It’s kind of frustrating, because I’ve seen a lot of you take notes and nod your head.  Maybe some singles here will say, “Yes, I should do those things that the Bible says about spouse selection.  That’s right, Ed.  Thank you.”  I’ve watched you.

Then, even though it may be completely wrong, you turn and follow the first person with a heartbeat that crosses your path.  You throw everything that we’ve talked about out the door and say, “Forget the Bible!”

I’ve seen others of you, who are married, taking notes, buying videos, reading books and listening to tapes.  Then you say, “This applies to everybody else – my neighbor, my husband – but not me.”  I have to tell you – it’s frustrating.

I’ve got to do this series because, first of all, God has led me to do it.  He wants me to do it.  Secondly, I’ve got to do it because one of the main values of Fellowship Church is building biblically functioning marriages.  There is no way, though, that you can build Biblically functioning marriages without making strategic decisions.  In other words, we have got to pick the right person.  It is all about the choice.  So, as we think about choosing the right spouse, we have got to start this series.   Once you make the choice, then you say, “I do.”  Then, you have to develop the implications of this important decision.

So, now that I have that off my chest, I can begin the first installment.

Picture yourself cruising down the freeway in your dream car,  blowing through intersection after intersection.  Just picture that dream car, whatever it is for you.  It could be a Corvette, a Ferrari, or one of those new Hummers.  Have you seen one of those cars?  Now, think about yourself riding on the relational freeway.  You are just cruising down the relational freeway.

I’m a solver; I’m a hunter.  I said, “Mallory, let me just quickly critique a few things about your presentation.  You need to … you know, if you want to have great stage presence, do this.  If you want to have some confidence you need to…” I was really trying to help her.  I thought that’s what she wanted, my help.  After a while she was looking at me with a disgusted look and she said, “Dad, I don’t want you to tell me what to do.  I just want you to listen to me.  I want you to experience the moment.”  She didn’t want my solving ability; she wanted me to sense the moment with her.

Fellowship-Church Grapevine stated that another difference that makes communication so difficult between men and women is that men are tight lipped and women are talkers.  Scientists tell us that men, on the average, will speak about twelve thousand words a day.  Women, on the other hand, will speak twice as many words — sometimes up to twenty-four thousand words a day.  Now, here’s where the problem happens in my family.  Usually during the day I spend most of my twelve thousand words at work. So when I came into the house in the evening and  walk into the kitchen,  I may just ask Dido off the top of my head, “How was your day honey?”  Well, I suddenly realize that she has saved most of her twenty-four thousand words just for me!  She begins to tell me all the stuff that’s happening to her. Ed Young Fellowship says that then, I feel like I’m out in the ocean with this leaky life raft and there is a tidal wave of words that’s just going envelope me.  Man, men are tight lipped and women are talkers.

You know it starts early in life.  I have a twelve year old son, Cameron.  From time to time a girl will call Cameron.  Now, you talk about an interesting thing to listen to — two seventh graders on the telephone!

This year this church will give $12,000,000.  Don’t say the Fellowship Church is not deep.  Hey, a lot of things don’t upset me, but I will fight you on that one.  And you better fight anyone that says that to you because they are just a walking billboard advertisement that they don’t get it.  It takes unselfish, mature people to grow a great church and that is what God is doing.

So we have got to practice the stuff.  I have been to church a lot.  I have heard various speakers a lot.  I have heard pastors a lot.  Sometimes when I am sitting in a church I will think, wow, that guy is smart.  And I will download all the data but walk out and wonder can I  apply that in my life, in my marriage, in my parenting.

Ed Young says that how can I apply that to the pressures I feel in leading the Fellowship Church?  How can I apply that to my thought life?  How can I apply that to my finances?  It was just a bunch of information, true information, interesting information but irrelevant.  The measure of a church is what happens in people’s lives in-between services.  We have 168 hours a week. If we sleep 8 hours a night, that leaves 112 hours that we are up.  And we need to worship God 112 hours.  Let’s say we go to church 2 of the 112 hours.

That leaves 110 hours.  Well, during the 2 hours at church, we better bust it.  We had better be prepared.  We had better be teaching and equipping and helping people to do what?  To worship the other 110 hours.  We worship more outside the church than in the church.  When we have that down, the preparation, the participation and the practice, when we have that down, we will understand what it means to be fully engaged in the finest hour.  The finest hour.

Fellowship Church Grapevine stated that generosity is also about cost.  What did David say in the Old Testament? You know, the David that killed Goliath?  David was a billionaire.  A lot of people don’t know this.  He was worth over a billion dollars.  Do you know what David said?

He said, “I’m not going to give God anything that doesn’t cost me something.”

Again, we give, but usually it doesn’t cost us something.  To truly be generous, to go over, above, and beyond, you have got to give something that will cost you something.  That’s why, years ago, I began to apply something in my life that has helped me on this. Regularly give things that matter to me away.  I don’t mean junk.  I don’t mean an old worn out cell phone, some shirt or pair of shoes that are sorry.  It’s got to be something that I like, something that matters to me.  When I began to do that regularly, it began to help me get the read on greed.  It began to give me the ability to loosely hold on to things, and God has done some amazing things in my life through that principle. Would challenge you to think about doing the same thing yourself.  Generosity is all about cost.

I love 2 Corinthians 9:6.  It just slams us all. “Remember this; whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.”

How many of you have ever listened to the radio station called The Ticket?  I don’t listen to The Ticket very much.  However, a year or two ago, I was listening to one of the morning programs and I heard  Dunham and Miller call someone a “spare.”

They said, “This guy’s a spare.”

I thought, “A spare.  What’s a spare?  I bowl a little bit, but they are calling a person a spare?  Is this person a bowling pin?  What’s that about?”  I jumped on my laptop and went on their website.  They had this thing called a “Tictionary,” where they used all these different terms and defined them.  Here is how they defined the word “spare.”  The “spare” was a person who did not achieve greatness — a person who did not achieve greatness.