Living on the Edge

Host: Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.

Chip Ingram: Do you find yourself wanting to do what's right, making commitments, and then in honesty, not being able to keep them? I mean big commitments, commitments to marriage, family, God, friends.

Host: If you long to learn how to make personal commitments and keep them, today's the day for you. Stay with us.

Host: Welcome to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.

Chip Ingram: Nehemiah Chapter 3 is one of the most unusual chapters in all of scripture. It's essentially a long list of names, gates, and building assignments. But buried in that list is one of the most practical pictures of what it actually takes to make and sustain a personal commitment.

Host: Today, Chip pulls back the curtain to reveal biblical principles that are just as true for your marriage, your walk with God, and the unique purpose he's placed in your heart, as they were for the people rebuilding Jerusalem's wall. Here's Chip Ingram with a message titled Exercise Personal Commitment.

Chip Ingram: We're going to talk about a personal commitment as the fifth step to turning God-shaped dreams into reality. And I want to talk about the awesome power of commitment.

Just the idea. Think about just right now, who's the most committed person in any area that you know. I mean, it could be the most committed Christian, most committed parent, most committed athlete, most committed business person, most committed student.

Who is the absolutely over the top most committed person you know in any area? Have you got it? Got it in your mind?

Here's what I want you to know. On your notes, commitment inspires us to greatness. Second, commitment protects us from shortsightedness and moments of weakness. And third, commitment provides stability and focus and results in blessing.

Commitment inspires us to greatness. The reason I brought this ball up is in seventh grade, I was, I think 4'8" or 9". In eighth grade, I made it to 4'11" or about 5'. And then in ninth grade, I just shot up to 5'4".

That's when my basketball coach said, "Chip, you weigh just about 105 pounds, and I think you'd be a great wrestler."

I wanted to be a basketball player. I remember going to a dinner. It was between my eighth grade and ninth grade year, and back then, where I was from, ninth grade was a part of junior high. It was a large junior high, pretty large school system, and I grew up as a little boy going to the Friday night high school games and the entire town would come out and it'd be packed.

The greatest thing in my mind ever would be to be a part of the blue and gold Gahanna Lincoln Lions. Someday when I grew up, you know, be up and playing, you know, on the high school basketball team. My dream after that was to get a scholarship and play somewhere in college. I didn't care where, just anywhere.

You're probably about 5'2" between my eighth and ninth grade year, and they basically told me that I should try another sport. I went to this sports banquet and this coach from a little university that had a good basketball program called Capital University was a speaker. If you've ever heard a really good coach, they're awesome motivational speakers.

He was talking about going to a team in their conference, Kenyon College, during the preseason, and his school was playing their school in football. The basketball season was opening about a month, and when he was there, he saw a young man named John Rinka. This would be about the mid-sixties.

John Rinka was 5'9" and led the nation in scoring in small college. There wasn't a three-point line. He averaged 41 points a game, and he was only 5'9". He told this story, and he tells the story, and he said that when he came into the gym, if that's the basket there, John Rinka would be on this side, and he'd shoot, and then he would run, and he'd grab it, he'd go to the other end line, stop, shoot, run, go to the other end line.

Then he'd put a chair right here, and then he would fake, stop, plant, go. He said he was drenched in sweat. He wasn't like shooting around; they were drills that he was doing. He said they came in from the halftime of the football game and he was still doing it. He said the game was over, the whole football game.

John Rinka is still in the gym. He made the point, greatness is not always, or is it rarely a matter of ability. It's a matter of commitment.

One little boy, who's a big boy now, who's out of breath doing that. I remember a picture came into my mind, and I decided that I was going to be a basketball player.

Without exaggeration, I practiced 6 to 10 hours a day. I would dribble in my room, I'd lay on the floor, I'd spin the ball on my finger. I saw an article about Pete Maravich that came out in Sports Illustrated right about that time, and he had all these drills he did behind his back, and I just did them.

I tried to find guys three, four, five years older and get in the game, and I just played and played and played and played until I got to be one of those high school guys, blue and gold for the Gahanna Lincoln Lions. Then a very small school offered me a scholarship to play basketball at it.

Commitment. Because of that, I didn't go to a junior senior prom. Because of that, I never put alcohol or drugs in my body, not at all because I was religious. I was not a Christian. I'd never opened the Bible. But commitment gives you focus, it gives you stability, it inspires to greatness.

The other thing it does is when I got tired, when I got weak, when I wanted to quit, when bigger guys were beating me up, it sustained me because I thought to myself, I had that picture of what I wanted to be, and I was committed to it. I wasn't just emotionally committed to it, I wasn't intellectually committed to it.

I was volitionally and willfully saying, "Whatever it takes, whatever price, that's what I'm going to do." Now, that's a silly little illustration to tell you the truth because it's just a sport. But that sport paid my way through college. It later opened the door for me to play basketball throughout all South America a couple summers.

We played every Olympic team, and I shared Christ at halftime, and that's where God called me into ministry. On a much more serious note, the awesome power of commitment protects you from shortsighted moments of weakness.

I got to be a committed believer, and the people who helped me, I began to read the Bible in the morning. I wanted to follow Christ, and pretty soon, we realized that God wanted Teresa and myself in full-time ministry. So we got married in December, and then probably fairly unwisely six months later, put everything we owned in a truck, and we drove to Dallas to go to seminary.

Then I work full-time, went to school full-time, had two kids, and about 18 months later, we realized we didn't know how to communicate, we didn't know how to resolve anger, and my wife was making me nuts, and I was making her more nuts.

Apart from an irrevocable, willful, we made a vow to each other and before God, I would have just said, "This is too hard." It was really hard. I didn't, I couldn't fathom that you could love someone so much and feel so angry and so hurt and so rejected.

But you know what? Once you make a commitment, what a commitment does, it keeps you from short-sided dropouts or giving in in moments of weakness. So we went to marriage counseling with one of my professors, and we learned how to communicate, and we learned how to resolve anger.

But here's what I will tell you, the thought that we would ever quit was never an option. Commitment inspires to greatness. Commitment protects you from shortsighted moments of weakness, and commitment provides focus and stability and great blessing from God.

Let me ask you, how personally are you committed to the people and the things that matter most? That's what we're going to talk about.

We've learned that a holy ambition, God-shaped dreams, they start with a dislocated heart, a broken spirit, a radical step of faith. You develop a strategic plan, and then you make a personal commitment about first and foremost to God, and then the role on the wall of the kingdom of God where he wants you to serve, where he's going to birth that holy ambition.

Notice in your notes, I gave you a definition of commitment. It's a pledge or a promise to do something. It's dedication to a long-term course of action, relationship, project, or course. I just want to remind you that when I'm talking about personal commitment, I don't mean that you intellectually or emotionally feel like, "I really ought to do that," or, "I'll try to do it when it's convenient," or, "I really want to do that as long as."

I'm talking about the kind of commitment that says, "I will choose to do this regardless of circumstances, regardless of how I feel, regardless what comes up against me, this is what I'll do." It's that kind of commitment that transforms you and the people around you.

The dynamics or the dilemma of commitment is this, is that I admire it when I see it, right? You know the Olympics? Don't you just love the little Olympics when they when they do the little vignettes and there's little 5'2" gymnast or they tell the story of someone that's gotten up since 4:30 in the morning, and they are standing on this stage, and you just see the product of commitment.

I admire commitment, I want commitment in my life, but the fact of the matter is, it's very hard to keep. For all of us, we're living in a day where people have a hard time, forget keeping them. We have a, we're living in a day where people have a hard time making them. We're afraid to make commitments. We're so afraid that we'll fail or we see so many other people who fail.

So if we admire it, we long for it, and we know the value, how do you make and sustain personal commitments? That's what we want to talk about. The answer is going to be in Nehemiah chapter 3.

We're going to see that he modeled it convincingly. He stepped out, he left his comfort zone, he left the palace, he went to Jerusalem. We're going to say he asked for it specifically. He said, "I need you to help me build this wall. It's God's will. It's worth it." Then finally, we're going to see he created an environment that sustained it.

Host: You've been listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and a message titled Exercise Personal Commitment. It's part of our larger series called You Were Made for More: How to Discover God's Purpose for Your Life. You can find this lesson and every message in this series at LivingOnTheEdge.org.

You know, for over 30 years, Living on the Edge has been committed to helping Christians actually live like Christians. That mission is only possible because people believe it's worth backing. If you're a regular donor to Living on the Edge, thank you. Teachings like today's and resources like the one we're about to share with you are all reaching new listeners right when they need it because of your faithful giving.

If you're listening today, and you've never given to this ministry before, now is a great time to start. We've made it quick and easy to partner with us by going online to LivingOnTheEdge.org or by giving us a call at 888-333-6003. Now, if you're trying to figure out where your section of the wall is, what God made you specifically to do and contribute, we have a special resource that can help.

It's a free online assessment called The Real You, built to help you understand your God-given personality, strengths, and design. Thousands of believers have found it to be a real turning point, so don't wait. Take it today, absolutely free at TheRealYou.org.

Host: Now, here's Chip.

Chip Ingram: As you listen to today's message, I wish we could have been together with the Bible open, because when you look at Nehemiah Chapter 3 and see this list, I mean a list of gates and people and details and hard names, you look at that and you think, what could be here?

Yet God cares so much about individuals that he records their names, and what they did, and where they're from. Why? Because God doesn't just know in general, he knows specifically. He knows you. He knows your name. He knows where you go to work. He knows what driveway you pull into.

He knows the burdens on your heart, and he wants you to be teamed up with other people to accomplish his purposes right where you're at. Here we have a picture of how God did it. He did an impossible thing. He didn't do it by some miraculous waving of the hand, he did it by regular ordinary people, finding their place, starting at the most strategic spot, being tied together with affinity and deep relationship, and then working together in cooperation, in coordination.

Each person having their commitment sustained by the relationships and the projects that they were designed to do. So let me ask you, how are you doing with your commitments? What kind of help and support might you need to keep the commitment to be the kind of marriage partner you know God wants you to be?

What ministry are you involved in that you need to have a cup of coffee with someone and talk about what's going on? You see, there was someone next to them and someone after them that tied them together. You need that. If you're struggling with keeping your commitments, it may not be that you're weak-willed and that you're a terrible person, and that you just can't stay with it.

It might be that you're not in the kind of environment that fosters and sustains commitments. You're important to God. Could I encourage you to get close to others that are committed to the Lord, and get the kind of encouragement you need to fulfill that special place that only you can do?

Host: That's a question most of us quietly wrestle with. How do you make the kind of commitment that actually holds, whether it's a commitment to God, to your marriage, or to a calling within your heart? Chip Ingram has real practical answers next time on Living on the Edge.

Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.