The Four Great Invitations - Come to Me, Part 2

Last broadcast, I shared the beginning of my story of growing up in a dysfunctional alcoholic family. Today, I want to share how God uses some of the most difficult things in our life to bring about the very best.

Stay with me. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this international discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Well, today Chip will pick up where he left off last time in our series, The Four Great Invitations, Lessons from My First Fifty Years with Jesus. But before he gets going, if this is your first time listening to Living on the Edge or you want to learn more about what we do, go to livingontheedge.org. You'll find tons of resources there on a variety of topics and countless programs to enjoy.

Or if you prefer, the Chip Ingram app is also a great way to get plugged in with our ministry. All with that, here's Chip with the second half of his message, Come to Me. He begins, as he teased a minute ago, by describing his upbringing and how those early experiences shaped his worldview. And my dad taught me a number of things that were really, really positive and really helpful in terms of my life. He taught me that if you want to be happy, here's the mantra, be successful. He literally said things by the time I was six, seven, eight years old, you know, this country needs a great president.

You could be that person. Now, on the one hand, he built a lot of confidence. On the other, he created a performance addict. And I remember becoming a workaholic by the time I was 12. I had eight or nine lawns, two paper routes, and lent my parents $3,000 at 6% interest. I was the kid who would, I didn't use a bag during Halloween. I used a pillowcase, because it was stronger. And I lived in housing developments, and this is a day when stuff was safe. I would sprint from house to house, and I would be drenching with sweat, and I would fill a whole pillowcase with candy. I would tie it in a knot and put it up in the top of my closet for about a month. And then I would take it to school and sell five-cent candies for 10 cents.

And my one sister, who was so gullible and so sweet, I could get a quarter for her if she really wanted the chocolate. And so I just, life was all about success, success, success. And so by the time I became a senior in high school, somewhere along the line, I caught this vision.

I saw a 5'9 guard lead the nation in scoring called John Rinca. And I'll never forget thinking, if he can do it, I can do it. And I became a gym rat, workaholic toward basketball. And I played seven, eight hours a day.

And what I wanted to do, I did all these drills and the stuff that Steph is doing now, a guy named Marovitch sort of did earlier. And by the time I graduated from high school, I had a basketball scholarship, a pretty girl, and I graduated in the very top of my class. The end. Great life, right? I'll never forget the evening. It was, I graduated from high school, and there was a big party afterwards. And I can't, you know, some of you, your memory is sort of like, how did we get here? But I remember being in an apartment off of Ohio State's campus.

I grew up in the Columbus area. And the apartment was empty, and there was about 25 or 30 of us sitting in a big circle, passing a joint around. And I was sitting next to a girl, I still remember her name, Jackie. And so as it's coming around, you know, I was, you know, as one famous president said, I didn't inhale. I actually didn't.

I passed it on. I was so small and so skinny, I thought, man, I can't do anything that's gonna, you know, hurt my body. Because man, all I, I thought all I cared about was basketball. But I was so desperately insecure, all I really cared about was impressing people, and trying to find significance, and longing for someone to love me just for me. Because what I had learned was, the only reason anyone ever cared about me is what I could do or what I'd accomplish. And I was a prisoner. But the benefit of becoming friends with Jackie was, her boyfriend was about two years older, about 6'3", about 220, and very mean, and so she was really safe.

He would kill you if you messed with his girl. And so we became friends. And as we were sitting there on the floor in the big circle, she looked at me and she goes, you must be really happy.

I said, why is that? And she named my cute little girlfriend, and then she said, you know, you ended up real near the top of the class, and you know, your dream, you basketball stuff, you got a scholarship. But something happened where I thought, oh, I never even thought about whether I was happy. See, I already had projected, I'm gonna be a lawyer, I'm gonna have three kids, I'm gonna marry a beautiful woman, I will have a luxury car, I'll have a, back in the day, I'm gonna have a station wagon, I'm gonna have $200 suits, and by 32, I'll be a leader in my community. And now here's how arrogant I was. The thought that I couldn't accomplish that never entered my mind, because what my dad told me, you set a goal, you develop a strategy, and when everyone else is sleeping, you work harder and harder and harder and harder and harder and harder, and if you do that, you'll be successful, and if you're successful, then you'll be happy.

And I'll never forget, I thought, I was driving home, it was about 2 a.m., that you must really be happy. And I already had projected to the next set of goals. And then I thought, so why am I here? And you know, granted, it was a large high school, but you know, I was aware enough to go like, okay, I'm a decent-sized fish in a pretty small pond.

Well, what if I'm 32 and I'm a leader in the community, and I'm this great trial lawyer, and blah blah blah blah blah. Well then I'm just gonna be, right? And I just thought, a bigger goal, I'll feel even more empty than I feel now.

And I remember, it probably was my first adult prayer, I kind of got real quiet, got in the house, and I remember, literally remember, sitting on my bed and there's a window right next to my bed, and I looked out, it was a really starry night, and I thought, you know, someone must have made this. And I said, God, I don't know if you exist or not. But here's the deal. If you exist, what do you want from me? I mean, I don't know if there's a God or not, but if you exist, what do you want from me? And then here's my proposition. If you can reveal yourself to me in a way that I can really understand, I'll do whatever you want me to do, and if you're not big enough to do that, I'm just giving notice, I'm gonna live like hell and die young. Because I've always been pretty logical and I thought, why this sort of gray area to be mildly moral and man, if everyone else is sleeping around, I should enjoy this. And if drugs are fun or getting drunk or getting high, if there is no meaning, if there are no purpose, if there is no life, if there is a God, then he made you, right? Then you ought to do whatever he wants you to do because he cares for you.

Second, if there's not, forget it, but there's nothing in between. And so that was my kind of first adult prayer, and I prayed it. And the guy that taught me so much, he was a basketball coach, I was lined up to do a paint house with him before I went away to school, and there was a delay for a week. And the same day I got, my summer job was gonna delay for a week, the football coach, for reasons I don't know, as you can see, I did not play football, said, hey, Chip, maybe he asked a number of other people.

Talk about the providence of God. I'll pay your way to this camp. The best basketball players in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio are gonna be there.

I said, I'm in. And so I go to this camp, and as I go to this camp, it was like, okay, great. And then I'll never forget, I got, literally, it was a Good News Bible, a little bit smaller and had a little cross, and on the bottom it said, FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Well, I didn't know what the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was. All I knew was Tom Landry, who is the, you know, coach of the Cowboys, was gonna be one of the speakers.

I mean, Bullet Bob Hayes, Roger Staubach, you all don't know who I'm talking about, but Google it, Cowboys, they were great. And then I walked in, it was on a college campus, and there was about 600 athletes, and when I used Jesus, it was with other words connected to it, but not in prayer. And I heard people saying Jesus out loud, and they had Bibles, and they give you a T-shirt with a cross on it, and I thought, oh, my lands. It's 1972, I've been dropped in the land of Jesus freaks.

I'm, this is, these are the hypocrites, these are the weird people, not going here. So every morning for 20 minutes before you ate breakfast, then you did a lot of really fun sports, is they had, they called it quiet time or something, and so they gave you this good news Bible. And so I did like this, and I sat like this, and I looked at 599 guys and said, if you suckers wanna believe this crap, you can, but I'm not. And so I wouldn't open my Bible, day one, day two, day three. And then each day, some guy, I can't, so his first name was Max, some guy named Max got up, opened the Bible, read a paragraph, and talked for 20 or 30 minutes. It actually made sense. When I grew up going to church, some guy would talk about 10 or 11 minutes, and we lit a lot of candles, and we sat in the old stand, sat in the old stand, and I had everything memorized, and I could be thinking about the MBA going also with you, and, you know, I had it down.

And I'm not, by the way, I don't mean that critically, I just, it was just, it was just words, because there's no reality. And so day four, the peer pressure got to me. In fact, I dug out a good news Bible so I would have the exact. And so, you know, I don't suggest this is how God always leads people, but what I did is I did this.

Everyone's looking around, I'm thinking, this is like day four. And I looked down, said, so then my brothers, because of God's great mercy to us, I appeal to you, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is what he really wants from you. And again, I've never heard of the Holy Spirit before, but it was like, literally, I could see myself in my room, in my mind, God, if you exist, what do you really want from me? And this verse said, you.

Not your money, no. Not going to church, a bunch of stuff, no, you. I want you. And then the very next verse said, do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you'll be able to know God's will, what is good and pleasing to him, what's actually perfect for you. So, I mean, I read that verse, and literally, I saw pictures in my mind, and I saw me with a girl dating and talking sweet and telling her what I wanted her to hear for ulterior motives. And then I had this picture come to me that, you know, in a classroom with the teachers and parents and all this stuff, and I gave them the all-American boys stuff, and then I had this picture, this video came up of me in the locker room, and I was always the shortest and the skinniest, always recruited, the biggest, baddest dude on our team to be my enforcer. And I had the mouth, and he had the brawn.

It was like, in the dictionary, if it came up and said chameleon, it was like, there was my picture. And I would pretend to be different people with every different group, because I was so desperately insecure and so afraid and had no rest in my soul and so longing, I didn't know what to do other than play everybody off one another, so that somehow, someway, because you're only as valuable as what people think of you. And then the next verse, it says, and because of God's gracious gift to me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.

Instead, be modest in your thinking, and judge yourself according to the amount of faith that God has given you. And all I can tell you was, I was scared, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. And later that afternoon, I was coming off the field, and they would put you in these, they call them huddles, and you have like 10 or 12 guys, and you play all the, you know, flag football, basketball, all kind of stuff, and then they'd throw a bag of ice in the middle, and they'd talk about God and things. And if you can picture this, you know, I couldn't have been 135, 140 pounds, and skinny little kid, and the fullback for Illinois was here, and the wide receivers for the Atlanta Falcons was here, and they're walking off the field, and this, those wide receivers look very small on TV. They're very big in real life. I still remember like his quads were like this big.

I'm going, dude, man, that's amazing. And I could hear about every third word, and I heard a very intimate conversation, and the fullback was struggling with something. I couldn't make it all out, and this guy was talking about what was more important than his NFL career, and his wife, and his faith, and Jesus, but he wasn't cussing, and I saw the gospel. Again, I didn't know any verses about by their love you'll know that the Father sent me. All I knew was something happened inside as I was walking behind these guys.

I thought, I've never seen a grown man love another grown man ever in my life in this powerful, nonsexual way, and something just welled up and said, I want what they have, but I didn't know how to get it. I had no understanding. All of a sudden, I get all this new information, and these Jesus freaks, and I'm a skeptic, and I don't believe any of this stuff, and all my background, all I know is what God really wants is me, and I'm the biggest hypocrite. And that night, that fullback got up, and he sang the Lord's Prayer, and I can't again. I didn't have any background with God.

He sings the Lord's Prayer, and I start to water, and why am I crying? I don't understand. And then a guy got up with some chalk, and he started drawing something, and he was drawing the story I would learn later. It's called the gospel or the good news.

It wasn't a transaction. It was a declaration. It's that God did something good, and he who has ears to hear, whoever would like to come to me, this is how you can actually come to me and have rest for your soul and purpose and all the things that I look for. And he drew this picture. In fact, I'm gonna put it up.

This is my little version of this picture. So he gave this verse in John 5 24 that says, Truly, truly, or verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hears my word and believes on him that sent me, and this is what killed, it's killer, not will, has eternal life. Jesus, what's it mean?

How do you come? He that hears my word, what you're hearing right now, and believes, put your trust in, not intellectually agrees with, believes on me, has eternal life, and will not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life. And so that picture is over here. That was me.

How do you like my stick figure? And he explained that all of us blow it, all of us of sin, and he explained that the wages of the consequences of our sin before a holy God as we fall short. I mean, Mother Teresa may have been in, you know, 97 out of 100, and Billy Graham a 96.5, but they still fell short. And with a holy God, there's just, there is no hope because he's absolutely pure and holy. But what we couldn't do for ourselves, he did. Jesus is the bridge. John 1 12 says, As many as received him, to them he gives the right. The word is the power or authority to become children of God, even to those who believe on his name. And afterward, I saw that, and for the first time in my life, I recognized coming to Jesus is not being religious. It's not intellectually even agreeing that Jesus was a person or even that it was God or even that it was the Savior of the world.

Those are important. But it's actually a transfer of trust that you believe that what he did on the cross paid or covered for your sin. And then his invitation, I'll still remember this, literally that man, he said, Jesus is saying this to each one of you athletes in this room. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If any man, any woman, if any student hears my voice and opens the door, I'll come into him and live with him and he with me. And all I can tell you was I was so aware that I was at a crossroads in my life. And I thought, if I allow you to come into my life, if I get this right, you want to forgive me, but you want to give me a new life and you want us to do this life in the future together. And it wasn't like I thought I had to stop this, this, this, or that, but I realized I can't play God.

I can't mess with him. There were some things that I knew I was doing that if I was going to get on this path, those things were going to have to go. And I didn't know if I wanted to let him go. And then I kind of replayed in my mind, I am so tired. I am so weary of trying to project that I'm something that I'm not.

I'm so weary and laid down with grinding it out, trying to be this and that and get these people to like me. And God, I'm not sure exactly what it means for you to come into my life. In fact, my prayer was like a letter.

Dear Jesus, this is Chip. I didn't know how to pray. Whatever it means for you to forgive me right now and for me to trust you to come into my life, I want to do that right now. And Jesus says, come to me.

And the promise is, I'll give you rest. And very imperfectly, I said, I want to do life with you, but I don't know how to do it. But I prayed and I asked Christ to forgive me and to come into my life in June of 1972. So I had this little Good News Bible, and when I got home, I put it underneath my pillow. I didn't want my parents to think, you know, I went to a camp and now I'm a Jesus freak. And when people weren't looking, like in the morning, I started reading through the New Testament. And I remember thinking, how could does someone have a recorder underneath my bed? How could anyone know this about you? And then at night, I would read it before I go to bed, and then I would hide it under my pillow. And I still remember about two weeks later, because I had such a, I mean a mouth that was unbelievable, foul.

I just quit cussing. And then I remember it was a month later and a big law had come in from instead of 21 to 18, you could drink. And so my buddy said, hey, man, you got to come with us. So I go with them and we go to this bar. And in fact, it's not just a bar.

I mean, it's super sleazy place. And I remember sitting in this booth in this really dark place and feeling dirty. And I remember turning to my friend and this was so weird. It was like, I'm just not into this. What?

Man, Chip, we've been waiting for this. Come on, man. It's just didn't for me.

And I remember I got up and I left. God changed my desires. Life is hard, but Jesus has given us an invitation. You are and you will become how you respond to invitations from people and even more so invitations from God.

My wife, Teresa, who couldn't be with us, she's sick this morning. My subtitle that I put for this was the four great invitations lessons from my first 50 years with Jesus. And she said, well, do you think you're gonna get 50 more?

I said, no. I think I'm gonna get forever. These are my first 50 years. I'll have 500 years. I'll have 5,000 years. I'll have 5 million years. I will have 5 billion years. I will have a Google years in the presence of a faithful, kind, loving, holy savior.

Because in 1972, Jesus said, come, it's a gift and I came. Before we go any farther in this program, Jesus makes this incredible offer. Come unto me, all of you that are weary. You're tired of the grind. You're burdened. And he says, what qualifies you to come to him is not how good you are. It's that you have need. He loves us. He takes us right where we're at. You don't have to improve.

You don't have to get better. You just have to come with the empty hands of faith and turn from your way and your view and your life and say to him, Lord Jesus, I desperately need you. I want you to forgive me for my sins. I want to take you up on this offer to lead my life. I want to take your yoke.

I want to do life with you. And so right now I ask you to forgive me for my sin. I trust right now that when you died on the cross, that you paid for my sin and that when you rose from the dead, you proved that it was true. And you promised me that as many as receive you, the Lord Jesus, to them you give the right, the authority to become children of God. And so today I receive you as my Lord and my Savior.

Thank you very much for forgiving me. And now I ask you, Lord Jesus, help me to follow you and to know you. You see, if you in your heart pray that and ask God to be that to you in your life, he's just saying, I love you. I want you to come. It's why he came to earth.

It's why he lived a perfect life. He wants you to know that you matter. He wants you to know that you're not alone. And he wants to help you today, right now. Can I encourage you? Go to our website, livingontheedge.org. We have some resources to give you. And then find this weekend a Bible teaching church and just show up and say, Lord, I want to learn.

I want to grow. And I will tell you, he's orchestrating people right now to help you on your journey. Welcome to the family. If you prayed with Chip, we do have a free resource we'd like to put in your hands that was created for new believers. It's a tool that'll help you gain a clear biblical understanding of what it means to put your faith in Jesus. Request this free resource by calling us at 888-333-6003 or by visiting livingontheedge.org, then clicking the New Believers button.

That's livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003. Let us help you get started in your faith journey. Chip's still with me in studio. And Chip, I can see you have one last thing you'd like to ask the Living on the Edge family before we go.

Thanks, Dave. I want to share an important request with you. If Living on the Edge is ministering to you, would you consider returning the favor? If you've been listening but haven't yet become a financial partner with Living on the Edge, would you prayerfully consider sending a gift today?

And if you've given but could do it monthly, I can't tell you, it would make a huge difference. If we all pitched in, it would just make an incredible difference in terms of what we can do here to reach and care for more people. So thanks so much for all that you do, and thanks for just praying and doing whatever God shows you to do. And we will receive it with great gratitude.

Thanks, Chip. Well, as you prayerfully consider your role with this ministry, I want to remind you that every gift is significant. When you partner with Living on the Edge, you multiply our efforts and resources in incredible ways. To set up a recurring donation, go to livingontheedge.org. Or visit the Chip Ingram app. You can also text donate to 74141. That's the word donate to 74141. We greatly appreciate your support. Well, before we go, I want to remind you that the Chip Ingram app is an easy way to share messages or complete series with others. So whenever you're encouraged by what you hear, I hope you'll pass it along to a friend or loved one who'd benefit from it. And be sure to tell them how it made a difference in your life. Well, from all of us here, this is Dave Druey, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.