Yes! You Really CAN Change - How to "Break Out" of a Destructive Cycle, Part 2

Do you find yourself repeating the same old sin?

You know, the one that seems impossible to kick. You try harder and harder, and yet you just feel guiltier and guiltier. But there doesn't seem to be an answer, and you're just about ready to give up. Stop. Don't give up. There's hope. You can break out of that, and today I want to show you from God's Word how you can have victory beginning today.

Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this daily discipleship program, Motivating Christians to Live Like Christians.

I'm Dave Drouie. In a minute, Chip will continue his series, Yes, You Really Can Change. Last time he talked about the harmful cycle of apathy that hinders genuine life change. Chip will build on that idea in this program by giving us the biblical prescription for defeating sin.

Just before we get started, if you're new to Living on the Edge, or you've missed any of these messages, you can always catch up on the Chip Ingram app. Now let's hear the rest of Chip's message, How to Break Out of a Destructive Cycle, from Ephesians Chapter 4. The issue is your identity. The issue is who you really are. And an immoral lifestyle contradicts who you are. That's not who you are, but it also contradicts who Jesus is. Jesus was not someone who sinned. Jesus was someone who loved. Jesus is someone who's pure in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. So if externally trying to keep these rules isn't at the heart of the new life, how do you become transformed?

How does it really work? And he's gonna give us the general outline in verses 22 to 24. And he's gonna say there's a three principles of renewal.

Three specific principles that progressively, yes, at a point in time you're justified. God fills you with his spirit. He forgives your sin. He declares you.

He sits you in the heavenly places. He says now there's a journey of walking. We achieve personal purity by following God's threefold principles of transformation. Number one, we put off the old. Notice what it says?

Put off the old self. It's a metaphor. It's a picture of like having shabby, dirty, stinky, torn clothes. And it's in a tense of the verb that means at a certain time, at a certain point, you make a decision and you take them off. For some of us, you've come to Christ and you struggle with an addiction to alcohol or codependency or drugs. For some of us, you have an addiction to pleasing people or you find your worth in work. We have a lot of these, you know, sins that we kind of get rewarded for.

And it says at a certain point, you need to make a decision that you need to take that off. I please people because I think I'm only acceptable. My identity is everyone likes me all the time. So you're overextended. Or you're a workaholic like I have been.

And you feel like I am my performance. How much I do, how much I accomplish when I have those uneasy feelings, I just start working because when I work I feel better. Some of you have eating problems. When you have that dissonance in your soul, you eat and go to the refrigerator because when you eat, you feel a little bit better for just a little while. He says you got to, at some point, you make a decision and you say I drink every night after dinner because there's this stuff going on inside of me. And it used to be just an occasional glass of wine.

But I can't not do it. And it went from an occasional glass of wine to a few margaritas. And then it went from that to, you know, a shot of Jack Daniels really kind of helps you sleep better. And you've had friends and people talk to you and say, you know, hey, honey, or hey, I think that's it. I'm just social.

I've got this freedom in Christ. And you do. But if a number of people were saying that you have a drinking problem, here's all I would say.

Well, just don't drink anything for the next seven days. Oh, I could do that. Okay, do it. Bet you can't.

But here's the issue. The focus isn't try hard, try hard, stop drinking. Try hard, try hard, get off the internet.

Try hard, try hard, quit pleasing people. It's a decision to realize I'm going to take that off. That can't fill me. And then notice the second one, have your mind renewed. You've got to think differently. You need to see yourself as a son. You need to realize, okay, for me, I had to say I'm going to stop working crazy hours and put a box around it. And people pleasing, I had to set some boundaries and say, I'm going to eat dinner at home on a regular basis. I'm not going to get with people until I get with God.

I'm only going to work X number of hours a week. For some of you, it's you know what? I'm going to stop smoking weed.

Even though I know it's illegal, it kind of really helps me connect with God. Believe me, I've heard it all. But it's a decision. But what you need to understand is behind that, it's not just about the external behavior. It's what that is doing to your relationship. And it's your identity that you don't understand. And so then you get your mind renewed. And you begin to think differently.

And you realize my work and performance isn't who I am. See, when that changes, then you have the power in Christ to not have to work all the time. This buzz that I get when I feel low and discouraged and worn out, for some of us, we're addicted to TV.

I mean, you go home and you literally, your pattern is you blow about two to three hours every night watching TV in the name of just sort of chilling out. And you're bombarding your mind with all kind of information that pulls you away from all the things of the person you long to be and who God wants you to be. The third step is this.

It says then put on a point in time the new. As someone has said, for some of us, it's a liar doesn't cease to be a liar when he stops lying. A liar ceases to be a liar when he stops lying and starts telling the truth.

A workaholic doesn't cease to see if it's just the behavior. I'm gonna stop working. I'm not gonna do so much. I'm gonna cut back. I'm gonna get margin in your life. How many of us have said that about a million times?

How's that working for you? See, at the core, if your mind isn't renewed and you don't realize my work is not me, what people think of me is not me. This buzz that I get that kind of gives me, that's not me. I'm a son or a daughter. I'm already loved.

I'm already precious. And so in my workaholism, I say I'm gonna stop. I have my mind renewed. My work isn't me.

I'm accepted by him and then I put on Sabbath. And so for me, all day Friday, it's no voicemail. It's no email. I'm not gonna work. Okay, some of you, you're addicted to materialism, right? I mean, you buy stuff you don't need. Your credit is off the wall because when you buy stuff and do stuff, it makes you feel better and you think it will. This issue is not like are you dealing with this?

It's just how much, right? You decide no longer will what I have or what I wear or what I buy define me. I renew my mind but I need to move from that to being generous with my time, generous with my resources.

That's the process of sanctification. And so many people are stuck on trying hard, trying hard. I gotta stop cussing. I gotta stop logging onto the internet. I gotta stop buying this stuff.

I gotta stop eating this stuff. I gotta stop, stop, stop, stop, stop and you try hard, try hard, try hard and you fail. Try hard, try hard, try hard and you fail. Then you try hard, try hard and then you start faking it.

And we got Christians all over America and around the world faking it. And so the next best thing is you learn a few verses and you come to church some and you're always living sort of with this conflict between guilt, guilt, guilt and God loves me, God loves me and God says, you're my son. You're my daughter. I've paid for you.

You're deeply loved. I've put my spirit in you. I want you to renew your mind.

I want you to understand who you really are. And would you in your notes right in the middle write Romans 12 two? I mean, I mean, what Paul is doing in these verses, 22, 23 and 24, he's giving you the shortest overview of Romans chapter five, six, seven and eight.

I mean, if you read that, he would lay out, this is what God has done. You've died with him. You've been resurrected.

He'll say, take off. Don't present your members anymore to sin. Have your mind renewed. Present yourself to God as someone who's been raised from the dead.

That's Romans six, Romans seven. He'll talk about the conflict that happens even as a believer. We're all going to struggle in our walk will fall down.

And then chapter eight, he'll talk about the power of the spirit to live his life through you. When I meet people, and this is, I've so struggled and why I have so want to share this with you. I meet people all the time that's so long down inside to break out of a destructive lifestyle, but you keep putting stuff in your mind that destines you to do the same stupid stuff over and over and over again. In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognized the hazards of living with an overabundance of food, obesity and diabetes, and have began to shift our diets. Most of us, however, have not yet understood that the news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. The news is easy to digest. The media feeds small bites of trivial material tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking.

That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading a book or a long deep magazine article which requires thinking, we can swallow limitless qualities of news flashes like bright colored candies for the mind. It's a long article. It's called Avoid the News Towards a Healthy News Diet by Rolf Debele. And then he does a number of research and he has like 13, 14, 15 things about what watching the news does. The news inhibits good thinking and decision making because you're flooded with information. The news is costly because it costs you a lot of time. The news kills creativity and the news creates passive people by research. Now, am I telling you that it's sinful or wrong to ever watch the news?

Of course not. What I'm telling you is, is that you live in a world where you're going to be the product of your thinking. As a man or woman thinks in your mind, so you become. The mindset on the flesh is death. The mindset on the spirit is life and peace.

This central part of renewing your mind, we know. What did Jesus say? Man can't live. You can't walk.

You can't be transformed by physical bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And so there's this process. It's a decision. It's like on your computer and there's a program. You delete.

So it's a point in time. You delete. Then you install a new program, right? And it's installed. It says, just a minute. It's booting, it's booting, loading, right? And then after it loads, then you click run. Isn't it interesting that we create computers exactly the way God's created our minds to work?

And for some of you, he brought you today and he says, here's what I want you to do. Click delete on sexual immorality. Click delete today on workaholism or pleasing people or alcohol. I don't know what it is but you do.

But now what he's gonna say is if all you do is click delete, what would you know on your computer? You gotta install a new program. You gotta put new things in your mind. So instead of all that news, you need to get into God's word. You need to take a walk outside and see beauty. You need to read a good book that causes you to think. You need to read some things that are refreshing and inspiring and some biographies. You need to hang out with some people and talk about what are you reading and what are you thinking.

When you start, you're reloading and then you put on. And so instead of being a people pleaser, I become a servant and I set some boundaries. Instead of being a workaholic, I have some Sabbath and I renew myself.

Instead of being an alcoholic and wanting to cover it, I get filled with the spirit instead of filled with stuff because what they both do is they influence me how I think, what I do, how I behave. Here's the hope and I really want you to get this. He gives us sort of this delete, install new program and run in verses 22, 23 and 24 because he's then gonna say let me show you how this actually works in the most practical areas of life and he's gonna give us five specific of areas that instead of trying hard, how to go into training and how you really change.

In fact, let me give you hope as we wrap this up. This is a letter I have from a friend. What I want you to listen for is stop decision. He put off the old self like a bad ugly pair of clothes. Install renewing of his mind and then click. He runs the new program. Greetings from San Quentin. It's one of my prison friends from death row. It's a very bad guy who lost all sensibility.

You don't get on death row for doing small things. I'm embarking now. He's a new Christian to change in my walk with Christ. When I first received Christ and he gives me the date, I felt compelled to isolate myself for a season here. Note to the point really from temptations that I wasn't yet able to resist. So I haven't been out to the yard since then and that from a man that used to hit the yard every day for my first four or five years here and oh yes, I was part and parcel of all that happened with the convict mentality and all that goes with it and so he pushed delete. He said so, I've decided I'm not going to go out in the yard for a season. Now runs a new program. Meanwhile I've saturated myself with God's word in various ways.

Now I feel ready to face my old nemesis head on. This is at a time when I also feel I need to get around some other Christians and have real fellowship with other believers. I tried to find some other genuine believers in this yard but I kept coming up short and then I heard about a group of believers in another cell block of real genuine believers that meet that share God's word that are living it out in the prison and so I requested of the warden to move me from my cell block to that cell block and I was told this absolutely never happens ever and then he writes to me he says but what I know is that the king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord and God can do anything and turns it whatever way he wishes. He said I told the Lord in my walk of faith if you move me great if you don't great I will receive it I want to do whatever you want me to do.

Do you hear the surrender? He's in God's word. Stop I can't keep going there and and be the man God wants me to be. I'm going to reprogram my mind with truth and the word and now I need people and then he gets an answer. The warden says we've reviewed your files. We've seen an amazing change from the Rick that we all knew to the Richard that you've become. Simply put he says we've reviewed your file and used to be quite a guy shamefully so and so he says as I now will be moved to the new yard I'm only going to attend the chapel service once or maybe twice a month and ease my way in to make it as painless as possible on the others who probably can't believe that I'm a genuine Christian. This is like Saul to Paul.

I mean I don't want to go to chapel too often they'll think I might try and kill them. I'm excited to tell you this I'm reaping the fellowship with other believers now that I so desperately needed God is changing my life please pray for me. There's some of us sitting in this room your prisons as real as his. Your prison is as real as his. He's free now.

He's not a slave. He's not on death row in San Quentin in the eyes of God. He's born again.

He has a future. He's heaven bound. He's forgiven. There's no condemnation. He's a son. He's not a slave. He's not a person that has to live forever and ever with what he's done in the past.

It's been put behind him. He's becoming a new person but trying to become this new person in that environment just like your environment is very hard and what he understands is that who he now is has to be demonstrated by how he now lives and in order to do that he needs to put off the old self a decision a point in time that some of you need to make today. Today I make a decision and then I'm going to run a new program and I would encourage you you know turn off the TV for three or four days or just stop watching the news or cut back and start getting into God's Word and take a walk and look at nature and listen to some good music and do things that renew you and then put on. Take some baby steps in positive areas and if you'll track with me and let God work 90 days you'll be a different person. Last night a guy walked up and he's with the salvation army drug rehab program and I just he walked up and I remember him a few months ago he walked up and man there's no hope man and he's drugged out and I prayed with him and this and that and he skipped up here last night and he put his arms like that was about six feet from me and he says he lit up I said what's happening he goes I'm 90 days clean and he said every he went like this everything you talked about that's how it works I said I know it's God's Word he wants it for you a new life demands a new lifestyle. Chip will be right back with his application for this message how to break out of a destructive cycle you're listening to Living on the Edge and we're in the middle of chip series yes you really can change if you're feeling burdened by your past or find yourself stuck in an unhealthy behavior don't lose hope a changed life is not only possible it's God's will for all of us so we hope you'll keep listening to this series to learn how to experience ongoing life change and we're here to help you along the way download chips message notes stream our exclusive video content or take a look at chips newly revised book and as always the mp3s are free learn more about all the resources for yes you really can change by going to Living on the Edge dot org or calling triple 8 3 3 3 6 0 0 3 app listener simply tap special offers chip before you give us your application for this message I think it's important we stop and acknowledge something many people who are listening to us right now feel spiritually stuck they've tried reading their Bible or setting aside time to pray but they never really feel like they're getting anywhere and that can be very discouraging what would you say to help people break out of this frustrating cycle absolutely Dave I don't think it's unusual to get spiritually stuck I can tell you know people I have different seasons in my life where sometimes it's circumstances events challenges and pretty soon you kind of find yourself going through the motions and even those that are faithful where you know I'm reading the Bible I'm praying but like I'm not getting through or I'm not very motivated and what I found was often it's meeting with another person it's digging it at a fresh level applying the scriptures in a way that really help you get out of your pattern that's not taking you anywhere and so I've developed a brand new daily discipleship many of you have already gone through one of these before but this is built on this series actually it's built on Ephesians chapter 4 and in it I help people understand this is the process of transformation and here's where the power comes from here's the kind of environment that it requires but sitting down not as the teacher but more as the mentor and just putting my arm around people and saying let's walk through this passage together let me help you take these steps I'll never speak more than 10 minutes I'll give you a little worksheet that you can spend at least 10 minutes on and what I can tell you as we meet every single day God gives breakthroughs that's really what we want to see happen we long to help people connect with God in a way where the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and makes it alive and where transformation happens from the inside out it's not wrong to be stuck we all go through some down seasons daily discipleship is a way to get unstuck I hope you'll join me daily discipleship with Chip our short daily sessions with Chip where he walks you through how to study a passage from the Bible and really hear God's voice these sessions are designed to help you get into the practice of doing that every day the study chips recommending is based on his current series from Ephesians chapter 4 yes you really can change understanding the process of how genuine life change really happens is essential to getting spiritually unstuck if you think meeting with Chip would help you do that I hope you'll make it a part of your routine for the next few weeks you'll find the daily discipleship with Chip at livingontheedge.org on the home page app listeners just tap discipleship as you listen to today's message what went through your mind I mean what is it in your life that when you're very honest you say to yourself I really want to change that but I've tried and tried and tried and the fact is that it's it's still there well what you know is trying hard doesn't work okay I know that you know that it begins first with the choice the passage is very clear you have to put off certain things renew your mind and then put on this truth and allow the Spirit of God to develop a life of Christ in you only he can do that but your part is you start with a choice and you say I'm gonna stop looking at pornography I'm gonna stop pleasing people all the time I'm gonna stop being a workaholic I'm gonna stop that level of alcohol consumption or that drug or whatever it is so that's the beginning but the key is what do you put in your mind there's a reason why you're behaving the way you're behaving and it makes sense to you right now because what you put in your mind is telling you that this will relieve the pain this will sedate it this will answer it for a while but your experience screams no it doesn't example I just got a email from a gal in our church and she's a real prayer warrior and just you can just see the life of Christ in her and she mentors a woman in prison and she's met with her multiple times and she sent me a an email from this lady and this lady's been there quite a while I meant through very very horrendous things and she said I've always tried hard to stop certain things and then she was teaching her about the miracle of life change Ephesians chapter 4 and she goes when I started renewing my mind it's like there's a whole new world for some of you what you need to realize is turn off the TV stop searching the web you don't need to watch that much YouTube there's certain people you need to for two weeks just stop being around them and take some small section of scripture maybe it's Psalm 23 or maybe it's this little passage in Ephesians but read four or five verses and and don't just keep reading meditate and ponder and think write it out on a card pray it back to God memorize all of Romans chapter 12 it's just one short chapter but just saturate your mind for two weeks in the truth of God in an area that you're struggling with and say no to some things that are going in your mind and then you email me in two weeks you know you email Living on the Edge I will guarantee that you will see the Spirit of God take the Word of God and begin to change you from the inside out don't delay choose to do it today tell one friend what you're going to do pick your passage and let me know in two weeks what God does just before we close I want you to know that as a staff we ask the Lord to help you take whatever your next faith step is if there's a way we can be helpful we'd love to do that maybe give us a call at triple eight three three three six zero zero three or connect with us at Living on the Edge dot org and while you're there you'll find resources on all kinds of topics many of them absolutely free well I'm glad you've been with us and until next time this is Dave Drewey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.