Fellowship One with Pastor Ed Young

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're excited that you joined us for today's episode of
the Creative Connection with Ed Young. We'll get to Ed's
message in just a moment. First, we want to invite
you to head online and sign up for Ed's daily
email Devotionals to get a daily dose of encouragement sent
to your inbox, covering relevant topics like victorious living, trusting God,

(00:21):
and living for Christ in our darkening world. Each daily
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to help you think about and apply biblical truth to
your life. You'll also find a guided prayer at the end.
Sign up today by visiting Edyong dot com slash devotionals,
and while you're there, take a moment to browse previous

(00:43):
devotionals as well as watch and listen to messages from Ed.
Head online now to sign up and start receiving your
devotionals today. That website again is Edyong dot com slash Devotionals.
We look forward to connecting with you there. Now, let's
hear what Pastor Ed Young house for us today.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
The family is a trauma center. The family is an
emergency room. Think about it when you see one of
those freestanding trauma centers. You know, I mean, I know
we have confidence at twenty four hours a day, seven

(01:28):
days a week. Anybody in your family and mine, any
of our friends, if we have a medical emergency, can
seek help and get help from a qualified staff who's
there to take care of our medical emergencies. Isn't it
great that we live in a culture, a nation that
has a system like that. That's a great thing. The

(01:52):
question is where do you go for those non medical emergencies?
Can't that be awesome if we had a freestanding er
available for the non medical emergencies, those family issues in life,

(02:13):
wouldn't that be great? A shattered self esteem, a collapsed confidence,
you're dealing with, fear someone has betrayed you. You could
just drive up and someone could heal those non medical emergencies.

(02:33):
We do have that. It's called the home. I'll say
it again. Our home is a trauma center. Our home
is an er. Our home is a hospital. As you
think about your family of origin, maybe as you think

(02:57):
about maybe you're single, your future family, as you think
about maybe your nuclear family with two point five kids,
as you just take a panoramic view, a Google Earth
view of your family, could you say it. My family
is a trauma center. My family is a place where

(03:23):
we process one another's pain, issues and difficulties. Is that
true in your family? As you think about how God
has moved in history, you can say, yeah, God has
moved through nations. We understand that God has moved through
people groups. We would would check that off. But the

(03:47):
main way God moves is through the family. That's his
main that's his main agenda, the main thing. The family
is not some product of evolution. It's not something that
maybe an anthropologist said, oh, look, people groups, you have
to have those who survive. No, no, no, it's much bigger,

(04:07):
it's much deeper, it's much more all encompassing than that.
A family. A family is a divine institution. It's a
divine design by God for the sole purposes of creating

(04:30):
forever followers of Jesus. So it's a divine design, a
God thing. And the purpose of the family is for
those of us in the family to send out kids
with great trajectory as they simply reproduce what they've seen

(04:53):
in their family of origin. And hopefully and prayerfully we're
having kids reproduce the fact act that the family is
a trauma center. The first time I ever thought about
my family being a trauma center, the first experience I

(05:14):
ever had with that. I was thinking about that. It
goes all the way back to my fifth grade year.
My fifth grade year was very tumultuous because our family
moved from a quaint, small town, very safe environment, a
little elementary school that I attended where everybody knew everybody.

(05:38):
We moved from there to a city. The school we
attended in the middle of the year was a rough
and tough, wheels off school. It was like it was
like going from Maybury to a maximum security prison. I'm

(05:59):
talking life from bock to rock or heavy metal or
headpanger music. So in the middle of my fifth grade year,
my brother two years younger than me, he was in
the third grade. We showed up at Lonnie B Elementary School.
I had on the goofiest outfit. I had these had

(06:19):
these striped pants on with white shoes. No wonder they
picked on me white shoes, and I was so excited.
I had the new school supplies. I'm thinking, man, I'm
going to meet some new people. It's gonna be amazing.
They escort me to my fifth grade class. I met
my teachhirt Missus Blackwell. She said about five ten and

(06:43):
weighed maybe, I don't know, ninety five pounds. She had
the worst coffee breath mixed with nicotine, horrible. When she
said hi, Edwin, it was like So she escorted me
into the class and the class was going absolutely buck wild.

(07:06):
She obviously had no control, so she said, Edwin, there's
an empty desk right there. Just put your books there.
That can be your desk. Yes ma'am, because I was
trained to say yes ma'am and yes sir. Found the seat,
put my school supplies on the desk, was just sliding

(07:28):
into the desk, and this kid walked up to me.
He had bangs, you know, just like remember Jim Carrey
dumb and dumber bangs. He kind of looked like that.
He took my books in front of Missus Blackwell, through
them against the wall. I looked back at her like, okay, okay.

(07:55):
She did absolutely nothing, like wow. Our elementary school was
one of the few experimental schools back in this era
where where the educators, well meaning educators, thought that if
you just allow complete and total freedom, that students could

(08:18):
work and learn on their own. Well, I'm a d
d a DHD. I'm sure, and I know I have
process and goods orders. It didn't. It didn't. It didn't
sit well with me. That's another point. I was counting
the minutes though, I was counting the minutes to recess.

(08:39):
I thought, if I could only make it to recess,
I could meet some people. You know, I'm kind of
an athletic guy and all that. So recess, recess, recess, finally, recess.
So I walk out to this playground, a dusty playground.
I'm by myself, just looking around, you know, trying to
meet some people. I see some kids and I walk

(09:04):
over and just kind of watch them there. They're kind
of playing. In fact, they were playing marbles. To show
you how long ago it was marbles. Most kids are like, what, well,
just google marbles. So I'm playing marbles and I was
watching them play marbles, and suddenly this big kid stood up,
curly hair, steel blue eyes. He looked at me and

(09:29):
he said, what in the blank are you looking at?
You'd better get your blankety blank away or I'm going
to kick the blank out of your blankety blank blank.
This kid was big. I mean I was big for
my age. He was my size, and it was the
first time I'd ever been cursed out, the first. There's

(09:52):
been many others, but that was the first. And I
didn't even know most of the words. I mean, I
grew up at a preacher's home, you know, communities. I'm
going wow. So I'm just feeling so down and despondent.
I'll never forget it. I walked to the edge of
the playground, right where the dirt met the street, and

(10:18):
I hate to confess, I started crying. And I walked
on the edge of that playground looking down at my
white shoes for the next thirty minutes. Why did Mom
and Dad move us here? Why are we living in

(10:39):
this hell hole? Why? Why? Why? My mother picked us up.
I was so happy to see her. She picked us
up from school. She had a beautiful blue Impalla, and
I was so happy to see that car. I started

(11:00):
spreading to the car with tears streaming down my face. Mommy,
you know, dove into the car. My brother dove into
the car, and Mom turned around and said, how was school?
We just broke down. We couldn't take it anymore. We

(11:22):
got home, hung out a little bit, washed them television.
Mom prepared a meal. Dad showed up we had a
family meal, which is huge. I encouraged family meals. I
didn't realize it at the time, but as mom and

(11:42):
dad asked us questions, how did that make you feel?
Ed Ben, what's going on? Tell me about the school.
As they were asking questions, they were allowing us to
express how we felt. They were doing CPR because of
our broken hearts. And now looking back, I think, wow,

(12:10):
my home, my family of origin, was a trauma center.
It wasn't perfect, but it was the place where we
could process pain.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
We'll return to today's message from Ed Young in just
a moment. First, though, Ed and Lisa Young know the
kind of pain most of us never hope to experience
the death of a child, and in their book A
Path through Pain, they share their family's journey through sorrow
and anger to hope and healing after the tragic and
sudden loss of their daughter. A Path through Pain is

(12:49):
our Thanks for your gift to help connect faith to
everyday life for more people through the creative Connection. This
resource will help you see that God really does care
for you, and in the darkest of places, his light
still shines to show you a way through. So head
over to Ed Young dot com slash gift to request

(13:10):
your copy of this encouraging resource. Again, that's at young
dot com slash gift. Now let's get back to today's message.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
What happens if your family is not a trauma center.
I'll tell you what happens. You know the stats. If
you're a guy, if you're a man, you might throw
yourself into achievement binges because you're not getting those emotional
needs met, you're not getting the pain processed. You might

(13:49):
get involved in an illicit relationship. You could do a
number of harmful things, drugs, alcohol, so forth. And that's
happening as we look in record numbers, is it not.
On the other hand, how about the wife? How about
the mom? When her needs are not getting met, when

(14:11):
she's not being bandaged, what can happen? She can throw
her life into the life of her kids, totally immerse
herself in their activities, become the helicopter parent. Or maybe
she seeks another relationship, Maybe she hits the bottle, maybe
she takes pills. What happens when kids realize that their

(14:36):
home is not a trauma central? What happens? Well, they
turn to their peers, who usually don't have the best
answers to the questions of life. Don't you see the
genius of God. God has given us this unit, this

(14:56):
divine design to help us process the non medical emergencies
of life. So I want to just basically go through
four things that you can do today, Four decisions that
you can make. Four things that could be traits of

(15:19):
your home if you decide, okay, okay, I want my
home to be a trauma center. I want my home
to be an er. I want my home to be
a hospital. For starters number one. Number one, we need
to have a motivated staff. A great hospital, a great

(15:41):
trauma center has a qualified staff. They know what's going on.
They get it. They're motivated. Now, what's the motivation for
your family. It's a God motivation. It's a motivation for oneness.
It's a motivationation as parents to teach Deuteronomy six, Train

(16:06):
Proverbs twenty two, verse six your children to Genesis two
twenty four. Leave spouse is stay kids. Leave. The great
physician Jesus founded the family. Hey, mom and dad, we

(16:27):
are the chief physicians. They called Jesus the great physician
in John chapter five. Jesus said in Mark two seventeen,
it's not the healthy you need a doctor, but the sick.
I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Do
you have a motivated staff. Have you ever said, Okay,
let's sit down and go through our mission statement. Why

(16:51):
do we have this hospital? That would be some good homework.
Do you have a family mission statement? I'll talk more
about that next time. Number two, after motivated staff, we
need an educated approach. An educated approach. There's got to
be more information about the family available today than ever before.

(17:12):
And I'm talking about great information. I'm talking about information
from this book. Whise doctors are always involved in continuing education.
WHISE doctors are always going to seminars. They're staying up
on the trends. They know the forour one one and

(17:32):
we should know the four one one so we don't
have to call nine to one one. Are you educated?
Have you studied the family members? Do you know your family?
How do you do that? It comes from spending quantity
time and quality time, and quality time emerges from quantity time.
Think about bedtime, meal time, and playtime. Those are huge

(17:58):
times to listen and to deal with maybe a shattered
self esteem or maybe an underlying issue or problem causing
another issue wise, parents have to discern, don't we between
drama and trauma? I mean trauma. Then there's real trauma.

(18:33):
We've got to discern. We ask God, Lord, give me discernment.
Sometimes you got to let them talk because every feeling.
Validate every feeling. You can't say, oh you can't feel that. No, no,
it's fine to validate every feeling. But remember too, feelings
are different than facts. So what we must do is

(18:57):
they give us the feelings the drama. We take it
and go okay, okay, okay, and then we can talk
about the fact. So that's important that we that we
separate that we have to spend, as I said earlier,
quantity time and quality time. So we need to have discernment.

(19:19):
We need to have a motivated staff, We need to
have an educated approach. We need to distinguish between trauma
and drama. The family is set up for success. Number three,
you have to have a dedicated plan, a dedicated plan.
So yeah, you got to have a motivated staff and

(19:40):
an educated approach. But a dedicated plan. What is your plan?
What is your agenda? You know should be for wholeness
and health. Any doctor, any nurse will tell you that
I mean, they want us to be healthy and whole.
That's that's that's the deal. So for that to happen,
we have to have a formulated agenda. Here is your

(20:03):
steps to getting better, and here's what you have to do.
But here's the thing. Parents, we all make mistakes. I've
made many mistakes as a parent. You can, you know,
lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

(20:23):
You have to make that decision. But I will say this,
if you're paying for a roof over their head, clothes
on their back, food on the table, as Joshua said
about his family, as for me and my house, we
will serve the Lord. I mean I had I'll just

(20:47):
admitted I had a drug problem growing up. Many times
my parents drug me to church weekend and week out.
There's no option. A motivated staff, an educated approach, a
dedicated plan, and finally, a saturated system. A saturated system.

(21:11):
God wants us to be saturated in his plan, doing
his family his way. We'll just take again a step back.
Think about the family. God divinely designed the family. Think
about the things in our culture do they highlight and

(21:33):
underscore the transcendent values given to us in the family
how about education For the most part, No, there's some exceptions,
I understand. For the most part. No. How about entertainment. No,

(21:58):
most shows, whether you're watching something Netflix, you two, whatever, television,
they make fun of the family. They look at mom
and dad to treat mom and dad like absolutely card
carrying idiots, that the family has been tweaked and redivined

(22:21):
and redesigned. It's it's it's it's it's a joke. And
that's what the ENEMYC wants us to do. He wants
us to laugh like, ah, that's so funny. We watch
a modern family, Ah, that's so funny. Then one day
we just accepted that's just normal. No, that's abnormal. That's abnormal.
You've got to be able to look at something to go, man,
that's that's ludicrous. And I'm not talking about the rapper.

(22:47):
So I would argue the only entity that supports these
values the church. The church. So showing up families, you know,

(23:07):
once every six weeks ain't gonna cut it. And there's
no guilt trip. That's just the reality. I don't always
want to go to church, and I'm the pastor, but
every time I go, I drive away from this place
and go God, Thank you. I'm so glad I showed up.

(23:29):
Now Here's what's so cute about this outline? A motivated staff, M,
an educated approach, E, A dedicated plan, D, A saturated
system s meds. Take your meds is your home. Hospital

(23:51):
is your home with trauma center. You can start today.
You can start today because God, what's us to carry,
especially in the family, each other's burdens.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
We're so glad you've joined us for today's episode of
The Creative Connection with Ed Young. We'd love to help
you continue connecting your faith to everyday life by sending
you a copy of A Path Through Pain. It's Ed
and Lisa Young's powerful book about God's loving presence in
your toughest trials. You'll be encouraged as they recount their

(24:31):
own painful journey of loss to show you that even
in the darkest of places, God's light still shines to
show you away through A Path through Pain is our
Thanks for your gift to help reach more people with
biblical truth through The Creative Connection.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Jess.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Visit edyong dot com slash gift to request your copy.
Thank you for your support. We'll see you next time
on The Creative Connection.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
UH