Hope of Nations - How to Live for Christ Now, Part 2

Every coach follows one key principle. When things get chaotic and confusing, go back to the simple fundamentals. In this final message of the series, there are nine specific ways that we're going to give you as a follower of Christ to live in the midst of chaos and upheaval all around you that will help you be light and salt in the midst of a world that desperately, desperately needs you. Don't miss today's program. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Drouin and Chip's our Bible teacher for this international discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians.

In this program, we're wrapping up our new series led by our guest teacher, John Dickerson, called Hope of Nations. Chip's motivation for asking John to share these messages was to open our eyes to where we are morally as a society and the steps we can take to protect our Christian values. Be sure to stick around after John's teaching to hear a few words from Chip about this message and recap what we've heard in this series.

You don't want to miss it. Well, let's get to the second half of John's message titled How to Live for Christ Now as he continues working through nine ways we can respond to this rapidly changing world. Well, there's a second way for us to balance grace and truth in a divided and shaking world, and that's to train our young that we will be intentional about training our young people. In other words, we're not going to bury our heads in the sand. We're going to be aware of what's going on, and we're going to raise our kids knowing that they will go out into universities and workplaces and into a world where Christianity will increasingly be mocked and laughed at and scorned.

A world where sometimes people, if they hear that you're a Christian, they assume you're bigoted and backwards and prejudiced just because they've prejudged that, ironically, okay? But that's the world that they'll inherit whether or not we like to think about it, and so how do we respond? Well, we can raise them to know God's truth and to hold God's truth in a gracious and graceful way so that they're prepared to thrive for Christ in such a world. And so what's the best thing we can do for our kids and grandkids knowing the world they're going to live in is going to be divided and shaking?

I don't like to think about it. I get that, but it is, so how do we prepare them for that? Well, the best thing we can do for them is make sure they have a relationship with Christ so that the Holy Spirit, who's a comforter and a counselor, lives inside them and is with them in every crisis and situation they'll go through. And the best thing we can do is train them to know that this book comes from the heart of God, and it leads to freedom. It leads to genuine equality and human dignity and prosperity, and that if we train them in that, then even when we're not there to hold them, they'll have the comforter of God inside them, and they'll have the Word of God to guide them through decisions that we might not be around to walk them through. There's a third way for us to live full of grace and truth as a church and as families, and it's to be known for doing good, to be known for doing good. There's a book of the Bible that's written to a group of Christians who were a hated minority in their culture.

Now, if you've been out on the coastal cities or if you're in university right now or if you've worked in the mainstream media where I've worked, this may sound familiar to you. They lived in a hypersexual pagan society where Christians were a despised minority. And this is the book of 1 Peter is written to Christians who live in that context. And as the world around us changes and there's times where we realize, whoa, this is what it feels like to be prejudged or hated. God has already instructed us how to respond, and there's a lot of depth and nuance to this. So I'm going to try to oversimplify here, but here's a key verse in 1 Peter 2.

It says, live such good lives among the pagans. That's a good Bible word. That just means the non-Christians live such good lives among the people who don't believe in Jesus that even though they accuse you of doing wrong. So if you're doing your best to serve Jesus and out of the blue, someone falsely accuses you of something, it's going to hurt.

But it doesn't necessarily need to surprise you. That will happen in life sometimes. And even though they accuse you of doing wrong, live such a good life with your actions that they'll see your good deeds.

That's actions again. And in the future, when God returns and he reveals how everything actually was, they'll glorify God and say, wow, that Jesus follower kept being good to me even when I was being a total jerk to them. And so God says, here's how you respond when you're hated or when you're mistreated in culture for your Christian beliefs is you respond by doing good. You get a cup of coffee for that person.

You do a physical act of service for that person who is not treating you the right way. The word of God, if we'll look to it, shows us here's how you live full of grace and full of truth. It doesn't come naturally to us, but the Holy Spirit's in us to empower us to actually live this way. There's a fourth way that we balance grace and truth, and that is that we dignify all people as image bearers of God.

All people, no matter what labels they put on themselves, no matter if they consider us their enemy. Yes, all are broken by sin, but all are made in the image of God and so have eternal worth and value to God. This is a uniquely Christian value. Most major societies in world history had a set of truth and ideology that they said, if you disagree with us, you either go to prison or you get killed. What's unique about Christianity when it's biblical Christianity is how we treat the people who disagree with us. And one of the things as our society continues to divide is we're seeing a complete loss of dignity toward people who disagree. Because whether or not we realize that that was a uniquely Christian value, that you could disagree and be dignified about it.

And we will see our neighbors increasingly treat each other in non-dignified ways. And sometimes people will behave in non-dignified ways, but we'll continue to dignify them. Not because of how we feel, not because they deserve it necessarily, but because our book says they're made in the image of God, and so we'll dignify them. They're endowed by their Creator with the rights that they have. Not because of how we feel, but because of their Creator.

I was reading this last week, a concentration camp survivor, his name is Victor Frankel. One of my favorite quotes from him, he said this, The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. What I love about that quote is it really summarizes this reality that we can't control what our neighbors will do. We can't control what North Korea does. We can't control the global economy or American social divides. We can't control that stuff.

But we can control our response when those things bump into us and touch us. And so what our responsibility is as followers of Christ is to always be asking, God, how can I be full of your grace and full of your truth in this situation? And here's the thing, if we get serious about being ambassadors of grace and truth, we will have times when we struggle and say, God, in this situation, how do I be full of grace and truth?

And if you find yourself struggling with that, you get an A plus, OK? Because that means you're actually making an effort and you're getting it, that we're here on a mission. And that's the next of these nine things that help us stay balanced in grace and truth is that we behave as ambassadors.

We behave as ambassadors. As I mentioned, there's scriptures under each of these points. The passage under this says that when sin separated humanity from God, God's here, humanity's here, sin's in the middle. Christ came to bridge the gap. And it says the followers of Christ, we are now God's reconcilers. He has entrusted to us, the church, the message of reconciliation, that all can be saved through faith in Christ if they'll repent and believe. He's entrusted that message of reconciliation to us. And so we are, therefore, God's ambassadors.

An ambassador is a diplomat who goes to a foreign culture. And so we balance grace and truth knowing, OK, some of my neighbors who don't believe in Jesus or God or who were raised in the church and have turned away from it, they may have views of God and the truth in me that are very negative. And I can go to them not in a defensive way, but as an ambassador behaving diplomatically to show them through my actions what the heart of God actually is. Even as I explain unapologetically, here's what God's truth says, whether or not we like it, this is what God's truth says. We balance grace and truth as ambassadors. And the seventh on your list of nine is that we remain calm. We remain calm. This is true when there are political divisions going around.

This is true if there's war, if there's economic recessions, whatever happens. Jesus taught his followers every day to pray this very simple prayer. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. In other words, God, you're big, you're in control of everything. You made the atoms, the molecules, the galaxies, Tyrannosaurus Rexes, humpback whales, humanity, you made it all. And nothing surprises you today. And so I orient my reality not around my Facebook feed or around news headlines, around what my co-workers are saying or my kids are doing.

I orient my reality around my creator who's unchanging and who's good. And I know, God, that you'll provide for me today. And so that's why we pray, give us today our daily bread. Daily bread means, God, give me what I need today. And sometimes what we need today is bread. Sometimes what we need today is peace. Sometimes what we need today is freedom from anxiety. But as we understand the principle of orienting our reality around God, trusting him for our daily bread, it means we don't have to worry so much about tomorrow or five years from now because we understand that our Father is already in tomorrow, providing what we'll need tomorrow. And he's already in five years from now, providing what we'll need five years from now. And so we can, as followers of Christ, remain calm even if the world really does shift and shake around us.

And these last two have to do with our sense of mission. This is the way that Jesus lived. If you think about Jesus' life, he was completely gracious and forgiving and loving, moments where he had little children sit on his lap, moments where he touched the lepers that no one else would touch, moments where he dignified women and people of races who were outcasts in the culture he lived in, and he showed that God dignifies them. He was full of grace. He also had moments where he stood up to people and he said, here's what the truth is. He was full of grace and he was full of truth. And while he was very gentle, he lived with an internal sense of invincibility, that he knew that the Father had called him to earth on a mission, and that until he had accomplished his mission, no power on earth or in hell could touch him.

You can live the same way because you've been called on the exact same mission to show the heart of the same Father. You can be gentle and gracious, but you can have an internal spinal column of steel, knowing that God has called you here on a mission and you don't have to fear anything because the only thing you fear is God and he's on your side. And you live knowing, I'm invincible.

Until God finishes his purpose for me on earth, I'm invincible, not because of my strength, but because of his strength to protect me and fulfill his purposes through me. And so you know you don't have to live by fear anymore. And when the world changes around us, so much of the hatred and the anger we see around us is people are afraid.

People are afraid of what's going to happen to them or happen in the world, and so they're lashing out in fear. I love the verse in Hebrews. It says that all humanity lives as slaves to the fear of death.

The richest people, they live as slaves to the fear of death. Everyone does, but it says when you place your faith in Christ, he sets you free from that slavery to the fear of death. As a follower of Christ, I know that when my body dies, I'm going to wake up in God's presence in a glorified body. And for me, the worst my eternity will ever be is right now in this world.

So it only gets better. So we don't sadistically look forward to death, but we're not afraid of death. And so we go through this world on a mission, knowing until I accomplish God's purpose for me on earth, I'm invincible, and I can be fearless because my Father is that strong. So we're here for a purpose. God sent us to show his grace and his truth to people he wants in heaven.

You guys with me about that? Awesome. I want to tell you one closing story that illustrates to me the ability to save people by staying true to the book and doing it even if it's controversial. On January 15, 2009, U.S. Airways Flight 1549 took off out of LaGuardia Airport in New York City. And as the plane was climbing with 155 people on board, it ran into a flock of birds. Now, this happens often when planes are taking off, but these were really big birds.

These were Canadian geese. And these huge birds actually knocked out all the engines on the plane. The plane completely lost power and started going down. This plane was going to crash. It was bound to crash.

The only way it could go was down. And as the pilot looks around and scans around for a place to make an emergency landing, he looks to the highways and he sees that the highways are full of cars because it's New York City. He can't land there. He looks for some land and he sees that all the land is taken up with these huge buildings because it's New York City. He can't land the plane there. And that's when he sees a river.

He sees the Hudson River. And he made a split-second decision that would actually be criticized by many in the aviation industry. He decided that the only way to save the lives of the 155 people on board was to ditch the plane in a crash landing on the Hudson River. And in his decision in that split-second, he saved the lives of 155 people who should have died. And the thing for me, my best friend from high school, he's a pilot for American Airlines.

And I've got so much respect for this guy because I know how hard my best friend works for American. This year, my buddy, he got shifted to a different plane and he spent nine months of this year learning the book, learning the manual, training on simulators for just the one specific plane that he'll now fly. He's flown thousands of hours in other planes, but before he flies with any passengers on this new plane, nine months of training. And so this guy with all that training, all that experience, completely unexpected, his world shakes and his world is going down.

And in the moment, he knows exactly what to do as a man of the book on how to operate his airplane. And he decides he'll ditch the plane in the Hudson River and miraculously, all 155 people survived. I love this picture of one of the survivors because it reminds us that these 155 people on board, it's not just a number. Every one of them was a brother, a dad, an uncle, a mom, a grandma, a sister. Every one of them was a person like you with a job, maybe with some pets, with a life. And every one of them was saved because of a person who in a moment of crisis knew exactly what to do. To me, it's an inspiring picture when our world shakes, when it seems like our world's going down, to know that we've been sent here for a purpose and that if we'll stay true to the book, we'll be part of a great rescue, even in situations that seem like there's no hope. God sent us to show his grace and truth to people he wants in heaven. How will those people get to heaven? God in his providence and plan will use you and me to connect that person you thought of and the person I'm thinking of to the heart of God.

Our role is very simply to show them God's grace and his truth. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. John Dickerson has been our guest teacher for this program, How to Live for Christ Now, from his series Hope of Nations.

Chip will be here with us in just a minute to share his application for this message. As you look around, are you filled with anxiety? Are the instability and chaos overwhelming? If you're looking for tangible hope, not only for yourself but for the future of our society, this series is for you. John explains where we can find true hope in a world spinning out of control.

Matthew chapter 12 says, In his name the nations will put their hope. For a limited time, the resources for Hope of Nations are discounted. For ordering and pricing details, visit livingontheedge.org. App listeners tap Special Offers. Well, Chip, as I was listening to John's message today, I was thinking that literally about a million people are listening right now, and those people have real needs.

As Living on the Edge continues to create new programming and develop resources that speak to those needs, the expenses of the ministry are a monthly issue. I think it's fair to say that a lot of people may have considered partnering with us financially, but then they might think that if they can't give something substantial, their gift won't really make much of a difference. You know, really, only about 2% of all the people that listen don't listen, partner with us financially in any way. And I think sometimes it's because they just don't think what I could do would make a difference. But I just want to encourage some of you that feel like, you know, hey, you know, boy, God's really using this in my life, but I'm just not in a position. Maybe you could do something really small, but God could take your small gift and do something really big with it. So, you know, thanks so much, and appreciate anything God leads you to do. Thanks, Chip. Well, as you prayerfully consider your role in this ministry, I want to remind you that no gift is insignificant.

Your dollars go places that you, on your own, might never go. So please consider partnering with us right now. You can send a gift by calling us at 888-333-6003, or if you prefer, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org. We greatly appreciate whatever the Lord leads you to give. Well, now here's Chip with some final thoughts from today's talk. As we wrap up today's program and wrap up this whole series, I would like to just remind you of those nine manifestos that we as followers of Christ can all embrace. Number one, we will remain rooted to the Christian Scriptures. In a world where truth is a variable, God's truth will be our truth. Number two, we will train our young.

In a society that's educated in ignorance and blindness, we will teach our kids the truth of God's Word and the truth of history. Number three, we will be known for doing good. We're not going to get mad. We're going to love deeply, and we're going to be helpers and healers. Number four, we will dignify all people as image bearers of God.

We'll refuse to attack. We will treat everyone with dignity. Number five, we will be ambassadors.

In a post-Christian world, we will be ambassadors to foreign tribes that think differently, act differently, believe differently, and we will represent Christ and represent Him well. Number six, we will love our persecutors. In a world where opponents are vilified and crucified, we will love our persecutors. Number seven, we will reclaim calm. In a world competing for limited resources and driven by fear and unrest and scarcity, we will be calm and confident that our Father will give us all that we need. Number eight, we will be invincible. In a world where we are discriminated against, prejudiced, and possibly persecuted, we will trust God's protection. And number nine, we will be fearless. In a world divided by violence, terrorism, and war, we will be fearless. Perfect love casts out all fear.

Those are not pie in the sky. Those are things that every believer can do by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of God. But it will require our part. It will require being men and women of God's word. It will require families meeting together. It will mean that we'll have to do life in community and help one another, and it means that we have to be on mission, not separate ourselves, not run from the world, not attack that which is evil, but allow evil to be overcome by good.

That's God's agenda. It's more than possible. We can do more than survive. We can thrive.

Let's do it together. That's an encouraging word, Chip. Thanks. In case you missed some of the points Chip just reviewed, they're pulled straight from the message notes, which is a tool available for every program. This resource includes the message outline, all scripture references, and lots of fill-ins to help you remember what you're learning. They really help you get the most out of every program. These message notes are a quick download at livingontheedge.org under the Broadcasts tab. App listeners just tap Fill-In Notes. Well, until next time, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.