True Spirituality - How to Overcome the Evil Aimed at You, Part 1

Is there someone in your life that has hurt you or someone that you love and you just can't get past it?

I mean, when you're honest, you're bitter, you're resentful, and you just don't know how to get unstuck? If so, today's the day. Hang with me.

You're going to get answers to that issue. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this international discipleship ministry. Thanks for joining us as we near the end of our series, True Spirituality. Chip's heart behind this teaching is for us to seriously evaluate our faith.

So if you've been challenged to deepen your relationship with God, let others know about it. Take a moment after this message and share this series, either through the Chip Ingram app or by downloading the free MP3s at livingontheedge.org. Well, in this program, Chip's in one of the most complex parts of Romans chapter 12, explaining how to love those who don't love us. So let's get going and dive right into Chip's message, How to Overcome the Evil Aimed at You. As we get started, I want to ask you to go to a place that you may not really want to go, but I'll tell you in advance, it'll be worth it. I'd like you to lean back just a little bit, be reflective. And I want you to answer this question in your mind.

Feel free to even close your eyes for just a moment if it's helpful. Of all the people in your life to date that you would say have hurt you the most, who comes to your mind? Who's wounded you? Who's lied about you? Who's walked out on you? Who's taken your money? Who's gossiped about you? Who sexually or physically abused you when you were younger? Who's been ungrateful and humiliated you in front of a group of people? Who said things at a Bible study or even at church that produced incredible pain and disunity, and you were made to be the person who was at fault? Who's betrayed you?

Have you got it? I don't mean to pull off a scab. I don't mean to conjure up things. For many of you, some of these things are pressed down pretty deeply. I want you to follow along, and I want to read to you what I think are the most radical words that have ever come out of any person's mouth that has walked on the earth.

They're familiar to some of you, which is unfortunate because they lose their power. As I read these, I want you to think about who wounded you, but I want you to think about what it would be like if you were living in an occupied country and your possessions were being taken away from you and you were being rejected by family members all because you believed that this itinerant preacher was, in fact, the Messiah, the God-man that came to save the world, and you knew you needed to follow Him, and as a result of that, everything from the persecution being walked into the Colosseum to being excommunicated from your Jewish family, this is what Jesus would say to them, and here's what He's saying to us. Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount, you have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That gives the reason why, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others?

Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, the word is teleos, that's our word for mature. It has the idea of something or someone fulfilling its ultimate design. Be mature, be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Now as you pull out your pen and pull out your notes, I want you to write something down because you need to really get this. It is not hard to be a Romans 12 Christian. Get that out of your mind.

Some of you think it's really, really, really hard and you're thinking it's been surrendered to God and separate from the world's values. It is not hard. It is impossible. Write that word down.

It's impossible. Because if you don't think it's impossible, you'll try to be one. And you'll try to be one out of your self-effort and your flesh and your energy and your personal discipline and your willpower. And the people that get good at it are called Pharisees. And Romans 12 was never written to help you in your power or my power to have a stronger moral code. It was a profile, it was a picture, it was a snapshot of what happens to a person when they experience the mercy and the grace of Romans chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

It's a faith response. Notice in your notes, Romans 12 Christians focus on relationships, not rules or religious activity. It doesn't mean there aren't any rules and it doesn't mean as a follower of Christ there aren't some religious activities. But the focus of any rule or any religious activity is to cultivate my relationship with God and my relationship with people, even my relationship with myself in a healthy, healthy way. In fact, you could summarize, Romans 12 Christians, their highest aim, our highest aim is love. You know, when Jesus was asked, what's the greatest commandment, do you remember what he said? Love the Lord your God, how? With all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

And what else? And love your neighbor as your self. You know, if you took everything that's in Romans 12, as we do just a quick review here, because what happens, you know, pretty soon you forget what we talked about two or three or four sessions ago. Really, Romans 12 is a snapshot of, in my mind's eye, it's the apostle Paul taking the sermon on the mount and the apostle Paul out of his conversations with the resurrected Christ in Arabia. And Jesus told them to love God, love themselves, love others, and Paul's a very brilliant didactic guy writing to a Roman audience, and he knows it's gotta get real practical. And so he says, let me show you what it looks like to love God in everyday life.

It means on a certain day at a certain time after you've received his grace and been born spiritually, that you say to God, I surrender all, I'm all in, because that's the spiritual service God desires. And that's what it means to love God. And he says there's a competition for that love. Remember the world system that wants to seduce you and tell you through the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life that real significance and real success and real power and real happiness is gonna come. And he says you have to refuse the love for the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father's not in him.

And then in verses three through eight he talks about loving yourself. Looking not just in the mirror and saying I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, but looking in the mirror of your soul through the lens of God's word and saying I'm forgiven. I'm adopted. I have the spirit of the living God inside of me.

I've been sealed. I have spiritual gifts. I'm the object of his affection. I am in Christ. God the Father now looks at me in the same way that he looks at his son Jesus. I am righteous in his eyes.

That's a sober self-assessment. And yet in a fallen world. And it goes from loving God and not loving the world and loving yourself to loving the family, the body of Christ, radically serving one another. And then finally we're gonna talk in this session what's it look like practically to love your enemies? Open your Bibles if you will to Romans chapter 12. He begins to clearly tell us how to respond to the evil aimed at us in verse 14. In verses 14 to 16 he's gonna give us a positive command. This is how you respond to that person that came to your mind that I started this message with and asked you to think about. And he's gonna say here's how you respond to that person.

Now I'm gonna warn you it's gonna sound ridiculous and impossible. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud but be willing to associate with people of low position.

Do not be conceited. He's gonna say you need to bless them and that's how. Then he gives a negative command. The temptation when our enemies and people have hurt us there's a temptation.

And he's gonna hit it right between our eyes. Verse 17 do not repay evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

If it is possible as far as it depends on you live or be at peace with all men. Do not take revenge my friends but leave room for God's wrath for it's written it is mine to avenge I will repay says the Lord. On the contrary here's how you're to treat that person that is in your mind. If your enemy's hungry feed him.

If she's thirsty give her a drink. In so doing you will keep burning coals upon their head and that doesn't mean God will blow their brains out. We'll learn a little bit what that really means.

And then there's a supernatural result. There's this thing that when you act the way Jesus acted toward his enemies because Jesus lives in you by his spirit and you do it in the power of his word and authentic community he says do not be overcome by evil and it's an evil world. But he says there's something more powerful than evil. Overcome evil with good. Now what I want to do in the remainder of our time is I want to break down very specifically and practically what it looks like to bless those who persecute you. That's the first and positive command. And the command is this bless them that persecute you.

That's what you're called to do. In verses 14, 15, and 16 he's going to give you three specific ways to bless them. The word bless by the way this is not like someone sneezes and you go oh bless you.

This is not that okay. This word literally means to desire the salvation of another person. It means to desire and long for God's blessing and favor to be upon them. I mean it's like for that enemy that actually their life would work out well that if they're married their marriage would get deeper. If they're a parent their kids would do well.

If they have a job they would. I mean it's blessing. That's what you're praying. And when it says the people who are cursing you these aren't people that are just using curse words at you. The idea of this word bless those who curse you it's people who socially ostracize you because of your faith. It's people who verbally humiliate you because of your faith. It's people that in the first century in many places around the world people who undercut you and actually persecute and want to kill you because you're a follower of Christ. He's saying what I want you to do is bless them.

And there's three components here. The first component of blessing others is forgiving them. This is hard, forgiving them. I mean if you're to pray for and blessing is for their salvation if you want God to forgive them guess what? You gotta forgive them. And you know that little section sort of in we call it the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our sins just as we forgive others.

See the premise is going to be and this is the key to loving your enemies. You and I have to come to the point where we really grasp how merciful and God has not given us what we deserve. And there's part of it where it's a dark place you need to go and you kind of need to look at your motives and some things that you've done and some stuff that you have begged God oh God please, please don't let me get the consequences of that one, oh God pick me up and cleanse me and he has.

And then what he's gonna say is I want you to do for that person what I've done for you. Now people get very confused when it comes to forgiveness because they tell me things like well my husband walked out on me he's not paying any child support or my boss sexually harassed me and I went to HR and they kind of glossed over it on this one and so I'm living with this and every time he makes some sort of comment I'm forgiving him but I feel very angry and well I'm forgiving him but so how do you square this forgiveness or one of my folks sexually abused me and I've forgiven him I think 144 times and then the phone rings and it's a certain time on Sunday afternoon and I think it's gonna be them and I get knots in my stomach in this anchor. Forgiveness has three phases.

Jot these down please. Phase number one is a choice. To forgive. It's when you, it is not emotional it has nothing to do with your feelings it is a choice. By the end of our time together many of you will open a section in your Bible and you will say I forgave blank today and you'll put a date because it's a choice. The second thing is the forgiving process so you forgive and then it's forgiving that's a journey and that journey is where your emotions catch up with the choice that you've made because you can forgive and you do that and you say and the word means to release or to loose. In other words I'm gonna take back my desire for them to get paid back and I'm gonna release them from that like God has released it and so I'm not gonna say anything negative about them I'm not gonna wish negative for them anymore I'm gonna release them to God and I'm gonna forgive them the way God's forgiven me freely.

And so it's a choice but then you know when they drop off those kids and they've kind of poisoned the kids against you and then you get this letter in the mail and you hear about this guy that you know stole a bunch of money from you on vacation in Hawaii or you read about him in Forbes and you just go grrr. Does it mean you haven't forgiven? No, it means you're on the journey and the journey means when you bless you begin to pray for him is the journey. You pray for him. When I first experienced this I got betrayed in a tremendously hurtful painful way and I got stuck and I couldn't get out of it and I had a good friend walk me through this passage and teach me how to do this and so I started to pray and my prayers honestly started out like this Dear God, give that sucker what he deserves.

I'm serious. Heavenly Father, take him out. And as I continued to pray the Holy Spirit was making evident that that was not exactly what blessing was all about. But you know part of it too is you need to be real with your emotions with God.

I think some people think God has a sanitized room. I got news he can handle whatever you can bring and what he appreciates is authenticity and sometimes it's painful and it's raw. Read the Psalms. And then I got to where oh God would you just help him see how wrong he is and bring him. And I mean I had to pray.

Every time I heard something about him the anger would come up. No, I've forgiven him but I've got to keep processing. And you know it was two or three months later God would you bless his marriage?

Would you? And I began to pray. For me I just decided every Lord's Supper I would never take the Lord's Supper until I prayed honestly and from my heart to bless this man and his life and his marriage and his kids. And all I can tell you is that over time he moved out of state.

He didn't change I don't believe but I did. See there's poison in your soul when there's bitterness and you've been wounded. And as someone wisely said when we refuse to forgive it's like we drink poison and think the other person's gonna die. Can I just make a comment because I think there's a lot of confusion about forgiveness and emotions and well I don't feel like I've forgiven him. Forgive is a choice and then you bless them. You pray for them. We're gonna learn in a minute you not only pray for them but you start doing good things for your actual enemies like if they're hungry you feed them.

If they're thirsty and there's specific ways that you do good things for people who don't deserve it. But I'd like you if you would think about Jesus in the garden. He died to forgive you and to forgive me. And sometimes we make this you know Jesus loves me this I know. Can I let you in on a little secret? He didn't feel like forgiving you.

Did you ever think of that? He's in the garden, he's sweating like drops the stress like blood coming out of his pores. And he's fully God but he's fully man. He didn't die with some S on his chest like I'm going through the motions. As a man he could die but as God the son he knew that when he was gonna get on that cross your sin and my sin and the sin of all people of all time would be placed upon him. He became our sin offering and when the moment sin came upon him the father would turn away and for the first time in eternity the father and the son would be separated and he would experience that isolation and the price of sin. And as that was coming let alone getting beaten within an inch of his life and let alone being humiliated and stripped naked in a crown of thorns and being public displayed. We think that's the big deal.

That's the small stuff and it's horrendous. And you remember what he prayed? Father let this cup pass. You know what he's saying? I don't want to do this.

I don't feel like doing this. Forgiving and loving isn't doing what you feel like. It's choosing to give another person what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost. And when God says to forgive this person all we're doing is we're stepping in the same path of Jesus and we're doing for this person that they don't deserve it, of course not.

Neither did I, neither did you. And so the process of forgiveness is a choice. Second forgive forgiving is a process and then forgiven is it's done.

And here's how you know when it's done. You can spontaneously rejoice at blessing in their life. I've been praying, this was my first real battle with this. I've had multiple ones since I guess the older you get the more betrayed and difficult things you get in your life. But in this particular situation it had been about nine months since I went through this betrayal and I was hurt and angry and I'm taking the Lord's Supper and I'm praying for this guy.

I'm praying for him more than my mom. Because the anger fantasies would come up and every time they would I'd start praying for him and blessing him. And so I was right before I was supposed to speak and a guy thought it would be a positive comment I suppose.

He goes, oh did you hear about so and so? This really good thing happened to him. And I did the good Christian thing like oh wow, great. And my insides were going oh yuck.

That stinks, that is so unfair. After what he did here and he got blessed over there. Well see I'm not done. Two years later, I don't know why this always happens to me in church. Two years later I'm in church and a guy walks up to me, did you hear about so and so?

I said no, he said this, this, this and this happened to this guy. And before I could think, before I could process joy I said oh that's great and I meant it. I stopped praying before the Lord's Supper, I was done.

I was done. Forgive choice, forgiving process where your emotions go up and down. As I bless and pray, forgiven, it's done. Some of you are gonna get out of prison today. Some of you have been pushing this down and that's why you're depressed.

Some of you eat when you're not hungry because you've been pushing this stuff down. Some of you have ulcers and migraines and there's lots of physical causes but a big part of why our bodies don't work very well and why we do stuff that doesn't make sense and you know we have sanctified quote addictions and not so sanctified addictions and a lot of it is rooted in this lack of forgiveness and be willing to release these people and you can start that today. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and you've been listening to part one of his message How to Overcome the Evil Aimed at You from our series True Spirituality.

Chip will be back shortly to share some helpful application for us to think about. Did you know that the word Christian means little Christ? So when we decide to follow Jesus we're to act as he did with love, grace and mercy.

Unfortunately that's not how people would describe Christians today. So how can we live more authentically and better represent Jesus to others? Well through this study in Romans chapter 12 Chip's going to highlight a clear blueprint for what it means to be a genuine follower of Christ. Learn about our value as men and women, our need for authentic community and how we can biblically respond to the evil and injustice we encounter. Now if you've missed any part of this series catch up anytime on the Chip Ingram map or at livingontheedge.org Well Chip's with me in studio now with something really important to share with all of you. Chip?

Thanks Dave. Have you ever met another Christian and wondered why aren't I as spiritual as he or she is? Or why doesn't she have more compassion? Or doesn't he feel compelled to be more generous?

You know we as Christians can really get stuck on the comparison trap. To some of us he gave gifts to speak. To others he gave gifts to serve. To some we love the big picture and thinking great ideas and making big things happen.

To others it's out of the limelight to really help people that are in great need. However he wired you he has a purpose and a plan that fits perfectly for you. Do you know what it is? Well here at Living on the Edge we've created a brand new resource called The Real You. It's an online questionnaire designed to provide insight into how God wired you. This is more than spiritual gift test. You'll identify the patterns in what you think, what motivates you, and why teams need someone just like you.

It'll take about 20 minutes to complete and it won't cost you a thing. Then based on your responses The Real You will offer suggestions about how you can practically live out God's purpose for your life. Whether that's at home, in the office, at church, or in your community. As a Living on the Edge partner we want you to be the first to access this resource. Head over to TheRealYou.org to learn more. That's TheRealYou.org Most Christians don't know how to leverage their God-given wiring and experiences for the kingdom.

We want to change that. As you can tell we are really excited about this resource. We hope The Real You will help you discover who God made you to be and how He created you to think, act, and live. Sign up for this free assessment by going to TheRealYou.org or if it's easier text real to 74141.

That's the word real, R-E-A-L, to 74141. App listeners tap The Real You. Here again is Chip with a few final thoughts for us to think about. As we wrap up today's program I understand it is really, really heavy and some of you right now are kind of putting up those emotional walls and you don't want to go there because the idea of forgiving someone even though your intellect says I know it's biblical, I know it's right, I know I ought to do it. Your emotions are going, no, no, I'm not going to take them off the hook. Here's what I just want to do. I want a cup of coffee. I wish I could just lean forward right now, look you in the eye and say, look, man, you know, this is killing you. And that other person, they're sleeping, they're sleeping like a baby.

Their life's going fine. You freely received God's forgiveness. Why don't you take this mess and everything you want to see happen to this person and why don't you just say, you know what, God, I bet you can handle this better than me and I'm going to do it right now. I'm going to release my desire for vengeance.

I'm going to release my desire for them getting paid back by me and, Lord, I'm going to give that to you and I'm going to choose to do something that makes no sense. Today I'm going to write in my Bible, literally or in my journal, I forgave and put their name there and put the date today. It was a choice and then I'm going to start, that's right, just start the journey of blessing them. You're going to pray God's blessing and if appropriate, only if appropriate, in some way you will do something good for them.

You may need to do it anonymously because of the relationship, but you're going to forgive, you're going to pray and then you're going to act and you will be set free because this is the truth and God's going to do a great work in you and then he's going to do a great work through you and you will be like your Heavenly Father, giving good in response to evil. What a great challenge Chip, thanks for that word. And as we close, I want you to know that as a staff, we're praying that the Lord will help you take that step. If there's a way we can help, we'd love to do that. Give us a call, 888-333-6003 is our number or connect with us at livingontheedge.org and while you're there, take a moment and look through our resources on various topics, many of them absolutely free. Join us next time as Chip wraps up his series, True Spirituality, Becoming a Romans 12 Christian. Until then, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.