Discover Your True Self - You are Secure, Part 1

Fear is a paralyzing emotion. So let me ask you, do you find yourself feeling afraid for your health and the health of your family? Afraid for your physical safety? Are you afraid of losing your job or having enough money to live on? How do we find security in fearful times?

Well, that's today. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher on this international discipleship program, and I'm Dave Drouie. We're in Chip's series, Discover Your True Self, and in this program, Chip explains that it's possible, in a moment of time, to be 100% secure for the rest of your life.

Sound too good to be true? Well, I'm glad you're with us, because it is true, and you're about to find out how. If you have a Bible, open it now to Ephesians chapter 1, and just before we get started, let me remind you that if you don't get to hear the entire broadcast, you'll find this message and the rest of the programs in this series on the Chip Ingram app. Well, now with this message, you are secure.

Here's Chip. When we look at our life under pressure and we think about what makes us feel secure, what makes us feel safe, what makes us feel like we're in control, how do we learn that? And the more I thought about it, I was praying through my office this morning and thinking, it's actually in the storms of life that God allows you to get a glimpse of how you take things from your head into your heart. I was probably a Christian over 20 years when my mother died.

I was really close to her, and it happened very suddenly. And it was so painful, and I came to learn how much I actually believe that there's a real heaven, and there's a real God, and that you will see people that you love. I remember the biggest failure I ever experienced in ministry and resigning from a job and recognizing that I didn't have the power or the wits or the ability to turn something around and just feeling so distraught and having an experience where the Holy Spirit literally whispered, I just love you for you. And it was in that moment I realized how much of my security or my worth was in what I do, my job, or how I perform.

I remember years later sitting on the couch with Teresa, and we had learned that afternoon that she had cancer. And I don't know about you, but of all the fears that humanly at least I've struggled with is, you know, the loss of a child or the loss of your wife or a family member, and we just cried, and then we prayed, and then we went through months and treatments and radiation, and we came through all that. But the moment that I can tell you that Jesus promises He'll be enough with or without your wife or one of your kids, but when you live with it every day and it's just so vulnerable and He shows up in those moments, that's when you know by way of deep personal experience. And we're going to talk today about I think something that's at the root of our being is God is going to tell you and me that you're secure.

On the front of your notes, pull it out if you will, I want you to get a deeper understanding of even the word security. It means you're safe. There's a firm foundation. It means you're not liable to fail. It means there's a place that's safe that's set apart. The verb means it's something you're certain of, that you've obtained, that it's a sure deal.

It means that there's no outside force that can come in and remove you, in this case from God. And yet we all struggle, don't we? I mean we all, I mean, I don't need a psychologist to tell me that I'm insecure.

It just takes a few circumstances and it just pops up. But we tend to have very genuine fears about different things, but I put four categories in your notes. Because these are human. If you're human, you're going to struggle with some of these and until it goes from your head to your heart, you may live with lots of fear and insecurity and doubts and then we've learned we have lots of unhealthy ways we deal with them. The first one is the fear of physical harm or death or the fear of being alone, of being rejected, of thinking I'll never get married or this marriage is never going to get better or the sense that something's happened for those of us that have kids.

The fear of punishment. I got an email just this week from a young gal that we were interviewing for a job and she just talked about, she got some very bad theology and read a few verses in scripture and was living with this idea that someday, some way, she might do something or make a mistake and God would cast her off and she wouldn't spend eternity with him. And that every single day that she was being held over, if you mess up today, this is the worst day of your life. To the point that in despair, she said, God kill me.

I know I'm walking with you today. Just kill me so I don't get discarded later. Until she got some good teaching and she got some truth from here down to here. And then our basic insecurities can produce guilt and condemnation and struggles. So here's the question I have for you because this is going to be a bit of a heady message. I'm going to give you some real truth that I'm going to get here and then we'll spend the rest of our time working hard to get it down here.

Where do you tend to feel insecure or afraid? Over 80 times, the Bible says fear not. Over 30 times, it says don't be afraid. Jesus' last words to the disciples, I am with you always. I will never ever leave you or forsake you, the writer of Hebrews says from God's voice. And yet we struggle. So at the bottom of your notes, there's a question I'd like you to do some real pondering and the pondering I'd like you to do is in what or whom do you seek to find security apart from Christ?

We all do this, right? But identify it because I'm going to tell you in a fallen world, God is going to allow some storms to come into your life but the goal of the storms will be like Joseph. I think Joseph when he was betrayed, Joseph in prison, Joseph loss of reputation, Joseph when people forgot him. Each and every time, if you read that carefully, it says and the Lord was with him and the Lord was with him and the Lord was with him. If you can identify where you tend to put security because a test is coming and God wants you to pass the test.

He wants you to know, I'll be with you, I'll never leave you, I'll never let you down, I am for you. And down deep in your psyche, a lot of us don't believe that. So let me just ask you, is your security in yourself? I've certainly had that one.

Your brains, your ability, you'll figure it out, you can make it happen. Is it in money? I mean, are you kind of fixated with man, as soon as I get so many zeros and there's my portfolio and I'll be secure. Is it family? You know what really makes everything okay is your family, your wife, your kid, your husband, all that stuff and when that's okay, you're okay but boy, if that gets, is it your work?

I mean, how many of us, here's a test, are you ready for this? Whatever would get taken away or challenged to the level it devastates you, that will tell you where your security is. See, your security is like a rug and if it gets pulled out from under you, it might hurt a little bit. If it devastates you, you know my security is in that job, my security is in me, my security is not in Christ. So I want you to identify that and now turn your notes with me if you will and I want to talk about God's plan to give you a security that can't change by circumstances or terrorism or death or abandonment or cancer or rejection or any fear of punishment. God's answer is in 1 Peter 3.18, it's a summary of the work of Jesus. For Christ also died for sins.

Put a circle around the word for and I'll tell you why. Once for all, who is he? The just or the righteous for the unrighteous or the unjust. What was his purpose? So that he, Jesus, might bring us to God.

Well how did he do it? Having been put to death in the flesh on the cross but made alive in the spirit, the resurrection. God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, God the son, that whoever would believe in him shouldn't perish but have everlasting life. God's solution to your security is that you're valuable, he wants to choose you, he cares about you, he's redeemed you and he wants to reconnect you close to him so that no one at any time ever, now or in eternity, can separate you from him.

So then the question is, what must I do to experience that security? The Gospel writer John would say, as many as received him, Jesus, to them he gave the right or the authority to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. That little word for means in the place of. Jesus came and he died in the place of you. All that you deserve and I deserve because of my sin and rebellion or passive indifference, God took all of that and he placed that on Christ. And now he says, you are forgiven but you must respond. As many as not just intellectually believe, as many as receive him personally.

To them he gives the right not to be religious but to become an actual child of the living God. Jesus said, behold I stand at the door and knock of your heart, my heart. This is the verse I heard when I trusted Christ, 1972. If any man, if any woman hears my voice and will open the door of your heart, the promise, I will come into him. And the old translation, I will sup with him or eat with him and he with me. And it's Jesus saying, I want a relationship. The cross has paid for your sin.

It is a free gift. Now turn from your sin in the empty hands of faith. Say, Lord Jesus, forgive me. Come into my life. Be my Lord. Be my Savior. And the Spirit of God enters your human body and you start a new life.

In the old days, people called that. That's what it's called to be saved or receiving Christ or trusting Christ. Now what I want to talk to you about is, I'm guessing a great majority of you sort of have down what I just talked about. I'm guessing that those that are watching and those of us that have been around for a while, it's like okay Chip, thanks, it's very helpful.

Like I've known this since fourth grade or for some of us when I was 18. But in 1972, knowing very little, having no idea that there was a personal relationship with God and I invited Christ into my life, I want you to go back when you did that, I don't think the average Christian has any idea what actually happened. It wasn't just a little experience.

It wasn't just now you're heaven bound. It's not just that you know Christ. What actually happened that actually is at the source of all the security and every challenge that you'll face of all the fears that we talked about. So I want to walk through these.

I'll do them quickly. But I want you to get some quote theology. Remember last time I said, your theology informs your thinking. Your thinking informs your emotions. Your emotions inform your actions. Your actions have consequences negatively and positively. Bad theology always produces bad actions.

And then what do we do? I look for security in sex. I look for security in addictions. I look for security in money. I look for security in jobs.

I look for security in all kind of places that take me bad roads and multiply the pain in my life. And God says no, no. Start thinking rightly. The moment you receive Christ, if indeed you have, this happened. You were justified. The word means it's a legal declaration that all my sins are forgiven.

Past, present and future. This is God as the judge. Legally the gavel comes down. You're before him. Christ's righteousness, your sin. He looks at the work of Christ. He says all of your sins are forgiven and the righteousness of Christ is placed in your account. You were granted the righteousness of Jesus. You have a new position as his dearly loved child. Romans 5 one says, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This piece is not just an emotional piece. It means we were hostile to God. The word is we have the shalom of God. We have the wholeness of God. We have the favor of God. We are now in God's family. In the space below I want you to write this down. Are you ready? God is my Father. I'm going to give you some theological words, but what I realize is most Christians don't know the words anymore, but worse those who do know them, sometimes we don't get what they really mean.

Are you ready for this? God, the one who spoke billions of galaxies into existence. He is your Father. You might write down, I am his child.

What if you started to believe that? You know what? What do good fathers do?

What do good parents do? They protect and they provide. The second thing that happened to you the moment you received Christ is regeneration. That means that I'm a new creation in Christ. I've been given a new nature fully pleasing to God. It's different from religion.

It's different from morality. You become an actual new person. Nicodemus was a very religious rabbi, squeaky clean morally, and he came at night because he saw that Jesus was from God, the miracles attested to it. And in this night meeting, Jesus says to him in John chapter 3, he answered him and said, truly, truly I say to you, now this is a very religious moral man, unless one is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born again when he's old? He's taking it pretty literally here. He cannot enter again into his mother's womb a second time.

Can he? Jesus answered, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water, physical birth, and spirit, spiritual birth, he can't enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh, physical is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Jesus taught the most religious moral man we have cited in scripture that when you pray to receive Jesus and he enters your life, it's a spiritual birth. You're regenerated. You receive a new nature. Jod in your notes, 2 Corinthians 5, 17 says, if any man, any woman is in Christ, you're a new creation. The old things, notice this, pass away.

Behold, all things, listen to the tense of the verb, are becoming new. 9th grade biology, right? The little green caterpillar creates a cocoon and out comes a butterfly. We call it meta.

I love being with such intelligent people. That's what it's called, right? The DNA in that green caterpillar and the DNA in that butterfly are exactly the same. But a metamorphosis occurs where that butterfly is no longer ugly and green and crawls.

It is beautiful. It gets a new nature. It gets a new capacity. That's the physical picture and nature of what happens when you pray to receive Christ. Are you ready for this?

Write this down. God gave me a new nature. God made me a new person. You don't have to live with your past anymore. God made you a new person. Do you believe that? How many Christians are living with, well this is how I grew up and my dad was an alcoholic and I've been through this and then this happened.

No, I'm not saying there aren't consequences. I'm saying what if you believed in the cocoon of metamorphosis and life change that is the word of God and time and community and time and His word and your openness and steps of faith. You have a brand new nature. You can fly. Stop crawling.

We have Christians everywhere that are still crawling in your butterflies because you don't believe you have a new nature. You've been regenerated. Now it's a journey and a process. God is my Father, number one. Number two, God made me a new person. And as a result, guess what? You might jot down, Jesus lives in me.

That's what it says. Jesus actually lives inside of you in the person of the Holy Spirit. The third thing that happens is reconciliation. That means that although I was once hostile to God and alienated from Him, I am now His friend. Paul would write inspired by the Holy Spirit in Colossians chapter 1 verse 21 and 22. Although you, speaking to these new Christians, were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He, Jesus, has reconciled you in His fleshly body through His death. Do you see how all these keep coming back to what happened at the cross? And when what happens at the cross gets received by faith, and then this journey from your head to your heart where you actually not just know about it, but you know it, you digest it, you absorb it, you believe it. It becomes a part of your life focus and how you see God, see the world, and see yourself. In order to present you, this is how He presented you. Holy and blameless beyond reproach. You've been listening to part one of Chip's message, You Are Secure, from his series, Discover Your True Self, How to Silence the Lies of Your Past and Actually Experience Who God Says You Are.

Chip will be right back with his application, but before he is, I hope you'll take a second and go online or tap share and encourage others to join us for this series, too. We all struggle with doubts about self-worth and value, but the facts about who we are change when we put our faith in Jesus. Chip's teaching from the book of Ephesians to help us understand who we are as believers in Christ. He explains the nature of the new creation we become and how to leave old thinking and doubts in the past. For a limited time, resources for Discover Your True Self are discounted, and the MP3s are always free. To order your copy or to send it to a friend, visit us online at livingontheedge.org.

For additional information, just give us a call at 888-333-6003. Chip, you talked in your message today about how we're safe and secure in Christ. Why is it so important for us to not just know that but believe it to the point where how we think and how we act actually changes because of it?

Well, Dave, we live in a world where people are fearful. It's been a very, very challenging time. People have been separated, and we all have these issues. We've talked in this series about doing the daily discipleship, which is a short little video that I do personally with people for about 20 days. Listen to this. Sandra writes, Thank you for helping me fight through my hopelessness, depression, and caring for me and for others. In your teaching of Discover the Real You, I got clarity that I was chosen of God, bought by Christ, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and simply loved.

Doing the daily series, reviewing those cards, and even the little part of the book that came in audio has absolutely changed my life during one of the most difficult times I've ever had. The fact of the matter is as you listen to this series right now about Discover Your True Self, we're going through Ephesians 1, 2, and 3. But if you want it to go from your head to your heart, if you want to not just believe you're safe but feel safe, be secure, then this is something you need to take the next step. You need to not simply listen and agree, but taking 10 minutes every morning and let me meet with you personally, help you learn how to study this passage for yourself, and then each and every day there'll be a very simple handout that will take you about 10 minutes to go through, where you will begin to engage with God personally, not through someone else but the Holy Spirit taking His word directly to your life, your mind, and your heart. And this is what I can guarantee because God does. He'll change you.

He'll help you understand that you are loved, valued, redeemed, and wanted, that you can live from His approval rather than for His approval. Could I encourage you? Meet with me at the Daily Discipleship. We can do it every day together. And if you stick with me for about 20 days, you will build a pattern that will change the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you live. Let's do this together.

Well, great plan. Thanks for that encouragement. Daily Discipleship with Chip is a course of 10-minute videos where Chip walks you through how to study a passage from the Bible and really hear God's voice.

Now, these sessions are designed to help you get into the practice of doing that every day. The study Chip's recommending is based on his current series, Discover Your True Self. Because you see yourself as God sees you, it's essential to overcoming your deepest struggles, having healthy relationships, living in freedom, and fulfilling your life's purpose. You're going to find the Daily Discipleship with Chip at LivingOnTheEdge.org on the homepage.

App listeners, just tap Discipleship. As we wrap up today's program, I have to tell you, I love the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus. Jesus didn't shame him for not asking his questions in public. You know, he had a quiet, personal, profound conversation, and he loved Nicodemus. And what I also like about this is Nicodemus knew, I mean, he was a theologian. He had major portions of the Old Testament memorized. I mean, he knew his theology, and yet he didn't get how that theology connected to real life and real relationship with God. And I find that really encouraging because that's often the case with me, and I think with many Christians. You know, as I taught today, I taught about justification.

And some of the words I used, and some of you might be going, wow, man, this is kind of heavy. Justification, regeneration, propitiation. Man, this guy's using a lot of theological words. But here's what I want to tell you. It is the meaning of those words that if you're a follower of Christ and you prayed to receive Him, these things are true of you.

And here's what I want you to get. Justification, I walk through what that means. That's a legal term where God the Father has declared you righteous in His sight forever, not because of anything you've done or I've done, but because of Christ's work in your place applied to you.

And you know what that means? It means God is your Father. God is your Father.

You don't have to earn it. You're a part of the family. And then I talked about regeneration as I talked about Nicodemus, and you have to be born again, and that's a big word, but here's all of that means. It means that you're a new creation. The old you, the person you were before you trusted Christ died, and Christ now lives in you. Your personality's the same, your body looks the same, but you're a completely new creation. It's like the same DNA, you know, the story of the little caterpillar or the chrysalis, and then it turns into a butterfly? That's what happened to you and me when we trusted Christ.

Our DNA doesn't change, but there's completely new life, new potential, new future. Do you believe that? Are you experiencing that? In our next program, I'm going to walk through five very specific things that happened to you when you trusted Christ. And I will tell you, when you begin to believe these, you talk about security, you talk about feeling safe, you talk about being the kind of person that can walk into a room and walk through life without fear. It's because you know you're a son, you're a daughter of the Lord of Lords and King of Kings who has promised to protect you and love you and keep you for himself no matter what. I hope you'll join me. Just before we close, I want to thank each of you who's making this program possible through your generous giving. One hundred percent of your gifts are going directly to the ministry to help Christians really live like Christians.

Now, if you found SHIP's teaching helpful, but you're not yet on the team, would you consider doing that today? To donate or become a monthly partner, just go to livingontheedge.org, tap donate on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003. And let me thank you in advance for whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well, until next time, for everyone here, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.