The ART of Survival - Part 1A

I've talked to a lot of people recently that have deep concerns about business, about school, about work, about do I have a job, real concerns about our nation and the economy. Am I even going to be able to put food on the table? In fact, they want to know, will I survive all that we're going through? I want you to know that God has an answer. It's called the art of survival, and I want to share it with you.

Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge features the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram, helping Christians live like Christians.

I'm Dave Drouie. You know, no matter how much we know about history and no matter how much we try to predict the future, the only day we actually live is today. But today holds a lot of unknowns, doesn't it? That's why the insights from Chip's new series called The Art of Survival are so important. They reveal the hope God wants us to hang on to in the midst of trials and fear. So let's get to it, shall we?

Here's Chip with part one of The Art of Survival from James chapter one. You know, we're living in very historic times right now. I mean, it's historic in that we have a pandemic that's global. And pandemics bring very difficult things in the lives of people all across the world. For some right now, this is a very difficult time, but they see a way through. For others, it's a desperate time.

How will we get through this? And it's more than just the disease, as radical and difficult as that has been. It's created emotional, relational, economic issues. Churches are closed.

Businesses are closed. I've been in contact in recent days with people in Egypt in the Middle East, issues in Lebanon. We've talked very directly with what's going on in China as they're dealing with the pandemic. People in India, Pakistan, we've been having talks with them about what's going on in that country and how do we make it through this.

In Latin America, another team of pastors and leaders have talked to us about it is really, really difficult. The question isn't sometimes, you know, how do we thrive? Sometimes the question is how do we survive? I mean, people don't have food.

People don't have money. Their connection, the church, the love, the encouragement of what people need to make it through times. Pastors and leaders are asking, why, Lord?

As I talked to one leader recently, he said, our teams all throughout the Middle East are coming to me and they're very young leaders. I'm serving God. I'm risking my life for the Gospel.

And in the midst of this, why is all this happening? Well, I want to tell you that there is an art to survival. You know, science sometimes is very clear. There's a formula, right? You know, two plus two equals four.

Here's the law of physics. But art means that there's an answer, there's a way, but it looks different for different people in different situations. And you may not know it, but the early church was birthed at a time much like our own. It wasn't just difficult.

It was desperate. And God gave them the very first words from the half brother of Jesus. His name is James and is found in the book of James.

The book was written about AD 46 or 49. So the church is only 13, 14, 15 years old from the death and resurrection of Jesus. And what we find is there's a great persecution that occurred.

We learn about it in Acts chapter eight. And now people are struggling. They've left homes. They're scattered abroad. There's economic issues. They've been disinherited. They've been cut off from family.

There's persecution by the Roman government. And they're wondering, what do we do? We've believed in this Jesus who died and rose from the dead. We have eternal life, but how do we survive this difficulty?

And what's very interesting and so encouraging is we're going to get the answers. I call it the art of survival for those who speak English. There's a little acronym because I think there's an A, attitude that you must have.

R, there's a resource, the most important resource to get through all of this. And the T is for a theology or a way of thinking that will give you perspective in the midst of the most difficult times in all the world. Before we begin, let's get a little world view perspective and say, what does the Bible say about a fallen world?

Right? I mean, it's a very difficult fallen world. Some of us are surprised and struggling and wondering why. Listen carefully to Peter. Peter said, dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial that you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you. First Peter chapter four, verse 12. Jesus said the very last night on earth, these things I've spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. Be of good cheer.

I've overcome the world. The apostle Paul would write in second Timothy chapter three, everyone who wants to live a godly life in union with Christ Jesus will be persecuted and evil persons and imposters will keep on going from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived themselves. So what I want you to know is some observations before we jump into the text and learn the actual art of survival. Number one, trials are inevitable.

Difficulty in a fallen world is absolutely promised. The second observation is trials either make us or break us. You know, it's interesting, the word for tragedy and opportunity is put together.

And that word for tragedy and opportunity that's put together in Chinese is the word crisis. When you're in a crisis, whether it's personal, whether it's a community, whether it's a church, whether it's a nation, or whether it's global, what emerges out of this is great, great possibility for tragedy, but also great opportunity. If you look at the lives of great Bible characters, of great people in history, you'll find that when pressure and difficulty and opposition and persecution, for some people they cave in. It destroys their life and for others, something happens. It makes them. There's something that happens in their character, in their faith, in their trust.

The greatest stories we have in human history, Christian or not, are people that come through the fire and are purified, and that's what God wants for us. The third observation is that victims fail to move beyond asking why and remain stuck in their pain. You see, the opposite of a survivor is a victim, and we need to be very careful.

One, we don't want to diminish how difficult this is, but you're only a victim if you choose to be a victim. Victims begin to ask why. Why me, Lord? Why now?

Why this? And hear me. I understand. There are such pains some of you are going through.

It's okay to begin with a why question. Why me, Lord? I mean, I've been through cancer with my wife in an earlier season. Lord, why did this happen?

She loves God. By God's grace, we made it through that. I've been through seasons where I've been betrayed by Christian leaders that I couldn't believe would do something to me. I've had health issues. I've had challenges with my children.

I've been in places in the world where I didn't think I was going to live. So I think it's okay to pause and say, Lord, why is this happening? But you can't stay there. But victims do. They get stuck in their pain. Why this? Why that? Well, here's the thing.

It never works. Pragmatically, people who never stop asking why are stuck in their pain, and they become victims, and they get bitter, and they get resentful, or they give up. What I would suggest to you is that God has clear instruction in James chapter 1, verses 1 through 12, and we're going to look at the first section of it. Follow along as I read. James, a bondservant of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes who dispersed abroad.

Greetings. He's saying to them they're running for their life. They're going all throughout the Roman Empire, and he's writing to them and says, Greetings. Christianity is primarily Jewish, right?

There was the day of Pentecost, and some different things have happened in different places. But overall, this first 10, 15 years, these Jewish Christians, their identity is still as their Messiah Jesus has come, they're following him, and their world has fallen apart. I mean, they aren't in a difficult situation. They're in a desperate situation. And so you might want to ask, what would God say to them?

I mean, if Jesus walked in the room where you are right now, and you could look him in the eye in his resurrection body, and you could say, Jesus, what do I do? What do I do with this situation with my family? What do I do with this ministry? What do I do with this health issue? What do I do? I haven't been able to work. What do I do? I lost my business. What do I do, Lord?

I don't see my way in the future. Here's what he would say. He said, there's an attitude that you must begin with. Verse 2, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. I want you to notice, first, there's a command. It says, consider it all joy. We'll look at that more carefully. But it's a command.

It's not an option. Second, there's a reminder. It says, knowing, and this word for knowing we'll learn is knowing by experience, knowing by how God works in our lives, that faith will produce an endurance that will do something.

And then after that, he gives a second command. It says, and then endure. Don't give up. Don't give in. Don't become a victim.

You are more than a conqueror in Christ, but it starts with this kind of attitude. And now what he's going to say is, don't ask why. Ask what. Here's what I can tell you, whether it's in a cancer ward, whether it's when a friend of mine's house burned down, whether it's when I was in Indonesia, I mean literally less than a week after the tsunami, and I saw things devastated like never before.

There are people who are survivors, and there are people who are victims. Victims almost always keep asking, why me? Why now? Why? Why?

Why? And they get crushed. Survivors ask what questions. They ask three very important what questions, and the answer to those what questions are in this text. And here's what I want you to know.

God can and will give you the power to be a survivor, to conquer, to overcome whatever you're facing as you begin to obey this passage by the power of the Holy Spirit sourced in the Word of God in the context of fellow brothers and sisters that we're going to go through this together. The first what question you need to ask in your world right now is this. What can I control when my world falls apart? What can you control? I can't control the pandemic. I can't control the economy of your country or my country. I can't control what certain leaders, decisions they make, or what they don't make. Here's what you can control. Your attitude. Notice he says consider.

The word means evaluate, calculate, choose. Choose to consider your current difficult situation as pure, literally the word is, unmixed joy. And you say to yourself, how do I do that?

How in the world could I do that? He says knowing that you're surrounded by trials. In fact, this word is only used one other time in the New Testament. He's saying, I want you to consider, to choose an attitude of pure joy about these external trials. The other place it is used is when, if you remember the story of the Good Samaritan, it says he got surrounded literally by robbers. God is saying through Jesus, half brother James, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that there are times in life where external circumstances come around our life and they threaten to crush and destroy us.

And he says in the midst of that, because you are connected to the all powerful, all knowing sovereign God, because his Spirit lives inside of you and because you can know for sure he's going to work this for your good and bring good out of the worst in a fallen world, choose to consider all joy knowing something, that the testing of your faith is going to produce something. So the first question you need to ask and answer is, where's my attitude? And by the way, don't confuse attitude with feelings. In difficult situations, I don't feel like counting it joy. This is not an emotion.

This is a choice. I'm going to choose to look into the face of this difficulty, and I'm going to choose to count it all joy as I'm surrounded by overwhelming, devastating trials, knowing that this is a test that God wants to take me through. He's going to do something in my life, and as he does something in my life, he'll do something through my life.

But I can't have a pity party at a time like this. I need to fight the good fight. Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. God has not given you or me a spirit of fear, right, but of power and love and self-discipline. This is where we put on the full armor of God. This is where we fight. This is where we grab hold of the anchor of hope and we say, I will not give up. I will not give in. I'm going to choose moment by moment my attitude. I remember reading a quote by one of the survivors of the concentration camps. He later became a world-renowned psychologist, Viktor Frankl, and he wrote this after enduring the concentration camps of which most people died.

He said, everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of all human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstance, to choose one's own way. So here's what I want to say to you. Don't ask why. Ask what. First, what question?

What can I control? Second, what question is what must I do to make it through today, okay? Not tomorrow. Not what will happen next month. Not what about my business. Not what about the church. Not what about even our country.

Not what will happen in the next two years or five years or ten years. The moment your mind goes out that far and you have no idea what's going to happen and you can't control it, it will keep sending you downward. The question I need to ask, you need to ask, what can I do to make it through today? And the answer is one word and I don't like it and you don't like it but it's endure. It's persevere. In other words, it is a choice to say, I won't give in. I won't give up. I won't become a victim.

There's no short term fix. I remember reading the story of a prisoner of war and he was nine years in a prison camp of war and he had a number of his colleagues were with him and they asked him because he made it through after nine years and the great majority of them didn't. They died. They gave in. They struggled. They either died or were tortured and in the torture, they gave up information and then they were killed. And they asked him, how did you make it?

Who made it and who didn't? He said, I can tell you very quickly, those that were optimists died. They didn't make it.

They thought, well, by Christmas I'll get out or by Easter I'm going to get out or maybe in nine months or it can only last a year and they kept creating false expectations and then every time their expectations failed, you could see them sink deeper and deeper and deeper in despair. The only thing you can do and the only thing I can do is endure today. What do I do to make it through today? You know what I do? I hang tough. I don't give up.

I don't give in and here's the reason. Knowing by way of experience that tests produce endurance. That what God is going to do, this word does something inside of you.

The Greek word is hupo meno. It's to hupo, to be under meno, pressure or stress. For some of you right now, you're under incredible stress, emotional stress, family stress, financial stress, ministry stress, the stress of uncertainty.

There's people looking to you. Some of you have friends and family members with the disease. Others of you have seen people that you love and they have died and I know what I'm saying is challenging and difficult, but you have the spirit of the living God who as you choose to count it real joy, he will give you just what you need, not for tomorrow, but for today. His grace is sufficient for you. Power is perfected in weakness and so the one thing you can do to make it through today is choose I will endure. Chip's going to be back with his application, but just a quick reminder, this message is from part one of his series, The Art of Survival.

Art is an acronym, ART. As Chip walks us through the book of James chapter one, we realize that the uncertainty and fear of the believers James originally wrote to are similar to the growing pressures we face today. Chip explains there's an art to survival, skills honed by practice that lead to joyful endurance no matter what. A is the attitude that helps us navigate adversity. R is the resource God offers in adversity. And T is the theology that guides our perspective in adversity. If you think this message could help others, why not share or send it to them? Email, text, or on social media, whatever you think would be most helpful. For more information and access to all the series discounts, just go to livingontheedge.org or give us a call at 888-333-6003.

App listeners, tap current offers. Well Chip, it's got to be more than coincidental that you're in a series called The Art of Survival when so many people are faced with circumstances that cause fear and upset. And even the real question, how are we going to survive? Well Dave, it's really an interesting story. I mean, we've all been living in this COVID-19 for a very, very long time.

About the middle of the summer, I guess we were at about the four or five month mark. I just have to tell you, I was battling discouragement. I was really getting discouraged. Travel was cut off. We were doing the best we could to really minister to a lot of people, but very, very confined.

And for us extroverts, this is really hard. And I found myself then having a couple afternoons for a number of days in a row that I'd have like these two hours of really dark times, get discouraged and depressed. And I just thought, you know, wait a second, I got a battle.

My mental health is not going in a good direction. And so I upped my workouts and, you know, certain things that I knew practically would help me. But then I really got before the Lord and I thought, you know, what's the truth here? And I began to ponder and think, and he took me to James chapter one.

And one of the big things I got out of James chapter one, just for me, I wasn't trying to prepare a series or sermons. It was just God speaking to me. And as I went through that it was, Chip, it's about your attitude, it's about my resources, and it's about a theology or a lens to look through these things. And then the big takeaway was that my focus had gotten so inward and I think it's normal for us. So I just realized I am so thinking about me and literally the Holy Spirit whispered, why don't you see like maybe who has some real needs? And it just came as I was praying, I thought of a good friend who is the head of all the Protestant churches in Egypt.

And I just thought, okay, I'll do a Zoom call. And it worked out where we got on this call and asked him how he was doing. And he said, you know, our pastors are just trying to survive right now. And he said, we feel like the government's doing all they can, they've provided really good leadership, but it's really, everything's locked down.

And it's very, very challenging for pastors, churches, people. And he kept using that word survival. And I said, you know, I'm working on a new series on the art of survival.

And he said, well, send it to me. I said, no, you don't understand. I said, I'm working on it.

I have never even taught it out loud anywhere. I'm just thinking and praying God's really speaking to me about that. And he said, well, when can you get it done? And that was a Thursday. And it's really interesting. And there's a principle here before we get started in the series that's important to hear. When I realized there was a need and I heard the specific stories of these pastors in Egypt and what they were going through, my focus got off of me. I dug in, I've figured out the rest of that series . By the next Tuesday, Wednesday, we had a film crew come in. I taught all three parts of the series. I did a webinar for all those pastors. We did Q&A for an hour after I gave an overview.

And then they translated these three messages into Arabic and they got them into all the churches in Egypt. And so we kind of bring this to you when we're grappling with how do we survive? I mean, what's the art of survival? Where is God?

How do you experience Him? What's the game plan? How do you need to think? How do you need to act? How do you need to pray? How do we get through this?

And not just easily. How do we get through this and how do we honor God in the process? So Dave, that's the story. And I'm excited, very excited for our listeners to be ministered to by the Word of God from James chapter one. Thanks, Chip.

Well, besides audio resources, demand for this series skyrocketed so quickly that we also had it published. So for a limited time, you can order a discounted copy of this brand new book for yourself and maybe a second one to send to someone who's really struggling with how to survive. For all the details, just give us a call at 888-333-6003.

Check it out online at livingontheedge.org or tap current offers on the app. As we close today's program, first and foremost, I want you to know it's not wrong to ask why. We all are going to ask why. Why is all this happening?

And actually what we're asking is why is it happening to me or with someone that I love? And behind that is that somehow life is not fair. And God, if you loved me, I mean, this is a picture of Martha and her sister Mary. Remember their brother died and they came to Jesus. If you would have been here, he would have lived.

Why? In other words, why would you let something so challenging and difficult happen? And I just want to remind you and remind me actually that in order to survive, we've got to shift that question because we're never going to answer that one fully, never in this life. We do know God is all-knowing. We know He's sovereign. We know He's powerful.

More than anything else, we know He's good. We know even in that situation with Mary and Martha, He wanted to do a greater good. The text says He wept.

He cares. He understands our pain. And in a fallen world, there is an agenda, and the agenda isn't always that He delivers us out of things and makes everything work out the way we want to when we want Him to do it.

That's just not how life works, and it's not what God ever promised. Jesus said we would have tribulation. But what He promised was, be of good cheer. I've overcome the world. I'm going to be in it with you. And as you trust Me, as you abide, as you hang tough, as you hang in there, I'm going to do some things in you. I'm going to do some maturing through you. I'm going to let you experience Me in ways that you never could, apart from difficulty, challenge, circumstances that all of us would say we want them to go away tomorrow. But what I will tell you is when you meet people that know God deeply, who trust Him deeply, who are the kind of people that you and I want to become like, they're loving, and they're patient, and they're kind, and they have this stability, this steadiness, this endurance, that came because instead of giving up, they made a willful choice, not an emotional choice. They considered it all joy, not that it was good, but they considered the fact that they were in a process that as they endured, as they wouldn't give up, as they held up moment by moment, not even day by day, moment by moment in the midst of what feels impossible, that they knew that God would be doing a work in them, that they would become mature and fulfill the design He has for them, and they wouldn't lack anything.

That's the promise, and we're going to talk in this whole series about how you can stop asking why, start asking what, and go through a process that you will come out the other side. Please don't miss these broadcasts. Share them with a friend. Now is the time for Christians to live like Christians, and that means enduring with a supernatural attitude of considering it all joy. You know, an easy way to share any message that you find especially helpful is with the Chip Ingram app. With just a couple of taps, any message you choose is on its way to your friend, someone in your family, or on social media to help others who could benefit from the truth of Scripture and its encouragement. And don't forget to include a quick note about how it made a difference in your life. We'll be with us again next time when Chip continues his series, The Art of Survival. Until then, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.