Spiritual Simplicity - What's Love Got to Do With It?, Part 1

There are two things, two attitudes that will kill love.

Today I'm going to share with you what those two attitudes are, how to spot them, and then how to keep them from ruining the love in your life. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. We're in the middle of our series, Spiritual Simplicity, Doing Less, Loving More.

And if you've missed any of these messages so far, you can catch up at livingontheedge.org or via the Chip Ingram app. Turn in your Bibles now to 1 Corinthians chapter 13 as we join Chip for his talk, What's Love Got to Do With It? I don't know about you, but that sort of brings back a little memory, you know, kind of Tina. It's the early 90s, I'm in my car, what's love got to do with it?

Easy, easy. I better save my impressions for later. But that was one of the catchiest tunes I'd ever, ever heard. And I remember later, you know how you sing along in the car and then you hear what you're singing? I listened to the words and I thought, these may be some of the most pathetically sad words about love I've ever heard. She came out of a very difficult, abusive relationship if you know her life story.

And if you have time to actually study the words, I actually pulled them down. And she says, basically, love is nothing more than a secondhand emotion. It's a sweet, old-fashioned notion.

In other words, it's really not true. It's just sort of this ideal that maybe someday, someway, but she's given up on it. And then she says this line, who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

And so just focus on the physical, don't risk, don't care. The message is get, take, exploit, because real love is either too rare, too dangerous, or too costly. And although it was in the very beginning of the 90s, I could actually listen to the lyrics of that song in terms of philosophy.

Francis Schaeffer was right. If you want to know when the philosophy of a culture has hit mainstream, just listen to the music and observe the art. And the message of this song in the 60s and 70s, that same message birthed the sexual revolution. The message of that song really epitomizes the greed of the 80s and the me-ism of the 90s. And the message and the disappointment of that song I think has birthed what this new millennium generation is saying, you know, I don't know what you all did with your life, but I want genuine intimacy and authentic community, and I want to do life with people that really care, that are really real, and really deep.

And here's what I can tell you. When love is minimized, because that's what the song is about, trivia is maximized. The important becomes trivial, and then the trivial becomes important.

And so the way that we got where we are is when loving people and loving God and really knowing what that means becomes minimized, then possessions and power and prestige and what people think and what you wear and what schools your kids go to and how you're doing produces these demands where we start living lives that are just unprecedented in terms of demand, demand, demand, complexity, complexity, complexity. And so on the very front of your notes, if you have those, I ask the question as we get started, so what's love got to do with simplifying your life? And the answer is everything. Because when you maximize love, when you talk about purposefully, specifically loving other people in intimate and authentic ways, some of the trivial things all of a sudden they lose their luster. Who cares about this or that when love is really happening?

I gave you three reasons why the answer is everything. The first we covered because anything minus love is nothing. In fact, everything minus love. Meet some people that have spent their life with the latter leaning on fame, money, fortune.

The only thing missing is their mate, their kids and any close friends. Everything minus love is nothing. The second reason is because it is our misbelief about what our performance, possessions and provisions can deliver that we chase bigger, better, faster, more, bigger, better, faster, more that creates worlds of complexity and worlds that have tired overextended people with a lifestyle that promises a lot, delivers little and is characterized by superficial, shallow relationships and achy loneliness in your soul.

The third reason that love and simplicity go together is because you can only do less if you purpose to love more. For me in terms of my study, you know, when I prepare for this, the person who gets spoken to first is me. And I've, like many of you, I'm a fairly driven person. I'm pretty goal oriented. And I've told myself a million times I'm going to slow down more, get more margin. That doesn't last long unless you shift the focus on instead of I'm not going to be doing these things to I'm going to love deeply. I'm going to love God more deeply than ever before. I'm going to love my wife more deeply than ever before. I'm going to love my kids and in my case grandkids. I'm going to love my friends. When you begin to purpose to say I'm going to love more and love deeper, some of the pressures I was feeling, all of a sudden they're not that important anymore. Well, how do you do it? Assess what's the biggest barrier to you slowing down and simplifying your life. What is it that really keeps you at the pace that you're living? Second is define what's it look like to really love those in your world?

I mean, we know God loves the whole world. Well, you either have a roommate or a family. You have a workplace. You have friends. You have people here.

You're probably in a small group. So what's it look like specifically to love the people that are closest to you? And then third, we talk about develop specific baby steps of love and action that break old habit patterns.

How you live, how I live. I mean, you didn't get there overnight and us saying let's love more and do less is not going to cut it. We've got to look at specific action steps of action that will allow the transformation of your heart and then your relationships that get translated to your schedule. And so the question I want to ask and answer today is how do we then maximize love so love becomes what's important and some of those trivial, they don't feel trivial, but those trivial, less important things diminish in their priority and demand on your life.

And since you have opened your notes, I will catch up because you've hit the answer. I believe the key is learning to love in real time. So this is not a motivational talk that you know, you should love more, you know, platitudes or try harder or get you emotionally in a picture. I want to love more.

Well, that lasts about 30 seconds to 30 hours depending on your personality. The key to transformation is in real time in how you live with the people you're closest to. A real time issue is how do you respond to those who hurt you? And the truth is we learn.

1 Corinthians 13, love is patient, love is kind. The practice is someone has hurt you. They've ignored you. They've rejected you. They made you feel bad.

You can either withdraw or pay them back or remember the pillow? You can absorb the blow by the grace of God and return a hug. That's the practice. Today we're going to talk about a second real life kind of learning to love in real time. And in real time, we're going to look now at how does love respond to differences? We have different personalities. We have different backgrounds.

We have different gifts. Those of you that are in a significant relationship or married, it was your differences that drew you together. And if you've been married much time at all, it is your differences that make you crazy, right? Or even with friends, you become good friends with someone and you really like it because they're different than you and then you start hanging out with them. And those differences are like, man, would you lighten up?

You're kind of making me crazy. Well, the church in Corinth had a lot of differences and the apostle Paul is going to address this issue of differences. In fact, the truth is love does not envy. It does not boast.

It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no records of wrong. That's 1 Corinthians 13, four and five.

Now make sure you get the core of it. Pull out your pencil, underline the word envy, underline the word boast, rude, not self-seeking, easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs. This is how love responds to differences. And you would find that far from a beautiful poem that Paul is writing is that he's actually giving correctives to how this church was treating one another. And so it says, love doesn't envy. Well, they were envying in chapter three and he addresses it.

It says, love doesn't boast. He actually says, why are you boasting in chapter four? In chapter 11, they were rude in the way they took the Lord's supper. In chapter six, they were self-seeking.

They were actually going to court and suing one another. And then when you get all that conflict, guess what? They're easily angry at one another and they're holding on and they're bitter and resentful. And so Paul is saying, that's not how love responds to differences.

So in chapter 12, what he actually did, if you have your Bible, open it up. 1 Corinthians chapter 12, he's expressed to them how love actually works. He says, the way love works is love celebrates our differences.

Love looks at different people and realizes it's kind of like the little pieces of a puzzle is that every one of them is important and they're different colors and they're different shapes, but love celebrates differences and love refuses to compare. And so he gives the analogy of the human body. And so he writes, the body, this is chapter 12, verse 12, the body is a unit, get the idea of oneness or wholeness, though it's made up of many parts and though all the parts are many, they form one body. So there's differences, diversity, and there's unity. Now he applies, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one spirit in the one body, whether Jews or Greeks or slave or free, and we're all given the one spirit to drink.

Now, when we read slave or free Jew or Greek, we think, I mean, these are people that didn't get along at all before they came to Christ. He's saying you were very, very, very different, but now you're a part of something that's bigger and more important in your new relationship. You're a part of the body of Christ, the church. Now the body is not made up of one part, but many. And then he gives a hypothetical situation. He's using the human body to make his point about love doesn't compare. He says, if the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be a part of the body. And then he goes on to say, if the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?

If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? He's saying, we need every part of the body. But in fact, God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be?

As it is, there are many parts, but one body. You might underline that little phrase in your Bible, just as he wanted them to be. Until you understand that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, that you're unique, that your physical body, how you process information, your spiritual gifts, your weaknesses, your strength, and the sovereignty of God, even the kind of experiences up and down you've been through, you bring something unique that no one else does, and if you compare or copy or be like someone else, we lose you.

And we need you. He goes on to say, verse 21, the eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you. And the head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special favor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty while our presentable parts have no special treatment. Now here's the application. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so there would be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.

Key application. He says, God has done this in a way so that there's no division and we would have equal concern for one another. This church was very divided.

To say it was cliquish is an understatement. This church was backbiting, gossiping, arguing, and here's the thing, the problem doesn't just rest with the Corinthian church in the first century. Every church, every family, every organization, if you compare instead of celebrate differences, it always produces bad, bad things.

In fact, it kills love. We take differences and instead of saying we're different, we look at differences and we say people that are different, some of them we think, well they're better than us and we envy them. And some people are different, we think, well they're less than us.

And so we're arrogant toward them. And the apostle Paul is going to say that these are the issues he wanted to address and that the Corinthian church had two unloving responses when it came to differences. The first is envy and the second is arrogance.

Those two issues, I want you to kind of see them as a singular coin. And the coin is in your relationships, in my relationships, in the Corinthian relationships, the question is how do you respond to differences? And some people respond by comparing and the outcome is envy. Other people respond and compare in a different way and the outcome is arrogance. And if you look at those words we read, he says love isn't envious, love isn't boastful or arrogant. Every other little phrase after that is the fruit of either being envious or arrogant. Here's what I want you, I mean this is what we're going after.

This is the jugular. You want to become more loving in real time, here's the issue. Comparison always leads to carnality. The moment you compare your hair with another person, your car with another person, your gifts with another person, your singleness with a person, your marriage with another person, how God is using or not using you, how much money you have, where you live, what you drive, the moment you ever compare yourself with another person, it always produces carnality.

And if you're wondering what carnality is, it's just sin. You're not loving. Because the moment you compare, there's only two directions to go. You start comparing and you go, hmm, I think that person's up here and I'm here.

That's a lot nicer car. They have more visible gifts. I'm single and they're married and I wish I was married. Or it goes the other way.

You know what, that person's not very important. That's an old dumpy thing. I wonder why they act like that.

I wonder why they dress like that. And you know what, you don't verbalize it, but you feel superior. You feel better than. And when you envy people, you don't treat them in loving ways. Or if you think you're better than them, you don't treat them in loving ways.

And so here's what I want you to see. We are gonna go to war on the issue of comparison. And comparison, as one guy said, I love it. Comparison is like a mafia boss. Mafia bosses, they don't ever commit murders. They have hit men.

They never get their hands dirty. And so what happens is comparison is really what we wanna go after, but there's two hit men. One is envy and the other is arrogance.

Envy compares upward and produces jealousy, anger, resentment, and bitterness. And the text here, this is the foot says to the hand. The foot says to the hand, I mean, the foot says to the hand, this isn't fair.

I don't like what you've got. I mean, I'm down here on the ground and there's dust and my feet are dirty. And then later people put socks on me.

People can't even see me and then you have to wear these shoes and they kinda hurt my feet. And look at you, your hands. They put rings on yours. You paint your nails. I mean, your hands do surgery.

Your hands play instrument. You're important and I'm a nobody. You see, envy always compares upward and then it produces jealousy and anger and resentment. The word here in Hebrew means something that has connotations of something that's red hot. It's this emotion that when you begin to envy someone, something burns inside.

It goes something like this. You're single and you have a desire to be married and you're now with your third roommate and your first two roommates came home after a date and they said something like, I've got some exciting news. I'm engaged. And your response is, oh, that's wonderful on the outside.

And on the inside, there's this burning, I can't get it. I mean, I'll tell you what I've been doing at God's way. I'm sexually pure.

I'm trying really hard. I go to church. She's a once a monther. God, what's the deal?

How come she's right? Or you're in a Bible study and people don't know it, but you know, they ask off and you've been married six, seven years. You don't have any kids. Oh, well, we're just kinda, and you've spent all kind of money and you can't have children. And then you're in one of these Bible studies and you know, this group says, well, you know, we were thinking about having kids, but it's been nine months, 11 months and we still can't. And then they come to a Bible study or a life group and go, we're pregnant. And like everyone else, you go, oh, that's wonderful. And your insides go, God, I mean, we spent thousands of dollars.

We've done this, this, you know, why do they get that? See by definition, envy is you looking at what someone else has or what someone else is and you think if you had it or were it, then you would matter. Then your soul, then your heart, then your life would be complete and underneath of it, it's not fair, God. If you really loved me, I wouldn't be single. If you really loved me, we would have kids. If you really loved me, I'd be the top salesperson. If you really loved me after I gave all that money, how could you let this happen when the recession hit? And so rooted in a belief system that God isn't really good, you compare upward and you envy and the envious person has some feelings and attitudes that go something like this. I don't belong.

You don't need me. The feelings move on to a pattern inside the heart and inside the heart, it's like, well, I feel less than them. You both went to school together. You both had careers together.

Seems like their careers here and yours is there. And when you're with them and you used to be great friends, but they talk about this world that you feel like, why don't I have that? And now you feel less than, and then the second step is you don't want to be around them because we don't like to be around people who make us feel less than. And then after we move from feelings of less than to not being around them, then we resent them. Subtle little, you know, my sister and her husband, how come they got the new car? You know that guy, that woman, that person at work. And by the way, these aren't things we usually, they're so delicate and often when you look at them and get them out, they're pretty ugly. These are not like prerogatives.

Could you help me? When's the last time someone said, excuse me, I have a prayer request. I'm a very envious person.

Do you think you could help me with my jealousy? I've not heard a lot of those prayer requests. The word literally means in Greek to eagerly desire. And often the way we try and solve this is very unhealthy. I guess I shouldn't want to be married. Why do I have the desire? I shouldn't feel that way. And you just beat yourself up.

That doesn't work. The word means to eagerly desire. In chapter 12 verse 31, it's used positively. In chapter 14 verse one, it's used positively. In chapter 14 verse 39, the exact same word. Eagerly desire.

Here's the deal. It can either mean to be jealous or it can mean to be zealous. And the only issue is the focus of your want. He says, I want you to eagerly desire spiritual gifts. I want you to eagerly desire to prophesy or use your gifts to honor and build up people.

So here's what I want you to get on Envy. It's this thing called this eager desire for something. And let's say that you have an eager desire. You have a desire in your heart for a bigger home. And your motivation is you have a gift of hospitality and you're not comparing with other people. But if you had more room, you could serve and love more people.

That's called zealous desire to honor God. But let's say you have a desire for a bigger house. And the desire for a bigger house is everyone you know is getting bigger houses. And you are sick and tired of inviting them into your condo or your smaller house.

And down deep, you feel like you will demonstrate that you have arrived when you have a bigger house. That's called envy or jealousy. If the desire is to try and matter more, jealousy. If the desire is God, I want this to minister more deeply, it's zealous God honoring desire.

You need to redirect your desires, not try to kill him. There's nothing wrong with the desire if you're single to be married. There's nothing wrong with the desire if you don't have kids and want to have kids. There's nothing wrong with the desire to be up on the sales force to earn a better living. There's nothing wrong with it. Those are honest desires, but the moment you compare, you stop loving. You stop loving.

This would be the time in my notes where I should write down, Chip, pregnant pause. Give them time to think about the specific person that they envy. Have you got it? Him? Her? A fellow worker? Someone in the church?

Sometimes it happens inside families. You've been listening to part one of Chip's message, What's Love Got to Do With It? He'll be right back with his application for this teaching from his series, Spiritual Simplicity, Doing Less, Loving More. Have you ever felt like there's never enough time in the day for yourself, the people you love, even God?

If so, then don't miss this series. Chip's going to challenge the unrealistic standards and norms we all feel pressured by. Join us as we learn how to break free from this demanding cycle and uncover the simpler, more fulfilling life God has for us. To get more plugged in with this series, Spiritual Simplicity, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org.

That's LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well, I'm joined in studio now by Chip, and Chip, before we go any further, you wanted to say something about the year-end match that we talked about throughout the month of December. Well, Dave, I just wanted to pause. I mean, to really pause and tell you from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You know, every time a person makes a financial gift, a spiritual transaction occurs.

In other words, something actually happens in a person's heart. I speak to those of you who gave. You gave.

You responded. You invested in Living on the Edge. I want you to know that as you've invested, we're going to invest in the lives of people here and all around the world. It really matters, and we are super grateful. Thank you, each one of you who prayed and said, Lord, what do you want me to do?

Then you followed his lead. The final numbers will be on our website as soon as we get all the mail that comes in, but I just want to say thank you. Thank you so very much for hearing from God, responding to God, and for being so generous. Let me add my thanks, too. We truly celebrate every gift we've received and are excited to see how God uses it to motivate Christians to really live like Christians. So thanks again for your support.

Well, here again is Chip to share his application. As we close today's program and sense this issue of comparison is so deeply rooted in your psyche and mine, let me do just a little review. Lean back a little bit and listen. When love is minimized, the trivial becomes maximized. When you start obsessing about trivial stuff, you can know that love is being minimized. The second thing is our misbeliefs about possessions and about power and prestige. They fuel our propensity to compare. That idea that if we have and can attain and perform and those external things are going to make us a somebody, I mean, that's like pouring gasoline on the fire in your soul of comparing with other people, and it always turns out negative. The third is, remember, comparison always leads to carnality. I mean, no matter which direction you go, you compare, oh, they're better than me, I'm a nobody, or I'm better than them.

I mean, it's either envy or arrogance. And we're going to talk about the latter in our next broadcast. But just ask yourself, when and how and with whom do I compare? And then finally, you know, God, what do you want me to do? What can I do this day to stop the comparing?

And here's one little tip I'll give you until our next broadcast. When you start to compare, instead, stop, thank God for that person and the way he made them or what he gave them, and thank God for you and the way he made you and what he gave you. You do not know what is all going on in that person's life. You know, they may have a nice car and a beautiful this or a great that.

You do not know what's going on. Just thank God that he was generous and kind with them. And then thank God for what he's given you and who you are. It's a choice.

You cannot envy and compare when you're thanking God for who you are and what he's already done for you. It'll realign and recalibrate your soul. Do it today. Thanks Chip. And in case you missed some of the points Chip just reviewed, they're pulled straight from his message notes, which is a tool available for every program. So let me encourage you to get this resource before you listen to us again. Chip's notes include his outline, all of the scripture references, and lots of fill-ins to help you remember what you're learning. They're a quick download at livingontheedge.org. Under the broadcasts tab, app listeners tap fill-in notes. Well until next time, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.