Yes! You Really CAN Change - The Role of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process, Part 1

Hi, this is Chip Ingram with Living on the Edge, and I want you to know that God taught me something a number of years ago that literally took my spiritual life to the next level. I mean, quite honestly, I was a pastor.

I was stuck. There were certain things that I just didn't see change, and then I was introduced to a concept. It was a concept called spiritual training. It revolutionized my life, and that's what I want to share with you today. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.

Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians through the daily teaching of Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Gruey, and we're in the middle of Chip's series, Yes, You Really Can Change. The idea of training, he alluded to a second ago, brings to mind the world of sports. In order to be successful, athletes go through rigorous preparation for every competition. How does that relate to our current series?

Chip's about to tell us. Open your Bible, if you have one, to Ephesians 4, and let's join him now for his message, The Role of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process. Despite some of the radical transformation that happens early on in most people's Christian lives, there's these nagging areas.

There's areas that you try and try and try and try and try, but they don't change. Some of the outer big stuff sometimes gets cleaned up, but those outbursts of anger, or the workaholism, or pleasing people, or codependency, or there's just people that, you know what, you just find yourself, you really love God, you're sincere, you're actually reading your Bible, you're praying, you've joined a small group, but there are just pockets or closets in your life that you want to change, and you have tried very hard, and you're stuck. And what I want you to know is that we all have areas like that, and the reason this is so important is because how we think about that and how God actually works to transform those things is different, and most people don't understand how that works. In fact, I would say probably the first 10 years I was a Christian, I made some progress in some of those areas almost by random chance, but I couldn't articulate what happened or why until I had a situation with one of my sons.

My youngest son, Ryan, he gave me permission, and this bench is going to tell a story. I can still remember sitting on the floor, and my son had what an older translation says as a besetting sin. I mean, he was a young guy, loved God, I mean, at 10, 11 years old, he's getting up, reading the Bible, he's leading worship by the time he's in junior high. Although he doesn't like school and he's not very disciplined, he's this young guy with a great heart, but this besetting sin is every little kid goes through a season of lying, at least my four did, but they usually grow out of it. But Ryan, this shortcut, this besetting sin was, whether his homework was due or he was supposed to do that, he got into a pattern, he got into a habit of lying.

In fact, for like four years, and he was really good. I mean, he would lie so much that he actually would tell me later, Dad, I lied about everything so much, I became convinced of my own lies. And then I would ask him, so is your homework done? Oh yeah, I got it taken care of, and then his report card would come, or have you talked to so and so? I mean, perpetual besetting, I mean, I disciplined him, I rewarded him, I grounded him. If you're a parent and you've ever had one of these things, you know, I did everything you can do as a parent. And I mean, I was just frustrated.

And it put a real breach in our relationship because then I never knew if I could trust him. And in one of just three years of this, and I've done everything I can do, I'm literally sitting on the floor, he's sitting on his bed, and a breakthrough came, because as I'm sitting on the floor, and literally tears coming down my eyes, and tears coming, Ryan. I mean, you just keep lying and lying and lying. And I remember him looking down at me and says, Dad, Dad, I'm trying as hard as I can.

What do you do? I've prayed, I've memorized a couple verses, I've asked God, I can't stop. What do you do when you try as hard as you can and you just can't change? And I remember in that moment, I thought to myself, number one, I'm his dad, and he wants a really good answer from his dad. And number two, I'm a pastor, so I should have a good answer.

And I'm thinking, I don't. What do you do when you're trying as hard as you can, and you really love God, and you're doing what you know to do, you're in the scriptures, you're renewing your mind, but certain things won't change. And as he said that, and I'm feeling this overwhelming inadequacy as a father and as a pastor to give a good response, I'm praying one of the super quick prayers in your mind, oh God, give me wisdom, give me wisdom, give me wisdom. And he's crying and bawling, and he's kind of looking at me like, well, Dad? And God brought something to my mind.

I'd been studying it privately, but all the pieces came together in that moment. I said, Ryan, relax. What? I said, relax. I've got the answer.

You do? He said, yeah, I've got the answer. Here's what I want you to do. I'll pick you up after school tomorrow. Load your gym bag. I want you to put a pair of sweats, your tennis shoes, everything in the gym bag. I'll pick you up. Because what I had to teach my son was there are certain things that no amount of trying harder as sincere as you can be will bring about change.

Certain things are going to require training. And so I picked him up after school, and we started in the car. He goes, Dad, we're not heading home.

I said, no, we're going to go someplace different. At the time, I had a good friend. He was Mr. Universe for a number of years called, his name is Dave Draper, and he owned World Gym. They're in Santa Cruz, and he gave me a free membership. And so we walk into World Gym, and hi, Dave, how you doing? And Dave's like, I mean, Dave, well this, now please, here, this is a gym, not a spa.

There is no spandex anywhere. In fact, there are guys with big leather belts like this, and there's not a lot of machines, and there's just a few cardio areas. This is like free weights, big guys, lots of grunting, probably a few steroids in the back room. And I mean, then, and then they drop the weights and it goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And these guys look like they were born on these weight machines. And so I walked in and I said, what do you think, Ryan?

They're really big. And you know, naively, I said, do you think they were born that way? No, Dad.

I said, I don't either. Well, come here, son. So we'd been lifting in the garage with his older brothers. I had him lay down on the bench press. We got warmed up, and I knew what he could lift, and so I took about five to seven pounds on each end beyond what he could lift. So I knew he could hold it, but he couldn't lift it. And so I said, get down, son, will you?

And so he gets down. I said, okay, you ready? Let's do a few reps of this. Okay. Okay, here you go. Okay, ready, son? Okay, okay. Press, press, press, press, press. Okay, ready? Let it down.

Okay. Okay, now press it up. And if you've ever done a little weightlifting and if you know it's just, you know when you start to shake? So he's shaking. And now it's coming down closer and closer to his neck, closer and closer to his neck.

His mother would not be pleased at this moment. And so as he's laying down there and his face is red and it's coming close to his neck, I get over him. And you know, I've got my hands in case, you know, I don't want it to hit his neck. And I start screaming, come on, Ryan, try harder, try harder, try harder. And finally, it's like inches from his neck and his arms are shaking. He goes, dad, I'm trying as hard as I can. I lifted it off. I said, never forget that, son.

Then we sat there together and he was like overwhelmed and sweaty. I said, Ryan, let me ask you something. You see all these guys, how do you think they got the way they got?

Well, I think they come here a lot. I think you're right. I said, well, let me ask you, if I would take maybe 10 pounds off each end and you did three sets of eight or 10 today and it was a Monday, we come back Wednesday, you do three sets of eight or 10. We come back Friday, you do three sets of eight or 10. The next week we come back and you do three sets of eight or 10 and maybe we add a pound or two. Do you think in three months you could lift that extra five or seven pounds on each end? Oh yeah, dad, I'm sure I could do that.

That's no problem. You know, my older brother, Jason, he could only lift about 130, 40 pounds and he does almost 300 now. He was a wrestler. I said, Ryan, listen carefully. You have everything in your body to lift that weight, but no amount of trying hard will lift that weight right now. You have to go into training. You have to develop what God has given you and here's what I want you to know. Some of your anger issues, some of your addiction issues, some of your people pleasing issues, some of your alcohol and prescription drug issues, some of your workaholism issues, some of the issues that we all have that we all kind of keep over here and you're stuck and you really haven't seen change.

I want you to understand no amount of trying harder and we're going to go into training. We're going to talk about five habits that cultivate holiness from the heart. See, there's certain things that when you go into training, they literally become thoughts. You have spiritual, supernatural responses to certain things that right now are besetting sins. There's a study done by Duke University. Did you realize 40% of all your behavior you don't think about? It's called a habit. I mean, think about, I mean, like how many of you really thought through very specifically how to brush your teeth this morning? You've got it down.

I mean, it wasn't like you got up. Okay, now, okay, I think you pull the brush out this angle, carefully take the tube off. Okay, now I got to work and see I want just enough here.

Put the water on lightly to sprinkle under it. Begin with the molars up and down 45 degree. Does anybody think about any of that stuff? Now when you teach your two or three year old to brush your teeth, you do all that habits, the power of habit. Research tells us that every habit has a cue or a craving. There's a routine and there's a reward.

Your besetting sin has become a habit in your life. It's just like when God wanted to do an amazing, miraculous thing with the children of Israel, certain things, he has this big deliverance and so you see his power and then there's a process and a journey where your character gets developed but there's sort of a grinding it out and doing things over time, they become a habit. So when God takes the children of Israel, what happens?

What's he do? The miracle, the Jordan parts, Jericho, dramatic, falls supernaturally and then for decades, what do they do? For decades, they get up and they go into training and they do battle and inch by inch, they take more and more territory and that's a good picture of sanctification, what happens in our lives.

And so I'm going to help you begin to break some of those habits that you don't even think about, begin to analyze what's really going on and as you do these, they're very critical. First and foremost, here's training station number one, the bench press of spirituality is this, it's be honest. Speak the truth in love. Paul picks up where he had talked about in verse 15 where he says, speaking the truth in love, we're to grow up into all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ.

Therefore, verse 25 then, he's going to make the application, laying aside falsehood, speak the truth, each one of you with his neighbor for we are members of one another. Spiritual training station number one is honesty, personal integrity. This isn't just your speech but all aspects, honesty, integrity, how you live, what you say, but especially, you're going to put off falsehood. Your training command is to speak the truth in love. Speaking the truth but doing it in love, not speaking the truth to hurt people, speaking the truth to build relationships. The training action is you put off falsehood. This word falsehood is well beyond, this isn't just lying, the word falsehood has the idea of speech, deceit, exaggeration, the falsehood that comes from white lies, the falsehood of silence. Aren't there times where someone's saying something and you completely disagree but in your silence, you communicate that you agree with them? It says put off falsehood.

Then notice the renewal is you recognize your shared membership in God's family. Put off falsehood but notice the difference in thinking with your neighbor for we are members of one another. See, at the end of the day, the reason why Ryan lied to me because it always produced short-term relief and then long-term consequences.

I didn't do my homework but I lie about it so I'm not in trouble right now. But the one thing that it did in our relationship is what? It violated trust. The commodity of every human relationship whether it's parent to child, whether it's your marriage partner, whether it's a friend, whether it's a roommate, whether it's a business, the commodity of every relationship is trust. Once trust is gone, you have no relationship. Once you lie to me a few times, one, I will not trust what you say in the future and number two, I will not vulnerable reveal anything about my life because what I know is you can't be trusted. When you lie, when your life is falsehood either by your speech or your actions, you can't be trusted.

Relationships can't grow. The apostle Paul is using like the human body and he says just as we're members of one another in the body of Christ, I mean think about if your hand and your eye and your foot begin to lie to your brain. If something was hot and your hand got on something hot and told your brain it was cold, what's going to happen?

Pain. And he's saying to you, you have to rethink. You are thinking only about yourself when you lie, when you have less than the truth in relationships, when you exaggerate, when there are these little white lies. What you're doing is you're avoiding some front term pain but what you're doing is you're eroding trust and little lies in marriage end up over the years big lies and when your words say one thing and your behavior says something to your kids, they say I don't not only believe in you but I don't believe in your faith.

At a certain time, remember, you have to make a decision, delete. Then you have to run a new program and the new program is I'm going to be honest in everything all the time and you have to go into training to become an honest person. Now some of you are thinking I'm an honest person. I don't like do any big lies and I've actually reported everything on my taxes and well let's, let me probe a little bit on some of the exaggeration and some of the white lies and some of the small ways because Luke 16 10, you might jot that in your notes, it's a financial passage but it's a timeless principle.

It says he who is faithful in a very little thing will be faithful also much but he was unrighteous in a very little thing will be unrighteous also much. How many times have you left late for something and there's a little bit of traffic and you walk into work or to someone and you say oh well the traffic was really heavy. Well the traffic was really heavy but you're late not because the traffic's heavy.

You're late because you left 15 minutes late. Well that's just a little lie or how many of us exaggerate? We just exaggerate in a little bit here and a little bit there. Little lies, little exaggerations. What I can tell you is we have all grown accustomed to doing that at such a level we just give one another a pass. Truth. Integrity.

See what we then do is then we lie to ourselves. You know I don't really have a drinking problem. I don't really please people that much. I don't think I'm a workaholic. I just have a lot of energy. You know I don't think our marriage really is in trouble.

You know I think she's just going through a season where she needs more attention. Lie, lie, lie. When you don't ruthlessly say I'm going to go into training to be honest with God, honest with myself and honest with others a hundred percent of the time.

When you do that I will tell you it will bring about transformation in those besetting sins. I was early married and I happened to marry someone not all positive and she would say this whose integrity is like off the charts. In fact so literal at times that she kind of misses the point. I'm sort of one of those big picture people and big picture people have a tendency to just sort of generalize. We don't call it lying. We call it generalizing. We call it rounding. If you've been around.

By the way I love you but people in sales, people in leadership. You know you frame things in a way that's just a little you know. So we were in this little church. We just started out and so we you know like 35 people in the church and we got all these neighborhood kids in a club and we had them over on a midweek and had a little midweek thing on Wednesday and I was announcing to the church the progress of God. How encouraging it was and said we had like 62 kids last week and you know or something like that and I get in the car and my wife's real quiet.

What's wrong? Why did you lie today? What do you mean lie? Well you said they were like 62 or 69 kids and they were like 50 some. I said I rounded. I said well how do you round from like 58 to 62? I said up. And what I found was in little numbers and in little ways or you know I'm going to be about five minutes late and it's 15 minutes late or this is what happened. I found that I exaggerated. Well I mean you know I'm a young pastor and I'm just starting out.

Like every week for the first six or eight or ten weeks. I mean she's real quiet. I mean in every message there was something where and she would. Why did you lie?

And I'm just thinking is this going to be the rest of my life? And then God says well probably if you keep. Why do you have to exaggerate?

Why do you have to try and make me look better or is it really about making you look better? What would happen if you were ruthlessly honest in every area of your life? How many times has someone said something to you and hey we really ought to get together and this is a great idea I think you'd love to do it and you say something like yeah let's really get together sometime and yeah I think that's a winner and down deep the moment they walk out of the room you think man I would never do that and I don't want to take that person's phone call in the future. But what you did is you did a little covering and you acted like you were interested because it would take a lot more courage to say you know that's an interesting idea.

I don't really think that is for me and I'm not really interested at this point in time with my other priorities of being involved in that. And so we lie all the time. We say things we don't mean. We present ourselves as better than we are.

That's falsehood. But when you do that I want you to know it's a disease and it grows. And deception happens in your own heart and then pretty soon you don't see yourself the way you really are and you don't see God the way he is and things get more cloudy and the problem with these kind of things is they grow and things that are little little 10, 12, 15 years later they're big things. And so God says go into training. And so you put on truthful speech and authenticity. Well how do you do that?

I mean how do you make the break when that really occurs? I in the same season God hammered me on this and it was really life transforming. When I said that I learned this sort of by random God brought some circumstances into my life where I learned this training apparatus.

And the training apparatus here literally is practice confession. It was during the same time and I was pastoring a little church and I'm finishing up seminary and I'm in seminary and as I walk the halls of seminary being the basketball hall like I am in the halls there's a 6'11 guy and I find out he plays at West Virginia. There's a 6'8 guy from Wisconsin.

There's a 6'7 guy from Illinois and there's a 6'4, 6'5 guy from New Mexico State. They all played college basketball. We all played hoop together. So we formed a little team. It was the most formidable intramural team you've ever seen.

And we had a blast. And I got a call from the head of what was called sports ambassadors and I'd been overseas playing them throughout South America and then I did one stint in the Orient. And Bud Shafer who's the head of it he goes this is when China was closed many years ago. You couldn't get in China. We have an invitation to go to China. We're going to get to play all their national teams.

We're going to play in all the major providences and in small areas they're going to allow us to share the gospel. Chip I'm looking for two guards. Are you in shape? Yes. Well how many points? I'm playing league right now.

Oh yeah. And well how many points? Ten or twelve points. Six or eight assists. Probably three or four steals. Well that's great.

Well I'll get back to you. And I hung up the phone. And the peace of God just dissipated.

It was gone. See the fact is in that little intramural league we didn't even have a score keeper. No one was keeping track of points.

No one was keeping track of assists. I just rounded. Up. I so now desire. Here's how here's how habits work. The cue is I want to get something. I want approval.

I want this. The routine is I exaggerate, white lie, present myself falsely. The reward is I get it occasionally. It's a habit. So I said oh Lord I'm sorry. Because I'm in seminary now I'm preparing to teach God's word to people. The truth. That's ironic isn't it?

I'm preparing to teach the truth as I lie to this guy about getting on a ministry team to go teach the truth. Weird huh? Well look in the mirror and it won't be quite so weird. And so there's no peace. And so it's okay.

Well I know the verse. Confess your sins and he'll forgive me so I confess my sins. Lord please forgive me and I hope I get on the team. Two days later still I mean I can't pray effectively and I have this guilt.

There's still no peace. And God whispers I want you to call Bud Shaffer. Own your stuff. Confess your sin and apologize.

Oh Lord surely you jest. I mean I'm in seminary. Do you realize how embarrassing it is for a seminary student to say he lied about a ministry opportunity?

And like this is the organization and I've done things with them before and I want them to think well of me. And I'll never forget the phone call. I called and I said Bud this is Chip.

And I want you to know those statistics I gave they don't really keep statistics so I made those up. And I lied to you and I'm guessing you probably don't want someone on your team that lies as a representative to share Christ in China. And see he was a great leader.

He didn't gloss it. Chip thanks so much for your integrity and coming clean. You're exactly right. We really don't want players that habitually don't tell the truth. But I think this is a great step.

We'll be looking for a couple other guards. You know what I did? I went into training. And I made a vow before God that when I lied, when God made it aware that I lied in little things or in big things to my wife, to another person, in a sermon, I would confess it and actually go to whoever I lied to and tell them.

Now I'd like to say that you know that was like 25, 30 years ago. I can tell you I've had to do that in the last two weeks. Because I'm in training. And you're in training. But I will tell you what by and large I broke the power of deceit in my heart and I broke the power of lying because for 30 years I've been in training to be honest about exaggerating and white lies and presenting myself.

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, The Role of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process from his series, Yes You Really Can Change. The point of this series is not only to say that genuine life change is possible, but to help us reflect on areas where we struggle.

Maybe you need to break an addiction, repair a broken relationship, or correct a behavior. Whatever the issue is, you can make the change. And we'd love to help you with that process. Digging deeper into this series would be a great way to start. Take a look at the study guide, stream the small group video, or download the free MP3s to listen anytime.

To place your order or for more details on Yes You Really Can Change, go to livingontheedge.org, call 888-333-6003, or tap special offers on the Chip Ingram app. Chip, as we listen to this series, I think we all recognize that there are serious issues people struggle with like addiction, depression, and abuse. But there are others who are kind of coasting along in quiet desperation. They might even be reading their Bible and going to church every once in a while, but they just aren't experiencing the power and the joy you're talking about.

What would you say to them? Well, Dave, that's an insightful question because I think you're right. There's certainly people that are going through really deep addictions and this series is going to be super helpful for them. But what I can tell you is there are a multitude of Christians who aren't involved in any, quote, blatant sin but are not experiencing this supernatural life we're talking about. And I think for many, they believed unconsciously that certain religious activity will bring about change.

We all can have idols in our life, roadblocks in our life that we're completely oblivious to. And so that's why the Apostle Paul is so clear in Ephesians chapter four of this taking off, this renewing of our mind, and this putting on. And that's why these last messages are so important. I've seen people begin to specifically go into training and I've outlined that in this teaching series, but I put it in the book in such a way where there's a roadmap, a very specific way for them to learn to go into training to renew their mind in a way that allows them to experience that joy and that peace and that power that God longs for them to experience because he would say, I'm your father, you're my daughter, you're my son. And so I would encourage people, especially if what you're listening to is resonating, get the book, do it with someone and see if as you dig in personally, God won't speak to you in a powerful way. That's a great idea.

Thanks. Well, we're pretty excited about the release of the new revised edition of Chip's book, Yes, You Really Can Change. Let me encourage you, go to our website, livingontheedge.org to pick up your copy of Yes, You Really Can Change. Pick one up for yourself, maybe get one for a friend and spend some time over coffee encouraging one another on your new journey of life change.

Now here's Chip with a final thought. As you ponder today about where and how you need to go into spiritual training in the area of honesty, let me take just a minute and share a little story about how God put me into training long before I knew what it was. Very first pastorate of the very small church, wonderful group of people in rural Texas, and it was my very first pastorate. I'm 28 years old and the first two or three weeks I'm preaching my first messages and then the church starts to grow a little bit and we start a little Wednesday night group. I say in my sermon, you know, last Wednesday was really great.

We had about 68 or 70 people. We go on with the message and I'm in the car on the way home. My wife is strangely silent. We drive a little while and I say, like you would say, hey honey, something wrong? Well, yeah, what's wrong? Why did you lie today? I said, what? Why did you lie today? What do you mean why did I lie today?

I thought it was a pretty good message, actually. Hey, I watched you count them Wednesday night. There was like 64 people. I said, well, I was just rounding. She said, well, how do you round from 64 to 68 to 70? I said, well, what's it matter? And she said, isn't that the point?

What does it matter? And I thought, oh, brother, you know, I'm thinking she's very detail oriented. I'm a big picture guy.

It's a small misunderstanding and she just doesn't get it. But okay, you're right. You know, I exaggerate a little bit. No, you lied.

You know? Okay. So I'm thinking over, forget it. I'm sorry.

I didn't really mean it, but I'm not going to go there. Next week I tell another story. I use a figure again.

I've got icicles coming home in the car in round two and I'm thinking, you know, this past trip may not be very fun if this happens every week. And I said, what's wrong? And she looked at me with that same look.

She goes, why did you lie again this week? And I went, oh no, this is like a royal headache that's not going to go away. I said, what do you mean? And I exaggerated again. And I thought, this is going to be a long journey being a pastor. And what happened was I realized down deep that I like to exaggerate because somehow out of my own insecurities, even though it didn't mean anything, I wanted to make myself look better than I really am.

And when you're unfaithful in a very little thing, then you're going to be unfaithful and much. And God used my wife and I went into training. Now I didn't go into training because I was smart or spiritual. I went into training because you can only take so many of those drives home with your wife saying, why did you lie?

And you're the pastor. And you know, I went into training to down to the littlest parts of my speech to tell the truth. And I'm not going to tell you that overnight everything happened. It's like lifting weights when I talked about with my son, but I mean week after week, week after week.

And she learned to actually say it a little bit nicer. And I went into this training about being honest. And I don't have it licked, but I want you to know that integrity has been a foundational issue in my life after that first pastorate in those early years because I went into training to be honest down to the little things. Let me ask you, what would it look like today for you to go into training in the area of honesty?

Okay, have you got it? Is it white lies? Is it exaggeration?

Or is it just plain falsehood? Have your mind renewed? Remember, we're members of one another and put on honesty that your life would reflect the very purity and truthfulness of Christ. Thanks, Chip. Let me take just a second and thank the generous people who make monthly donations to support the ministry of Living on the Edge. Your faithful gifts help us inspire Christians to live like Christians. Every gift makes a huge difference. If you haven't partnered with us yet, would you prayerfully consider joining the Living on the Edge team? Make a one-time gift or set up a recurring donation by going to livingontheedge.org or calling us at 888-333-6003. And know we're blessed by whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well, until next time, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.