You know, once a person makes a commitment to follow Christ, I mean radical and all indecision, there's a process God uses to transform us. Well, today I'm going to address what I believe is one of the most neglected areas of spiritual growth, because once we're aware and willing to engage, it results in amazing life change. Stay with me.
That's today. Thanks for joining us for 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 Gruey, and we're nearing the end of Chip's series, Yes, You Really Can Change. Chip's heart behind each of these messages has been to remind us that genuine life change is possible.
He'll be joining us in studio for some deeper application, so be sure to stick around for that. If you've missed any of these messages, they're available online at livingontheedge.org. Well, Chip's got a lot to share, so let's join him now for his message, The Power of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process.
Listen carefully. Only God can transform a life. Only by God's supernatural grace can a life be authentically changed from the inside out, but he chooses to never do it alone. It's a joint effort. Transformation, the miracle of life change, everything we've talked about, is a joint effort. It's completely and fully by grace, but we have a part.
Notice that even in nature, God points us out. I came across an article. It talks about a man who found a cocoon of a butterfly, and one day he saw a small opening appear. He sat and he watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that small little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress.
It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and could get no farther. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors, and he snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon, and then the butterfly easily emerged, but it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that any moment its wings would expand and it would fly off, but it didn't happen. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.
It was never able to fly. What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly through that tiny little opening was God's way of forcing the fluid from the body down into the butterfly's wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. See, God made the caterpillar, that green worm, if you will. That green worm had exactly the same DNA as the butterfly. That DNA told that caterpillar when and what season to go to on that milkweed, when to form a cocoon, and it's all the DNA inside of that that created from this caterpillar into a butterfly, but there came a time of struggle and responsibility for metamorphosis to occur where that butterfly had to make every effort and struggle to cooperate with its design in order to fulfill its purpose, and the exact same thing is true of us. Open your Bibles, if you will, do a quick review before we jump into Ephesians chapter four.
Let's go all the way back to the beginning of this series. Chapters one, two, and three is the DNA that God has put us, all that he has done for us in Christ. Chapter four opens up where he begins to talk about our responsibility. He says, as a prisoner of the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you received, and then he begins to describe what it looks like in relationships. Be completely humble and gentle and patient, bearing with one another in love, and then notice, make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Then we talked about what Christ has accomplished. We talked about the role of the church. We talked about that sort of threefold process where we put off, have your mind renewed and put on, and then pick it up with me in verse 25 as the apostle Paul goes through five specific training stations. Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we're all members of one body.
We talked about be honest. You go into training for integrity. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil a foothold, and then he goes on, he who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work with your hands doing something useful that he may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what's helped for the building up of others according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness and rage and anger and brawling and slander, along with every form of malice, and be kind, compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Now, I want you to see this combination. Psalm 77 14 says you are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the people. God does miracles. He's done them in the past.
He does them today. That's God's part, the supernatural. He does miracles among us, but look at the next passage in Romans 8. He does miracles in us. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, amazingly lives in you.
Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. God does miracles in the world. He parts Red Seas. He's raised people from the dead, but he doesn't just do miracles among us. He does miracles in us. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, when you put your faith in him, dwells inside of you. We don't have to sin anymore.
We will. We will have struggles, but you've been forgiven. The penalty of sin's been paid. The power of sin has been broken, and now the Spirit of the living God that created all that there is, if you're a follower of Jesus, lives inside of you. That's God's part. Now notice the apostle Paul says, but that's not how it all works. Philippians chapter 4, he says, I can do, that's something he does, I can do all things, but how?
Through Christ who gives me strength. In fact, the next passage in Philippians 2, he kind of puts the whole package together. There's God's part. There's our part.
There's dependency. It's all of grace, and yet we have to make every effort. And so he commands us, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
Then notice the second half. For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Be diligent. Be diligent. Work hard.
Refuse to take shortcuts. It says, he who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good. Then notice the purpose clause, so that he may have something to share with the one who has need.
Training objective is financial stewardship, and rooted in this is our work ethic. The training command is steal no longer. Grammatically, he's saying, people in this particular church were stealing. Grammatically, it's stop stealing, knock it off. Stealing was rampant in the ancient world.
Now, I think it's the same today, but when people would go to the Roman baths, and they would leave their clothes to their valuables, or when they went to the market, so Christians that came to Christ in the city, but it was a habitual pattern, and they would steal, so he stopped stealing. The training action is you're to put off stealing, then there's a renewal of your mind. Recognize the value, and the purpose of work. Recognize the value, and the purpose of work, and then what we're gonna see in just a minute, he's gonna say, stop stealing. Recognize the value of work, and the purpose of work, and then he says, now I want you to put on, I want you to learn to work, or to labor, and he's talking about real physical labor here, but unto the Lord.
I want you to work as though you're working for an audience of one. So let's back up and think through just a little bit. The issue behind stealing, obviously, I'm guessing that there's not a lot of you that are going, oh my lands, you know, Friday night I held up that guy at the ATM, I just gotta knock that off, you know?
I didn't use a knife or anything, it was a plastic gun, but I just gotta quit doing that, you know? Or, you know, hopefully there's not like just a handful of you that are saying, you know, it's tax time, and I've embezzled a few thousand dollars, or a few hundred thousand dollars, and I'm glad I came today, because I need to repent of that. Now by the way, if you're stealing in those ways, for sure, you need to repent from that. But we steal in lots of ways. See, behind stealing is, the real thing that needs to be addressed for most of us, is the shortcut mentality. See, at the end of the day, if you went to work for two weeks, and they put X numbers of dollars out of your paycheck in a bank account, and then you want to go to dinner, or go shopping, and you go to an ATM, and you pull out a hundred dollars, because that represents what you've worked, and as you take that hundred dollars out, someone stops you, and either puts a gun or a knife to your throat, and says, give me your money, number one, give it to them.
Heroes end up dead. But you did the work, they took your money. At the heart of stealing, is we want the product without the process. We want the product without the price.
And for many of you, the stealing is not about money, and the stealing isn't in your vocational work. A lot of us want a really great marriage, but we don't want to put in the work. A lot of us want kids that really love God, and turn out well, and tell the truth, and have great relationships, but we don't spend any time with them around the table, we don't tuck them in bed, we don't teach them. A lot of us really want our bodies to be low in cholesterol, and low in fat, and we want to be healthy and live long lives.
We just don't want to do the hard work of working out or watching what we eat. You get the idea? A lot of us have overwhelming jobs with demand, demand, demand, demand, and we steal from relationships, and we steal from other areas to fulfill responsibilities and jobs to either please people or be addicted to the income that it brings. See, now stealing has a lot to do with all of us, doesn't it? Now, here's what you need to understand. You need to understand the value of work, the value of diligence. Before sin entered the world, we were told to work, so work has value. It's not like TGIF, it's not like the mentality we've been inundated with our culture is that the mentality that what most of our culture tells us is do as little as possible to get as much as possible for the greatest income as possible, unless you own the business.
And see, we then, we do the same thing in those other relationships, like I shared. We want the results, but the diligence, the line upon line, the precept upon precept, the getting up, the putting one foot after another, it's very difficult to learn to work hard on the things that are hard for us to work on. And so he says, you got to understand the value of work. Jesus, for the first 30 years, worked with his hands. He learned that things don't happen overnight. Jesus, though he was fully God and fully man, as a little boy, sat with the rabbis and he memorized the passages and he asked questions and he did the work to learn to grow.
He grew in stature before God and before men. So there's a great value in work. But notice also in this passage, the purpose of work.
The purpose of work just isn't upward economic mobility. He says, you who steal, steal no longer, stop taking shortcuts, but work with your hands, what's the last phrase, so that you may be able to share. Interesting little Greek word, the idea of sharing with those in need, it has the idea of doing it personally. This isn't sharing as in, I get some money and I give it to an agency or an organization or even to the church. This is working with your hands and as you work with your hands, you meet people that have actual needs and part of the reason that you work before God is you want to have some extra to help other people personally.
See, it goes from staying I'm not going to steal to I want to be generous. I want to be like God. I want to be like Christ. Remember, as a prisoner of the Lord I say to you, no longer live in this way but walk in a manner worthy.
That means you're going to look and think and talk and share the way Jesus does. The training apparatus that's been most helpful to me is I'm going to encourage you to write out a to be list. Now I don't know about you but I've learned to work best because of mentors. My first mentor was my father.
Say no more. I mean there's some of us that grew up with I learned how to work. He passed it on and by the way, you know, there's some things about my dad that weren't real helpful. This was very helpful.
Son, that's okay and I'll try it again the right way. Anybody remember that? When I taught my kids early on, it wasn't just about cleaning this or doing the garage or doing their room or making their bed. It was they needed to learn that the diligence, not taking shortcuts is a discipline and it's difficult but as you go into training, you can learn how to do it.
So probably one of the best gifts Teresa and I gave our kids was teaching them to work. And early on, I mean it was terrible, they would vacuum and then you say, you know what, you have to move these things and vacuum them, not just go around them. Or you know, they needed to clean their room and you'd open the closet and you'd realize it looked clean when you walked in but it looks like a mess there. And so you teach them. You know, you look at a homework paper and you go, oh my lands.
I mean you'd have to have x-ray vision to figure out what this says, you know, rewrite it, do it right. It takes time. And when I say a to be list, here's one of my biggest mentors other than my father and a few other people. I shared with you Professor Howard Hendricks was a great mentor in my life. In my third year of school, there was about 10 or 12 of us, we met with him for lunch. We had a brown bag lunch and we would talk and I was working full time, going to school full time, had three kids and had just started out pastoring a church. And so I mean my life was crazy.
I mean it was up four in the morning and you study here then you do this with the church and then you drive in and then you go to school and you know then you try and be a good dad and I mean it was nuts. And I'll never forget him talking about, men the problem with a lot of your lives, because we'd ask him questions for an hour every Wednesday afternoon over lunch. He says you need to create a to be list instead of just a to do list. I mean my to do list were this long and I could never get them all done. And I'll never forget, you might be thinking what do you mean by a to be list?
He said you will never be more loved than you're loved right now. You'll never get all your to dos done and your life isn't based on your performance. So what you need to do is get very very clear about who do you want to be? Who do you want to become? And I don't know how this works but I'm praying, I prayed for you all today that this will happen in your life.
I don't know how it is when certain truths, it's not like I never heard it before but you know how they ignite inside your mind and then somehow they get down to your heart and you feel compelled I have to act on this. And I remember driving away from that little seminary and stopping at a Dairy Queen in a little town called Crandall and then on the back of a napkin said I'm either going to make a to be list and follow it or I'm going to keep living this crazy life where I'm not quite the husband I need to be and I'm not getting enough sleep and I'm not working out anymore and I've got school over here and life is crazy. And then the back of the napkin I said I want to be a man of God. I want to be a great husband. I want to be a great dad.
I want to be a great friend. I want to be a great pastor and I want to be someone who takes care of my body. And then what Prof Hendrick said was you take those and you stick them in your schedule before you do anything else.
Sure you'll still have a lot of to do's to do but when you stick those in if you will be diligent the person you are a year, three years, five years, ten years, that was 30 years ago literally to the year. And I decide if I'm going to be a man of God I'm going to meet with God at least an hour every morning before anybody else. If I'm going to be a great husband my wife's going to know that every Friday for three hours we're going to have a date uninterrupted that she has me with my undivided attention. And every night, every night after our meal it might be ten minutes it might be thirty minutes but we're going to talk and connect from the heart. I went through and I put my kids names in my schedule on the same calendar and to be then I said we're going to eat together and I'm going to meet with my kids individually.
And then there's two or three guys that I really liked I said I want to be a great friend and I want to work out and I love being with you guys and I need to process some stuff with you that I don't need to talk about with my wife. And I built that in my schedule. And then I changed my calendar and I said you know what there's two or three things as the senior pastor that only I can do. And all of Wednesday was going to be sermon preparation and I was going to have my deadline and I mean it was so hard and it was three steps forward and two steps backwards but I was more concerned about my to be list than my to do list. Be diligent. Work hard. Don't take shortcuts. Because see here's what happens.
I can't tell you that everything overnight at all got way better. It's a lot like this exercise right here. You know when you go everyone likes to pump a lot of iron you know right you know you do the curls and you know hey you know get the well I'm not going to do that because it could be embarrassing. But you get the big guns or get the big pecs right but how many people go hey how's those back muscles coming? Man she's got an awesome back.
He's got a great back. Have you ever heard that? See this is diligence. These are the kind of exercises personally I hate right.
You do these and it's like come on I mean no one sees these things. Of course these are the balancing muscles to these. And then you can't just do one side you got to do both sides. And what happens is for those who do the actual kind of personal training what they tell us is that every muscle you have to work the other side. And as people get older have you noticed how many people when they get older they walk like this?
Because they don't have these strong muscles. Diligence. You go into training. You get diligent about I'm going to make my marriage a priority.
I'm going to make my personal time with God a priority. But it's not about the activity it's who do you want to become. You are currently becoming someone. And who are you becoming? You're becoming where your time and energy and focus. You are in training right now.
You just don't know what it is. But you may be training to become a workaholic. You may be in training for your marriage to drift. You may be in training for your kids to be disengaged twenty years from now.
See the problem is is I can do this three times a week and you can't even hardly even see the back muscles. You don't see the results. Most of everything I said about the to be I saw no difference for a year or two or three or five but here's what I'll tell you. I can remember ten years into my marriage thinking wow instead of being in marriage counseling I didn't believe it's good. I remember twenty years into my relationship with my kids and thinking boy I said no to this and no to that and it was a hassle and but we ate together.
I tucked them in and now I've got grown kids by the grace of God and their individual choices who love God and have a relationship. There's no guarantees but there is a guarantee if you aren't diligent. See sowing and reaping right we all believe that. You always reap what you sow but here's the catch you never reap in the same season.
You never reap in the same season that you sow. So let me encourage you be diligent go into training. Station number four is be positive don't wound with your words. Don't wound with your words be positive. Let no one wholesome word proceed from your mouth but only such a word is as good for education according to the need of the moment. Notice the purpose clause so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Here we have the training objective is positive speech positive speech.
The training command say only that which helps. Stop saying unwholesome words. The word here has the idea of rotten putrid corrupt.
It's like milk that is spoiled or fruit that's gone bad or meat that has been corrupted. Don't let anything come out of your mouth that's corrupt or putrid. Instead say words that build up that help that edify that encourage and the idea of this phrase is that encourage specifically at specific times according to the needs as you're engaging with people. The training action is put off negative speech. Renew recognize the power and the consequences of your speech. So first we're gonna put off negative speech and some of you who may be thinking you know I'm glad this one doesn't apply much to me. Well I listed in my notes about 12 or 13 little negative speeches that at some point in my life I've either heard or practiced unfortunately and I'll share those in just a minute. But I want you to get we're gonna put off negative speech and then we're gonna start thinking. Instead of not thinking much about my words I'm gonna renew my mind and I'm gonna realize the power and the consequences of what comes out of my mouth and then what I'm gonna put on is I'm gonna put on positive encouraging speech. Here's some examples of negative speech. Sarcasm, put downs, innuendos, general negativity, outbursts of anger, criticism, labeling, abusive speech, cussing, swearing, taking the Lord's name in vain, slander, gossip, coarse jokes.
Should I go on? Now here's the deal. You need to understand the power in your words.
Proverbs 18 21, very powerful, tells us there's life and death in the power of our words and those who love it will eat its fruit. I mean if I could pass a microphone around and some of you could tell me a moment with one of your parents or with a teacher or with a coach who said something to you and it brought death to you. You're a loser. I wish we never had you. You'll never amount to anything. Get out of this house. You're too short.
You're too fat. You'll never make it. I don't love you. Remember?
Remember that? Words are not, you know that sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. Liar, liar, liar, pants on fire. You can absorb a lot more sticks and stones than you can ever. The power, there's life and death in the power of words.
What comes out of your mouth brings life to the people around you or it kills them. We could get another microphone and we could talk about the teacher or the coach or the friend or the person who said no you ought to go out for the team. I think you'd be good. You know it's amazing how you think. Have you ever thought of being an engineer? Oh no, no, you should apply to a college.
You can make it and now you got your PhD. Or you know something? You pick up those songs pretty quickly. Why don't you try playing this instrument? You're great with people.
Have you ever thought about being a counselor? Hey, we need you. And you know what? Someone believed in you before you believed in yourself and they gave you words of life and words of hope. Be positive. Don't wound with your words. Why?
Because there's power. You've been listening to part one of Chip's Message, the power of spiritual training in the transformation process. He'll be right back with his application on this teaching 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, in this series you've been pretty direct about some of the struggles people deal with on a day-to-day basis. As true as that is, not everyone's facing major crises but there 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 kind of power and 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 are 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've 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 4 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 suggestion.
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 a copy encouraging one another on your new journey of life change. Well, now here's Chip with a final thought. As we close today's program, I talked about being diligent. And the apostle Paul always takes the negative and replaces it with the positive and basically told us, don't be lazy, but work hard, stop stealing, which is basically a shortcut.
And he says, work hard in order that you might have something to give to those that are in need. And the overarching principle there is don't take a shortcut. And it's not just stealing money. We steal time, we steal relationships. We just think there's little shortcuts we can take.
And what we know down deep is it never works that way. Diligence is a tough one to develop. In fact, one of the fruits of the spirit is self discipline, you know, doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. And I don't know about you, but I've met very few people in my life where that comes easily. And I get so bombarded by all the stuff to do, at least in my life and with the people I'm around, I unconsciously feel like it's impossible. And I shared something today that I think might be a great exercise for you. The first time I did it, it took me less than a half hour, but it changed the entire course of my life.
I was 28 years old thinking deeply about the kind of things we talked about today. And I still remember pulling over at that Dairy Queen in Crandall, Texas, and I got out a napkin and I made a to be list, not a to do list, a to be list. And let me encourage you, what would happen if you did that?
I mean, not all that you have to do, but if you just, I mean, put a little line down the middle of the paper and on the left you put to do and on the right you put to be. And just you said, I want to be a man or a woman of God. You know, I want to be a great dad or a great mom. You know, I want to be a great friend. One of mine, this was 30 some years ago, I want to be in great shape.
You know, I just kind of saw, you know, it seemed like people's lives kind of went downhill and their energy and their life. And I just, I want to be in great shape. I want to be a person who's generous. And so I wrote those things down and the key areas of my life. And then I began to plug in what would it take to be a man of God?
What would it take to be a good, a really great husband? And I put those in my schedule. And did I keep them 100% of the time? Are you kidding me?
No way. But I kept them a lot more. And then that's where my small group kicked in.
Because instead of just saying, how you doing? Well, I got 133 things to do. And I did 120 yesterday. Now I've got 150 today.
I mean, isn't that how life works? It rearranged my whole life around who I wanted to become. Can I encourage you take 30 minutes and make it to be list? You know, a great way to stay engaged and connected to Chip and Living on the Edge is with the Chip Ingram app. You'll get free access to all of Chip's recent messages, his message notes, and much more. Not only that, but it couldn't be easier to call or email directly from the app. We'll be with us again next time when Chip continues his series, Yes, You Really Can Change. Until then, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.
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