Share the Love - How to Tell His Story, Part 1

I have a confession to make. I'm not a handy guy, but even I can read directions. You see, knowing the directions makes all the difference in the world. And you know the same thing is true about sharing God's love with others. If you know the directions, if you learn some simple steps, you can tell His story with confidence and in such a way that lost people in deep need can experience the saving grace of Christ. Don't miss today, Simple Directions about Sharing His Story. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.

I'm Dave Rui. In this program, Chip continues his series, Share the Love, how to talk to anyone about God by getting back to the basics, the basics of the Christian faith that is. We'll learn how to take the entire message of the Gospel and distill it down to an easy to remember outline that'll bring clarity and confidence the next time you have the opportunity to talk with someone about God or your faith.

So let's join Chip now for his message, How to Tell His Story from Romans Chapter 6. From the moment that you're born and take your first breath to the moment you take your last breath, every person on this planet is in a passionate pursuit to be loved. You took a little breath and you began to cry when you were born and you were placed on your mother's chest and all of a sudden things got better. As a two year old, all of us had that moment when we got afraid in the night and we ran and climbed in bed searching for comfort to be belonged, to cared for, to be affirmed, to know it's safe. Then we got a little bit older and we went to school and we were a preteen and we just longed for that one friend or that one group that would just accept us. And then the magic of teen years happened and the search intensified. The hormones kicked in and we wanted a boyfriend or a girlfriend and felt crazy until we found one. And then in the young adult years what happens? The search even more intensifies and you're looking for that life partner.

Who are they? By midlife we have been there and done that for a while and we're desperately searching for love and finding people that won't look just on the outside, who won't love us for what we've done or what we have but are willing to just care about us. No strings attached. The flip side of midlife is you're looking for people who will love you in spite of what you've done and just will care. And then the day comes, the search continues all the way to the very, very last years and we get old and we're longing for people that won't put us without the pasture.

We're longing for people to remember we have something to offer even though our bodies don't work so well and our minds aren't as sharp. I want you to know every person in this room is desperately pursuing to be loved every day. You've developed your own story and you've taken a light like I have and you take your little light with your background and you say this is how I'm going to get loved. Now here's the question.

Do you have enough light in your little torch, in your little view to solve that issue? And if you look around at most marriages and most families and our journeys, the fact is we don't. Imagine if you will, instead of me and you with one little light, I came from a certain family, from a certain part of the country with a certain world view like everyone here and everyone here is passionately, who will love me? Who will accept me? Do I have value?

How much education do I need to have? Will I do this? Will I do that? All of us have this one little light. But here's what I want you to get. Until you understand the big picture story of God's love for you, you will search in vain and you will have one disappointment after the next disappointment when the one person doesn't come through and the job doesn't come through and what you thought you would do or even if you do it and find it's empty. This is the last part of our series on sharing the love and I want to take you on a journey to explain to you the story of God's love, the big picture. It's contained, many of you, I've watched you on planes, you read a paperback like this, a fiction usually or a romance novel.

I've watched some of you knock it out in two or three days. Well, this is the greatest romance novel paperback I have in my hands ever written. It's God's love letter to us. But the difference is is that I don't know about you, there's a lot of hard names in here and it covers a lot of space and a lot of years and at least the first time I opened the Bible, I didn't have a clue of what it really said or what it really meant.

In fact, my experience is most authentic Christ followers don't know too much about the Bible these days either. And so what I want to do is I want to give you the entire Bible already, the entire Bible and I want to give you the overview and I want you to see that God has a story and there's four acts in his story like in a great play, act one, act two, act three, act four. Act one opens up and act one is how it all began. In the Bible it opens in Genesis chapter one and it talks about creation. God wants you to know in his love story he made you for himself. Now think of that. If you go out at night or early in the morning as I do sometimes and you look up and you see the stars are really bright and then you realize that this one little planet and this one little solar system is in a galaxy and our galaxy supposedly has about a hundred billion stars and some project that there's a hundred to two hundred billion galaxies and the God that spoke and all that came into existence, the pinnacle of his creation was you.

Man. And he didn't just make you and then go off and let you run your life, he made you for himself. He cares about you.

He loves you. God created originally a perfect relationship and a perfect world giving receiving perfect love. It started in a garden. Our first parents, intimacy, no shame, no guilt, absolute connection, love, affirmation, authenticity that both went vertical and horizontal. Love gives life that leads to relationship. At the heart of everything the God of the Bible talks about, he loves us, he created us so he gives life, he breathed into us and there was life and it created relationship and so God would walk in the garden.

What that means and how it looked I don't know but he wanted connection. He made us for himself and the result of that is purpose. Ephesians 2 10 says we are his workmanship or his work of art.

We're his masterpiece. And he says we're created unto good work before the foundations of the earth we should walk in it. God has a plan. There is a purpose. History is linear. It started one place.

It's going somewhere. You're a part of it. You were made for him and what most people don't know is you really matter and there's a plan for you. After he said let us make man in our likeness when the triunity of God created all that there is. The next thing he said and let them rule over the earth and the fish of the sea. You're made like God. You can think and feel and choose and create and there's a plan.

A lot of people never never never know that. Probably the most dramatic moment I had in experiencing how God must feel about me was in the birth of our first child and it was a very complicated birth and it was a 27 hour labor and there was complications so they put a fetal monitor on my little boy and it would go beep beep beep beep beep. You know kids heartbeat when they're real small like that. It's real fast and then Teresa would have a contraction and then it would go beep beep beep beep beep beep and then the nurse would be there and the doctor there and they get ready to and then it would beep beep beep beep beep beep beep.

Well for 27 hours we did that. Believe me it was a lot harder on her than it was on me but I mean together when we thought we you know his heart would almost stop for more than just a few seconds. I just I gave that boy back to God eight times probably took him back nine and finally oh God please gave him back the tenth time and after 27 hours he was born and they they cleaned him up and they placed him on Teresa's chest and she was exhausted and that little boy just hugged next to her and then they took him and put him in my arms and gave me about a half hour with him and here's all I can tell you. I can't even explain it because I didn't have a dad that ever said he loved me. My dad was an alcoholic. I know he did but he never verbalized and he didn't know how to get that across and so I had that big heart father wound too and now I've got a part of me and a part of Teresa and I'm holding it and all I can tell you emotions came out of me that I didn't know existed and just tears of joy and I remember literally getting down on the linoleum floor and holding my boy and just thanking God for life and then just wondering.

It was just instinctive. What's the purpose? I wonder what this boy and I are going to do. I wonder what your plan is for him. Can I tell you something? I mean I'm just one puny man and I can't tell you how much I love that little boy and I have for the last 31 years. That's how God feels about you. Do you believe that? That's how God feels about you except infinitely more.

He's a good God with a good plan. That's act one. It goes from Genesis chapter one, Genesis chapter two but act two is a bad part of the story. It's ugly.

It's terrible. Act two is how it all went wrong. The theologians call it the fall. See God's love isn't some sort of plastic superficial love. It's a love that's real and the love that's real has to give people the opportunity to accept it or reject it. So God allowed us to choose or reject his love.

In this perfect environment where we had all that we needed as mankind, God gave the option to turn away to reject him if we so chose. And the choice of Adam and our first parents Eve to reject God's love ushered in sin and death and selfishness in every relationship separating us from God, ourselves and others. See love gives life but love also gives freedom.

Freedom that leads to consequences. I mean you can put a bird in a cage and say the bird loves you but you know when you open the cage, it's when they have the freedom to go wherever and fly back. There's a relationship and God didn't create little robots or little machines or little people that I love you God. I love you God.

I do whatever you want. He gave you, he gave our first parents, he gave all of us the freedom to accept or reject because he wanted legitimate from our heart moral beings the opportunity to love him. And our first parents rejected his love and as a result we get to inherit some good things and some bad things. Romans 5 12 says therefore just as sin entered the world through one man Adam and death through sin and in this way death came to all men because all sinned and the result is separation. Now the way the story goes is there was deception and there's evil and there's an enemy called Satan and he fooled and tricked our parents and yet they made a willful choice and as the separation occurred God said in the day that you sin or eat from that tree you'll surely die but if you read the story and you read the paperback version what you're going to find is the moment they sinned they didn't fall over dead physically but they were separated then spiritually.

They were taken out of the perfect environment. The perfect relationship was broken and they were separated. I remember as a young pastor getting a call from a guy that had become a good buddy and just was a great guy and from all outward circumstances think the beautiful wife that he had and the couple little kids that he had and things were going great and he gave me a call on the phone and by the way some of you who think us pastors know a lot we're learning but I'll tell you the first time things happen there's times where when you get off the phone and someone says so and so committed suicide or they lost a baby or you get a call like this you just pray like crazy oh God I don't know what to do and this was one of those calls and I was a very young pastor he said man I got to talk to you and we found ourselves sitting across from one another and he pulled out a sheet of paper I said what's that he says that's what was stuck on the refrigerator when I got home today. I don't love you anymore.

I'm gone I'm never coming back. He said I got home and that was on the refrigerator I didn't even know we had a problem we didn't have any big arguments she's gone and all of her stuff is gone and most of mine and I don't know where they're separated can I tell you something else just as the God who created you made you for himself and loves you and feels infinitely more about you like I felt with my son when you sin when you walk away from God when you do your own thing when you do things that hurt other people you know how God feels God feels he's a being he's a person he feels like that man when his wife walked out on him there's separation God's heart gets broken the Bible says that he grieves and so act one is creation and love brings life and life leads to relationship. Act two is a sad one. Act two is that love gives freedom but it leads to consequences and death and separation and then act three is really it's the it's the big act if you get the novel and by the way if you've never read it you really should I was 18 before I ever opened a Bible but act three starts from Genesis end of Genesis chapter 3 and goes all the way to almost the end to Revelation chapter 20 and act three is the exciting part this is how God's love rescued us you've heard it before you've seen it but greater love has no one than this that one lay down his life for his friend that's the test of love you're willing to give your all God the son took on human flesh he came to earth fully man fully God he lived a perfect life to reveal God's heart it's Jesus and then he offered his life as a sacrifice and a payment for the sins of all people of all time that whoever would choose to receive new life may have it. See love gives forgiveness that leads to peace the whole point God knew he would give us freedom God knew that with that freedom all knowing all powerful even outside of time gives us that freedom but from the foundations of the earth said the high price tag of our freedom would mean evil and suffering and a fallen world of course but it would mean for him that God the son would come and lay down his life to rescue us to redeem us that word redeem is something's bad and broken and torn it gets bought back it gets repaired you want to know what God's really like he's not some invisible force it's not some invisible list of rules or morality that's not at all what Jesus taught it's not about religion it's not about trying to be good it's about reestablishing the connection and the heart and the relationship between your creator and you that was always God's purpose but when sin entered the world every one of us in this room right we lie we pretend we love people more than we do when people don't come through for us we try and act better than we are we sin I mean how many people are here from parents who divorced and you thought things would never be that way how many of you have had someone walk out on you how many of you had a business partner who lied to you how many of you have had a boyfriend or girlfriend that cheated on you I mean it's a fallen world Jesus came and lived the perfect life to say this is the father's heart he wants to repair if you want to know what God is really like it's Jesus talking with a prostitute how does he respond to her it's Jesus helping a poor person it's Jesus here with religious people who try and put burdens on people and he cuts them off at the knees it says I'm looking for what's happening in people's heart in their life and so he gives forgiveness it's a gift and it leads to peace but notice the result is reconciliation that just simply means that you become friends again with God when you're reconciled some of you have been through a very difficult time in your marriage you were separated for a season and what's it called when you know you probably go to some counseling you probably realize like most of us you have a lot of baggage and you begin to learn to communicate and then you forgive one another and then you're reconciled and if you've ever been separated the wounds were really pretty deep and there was some anger and there was some hurt and there was times where you were just enemies and when the love gets restored your friends again and that's what act three is notice what the scripture says second Corinthians five seventeen and eighteen says therefore if anyone is in Christ if anyone would understand that act two doesn't have to be your life story but you can turn from your sin and ask him to forgive you based on what he did on the cross if you're in Christ here's what he promises he's a new creation the old is gone the new has come and all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ then I love this and then he gave us the ministry of reconciliation that there is this amazing thing I never heard of I grew up in a church that was out to lunch that didn't believe or teach God God's Word and people said one thing and lived another way so I rejected Christianity I rejected God but then I met a group of people that understood about the love of God and they lived it out with their life and with their lips and they introduced me to his word and they were the conduit of that love into my heart that changed my life that's the ministry of reconciliation that your neighbors and your co-workers and your kids and your friends and your schoolmates would understand they would have a living Jesus inside of you living it out imperfectly but with progress to let them know that they're loved I mean everyone's looking for love right there's not a lot of competition when you start loving people and there's something amazing that happens when you become a conduit of the love of God and you see people's lives transform because when you are forgiven and you have peace then you actually can give away something that you never could before and it's powerful. Chip's going to be back with his application but just a quick reminder this message how to tell his story is from his series share the love how to talk to anyone about God for lots of reasons we can be hesitant to talk about our faith that's why Chip taught this four-part series to boost your confidence and help you have spontaneous conversations about your relationship with Jesus now if you'd like to hear this message again the Chip Ingram app is perfect for free access or one tap sharing of these powerful messages if you prefer CDs take advantage of our on-air discounts and remember the mp3s are always free just visit us online at livingontheedge.org or give us a call at 888-333-6003. Well Chip before you come back with some final thoughts you know we're living in a day where evil's called good and good's called evil what are we at Living on the Edge doing to battle the radical shift of values in America and around the world? Well Dave we are living in a day where things that we would all call evil are being called good the values in America have been flipped upside down yeah and whether that's in sexual morality whether that's in the life of an unborn child or whether that's in things like what's it mean to be married we at Living on the Edge take a strong stand to teach what the Bible says not in a harsh way not in a way that puts people down but in a way that gives life you see God designed life to work in a certain way he has a design for marriage for sexuality for family and what we've done in the last year is create very specific courses and teachings that help God's people first practice that and then communicate that in a winsome way to a world that is very very confused the world is not the enemy Jesus didn't come to condemn the world he came to save the world but we as God's children have to model what that looks like and we at Living on the Edge are creating resources in this coming year that's going to address the most controversial and difficult issues of our day when you give to Living on the Edge you're taking a stand for biblical morality for marriage and helping our young people understand what biblical sexuality is all about we long to help God's people grow and then in a winsome and loving way share that love with the people around them will you please help us Dave why don't you tell them what their gift will mean this month happy to because it's gonna mean a lot when you give to Living on the Edge you become part of a great team of Christians who are committed to sharing the truth of God's Word and we're gonna keep doing that as long as we're able if you'd like to help us do that December is the perfect time because every gift we receive is doubled dollar for dollar now to send a donation just go to Living on the Edge org tap donate on the app or give us a call at triple 8 3 3 3 6 0 0 3 that's triple 8 3 3 3 6 0 0 3 your generosity is much appreciated as we wrap up today's message the major point was pretty simple today in the teaching the importance of getting clear on exactly what the gospel is so that you can articulate it clearly and even in a brief amount of time and I have to tell you a story that is so vivid in my mind it's one of those things that is just like a movie and I can push a button and relive it in my mind almost at a moment's notice many many many years ago my kids were fairly small we went down to visit my parents in Florida and we were driving up from Florida back to Texas and we're on the freeway and as we were going in one direction on the freeway cars were coming the opposite direction and literally it was like in slow motion but I saw a car hit another car hit the embankment and then the car went up in the air and rotated in the air and then landed in the median and I'm you know like about I don't know maybe eight nine hundred yards away and I'm coming sixty five miles an hour but no one's there I see the car land and crash and then I see a body literally thrown from the car and I mean what am I supposed to do and so it all happened right in front of me I pulled off to the left side I was the very first person there within a minute or two someone from the other lane pulled and someone called nine one one I got there and it was like a movie except the bad part it was not a movie and there was a man laying on the grass and it was obvious he was deeply injured and I put my my hand under his head and I began to talk with him a little bit and I've never been in the presence of someone that I thought was maybe minutes away from dying and I remember clearly prompted by God saying is it okay can I pray for you and he his eyes he nodded and yes and was coherent and I prayed for him and then immediately I thought and then some two other people came and I was a little self-conscious and I thought this is not a time to be self-conscious I said excuse me sir I have no idea where you're coming from but things do not look good right now I want to share with you that God loves you and I literally in about two and a half minutes clearly shared the gospel and I said do you understand and his eyes were kind of nodding that he understood by that time police and fire trucks I mean I don't know where they came from and people rushed in and told us to clear away and I remember shaking going back literally my hands were shaking getting back in my car with my family and my kids and thanking God that I had taken the time to learn the story and could articulate it clearly and briefly it's the power of God to salvation it's the gospel let me encourage you in fact let me challenge you make sure you understand and can communicate the gospel clearly someone's eternity may depend on it well just before we close I want to thank each of you who's making this program possible through your generous giving 100% of your gifts are going directly to the ministry to help Christians really live like Christians now if you found chips teaching helpful but you're not yet on the team would you consider doing that today there's never been a better time because thanks to a small group of ministry partners every gift we receive between now and December 31st will be doubled dollar-for-dollar now to donate just go to Living on the Edge org tap donate on the app or give us a call at triple 8 3 3 3 6 0 0 3 and let me thank you in advance for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do well until next time for everyone here this is Dave Drue saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge