Living on the Edge

Chip Ingram: Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, if your teenager or young adult is drifting or has actually walked away from the Lord and you need help, you don't know what to do or how to do it, stay with me. Today, help is on the way.

Dave Druey: Welcome to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Today, a unique teaching series continues from Chip's friend, guest teacher Aaron Pierce, who leads a global ministry reaching secular young people with the gospel. Our study is called "Caring Enough to Connect: Building Bridges to Those We Love."

Today, Aaron shows us how to actually build trust and real friendship with the people in our lives who feel far from God. As we'll see, oftentimes the way to reach those who seem lost isn't with a better argument; it's with better friendship. Now here's Aaron Pierce with today's insightful message titled "Building Trust and Friendships."

Aaron Pierce: Today it's all about how to build relationships and friendships with secular, non-religious people. I want to start with a story. There is a girl called Lucy. She was a singer and actress in that world. As you can imagine, it's a pretty crazy world in terms of lifestyle and morality. She actually lived what is called a polyamorous lifestyle. What that meant is that she had multiple sexual relationships with different people at the same time—all open, different genders. It didn't matter.

The justification for it was that she had so much love to give. That was her argument for that lifestyle. The reality of it is that she was actually really feeling empty and lonely. She was living in this pretty tough environment when she met a girl called Maria, who befriended her and began to connect with her and talk to her about the struggles that she was dealing with. Then Maria shared that she was a follower of Jesus and began to pray with her and to really empathize with what she was going through.

Eventually, Maria invited her to come to a Bible study at her home where she heard the gospel and was invited into a community. She didn't begin to follow Jesus right away, but she got embraced in this community and began to develop friendships. She began to really connect with these people, and eventually, she made a decision to follow Jesus. Through that whole community, she was eventually baptized. That's Maria who was at her baptism in a river. It's a really cool story.

This girl, Lucy, perfectly illustrates what so many people are going through today. A Harvard study last year showed that 61% of young adults feel serious loneliness. 61% feel serious loneliness. There are a bunch of reasons why loneliness has become an epidemic which is so common. There are a number of reasons. First is the concept of cheap sex. We have rejected the biblical sexual ethic where sex is supposed to be between a man and a woman in the context of marriage. That has been rejected.

Basically, sex is nothing more than a physical act that is about personal pleasure, so long as you're not harming others and it's governed by a sense of mutual consent. You can do whatever you want. That's the sexual ethic of the day. It's also led to cultural changes where we are delaying marriage and delaying kids. What's so ironic about that is we actually desire intimacy. We desire connection, but we are pushing away the design where we are supposed to find that most meaningfully in our human existence, which is in the context of a family.

Then, of course, you've got pornography and hookup culture, which is a pervasive culture of our day. You've got dating apps where people are connecting with strangers with very little personal connection, but they're connecting sexually and it's leading to all sorts of brokenness and loneliness because of this concept of cheap sex. The other is technological changes that we've experienced with social media, video games, and now the emergence of the Metaverse, which is a whole big thing as well.

Basically, what you've got is this sense of filtered reality, which is that on social media, but also on these other things, we're presenting a view of ourselves and we're seeing a view of others that is filtered. It's not real. In that sense, all my connections are superficial and they're not authentic. You have a lot of this filtered reality and then you have a sense of escapism. The idea here is that rather than face the issues or the dark thoughts that I'm facing, I can escape into the world of video games or the Metaverse or I can just keep scrolling.

It's like the Finding Nemo movie where it's just "keep swimming." It's "just keep scrolling" so I don't have to think about these big, deep, scary thoughts. I escape into the world of video games. This is how so many people are responding to the challenges and the difficulties that they face. Whereas the way that God has designed it is that when we face challenges, we have a community that we connect into, and instead, we move to escapism.

Then we have this sense of living someone else's story, which is a big thing that we experience. One of the things that people love to do is follow a particular social media influencer. There's someone on YouTube who is kind of the modern-day Seinfeld, a girl called Emma Chamberlain. She basically has a YouTube channel about nothing. She's this charismatic girl that posts videos of her just doing daily life. People love it because they connect and they live through her story.

She has millions and millions of followers on YouTube and other platforms. She's not doing anything particularly interesting, but people really connect because they get to live someone else's story. That is true also for the world of video games where you live a kind of fantasy world of living some character out, or in the Metaverse where people are finding their identity in an avatar.

You've got all of these things technologically, and then our sexual ethics, that are creating this deep sense of loneliness. Of course, God has created us to be in community. So when we're missing that sense of community, we feel this deep longing for something. So many people are experiencing it. So many people sense that there's something missing. The truth that we need to understand is that secular people are looking for deep relational connection and belonging. That is a deep desire that people have. You can bank on that truth when you're connecting with people.

The challenge is that we have this false idea, and this is a cultural lie that we have today. The lie is that to love or be in relationship with someone, I have to affirm their lifestyle or their worldview. That is a lie that our culture has put on us. Jesus demonstrated that association and relationship with sinners—and I put that in quotes only because we're all sinners—was not synonymous with affirming their lifestyle. Jesus demonstrated this in a really powerful way over and over again.

Let's talk about this because one of the challenges of our day is tribalism. It's this us versus them mentality. It's this toxic trait of modern culture basically because of social media algorithms, cable news, and internet conspiracies. It's this intense sense of us versus them. We straw man argument the other side and what they're about and how they're out to get us. Tribalism existed during Jesus' day as well in multiple ways. One of the good examples of that was the Jews and the Samaritans.

The Samaritans were these racially mixed people of Gentile and Jewish background. The Jews and Samaritans hated each other. Jews would actually—there would be a direct path to go somewhere through the Samaritan area, but they would go around it just so they wouldn't be associated with these unclean people. It was in that context, in John 4, that Jesus goes to Samaria and he meets the woman at the well, which is an incredible example of Jesus defying the tribalism of his day.

He defied it in a radical countercultural way because he ends up engaging—he actually initiates contact with this woman. Just the fact that she's a woman, that's already breaking some boundaries. But then the fact is that this is a woman who's been married five times and now is currently living with a man that is not her husband. In that day, the fact that he would engage this woman was just beyond comprehension.

It speaks to how Jesus loved people so much that he was going to cross those cultural boundaries. But that didn't mean that he affirmed her lifestyle. That didn't mean that he accepted the way that someone lived and said, "Just do whatever you want." He challenged people to sin no more, even as he approached them with great mercy and grace. That's the thing we have to understand. But what that means as well is that Jesus offended the religious people of his day.

He offended them because he spent so much time with sinners. That's what happens when you spend time with sinners. You get accused of being one yourself. We are afraid to associate with those people lest I get lumped in with them and like I'm agreeing with them. That is one of the challenges that we have. But again, Jesus did this all the time. Luke 15:1-2 said the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." Eating with people in that culture was a very intimate thing to do. Jesus was willing to be very intimate with these people even if it offended the religious establishment. That's part of what we have to deal with today.

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with guest teacher Aaron Pierce. We'll get back to the message in just a moment. But first, have you checked out the Living on the Edge YouTube channel? It's not just audio; it's a chance to actually sit down and watch Chip teach on his own schedule of series covering marriage, parenting, leadership, and more. New videos post every week, so there's always something fresh waiting for you. If you learn better by watching or you just want to put a face to the voice, search Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram on YouTube and hit subscribe. Now back to today's lesson.

Aaron Pierce: Part of it is understanding the power of friendship with people that are not like us, with people that wouldn't walk into a church. The first idea is that friendship humanizes them. It's so easy to talk about those people and what they do, but when you sit across from someone, it's a lot harder to hate them. When you're sitting and having coffee with them, it's a lot harder to hate them. Friendship actually allows you to demonstrate the gospel with your life.

A lot of secular people have a lot of false assumptions about who Jesus is and what Jesus followers are like. They make these misconceptions. When you get to be with secular people and live a life, you can actually reflect the gospel through your actions that can break down some of those walls. Philippians 2:3-4 is such a powerful verse. If we can live this verse out in front of secular people, it's the kind of verse that does not make sense to secular culture.

The idea is to do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourself, not looking to your own interest but each of you to the interest of others. If you live that kind of life in front of secular people, it blows them away. Because that is something where you're laying down my needs, my desires, for someone else's sake. The religion of this culture is secular humanism, which is the religion of self.

It's all about me and pursuing my happiness. When you see people lay aside their happiness for the sake of others, it's radical countercultural that really opens up the opportunity to connect with people. The other thing that friendship does is it helps you to understand. So often we don't actually understand people or understand how they came to be where they are or understand why they believe what they believe. Because of that, we're not able to communicate the gospel effectively.

When you build friendships, you can actually get to know them and then you're able to communicate the gospel in a way that connects with them. Beyond that, it allows you to earn the trust to actually challenge their views and speak truth. We live in a very sensitive time in which if you challenge my views, I'm going to get offended. But when I build the relational trust and credibility, then I can actually speak into your life.

The power of friendship in engaging secular people is amazing. Also, what's beautiful about this is you don't have to be super talented or a really persuasive apologetic person. You can just be a good friend. It's accessible to all of us. Each of us can build a friendship with the few people that God puts in our life. To me, this is encouraging because I can do this. Anyone can do this. But here's the thing: in order for you to do this, you've got to count the cost.

One of the addictions of our time is busyness. We are so overscheduled. As Christians, we're often overscheduled doing good things like five different Bible studies and eight different church events. All good stuff, but there is literally no room, no margin to have a relationship with a secular person. As we all know, relationships take time. They're costly. We need to make room, which means we need to have a shift in priority and lifestyle.

This starts with a broken heart where we repent and say, "God, my heart is cold. It's not right. I'm sorry. Would you give me your broken heart?" When your heart is broken, then you're willing to sacrifice. We need to count the cost and intentionally build the margin in our life in order to have these kinds of relationships. Another key point has to do with the idea of holiness versus relevance. What happens is you can actually err on either side.

You can be completely relevant to the point where you look exactly like the world and you essentially adopt the world's lifestyle and morals and theology in order to fit in and to connect. That's one extreme end of the spectrum. The other is that we are so holy that we isolate ourselves from the world, that we're completely disconnected. We do everything separate: separate Christian schools, Christian entertainment, Christian everything so that we have no impact and no influence on the world.

The tension is: how do we actually be in the world but distinct? That's the tension that we need to have. As followers of Jesus, we are called to go into the world and to transform it. That means that we have to be distinct. We don't compromise morally or theologically, but we also don't hide from the world either. So there's that tension of relevance versus holiness. How do we do this well?

First, when we're developing these relationships and friendships, we want to be distinct. We want to be clear that we're a follower of Jesus. We don't want to hide the fact that we are a follower of Jesus. In fact, if following Jesus is core to who you are, it should come out naturally. It should be part of the flow of your conversation. We want to be distinct and clear, but we don't want to be obnoxious.

The second thing that's really important in this approach is that we cannot be offended that non-Christians act like non-Christians. So many times Christians are so precious and so easily offended when someone acts a little rough or maybe makes a comment politically that you don't agree with. We need to be a little more relaxed that we're not going to freak out when someone acts like a non-Christian, because that is what they are.

The next point is that the goal is not to flaunt our moral superiority, like the fact that we swear a little less or the fact that we don't get drunk. The goal is not to flaunt that. The goal is that we actually allow them to see our supernatural hope, love, joy, and peace. What I mean by that is what people want to see is: how is it that you are joyful in suffering? How is it that you just found out that you have cancer, but you have peace?

How does that make sense? How is it that you have hope when everything around you is falling apart? How is it that you're able to love the unlovable, that you're able to forgive someone that hurt you? How is it that you're able to have hope, love, joy, and peace? The reason is because it's not natural. It's a supernatural thing the Holy Spirit has done in you. That is the distinction that you want people to see.

I'm not suggesting that we don't worry about our morals. I'm just saying that is not what's going to attract someone. They want to see something supernatural, and the supernatural is the fruit of the spirit, especially when they see how you handle hard things and how you handle suffering. Then what you get is that classic apologetic verse, which is 1 Peter 3:15, which says always prepare to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect.

They're not asking you to give the reason that you swear less or the reason you're not drinking. That's not what they're asking. They're asking: where does the hope come from? I think this is a critical distinction that we need to make as we engage secular people. We want people to see those supernatural things of hope, joy, love, and peace in our life.

Dave Druey: You've been listening to Living on the Edge with guest teacher Aaron Pierce and a message titled "Building Trust and Friendships." If you want to revisit or share this lesson, then be sure to visit our website, livingontheedge.org. Building a friendship like the one that changed Lucy's life takes more than good intentions; it takes a plan. That's exactly what you'll find in the "Not Beyond Reach" participant's guide, a 10-week video-based study covering everything from starting spiritual conversations to navigating politics, sexuality, and science.

Each lesson gives you a viewing guide, discussion questions, a weekly application, and group exercises like prayer and role-play, so your group actually practices what it's learning. Get the "Not Beyond Reach" participant's guide at a discounted price today at livingontheedge.org/offer. Somewhere right now, there's a Lucy—lonely, searching, waiting for someone to simply show up.

Teachings like what we heard today equip ordinary believers to be that someone, and they only reach people because listeners like you decide this ministry is worth supporting. To give a generous gift today, just go online to livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. If you'd rather send your gift by mail, just write to us at Living on the Edge, PO Box 3007, Suwanee, Georgia 30024. Now here's Chip Ingram with Aaron to wrap up today's program.

Chip Ingram: Thanks, Dave. Great message, Aaron. I really appreciated the things you shared about building a relational foundation with people that don't know Jesus. Let me ask you: what's been most helpful in befriending someone maybe of a different faith or a different political party or a really different cultural background? And then what advice would you give to a parent especially or maybe a grandparent who's lost that relational connection?

Aaron Pierce: Thanks, Chip. Those are great questions. The first thing I need to do is remind myself that they too are made in the image of God and that God loves them, that in fact, these are the ones that Jesus died for, and that they too have hopes and dreams and are wanting a good life and all the things that we share with people in common. So I ask that God would allow me to see these people as he does, to see them through his eyes.

And then to remember these important truths: that love does not equal affirmation. And then as a parent or grandparent whose children or child maybe has walked away from the Lord, first of all, my heart breaks for you. And then I would say: don't give up. And as you interact with them, practically, I would say don't waver in your biblical convictions. But at the same time, don't get hung up on debating secondary or downstream issues like politics or moral behavior.

Because as we will discuss later in the series, they need to meet Jesus first. And so instead, seek to be a consistent, loving presence in their life. And then I would say live a life that is fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit because more than anything else, what they need to see is the supernatural work of God in your life. They need to see that you have hope that cannot be shaken because your hope is in something outside of this world.

They need to see that in your life. That is what is attractive. And then finally, I would say pray like crazy. Ask God to bring people into their lives. Ask God to do something circumstantially in their life that would draw them to God, that would open their hearts. Don't give up hope because their story is not over yet.

Dave Druey: I'm your host, Dave Druey. Join us next time as Aaron Pierce shows us how to expand our circle of friendships even further to reach the people who need Jesus most. That's on the next edition of Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.