Living on the Edge

Guest (Male): Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, are you getting God’s best? I mean the God of the universe who created all there is and loves you wants the highest, the best for you in every area of your life. Is that what you’re experiencing? Well, if not, stick around.

Ever wonder why so many Christians feel stuck? They genuinely love Jesus, but their lives don’t reflect it. Today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram exposes the invisible battle happening in every believer’s mind. The world constantly pressures you to conform through screens, relationships, and endless messages about what makes you valuable.

Meanwhile, God invites transformation through renewing your mind with His truth. This isn’t about trying harder or being a better person through willpower. It’s about allowing God’s word to reshape how you think, which transforms how you live. Now here’s Chip Ingram with today’s message, "How to Get God’s Best for Your Life."

Chip Ingram: Have you ever wondered why there are so many decisions and so few disciples? And here is what I mean by that. I know historically right now, in the next 24 hours, tens of thousands of people all across the world will make decisions to follow Christ. They’ll get it where you realize, "I’ve sinned before a holy God, Christ died in my place, He rose from the dead," and you place your faith in Him, and He takes you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

But I’m guessing that we all have either a short or long list of friends—and for many of us, I’ve certainly been there myself—where that’s a reality. His spirit came into your life, you begin to make some progress, you started to grow, but then things kind of got not so good. And the great majority, at least statistically, of people that genuinely know and love God, who are followers of Christ, their life isn’t quite matching up.

I got an email from a lady that is a picture of this and it’s interesting. She said, "Thank you for your message this morning on Romans 12:1." And then now listen to her story and see how much you can identify with. "I came to Christ when I was 13, but I’ve gone through a lot of hard times throughout my college, and my relationship with God has been up and down ever since. Lately, I’ve been feeling lethargic and distant from God. I woke up this morning and I asked myself this question: if I died today, would people say that I was a Christian, that I was a messenger of God, or would they even say or know that I followed God at all? Well, I happened to turn on your program."

And as I in my inner life have struggled both with alcoholism and immorality, I heard what it meant to go all in. Bold letters: "I decided to give all myself to God and completely surrender to Him. So thank you and God bless." Now that email is, there’s some really wonderful neat parts of it.

But isn’t it kind of sad that someone would come to a saving knowledge at 13 and have the next plus or minus 20 years described by up and down, distant, lethargic, looking for the satisfaction that only God can give, and for reasons maybe she didn’t understand, finds herself relying on alcohol and then multiple sexual relationships only to discover, "Oh, God has a good plan. God wants to give me the best." And for many people, they didn’t know it does require a moment where you say to Him, "I’m going to trust You."

And here’s what Romans 12:1 said: "Therefore I urge you my brothers, in view of God’s mercy," remember 11 chapters of His love for you, "offer your body a living and holy sacrifice, well-pleasing to God. This is your spiritual service." In other words, that’s what God really wants.

But here’s the question. It’s one thing to give God what He really wants. The second question is, how do you get the very best from God? And it’s interesting, that’s verse 2. He’s going to say, "And do not be conformed any longer to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that your life," in other words, your lifestyle, what you actually experience, "would be the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God."

So I’m going to ask you to open your teaching handout, and what I want you to do is know that we’re going to ask and answer the question that I think is one of the most important for any Christian: how do you get the very best from God? What you’re going to see, the structure of this passage, there’s a negative command: stop literally allowing the world to conform you to its mold. Then there’s a positive command: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then there’s this purpose clause. There’s a reason. Why? So that you personally, not someone out there, so you could experience the good, well-pleasing, perfect will of God.

So you’ve got your study out, let me do a little Bible study. It’s a bit more technical than normal, but I think it’s worthwhile. The negative command is do not be conformed to the pattern of this world. And then in 1 John 2:15-17, I’ve put the text right in your notes, he will literally define and explain what the world’s values are and how it works. Follow along as I read.

"Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." And now he’s going to define: so what’s the world? "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but it’s from the world." And then notice this commentary: "The world is passing away and its lusts or passions. But the one who does the will of God lives forever."

And so in summary, the world system seeks to seduce us from our love for Christ by pleasure, possessions, and position. Here’s what I want you to get. There is a system that comes on almost every commercial, every billboard, in every magazine, where you work, that tells you that if you could possess that, if you get this position, if your kids get in this school, if you can have these things, that security and significance and meaning and happiness and purpose, it’s all for you.

In fact, every time you walk out of the checkout stand, it screams the world system because here you are, you’ve got your little groceries and you’re at the local grocery store and they’ve got all the magazines. And this magazine number one is either Cosmo or Men’s Health. And if you’re a guy, you look more at Cosmo than you do Men’s Health. And all the girls are literally all the same from the neck down when you look at the cover of Cosmo. Some of you will get that a little bit later.

And it just says "sex," man, if you have that. Or part of us look at Men’s Health and say, "Man, if I had abs, if I had abs like that, man, the women would love me." And so sex, power, position. And then we create worlds so that our kids can get money, power, sex, and position. So we work like crazy, don’t see one another, spend most of our time staring at screens, have relationships that don’t work, work hours that are insane, be in the gym for long hours to become and look like someone so someone will love us.

And all the while, the people that have the most money, with the sexiest bodies, with the largest houses, who’ve won the lotto or are the celebrities, when we look carefully at their life, we see the highest percentage of depression, divorce, suicide, and emptiness. It’s like this crazy picture of everyone following the great rainbow for the pot of gold with possessions and power and position, and those that have it would come out and say, "It’s empty. It’s empty."

And I can tell you whether it’s in South Africa or Korea or Hong Kong or Indonesia or the Silicon Valley or Nebraska, the great majority of Christians are not experiencing God’s best. And they’re not experiencing God’s best because their heart has been seduced away from their Savior, and we’ve bought the lies that these things will fulfill, and they don’t. And God brought you into this room on this day to say to you, "I want to give you the best. So, negative, stop allowing yourself to be molded by the world. So get aware."

But that’s not enough. Turn the page. Second, he’s going to say, "Start allowing yourself to be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Notice the positive command. He says don’t allow the world, the externals, to squeeze you and their values into this false belief and system of lies that lead to death, but allow yourself, by the transformation of your mind, to be changed from the inside out.

It’s the spirit of God taking the word of God, renewing your mind in the context of community of real-life relationships where the very personality of Jesus and His character, where you’re loving and kind and peaceful and gentle and generous and other-centered and have self-discipline. And the fruit of the spirit, which is really the life of Christ, progressively becomes more how you think and how you act.

It’s not trying hard to be like Jesus; it’s allowing the Jesus living in you by the Holy Spirit to transform you from the inside out.

Guest (Male): You’re listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We’re halfway through today’s message, so don’t go anywhere just yet. Today’s insightful lesson comes from our series called "God’s Dream for Your Life." Want to dig deeper into these truths? Well, the full series is ready for you online at livingontheedge.org. You’ll discover extra teaching content, downloadable material, and discussion guides to take you further. Find it all at livingontheedge.org. Well, now let’s rejoin Chip with today’s message.

Chip Ingram: And so the application is really I put it in the form of a question. Are you shaped more by the world or by the word? The world is saying get, get, get, accumulate, accumulate, impress, impress, impress. The word is saying give, give, give, be authentic, love, care. The world is saying it’s how you look. The word is saying it’s who you are.

The word comes to you in the beauty of nature, primarily the Bible, the word of God, and out of the relationships of other believers where Jesus lives inside of them, all those things wooing you and drawing you to allow Christ be formed in you. And the world comes at you in smartphones, computer, TV, Netflix, billboards, romance novels, relationships where people kind of look at you and say, "Unless you have this, unless you look like that, unless you can do this, unless you can afford that, you don’t really measure up."

And you’re in the battle of your life. External forces like this saying to you, "Conform, conform, conform." And an internal supernatural power saying, "Be transformed, be transformed." Is the input of God’s word and God’s people and those things influencing your time, your priorities, and your focus, or is it more the world?

Can you imagine in heaven how God must feel about that lady and about us, of a 13-year-old girl that comes to know Jesus and His love and He’s got this amazing plan for her, but she hears that unless you sleep with your boyfriend, you don’t measure up, and so she does. And then she feels guilty because when the spirit lives in you, there’s this battle. And she did it to be loved, and then she feels bad about it. And so to get to sleep at night, she starts drinking a little bit and she wants to be a part of things, so she hangs with the crowd.

And down deep inside of her soul, she has this lack of peace. And then finally, she just realizes, "I’ve spent 20 years with the spirit of God living inside me, and I’ve never gotten God’s best." I wonder how many Christians sitting in this room today are living right there today? Because boy, I’ll tell you, I’ve been there.

So, application. And the goal of application is there’s movement. God is going to nudge you about taking some steps to what? Saying no to the world and beginning maybe some baby steps to say yes to Him changing you. Notice Jesus, when He was facing this. Go over to Jesus with Satan, Matthew chapter 4, and He’s being tempted. And three temptations. How’s He tempted? Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. How did He win?

They lost, He won. Why? "It is written, it is written, it is written." Each time from memory He reached back into Deuteronomy and the lie came—bam!—He knocked it out with the truth. And so in Matthew 4:4, it says He answered Satan and said, "It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." You cannot experience God’s best for your life without making this truth a part of your experience on a very regular basis.

You don’t have the power, I don’t have the power. You must take the raw material of God’s written word and get it into your mind and share it with other people so the spirit of God can take the written word and make it the living word and change you and change your desires in ways that you cannot understand. It’s supernatural.

In fact, the Apostle Paul would say it’s not only supernatural, but it’s a process. There’s not like you can just turn a switch and now I’m like Jesus. What’s he say in 2 Corinthians 3:18? I put the passage there: "But we all," speaking of the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, between the law when it was given in Sinai and now with the spirit living in us, "but we all with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed."

Notice the tense of this verb: "are being transformed." How? "From glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the spirit." He’s saying Moses, when he was up on the mountain with God, see, you become like whoever you hang out with. And after 40 days hanging out with God, he just glowed. He just radiated with the glory of God. And so when he came down, people couldn’t take it, so he put a veil over his face so he could talk to them.

And then in his hypocrisy, when it started to fade, he kept the veil on because he wanted people to think he still had it. None of us ever do that, of course. We don’t do any image management or any of those sort of things, but Moses did. And Paul says, "We with an unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror—it’s not direct, but we get these reflections and snapshots and moments where Jesus reveals Himself."

And a passage comes out of the word, and you’re in a Bible study and someone speaks a word or accepts you in a way that you’ve never been accepted, and you were vulnerable or you’re supported, or someone in love actually rebukes you and calls you on the carpet for something that in your heart you’ve known, and you realize that open rebuke is better than love concealed, and you find this safe place and God changes you. But it’s from glory to glory. That’s like four steps forward, two steps backward. We’re all in process. And notice who brings about the change? From the Lord, the spirit.

And so here’s the key what I want you to get. Review: stop allowing the world to conform you. Start being transformed. Here’s what I want to camp on. How? What’s your part? We said we can’t change ourselves. Allow yourself to be transformed, how? Here’s our part: the renewing of your mind. Mind renewal, I think, has three key components.

The first component of mind renewal is renewing your mind is a continual refocus of the Romans 12:1 perspective. Colossians 3 says set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. It’s a worldview, it’s a mindset that has eternity in mind, that has Christ in mind about what matters in mind.

See, when you come to that moment where you say, "God, I’m all in, I will do whatever," it’s authentic, it’s real, it’s sincere, you make great decisions in that moment. But then there’s Monday morning, right? And that was two football games and an argument with your roommate or your wife or with your husband and a kid who treated you dirty and a boss who wasn’t very nice ago. And a different person shows up after that, right?

And so you renew your mind to keep that focus, and all of us have different issues that we face that keep us conformed to the world. Let me give you an example. As I grew up in my home, my family of origin—I have one, you have one—the enemy uses the world in some ways in my life different than yours. I mean, there’s people that can walk into a bar, love friends, have no problem, never think about this or that.

Man, my dad was an alcoholic. Alcohol shaped our home. There’s some people that you’re not performance-oriented at all. Man, you are just balanced and laid back, and you go to work, you shut it off, no problem. You’re not a people pleaser. You’re just so healthy relationally and emotionally, and I envy you. And so I realized that I was a workaholic, that I was insecure, that I was always trying to please people, and then after I got married, that I was very insensitive to my wife. Other than that, as a Christian, I was really doing well.

I’m dead serious. I mean, I didn’t have a porn addiction, I wasn’t putting cocaine up my nose, okay? But I’m saying those were real. And what I started reading the Bible some and I wanted to follow Jesus, and I kept trying hard. I tried hard not to be a workaholic. I tried not to be insecure. I tried to be more sensitive to my wife. On my best days, and I’m pretty disciplined and willpower, I could only keep that up for about two weeks because I didn’t understand transformation isn’t about just trying harder. It’s renewing your mind.

And so I wrote down on some cards the truth. Now I prayed, I asked God—does it mean there’s not self-effort? Of course I had to make effort. But for example, I thought, "Am I going to be insecure my whole life or am I going to get my mind renewed?" And so I wrote down this on a card, I read it in the morning, the night, put it in my pocket, read it multiple times a day: "I’d like to be more authentic in every aspect of my life. I’m trying to please everyone and I am what I am by the grace of God. And His grace didn’t prove vain toward me, but I labored more than all of them, yet not me but Christ in me."

You know, when you keep reading over, "I’d like to be more authentic in every relationship," you know what happens? That gets in your mind. You catch yourself when you’re posing. You catch yourself image managing, and God begins to birth where you say, "You know, I think I’m just going to like who God made me." Got a long way to go. Transformation.

My people pleasing. I mean, anybody here ever struggle with like everyone asks you to do this and you either feel guilty if you don’t or you’re trying to do everything? You’re multitasking and you’re up early and you’re back late. I wrote this on a card: "I want to stop caring what others think and apply myself and my schedule to what will make me the best I can be to honor God the most. I want to grow free of the invisible expectations that I allow to hinder my joy, my freedom, my schedule from pursuing the best." These invisible like I had this gun to my head. Still struggle some, but if you live your life to please people, it’ll kill you. But it’s the world. So you refocus.

My next one was on my workaholism. I just thought working a lot, performing, getting stuff done, I got approval. And so that was how I did everything. I even did the ministry like that. And so I wrote on this card, I read it over: "I want to learn to take time and schedule in enjoyable, fun, refreshing activities without feeling guilty about them or caring what other people think." What happened was I just found putting it in my schedule. Pretty soon, I didn’t feel guilty about having fun. It was like, "Wow, this must be a part of God’s plan."

Guest (Male): You’re hearing Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip will be back with final thoughts in just a moment. Before he returns, though, let me point you to some valuable ways to stay connected with this ministry beyond the radio broadcast. The Chip Ingram app puts over a year’s worth of Chip’s teaching library in your pocket. Download it free on iOS or Android. You’ll find current series, classic messages, and resources like "Daily Discipleship" accessible anytime, anywhere.

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And be sure to subscribe to the Living on the Edge podcast, featuring uncut sermons through the Chip Ingram Sermon Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen. Well, now here’s Chip with some final thoughts.

Chip Ingram: As you listened to today’s message, what went through your mind? I mean, it’s a no-yes proposition, and to get God’s best, what we talked about is you have to say no to the influences of the world system that is taking you out of receiving God’s best. We’re going to talk about how do you actually renew your mind to receive God’s best, but today is kind of like inventory day. I mean, what came to your mind? What people, what practices, what’s going into your mind, your heart, that you realize as I was talking—in fact, you realized it because the spirit of God did that thing?

You know how He does, where He just sort of pokes and you go, "Ooh, it sort of hurts, but I know it’s true." Where did He poke you? I mean, what movie, what Netflix, what relationships, what websites, what books, what magazines do you just say—and some of them, they aren’t even wrong, they’re just not helpful, they’re not healthy, they’re distracting. Did God just whisper to your spirit and say, "You can keep doing that, but you’ll never get my best. You need to make room for me, so I can do in you and through you what I long to do so you get the very, very best."

And so what I want you to do is just identify that and then make a commitment to be with me at our next broadcast. And we’re going to talk about how to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Dave Druey: I’m Dave Druey, and we’ll see you next time here on Living on the Edge. Today’s program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.