Momentum - What is True Spirituality?, Part 2

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions spiritually? You wish down deep you could have a fresh, real, new experience with God? Well, let me tell you, today on Living on the Edge, we're going to discover what the Bible says about authentic spirituality. How you cannot just know about it, but experience it, starting today.

If that interests you, stick around. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge features the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram on this daily discipleship program. I'm Dave Drouie, and this program, Chip, continues his series, Momentum, How to Ignite Your Faith, by revealing the keys to living a life of true spirituality 24-7.

At the end of the teaching, Chip will be here in studio to share some additional ways to make real progress on your spiritual journey, so be sure to stay with us for that. Well, let's join him now for part two of his message from Romans chapter 12. Your father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray. Our father, foreign concept.

Judaism of the day had the sense of God's majesty and his glory and his transcendence, but they had missed the truth of scripture, of his fatherhood, of his intimacy, of his approachability. And since God is your father, he has a dream. He's got a plan for your life. How many people, by the way, just are parents in here? You got a kid.

Wow, awful lot of us. If you don't know this yet, it's only because they're real small, but your kids have a powerful, powerful role to play in your life. They will be the source of greatest joy you will ever experience on this planet, and they will be the source of the greatest heartache you will ever have.

Far more than any conflict with your mate, this person that's a part of each of you can break your heart, can break down communication, can say things and do things and live in ways that will bring you the deepest, deepest sorrow you'll ever experience. And by contrast, man, when your kids want to be around you, I mean, they're little, and they say, Daddy, can I crawl up in your lap? Yeah. Daddy, what? I love you.

I mean, you're right. And I will tell you that even as they grow up and get older and have kids of their own, there's few things sweeter in all of life. And you have a dream for your kids, and I have a dream for my kids. And when you're young, like, they're like one or two years old, and your young parents, like, I want them to be an astronaut, a nuclear physicist. I want my son to, you know, cure cancer, or, you know, I want him to be the CEO of, and you have all these lofty what they do. And then they get to be like little kids and eight, nine, ten years old, and you're thinking, you know, I'd like him to be a nice boy, nice girl. Then they get to be teenagers.

I don't care what they do. I mean, they can deliver trash, but if they loved God, if they were a person of integrity, if they had character, if we had a great relationship, I could care less where they work. Oh God, give them a good vocation, help them to put food on the table, put them in their gifts, but oh God, what I really want. See, what you're really concerned about, the older you get, is not what they do, but who they become. God's dream for you is about who you become.

When you understand that he's father, God's dream for his children is to make you like his son. He's not a force. See, we got this idea that there's like these invisible rules or principles or duties, and when I violate those, oh sorry, I messed up.

No, no, no, no. You broke your father's heart. You stepped away from relationship. You pulled away from his hug. He loves you.

He cares for you. For reasons I don't understand, the one that created all that there is has given you the opportunity to either bring him joy or bring him sorrow. You can grieve the Holy Spirit. That's a personal word. When I live in ways that are not good for me, it hurts God's heart because he's my father.

You miss that. You fall into religious activity, external rules. So first and foremost, you get an accurate picture of God, but second, true spirituality is built on the principle of relationship. It's not the external keeping of religious duties.

Now, you may end up doing some of those things out of love for a whole different set of reasons. It's not about keeping of external rules and to see these five things or those seven things. It's not that there aren't any things to do, but it's the difference between a child that you say to them, okay, don't go outside the yard. It's a four-year-old or five-year-old because the cars are very dangerous, and you put a little picket fence, but they can get over it, and they, now for all their life, I don't go outside the yard. I don't go outside the yard.

I'm better than everybody else. You know, some other kids, they go outside the yard. I don't go outside the yard. I stay inside the yard. Aren't I a good person?

I'm a really wonderful person because I don't go outside the yard. I have to go outside the yard, and they keep the external rules, but they never go talk to the parent who said to go outside the yard, and they totally forgot that the whole reason for not going outside the yard was I love you, and I care for you, and like I don't want you to get hit by a car. That's a lot different than someone who says, you know, I could go outside the yard if I wanted to, and I could look both ways, and you know what, my father wants me to stay in here because he cares for me. My parents want me to be in this place, and so it may look a little bit the same, but the motives are completely different. When Jesus was asked, you're so different.

You're a radical teacher. You're not religious, so what's it all about? There's 613 or 14 commands in the Old Testament.

I mean, net it down for us. What's it all about? Jesus would say, here's what it's all about. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, the most vivid example, if you have a Bible with you, open it if you will.

It's toward the back, Philippians. This is the most religious man that ever became a Christian, the most moral man. He was far from God. He was so religious, he thought he was doing God's will when he was killing Christians, and someone challenged him and basically said, you know what, you don't measure up religiously like we do. Listen to the priorities of the Apostle Paul. Beginning about verse 4, he says, if someone thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I far more, and then he gives us his pedigree, circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

In other words, I'm squeaky clean, I follow all the rules, all the time, in the right way, I had it down. But whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to, listen to his focus, the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things, and I consider them rubbish.

Literally, the word is dung, or another good translation would be poo-poo. I mean, that's what he's saying. It's in the text. He says, all of that former religious activity, impressing people, keeping the rules, compared that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which is through faith and Christ, the righteousness that comes from God that is by faith. Now notice his focus. I want to know Christ, not earn God's favor, not avoid some fearful, wrathful God, not discover a formula, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of suffering, to become like him in his death, if somehow to obtain to the resurrection from the dead. And then notice it's a process, not that I've already obtained it, I've already been made perfect or mature, but I press on.

Notice the focus. I take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I don't consider myself yet to having take hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward or pressing forward to what lies ahead, I reach to lay hold of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. And you know what that upward call is? I want to know God.

It's a relationship. We've missed this. We've taken Christianity and made it some little moral code. A good Christian is people that don't cuss and don't do certain other things and a little bit nicer at work. Oh I'm sorry, that was a real Christian thing to do.

Sorry. The Jesus of the New Testament was a strong, passionate, righteous, and when he confronted things, he actually got very angry about some things to change the world. He calls us to follow him. True spirituality begins with a accurate picture of God. True spirituality is built on the principle of relationship is the core. And if you want a good definition of it, it literally is loving God and loving people 24-7 from the heart. That's what it means to be spiritual. When you are loving God and loving people from the heart with the right motive, that's when the Father looks down and goes, oh man, boy climb up into my lap. That's when the Father is most pleased with you.

Now the problem is it raises the issues, you know, we can get fired up and say, okay I want to love God and love people 24-7 from the heart. How? What's it look like? How do you do it? How do you get a handle on it?

What specifically, what's the pathway? I mean, show me, you know, Jesus you said I'm the way, the word is Hadas, the word is, it means a street or a road or a path. I'm the way, the truth and the life.

So would you show me what is the way? And the Apostle Paul would pin the way for us. Romans 12 provides us with a relational grace-paced pathway of true spirituality. In Romans 12, after 11 chapters of grace, he's going to tell us what God did for us, where we've fallen, how he's taken care of us, how he's forgiven us, all the power that's available. And then in chapter 12, he's going to say, let me give you the pathway, the profile of what it means to be an authentic follower of Christ.

Notice first that it's about relationships. Verse 1 is about your relationship with God. Verse 2, your relationship with the world or the world system, the cosmos, that's not the physical world, that's the the worldview energized by the evil one, Satan, who wants to seduce your soul from God. And then there's a relationship, notice verse 3 through 8 with yourself. In verses 9 through 13, you have a relationship with believers, those that are in Christ. And then in verses 14 through 21, you have a relationship with unbelievers. If you would, with your pen, I want you to circle just those relationships. Go back through and where it says God, world, yourself, believers, unbelievers.

Circle it in your notes. Because I want, you got to get this. And left to ourselves, we always drift into religiosity, into keeping rules, and how am I doing? We actually want a scorecard. We want a cosmic scorekeeper, and we want him to grade on the curve, but he doesn't.

And so there's a response to each one of these. We're gonna learn what God wants the most from you. And what we're gonna learn, what he wants, is for you to offer your body, your physical body, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to him.

That is your spiritual service of worship. That's what he really wants. He wants you, not your money, not your religious activity.

He wants you. And then we're gonna look at the life of Abraham because he blazes the trail. And we're gonna learn that surrender to God is the channel through which God's biggest and best blessings flow. It's super counterintuitive, but we're gonna learn by coming to God and surrendering all that I am and all that I have, God, because he's a good God, he's a father, he pours blessing into our life with him, relationships in every area. And we'll learn from Abraham what it looks like and how to do it. We're gonna learn that there's this world system, and we need to stop allowing ourselves to be conformed to the world, but we need to be transformed not by trying hard, but by the renewing of our mind, by thinking differently. And when we think differently and our mind is renewed with truth, then we will understand what the will of God is, that we'll taste it, we'll prove it, and we'll actually get the good acceptable and perfect good things God has for us. And we'll look at the life of Daniel who lived in an amazing pagan, pagan world. And as a young teenager all the way through his 80s, he figured out how to not allow the world to press him into its mold, but he lived this amazing life, and what he learned was how to get God's best.

And that's what you'll learn. And we'll talk about having a sober self-assessment. You know verse 3 says, don't think too highly of yourself, but think as you ought or with a sober judgment. God made you with strengths, with weaknesses. He's deposited spiritual gifts. You have a DNA that no other person in all the world has. You'll never discover your calling of what he wants you to do until you quit denying who you are and trying to be someone else and trying to impress other people.

We all do it. And we're gonna look at the life of Moses. Moses at one point thought he was bigger than he was and failed, and later he didn't think he was good enough and he almost failed. And we're gonna learn from his life how to get an accurate sober assessment where you can look not just in the physical mirror but into the mirror of your soul and say, God thanks for making me the way I am. I'm glad I'm this tall, with this color of eyes, with these strengths, with this personality that came out of this background. And I know there's a whole big you know painting and all the commercials that say I need to look like that and act like that. But you know what?

No one can be me. And when you discover that and lean into it, you will find a joy and acceptance about how to come to grips with the real you that you have never had in your life. Next we'll look at our relationships with fellow believers. And we'll learn that far from Christianity or being a Christian coming and sitting in a room and hearing some person talk and playing a little music and saying, well I got that done today. Let's see, I ate, that's important, went to work, church, okay, got that one done. And it was a little more interesting.

That wasn't bad. And you're gonna realize, no, no, no, it's about doing life. Let love be without hypocrisy. Literally it's take off your mask. Abhor what is evil. Come clean.

You don't have to protect and hide and fake it. Be devoted to one another and brotherly love. And you'll learn to serve and love. And we'll look at the life of Jonathan and David in a relationship where they peel back the layers and they're heart to heart and face to face and devoted at deep levels. And they experience this connection. And you'll learn how to experience authentic community.

And then finally we'll look at the most supernatural of all. And by the way, this one can't happen until the others do. Because in a fallen world you get knocked, don't you? You have mates that walk out on you. You have bosses that betray you.

You have quote what you thought were Christian friends or Christian business people who you're left with the debt and they left with the money. We're all gonna get a raw deal. It's a fallen world. Really bad things happen to good people and what bothers me almost as much or more is really good things happen to some bad people for a season. And you're gonna have to discover what are you gonna do about the evil that's aimed at you. And you can whine and complain and not forgive and be bitter and you become a little prisoner of your own little world. Or you can bless those who persecute you. You can bless and curse not. You cannot be overcome with evil but you'll learn how to overcome evil with good. And you'll just choose to do it.

You won't feel like doing it. You'll be with a group of people now and by now you'll get to know really one another and some stuff you've held on to from years will get on the table and God will break the prison that some of you are in and you will do good for some people that have done you wrong. And you'll forgive from the heart and you will be free and people will wonder what in the world happened to you. Because what you're happening is you're just an authentic, regular, ordinary, normal Christian. You're an r12 Christian surrendered to God separate from the world's values sober and self-assessment serving in love and supernaturally responding to evil with good. That's the journey we're on. That's true spirituality. Now here's the deal. Everything I just shared is going to be an exciting journey but right now if I could have like red lights flashing in the back beep beep it may be some you know like those big trucks like when you go backwards there's a warning turn the page here's the warning very very important because we're human because we like to control because we want to know where we're at the danger is we will make the r12 profile or pathway we'll just make it a new set of rules and it'll become our new set of externals and we'll try to do it in our own energy r12 is not trying a try-hard moral code to live up to but a faith response to what God has already done listen to that let's let that wash over you a faith response to what God has already done if this was like if you could imagine this as a number line and the book of Romans was actually an open book and I could stand right here and God would supernaturally open the book of Romans I'd say come on you guys we'd walk through chapter one two and three and I would say if I would summarize all of it this is the problem of all people of all time we miss the mark we know what's right and we don't do it we know what's wrong do it anyway we try hard we fail and God is an absolutely holy God and it says for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God the glory of God says anyone to have a relationship with the holy God your moral character motives needs to be a perfect score of 100 all the time and God says no one does that how do you solve that problem being religious doesn't do it and so in chapters four and five if we move through the book is God's solution to the problem of sin is salvation the word salvation means deliverance and chapters four and five are about God the Son Jesus coming to the earth living an absolutely perfect life being convicted of nothing being the central person of all time and history and he would die upon a cross being fully God and fully man and when he died upon the cross he took on your sin and my sin once and for all and he paid for it but he atoned for it it means he covered it and so he took the first three chapters and he covers it and the only way you can receive that forgiveness that's an absolute free gift is by faith God forgive me I repent of my way of thinking I admit that I've sinned and I ask you right now to give me the gift of the life of Christ to forgive my sin and he says he will when that happens the Spirit of God enters your life and so we move into chapter six seven and eight and the theologians call this sanctification or how do you live this new life in freedom and in power and chapter six says whatever happened to Jesus actually happened to you you died with him you've been raised with him chapter seven says as long as you're in this physical body you're gonna have a battle between the flesh and the spirit and it's gonna be three steps forward progress and then you're gonna really blow it doesn't mean you're not a Christian it just means you're human and you stay on the path in chapter eight will say thanks be to God but there's no condemnation therefore for those that are in Christ and the Christian life isn't hard it's absolutely impossible and chapter eight will teach you and me that the only one that can live it is Christ but now that his spirit lives inside of you your only goal you abide and as you abide and surrender to the Spirit of God and are in the Word of God in the community of God's people the life of Christ will be produced in and through you he lives his life through you that's true spirituality I look back out of that book and God says now here's how the pathway for followers I want you to surrender all that you are and all you have to me so you can get my best I want you to turn from the world have your mind renewed in such a way that I will show you my will for you and give it to you I want you to discover how I made you I want you to get connected with people to get loved and give love and then in a world that is absolutely evil until I come back I want you to stand with me and say to them from the heart without being a passive doormat God forgive them they know not what they do but in strength and in power the word is meekness or gentleness we blaze a trail where we don't get evil for evil but we return good and in that power as we've seen historically it brings about transformation in people in groups and in cultures returning good for evil what a powerful testimony we can have when we live and love like Jesus did well Chip will be back with a final thought but before he is just a quick word about this series in momentum chip develops his outline for Romans chapter 12 and shows you how to live out a life of real faith no matter what's going on learning how to overcome the evil aimed at you and understanding how to give God what he wants the most is guaranteed to make a difference in your life starting today access chips entire series momentum how to ignite your faith with the chip and grow map or download the free mp3s from our website Living on the Edge org chip so much has changed over the last year and a half or so and it's messed with people in a lot of different ways some of the tough fallout is that many are struggling with issues of faith some are stuck some are doubting what are we doing to help people who need to reignite their faith walk with Jesus well Dave you know we create resources that are specially designed to help people in different seasons and windows in their life I've got a very close friend that I've learned so much from his name is Lance Witt and he developed a resource it's called leaving ordinary behind 25 days to an extraordinary faith it's a devotional what I find when people need to get back on board they need to cultivate the habit again and sometimes something big is overwhelming this is a devotional you read a little bit you interact a little bit 25 days that will reignite your spiritual life that'll help you get unstuck that will take you from where you're at to begin to get a fresh wind of God's Spirit in your soul and in your heart this is a great resource for people that are struggling right now this brand new devotional written by chips friend and fellow pastor Lance Witt is called leaving ordinary behind 25 days to an extraordinary faith to check out the discounts while they last go to Living on the Edge org or give us a call at triple 8 3 3 3 6 0 0 3 app listeners tap special offers again the resource we're talking about is our brand new devotional called leave ordinary behind 25 days to an extraordinary faith well now here's chip with his application as we close today's program and we finish this first message of what is true spirituality here's my challenge I really want to invite you to stay with me on this whole series I have to tell you a quick little story I was actually in Nigeria and I was teaching probably the largest crowd I've ever taught it was about 60,000 people with a big celebration and they gave me this assignment what is a disciple and I found myself teaching through Romans 12 where much of what you heard was birthed and then God used it in an amazing way but then what I learned was you know as I gave you the overview in the teaching today you know I talked about being surrendered to God separate from the world's values having a sober self-assessment serving in love and then supernaturally responding to evil with good I mean it was amazing as I taught that there what I saw God do and it birthed the series called true spirituality and then as that has gone literally around the world and we've done some exciting things here in American a number of churches we realized that people needed clothes on it you know what I mean it's one thing to say oh I want to be surrendered to God but when you see the life of Abraham you see what it looks like or I want to be separate from the world but when you see a teenager like Daniel actually live it out I mean it really is amazing or when you talk about having a sober self-assessment and someone like Moses steps up and he didn't see himself accurately and then he does here's what I want you to know if you'll stay with me we're gonna walk through Old Testament characters and we're gonna put clothes on these concepts in a way where God will show you how to experience true spirituality you know we all have situations in our life where we wish we were more consistent a vibrant dynamic walk with God momentum is a series we're based on what God has done in people in the past we can take those things and by his grace imitate their life in these areas and God will show you how to live it out every day right where you live this is a great series to get momentum in your life at Living on the Edge we want you to know about an easy way to listen to our extended teaching podcast here chip anytime on Amazon's Alexa echo and echo dot just say Alexa open Living on the Edge and you'll hear that day's extended teaching anytime you want well for chip and everyone here this is Dave Drewey saying thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge you