Life Lessons with Chip - Recalibrating Your Walk with God

Every so often, I get this uneasy feeling in my spirit. I'm working hard, I'm busy, I'm doing good stuff, but something's off and I can't quite put my finger on it. But I've learned to stop, reflect, assess, and then recalibrate. Today I want to be very personal and help you recalibrate your walk with God.

I think this is really going to help. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We are a discipleship-driven ministry on a mission to encourage Christians everywhere to live like Christians. In this program, we're pushing pause on Chip's 10 practices great Christians have in common teaching to highlight a new timely message from our series, Life Lessons with Chip.

As he teased, every once in a while we need to hit the reset button physically, emotionally, and especially spiritually. And that's exactly what Chip is ready to help us do today. So settle in as we join Chip with his talk, Recalibrating Your Time with God. One of the things that I love to do about my job is we have staff meetings. We meet as a staff every day and pray, but on Wednesday we have a staff meeting and once, sometimes twice a month, or even now and then I'll get to do a little series. But what I love most is to just think about our team and what's going on in their life and especially, you know, when big things are happening in the world and I know they're feeling pressure like I'm feeling pressure and then if you combine that with, you know, as a ministry, as an organization you hit some speed bumps and things are a little rocky or maybe key people leave or there's financial pressure or there's like, oh, great opportunity and everyone's working with their hair on fire. You know, I meet with the Lord in the morning and I listen and, you know, Lord, I don't know what you want to say to our team, but I'm listening and I'll kind of close my eyes and God speaks to me. And, you know, I'll bring my Bible and, you know, we're all on Zoom all over the country and all that stuff and I'll say, hey, I'm just noodling.

This isn't like an official message, okay? I don't have a great outline. It's not like here's the three points, now here comes the illustration, here's the four things you need to do. It's more of let's sit down and have a cup of coffee together. Let's kind of talk about what we're thinking and feeling and where do we need God to show up in our lives? How do we need to think about this? And what I realized is there is a passage in Scripture that has caused me to recalibrate. I remember an early crisis, you know, I had only been a Christian maybe three years and it just felt like the world was falling apart. And I went out to a little coffee shop and I thought, God, I don't know if I can keep doing this.

And I had so many balls in the air and was praying whether I should marry Teresa and there was these issues and those issues in my last year of college and just graduate school, all kind of crazy things. And I remember reading Psalm 103. And if you're not familiar, he first talks to himself and he says, Bless the Lord or praise the Lord, O my soul, and all my innermost being praise his holy name. And all I want you to get out of it is he's talking to himself. In other words, this is me and I'm going to talk to my soul.

My soul isn't doing well or it's confused or it's hurting or it's struggling. And he's talking to his own soul. And then in verse two, he says, Bless the Lord or praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not any of his benefits.

And then he lists some benefits that I'll read in just a minute. And then he moves from that to talking about God's ways. And then he shifts to getting this renewed picture of this is the character of God. He goes to his theology. So he becomes aware of what's going on in his own heart and in his world. Then he starts reflecting on where he's been and things he's learned and how God has shown up in the past. And then he takes this theology and starts focusing. So I was there and I've been in Psalm 103.

I don't want to exaggerate, but I've been a Christian a little over 50 years. I'm going to say maybe 50, 100 times when I felt this, I got to recalibrate. I just, you know, there's changes here and changes there and I need to get centered. I need the Holy Spirit and you, Lord Jesus, to get me aligned. And so I said to our staff, you know, OK, big things are happening in the world and we're going through some times.

I want to meet with you for you. And so I actually wrote this staff meeting is about your individual life. It's about your journey, your family, your walk with God, your struggles and your insecurities, your fears and your anxieties, your hopes and dreams. And we all consciously and unconsciously are living in a way that deals with some of these things in really positive ways.

And we're all actually doing some of these things in very negative and unproductive ways. And I think about, you know, surviving, but I really think about how do you thrive in the Christian life? And one of the things I realize is you constantly have to sort of review, renew, recalibrate.

I like that word. And it was during this time I wrote this in my journal. I'm a verbal processor and I wrote this in my journal and I shared this with our staff. It's a season for renewal and fresh vision for me, for teaching and training and leaning into this new season with the amazing doors God has opened and is opening. I need to really stop, get deeply refreshed in body, soul and spirit and in unity with my wife for this next season. I don't want to just crank out contact or do what I'm supposed to do or have some vague idea that I think I'm on target and just keep doing what I'm doing without really pausing and getting a clear sense of, God, what do you want me to do? What does the people who listen to Living on the Edge need?

What do those overseas really need? I want to hear from you, see you, draw near to you, Lord Jesus, and get a fresh spiritual manna and direction with joy and discernment for the days ahead. Show me where and how to stop.

Show me what and how to rest, how to get refreshed. You know, we're all made differently, but I'm an activator. I'm a go, go, go, go, go person.

To sit quietly is like super hard. You know, I've disciplined myself to do it. But I'm just asking, God, spark a new energy and rhythm for this season in our marriage and in the ministry. Grant me a fresh, real knowledge and experience of your love for me. Grant me freedom. This is a good one for you, too. Grant me freedom to do what is in my heart and what you want me to do and what's your will, not the unspoken expectations I hear in my head or the sense of responsibility of meeting everyone else's needs.

And here's what I would say to you. When you're trying to recalibrate, number one is this. It starts with awareness, awareness of there's something bubbling up in your soul, awareness of what's happening in the world, awareness of what's happening in your family, awareness of—this is a key one—what season are you in? I mean, what's going on at work?

What season is the company in or the organization in? Awareness is really the first step. And what I've seen the psalmist here do, he says, Bless the Lord, O my soul. He says, Hey, soul.

You know, David also says, My soul is disquieted within me. When lots of changes are happening, I think awareness is the first step. I jotted down, you know, you need to be aware of what phase you're in. And so I'm going to just take a stab. Believe it or not, I've been through my 20s, of course, my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, and I'm in my 60s and ready pretty soon to hit my 70s. You need to be aware of what season are you in.

Are you ready for this? You need to understand that, you know, in your 20s, it's pretty much learning. I mean, it's learning how to relate. You may be single. You may get married.

You may be—it's career. 30s, you start to develop some things. If you do get married, often now you have some small kids. And so how do you do family and how do you adjust? And by 40s, all of a sudden there's demands. Your career is really ramping. And also the kids are getting older and new demands happen if you happen to be married or kind of new fresh demands if you're single and thinking, Do you want to remain single?

Is that God's calling? When you hit your 50s, it's probably a window of some of your greatest, greatest impact and some of the greatest dangers. The empty nest hits a lot of people in their 50s or real early 60s. And you need to realize the way you did life in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, it's going to be different. And then your 60s absolutely are the most productive time, according to a Harvard study, that you'll ever have in your life. So you need to ask yourself, So what season am I in? What decade am I in?

I can't say much about the 70s because I'm not there yet. But that Harvard study says that our 60s are our most productive time, that our 50s are our second most productive, and our 70s are third most productive. I know for me it was like, Okay, I want to stay in shape. I want to stay focused. I don't want to coast. I don't want to drift.

I want to stay sharp. And so part of what I wanted to share with our staff was, How do you do that? And so number one was to be aware and then to ask yourself not just what season are you in? This has been a big one for me.

Okay? What season are key family members in? What season is my wife in? I'm looking at her life's way different now. We don't just have kids. We have grandkids. We don't just have grandkids. We have some that are 21 and some that are five.

Where does she feel the pressure? And then I look at my kids. You know, some of you don't have ones as old as me.

And my grandkids, what season are they in? What's going on? Do you get it? All I want you to get is this. It is so easy to get up and do the same thing in the same way all the time and think, You know what?

I can't figure out why what I'm doing right now isn't producing good results because this is how I've always done it. And what I wanted to say to our staff was just pause. The first step is just become aware of what's going on. The second thing, and this is, you know, really is going to cause you to dig a little bit deeper.

I said to our staff, Be aware of your own story. We forget your family of origin, the traumatic events that have happened in your life, your pinnacles of success in the past, the richest relationships, the most painful relationships, where you tend to find your significance apart from Christ. What rhythms and seasons have you been closest to God? What things do you do, or when you look back you've done, brings life and energy and vitality? See, over time, external pressures, internal issues, family relationships, job changes, wars that are happening around the world, economies that shift, it's like all these arrows are coming at us. And what happens is we tend to be oblivious. And you start to be aware of what's going on inside and be aware of what's happening in this season of your life. That's when you begin to talk to your own soul and become aware and begin to do the very next thing.

And the very next thing is you need to reflect. Notice he says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all of his benefits, who forgives all your sins, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. And then there's this kind of commentary as he looks back on these are the things God has done in my life. He's forgiven, he's healed, he's redeemed, he's empowered, he's encouraged, he's crowned me, he's blessed me, he's satisfied me, so that the Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. This is what God has done, and this is who God is.

This is how he works. And then there's this what I call a hinge verse in verse 7. He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel. And so you reflect in order to get a good sense of where are you right now. You're aware of your maturity, your life season, your challenges, your struggles, your relationships. And then you start reflecting on what God has done and you reflect on your past and you do it in such a way that it begins to bring clarity to the now, to the changes, to the frustrations, to what's going through in your life. And so what I told our team was reflect on the inflection points that have directed your life in ways that have borne good fruit.

Let me say that again. Some people are verbal processors and you need to write it down. For others, you may need to do this with a friend. But reflect on the inflection points that have directed your life that have borne fruit. I started going back. I was sitting in my office and I was praying and thinking about what to share with the staff. And I thought of what are some major inflection points that really have geared how I think about life. But one of the inflection points in my life was recognizing that my loud mouth, my arrogance, my posing, my positioning was rooted in insecurity. I didn't know why I had to brag. I didn't know why I cussed the way I did it before I was a Christian.

I didn't know why I had to act certain ways in different groups, why I always wanted to impress someone or was afraid someone would see who I really was. And I didn't have any theology to speak of and I wasn't a follower of Jesus. But shortly after becoming a Christian and the Lord began to reveal himself to me, of course he's going to go after pride. God hates pride. But what he helped me see, instead of a harsh, mean father, you're proud. Get with it, Ingram.

That's ridiculous. What I heard was the gentle spirit of God saying to me, you know, Chip, do you know why you pose like that? Do you know why you act that way? Do you know why, you know, you have to let everyone know how hard you work or how early you get up or what you've accomplished or, you know, who you know? I mean, we all do this stuff, right? It's because you're insecure.

It's because down deep you're afraid if you took your mask off and someone saw who you really were, they would reject you. And that was an inflection point. Now here's the thing, in the last 50 years I have grown a lot, but when I want to recalibrate, guess what? Part of the frustrations and the changes, I'll catch myself mentioning something or saying something or posing, right? And then I don't know about you, but I try and take some time every day to reflect and say, Lord, you know, you pray the Lord's Prayer, right? Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Well, you talk about who you sin against. Lord, is there anything today where I've sinned? I mean, I wish I'd say, oh, I mean, usually it's a blank slate.

Oh, Chip, we're good. It's usually not that way. And it's usually subtle things.

It's usually with my mouth. It's usually thoughts that I had. It's usually internal criticism. It's usually self-righteousness. And it's interesting, it's usually pride that comes out in, are you ready?

Insecurity, still hiding. So when you go back to some of these foundational things, you go, oh, okay, okay. See, under pressure, this is where I default, Lord.

This is where I tend to go. The second thing I encouraged our staff to do was to reflect on how desperately insecure everyone else is. To actually realize, you know something, some people that are really withdrawn and you think they don't like you because they won't look you in the eye or they don't respond. I don't mean shy, I mean, or introverted, but there's some people that really withdraw that don't let you in. You know what, they're insecure and they're afraid to be known. And there's other people who they're just the opposite. They're bombastic and they're telling you what they did and who they met and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you just go, oh. And it's easy to be critical. The fact of the matter is, is when people have those strong reactions, they're insecure, just like we are.

And that's a way they keep people at a distance. You know, I have these little cards. When I make a discovery, I want to keep it. And so one of my cards, I just read them over. I don't try to memorize them, but you kind of, after years and years and years, I have a little prayer that says, Lord, would you help me to see other people through your eyes, not through their external beauty, success, wealth, or accomplishments, but to see them the way you see them. And then I put a little verse on the bottom of 2 Samuel 16, 7, I think it is. God sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord weighs the heart. And just, you know, as our staff, I just wanted to remind them, you know what, I'm insecure, you're insecure, she's insecure, under pressure, it's going to pop out. Some will pop out in weak responses, others in strong responses.

You know, we have vendors, we have ministries we're working with, we have partnerships. Could we all just like, could we remember? They're under pressure too. Could you remember, your kids are under pressure, your mate's under pressure. And when things are changing rapidly, our insecurities pop up. And so when you want to recalibrate, when you want to kind of recenter around the Lord, being aware is first.

And then I think you reflect on these big inflection points. A big, big inflection point for me was, I was 28 years old, and I shared this with our staff. It was when I made my first to-be list. I was a workaholic when I was 12. Okay, I started early, and then I worked really hard at becoming a really good workaholic. So by the time I was 12, I had two paper routes, seven or eight lawns, had really decided I'm going to get a basketball scholarship, get really good grades, have a pretty girlfriend. And by the time I graduated, I'd accomplished those things, then I had the next big list.

And in college, I was a workaholic, and I was an RA, I played basketball and baseball. I was in a Bible study, led a Bible study, and met with six guys individually each week to help them all grow. And I was a mess. I mean, I was an absolute mess. And I like to say that then I got married, and we had some kids, and I pastored the very first church, and it all went away.

No, I was about 20, probably seven years old at the time, maybe 28. And it was the very first church, and so a lot of responsibility, 35 people. And I figured out how to work about 90 hours a week to shepherd 35 people. I was so insecure, I had to meet everyone's needs. The phone would ring, I would jump up from the table, oh, you know, I can't let anybody down.

I mean, it was the performance orientation, the level of pressure I felt was just so ridiculous. And one of my mentors, Howard Hendricks, we met with him for a lunch for several weeks, and we have a brown bag, it's sitting in a circle. And Proth, I remember, he started, he goes, Gentlemen, most of you around this table are pretty gifted. You really work hard, and your priorities are out of whack because you don't believe something.

And I'm, you know, okay, Proth, what do I believe, right? He said, you don't believe that God really loves you. He said, here's what I want you to know, you will never be more loved or less loved than you are at this very minute. There is nothing you can do to get God to love you more, and there's nothing you can do to get him to love you less. And he said, now, don't get me wrong, there is blessing that comes with obedience and there's consequences, but God's love will not change. And then he went over to the board and he wrote the word objective, who do you really want to be? If God already loves you and you can't earn it, who do you really want to be? And then he wrote the word priorities. And then next to that he said, how badly do you want it? Are you willing to put knowing him, following him, pleasing him ahead of everything else? And then third, he said, schedule, where does it actually show up in your calendar if he's your priority?

I mean, what's it look like in your marriage? And I don't mean what you say, what songs you sing, I mean in your schedule where it's like this really matters. And then his last word was discipline.

Are you willing to pay the price to do what needs to be done when you don't feel like doing it? And I remember thinking, wow, God loves me right now as much as he's ever going to love me. And because of the way I grew up and my family of origin and kind of going through those things, I just realized I got loved when I scored a lot of points. I got loved when I got good grades. I got loved when I was obedient.

My dad was a Marine. I got loved when I obey. I mean, you know, and I just had transferred that into my relationship with my Heavenly Father. And I intellectually knew differently. I intellectually knew he loves me, but my behavior screamed all the time.

God loves me when I'm producing. And I just have to tell you, I was driving home. It was 32 miles from downtown out to this little town called Coughman, Texas, where I lived as this 28-year-old pastor. And I stopped off at the Dairy Queen, and I'd been thinking for, I guess, about 30 miles because the little Dairy Queen is a couple miles from where we lived. And I just had one of those moments, an inflection point. And I went, and I sat in a corner booth, and I got a napkin out, and I thought, Okay, Chip, who do you want to be?

Not what do you want to do. Who do you really want to be, and are you serious about it? And I wrote down, I want to be a great man of God.

And I don't mean that in an arrogant way. I just thought, I mean, if someone said, Would you like to be a good father or a great father? I want to be a great father. Do you want to be a good husband or a great husband? Well, I want to be a great husband. So I thought, as far as a Christian goes, I would like to be a great man of God, the way God measures, not what people think. And then my second one is, I want to be a great husband. I want to be a godly and great dad. I want to be a great friend. I want to be a great pastor. And I don't know why I missed out on the great.

I want to stay in shape all the days of my life. But that's what I wrote down. And then I literally took that little napkin, and I got out. It was old.

People weren't using computers and stuff then. It was like one of those day timer type things. And I thought, If I want to be a great man of God, and I was already spending time with the Lord, but I wrote in when I was going to meet with Him. And I put everything in my schedule. And then this epiphany hit.

If I do all these things to become that person, I don't have any time to do my to-do list. But I decided that's what I would do. And then I had an accidental moment happen in my life.

It was really amazing. My kids were not doing their homework like they should, and so we were going to do an experiment. No TV on school nights. And everyone was bored and whining for about two or three days. And then pretty soon they're playing the guitar, lifting weights.

We're playing basketball in the driveway. And they were small kids, so they went to bed pretty early. But it's like 8, 30, 9 o'clock. And I was used to watching the news and then going to bed about 11, 11.30. And it's 9 o'clock, and you can only read so long.

And it's like, Okay, I'll tell you what. I think I'll just go to bed. So it was like 9, 30, or 10 o'clock, I go to bed.

I wake up at 5 and got more sleep than normal. And that happened for a week. And all of a sudden, instead of trying to get up and spending time with God, I was like, I just added two hours to my day.

And that became a new pattern. And all I can tell you is from 28 until today, very imperfectly, one of the biggest inflection points for me has been I'm going to focus on my to-be list first and then my to-do list. And part of it was I never got my to-do list done anyway, right?

I mean, who makes a list and looks at the end of the week and go, I nailed all of that. But what I found is when I did my to-be list, it was, Okay, I'm going to have a date with my wife, and we're going to talk meaningfully right after supper, even if it's only for 10 or 15 minutes. I'm going to put my kids in my schedule so that, I mean, once a week I'm going to meet with one of them individually. We're going to eat together as a family, you know, like five out of seven nights. These are to-be.

This is what matters. I'm going to have some close friends that I really do life with and that I worked it in so I could work out. And since I loved basketball and didn't have any injuries back then, man, I'm going to play hoop two or three times a week and stay in great shape and really share my heart with guys. And then the other was, I'm going to find churches and pastors that know way more than me, that God's doing a great thing through, and I'm just going to keep knocking on their door until some of them will talk to me, and if they won't, then who's the next person? And I'm going to read, and I'm going to ask God, How do you become a pastor?

How do you become a man of God? What I learned is this, is if you focus on who God wants you to become, your capacity grows. And so those extended times with God and blocking times off to do my messages and spending time with my wife, what happened was the depth of our relationship, the capacity began to grow so that as I faced challenges, a different chip was showing up. You know, a lot of our staff is all different ages and especially those with young kids and under pressure. I was just trying to help our staff remember that, yes, your job's really important and family's really important and there's a lot of pressure in your life, but you'll never get your to-dos done.

So think about making a to-be list. And so as I thought through those things, probably the last reflection that I would share with you is I came to reflect on the most challenging things in my past and whether it was the time we went through cancer with my wife, whether it was a big, big problem with one of my children, whether it was a major ministry failure that I had. And I tried to look back and say to myself, What have you learned in this journey?

Because part of what I bring to our staff is I'm the oldest guy around, okay? And I don't want them to have to go through some of the things that I've been through. But I wrote this down, Actually looking backward through the lens of God's sovereignty and purposes and actively giving thanks to shape my future perspective, here's what I wanted them to hear. I really don't know God's ways or what He's up to. And I jotted down Hebrews 11, 33 to 36. You know, it talks about, oh, the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His ways and His precepts or His paths or beyond finding out, and who's been a counselor to Him that He should inform, or who has ever given anything to God that God should pay Him back for from Him and by Him and through Him and for Him is everything.

Basically, it's a mystery to the infinite knowledge and power and love of God and how He's orchestrating our lives. Here's what I wanted them to hear. As I've evaluated my life looking back, some of the most difficult, painful things that I've ever been through that I thought were the worst at the time have been the very things that I would never want to trade that either changed me or set me and my family up for what was so much better. And so kind of just getting to the point where you can kind of take a deep breath, that everything doesn't have to work out now, that how your kids are doing right now is not how they're going to be in 5 or 10 or 15 years.

You don't have to just bite your fingernails. You know, you thought you didn't get that job. You didn't get the interview, and that didn't turn out. And all I'm trying to tell you and what I was trying to tell our staff is, and I'm not good at this, but lighten up. Get perspective. Pause. Be still. Cease striving.

Take stock. How am I feeling? What season am I in?

What's going on in my life? And then start to reflect. And then the final thing here is where we all need to go. It's remembering our theology. Who is God?

Listen to this. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. Is that how you see God?

See, when I'm trying to recalibrate, what I realize is when my emotions and behavior and anxiety and struggles and frustrations and internal blaming of other people and stuff coming out of my mouth, somewhere along the way, who God really is and who I think he is or who I'm responding to is not the same. What's it like in your life right now to think God is compassionate? That means he feels with you. He hurts with you.

He's merciful. He's not down on you. He gets what's going on in your life.

And not only is he compassionate, he says the Lord is compassionate and gracious. He's not trying to hold out on you. He's for you. He wants to help you. He loves you. He's slow to anger. I mean, he's not like, I'm really upset with you and why don't you get with the program? You know, there's a lot that goes through our mind that is so different than who God really is.

I love this. He goes on to say he doesn't treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. It's such a refreshing and freeing thing for those of you that just live under this guilt that, you know, I messed up or if I do this and, you know, God is always down on me. That's not who he is as far as the East is from the West, so he's removed our transgressions from us. And as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

Why? He knows our frame. He remembers we're dust. As for man, our days are like grass. We flourish. We flower like a field. The wind blows over it. It's gone.

This place is remembered no more. From everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him and his righteousness with their children's children and with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. So all I want to say in our time of just kind of hanging out together is recalibrate. Really get aware of you, what's going on, what's going on in the world, and become aware of what are the emotions popping up and where are they coming from.

And I think the second is we just don't do enough think time. Reflect. Reflect on those major inflection points where God showed you things or on difficult things or great successes. And reflect on what are the things that you were actually doing when you felt close to God, when he was moving in your life. It's a longer list, but I literally, for our staff, I just talked about memorizing Scripture, spending time with God, doing what I didn't want to do, just remembering what are the things that over time you actually do.

Remember that Revelation passage where they've lost their first love and Jesus speaking says what? Repent, return, and basically it's not quite this word, but redo the things you used to do. In other words, just stop, repent. You're not doing what is drawing us close together and Jesus is saying, I love you and I want to be with you and I want to bless you, but you need to do a 180. And then you need to say, hey, Lord, I'm really, really sorry.

And then begin to do the things you used to do. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I keep this journal and I get stuck and I'm not feeling very close to God and I'm struggling and I start reading back through the last few weeks, the last few months, and it doesn't take a whole lot of time to realize, you know, Lord, I'm not kind of doing some of the things that I've done in the past. We all drift.

We all get a little undisciplined. And God's not down on us. He loves us, he's for us, and he wants us. Well, that's all the time we have today. Join us next time as we dive back into Chip's insightful series, Good to Great in God's Eyes. Until then, I'm Dave Drouy, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.