Unstuck - Overcoming Shattered Dreams, Part 2

When a dream gets shattered, what do you do?

How do you move on when what you gave your life to goes up in smoke? Well, today we're going to talk about not only how to survive a shattered dream, but actually how to grow stronger through them. If you've had a shattered dream or someone you know is struggling with a broken world experience, stay with me. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international teaching and discipleship ministry motivating Christians to live like Christians. Well, in just a minute, Chip will pick up where he left off in our series, Unstuck, with a remainder of his message, Overcoming Shattered Dreams. But quickly, 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 resources there on tons of topics and countless programs to enjoy. Okay, get your Bible ready as we dive right into the second half of Chip's talk. And so what I want to do is walk through Ephesians chapter 1 verses 15 to 23 and show you how the Apostle Paul talks about how shattered dreams can actually lead to transformed lives, where you can take the pain of our shattered dreams and allow us to come and run to God and begin to do things in us that we long to see happen, but because we're human, if we didn't have shattered dreams, we wouldn't go there. God wants to fulfill your dream of being intimately known and loved just for who you are.

That's legit, right? You have that need. I have that need. That's a dream.

That's a good dream. I want to be known. I want to be intimately loved. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I want Teresa to give that to me and someone I can see, and my expectations are very reasonable.

I only want it about 99 percent of the time. I want all my kids to grow up, to demonstrate that they love me by their behavior, to communicate with me, to love me, to care about me, to encourage me about 98 percent of the time. I've got a great wife. I've got great kids, and they're not even close in the 90 percentiles, and they're great people. When I placed that demand on my wife, if you place that demand on your children or on your friends or of your job, you're just set up for failure, as opposed to, what if the only person that could ever fulfill my deepest longing to be known and to be loved is Jesus? And what if I could, by His grace, understanding who I already am in Christ, of what we already learned, what if I could experience that in such a way that that would fill my soul to such a degree that in my relationship with my wife, I could be more of a giver instead of a getter and then with my relationship with my kids, instead of their performance being a reflection of whether I'm okay or not, I could love them unconditionally in a way that I want their performance to go well, but it doesn't mean I'm a good or a bad dad.

See, a lot of us have vicariously lived through our kids because they're sort of those little trophies that say to the world, I'm okay because my kid went to bat school or scored so many points or really played the violin well. So listen to what the Apostle Paul does. For this reason, he opens up. For this reason. Every time you get a for this reason, he's looking back. For what reason? Since you, Paul, if he was here, he'd say, remember that long sentence I wrote?

Yeah. Since you have every spiritual blessing in Christ for that reason. And since that reason means his Spirit has sealed you and you have an inheritance and you're secure and you're redeemed and you're adopted and all that because all that's true of Jesus, he's bolted you with him for this reason. Now what he's going to pray is that what you already possess in your relationship with him, you could begin to experience. And notice the way he thinks it gets from your head to your heart is, you know what Paul's doing right now? He's praying. For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I've not stopped giving thanks for you.

That's the first thing he does. By the way, that's really great when you pray for your wife, your friends, your family, because we all tend to think about what they're not doing right and where they need to shape up. And so what do you pray for? Lord, help my son to be more disciplined. Help him to do his homework. Help my wife to be more affectionate. Help my husband to get more discipline. He hasn't run that Bible in three days. Help him. Right?

Right? What would happen if we just took a little model here and you started thanking God for what the people that you love, what they already bring? He says, I've not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking.

It's a tense of the verb that means repetitive. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you, it says, the spirit of wisdom and revelation. In your notes, put a uh and then make a small s. We already have the Holy Spirit. Translation here, God, he's asking, I want God to give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better. The word wisdom here is that discernment.

Revelation is that God would open the truth. In other words, I'm praying that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and discernment about who you already are and a revelation, you know, that aha moment that, oh, I am adopted. I am redeemed. I am loved. I am free.

I am secure. And so that you may know him better. And you'll notice that you may know is in bold. There's a couple different words in the Greek New Testament for know. One is a factual knowledge. In other words, two plus two is four.

You need to know that fact. The another is a different word and it's a relational knowledge. It's a knowing that you comes by time and relationship and that's the word he uses here. He says, I want you to, all those facts, all those truths, I want you to relationally feel at home that Christ is in your heart.

I want you to feel and know and experience better that you're valued, that you've paid for, that you matter. And then the question is how, is ask the Father to reveal himself to you. See, what's really happening here is the Apostle Paul is saying, we all have shattered dreams.

The only one that will ever come through for you 100% of the time is the Lord. So the greatest thing you can ever do in dealing with all your shattered dreams is get to where your experience and knowledge of who he is so that you know that, you know what, there's days where your kids won't love you the way you wish. There's days your mate won't love you the way you wish.

But if you're grounded and know he loves you, you're sustained and the shattered dream doesn't have to shatter your life. I'll never forget my, he's my, actually I was gonna say he's my oldest but he's five minutes younger than his brother but he was always much bigger and he was, I guess, I don't know, between about 13 and a half and late 17, he went through this real window of rebellion. And to be honest now, to tell this story, part of his rebellion was his fearful father of not knowing how to be a dad and watching his kid go down a road not morally at this point but just, you know, his attitude and my answer probably was a lot like my dad's and I came on too strong, too hard, too quick. That was my part.

Now he had full-blown rebellion, he gets down 100% of that. But in that journey, I remember with tears in his eyes and, you know, he lived as a pastor's kid and he said, Dad, I just want to tell you something. And, you know, honestly, my friends actually like you, they actually think you're a pretty neat guy. I actually think you're a pretty neat guy. I just wish you weren't a Christian guy because I don't think I'd buy any of this.

And I know it really matters to you but I just, this Jesus stuff and Christianity, so I just don't think I'd buy any of it. Well, when you want to have an intimate, knowing, loving relationship with your son and you've given your life and you're a first-generation Christian to telling other people about Jesus and your son says. And so he was a very smart kid and he knew how to push all the buttons in my wife and he just kind of reframed reality. And we had a time where some of you have been here, you know, you sit up in bed after everyone and you just talk with each other. Are we being too strict?

Are we too lenient? What about this? What about that? Our family table time, you know, just the attitude.

I mean, just spoiled things, you know. We're going to pray. Well, I'm not going to pray because I don't, you know, and all this stuff. And we went through a very, very difficult season. And I remember, you know, okay, how do you respond to that? Do you talk about feeling rejected?

You talk about feeling isolated? I adopted that boy when he was five. And I remember in the car talking to him and God gave me my first words. I said, well, son, I know this might be hard to hear, but if I wasn't a Christian dad, you wouldn't have any dad at all. Because the biological dad didn't care anything about you.

And he ran off. You're my son because I chose you. Now, you don't have to, you know what, I'll never force you to follow my God. And, you know, son, it's, you know, but we'll have very few rules in our home. You're not going to destroy our home.

And you can have a good attitude. But I just want you to know it really breaks my heart. And your mom and I will be praying for you. And so we went through this journey. And it was knowing that my son's response to me, well, that's a shattered dream. And if how your kids turn out is what your life is based on, and some of them don't turn out very well, you can just rack up you have ruined your whole life.

Somehow thinking you had the power to make all the decisions for them. And all I knew to do was, you know, this isn't a parenting seminar, but I always had two guard rails. And I told him, son, you just got to get it.

There's nothing you can do for me to stop loving you. Okay? So I took him out for breakfast, you know, like once a week, every other week. I spent time with him.

Kept hoping for this great breakthroughs, you know. I said, if you're going to go hang with your friends at our church, you're going to come to church too. But, you know, no hypocrisy, you know, great, fine.

I don't have to listen. And the other was, you can't have your way. You can't have your own selfish way. You can't cut it both ways. So, you know, here's very clear.

You're going to respect your mom, etc. And so we went through about four years of that. And it was horrendous, and it was terrible. But I will tell you, what sustained me was I asked the father to reveal himself to me. And all I say by that is, see, I think as imperfectly as I handled that, and as many tears as we shed, see if somehow he's got to turn out right. Somehow I got to make him see. Somehow all that does is put pressure on the people that you love.

Trying to make your shattered dreams be what you want them to be almost always has a reverse effect. First and foremost, the apostle Paul says to this church, here's what you need in this pagan world of Ephesus and the temple of Diana here and prostitutes here and worldliness here. Here's what you need. Here's who you really are. I'm asking God to give you a spirit of wisdom and insight and revelation about who you are in Christ that you would know him better, because he's the only one that will love you consistently and never let you down.

Is that awesome or what? So that's not, is that like different from, you're supposed to have a quiet time. You're supposed to pray. You know, if you're really hot, you should memorize some verses. You know what the verses you ought to memorize? The ones that speak to the greatest need in your heart. The ones where you feel like, oh, I want to feel God more but I don't.

Well, you know what? He's near to the brokenhearted, so I'm going to write that down. I'm just going to read it over and I'm going to pray those verses back to God. And you know, when I feel confused, I mean, I'm going to write on my journal how I feel and I'm going to offer it up to God. And Lord help me, I don't know how to pray. I don't know what to do with this kid. I don't know what to do with this marriage.

I don't know, you know what? My lands, I was a financial planner, now my house is upside down. Help. God answers those prayers. The second key is God wants to fulfill your dream of having a better tomorrow. God wants to give you a hope and a future and He'll never let you down. Now, it won't be in the way that you want necessarily. It won't be exactly what you want and it won't happen at the time that you want.

Other than that, it'll be perfect. But He says, notice He keeps praying, He says, I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. Well, there's a purpose in order that you may know. Circle that if you will because that's the other word.

In other words, you'll know by rock solid facts what? The hope to which you've been called, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and then we'll see in a minute and His incomparably great power that is for us who believe. Here's what He says. He says, I'm praying also that the eyes of your heart, in other words, the part where you see by faith and it says may be enlightened, literally a very excellent translation is the eyes of your heart having been enlightened. So, He's certainly praying for what will happen in the future but what He's saying is now that you're in Christ, the eyes of your heart, your relationship with God, you see now in ways that you haven't seen before and since He has, what I'm praying is that you'll start to understand three things, three rock solid facts, the hope to which you're called, the riches, notice it's not now of your inheritance.

Look at the text, what's it says? The richest glorious inheritance in the saints, it's God's inheritance. You're His kid.

When you came into the family, He's excited about you. He wants you to, He's praying that we would understand, you mean we're valuable to God? Yeah.

And the power that's available. And so those are rock solid facts and He says the hope to which you're called, put a little box around the word hope. When we use the word hope in English, we say things like I hope things go well, I hope it doesn't rain, I hope the pizza comes on time.

Those are wishful thinking. This word, the word in hope is like the anchor of your soul. We hope that Jesus will return. When the Bible uses the word hope, it means absolute certainty.

God said it, God promised it, it will happen. And so what He's saying is I want you to know as a fact, as a bedrock that'll never shake, I'm praying since your eyes have been enlightened that you would begin to understand the absolute hope that you have. You will have shattered dreams of different magnitude depending on your life, your journey, and where you're placed for God's purposes. But here's the hope that won't change.

Jesus is real, Heaven is real, He lives in you, you're headed there, and He'll be with you until you get there. That never changes. Your kids may not turn out right, you may never get married, you may never have the financial success, you may never be on the island in your dreams with your loved one walking on the beach in your golden years. And by the way, don't get me wrong, any of that stuff you get, God bless you. I mean, I hope I get some of it too.

It just can't fill you up. It just can't be what I'm thinking life's going to be all about. He says I want you to know about the hope of your calling.

It's the same word He used up in chapter four where it says you've been chosen, you've been called, same word. He wants you to know that's a certainty. Ask the Father to give you an eternal perspective. See that is the antidote to shattered dreams. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.

We'll get back to our series Unstuck in just a minute. But first, if this teaching has ministered to you, consider becoming a monthly partner. Your regular financial support goes a long way to help us encourage pastors, create resources, and share Jesus with today's youth.

Visit LivingOnTheEdge.org today to learn how to support us. Well, with that, here again is Chip. The first antidote is being in relationship with God the Father who loves you in a way that no matter what other people do, does it hurt? Of course it hurts.

But it can't destroy you. And then you ask God, will you give me an eternal perspective? Would you help me to understand the hope that I have? And then this is one of those verses that I look, and would you help me to grasp the riches of your glorious inheritance? Now think about this, okay? This is one of those lofty theological things.

Would you just try and lean back? There is an eternal being outside of all time and eternity. He had no beginning and he has no end. He is simple.

And by that, he doesn't have parts. He's one essence, God in three personalities, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And in the mind and the heart of God before the foundations of the earth, he has a plan. And he decided out of all the galaxies we estimate now, but it keeps growing and expanding that there's billions of galaxies, 200 billion or plus.

There's over 200 billion stars in our simple one little galaxy Milky Way, just fairly small. This one who created all of that has decided in one planet that is just situated in such a way that is ideal for life as we know it, that he would create you and me and mankind. And he would watch us in our violence and selfishness kill one another and have wars and realize that in our rebellion, that from the foundations of the earth giving us freedom, that he would send his son to live an absolutely perfect life, born of a virgin. Born of a virgin so he could be fully human and yet fully divine. And after living this perfect life, he would die upon a cross to pay for your sin and my sin in the sins of all people of all time. And then he would rise from the dead, not as some mystic religion somewhere, but in space-time history with over 500 people who would be eyewitnesses, who would talk to him over a 40-day period and then visibly rise. And then he says to you, his church, when you trust in that work and become a part of his family, he gets inheritance. Who for the joy set before him endured the cross. You are precious.

You are magnificent. You are a part now of his family. He sees you as an inheritance.

Are you kidding me? I mean, if like a king or a queen or some president or in our day, I think some owner of some football team, if they said, I want you to come and be a guest in my suite and I have five mansions, I've got one. I just want you to live there.

It's on me. And by the way, I've just written you into my will. I mean, wouldn't you go like, are you kidding? And the God of the universe says, you are my inheritance. When you begin to think with an eternal perspective of who God is and what he's done, do you start to see how that shrinks those shattered dreams? Do you see how they're hurts? And I don't mean to dismiss them. And I don't mean you don't face them.

I don't mean you don't weep over them. They don't have the power to make you stuck the rest of your life. You're a child of the king of kings and the Lord of lords. Finally, he's going to tell us that the third fact is I want you to know the power that you possess currently. God wants to fulfill your dreams of leaving a legacy to make a difference in the world.

And you're saying, I got shattered dreams. I don't have the power to do that. He goes, and the incomparable greatness of his power for those who believe, the power that is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ. And then he's going to give three quick examples of this power. Now you'll notice in your notes the word power, the word working, and the word might, and the word strength.

Circle all those words. The apostle Paul, he wants you to get how much power is available. And he took like his Greek lexicon, and he took four different words to say, you know what, here's what I want you to know. The word power, the first one we get our word for dynamite. It's dynamic, power, the energy that makes things happen. When he says here the working, we get our word, it's energon. As we get our word energy, it makes things move.

And the word might here, it has this idea that things that transpire and happen. And then finally, strength is the ability to overcome obstacles. And so he goes, I want you to understand, I'm praying that somehow from your head to your heart to your soul, that you would grasp not only of this hope of your calling, that you are a part of God's inheritance, but you had this incomparably great. I mean, in other words, it's so great you can't get your arms around it, power. And then he says, which he exerted, and he goes, let me just tell you the kind of power that lives inside of you.

Illustration number one, when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. That's the kind of power that lives in you. Same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Illustration number two, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion in every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the age to come. Here's his power. He's giving us in Hebrew mindset, sort of all those levels of different angels and authorities and powers.

This is over all of them. That's the kind of power that lives in you. Not that you have that role, but that same kind of power that God did in giving Christ that reign. And then notice, and God placed all things under his feet and appointed to him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

And he says, I want you. He's praying. This is a great thing to pray for yourself, to pray for your mate, to pray for your friends, to pray for your roommate, to pray for your kids. I'm praying that you might know, not experientially, but as a fact from your head to your heart, that you have a hope that no shattered dream can break, because you have a hope in his calling. That you have an inheritance, but bigger yet, you are part of God's inheritance. And that the same power that raised him from the dead and the same kind of power that made him ruler over all these different levels of powers and angels and things we can't see, and the same kind of power that places him over everything forever in every way, are you ready for this?

It dwells in you. See, the Christian life isn't getting something new or something different. The Christian life is tapping into, by the power of the Holy Spirit abiding in his word in the community of God's people, that which you already possess. You're in Christ.

How? Ask the Father to help you comprehend the supernatural power available to you today. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and the message you just heard, Overcoming Shattered Dreams, is from our series, Unstuck. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. Through this study in the book of Ephesians, Chip highlights the most painful experiences we'll encounter in life and explains how God's Word delivers healing and power to overcome them. Learn how to not just move past broken relationships, rejection, and shattered dreams, but have true joy and contentment that only comes from a relationship with Jesus. If you've missed any part of this series, catch up any time through the Chip Ingram app. Before we go any further, our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, is with me now to share a quick word.

Thanks so much, Dave. If you've been listening to Living on the Edge for a while, you may have heard me talk about BIO. The B is for Before God, the I for In Community, and the O for On Mission. Here at Living on the Edge, we have about a million folks who listen each week like you are right now. We've got hundreds of thousands who use our small group studies, read the books, and go to the website every year. And for many, the teaching and the resources we provide through Living on the Edge, it helps them understand what it really means to come before God and to meet Him and experience Him. For others, it's kind of their lifeline to doing life in community. But there's a relatively smaller group of people who step up and say, I'm all in. We want to be on mission with you, and we want to make this ministry happen.

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Have listeners tap donate. We appreciate your generosity. Well, here again is Chip to share a few final words for us to think about.

As we close today's program, we're wrapping up this teaching on overcoming shattered dreams from Ephesians chapter 1, verses 15 to 23. And it's emotional. I mean, it really is. You start talking about really, really big issues in your heart and your life, and it hits a very deep and raw nerve. It does for me. I know it does for you. And the apostle Paul teaches in this passage that shattered dreams can lead to lives that get transformed.

And we live in a day of great self-help, of we can fix anything. And it's very interesting that when the apostle Paul is trying to help this church understand God's dream for them, notice the phrase he says, For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, your love for all the saints, I've not stopped giving thanks. And then he says, I remember you in my prayers. And I don't know if you've ever done this. I think sometimes our prayer lives become—I don't mean this critically, I think it's just human—they become sort of a, Oh God, here's where I'm overwhelmed today.

Please help. And you think about the meetings that are coming up, or you've got a problem at work, you've got a problem in your marriage, one of your kids is going through an issue. And by the way, I think these are all really good prayers. I think we should pray about these things.

And we need more money, and we've got to pay a bill, and Johnny's sick, and Mary's having trouble with her boyfriend, and I think God is our Father. But what I would remind you that these deep kind of issues that need a complete transformation of our thinking and our mind and our soul is, it's very interesting that those are the kind of things that when you read Scripture, that's what the Apostle Paul prays. And so he prays that we would ask the Father to reveal himself to us. I mean, what would happen if instead of all these kind of, you know, this dream and that dream, what if you said, Father, would you reveal who you really are to me?

In other words, instead of the dream, what if you fell in love or grasped how deeply the dream giver loves you? Or the second thing he prays, what if you begin to ask God, you know, he wants you to have a better tomorrow. He has an eternal inheritance. What if you said to God and started to pray, God, would you give me eyes to see my present circumstances through an eternal perspective? Not just how I feel, not just what I want, but God, would you, I mean, supernaturally help me see life through an eternal perspective?

And then the third prayer here is you could pray, God, would you help me comprehend the power available? You know, I read, interestingly, a quote just the other morning by Philip Brooks. He's a preacher of many years past. And in this quote, he says, don't pray that God would remove all the barriers in your life. He says, pray that God would give you the power to go through those barriers. And he says, we often pray that God will eliminate all the hassles and the hurts. And he says, pray for the strength to be that person that makes it through those things.

And so here's my application for you. Yes, we have shattered dreams in a fallen world with imperfect people. They're going to let us down. And this is going to be something we'll deal with all of our lives. Here's my request. Pray, but pray differently. Pray big, pray deep. Ask God to do things in you that only He can do that are way beyond just the everyday.

Thanks, Chip. And as we close, would you stop for a minute and pray for Living on the Edge today? We've never seen a greater need for God's truth to go out than right now. And by God's grace, Living on the Edge has provided encouragement, teaching and personal discipleship resources to more people than ever. So thank you to those who support us in prayer. God is doing amazing things. Well, until next time, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.