Ed Young defines E in help stands for enjoy.  H stands for hit the pause button, E stands for enjoy.  We are to enjoy, what?  Mealtimes together.  What?  That’s right, we are to enjoy mealtimes together.  Here’s your homework assignment, 90’s family going 90 miles per hour.  I want you to eat, this week, count them, one-two-three-four, four meals as a family.  Preferably the nighttime meal.  Most of us eat meals like the Dallas Cowboys.  Huddle, down-set-hut, and they’re gone.  That’s how we eat.  “Time to eat!”  “Oh, yeah!”  We do that, don’t we?

Here’s what I want you to do – and this will revolutionize your life.  After you eat, take the fork and the knife, put them down on the plate.  Don’t take the dishes to the kitchen, yet, mom.  I want you to sit there for twenty minutes after the meal has been concluded.  You’re talking about some sweet times, you’re talking about some precious times, you’re talking about some rich times? Ed Young Pastor believes that you will have these times in your family if you stop – just this week, try it – for four nights.  For twenty minutes after the meal, you talk.  No noise.  No ESPN.  No Home Improvement.  Talk.  At first there will be long periods of silence.  We live in the age of technology, don’t we?  For many of us at Ed Young Ministries, we’re so involved with computers and televisions and CD players and all of this, that we’ve forgotten how to relate.  Ask penetrating questions like this, dad or mom.  “How was your day?”  “How do you feel about this particular issue?”  “Tell me about school.”  “If you could go to any place in the world, where would you go?”  Simple questions like that.  All of a sudden you will open up doors and windows, and you’ll begin to relate.  You’ll begin to know what’s going on in each others’ lives.

And then the rain of terror happened.  But before it happened, the Lord said to Noah, Genesis 7:1, “Go into the ark you and your whole family..”

We are going to triple the size, possibly quadruple the size, of our atrium.  You’re saying to yourself, “Well, man, why?”  The church is to be a family.  We’re a big family with no family room.  We don’t have a place for community.  You go into the lobby, the atrium area, before and after a service?  It’s SRO: Standing Room Only.  It’s also SOS: Scoot Over Some, isn’t it?  This area we’re going to build will have couches and tables.  It will have a place where we can cater food before and after services.  It will be a place for community, because if we are not a social church, we’re not a New Testament church.  The New Testament church was a church – read it in the book of Acts – that met together from house to house and experienced community with one another.  North, south, east, and west.

In a couple of weeks we’re moving into the APEX facility.  We’ve added another floor in the APEX facility just for some office space needs.  We have two, three, sometimes four staff members in one little cubicle.  We have a scandalous level of overcrowding in our church.  Also, we don’t have a place for our students.  We are constructing over there – and I can’t wait until you see it – the ultimate in student-driven ministry facilities.

East is another direction we’re going.  We are going to triple the size, possibly quadruple the size, of our atrium.  You’re saying to yourself, “Well, man, why?”  The church is to be a family.  We’re a big family with no family room.  We don’t have a place for community.  You go into the lobby, the atrium area, before and after a service?  It’s SRO: Standing Room Only.  It’s also SOS: Scoot Over Some, isn’t it?  Ed Young Ministries states that this area we’re going to build will have couches and tables.  It will have a place where we can cater food before and after services.  It will be a place for community, because if we are not a social church, we’re not a New Testament church.  The New Testament church was a church – read it in the book of Acts – that met together from house to house and experienced community with one another.  North, south, east, and west.

In a couple of weeks we’re moving into the APEX facility.  We’ve added another floor in the APEX facility just for some office space needs.  We have two, three, sometimes four staff members in one little cubicle.  We have a scandalous level of overcrowding in our church.  Also, we don’t have a place for our students.  We are constructing over there – and I can’t wait until you see it – the ultimate in student-driven ministry facilities.  Rock-climbing walls.  Basketball cages.  A theatre that will seat 1,000 people.  Video rooms.  It’s going to be a place of ministry for our students.  And that’s pretty much done.  We pretty much paid in cash for that, which I think is awesome.

Have you made that pact?  Have you made that trust decision?  Have you made that faith step?  Have you?

So, here we have Joshua.  All of a sudden, he runs into Jesus Christ, this soldier who says he is the commander of the army of God.  Here is what Joshua did.  Folks, this is how you humble yourselves, as we read what Joshua’s reaction was to Christ.  Here is how he humbled himself.  The first thing that Joshua did was to recognize who he was talking to.  How did he recognize who he was talking to?  The Bible says that Joshua fell face down.

Have you ever prayed prostrate, down on your face?  I didn’t say prostate—that’s a whole other deal.  I said “prostrate,” which means to lie with your face down in humility or submission before God.

You get a whole different perspective.  It’s kind of a different perspective for me to look at you while I am lying on my face.  Just think about what can happen when we recognize who God is.  Folks, the problem is we spend way too much time on our rears, and not enough time lying on our faces before God.

Joshua recognized who he was talking to.  The Bible says he immediately went face down.  Joshua got low.