According to a recent survey, we want to reduce the clutter, the stress, the ongoing chaos of our busy lives. But the big question is, How do you really simplify your life?
Well today we're going to talk about a plan that will help you cut through the noise and to begin to simplify your life today. Stay with me. You're going to love it. Thank you for being with us for this Edition of Living on the Edge Chip Ingram Room. Chip serves as our Bible teacher for this global teaching and discipleship ministry, helping Christians develop an authentic faith.
In just a minute, Chip will pick up where he left off last time in our series Spiritual Simplicity. For the past several programs, Chip's taught through 1 Corinthians 13, highlighting our need to declutter our busy lives and embrace an intentional, loving mindset.
So if you've missed any part of this study, it's not too late to catch up. either through livingontheedge.org or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Well with that, here's Chip to share the remainder of his talk in the name of love. You know what? Wonder what would have happened if we would have eaten together three or four times a week. I wonder what would happen if Instead of being so busy, I actually blocked off the first 30 minutes of every day and talked with God so I could keep my priorities straight. I wonder what would have happened instead of, you know, two or three hours every night just to wind down.
and watching fairly mindless T V, If I would have spent some time investing in the things that matter and the people that matter and giving attention to the things that I know that would last. This is what the Apostle Paul is saying. He's saying this is how love responds to misplaced priorities. And then he gives us a solution. I love the Bible.
It's not just, you know... He's saying, you know, you could be successful in business or finances or your kids could get in the best schools, but. Any success. Minus love equals a. Goose egg.
Everything minus love is a zero. And so what would happen, just what would happen? If sometime You started a brand new journey. And the new journey went something like this. I'm not sure what I'll do with the entire rest of my life.
But until I take my last breath, I'm going to start thinking and planning and praying and structuring my life, my activities, and my energy and my money around two things. loving God and loving people. And I'm going to stop cheating by saying one thing and pretending it's true. And I'm going to ask: do my finances and my time and my closest relationships reflect. But I really love God.
and love people. And here's the promise. Love never fails. You'll never have a regret. You'll never say no to one youth sport activity or a few more hours at work or one more deal that you can do.
Where you say no this vacation's planned and we're gonna go away you'll you'll never look back and go. Oh, I wish you would have done one more deal But you will look back. with regret. If love's not the number one priority. And so he tells us how to do it.
Are you ready for this? He says, grow up.
So, how does love respond to misplaced priorities? You grow up. I mean, look, look what he says. Verse 11. He says, When I was a child, I talked, I thought, and I reasoned as a child, but when I became a man, and this word means a man who has responsibility, who's at the point in his life that is old enough to reproduce.
So I did a little thinking about how kids think or children think, and the word for child here is a small child.
So let me tell you how children think, and then we'll talk about how adults think, and then you can ask yourself, how am I talking and thinking and reasoning like a child? The word talk here just means what comes out of your mouth. It's no technical term to it, but what comes out of our mouth always reveals what's in our heart. The word think here is that same word that's used in, same root word as in, remember Romans 12:2? Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but think is to have sober, back, same word.
Judgment as God is allowed to teach. It's about processing and evaluating what's going on and why. And then the word reasoning here is one of my favorite words. It's logidzemai. It's found in Romans 12:1.
Do you hear it? Logic am I? It means to reason. It's a very clear, it's reckoning, it's an accounting term, it's weighing things. Here's all the positive, here's all the negatives, here's the PL, here's what will deliver here, here's what won't.
It's a reasoning matter-of-fact form. thinking. And in Romans 12:1, at the very end, it says, For this is your spiritual service of worship. The word spiritual or reasonable is this word.
Now here's how kids think. Here's how they when I hear kids talk Little kids, they say, I want it. I mean, I did an experiment, a sociological experiment. Friday night. I had two kids stay overnight in my house.
One was three. And one just turned six. And I heard. Papa, I want that. I want that.
I want that. Can we do this? Can, please, please. Yes, yes, can, want, want, want, want, want. That's how kids think.
And and or how they talk. And then how they think. is what about them? I mean, there's 50 toys on our living room floor. There's two kids.
One kid's playing with, I want that, I want that, yeah, yeah, I want, I want. They kids by nature. They don't wake up in the morning thinking, I wonder how we can encourage mom and dad today. Or they don't walk into a room with other seven-year-olds and say, Hey, uh anybody feeling kind of down? Need a little time to talk?
Did everybody, you know, hey, did did everyone get their milk? I want to make sure I've got two here. You can have seven milks and three kids, and they fight over who gets two or three. That's childish. Paul says When he was a child, he talked like a child.
Want, want, want. He thought like a child about me, me, me. And he reasoned as a child. And the way kids reason are called now, immediate gratification. If you tell them you can have five candy bars a week from now, or you can have one now, the wrappers off of it.
They can't even think about five candy bars later. It's immediate, it's now, I've got to have it. That's how kids think. How do adults think? Talk and reason.
Well, a kid says, I want. An adult says, what's needed? What's needed here? Not what I want, not what you want, what's needed. What's best?
Kids say, it's all about me. When you're an adult, what you realize is, Anything that works, it's about others. Maturity is thinking about others. Especially for you moms, I don't think there's probably hardly a mom in the whole world that gets up thinking, oh, I wonder how I'm going to spend this day on me today. When you're an adult, When you walk into an office, it's about What do these people need?
I'm responsible. You think about others. An adult's reasoning goes something like this. Two words. Delayed gratification.
It's not what this is going to deliver today. It's what is it going to deliver over the long haul. What will this behavior produce next week, next year, five years from now? Adults ask the question: not what can I have now? Adults ask, what is needed and what is best for the longest haul for the most people.
What's wise? What has value? What will deliver?
Now He goes on to talk about Cloudy vision leads to complexity. And I want to give you and me a little grace because if you think these messages are hard to listen to, you should have to come up with them. I'm serious. I mean, I got to apply this stuff. If I don't apply it to me first, I got nothing to say.
And the principle is: notice what he says, for now. We see in a mirror dimly. And by the way, the mirror in the ancient world was not like your mirror where everything was clear. It was a piece of steel that was brushed, and so you could see yourself and you make yourself out, but it was cloudy. You knew who it was, and it was helpful, but it wasn't crystal clear.
He says, now, temporal, in this life, the way we're living. We see in a mirror, but it's kind of cloudy.
So it's complex. And so it's hard to know. And some people say this and some people say this. And then you get busy and you feel a pull here and a pull here. And there's competing demands.
And there's a demand for this and a demand for this. And a demand for family, a demand for what? When do you do what? How can you ever know? And so most of us try and do it all.
and not do any of it very well. and neglect our own soul. He says, now we see in a mirror dimly, but then he's not. He's talking about when Christ comes back, then. We'll see fully Now we know and see in part, but then it's going to be face to face.
Jot in your notes, 1 John 3:2. We do not know. what we will be like, but this is what we know. When we see him, we will be like him. When you meet Christ face to face, we will be transformed and we will be like Him, not God.
But as created beings, these glorified bodies, I mean, everything gets clear. And when it's clear, notice what happens. When things are absolutely clear, He says, now abide. Faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is Love, why?
One, because it lasts. Faith is trusting or believing in what I can't see, the promises and the character of God, but someday faith becomes sight. Hope is this anchor of your soul, this certainty that God says, I am coming back, I have forgiven you, I am in control. And it's not a wish, it's an absolute hope. But at one point in time, your hope turns from hope to possession.
You will walk with God if you're a Christ follower, if you've received His forgiveness. But love. We'll continue on because when you see him face to face, what's 1 John say? God Yeah. Love.
We will love one another. perfectly. That's why it's never ruined. It never falls. When you have a cloudy vision about your purpose and your priorities.
It produces complexity. When you have a clear vision about where you're going, why you're going there, what's important, and how to get there, it produces love.
Now If I was sitting there Like I've been with this text. And I really wanted my priorities, and some of these are big issues. Right? I mean, this isn't like, oh, hey, why don't you pray a couple extra little prayers? I mean, this is some of you saying, you know what, I'm not sure I'm in the right job.
This is some of you saying, well, if this isn't the right job, I don't know if I can continue living in this community. For some of you, it's like well You know, we're both working and we never see our kids May maybe one of us needs to stop. I mean for some it's like, you know, aren't my schedules nuts? I mean, I intend and want, and, you know, I don't read the Bible, I don't talk with God much, and I can't figure why it's not working. Ding ding ding ding ding.
You know, I know that I could get help from people, but I'd love to get one of those small groups. I hear it's really great. I don't have time. To make time. To love God.
to create margin. to nourish your own soul.
Some of you haven't taken a day off in ages and haven't had what's a real vacation in years. And you know what? You reap. And then you're going to sell. But what you need to hear is this isn't like a message you have misplaced priorities and God is mad at you.
What you need to hear is you're living in a world that's complex, in a place that's fast with a lot of smart people, and this is your heavenly father saying, let's call a timeout. I don't want your life to end up. A super duper temporal ice sculpture that impresses people, and then you get near the end of your life, or maybe even five or ten years from now, and the most important relationships and issues in your life be. puddles of water. And you say, wow, I was successful.
My kids got in this school, or, you know, I was upperly mobile, or I worked all these hours, and they promoted me, or I did this and I did that, and then you just think, and it. profited you Nothing. And then you became nothing. You're listening to Living on the Edge. Before we continue today's program, let me ask you, are you in a small group?
Well, if so, are you looking for a new study to do together this year? Join us after Chip's message to learn more about our library of study guides, which are sure to help you and your group grow in your faith. You won't want to miss it.
Well, with that, let's rejoin Chip for the remainder of his message. And so you gotta grow up. You gotta learn to talk like an adult. You're going to start asking questions like what's really needed? You need to begin to think like an adult.
What do the people in my sphere that I'm responsible for, what do they need? Not what do they want, not what makes them happy, not if I say this, will they reject me? Do they need a cell phone at this age? Do they need to be watching this or that? Are these the right friends for them to be with?
For some of us, do I need to keep hanging around this group of people that I find myself making progress and pulled back away? Do I need to keep burning two to three hours a night because I'm exhausted? Do I need to keep that second glass of wine every night? Do I basically have an addiction? See, this is hard stuff.
Unless we grow up. Unless we ask, you know what? What's wise? What's best? Who do I really want to become?
What kind of relationships do I really want to have? What do you want to be known for? What do you really want to be known for? I can't think of a greater goal than. And I'm praying and I've got so far to go, but I would love.
I don't want my kids adult kids now to say wow My dad was a busy pastor. I I like my adult kids to say, You know, my dad had a lot on his plate. But man, I heard from him every week. He had time for my kids. He really cared about me.
I want my wife, you know, I I figure At the pace that I go, I'll probably go before she does. I hope so, because I need her a lot more than she needs me. But uh Man, I I hope After I die, I hope my wife will say, You know something? He did have a lot on his plate, but man, we had a rich, deep, he loved me. He loved me and he loved God.
And what I can tell you is, I've had various seasons in my life, like you have in your life, where I just had to say, you know, something. I'm going to have to uncloud my vision. And I may see in part But if you want, this is a lamp into your feet and a light into your path. If you want to get clear vision, you have to be in God's Word. No legalism.
No ought or got to. It is a love relationship. If you want to know if you're doing the right thing, you need to talk and talk to God out loud. And when you're confused, ask Him a question and sit quietly. and see if he doesn't give you direction.
If you want to make it in this life and stay clear and stay on course, it's not hard to do it alone. It's impossible to do it alone. You will have to create margin in your life to be with a group of people to say, I can't love God and love others by myself. Will you help me? If you want the kind of family that is in the back of your mind that you hope someday, some way it's going to have, you will have to structure in times around the table and times for vacation and times to really talk.
Because you're going to get the outcomes of what you're structured. The way you're presently living is going to produce the continued outcomes what you're presently receiving. It really is about just loving God and loving one another. If you turn to the last page, I uh put our R12 application as being separate from the world's values. Because in essence what I've really talked about is how to be holy.
Holy is not, that word conjures up for some of us black robes and candles, and you know, people with really big black Bibles and sometimes weird and mystical. The word holy, you know what it means, just means different. The word literally means something that's set apart, that it's special. It just means different. God wants a different life for you.
A better life, a holy life. Is moral purity a part of it? Absolutely. But he wants something different for you. I mean, look at the families in America and the single people in America, and all the pain and all the junk and all the stuff.
He's just saying, I don't want that for you.
So, stop being conformed to this world's values and start not trying hard, but renew your mind. Say no to some of the movies and some of the stuff and some of the time and some of the novels and some of the relationships that keep telling you you got to look like this and act like this and earn this much and do this stuff and live at this pace. And shut out some of that and start renewing your mind with God's truth. And then, notice, look in your notes: what's the second half of that verse say? What's his heart?
His heart isn't that you become religious and weird. His heart is that you might approve or taste or test or experience his will for you, which is good, acceptable, and perfect. I jotted down. When we have misplaced priorities, even when it's out of ignorance. We end up buying what we don't need.
to impress people that don't care. We listen to what The world says instead of what God's word says. We assume that the goal in our parenting is to make our kids successful and happy. instead of holy. Um We don't live differently, and therefore, the great majority of all people who sincerely love God.
Miss God's best. And the point of simplifying your life. is not to become some Weird, religious, fanatical. Christian in the negative sense. is that you could be holy.
as God is holy.
So that you could experience the very best, and that when people would rub up against your life. And your lifestyle and your values as a single person, as a married person, as people with kids. They would see a refreshing peaceful Deep connected relationship. that flows out of your time with God. your time with others.
and they would just say something like, you know something? This world's nuts. How could you say no to that opportunity? Or how do you balance your life with all your responsibility? And you will have an answer.
that will say, you know something? I was going really strong and I really loved God, but I came out of denial. And I decided. that I would actually Make loving God and loving people my number one priority. and trust that the hard decisions and the people that I disappoint that God was big enough to take care of that.
And that's my prayer for you. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. And the message you just heard, in the name of love, is from our series, Spiritual Simplicity. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. Have you ever felt like there's never enough time in the day for yourself, the people you love, even God?
If you can relate, don't miss this series. Chip's going to challenge the unrealistic standards and expectations we all feel pressured by. Join us as we learn how to break free from this demanding cycle and discover the simpler, more fulfilling life God has in store for us. I hope you'll be with us for every part of this study.
Well before we go on, here's Chip. Thanks so much, Dave. Our mission is to help Christians live like Christians. Here's what I can tell you: I meet people who go to church regularly, that even are in the Bible on a regular basis, and they get stuck. I'll never forget when Steve came to me.
I was rehabbing one of my mini injuries. He was a personal trainer. I had no idea of his background. We got to know one another, and pretty soon he said, You're that chip on the radio, aren't you? And we built a great friendship.
He shared and poured out his life, and he just was stuck in a number of areas. Finally, after a few months, I said, Steve, do you know your problem? There's something in the way you'll never break through unless this becomes a part of your life. He paused, looked at me and said What is it? I said, you got to have community, Steve.
You're not in any group. You can't do this alone. You're one of the most disciplined people I've ever met. God tells us that you cannot change in isolation. Steve got an early morning Bible study with some men.
Then he began to lead one, and right now he's leading about three of them. His life has been transformed over the last few years. And it was all about one thing. Steve needed a group centered on God's Word where he put it into practice and got the love, the support, and the accountability that he desperately needed. How about you?
Push away all the other demands, and after your time with God, can I encourage you? Get in a group or start a group, and we have resources that will help you grow in Christ. Face spiritual warfare, be a better parent, grow in your knowledge of the scripture, because when Christians live like Christians, they change, marriages change, families change, churches change, communities change, and God is glorified. and that's our mission, and I invite you to join me in it. Thanks, Chip.
Well, we have a growing library of small group resources on a wide range of topics, and they're so easy to use. Chip provides the teaching, then you'll have time to discuss what you've heard alongside our helpful study guides. We also offer some insights for leaders to effectively lead their groups. If you're not in a small group yet or looking for your next topic to study, check out our resources. And as Chip said, for a limited time, we've discounted all of our small group resources so you can get into community today.
To learn more, go to livingonthege.org or call us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003 or livingonthege.org. App listeners tap special offers.
Well before we go, here again is Chip with a final word from this program. When you listen today, where did God speak to you? You know, we talked about growing up. You just have to flat out grow up if you're going to receive. and give love.
And I asked three little questions. And I want to remind you of these three questions as we end our time together. The first one is: what is wise? You know, what's the wise thing for you? What's the path for you?
What do you need to do? Second, what is best? What is the very best thing for you? Not what is good. And third, what do you want to be known for?
At the end of your life, at the end of the day, people are going to know you for something. What do you really want that to be? And you're a smart person. I mean, if tweaking your life, if making little Incremental changes would get you in the right place in priorities, you would have already done that. Many of you, this is going to be one of the most important days of your life, and you're going to weigh things.
and the Spirit of God is speaking to you, and you realize you need to get off a committee. You need to stop working two jobs. You need to stop some hobby that's fun and that you like that's eating up your time. You need to just literally do something radical to to get your priorities in line so that you can love. You can't keep living the way you're living and doing as much as you're doing and really love.
You may appear loving. but you can't really love living how you are.
Now in the end of the message I I put a game plan. I laid it out very specifically. But here's the issue. What are you going to do? My challenge?
Get before God. Ask him, sit quietly. Do what he says. and then write down what he says and share it with one friend for accountability. and then watch God work in you and through you.
As we wrap up this program, Living on the Edge depends on listeners like you to help us continue encouraging Christians to live like Christians.
So would you consider becoming a monthly partner to help others benefit from this ministry? You can set up a recurring donation at livingonthege.org or by calling 888-333-6003. Again, that's 888-333-6003 or visit livingonthege.org. App Listeners Tap Donate. and thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do.
Well, from all of us here, I'm Dave Druy, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge, and I hope you'll join us again next time.
