God Wants You Happy Series

Urban Legends #2

[Video, Eerie Sounds] Well, I wanted to give you a little bit of, kind of a little bit of scoop on the now famous haunted house video. If you are new with us, we were promoting our legends, and we were at a house where there is an urban legend, where a little girl was supposed to be murdered, and now, she haunts the house. And the freaky thing is, we found in the video a couple of freaky images. If you want to see it, you can go to Utube.com, type in Urban Legends and it is there on the first page. We have had thousands of people looking at it. We have been bombarded with emails, phone calls. In fact, Sarah, you got this one in this morning. What’s the email say?

[Sarah] It says, “Sarah, my name is William and I attend the Edmond campus. Can you please get this message to Craig? My friends and I used to go to that house for fun. One night, I swear we felt a presence and heard a female voice asking for help. Most people don’t believe us, but we will never go back to that house. Anyway, thanks for your ministry. God is good. William.”

[Craig] Yeah, we’ve got some parents who are a little freaked out because their kids are scared. Let me be just very clear. I don’t believe this house is haunted. I don’t think we are seeing a ghost. I do believe in evil spirits. I do believe in demons, but when a little girl dies, they don’t turn into an evil spirit, so I wanted to introduce you. This is Mark. He is the guy who shot the video, and he is the one who found this first. Do you want to just talk us through what you think?

[Mark] Well, I’m not really sure, Craig, because you see, the first shot I had out here, it’s tilted down from the window there. You know, there’s … the sun glares on there, so my guess is, we were shooting you through the window over here. You kind of see it for the first time coming up. Right there. Pretty weird.

[Craig] Show it to us again. What, what could that be? Go ahead and roll it.

[Mark] Well, you know, that could be someone walking outside, a reflection of light or something like that, but what is strange is, the second one … I’m kind of going, I’m rolling in the same direction, but the thing is going the other way.

[Craig] Yeah, show it to us one more time. It looks like a person.

[Mark] But, here we go. Here we go. Rolling. Strange.

[Craig] Yeah, so it could be some light reflection, could be camera, so it’s nothing to worry about. It is an interesting house. We won’t go back there, but today we will talk about another urban legend.

[Video, Music]

Well, welcome today to all of our campuses, and all of you watching on video. If you have your Bibles with you, please open them today to II Timothy 4. That’s where we are going to start, as we continue our study on Urban Legends. Today, I want to talk to you about a spiritual urban legend that I think is one of the most dangerous, and yet, one of the most common spiritual urban legends in the American church today. You will hear people talk about this. You will hear it on TV today with TV preachers. You’ll read books about it, and you will hear it over and over and over again, and it is a message that feels very good. Here is the urban legend. It goes something like this. God wants you happy. God has good things in store for you. God wants you to enjoy your life. God wants you to prosper in every single way. The bottom line is, God wants you happy. I call this message the theology of happiness, and the danger is that it elevates us to the point where God is there to serve us, rather than the truth, and that is that we are here to serve Him. It is very subtle, and yet very seductive. You can see it even permeating our children’s stories. Read any fairy tale, any story to a kid, and you will always hear it close out with the same famous line … “And they all lived,” what? Say it with me, “And they all lived happily ever after.”

[Video, Craig with children] Papa bear said, “Who’s been eating my porridge?” And mama bear said, “Who’s been sitting in my chair?” And baby bear said, “Hey, somebody’s sleeping in my bed. It’s a little girl.” Well, papa bear had had a really bad day, because his house taxes went up, and because his boss was mad at him. So, papa bear lost his cool and went in to the little girl, grabbed her with his paws. So mama bear grabbed the little girl and pawed her across, and blood shot on the wall. And the little girl screamed, “Help me. Help me. I’m only a little girl. Somebody save me!” But mama bear and papa bear showed no mercy. They clawed the little girl, and threw her little blonde hair up against the wall like a rag doll until the little girl slowly bled to death, and baby bear went up to the girl and said, “That’ll teach you to sleep in my bed.” And baby bear ate the little girl for dinner, and the three little bears lived happily ever after. The end.