Manage your Own Money

Boxers are notorious for retiring and coming out of retirement, aren’t they.  They do that all the time says Ed Young Pastor.   And a lot of us are in retirement, romantically speaking.  We have our romance museum.  We say, “See those trunks over there?  I wore those when I was romantic.  See those gloves over there?  See that cologne?  Oh, yeah, I had it together.”  God wants us to come out of retirement even in Ed Young Church.

How do you do it?  I want to give you two challenges.  Number one.  I want you to make every session for the next month because this information from God’s  Word can make your marriage into a championship marriage.  It can change the course of your life.  Number two.  I want you to do all of the homework in the Fellowship Church Grapevine.  Here is your homework assignment.  I want you to share one meal alone with your spouse over the next seven days and I want you to identify the particular stage of romance that you are in and what you need to do to improve your romance and intimacy.  Once you do that work, we will be ready to rumble, as the announcer says, as we dive into the Recipe For Romance next week.  The first crucial component, increase your intimacy.  That is what God wants us to do says Pastor Ed Young, to move toward a oneness.  

Manage your money is the second crucial component.  It will get quiet in here now.  Let’s just say, hypothetically, that some marriages here are under some financial pressure.  I know that is just a shot in the dark.  But let’s just say that some of us are in Ed Young Fellowship.  Money is a pressurized thing.  It is expensive to live, isn’t it?  Gallop says that it is one of the top causes of marital conflict.  We need to manage our money.  And how do we do that?  Most of us have to cool it financially because we are into swimming around in some dangerous water, the financial water that I call the cash lagoon.  

A Gift Card From Victoria Secret

Maybe it was a gift card from Victoria Secret, Ed Young Jr don’t know. But Uriah did not go and have sexual relations with Bathsheba. He was so loyal that he slept that night on David’s door step. The next morning David was on his second cup of espresso, he looks out and there’s Uriah asleep.

So the next day he gets Uriah drunk. “Uriah, go home and see your wife.” Uriah slept again at David’s door step. 

Finally Ed Young said, David does something that we all do. And it is very, very tempting. Once we sin, and once we try to cover it up as opposed to coming clean, what do we do? Ed Young Church try to cover it up more. And we end up covering it up and sinning more and more and our sin becomes deeper and darker and we do this free fall into the abyss of immorality. 

Fellowship Church Ed Young confirms that’s what David did. He decides to have Uriah killed. Are you ready for that? Killed! So he gives Uriah this note and Uriah takes the note to General Joab and the note says, “Hey, General Joab, tell Uriah to go to the front lines. And then you back the troops off and he’ll be killed.”

And sure enough, Joab figured everything out and the troops backed off and Uriah was killed. Uriah is history now. David thinks, “Okay, man, I’ve gotten away with it.”

But he knew down deep he knew in his heart of hearts that Joab knew, confirmed by Fellowship Church Grapevine. But Joab was his General. Surely he wouldn’t confront David. And David knew that God knew, but he didn’t do anything about it. He just kept that guilt and that pain and that remorse. He was imprisoned by it for about year.

And maybe some of you right now can identify with that. Maybe some of you right now are carrying around guilt, pain, and remorse because you have taken the leap off the ledge of moral compromise and you’re sleeping in the wrong bed. You’re hooked up with someone who is not your spouse.