before it is too late.

So, from your perspective: what can we do?

I’m more than just a little excited that we are starting a new series this Sunday at Horizon called 1 & 2 Timothy. This series will be an extended look at these two letters that are filled with wisdom on leadership, life, and love. We’ll be learning from the wisdom of Paul, who was one of the first men to plant churches for Jesus Christ’s Gospel. He was a pioneer of what we are doing RIGHT NOW. How cool is that?

As a preacher there is nothing that excites me more than getting an opportunity to preach the Bible straight up. No frills, no cute titles, no wishy washy parallels. Just letting scripture speak straight to the hearts of God’s people. If I can give people the truth of scripture and get out of the way then hearts and lives will be changed. I hope you’ll join us for the entirety of this series. It’s going to be great!

Sunday morning at 11am.
Get directions

No matter what I’m doing I always seem to struggle with my process, eventually. How I do things is just as important as the things I do, and therefore my process is very important. As a preacher it’s very hard to keep the weekly responsibility of sermon writing fresh. There are always distractions that can pull your focus away, and inevitably there are going to be those sermons that just don’t fire you up as easily as others. But, by the end of the week they need to be setting your life and perspective on fire or they won’t be affective.

So, the week after vacation I find myself staring writer’s block and distractions square in the face once again. What’s a guys to do? How ’bout changing the process?

Normally, I sit in a local wifi hotspot on my MacBook and type out my outlines as I research and brainstorm for ideas. To change things dramatically I went out and purchased a two dollar notebook and took my creativity on the road. Armed only with my Bible, a good pen, and my new notebook I visited several different locations over the past few days. Each location brought a new perspective and some fresh ideas. It really helped me to disconnect from my crutch, the computer, and reconnect God’s word on a more simplistic level so that each sermon will truly be an outpouring of what He is doing in and through my life.

What’s your process for creating? Does you need to change it up a bit? If you want to keep things fresh then you need to be able to change your process every now and again.

REMEMBER: Your process can change, but your purpose can’t.

Tuesday is the new Monday, at least for this week. Because of our Memorial day observances, most of us haven’t started our work week until Today, which is Tuesday. For me, Monday represents a time to regroup before I hit the week’s work really hard. I usually use it to re-focus myself and re-energize my mind as I prepare for the upcoming Sunday’s teaching. Sometimes the weight of a message can really beat you down and you need some time to recoup before you can do it again, but this week I’m already in the hole by one day and need all the time I can get.

So, I skipped my rejuvenation period and went right to work….NOT! That’s what I would have done six months ago. Now, more than ever, I realize that if I am going to be available for God to use in my weekly preaching I need time to re-focus myself and clean my pallet so God can use my freshly prepared mind. God’s message demands a fresh mind and deserves a prepared heart.

Martin Luther once said (and I’m paraphrasing), “I begin each day with two hours of prayer. And on those days when I have a lot of work to do I begin with three hours of prayer.”

Realizing that God can use a half day of work that is fully focused on Him more than He can use a full day of work that isn’t can change everything.