Authentic - The Best Advice I Ever Took, Part 1

Today I'm going to share with you five things, five habits that have literally shaped my life, I mean changed my life. They're not profound, they're not mysterious, it's not that I'm some super smart guy, but there are five things that I've done pretty consistently for the last 25 or 30 years that God has used to reveal His grace to me like nothing else.

I'd like to share those five things with you. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.

I'm Dave Drouie. Thanks for joining us as we begin a brief two-part series called The Best Advice I Ever Took. And let me tell you, this message is one you're going to want to pay close attention to because it's really simple yet profound truth that will absolutely change your life. Now before we begin, let me encourage you to try using Chip's message notes. While you listen, they contain as outline, scripture references, and much more. Chip's notes will really help you remember what you hear and maybe even share what you're learning. To download these message notes, just go to the broadcasts tab at livingontheedge.org. App listeners tap fill in notes.

With all that said, here's Chip with today's talk. How do you live an upright, godly life in this present age? Grace, it teaches us how to do it. You don't learn it all at once.

It is a process. And so if you'll open your notes and turn the page, I want to talk about how grace works out. This is not about please don't hear this through the lens of I'm going to start doing these five things and I'm going to try harder, try harder, try harder.

No, no, no. I want you to hear. I want to trust God more deeply. Grace begins to come into play when you are desperate.

When you say, God, I can't do this. I've tried to get up and I can't read the Bible. I've tried to cut down on my drinking and I can't stop.

No one knows about it, but I do have a drug problem. I know I'm a leader in the church, but in the wee hours of the morning, I'm logging on to porn sites. I feel guilty. I feel terrible.

I don't like me. I want to stop and I can't. Grace is coming to the point where you say, God, I can't do it.

I am desperate. I need you. But that doesn't mean that He just gives you a magic grace pill and then poof. Grace, imagine grace like water.

It comes free and it always flows downhill. Grace always flows where? To a humble heart.

God is opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that He might exalt or lift you up. And grace, imagine water just doesn't float around.

It comes through a hose or it comes through a sprinkler. There are different vehicles through which grace comes to us. When the Bible is taught, we receive grace. When we come with tender hearts and share the Lord's Supper, we receive grace.

When we're in a small group and authentically share our hearts and our lives, we receive grace. And I'm going to give you five habits that cultivate grace. This is the best advice that I've ever taken. And I'm going to give you five habits tonight that will cultivate grace in your life. The best advice I ever took.

Advice number one, are you ready for this? Buy an alarm clock. Buy an alarm clock. Some of the best advice I ever took was to buy an alarm clock. Now many of you are much more mature, you're sophisticated, you're way more godly than me, but I've actually met two people here that I knew during college days.

Brand new Christian, did not grow up in the church, never opened the Bible until I was 18, went to a college campus, met a bricklayer, he began to meet with me and teach me how to get into the Bible, but this was most of my college life for the first two years. See if you can remember this. It's college, or it's Monday for you. The alarm goes off. Thank God for a snooze button. Snooze one, snooze two, snooze three, snooze four, snooze five.

I've hit it five times. Then you look up and go, ah! You can't dress, you can't shower, you run in. And since it's college, you put on sweatpants. You can't shower, so you put on a baseball cap.

You can't even brush your teeth, so you grab gum. Then you run across campus. You are sweaty and stink next to the lovely girl who's been up for an hour making herself beautiful for this class.

You're three minutes late again, and the professor goes, I ain't grum. And that's how I started my day. No breakfast, no time with God, rushed. The first battle every day is this.

Mind over mattress. You've got to win that battle. A man introduced me to a habit by which God has been pouring grace into my life for the last 31 years.

And I want to tell you, it will come hard. You may not do very well for a while, but this bricklayer named Dave Marshall every Tuesday morning came down, and he would knock on my door. It's seven o'clock. Well, seven o'clock might have been three in the morning for me. I would pretend not to hear him and feel very guilty most of that day.

But about every two out of three times, I would say, oh brother, here he is. And I would put on my baseball cap, throw on my sweatpants, and we would go into a little kitchenette. Everyone was asleep. He was not cool. He was not dynamic. He was ordinary. He was doing this after he got up, had time with God, ate his breakfast, and he was going to lay brick all day. And he would open a Bible, and I would open mine, and we would read a couple paragraphs, and we would talk about it, and we would pray. And like a little toddler that didn't know what he was doing, he spiritually led me along and taught me how to talk to my father.

And then we would read, and I would say wacky stuff that the Bible didn't say, and he would bring me back and say, no, could you read that again for me? And every Tuesday until he got me to the point where three out of seven mornings, maybe I got up 15 minutes early, and then it was 20 minutes early. Finally, I decided when I started my day and allowed the grace of God to pour into my life by stopping and asking, since you are all knowing and all powerful, and I'm your child, and you love me, and you know every person, every event, every circumstances that's going to come into my life, I think I'll talk to you about this day before I go running around. See, it's very arrogant to do otherwise, but I couldn't get out of bed, and so first I put the alarm clock on the dresser, but I found that I was so nimble and quick in those days, I could snap the snooze alarm and jump back into bed. And so then I put it in the bathroom, still to no avail, and after a while, and I'm playing with you, but I developed the habit to spend about 20 minutes every morning with God. It revolutionized my life, and then as the time would go, it was a half hour, and after about 20 years, I found that I don't use alarms anymore, and God wakes me up, and the first hour or two, because of my job, and my needs, and the pressure, and my studying of the scriptures, my best times in all the world, I receive grace from God in the morning. If you want your life to change, you must put first things first. I challenge you to set your alarm back 20 to 30 minutes, and don't get down on yourself if you only do it two or three times this week, and don't give up, and find one person that will hold you accountable, and if you have to call on the phone and talk to each other, but you make God your number one priority, and you meet with him, and you talk with him, and you get honest, and you pray through your day, and pray for the people that you love, and say, Lord, I'm going to sit quietly now, will you reveal anything to me you want me to, and you read his word, and you do that, and you give me an email and tell me how bad your life is. Because what I'll tell you is if you do, your life will change. You'll be a different person at work. Thoughts will come to you like maybe I ought to eat something.

Maybe donuts and coffee probably are not best for this temple to stick in my body. Maybe I shouldn't be driving, zooming in and out, and be under a rush all the time. The Spirit of God does not work in people whose lives are characterized by rush and hurry. The Spirit of God leads calmly, gently, wisely.

He's got everything under his control, and he wants to lead us. You don't need to run so fast. Our desperation and our hurry reveals our lack of trust, and our lack of trust is because many of us have not cultivated the habit of buying an alarm clock. And by the way, parents, early on, my kids, by the time they got in junior high, I didn't wake them up. They got their own alarm clock. And early on, 9, 10, 11, 12, not duty, not obligation, not legalism, but every one of my children, we cultivated and built in time, not only for breakfast, but for them to spend 10, 10, 12 minutes.

And I'm going to just tell you this. The singular most powerful evidence of God's grace in transforming my life personally was I bought an alarm clock. And not that I make it every day, but it's become such a habit, I just can't remember the days I miss.

Because it's not that I ought or should or God's going to get brownie points. It is so now enjoyable. It started out as a pain, became a duty, later became a habit.

It is now a delight. Are you ready? First habit you are going to? Buy an alarm clock. Not bad.

I mean, not good, but not bad. The first habit you're going to do is? Buy an alarm clock. Very good. All right.

Are you ready? Habit number two. Take out the trash. And we'll just leave that right there as a good sloppy visual that will just bother the obsessive compulsives on this side of the room probably for the entire night. There's got to be one lady nudging her husband he should pick that up.

I don't know if I can listen until those bags go back inside there. I pastored in a little town called Kaufman, Texas. Kaufman was a little town of 4,000.

It didn't have a stoplight. We started out with about 35 people out in the country and we watched God see it grow and a family came in that were really hurting. And he was an older gentleman and his wife and they had about three kids and he came after service. He said, we really need some food. And so we had a little pantry. I gave him a little bit of food and about two weeks later, we need some food. I mean, we're at the end of our rope and I know this is a Bible teaching church and pastors kind of spot these people. It was semi-legit, but it was like, you know, it was not like we were really in need and could you help us. It was, I understand the Bible teaches and if you don't give me food, you're really in big trouble with God and I want food and I want it now.

I'd like a little bit of money, a little gas in my car, you know. So I remember I said, we need to check this out. So I said, honey, why don't you go with me? I'm not sure what's going to happen.

Probably shouldn't go to something like this alone. We drive out through the country and we pull in this long gravel drive and there's a house. And as we pull in, there's a horse out there. And I noticed there's a bag where oats, where someone had put some oats in there. And then I looked and there was three dogs.

Fairly well fed dogs, as best I could tell. And then we went inside and, oh man. Have you ever gone on vacation and left something in the refrigerator for like three weeks that spoils and you open it and you just, I mean, you just want to, you know, just like, you know. The entire house, there was 19 cats inside the house. Open, open, you know, not dry food, you know, like the little, you know, meow, meow type stuff. Open cans of stuff, garbage laying around.

I mean, it was like, I don't think I can take this. And they invited us in and then they started to tell us about all their need and how much food they wanted. And I started doing the math, like how much food are these cats eating? How many do you have?

19. I said, I don't want to be like out there, but have you ever thought of having a few less cats and a little bit more food for you? You know, how many dogs do you have? And I remember going through there and it was, the smell and the dirt and the trash was so overwhelming, I almost threw up.

And my wife was just kind of doing, uh, I think we've seen enough chip, what have we done for you? You know what amazed me? They didn't see it. They didn't smell it anymore.

You see, if you live with trash and junk long enough, you get completely desensitized to it. And if the first one gave us the principle of priority, the second one is the principle of transformation. Romans 12, 2 says, And don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed how? By the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Don't be conformed. Don't be squeezed.

Literally, it's in the passive tense. Don't allow yourself to be squeezed or pushed around by the world. By the world system, by the cosmos, by all the advertisements, by all the books, all the magazines, at the checkout stand, MTV, VH1, by the news. Don't let the world and the world system about what's true, about what's right, about what's holy, what's pure, what's not. Don't let it squeeze you into its mold, but have your mind continually flushed out or renewed. How? By God's word, so that your lifestyle, how you actually live, how you drive, how you speak, how you eat, how you talk, how you relate to your wife, how you think about your kids, indicates and demonstrates or proves.

The word for prove there is a word for testing of metal to find out the genuineness. So that your life would demonstrate the genuineness or the reality of God's will, which is good, acceptable and perfect. I want to say this real nicely because it's going to sound a bit harsh, but I would like you to consider how much junk is in your mind that's like 19 cats, trash all over the floor. And it smells bad and it is polluting your heart and your soul, but you've just gotten so used to it that you don't even know it's there anymore. How many of us can walk into a theater, pay 7 to 9 dollars, be told by other people it's really good except for this, this, this, this.

There's only one really nude scene and a little bit of violence, but everyone says it's great. I hear Christians talking like that. And then after you've paid your 8 dollars, which is God's money, not yours, you to steward.

And you sit in a reclining chair and then you watch and this guy comes on the screen and 4 people in slow motion, they go do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do and body parts and blood sprows against the glass. And we say that we believe in the sanctity of life and we are so desensitized that we not only allow that to go into our mind, we paid to get it into our mind. I think Jesus would say, I died for that person and that body that was casually killed and when any culture comes to the point where they think blowing up people for entertainment produces some sense of pleasure and there's not a revulsion of their heart, it means they have so slid apart from my view of mankind and the holiness of life that they've become calloused in their heart and I take no pleasure in them.

I'd like to call us together to literally take out the trash. And I'd like you to, and you know what, this is, I'm not talking about legalism and you can't do this and you can't do this and you can't do this, I'm talking about you are what you eat, period. And you will be what you put in your mind. The most important decision you will make on any single day is what you allow to go into your mind because as a man or a woman thinks in his heart, so he or she becomes. The mindset on the flesh is death. The mindset on the spirit is life and peace. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things of earth, where Christ is. That's where your life is hidden in him. We need to get some holy shock.

We need to look at prime time and say, we don't watch that here. Well, why mom? Why dad? You know what? Because it doesn't honor God.

It doesn't put good thoughts in our minds. And you just take the junk and you say, that magazine? No. That cable station? No.

When I walk out of the checkout counter, I discipline myself. We're not going to go there. We put a filter on the website. We're going to be a little bit radical.

We're going to be people who have pure minds so that our lives will demonstrate God's will. You know, we can't figure out why we can't break out of certain things when our minds are stuck with so much junk inside. And so I would encourage you to first buy an alarm clock and second take out the trash.

Third, are you ready for this one? I would encourage you to do your own dishes. Right? You know, you take a glass of water, you eat a little bit, you stick it in the sink and then someone else does it and they stick it in the sink. Then later you have a meal and you put that in the sink. Have you ever seen it up above the counter?

It probably never happened in your house, but on rare occasion it hasn't ours. And I want to encourage you to do your own dishes. And what I'm talking about here is the principle of responsibility. Chip will join us here in studio with his application in just a minute. You've been listening to the first part of his message, The Best Advice I Ever Took, which is from his series, Authentic, How to Be a Christian Without Being Religious. Are you tired of trying and trying to change something in your life only to be met by failure again and again? Does it feel like you're stuck in a spiritual rut and you can't find your way out? Well, in this short series, Chip highlights five simple yet profound behaviors that changed his perspective that will help you too. You'll be blown away by how these attitudes not only make a difference in your day-to-day life, but will strengthen your relationship with God too. For more information about The Best Advice I Ever Took, go to livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. Or go to livingontheedge.org.

App listeners, tap Special Offers. Well, Chip, we're nearing the end of 2021. And as we look back, it's amazing to see how God has used this ministry in the last 12 months. You know, it feels like we've all been through the ringer. The pandemic, social unrest, separation. And the fact is, there's still a lot of turmoil out there, but you seem to have a sense of optimism. Why is that?

Absolutely, Dave. Don't get me wrong, the chaos, the difficulty, the things that you've described, I don't dismiss those in any way. But there's something that always happens. A momentous moment is when people and the world and institutions are open to change. Jesus came at a momentous moment.

It was a time when the Roman Empire and culture and philosophies and religions were bankrupt. And we're in that time, we've never seen people more responsive to the gospel. We've never seen people cry out for God's word and be hungry like they do today. We've introduced some new things like the daily discipleship or some teaching to pastors around the world. The response has been beyond anything we could have ever thought or imagined. And so what we're doing is we're responding.

And God does great things in the midst of hard things. And so what we're asking this month is for people to help us. The opportunities are beyond anything we've ever seen, but it requires finances, staff, resources, as God has opened these doors all across America and around the world. And so let me just ask you, if you've been benefiting from the teaching of Living on the Edge, if you have a heart for people that are in need here in America and around the world, this is a great time to give. Every dollar you give up to December 31st at midnight will be doubled dollar for dollar. I like the words, seize this divine moment. That's what we want to do, and I'm asking for your help to do it.

What a great challenge. Well, if you want to help us pursue our mission to teach God's word, now's a great time for you to become a financial partner. Because right now, thanks to a small group of friends of the ministry, every gift we receive between now and December 31st will be doubled.

Your 40 becomes 80, 400 becomes 800. To make a donation, just give us a call at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. Or if you prefer to give online, our web address is livingontheedge.org. App listeners, just tap donate. Thank you for praying and doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. Chip, as I listened to this message, I think the thing that struck me was the idea of taking out the trash.

It was really convicting. Could you take a minute and maybe give us some pointers about how that really works? Absolutely, Dave. I mean, the fact of the matter is that just like in our house, or like that story I talked about that was so messy, I mean, it's little by little, isn't it? There's a pile that starts on your desk, and then pretty soon it's another pile. And for those of us that are always going to get to it later, we crisscross the papers, and then there's a pile on the floor.

And those kind of things happen to our soul. And there's just times where we need to not just clean off our desk, but in our soul and in our life, we have to take out the trash. You know, a piece of trash can be there, but after three or four days, it's not just trash, it starts to smell. And I like to think about there's good trash and there's bad trash.

And they both need to be taken out. And I think for us who are followers of Christ that are maybe a bit more seasoned, we say, oh, yeah, the pornography, the alcohol addiction, the outrageous debt, the busyness, the workaholism, the neglecting of my family, the eating disorder, the prescription drug addiction that I had, I mean, those are big, that's bad trash. And anyone who's listening now needs to understand that if those are the trash that needs to be taken out, I'm just going to say you deciding today with willpower that you're going to do that will probably not be a good solution.

You're going to have to choose and then you're going to have to talk with someone and you're going to have to get some help. Those are the kind of things that require more than one person to take that kind of trash out because those have happened over time and they are addictive and they are deep and you do have to take them out. And then I think for me there's another kind of trash and I call it good trash because we even get rewarded for it. In other words, like, hey, we're involved in sports as a family and now we don't go to church as often.

In fact, we don't eat as a family as often. But good things begin to take on a life of their own. Sometimes it's, hey, we've got these big things happening in church and ministry takes over your life. Or sometimes it's, oh, we're going to start a company or I'm involved in a startup or I'm doing some really good things. I'm beginning to help some other people. And as I talked to one guy recently, it was like, man, we're really helping people and we got involved in ministry and now I'm exhausted.

I'm not dating my wife anymore. Every free moment is filled with all kind of people's needs and I'm not sure what it's like to be burned out but I'm as close to it as you can be if I'm not already there. So, I would say to some others who are dealing with what are some really good things in your life. Technology can be a really good thing but is there some technology trash that needs to be taken out?

And what are some of those things that need to be substituted? Quality time with God alone. Quality time with our mate if we're married. An unhurried time margin in our life where our soul can get recalibrated.

How do we make sure our body where we get exercise and enough sleep and we just start skimming in so many areas that pretty soon a lot of good things take on a life of their own. So, let me encourage you. If you got some bad trash make a call, text a friend and say this is what I'm dealing with and I need help. If you have some good trash I would encourage you to write down what are some good things in your life that are really squeezing out the best and have a very honest talk with God and then a serious talk with someone close to you and then take out the trash. Well, just before we close would you pray for those who are feeling challenged to respond to Chip's words right now?

There's always a spiritual battle when we feel prompted to draw near to God. Thanks for taking a minute to do that. And if there's a way we can pray for you would you let us know? Call 888-333-6003 or email chip at livingontheedge.org. We'd love to hear from you. Well, until next time for everyone here this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.