Living on the Edge

Dave Drury: God is on a mission. He's looking for a very select group of people on the face of the earth in order to strongly support them, to empower them, to do amazing things in them and through them. Would you like to be that kind of person? Would you like to be one that He selects? Stick around, find out how.

Here's a question most of us never think to ask: not "does God exist?" but "is God looking for me?" Today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram opens a series called "You Were Made for More: How to Discover God's Purpose for Your Life" with a breathtaking promise from 2 Chronicles that God is scanning the earth right now, looking for men and women whose hearts are completely His, so He can work through them in extraordinary ways. If you've ever sensed there's more to your life than you're currently living, this series is for you. Go ahead and open your Bible to 2 Chronicles 16. Here's Chip Ingram.

Chip Ingram: For the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the whole earth, that He might strongly support those whose hearts are fully His. Think on that with me, okay? Get that in your head and your mind. The eyes of the Lord, the Spirit of God in this room, on this night, are going up and down all through the aisles, and He's looking for a man, or a student, or a woman whose heart is fully His. And He promises if He could find one man, or one woman, or one student, He would strongly support it.

What do venture capitalists do? They find people that have a dream, a vision, organization skills, and a plan. When they find the right people with the right plan at the right time, they fund it. Then they keep track and they bring about expertise. That's what God wants to do. He wants to fund your ministry vision, the Ephesians 2:10 calling on your life.

I want to tell you, we're going to talk about how to know if your heart is fully His, and if it is not, how to move week by week where He will do in you and through you things you never dreamed. This book is full of stories of people that if you would have met them before they became apostles, or if you would have met them before they stood at the edge of the Red Sea, or if you would have met them just before the invaders were coming and they laid out this prayer before God and said, "There's a million or so of them and 300,000 of us, and we're going to be toast, and God, if You don't do it..." every single one were just ordinary people.

God cares about your relatives, and He cares about the people you work with, and He cares about the people that are right next door to you. The fact of the matter is that He'll strongly support you. He'll give you whatever you need. If you need courage, you need faith, you need money, you need staff, you need an idea, whatever you need, if God can find a man, a woman, or a student whose heart is fully His, He will do extraordinary things through ordinary people for His exclusive glory.

If you'll pull out your teaching notes, let's start the journey together. That's a great verse, and I actually memorized it years before I ever studied it. It was one of those verses that was "wow," but let me give you a little background on it because it means even more when you study the background. It actually comes out of a story in 2 Chronicles 16, but the real story starts about verses 14 and 15.

It's about a king named Asa. Asa was a good king at a bad time. In this time in Asa's world, people are worshipping idols, they're sacrificing their kids to Molech and other—it was horrendous what was happening. Most of the kings were involved in it. If you read 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Chronicles, it goes like this: bad king, bad king, bad king, bad king, bad king, okay king, bad king, bad king, good king, bad king, bad king. There's not very many good kings. In fact, Asa's father didn't do a great job, and the one before him was worse.

Asa gets this heart for God, and it opens in chapter 14. He honored God because he removed the idols. Then he started a little building program. Then God gives him about 10 years of rest. In the little area of Judah, he obeys God. It begins to get cleaned up, and God sees his heart. Then God brings a test. There's the army of the Cushites from the northern part of Africa. They have well over a million soldiers. He's got a decent army, but this is impossible.

He goes out to battle and he literally says, "God, no one can stand against You." Read the prayer—I encourage you to do it—and he basically says, "God, if You don't show up, if You don't do it, there is no way. The odds are insurmountable." They have this amazing victory that's supernatural by God. It's so amazing that when he gets done with the victory, a prophet comes.

The prophet says, "Asa, the Lord's pleased with you." This is a great line—I read this afresh this morning: "If you will be with Him, He will be with you." Asa, if your life lines up, and if you'll be with Him and do life His way and align with Him, He will be with you. But if you turn away from Him, He'll turn away from you. Asa got it, and he pulled together all the people. He said, "Historically, we are so far off." There's this national repentance and this movement of God.

Another prophet comes, and so he gets 15 years of relative peace in a small area, and then he gets another 20 years of massive success: building programs, removal of idols. There's even a little line in there where it talks about he even removes the Queen Mother, his grandmother. When you start getting really serious with God, He does stuff in you and through you. There'll be a few really touchy relationships where you've got to step up and be honest and clear and walk with Him. That text was saying Asa, from bottom to top, was honoring God.

Then we pick it up in chapter 16. It's the 36th year of his reign. He's had 35 years of success. There's a great door of opportunity in verses 1 through 6 of chapter 16. It looks like a bad situation. Judah and Israel are at odds, and the King of Israel is really making war on Judah right now. He's got 36 years, and after time, you get a little bit older. If you're not careful, you get comfortable. You start relying on you instead of relying on God.

He sees this problem and he hires some mercenaries, the King of Aram. He empties his treasury and the king goes ahead and does what he said he would do. He attacks Israel. Israel withdraws. Things are okay. Now let me read, because I want you to pick up the text in verse 7 of chapter 16 of 2 Chronicles. He's thinking, "I'm a good man, I've been a good king, I've got 35 years under my belt. We had a problem. I had the resources and took care of the problem."

At that time Hanani the seer, or the prophet, came to Asa the king of Judah and said to him, "Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand." God's plan when He brought that difficulty, He wanted to use the biggest new difficulty for a greater opportunity of victory. But he said, "You kind of blew it."

Then He reminds him, "Were not the great number of Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand." Then we get our verse. This is an axiomatic characteristic of God. This isn't just an Old Testament passage. He rebukes him and says, "For the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the whole earth." This is a principle. This is how God works. Don't you understand, Asa? If you would have relied on Him now like you used to, the hand of God and the support of God and the victory of God. But instead, what you did is you grew comfortable, and you relied on you and on your resources, and you missed.

Unfortunately, if you continue to read, Asa's response is a little less than we'd hope. He gets a little contrary and throws a few people in prison. It's really a bit of a sad ending. A great door of opportunity, a sad commentary. When you read through this book, or when you read through church history, a lot of people start well in the Christian life. Very few finish well.

If you're 50 years and older and you've walked with the Lord for 15 to 20 years, let me put an asterisk on your soul. Chances are you will not finish well, unless you get intentional, unless you get focused. What happens is you get risk-averse. When you're desperate and you didn't know anything, you'd read the Bible, it says it, you'll try it, you'll do it. God showed up. Then pretty soon He blesses your life. Pretty soon you find a little comfort level, and you're operating on the verses of yesteryear. Then pretty soon it's "God, how can You make my life work, and how can life not get too dangerous?" You stop relying on God. If you're not careful, you end up just a nice moral, religious person that misses what God called you to do in this life. I don't want to be there. I want to have a holy ambition. I want to make a difference with my life until the day I die.

Dave Drury: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Don't go anywhere yet, there's more coming up. We're in a brand new series this week called "You Were Made for More: How to Discover God's Purpose for Your Life." If you ever have trouble catching one of these programs, or if you want to share any of these messages with a friend or family member, every lesson is available free at livingontheedge.org. You'll also find study resources and bonus content from Chip. That's livingontheedge.org. Well, now here's Chip.

Chip Ingram: The question is, will we answer God's call to make a significant impact at this pivotal moment in history? We are living in a window of opportunity of time that God is calling His church to step up and be difference-makers. We've got a great door of opportunity. Read church history. The early church wasn't born out of things going great. There was crisis. There was crisis in the government. There was crisis in all these religions. There was crisis in philosophy. That produces a fertile environment where people like never before are open to not just hearing about Christ, but trusting Him and walking with Him and making a difference.

What will it mean for each of us? First of all, it means we're going to have to model it. You can't impart what you don't possess. You've got to model it. You can talk all day, you have to live it out. You can do "God talk" in the mall, but you've got to do "God walk" at home, and "God walk" at the job, and "God walk" in your family. You have to model it.

I was talking to a man on the plane. He's an answer to a three or four-year prayer. This was bizarre. I got on the plane to come from Dallas, and a couple said, "Excuse me, we're husband and wife, would you mind if we sit here? Can you sit here and we'll sit here?" I said, "I'm traveling by myself, that's fine." They sit here and I sit here, and a guy sits next to me. I've been praying about how do you multiply groups, and God, how does it really work? I understand bits and pieces, I've been reading them and thinking, I've been looking at churches, I've looked at things around the world. I know there's a way and I've got pieces, but I don't understand it all.

I sit next to a guy that in the last 18 years was responsible for writing the strategy and pioneering planting 100,000 churches around the world. I said, "David, are you tired?" He said, "Not particularly." I said, "That's very good because I'm getting my legal pad out and you're going to be answering questions for the next three hours." He said, "Fire away." I said, "Brother, I am." I took—when I got done, I said, "Okay, where can I get this?" He put pieces together that I've never seen. I'm telling you, God is working in our midst. It will require every person in this room, and every person in this church, to discover the holy ambition that He has for you.

Second, it requires focus. The key to impact is concentration, and the key to concentration is elimination. If those last two quotes I've made sound a lot like Howard Hendricks, it's because it is Howard Hendricks, my mentor. I was listening to a series, and it's called "The Ceiling of Complexity." As you work hard and you get focused and you do a few simple things, that grows, and then that grows. Then you have to have meetings to talk about the simple things that grew into big things. Then you have to write reports about the simple things that grew into the big things. Then you have to hire people or get involved in other things. Pretty soon your life—anybody have stacks at home? Clutter, stacks, email, phone.

What actually happens is many of you are very successful, and then you hit a ceiling. You unwisely, like me, believe that the way you break through the ceiling is working harder and longer. That's not what the research demonstrates. The fact of the matter is your paradigm has to completely change, and you have to simplify your life. You have to realize you get a focus, and there's a number of things that you've been doing which made you successful, that you step back and say, "Some of those I can't do anymore." Some people will be a little upset because I'm drawing a boundary, and I'm going to get back to the simple, focused things that I'm best at, that I love to do, that cause the growth in my life, my family, my relationships.

Most people today are flashlights: diffused light going multiple directions with high frustration and lack of productivity. People who are laser beams have discovered the few things they can do. They say no to a lot of things and to a lot of people, and they do a few things extraordinarily well. A laser beam can cut through a steel door, and a flashlight can see about 30 feet across the room. Which are you?

We've started to believe that the invisible gun that we hold to our head has someone else's hand on it, and it's not. It's yours and it's mine. I have to be here, I've got to go here, I've got to go here. My kids are involved in four youth sports, and I've got these three meetings, those two meetings. Timeout. Who signed up for that? Who said your kids have to be involved in that much? At the end of the day, you make choices and they determine everything. Some of the subtle choices you've made have ripple effects that have you living a life that you don't like, that's not fulfilling what you were made to do, and you keep hitting these walls. It will require that we model it, then it requires focus.

The key to focus is concentration. The key to concentration is elimination. It'll mean for each of us that God gives us a holy ambition. God is searching as intently today as He was in Asa's day to strongly support those whose hearts are fully His. He's looking for those who would dare to dream and to believe that they can in fact change the world. I would really say it like this: change your world. No one knows your world and the needs like you do.

It's the people you love. We don't have to change the world if we will each change our little sections and the things that cause our heart to beat faster and the needs and the hurts that cause something inside of us where the Spirit of God is poured out and says, "If you had more time, you could really care and make a difference." We keep telling the Spirit, "I will later, when things slow down. I will later when I have more time. I will later when I have more resources." I've got news for you, that "later" is never coming. It comes when you say, "That I must do. And God, I will listen to Your voice and rearrange my time and my schedule and my living and my thinking and my viewing around what it will cost to do that." Those who do that experience a holy ambition.

Our model is going to be a man that had a holy ambition. What I like about him: he's not a prophet, he's not a priest. He's a business guy with a nine-to-five job. His job in that day was to be the cupbearer, and you would taste the wine and taste the food so that if it's poisoned, you die before the king does. It was a great job if the food was good. He also became a confidant. You became friends with the king. You were the inside man. It was always chosen someone outside the royal line. In this case, he wants a Jewish cupbearer because he's the Persian king. A lot of Persians want that job, and the way you get to be the king is you kill the present king. When you look at history, sometimes it's even your own sons or whoever does it.

We're going to meet a man named Nehemiah. God has judged His children because they've worshipped idols, and because of their worship of idols, they've been dispersed. After they've been dispersed, He promised He would regather them, and there has been a partial return. Zerubbabel was one of God's men, a prophet, and he went back and said, "Hey people, God promised, let's get with the program." It wasn't very successful. Ezra headed back, and he's a teacher and a scribe, and he teaches God's Word, and still wasn't getting any traction.

We pick up the story in Nehemiah 1. It says the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hakaliah, in the month of Kislev, which is our November/December, in the 20th year—the reference is the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, who's the King of Persia—while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish people, the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. It's interesting that people that get a holy ambition that's from God ask questions. Nehemiah gets a report and he asks about the people and he asks about the place.

Now we get the report. They said to me, "Those who survived the exile are back in the province and they're in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire." The wall would be protection for a functioning city. The gates are where the elders would meet. It's how you could close things off and have security. We know that the temple hasn't been rebuilt, but the walls are crumbled and the gates are burned. Basically, you look at Jerusalem, the city that God promised would be the hope of the world. If you could go back in a time machine and look at that city at this moment, you would just say, "God's agenda is dead. It ain't going to happen. All those promises He made and a coming Messiah—it's done. The place is a shambles."

There's people today that when you look at the world situation, the economy, the violence and the murder, the terrorism, people are saying, "Where's God in all this?" The answer is He lives inside His children, and they have an agenda today just like there was an agenda then. The issue that will really make the big difference is how will you respond to the news that you see today?

Dave Drury: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, in a message titled "Develop a Dislocated Heart." Today's program ended right in the middle of Nehemiah's story, and what happens next is the whole point. Nehemiah was comfortable, influential, and had every reason to stay put. But something shifted. Tune in next time to hear the rest.

This week's series, "You Were Made for More," pairs perfectly with our free resource called "The Real You," an online assessment at therealyou.org. It's a carefully designed tool that helps you discover how God has wired you: your strengths, your passions, and how all of it connects to the purpose He made you for. Check it out today, completely free, at therealyou.org.

This practical, faith-based resource exists because this ministry exists, and this ministry exists because people believe that teaching that moves from your head to your heart to how you actually live is worth supporting. If Living on the Edge has made a difference in your walk with God, we invite you to give to this ministry today. Your gift keeps this gospel work going and reaches people who need to hear that they were made for more. Give online at livingontheedge.org, or call us at 888-333-6003. If today's message stirred something in you, share it. The Living on the Edge podcast has every lesson ready to go. If you want to go even deeper, check out the Chip Ingram Sermon podcast, featuring full-length sermons from Chip. Search for both wherever you get your podcasts. Well, now here's Chip.

Chip Ingram: As we close, I want to talk about this phrase "holy ambition." When I say that, often those two words don't go together in people's mind. Holiness has this idea of something that is set apart, that is given to God, that it's pure, it's things that God does. The word "ambition," at least from most of our own experience, is about me and my stuff, and how many likes I have, and how many people are looking at my posts, and how famous I am. But those two words go together. You and I have been made for a very special purpose that no one in all the world can fulfill quite like us.

Ephesians 2:10 says that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto a good work that He preordained from the foundations of the earth. He wants to birth something in you. You don't have to be famous, it doesn't have to be big, but there's something He wants you to do that's holy. He wants to birth a sense of ambition. Ambition says, "I've got to do that," and there's drive, motivation, planning, energy, and perseverance.

I just want to encourage you to stay with me on this journey. Down deep, we all long to make a difference. There's something that feels so good and actually is so good when we're used by God to love another person, to help another person, to get them on their feet, to restore a relationship, to help kids that no one cares about, to take food to people that are too old and can't get out. There's just amazing things that happen when a holy ambition gets birthed right out of your heart into reality. That's what this is about.

So here's my prayer for you: Holy Father, will You help my brothers and sisters to join with me for this whole series? Would You birth in them very clearly the holy ambition You have for them? In Jesus' name, amen.

Dave Drury: I'm Dave Drury. Next time, Chip Ingram asks a question most of us quietly avoid: Do you actually care about the people around you enough to let it cost you something? You'll want to hear his answer. That's next time on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.