Pastor Ed Young of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas is delivering sermons in his series "What Would Jesus Say To...?"
He has already delivered the sermon "What Would Jesus Say To Jerry Brown" and "What Would Jesus Say To Kim Kardashian?"
According to the Christian Post, Pastor Young's sermon over the weekend was "What Would God Say to Lance Armstrong?"
He offered that Christ would tell disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong to stop running away from the truth, to stop lying and turn to God.
According to Pastor Young, Jesus would turn to Armstrong in a one-on-one conversation and say:
"Lance, fall on your knees before me. Stop your paddling. Stop your performing. Stop trying to hear those words you didn't hear when you were young. Stop compromising. Stop trying to be the god of your life. You're out of control. Your life is a wreck; your life is a mess."
Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey last week in a much anticipated interview that he had been using illegal performance enhancing drugs his entire career.
Additionally, the cyclist admitted that he had falsely accused people of lying when they suggested that he had been doping, and that he had been taking the exact substances the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accused of him using. Armstrong was stripped of all his Tour de France titles, was banned from the sport for life, and has lost millions in sponsorship deals.
Pastor Young reminded his 20,000 member congregation that the testicular cancer survivor has still done a great deal of good in his life, including founding the Livestrong foundation, which has raised almost half a billion dollars in cancer research. However, people cannot compare before God how much good they do in order to compensate for the sins in their life.
Pastor Young said;
"You just can't play that game with God."
Armstrong said he does not belong to a specific faith, but he has made it his life mission to live in an honest and moral manner.
This is what Armstrong said in reference to his religious beliefs when he faced cancer surgery in 1996:
"I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized."
Additionally Armstrong said: "If there was a God, I would still have both of my testicles."
In conclusion, Pastor Young suggested Jesus would say this to Armstrong:
"Lance, when you ride away from the truth, you crash right into it. There is going to be a colossal wreck between the truth and the lies. When you wreck, look at me."
Young said that Armstrong needs to stop cycling away from the past and the pain in his life, and seek to be adopted into God's family with God as the Father – and the only way to do that is through Jesus.
Pastor Young has two more parts in the celebrity series lined up that can be watched online on the Fellowship Church website.
You can get the summary of the last two sermons by subscribing above or below to articles written here.
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