Discover Your True Self - You are Competent, Part 2

Shame is a powerful, debilitating emotion that causes us to feel inferior, hate our appearance, withdraw from others, engage in self-destructive behavior, or be driven to excess to prove that we really matter. Here's the question.

How do we overcome shame in our lives? That's today. Stay with me. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher on this international discipleship program, and I'm Dave Gruhey. In this program, Chip continues his series, Discover Your True Self, with a word picture about the supernatural power Jesus promises that enables us to overcome past shame and whatever else may be blocking the freedom God says is ours.

Now, we're in the middle of the series, so if you missed any of the previous programs, let me suggest that using the Chip Ingram map is a great way to catch up. Okay, if you have a Bible, open it now to Ephesians chapter one, and let's join Chip for part two of his message, You Are Competent. I don't know what you pray about, right? I know for most of us, prayer can be a challenge, right?

You know, when I'm stuck or even when I'm not stuck, one of the things I pray for me, I pray for my wife, I pray for all my kids, I pray for the elders, I pray for our staff, and I pray for my friends. And God answers this prayer, Father, as I think about my grown boys and my daughter and my grandkids, Father, I'm asking you, will you give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation into who you really are? Would you help them to grasp in their inner man and in their hearts how much you love them? Would you help them to understand that you're their father, that you've adopted them, that you've redeemed them, that you've sealed them? God, would you take the truths that they're learning, and would you help them to grasp who you really are?

Because you know why? When God answers that prayer, guess what, it deals with shame, it deals with fear, it deals with rejection, it deals with so much junk. And so, when Paul is wanting the Ephesians church to live out their faith, what does he do? I mean, what's his game plan to get it from their head to their heart? What did he do? He answers prayer.

Why don't you say it together? He prayed. Pray that for you.

God will answer that prayer. Then third, we need to believe three historical facts. Fact number one is my past no longer defines me.

Right? Verse 18, he said, I want you to know about the hope of your calling, it is certain your past doesn't define you anymore. In fact, the psalmist put it this way, as far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed our transgressions from us. For many of you in this room, and for a lot of people watching and listening, I will tell you this, whether they've been a Christian six months, six years, or six decades, your past still defines you.

And part of it is because you've never let that shame come to the surface, been honest about it, and let God work in it. I have two heroes, I mean, a number of heroes, but two people that are really big heroes in my life that I've gotten to know. One is a lady named Valerie Hill, and another is a lady named Teresa Ingram.

I know one a lot better than the other. Valerie Hill had an abortion. For many years she kept it a secret. Valerie Hill realized it can't be a secret.

It was a mistake. A mistake for which she was forgiven. Then she recruited a team, and there are hundreds, thousands of women, thousands and thousands of women whose lives are completely different, who've been loved and healed. There are thousands of babies that are alive because instead of living in her shame, she said, I'm going to take the shame and God's forgiveness, that's not who I am. I'm his daughter, and he wants to turn my shame into his fame, and he's made me a trophy on his mantle, and because he's given me hope, I can give hope to others.

My wife lived with tremendous shame. She was abandoned in her first marriage by an unbeliever who ran off with another woman and found herself with two small babies, and someone cared enough to verbally share the gospel. Her boss loved her, and every day told her in the workplace, Jesus loves you. He's going to help you.

Jesus loves you. She ended up hearing that for a year, went to a little church where he was a lay preacher, listened to him preach, and it was like nothing. She's walking out to the car, little Mrs. McGrady, like 85 years old. She's opening the car, putting these two babies in the car, hey young lady, yeah, do you want to be saved? She said yes.

Let's go back in that church and ask God to come into your life. She did. The whole church did.

She knelt at the altar. That lady didn't know her. That lady was bold.

She was competent. My wife came to Christ. You know where she felt shame? I was in seminary, and we had another seminary student tell my wife, I didn't know they let people like you in here. I remember in our first church, she didn't tell anybody. She wouldn't tell anyone her background. I don't want to go through that again. She felt like a second-class citizen.

She felt so shameful. You know, my two older boys, are you ready for this? We have a picture in our house, and they were in our wedding. So, you know, two little like four or five-year-olds, four-year-olds, four-and-a-half-year-olds, and they're in our wedding, and we have a wedding picture. Well, Ryan gets to be like, he's our third son, he gets to be like six-years-old, and he asks this classic question. Hey, Mommy, how come I didn't get to be in the wedding like Eric and Jason? Guys, her shame was so deep, she was afraid to tell our own son, and we happened to go through a thing at Dallas Seminary where, thank God for Bill Lawrence, he helped her understand. You know what?

Hey, the church may shame you, God doesn't. We were his precious daughter, and she told our son, and then when we went to Santa Cruz Bible Church, the first thing she did is she gave her testimony, and God opened up a world. In fact, I think about it now. I was thinking about these cards, and I talk about part of her journey. She was damaged in multiple ways, and part of this renewing your mind, these cards is what she did 30-some years ago. Then she did them with our daughter, and then one day, you know, I was talking to the guys at Living on the Edge. I think there's a lot of women who are struggling, so we put one of her series on about this. Then they made these cards.

Our chief operating officer said, Chip, I don't want to make you feel bad, but we've never had anything, any response like these cards. That's a raw nerve. Her shame became God's fame, and people have found hope and love, not because she has it all together, but they found hope and love because she was willing to say, yes, this is a part of my past. Part were my mistakes. Part were mistakes that people did to me, but I'm a daughter of the king. He's my father. I'm redeemed. I'm adopted. I'm secure. This is who I really am, so I can share that.

There's not pretense. Can I ask you, what are your secrets? Where are you still hiding? Is your past still dominating you? You might write in your notes, I am free in Christ. My question is, will you activate that freedom?

It's heavy, isn't it? Literally, as I said, that doesn't happen very often, but it's like I sense the Spirit of God go. And a shameful something about so many of you came to the surface, and the moment you had was, would I be willing in a safe place to go public with this and turn my shame into God's fame and let him use my hurt, either done to me or my mistake to help someone else? We're going to learn in a minute that that's where the power that you already have, power is perfected in weakness. Second fact, my future happiness is guaranteed. Think about that.

Well, where do you get that? The richest of his inheritance. You're his child. You're his treasure.

It's guaranteed. You may have ups. You may have downs. You may have some big mistakes. Your kids may not turn out quite right. You may never get married. You may have a business that grows, and then you may go down the tubes.

You may have a big failure. But here, can I tell you something? You're here right now.

Hold it right here. You die. You meet Jesus.

You're his treasure. You get a new body in a perfect environment. You will experience the absolute ultimate happiness. Nothing and no one can ever, your future is a guaranteed happiness. What if you lived your life as though I can't fail? I don't have to worry about what people think.

I don't have to worry about risk. My future happiness is guaranteed by my Heavenly Father, so I'm going to live my life instead of protect myself. I'm going to give you a glimpse into your future inheritance and God's future inheritance. But it's written, 1 Corinthians 2, 9, things which I have not seen, which ear has not heard. Are you ready for this?

Which hasn't entered into the heart of man. It's so good. It's so wonderful.

It's so awesome. Your future is so guaranteed of a happiness that you can't imagine. No one's ever heard about it.

No one's ever seen it. It's not even entered your heart. All that God has prepared for those that love him. When you think about the future, are you filled with anxiety? Is your thought about the future about terrorism or a personal issue or family issue or what might happen? See, this is a fact. This isn't subjective. Your future, my future happiness is guaranteed. Therefore, I'm confident.

I can be absolutely confident. It doesn't mean I'm not going to have struggles or setbacks and hurts. It's a fallen world. But I can't touch you. Third, I have incomprehensible power to meet all my present challenges and opportunities. All those words that the apostle Paul talked about. All those examples of the same power that would raise Christ from the dead, the same power that would seat him in the heavenly places, the same power that would be over angels and principalities and powers and the same power that would be over every title of this age and the future, the same power that would make him head of everything and fill everything. I can't, I mean, I can't get my head close to around that. It dwells in me, his son, and it dwells in you, his daughter or son. I guess the question is why aren't we experiencing it?

If there's that much power, why do we have such struggles in certain areas if we have that power? Let me give you a picture, okay? This is a little word picture. I want you to imagine that your car is broken down somewhere and it's super, super cold like it's you're on vacation in South Dakota. Whoever goes to South Dakota in the winter on vacation, but you decided you would and whoever goes alone, but you decided you would go alone. When you make up these stories, you can say whatever you want, but that's you and you're kind of shivering and then you realize, you know, there's a motel and oh my gosh, you don't have any money, you don't have any money for food, your car's stalled out, you're stranded. I mean, your phone battery's dead.

I mean, what am I going to do? And then you look over and there's a little blue light and there's an ATM machine. And you happen to be a fairly affluent person. You happen to know you have $100,000 in your checking account. May the Lord bless you and keep you, cause his face to shine upon you and may the rest of us do as well, but this is what you have. Now, it's in the machine, you have the card, you have everything you need, but you're sitting in your car freezing without food and you're not in the hotel. Why? What must you do?

This is not a trick question. What do you got to do? Now you got a hotel room, you can fix your car, you got food.

Everything you need is way more than $100,000. You have a power that can break obstacles. You have a power of muscular force that can overcome challenges. You have a power that's like dynamite that can break through things that have held you a prisoner for decades.

Family of origin, past mistakes, labeling. You have a power that can change how you parent in the future. You have a power that can overcome your fears and give you peace, but you have to activate it. The Bible is very clear that the key to activating things is, as just as you've received the Lord, so walk in him.

How did you receive him? By faith. And faith is always rooted in the promises of God. Paul, in a crisis, would say, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Peter would write, God has given us his precious and heavenly promises in the first chapter of 2 Peter, and by them we have everything that we need for godliness. Apostle Paul would write that there's a promise.

He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. In other words, I have this power. How do you activate, one, God's promises are in his word. And what I can say is that when you begin to get word centered and claim his promises, it's like taking withdrawals from the ATM, but the ATM only brings out so much money, sometimes what you need is other people drawing out of their ATMs.

And so it's not just his word and his promises by his spirit, but his power is manifested how? In weakness. My wife and I, we're in a big transition and I'm glad, I really don't feel afraid, but you talk about completely uncertain in so many areas. And I mean this in the most humble, I'm more amazed than any of you, that we realize now, 40 years of marriage this year, and I'll hear reports and things that it sounds like about someone else of literally millions and millions of people all around the world that hear what I teach and things that she's done. And we're kind of like this little West Virginia girl out of a broken background and this super insecure skinny little guy, and we both came to Jesus. And it was like God's power, he's used our lives, and I think some of you think that it's because we have so much together. That like sort of we're really, like really got it together.

And we were sitting on the floor this morning drinking coffee, looking back at, it's his power has been manifested in our weakness. It was when the lights came on and I just realized, you know, I'm desperately insecure and all this stuff I do is mostly to please people and impress people and pose, and I'm so sick of it and so I just went public with that. And she stopped hiding her background and difficulty and pain, and I think it's not because we have anything together. I think what's happened is people get hope and there's more authority in our lives because we're weak.

I've got friends in this church that have had some challenges in their past. Their own kids don't know anything about their past. They're ashamed of how they used to live.

And what they don't know is they're projecting to their kids, oh I never had any real problems, this is how you need to live. Hey, I had an alcohol problem. I had a sex addiction. Man, when I was in college, I was promiscuous and I did this.

This is the pain that it caused. Right time and the right way. I'm not saying you share everything, but I'm just saying your shame and the power of God won't get released until you say, God, I need you. I need you. And it's your word, your truth that can change me. But it's going to be your truth as I'm honest with you and I invite people into my life. Can I just tell you something? You'll be stuck in your shame and you will be a Christian that changes minimally if at all until you're in God's word claiming his promises and you get in some smaller group where you can say, I was abused when I was 14. I stole. Please don't say anything out loud.

I'm not legal and everyone thinks I am. And you would share that only wisely with just the right group, but it will be when the real you shows up that the real God will show up and life change will happen. It's our journey. But it's not our journey. It's the journey of every believer.

And then it sort of wipes away. We're really busy and at this stage of our kids and things are really, really, really busy right now. And this fall we have a lot going on and I just started a business or I'm just changing jobs or I'm just doing this and it's going to be just completely different in six months, right?

I mean, this is just a season like the last season and last season and the last season. And please hear me. Just the great majority of Christians are not in God's word. And I don't mean in it like I got to read so many verses.

I mean to hear. The great majority of Christians don't have real close, honest, authentic relationships where shame can come out and you're not judged and you're loved. Turn to the back page because this is the process by which God has decided He would change us. And the reason He's so adamant that you know that you're wanted and secure and competent and valuable.

Are you ready? It's not so you can be more fulfilled and happy. That's a byproduct. You're His body. The reason He's transformed you is you are the instrument, the ambassador, the agent to share with others that God loves them, that Christ died for them, that He rose from the dead. And they don't have to go to hell and they don't have to live in a hell today. But there's a Father who loves them but they will never know unless your life and your words communicate that story boldly. We've turned the whole Christian life about your self-improvement and your happiness and your fulfillment and your kids being, you know, excelling. All that will mean nothing. The reason He did all this is to transform you and me so that we would be His mouthpiece and His hands and His feet and that we would actually love people.

It's God's will. But if you believe misbeliefs, I am what I am, I cannot change. Do you believe that? Or does your behavior say you do? How about I can't help myself?

This is just the way I've always been? I always will be. Write that on a card, will you?

And then write, stop. I'm a competent person equipped by the Holy Spirit to carry out God's will in my daily life in a way that pleases Him. You are. You're competent regardless of what stage of growth I may be in at the present time.

Are you ready for this? My real importance in life is connected with the way I'm touching other people's lives with the love of God and the message of Christ. Chip's going to be back with his application, but just a quick reminder, this message, You Are Competent, is from his series, Discover Your True Self. You know, at some point in our lives, most of us cut through all of the clutter to ask a very important question, who am I? In this series, Chip opens the book of Ephesians to explain that the answer to that question changes when you become a son or daughter of the Most High God. Issues of worth and belonging take on a completely different meaning when we give our lives to his son, Jesus. But if we don't know that, we tend to get bogged down in the doubts and struggles of our past. If you long to break free and truly live in the power of Christ, this series will help you do that. To check out your resource options for Discover Your True Self, just go to livingontheedge.org or tap Special Offers. Discounts are available for a limited time.

For more information, just give us a call at 888-333-6003. Chip, I know you've talked about this before, but so many times I'll listen to a message and think, OK, I got it, and I'm really going to try to do better, or remember that. And that works for a little while, but then I fall back into believing the same old lies. You know, it's so frustrating. How do we stop that vicious cycle? Well, Dave, as a matter of fact, until we renew our mind, not just intellectually believe that God loves us, but believe deep in our heart and our convictions, that we're valued, we're wanted, we're chosen, we're secure, we're beautiful, we're called with a purpose by the God of the universe, then you can listen to these things.

And I mean, personally, I have had those seasons. I remember reading through the book of Ephesians and studying these great doctrines and going, Wow, this is really great. This is amazing. And two months later, falling back into my performance orientation. And so I began to write these truths on cards, and then pretty soon I began to write in my journal. And out of all that, what I realized was, for me and for others, I needed to write this in such a way that I could review it and really get it from my head into my heart. And out of that came a book, and the book is called Discover Your True Self. And so the broadcast that people were hearing actually became a book. And what I find with a book that's different than hearing is I can underline a book. I put study questions inside the book. All the different little cards I talk about in terms of here's a card where the lie, and then you turn the card over, those cards are in the book.

This is a book that you can do with other people. What I've learned over the years is I have to ponder, soak in, meditate, and renew my mind. And the Bible promises that if we're not conformed to this world, but if we are transformed by the renewing of our mind, then we'll discover the will of God, the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. And I just long for people to actually experience the joy and acceptance of being wanted and loved and valued, not because of how they look or what they do or how much money they have or what they've accomplished, but simply for who they are. When that ever gets from your head to your heart, it just changes everything. Thanks for that. Well, listening is a great way to learn, but we also know that some like to read and underline. So for a limited time, we've discounted Chip's book, Discover Your True Self. Besides the content, you're going to find study questions and the cards Chip and Teresa have found so helpful. For all the details, go to livingontheedge.org, tap Special Offers on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003.

That's 888-333-6003. As we close today's program, I hope you're beginning to see a pattern here, that we all have warp mirrors, that the deepest needs of our life for being wanted, belonging, valued, significant, safe, secure, competent, all of these things are needs that are very legitimate, and that what we tend to do in the world system is find people or things or performance to tell us that we're okay. And that's how we try and deal with our shame and our guilt and our pain.

And the fact of the matter is that when you come to know Jesus Christ as your savior, God addresses all those issues when he takes you out of the kingdom of darkness and places you into the kingdom of light, when he makes you his son, when he makes you his daughter. And what I want you to know is that each time as I end these messages and I give you the misbeliefs and then the truth cards, and, you know, maybe you can even visualize me and my wife sitting on the sofa in the early years of our marriage, you know, reading these cards out loud every day before I went to work for like over two years. What I want you to know is the lies you believe are deeply embedded. The lies that your children believe are deeply embedded.

And it takes intentionality and focus and work. And of all the things that are hard to overcome, shame is one of them. There's lots of people that, you know, I am what I am. I can't change. I'm a loser. I'll never be anything. And when you believe that, I will guarantee your life will play out exactly like that.

But the truth is that you are a competent person equipped by the Holy Spirit to live a life of fruitfulness and purpose. He has gifted you. He loves you. He's for you.

He wants to use you. And you have to combat those lies. But you got to grab them by the collar and you got to say, I'm not going to believe you anymore. We would say them out loud at the bottom of that card. There would be a stop sign and we'd say stop.

And then we would say the truth. And as we renew our mind, what's the promise? The scripture says do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that your life, your lifestyle, your life experience could prove or test or make evident what God's will is. His will is good. It's acceptable.

It's perfect. He wants you to understand who you already are. Your past no longer defines you. Your future happiness is absolutely guaranteed because of Christ. And in the present, you have all the power and all the ability to face every challenge and seize every opportunity because you are competent in Christ. You know, a great way to soak in the truth, like Chip was just saying, is with the Chip Ingram app. You'll find this series there and many more all free. Let God's Word pour into you in such a way that you get perspective and the freedom He longs for you to enjoy in Him. Well, until next time, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.