Is it possible to become the person you've always longed to become? I would submit it's not only possible, it's God's will that you become winsome and loving and holy.
A person of faith and integrity that changes from the inside out. And God has literally arranged and designed a very special place in which this reality takes place. And today I want to share with you where this special place is and how you can get connected to it.
Stay with us. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry featuring the daily Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.
I'm Dave Gruy. And in this program, Chip continues his series, Yes, You Really Can Change, based in Ephesians Chapter 4. The concepts we're learning are so critical to life change that we hope you'll make it a point to join us for each of these messages. But if you do have any questions, please let us know in the comments below. But if you do have to step away, you can always catch up through the Chip Ingram app. With that, let's listen now to Chip's message, How to Become the Person You've Always Longed to Be.
So we start our time in God's Word. I'd like you to do something a bit unusual. I want you to really lean back. I want you to feel free.
Even if you want to shut your eyes, I'm going to give you three imaginary pictures. And they're very important if you can let your mind, whatever helps you, begin to picture this in your mind. Imagine driving home after an exhausting and stressful day, only to get a SOS voicemail from a not-so-close friend. And immediately experiencing a shift of focus off yourself, your stress, and what you've got to do. And you find yourself filled with compassion and energy to meet this person and help them. You fix a quick supper. You get back in the car.
You meet him at a coffee shop. Two and a half hours of counseling. You pull in your driveway at 11.35 physically completely beat. But an energy and a peace and a sense that you were a part of the living God changing a person's life forever as you put your head on the pillow. Scene number two, can you imagine hearing of the promotion or a financial windfall in the life of your ex-husband, your ex-wife, the child that betrayed you, your ex-boss who fired you unfairly, the business partner who ripped you off financially. And as you hear of this good thing that happened to that person who betrayed or hurt you, before you have time to think, the first thought that comes to your mind is joy and gratitude to God for blessing their life. Because over a season of time you have so thoroughly forgiven them that like Jesus said, you actually love your enemies.
You may have to lean back a little bit deeper. This will take a deeper imagination. Imagine hearing the honest conversation of your children and your closest friends as they've gathered at your house after your funeral. They can't see you, but you can see them and you can hear them. And they've gone through little lines and grabbed little food that we always have after people die. And they're talking about you and your own kids and the people that really know you talk about your loyalty, your integrity, your love, that you were in fact one of the greatest Christians that they ever met. That someday they want to be like you. And little stories, not those exaggerated kind that people say at funerals, but the kind when it's unedited and no one's around, the little stories of moments with you, many of which you totally forgot or unaware of, where your life, your love, your integrity marked their life forever. You were actually the kind of person that we all long to become.
Can you imagine that? What each of these three scenarios have in common is they're a picture of the miracle of life change. And what they also have in common is you can't fake them.
Those aren't stories of behavior modification, cleaning up a few external behaviors through a lot of hard work and discipline. These are supernatural works of the Spirit of God through the Word of God, the community of God's people, where the actual life of Christ over time with many ups and many downs created in you a life that we all long for. We're gonna talk in this series about how that can become a reality, if you will, and let's talk about how that can actually happen to ordinary, regular people like you and me. If you have your Bible open to Ephesians chapter four, and as you scan Ephesians chapter four, you'll remember that the series started with chapters one, two, and three talking about this is what God has done for you in Christ. You've been adopted, you have an inheritance, His Spirit lives within you, you have and possess eternal life. And then verse one said, you're to live out this new calling.
Your belief and your behavior tell the same story. And far from a new list of activities, it says it happens in deep, other-centered, sacrificial relationships, where by His power you're humble and patient. And you bear with the idiosyncrasies, and you make every effort, and you move into people's lives with the power that you don't possess to love them, to maintain the unity of the body and the bond of peace. Then in our next session we talked about, well, where do you get that kind of power? And we learned that Christ gave gifts to men and to women in the church.
And where did they come from? What does it mean that He ascended, except that He descended into the lower parts of the earth? And we learned that everything that is true of you is true of Christ, and when He resurrected, He gave gifts to men to declare that sin and death and Satan had been defeated. And now as we open the text, we're in chapter four, verse 11, and He describes some of those gifts, and now He's gonna give you the design, He's gonna give you the picture of that spiritual cocoon, if you will, where the community of the Spirit of God and the Word of God with this new supernatural community produces that kind of radical life change. We pick it up in verse 11, and He gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers. And so He gives gifted people to the church. And then the very next word is important, you might underlie it, for.
That's the reason, that's the purpose. Why does He give gifted people to the church? For the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. And put a little line through the word saints, because that doesn't mean someone's in stained glass. That's just a biblical word for a Christian, a believer, someone who the Spirit of God lives in. And then put a little box around, if you would, work of service, and right next to it, minister.
We get our word for a minister. So God gives gifted leaders to the church. They equip, and put a circle around the word equip, it's very important. It was a picture of, if there was a compound fracture, a doctor resets it, so it works again.
It's the picture of fishermen whose nets are broken, and they repair them so the nets do what they were supposed to do. Leaders are given to restore and equip all of us people for the ministry or work of service. And when we operate together doing what Christ wants us to, then notice what occurs and what the ultimate goal is.
Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the statue which belongs to the fullness of Christ. If you would, put a line under knowledge. This isn't an intellectual knowledge. In Greek, there's two or three different words for knowledge. One is sort of an intellectual, two plus two is four. Another is a relational knowledge.
This has to do with knowing someone, not knowing about them. And then even put a little prefix, this is a super-powered, intimate knowledge of God. Leaders are given to equip God's people to do the actual ministry until all of us corporately come together and have an intimate knowledge of God until we're what?
Mature. That's our word teleos, telescope. It's when you fulfill the design that God longs for you. In essence, the goal is to become like Jesus. The measure, the statue, the fullness of Christ. And then he gives it a little test.
Well, how do you know if you're making progress? What would be the evidence of a person that this really occurs as the supernatural community of the church works together? Verse 14, as a result, in other words, the impact is we're no longer to be children tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine, by trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. In other words, you're no longer manipulated by false teachers. You're no longer wandering or led astray by people who tell you one thing, but it doesn't line up with scripture. And so there's a doctrinal stability. There's people that are mature that know the word of God. But it moves from that to a relational dynamic. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up into all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ.
And so there's a level of relationship in the body of Christ where you just don't speak truth and you're just not nice and loving. But there's this authenticity of caring where you even share the hard things. You help people grow. Then it talks about participation from whom the whole body, speaking of the church, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part that causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself and love. Did you notice those key little words fitted and joint? The word fitted was in construction. You know, you'll see people that you make a cut here and you make a cut here and you align them. That's this word.
And joint has to do with two things that actually touch. He's saying that something happens when every single member of the body of Christ is walking in obedience to him by faith. And understands your role. There's a coming together, a loving and a support and a connection. And notice those phrases where each and every, every single person matters. And as we function in that way, this thing happens.
This amazing thing happens. You experience God's love through other people and you get loved by other people. And God uses you to love other people. And then what did Jesus say? Jesus said the whole world will know that the Father sent the Son, not by the sizes of your church, not by how intellectual you are, not by success of your people, not by how cool or hot or wonderful your music is.
He says the world's gonna know. The reality of a God who created the world and sent the second person of the triune God, His Son, to die in people's place and give them new life and want to be with them forever will be how we love one another. What you have in verses 11 through 16 is, if you will, God's design. God's actual design for how those who call ourselves followers of Christ relate to one another in such a way that the life that we long for and the life He destines us for actually becomes a reality.
There's three principles and a proof that flow out of this passage. Principle number one tells us what leaders are to do. Leaders are gifted to equip God's people for service. It's what leaders do. And I don't mean just, you know, quote, vocational leaders like pastors, but all the leaders of the church, the leaders of a small group. Leaders' job, gifted leadership, is designed to equip God's people for service. When there's hurts, compound fractures, whether they're physical or emotional or spiritual, leaders help restore those things. Where people's lives are broken, leaders help mend those things.
As one commentator said, this word equip has the idea of something being restored to its original usefulness. Leaders equip people, help them, restore them. And then he gives four examples of leaders in the early church, and you'll notice he literally gives the foundation. He says, first there's apostles. The word apostle literally means one who is sent with a commission.
Jesus had many disciples, but he chose 12 apostles. The qualifications for being an apostle is you had to be actually with the risen Christ from his baptism on to the rest of his ministry. Now, there's the office of apostle. You have these 12, and then you have the function of apostle. These are people that aren't original apostles because there's no one living today that actually, right, was back when Jesus was resurrected.
But this function of starting new things, the idea of missionaries, people who start ministries, there's a function of apostleship. And then after he had the apostles, there's the prophets, and the early church didn't have a New Testament. And so they got revelation from God. Prophecy primarily is the forth-telling of God's truth. We tend to think of it as foretelling or telling the future. But the foundation, when there wasn't any New Testament, was they got revelation from God, they gave it from the church, and then those with prophetic gifts today, we teach God's word in a culturally relevant way to say, this is the truth of God for today from his word.
There is no chapter 23 of revelation. So there's not new truth coming from God. He reveals the truth he's given us. And then after the apostles are sent and the truth is laid out, then you have evangelists. These are people gifted with an extraordinary gift and a winsomeness that lead lost people into an understanding of a saving knowledge of Christ. And when you're around them, they motivate the rest of us to do the work of an evangelist, to really care about people outside of Christ. And once they're sent, and once there's truth, and once people come to Christ, then pastor teachers. The word pastor literally just means a shepherd. It's someone who comes along someone and says, I want to help you through the valleys and the ups and the downs and the struggles, and I'm going to teach you the truth so that you understand this is how God wants your marriage to work. This is what God says in terms of living a single life. This is how his instruction about your finances, your dreams or ambition.
Here's how you deal with these kind of temptations. And the goal of apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers is to equip God's people for the work of service so that literally we become the body of Christ. Jesus, when he was on the earth, would walk around, and if someone needed a cup of cold water with his hands, he would give them a cup of cold water. Or if they needed food, he would break some bread and pray over it and give them food. But today, Jesus' body is us.
But what you've got to understand is the role of leaders are to equip. By and large, the design of God has been shanghaied by the enemy and by our own sort of dysfunctional way that we look at relationships. In the average church in America and around the world, the average size is about 75 to 100 people. Over 90% of all the churches in the world are under 100 people, most of them under about 80. Because that's, if you turn the model of God upside down and do it completely wrong, that's about how many people, one person, if you work like crazy, can shepherd. And so many of us have grown up in a world where the idea is the pastor is the spiritual person, and we're the regular people, and our job is to come and listen to him, and then if we have someone in the hospital, we say, Pastor, go visit them in the hospital because they're in need. Or maybe we have someone who needs to hear about Christ, and we say, Pastor, why don't you come over and share the gospel with one of my friends?
And so they do everything. And can you imagine if someone came from like the Amazon, and they never had seen the design of a car, and maybe their parents were doing Bible translation, and they came to a city, and the name of the city would be called Backward City, and they wanted to learn how to drive a car, and if they got it in the car, and everyone who drove a car did it like this, they put it in, and they went like, and they would actually either turn their head like this, but they always drove the car backwards. And the car has always made this funny sound when it got going really fast. And people couldn't go very fast. I mean, it would go about 20 miles an hour. But if that's all you ever saw, and you would always wonder, why do the people who drive cars, why do their necks hurt so much? And why do the cars make such funny sounds? Now, engineers would tell you the car was designed with a big windshield, an engine, and gears one, two, three, and four to go forward.
But if that's all you ever saw, you would learn to drive a car like that and think it's normal. That's how most pastors have grown up. I'm supposed to do it all, and most churches believe you're supposed to do it all, and we'll come and watch you do this. And when you get really, really tired, we'll give you a little pat on the back and say, good boy, keep going. And we know that there's too many things going on, but if we're in the hospital, pastor, you have to be there. Or if there's a need, you have to be there. And what happens is that the leader isn't equipping. It destroys the pastor, and all those gifts in the church don't get used, and people don't grow, and their lives don't change. I will tell you, this is a known fact. The people that go to football games and simply watch people on the field do not get tired, and they don't get in shape, and they never score.
No matter how loud they cheer, they never score. And that's a picture of the church. Chip will join us here in studio with his application in just a minute. You've been listening to the first part of his message, How to Become the Person You've Always Longed to Be, from his series, Yes, You Really Can Change. If you're feeling burdened by your past or find yourself stuck in an unhealthy behavior, don't lose hope. A changed life is not only possible, it's God's will for all of us. So we hope you'll keep listening to this series to learn how to experience ongoing life change. And we're here to help you along the way. Download Chip's message notes, stream our exclusive video content, or take a look at Chip's newly revised book. And as always, the MP3s are free. Learn more about all the resources for Yes, You Really Can Change by going to LivingOnTheEdge.org or calling 888-333-6003.
App listeners simply tap Special Offers. Chip, could you give us a little history on what really motivated you to teach this series? I sure can, Dave.
Just to tell you, I think many Christians are experiencing a Christian life that honestly isn't working for them. Here's what I mean. I remember a young guy. He was mid to late 20s. We became friends. He trusted Christ after coming to church for a few months. And then about every third week, he would come up right after the message, after one of the services, and ask me some questions.
And I mean, whatever I told him, he just dug in. So he was in the Bible. He joined a men's group. He was making great progress. And then he had just the normal ups and downs that every new follower of Christ has.
And it had been now a little over a year. And I saw him coming down the aisle, and I thought, oh great, we're going to have another one of those talks. And he looked at me, and he was real kind of quiet. He goes, hey, I just want to thank you, Chip. You've helped me.
I mean, it's really been great. And I said, well, good, thanks so much. And he goes, but I have to tell you that this is just not working for me. I said, what do you mean?
He goes, Christian life doesn't work for me. You know, I still have struggles. I'm still tempted. I still have problems with my girlfriend. I'm reading the Bible.
I'm in a men's group. And everything isn't just perfect. And so I'm done. I said, what do you mean you're done? He goes, I'm quitting.
And before I could try and talk him out of it or give him some perspective, he literally just walked away. And I think a lot of people would never be that blunt. But I don't think the Christian life is working for a lot of people. I think a lot of Christians are try hard, do good, fail.
Try harder, do good, fail again. And then finally, I think a lot of Christians are trying hard and then quitting and just kind of faking it. And this abundant life, this new life, this power, this intimacy with God, these great relationships that we talk about, I think a lot of people were saying, you know, I'd like to have that, but that's not me. And so what I found was a lot of people have never had anyone meet with them personally and help them develop the kind of relationship where that abundant life is not theory but a reality. And so I do a thing called daily discipleship.
This is a brand new one. It's from Ephesians chapter 4 to help people break out of that cycle and actually experience God's power and the intimacy of this abundant life that we talk about. It's absolutely free.
I never talk more than 10 minutes. I ask them to give me 10 minutes and then I give them a very simple study, God, each and every day that if they'll stick with me for 18, 19, 20 days and go through it with me personally, what I found is they begin to have a relationship with God that they didn't think was possible. It's called daily discipleship. There's no cost.
We don't even ask for personal information. We just want to help people grow spiritually. Dave, could you give them the specific information about how they can sign up for the daily discipleship?
Absolutely. Daily discipleship with Chip are short daily sessions with Chip where he walks you through how to study a passage from the Bible and really hear God's voice. 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 from Ephesians chapter 4, Yes, You Really Can Change. Understanding the process of how genuine life change really happens is essential to getting spiritually unstuck. If you think meeting with Chip would help you do that, I hope you'll make it a part of your routine for the next few weeks. You'll find the daily discipleship with Chip at livingontheedge.org on the homepage. App listeners, just tap discipleship. As we close today's program, I was talking to your pastor.
I was talking to him indirectly because what I know is I've been in his world for the last 20 years, and I've been worn out, and I've tried to do it all. And you love your pastor, and you care about him, and you are listening to your pastor's best friend. I love your pastor.
I don't even know him. But the church is the hope of the world, and God has placed pastors in a strategic position. The tragedy is, is they're worn out doing all the ministry instead of equipping us regular people to do the ministry. So what do we have to do here?
How do we solve this thing? How do we get real change occurring, not out there in the church somewhere, but in your church? I'm going to suggest it begins with you. If you're a pastor listening to my voice, I want to pray that God gives you unbelievable courage to set boundaries and say no and develop a team of people to help you do ministry. And then what I know is most people listening to my voice, you're not a pastor.
In fact, maybe you're at home right now or you're in transit as you go back and forth to work. You need to step up. You need to help your pastor.
You need to free him up. Yes, you pray. But you need to say, what needs to happen in this church? What are normal ministry activities?
Of course, visiting the hospital, praying for people, teaching classes, counseling people, starting a mentoring program. But I've got to tell you something. I'm just going to be honest here as a pastor. I get people all the time who come to me and say, this is what we ought to do. And they dump it on my plate, and I'm already overloaded.
And then I get discouraged. And then they're down on me as a pastor because I can't do it all. That's not God's plan.
Let me tell you what to do. Come to your pastor and say, you know what? I think our junior high ministry needs to take it up a notch. My wife and I have prayed about this. We've already recruited two or three other couples, and we want to run them by you and talk about it. But we would like for the next year to see if we could take junior high where God wants it.
Would that be okay? Can you imagine how your pastor's going to feel? Or you're a lady listening to my voice, and you think, oh, he's got all this counseling, and he probably shouldn't be counseling ladies anyway. What if you got with three or four other ladies and thought about who's gifted in this? And you get together and you pray, and you go to the pastor and say, hey, there's four of us women. They're godly. They're people that have been walking with the Lord for a long time. And we actually even found some material. We want to run it by you first, pastor. When all these women come or marriage situations that the woman needs someone to cry and to pray with, we want to tell you we want to be your team. Can you imagine the difference that'll make? You can, can't you? So what's the application?
The application is dream the dream, find a couple friends, and go do it. And not only will you help your pastor and bless your church, you know who's going to change? You know who's going to get transformed? You, because God gave you gifts, and he's going to use you beyond your wildest dreams. I can't wait to hear from you when you email or write and let us know how God's using you in your local church. 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 Chip's teaching helpful, but you're not yet on the team, would you consider doing that today? To donate, 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. .
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