What Now? What Next? - Christ Not Causes, Part 1

We are living in a dramatic time of history. I've spoken with pastors and leaders all across the world, and they have been asking me two pivotal questions.

What now and what next? With all that's happening in the world, what are we to do in our churches? What are we to do in our families as we see the very foundations of Christianity crumbling across the world?

That's this series, and that's today on Living on the Edge. Welcome 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. I'm Dave Gruhey, and we're excited you've joined us as Chip begins teaching a brand new series addressing the very concerns he just brought up. After what our world has been through recently, it seems like the church at large is at a crossroads.

Will it cave into the pressures from society, or will it commit to boldly share the gospel? Over the next several programs, Chip will share six key attitudes every believer must adopt in order to continue making disciples. Now before we begin, a quick listener note. Chip taught these messages at an outdoor venue.

So throughout this series, you may hear some echoes and other ambient sounds. Well, here's Chip to kick off our series, What Now? What Next?

with his talk, Christ Not Causes. The world has never been through in our lifetimes what it's in right now. And as I've talked with multiple friends and leaders, and I mean, not here, but all around the world, they keep asking me and I'm asking them, so what now? What next? What are we going to do? What now? What next? And that's a big question also for the church. And I like to take a crack together with you and address that issue. And one of the little tools that I've used personally and we use at our organization, it's called the four helpful list.

It's in your notes. And if you're asking yourself some of those confusions like, hey, what now? What should I do? I mean, what's coming up? What's next? Make a list and in a column, write down in a column, this is what's wrong, just in your personal life and what's going on. Family, finances, the world. Make another column and say, this is what's right. And list all the things that are right. You'll be surprised how many things are right that you forget about because the wrong feels so loud. And then you make a column that says, what's confusing? It's hard to make a decision or know what to do until you get clear.

And then the last little column is, what's missing? Often the key to your future, the key is there's a person missing or some information missing or something that's missing. And what I'd like to do is flip that and walk through that process, not micro, my life or yours, but macro. But I think if I got a group of you together and I said, you know, when you think of the world right now, what's wrong? I would hear things like, wow, morality, decline of the church, 68 to 70 percent of our own young people leaving the faith, trillions and trillions of dollars of debt, division politically, division racially. I mean, we could have a pretty good list that we're all experiencing about what's wrong. And I'm going to suggest that in every era we could make a pretty good list.

But I like you in your notes if you jot down Isaiah chapter five, verse 20, because in every era there's fruit. Think of a tree and there's lots of negative or evil fruit. You know, there's the issue of the unborn. I mean, there's so many. There's the issue of the sex trade.

There's the issue of education. There's all kind of evil fruit. But if you go down the trunk to the root, Isaiah five, verse 20, in a similar situation, the prophet would speak for God and say, woe to you when you call good evil and when you call evil good, when you call that which is sweet bitter and when you call that which is bittersweet. And he goes on and basically says when there's a complete shift and you lose sight of God, lose sight of truth, which all morality, all relationships, everything is based on, I want to tell you that's the root.

And if we're going to change personally and big picture, we've got to get to the deeper issues. Then I'd say what's right? I mean, what's right right now in our world? And we could make another list, but I'm going to ask you to open your Bible. Here's what's right, Romans chapter eight.

The apostle Paul, just listen to what's right currently for you and our world. Verse 26, in the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Here's something right for you right now. The third person of the triune God is praying for you. He's praying for me. He's praying for America. He's praying for our world. Notice he goes on, verse 28, and we know that God causes all things to work together for the good to those that love him who are called according to his purpose. And then he talks about those who foreknew he called, and then he says his ultimate purpose is to conform us to the image of Jesus.

So we know, number one, right now regardless of all the junk that's happening all around the world and maybe in your world or in your marriage or with one of your kids or with your boyfriend, the Spirit of the living God is praying for you. And the sovereign Father is orchestrating everything happening in your life or America or the world or India or Africa for a good. And that good isn't that it just works out our way or we'll be happy and everything will be like the way we want it. But the good is that he will conform me. He'll conform you if we lean in. And he'll make us more and more like Christ. And when more and more of us are like Christ, then we become that light and that love and that salt and that power that we transform things.

That's what's right, but that's not enough. He goes on, what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who spared not his own son but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's chosen? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died, yes rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

Now, have you thought about this recently? I mean, you can just think everything is so terrible and it's so wrong and there's no hope and what about this and what about that? The Spirit of the living God is praying for you. The Father is working all things for your good and Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying and interceding for you.

Now, it's his agenda he's praying about. The condemnation, the fears, the struggle. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? And then he starts to mention some things that are happening globally. Will distress, will tribulation, will persecution, will famine, will nakedness or peril or sword? And then the apostle reaches back into the Old Testament. He says, no, for your sake we're being put to death all day long. We're considered as sheep to be slaughtered. That's their experience. But in all these things we are overwhelmingly conquered through him who loved us.

And then he says, why? Here's your hope. I don't care what's your circumstances, my circumstances. I have seven friends. It all happened within about ten days and I finally just, Teresa and I were talking, I got a yellow sheet of paper and I just had to list the seven names and five of the seven had the most serious kind of cancers you can get.

And the other two are in horrendous situations. And there's, aren't there just moments right now where you feel like there's just waves of junk and negativity? But Paul said, I'm convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And these four little lists, here's what I want you to know.

What's wrong? Truth has evaporated in our culture and now we're getting the consequences. Proverbs 14, 12 says, there's a way that seems right to a man or to even mankind and it's the way of death. And we've got our own way and now we're reaping a lot of consequences. What's confusing? I think what's confusing in our day is we really don't know what to do and there's so many different voices telling us what to do and where to go and how to get out of this situation.

Proverbs 16 says, the mind of a man plans his way but the Lord directs his steps. Jesus, the first century was so much like what we're living in. It was so bankrupt. It was so brutal. It was so violent.

It was so unfair. There was such injustice, whether for slaves or women, all kinds of people of color, if you weren't, and Jesus would say to those disciples, in the midst of all of that, if you're confused, ask and it'll be given unto you. Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be open. For everyone in the midst of a confusing world who keeps on asking and keeps on seeking and keeps on knocking, what you're going to find. The final little thing here is the fourth question is what's missing and if you were taking some notes and wanted to put a passage down, I would write down James 1.5. The biggest thing missing is men and women filled with the Spirit of God who have the wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God is knowing how God has arranged life to work and following in that path in your specific situation, knowing what to do, when to do it, how to do it in alignment with the Spirit's working through His word. And we are in a very, very unique time in all of world history. And in my research, I came across a very interesting article. It was actually written in 2020, pretty early on, called The End of an Epoch, a New Beginning for Capital Markets in the 21st Century by Bruce Fenton. I put the quote in your notes because I think just seeing it in print. He says, the measure of where we are today will not be marked as the beginning of a recession or even a depression but as the end of an era.

Listen carefully to this, especially if he's right, I think he is. Make no mistake, our old world is gone and the way it works has changed forever. As with all such times, the change happened fast and it's permanent. This will forever transform our lives, our markets and our world.

But here's the application. It's time for new ways of thinking and solving problems. What are the implications?

I have three observations that I think are very clear implications for your personal life, for the churches in America, for the churches around the world and also for countries and nations. Number one observation is we must accept normal as never returning. How people communicate will never be the same. Finances will never be the same. Geopolitical structures will never be the same.

The same and normal is never coming back. The sooner we accept that, the better. Some people will mourn about the past and they'll be stuck in it. Second observation is that we must rebuild because we can't return. We've got to rebuild. It's a new paradigm. It's new thinking. Because of the tragedies and difficulties that have happened, we will have opportunities to fix things that were systemic for years and we'll have a chance to rebuild things in new ways.

This is the third part that excites me. We must lead boldly, underline boldly in this Kairos moment of history. In Greek, there's a couple different words for time. Kronos is like, you know, from 2 o'clock to 3 o'clock to 4 o'clock, I'll be there at 7 tonight. That's Kronos, sequential time. Kairos means it's a window of time. It's an opportunity.

It's a little slice. Like Galatians 4, it says, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son. Literally, it's when the world was pregnant, there were Roman roads and there was a bankrupt philosophy. And in this window of time, Christ strategically came. And we're now living in one of those Kairos moments. We have unbelievable challenges but unbelievable opportunity. And I put a little passage there from 1 Chronicles 12 because I think this is what we need to be.

It was a time of huge transition. And there was a group of men from Issachar who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. My personal challenge to me first, to me and my wife, and then to you, understand the times. Discern what you should do. Discern what God wants to do and then get on board with what God is doing in this real strategic window of time. There's a lot of different opinions and a lot of different things, but I started from this is what I know the Bible teaches. What I've studied and looked at is how great movements of God have happened historically in the Bible and through church history.

And there's some very definitive patterns about how it works and how it doesn't work. And I just like it. Let's go on a journey together to out loud process. Here's my first point as we start our journey. Our world is desperate for hope, stability, direction, and deliverance. The world has never been more ripe for, we need a Messiah, we need someone to fix this. And what I want to say is who's going to fill this void? And if we get just sort of unconscious and start focusing just on ourselves and our own little worlds, some people will fill the voids of what's happening in the world instead of who needs to.

I gave some options. Well, philosophies and truth claims. We're seeing the rise of some old thinking and Marxism. We're seeing the rise of a lot of isms and new truth claims and religions.

Will they fill that void? Or maybe will it be all science and technology? Oh, we've got all these problems.

Don't worry. Science is the answer. Everything's empirical. There's new technology that's going to solve everything. Or will it be powerful people and institutions? It's happened all around the world. It's happened historically. When there's a vacuum like this, there's people with power, desire, and they've got a game plan. Or number four, will it be the body of Christ?

Will it be what happened in the first century? What seems so even unthinkable, but it was like this little tiny group of 12 and this little tiny group of 120, and they were like a grain of wheat that fell into the earth and died, and they brought forth much fruit. Because it wasn't them trying to do God's will and their power and their energy. It was them dying to themselves, and the same power that raised Christ from the dead dwelt in them, and they lived in ways that by 313 AD, of the 60 million people in the Roman Empire, 33 million confessed that they were believers of Jesus.

Huge. They turned the world right side up, as during the plagues they served and loved and died, as they sang going into coliseums thanking God for the honor and the privilege of dying for Christ. It's a little bit different kind of faith, isn't it?

I was in Jordan with a young doctor, probably 32, 33. There was a contract out on her from Yemen, and we were meeting with her to help her, and she just said, I don't expect to live very long. Before we go back, will you teach us to die well? And every time I get around people like that, all of a sudden there's a faith, there's a lens, there's a God, there's a spirit, there's a truth, there's a word that's so radically different than, how's my life going? I'm not very happy. You know, I'm not as fulfilled as I'd really like to be in my marriage. And by the way, all those things are true. I don't want to dismiss them, but the American dream and the gospel somewhere entered into a marriage about 30, 40, 50 years ago, and we've been asking all the wrong questions for quite a while. It's all about us, my fulfillment, my happiness. Jesus has become the self-help guru to give me a wonderful marriage, and healthy, wealthy, and wonderful all the time. And if I sort of read the Bible, pray, go on a missions trip, and even give above 10%, well, sort of the unconscious agreement is, he's got to make my life work out.

You know, my kids won't get in trouble, and I won't get cancer. And when those things happen, we say, God, where are you? We've claimed a God and a set of promises that are nowhere here.

When I'm in the third world, they claim different promises. For we've been called to suffer for his sake. Therefore, follow in the steps of Jesus, who although he suffered, did not revile, but entrusted himself to his faithful creator. All I'm saying is, I think the world is going to be very different. It's going to require a very different kind of Christian.

And here's the part that I'm very, very excited about. I want you to know that we have the greatest opportunity to experience God and make the greatest difference in the last 100 years at a minimum, and possibly no group of followers of Jesus with the technology we have, with the world situation, probably not since the Reformation. And I will tell you, the Spirit of the living God will tap some people on the shoulder, and he'll breathe life into some churches, and it probably won't be a lot of them.

And there'll be a group of people that get it. And we will see God do things like we have seen in Acts chapter 2. We'll see God do things, and it will be swimming upstream. You've been listening to part one of Chip's message, Christ, Not Causes, from his series, What Now?

What Next? Making Disciples in a Disrupted World. To go any further, Chip, you wanted to jump in here and share your application for this teaching while it's fresh. So what's on your mind?

Thanks, Dave. You know, the last thing I talked about, after all the disruption and the breaking into a new era, perhaps a new epoch of human history, rather than be fearful, and I know that's the temptation. And as I shared in this message, I've talked with literally pastors and leaders and individuals all around the world, and there is much cause for anxiety and fear.

But these are the windows in human history. We are in a Galatians 4 for a moment. And what I mean by that, it says, when the world was pregnant, that's literally what it says, God sent forth his Son. In other words, there was a dynamic and unique situation in world history that was the prime time for Jesus to come. And what you find in great movements of God is there's a disruption. There's something usually very difficult or challenging or painful, and it sort of upsets everybody's apple cart. And it upsets it to the degree that there's an opportunity to put things back together, to change things, to move forward.

There's an openness. There's an anxiety and a fear among unbelievers about what's life all about. I've talked with those in evangelistic ministry who tell me they have never seen so many people respond to the gospel.

I've talked to pastors who've talked about, yes, a lot of people have left the church and we've had many struggles, but we've also seen amazing doors open. Here's what I want you to do. Pray. Ask God to use you.

Ask Him to help you overcome your fear. In our next broadcast, I'm going to give you a very specific step to take that will, I think, empower you to face the most challenging things that are coming your way. That's a great word, Chip.

Thanks. And while I have you, I happen to know that this series came about in a very unique way over the last year and a half. Could you tell us that story and share what you want our listeners to learn from this series?

Be glad to, Dave. I found myself throughout much of the pandemic doing a monthly webinar with pastors in over 60 countries. And whether it was in the rural areas of India or South Africa, these questions kept coming up. What are we going to do? The markets are closed, the pandemic, there's the virus. Churches are closed.

Economies are shut down. What are we as pastors and leaders to do? Multiple things that seem to just bombard individual Christians and leaders all across the world. And after talking with them in these webinars for well over a year, the two questions that kept coming up were, what do we do now?

What's next? The Great Commission and God's calling hasn't changed. We're to go into all the world and make disciples for Jesus Christ. But how do we do that when the world is so disrupted? And what God gave me was an acronym that brought us back to what are the core tenets. Where does our focus need to be? How do we live out our faith in this disrupted world?

What's it look like to love and to care and to be light and salt in the very challenging times in which we live? Stay with me on this series because we can either curse the darkness or we can learn together how we can make the greatest difference ever. Well, thanks for that, Chip.

Well, we hope you'll make plans to be with us for this entire series. And if you happen to miss a program, you can always listen on the Chip Ingram app or at LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well, before we go, Chip, you have one last important thing to share. Today is Giving Tuesday. If you don't know what that is, it's a special day to support nonprofits and ministries that are important to you. And we have a special project at Living on the Edge that I'd like you to consider supporting. Beginning in January of 2022 all the way through March, we're going to provide live training for pastors in India and Kenya around a resource that we put together and literally has gone all around the world called The Art of Survival. It really helps people know, how do I make it through the worst of times? These pastors I've met with for the last year, they are hurting. They've literally been crushed and we want to help them.

And this is where you come in. For $3, you can help a pastor receive this training along with a book that he will then be able to teach to his church. So if you want to help 10 pastors, it's $30. You want to help 100 pastors, it's $300. Here's what we're saying. Will you pray and just ask God how we could partner together to love pastors, to give them hope personally, and then to help them help the people in their churches.

All throughout India and Kenya. And then what makes this great is whatever you give, it'll be doubled dollar for dollar by a small group of people who wanted this to be our best Giving Tuesday ever. Would you join us in helping them today? Well, if you'd like to be part of this important ministry work, we'd love to have you join us. Your financial support will literally put these useful resources into the hands of pastors who are desperate for help. And as Chip just said, every dollar we receive today will be doubled for greater impact.

So now is a great time to partner with us. To send your gift, give us a call at 888-333-6003 or go to livingontheedge.org. That's 888-333-6003 or livingontheedge.org. App listeners, just tap donate.

For all of us here, thank you in advance for your support. As we close, let me remind you of an easy way to listen to our extended teaching podcast. Hear 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 Druey saying thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge.