Share This Episode
Living on the Edge Chip Ingram Logo

B.I.O. - The Jesus Way of Disciple-Making, Part 2

Living on the Edge / Chip Ingram
The Truth Network Radio
December 5, 2024 12:00 am

B.I.O. - The Jesus Way of Disciple-Making, Part 2

Living on the Edge / Chip Ingram

On-Demand Podcasts NEW!

This broadcaster has 1645 podcast archives available on-demand.

Broadcaster's Links

Keep up-to-date with this broadcaster on social media and their website.


December 5, 2024 12:00 am

Have you ever considered what it truly means to know Jesus? How would you start that journey? In this program, Chip explores practical ways to deepen your relationship with Christ. He continues studying three simple practices Jesus modeled throughout the Gospels–that can help you build a more resilient faith- and develop a closer walk with Jesus.

Main Points

Introduction:

  • How can we address the discipleship deficit?

I. The problem

  • There is a need for discipleship

II. The invitation of Jesus

  • Jesus invites us to a life of abundance and purpose.

III. We must come to Jesus and learn from Him if we are to experience the life He promises

  • We must take His Yoke and learn from Him.

IV. Coming to Jesus is an event and a lifelong process of learning to follow His example and His teaching

  • The event = salvation - John 3:16
  • The process = discipleship - Matthew 4:19
  • The person = the path - John 14:6

V. Jesus practiced “the way” of living in dependency on the Spirit and submission to the Father

  • He came Before God
  • He did life In Community
  • He was On Mission 24/7

VI. Jesus taught His disciples what was required to continually experience the supernatural life He gave them

  • Abiding in Christ - John 15:1-11
  • Loving each other - John 15:12-17
  • Witnessing to the world - Matthew 28:18-20

VII. Until we grasp “the heart of God” and the why of discipleship, we will be destined to methods and programs that lead to discouragement, legalism, or self-righteousness.

  • Because of what Jesus did we can: know Him, love Him and serve Him.

Broadcast Resource

Year End Match

About Chip Ingram

Chip Ingram’s passion is helping Christians really live like Christians. As a pastor, author, and teacher for more than three decades, Chip has helped believers around the world move from spiritual spectators to healthy, authentic disciples of Jesus by living out God’s truth in their lives and relationships in transformational ways.

About Living on the Edge

Living on the Edge exists to help Christians live like Christians. Established in 1995 as the radio ministry of pastor and author Chip Ingram, God has since grown it into a global discipleship ministry. Living on the Edge provides Biblical teaching and discipleship resources that challenge and equip spiritually hungry Christians all over the world to become mature disciples of Jesus.

Connect

Partner With Us

COVERED TOPICS / TAGS (Click to Search)
Discipleship Spiritual Growth
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Has anyone ever taken the time to sit down and show you how to really get to know God? Well, a bricklayer did that for me when I was a young Christian, and it changed the whole course of my life. If you want to get to know Jesus, if you want to learn to come before Him and really hear His voice, then stay with me.

That's what we're going to do today. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this international teaching and discipleship ministry, and today we're continuing to help Christians live like Christians as we pick up in our series BIO, three essential practices to becoming more like Jesus. And to review, those three practices are built into the word BIO.

B is for Before God, I is for In Community, and O is for On Mission. The last time, Chip laid a lot of groundwork for how Jesus embodied these habits and taught them to his disciples. So if you missed that program, you can go back and catch up any time through the Chip Ingram app.

Today, Chip will take a more hands-on approach to help us apply the principles of BIO to our lives. So if you're ready, here's Chip with part two of his talk, The Jesus Way of Disciple Making. Most Christians I've met have never had anyone help them learn the ways of Jesus. No one sat down with them and said, I know it's a big book and it might be hard to understand, but believe me, with a little work, just like playing the piano or the guitar or learning to become a good basketball player, soccer player, whatever your sport, you know, there's a vocabulary to learn. There's some skills to learn. And with practice, you actually can learn to study the Bible because it was written for the common people.

I had a bricklayer do that for me. I was a brand new Christian. I came from that social church. I had rejected God because of the hypocrisy. I found Christ because I met some professional athletes and college athletes that I admired that had this personal relationship and love for one another that I didn't even know what it was.

I just knew I wanted that. And then I went away to college and within the first two days, a bricklayer, a blue-collar worker with a high school education, what did he do? He said, hey, Chip, how about seven o'clock Tuesday mornings, I'll come down and I'll help you learn the ways of Jesus. And I was, I mean, I was such a slow learner and he would knock on the door and sometimes I'd pretend I was asleep, but every Tuesday he kept coming back. And then we would go to the little kitchenette and we'd open the Bible and he taught me how to read the Bible, taught me how to understand it, just little by little. He said, don't worry about what you don't understand. Just ask God to show you and when he speaks to you, just obey.

That's what's important and trust him. And then pretty soon I had dinner at his house and I was having community and, you know, the fullback was there and two other guys and pretty soon we just had a little group that we met with Dave and he loved us. And I ate so many meals at his house and I watched what a Christian marriage looks like and he had four kids and I watched what a dad looked like. And I came from a home where my dad was an alcoholic. I'd never seen these things.

I'll never forget the first time I watched him go on a date with his wife and I'm thinking, married people have dates? It was unheard of. And here's what I want you to know. Yes, I learned the Bible. Yes, I learned to pray. But what I realized that really happened, I learned the ways of Jesus because Dave lived a life before God, because Dave did life in community. And I was with Dave in his car and I remember him pulling off to the side and someone was broke down.

Dave's mindset was missional, 24-7, helping people, loving people, and serving people. He didn't just give me information about Jesus. He followed the path of Jesus and then he showed me the path and then he did two things. He gave me great encouragement and then there were times where he said, hey, Chip, could we meet at McDonald's at 6 a.m.?

And we both were early risers and because of our work and our jobs and I knew McDonald's at 6 a.m. after a while was, I'll never forget. He looked across and he said, Chip, I watch how you drive and I think you think you're the most important person on the road and you're very impatient and I think how you drive doesn't represent Jesus at all. And I remember going, I thought we were in Bible study. What's driving? Come on, man. He said, no, no, you don't understand. We follow Jesus in every way and your driving is really just a symptom.

And I said, a symptom of what? He said, Chip, you're very arrogant and you're very proud. And then he began to point some things out about my relationships and some other things in my life and he said, we're all on a journey and it's a struggle, but God is opposed to the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

And so I just want to tell you that I share this. I prayed about this and you know, his eyes were watery. You could tell it was really hard for him. He goes, God wants you and me to learn to be a servant to other people, to consider other people as more important than ourselves.

Bam! I mean, what was he doing? He was doing what Jesus did with his disciples. He didn't just teach me.

What did he do? He actually showed me and cared for me and lived it out. And as a result, little by little, guess what? Still have a long way to go, but I'm not that person. After 50 years of walking with the Lord Jesus, he's radically, radically changed my life and I'm still on that journey.

In fact, actually one of the most exciting things that happened was two weeks ago. I had a big birthday and my wife said something. She goes, you know, Chip, you've never been really overly good at this, this and this, but in the last few months, I think you've been more sensitive and more caring and just these little things like you never used to empty the dishwasher or, you know, take the garbage out without being asked or, you know, just a bunch of little things that I just want to say, I see Jesus in your life. God continues to work in my life.

And if that all sounds like, wow, you're into the minutia, Chip, I mean, you're just, that's what it's all about. It's about Jesus living his life through you moment by moment every day. And the way that happens is coming before God on a regular basis so you get to see who he really is. So you can grasp that he's your father and that he loves you and he has a plan. And it's about doing life and community so you experience his love and you have a friendship with God the Father and friendship with other brothers and sisters in Christ.

And then it's doing what Jesus did. It's being on mission at home and in little things. And then eventually we'll talk about discovering your gifts and realizing you have a calling. As I was studying all of this, I came across something that I just have to share with you.

It was really, really, really exciting. In fact, let me pause for just a minute because this idea of coming before God to really experience joy, you know, the psalmist says in God's presence is fullness of joy. Jesus in John 15, when he talked about coming before God, he says, these things I've spoken to you that my joy would be in you and your joy might be made full. And then when I see this love relationship in the body of Christ and how we experience God's love through community with one another and then just the peace, the sense of purpose when you fulfill and know what you're here for and you do it, it's just amazing. And so I was on a long plane trip.

I mean, long, long plane trip, about 14 hours total. And I was thinking these things through and I decided, I do this a lot, I thought, Lord, in my mind, I just want to go through all of scripture, do these themes of coming before God, doing life in community and being on mission, where do they come from and are they really consistent through the whole Bible? And so I started studying Genesis chapter one and the lights came on. And it was like, wait a second, you know, so we're made in the image of God.

God actually is our Father. He wanted a family and he wants children that are like him who reflect his glory. And so the whole goal of God the Father is that we would know him and he would know us. And then you have this picture of Jesus comes in his pre-incarnate body and he walks with Adam.

We get this picture of a very regular rhythm in the cool of the night where they would come and take walks together. God wants to be our friend before there was sin. And then even before there was sin or a problem with work, he gave him a mission or a mandate and just as God created the universe, he said to mankind, to Adam and Eve, this man and this woman, I want you to be fruitful, I want you to multiply and then I want you to rule and have domain and have a mission.

I want you to get the joy of creating the way I've created, to rule the way I rule and let's do it in partnership. And I thought, and then in my mind I skipped over to Revelation chapter 21 and 22 and I thought even after sin and all the things that Jesus did, where does it begin? The marriage supper of the Lamb. There's a new heaven and there's a new earth and it's a perfect environment.

Now there's this family, right? Jesus is the bridegroom and his church is the bride. And then we have no sun or no moon and the Lamb is the light.

And we have this friendship that's unhindered by sorrow or pain or death or betrayal. And then what I realized was we will never grasp the role of these practices or the importance of the practices if we simply think, okay, I need to be in the Bible. Okay, I read three chapters. I'm supposed to pray.

I'm trying to learn to practice. I go to a Bible study. If that's your mentality, you will miss it. God wants you to experience what he wanted in the garden and God wants you to experience what we're going to experience in the new heaven and the new earth. Yes, we need to learn the teaching of Jesus, but he wants us to learn relationally to abide and come before God. He wants us to understand that we can't do it alone and have deep, authentic, wonderful relationships with one another.

And then he wants us to have these outside eyes where we're on mission 24 seven from the moment I get up thinking, what does my wife need? Or if you have children or my roommate and when I drive out my driveway or out of my apartment, think all these people here, I'm an ambassador for Christ. I may be the only Christian people know when I show up at work, where are my eyes?

How do I help other people? How do I represent Jesus? That's the life. And it's not a life of when you do those things, you earn God's favor.

No, no, no. These practices are doing what the disciples did, hanging with Jesus, listening to Jesus, doing what Jesus actually did and your desires change. Your focus changes and your heart changes and you begin to do what Jesus did. He did everything in dependency on the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit living the power of his life through you and me and pleasing the father.

And what I want you to know is that's God's grand, grand plan. It's the way of God to become like Jesus. And my observation after these many, many years is that the average Christian doesn't understand that. The average Christian thinks that going to church a couple of times a month, being a nice person, putting our kids in a good environment and a good church program, maybe even a Christian school, that that is going to transfer the life of Christ into the life of your family and your friends. And the evidence is, whether it's Gallup or whether it's Pew or whether it's Barna, the evidence is the lack of discipleship has created a church that is anemic where most Christians' lives don't look much like the Savior.

There's very little power. The average follower of Christ has never led another person to Christ. And many people have this warped idea that they need to do certain things all the time in order to get God to love them instead of understand that you will never be more loved than you are right now and that the Spirit of God dwells inside every believer and he's giving his life-giving Word that you can learn to understand and then put into practice and do life with other fellow believers in very open, vulnerable, accepting, and accountable relationships. And as you serve and care for other people, you give your life away, and Jesus' words ring true, giving it to be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running back into your lap.

You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We'll return you to Chip's message in just a minute. But first, let me tell you, God is doing incredible work through this ministry all around the world. And if you'd like to join us, consider partnering with us during our year-end match. Every gift we receive until midnight on December 31st will be matched dollar for dollar. Join us today by going to livingontheedge.org or by calling 888-333-6003. We appreciate your generosity.

Well, with that, here again is Chip. The distance between God's ultimate goal in Revelation 21 and 22, his fulfillment and his desires over here in the Garden, that distance of how did he build the bridge and make the rescue is all found in Colossians chapter 1. And what you see in Colossians chapter 1 verses about 13 through 20 is you see the desire of God and the heart of God and the fulfillment of God and how Jesus' life and mission and all that he did builds the bridge so you and I can experience that progressively more and more in this life now. I'm going to read this passage. I want you to listen very, very carefully. Don't know what you're doing.

Don't know where you're sitting. I want you to lean back, but I want you to say, oh, God, help me to really, really listen. Listen to what Jesus did and then listen for how this allows us to come before God, how this begins to create a life and community and how we now have a mission that's the very same mission as Jesus. Paul writes, empowered by the Holy Spirit, in Colossians 1 verse 13, for he, God, rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption, namely the forgiveness of our sins. He, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn. Literally, the word means first in rank of all creation.

Well, why? For by him, all things were created, both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. Notice this. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together. He is also the head of the body of the church, and he's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.

Why? So that he himself will come to have first place in everything, for it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness, the fullness of deity to dwell in him and through him to reconcile all things to himself through the blood of his cross. Through him I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven, Jesus' life, Jesus' death, Jesus' resurrection have made it possible that we can come before God and know him, know him genuinely, exhaustively know genuinely and fully. And as we know him as our Father, watching over us, helping us, loving us, it produces joy unimaginable. Second, because of what Jesus did, we can love him and experience his love as friends and in community. Community, just like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have community. Remember, I'm in the Father and the Father's in me and I in you and you in me and the Spirit in us. There's this beautiful picture of community and relationship that God says, what I share in the Godhead, I want you to share with me and I want you to share with one another. That's how we experience God's love. And finally, just as we were partners in the garden, we will be partners in the new heaven and the new earth, he says, Jesus is reconciling all things to himself and he's given us what? The ministry of reconciliation.

So what went wrong? You know, at this point, I hope you're saying, okay, Chip, number one is my head spinning a little bit, but I'm getting the before God in community and on mission. But what possibly could have gone so wrong that a Bob and Mary who are sincere, who understand the teaching of Jesus, who went to church, who even sent their kids to some good programs, what could possibly go so wrong that Bob and Mary are wondering what happened to their kids, what happened to their faith and what's happening to this crazy world around them.

I like to suggest that traditionally the church has embraced and taught the truths that I've shared with you for generations, but have not practiced what Jesus actually did to experience the supernatural life of joy and love and peace that he offers. See, the application is we have to practice the way of Jesus. We have to arrange our lives.

And here's the tough part. Arrange our lives around the busyness. Arrange our lives where the distractions of the phone. Arrange our lives where the most important thing each day, every day, is to come before our Heavenly Father who wants to help us, who knows all things. To arrange our lives where we have not superficial in the car driving here and there, but deep authentic relationships that take time and energy and sacrifice, and where we arrange our lives where we actually, our focus is serving and helping other people, and as we give our life away we begin to find it.

And that means that we come before God daily, we do life in community, and we're on mission 24-7. And what I want you to know is possible. We can address the discipleship deficit.

It's never too late. It will take some work. But in this series I'm going to teach you how not just to understand the theory, but how to specifically come before God to hear his voice, to study the scriptures, to know this is the direction for your life, for that business meeting or the challenge with one of your kids or an addiction that you're struggling with or a mental health issue. You have a Heavenly Father that when we apply the truth it sets us free. Second, in this series you're going to learn how to do life in community.

Not just the theory, but the actual practice of what it looks like and what you need to think and then what you need to do to experience the kind of community that God longs for you to have. And third, we're going to learn to be on mission 24-7. And we'll dig into not only being the servant, but understanding, are you ready? You have a calling. You are God's workmanship. You have a set of gifts and he's going to use your background and your strengths and your natural talents and you have an Ephesians 2 10 calling from God and a set of spiritual gifts to develop that you can be used in ways that you would never imagine.

And that excites me. It'll be a journey. It'll require practice.

People definitely need one another. But I want you to know that you can gain the confidence to be just a regular ordinary person like my friend, the bricklayer, who has disciples like me from just that little college ministry over many years on every continent I believe in the world. You see, you don't have to be famous. You don't have to write a book. You don't have to go to Bible college.

You don't have to go to seminary. When you follow the teaching of Jesus and you practice the way of Jesus, you will become more and more like Jesus. And when a son or a daughter lives with a mom or a dad or a roommate that is a lot like Jesus, it changes them and it attracts them.

And God begins to do the amazing kind of things that we all long for and that we read about, but somehow have begun to accept that that happened way back then, and it could never happen through an ordinary person like me or like you. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and the message you just heard, The Jesus Way of Disciple Making, is from our series BIO, Three Essential Practices to Becoming More Like Jesus. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. It's been said that the 21st-century church is thousands of miles wide but only an inch deep, meaning many people identify as Christians, but few truly live out a life that honors God. In this new series, Chip takes us on a journey through the Gospels, revealing the profile of an authentic follower of Christ. Together, we'll explore the discipleship path Jesus modeled while on earth, built around three simple yet powerful practices that will help us live out our faith.

You're not going to want to miss a single program of this meaningful series. Well, Chip's back in studio with me. Chip, for the next couple of weeks during our year end match, you'll be talking about how we are resourcing global pastors, reaching the next generation, and developing discipleship resources. But I'd like you to step back for a moment and share a bit of your heart for ministry. What keeps you going? Why do you do what you do? You know, Dave, that's an interesting question. And of course, first and foremost, I believe God's called me to do this, and He's gifted me to do this, and I'm going to be obedient. But from the emotional standpoint, I just have to tell you, it's the impact in people's lives.

I mean, every day people... I was at the airport, and a lady looked at me kind of funny, and she walked up and said, Hi, my name's Wanda. And for the last 20-some years, my husband and I, every single morning, have listened to Living on the Edge, and it's shaped us, and it's how we raised our kids, and our kids have grown. And she just began to talk about it. And I got a letter from a young man that trusted Christ at 25, and had had a pretty rough life. And he writes to me and says, I've listened to every sermon you've made available over the last 16 years.

Some of them I've listened to four and five and six times. And then he goes on to share how his dad died when he was 14, and I didn't know how to be a man. I didn't know how to be a husband.

I didn't know how to be a father. And just recently, God had led him to become a pastor of a small little country church. And he just writes, pouring out his heart, I got all this just from listening to Living on the Edge.

And Dave, I've got a longer email, just a couple hanging on by dear life. I mean, cancer and struggles and lost jobs and pain and things that you just think, are they ever going to make it through all this? And, you know, just saying every day we get up and we listen to God's Word through Living on the Edge.

So the reason I do what I do is God's Word doesn't return void. And by the grace of God, we teach God's Word to millions and millions and millions of people every year. And it's going across the nation and across the world, bringing some to Christ, strengthening others, and they in turn make a difference in the life of others. And when I have my down days, I take stacks of these emails and letters and I just read them and I remind myself, it's not about you. And I love what I get to do and we're going to keep on doing this. And that's why we're asking people to help us, why we're asking them to pray and to give so that regular people who are really hurting and need hope and help can get it and we can give it to them together.

Thanks for sharing those stories, Chip. It's so humbling to hear how God is using this ministry to touch people's lives. Well, if you'd like to join us in the work that we do, now is a great time to become a financial partner. Thanks to a handful of donors, every dollar we receive between now and December 31st will be doubled dollar for dollar. To send a gift, call us at 888-333-6003. Again, that's 888-333-6003. Or go to LivingOnTheEdge.org.

App listeners, tap donate. Chip, you drew a pretty definitive line in the sand today regarding knowing about Jesus and really knowing who he is. So as we wrap up our time, take a few minutes and unpack that a bit more for us, would you? Well, Dave, I probably come off a bit passionate on that very specific point because I actually grew up in church for quite a few years before I abandoned it. And what I recognized was I knew a lot about Jesus. And literally, I remember the very first time someone said, Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus? And I remember literally looking at them like, What? What are you talking about? I had never seen it.

I'd never heard of it. It was just this historic figure that you were supposed to be a good person. You were supposed to be religious, maybe come to church, be a little bit better, nicer guy. And so I am passionate because I think many people inside Bible-believing evangelical churches very subtly know a lot about Jesus but aren't necessarily experiencing that intimate knowledge where you hear his voice, where you get a prompting that says, This is what I want you to do today. Or we're asking for direction and you sit quietly. Or as you're reading the Scripture, the very question you're asking, it pops out of the page.

That's my heart's desire. So I think traditionally we focused a bit too much on morality and Bible knowledge instead of a real connection with our Heavenly Father. And don't get me wrong, it's not that morality is unimportant or Bible knowledge isn't important, but those things are a means to an end.

That's not the goal. We live a righteous life out of relationship and out of love and out of connection with our Heavenly Father. And so what I've done is I've kind of taken this to an extreme. And it was shortly after COVID, I told people, If no one has ever met with you and helped you learn how to have that kind of relationship with Jesus, I'll do it. And we started a thing called Daily Discipleship with Chip.

And now we've done five or six of these. They're online. They're absolutely free. My heart's desire is that you would have a deep, intimate relationship with Jesus and that you would learn the habitual practice of coming before Him and getting to know Him. Thanks, Chip. And before we go, let me tell you a bit more about the resource Chip mentioned called Daily Discipleship. Now this is a free video resource we've created where you can learn the basics of personal Bible study. For the entire course, you'll spend no more than 10 minutes with Chip in a particular passage of Scripture. Then he'll challenge you to study 10 more minutes on your own.

It's so easy. You'll be blown away by how much you'll learn about God and His Word. So sign up for any of our Daily Discipleship sessions today by visiting LivingOnTheEdge.org. App listeners, just tap Discipleship. Well for Chip and the entire team here, this is Dave Drouie thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge, and I hope you'll join us next time.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-12-05 02:34:56 / 2024-12-05 02:46:17 / 11

Get The Truth Mobile App and Listen to your Favorite Station Anytime