Living on the Edge

Dave Druey: Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, do you want to change? Do you want to do life differently, but you just can't seem to make it stick? Well, here's what you need to know. There's a way to experience real and lasting life change, and it isn't about trying harder. It's about a completely new way of thinking. Today, we're going to talk about how this process can begin in your life. Stay with me.

How do you actually change lifelong patterns? Workaholism, people-pleasing, insecurity? For years you've tried harder and mustered willpower, but nothing sticks. Today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram reveals why trying harder never works and what actually does. He'll share his own battle with these issues and the specific tools that brought real transformation. From hearing and reading God's Word to memorizing and meditating on scripture, you'll discover practical methods for renewing your mind. Now let's join Chip Ingram for a very important message titled, "How to Get God's Best for Your Life."

Chip Ingram: Here's what Romans 12:1 says. "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?

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." Here is the key I want you to get. Review: stop allowing the world to conform you. Start being transformed. How? What's your part? We said we can't change ourselves. Allow yourself to be transformed through the renewing of your mind.

Mind renewal has three key components. The first component of mind renewal 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. 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 differently than yours.

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 tried harder 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 with willpower, I could only keep that up for about two weeks because I didn't understand transformation.

Transformation isn't about just trying harder. It's renewing your mind. 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?" So I wrote this on a card and I read it in the morning, at night, put it in my pocket, and read it multiple times a day: "I'd like to be more authentic in every aspect of my life. 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."

When you keep reading over "I'd like to be more authentic in every relationship," what happens is 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, "I think I'm just going to like who God made me." I have a long way to go, but that is transformation. Regarding my people-pleasing—anyone here ever struggle with everyone asking you to do this, and you either feel guilty if you don't or you're trying to do everything? You're multitasking, up early and 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, and my schedule from pursuing the best." These invisible expectations felt like I had this gun to my head. I 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, and getting stuff done got me approval. So that was how I did everything. I even did the ministry like that. I wrote on this card and read it over: "I want to learn—this is almost sick to have to learn this—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 myself 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."

Finally, with my wife, I realized I was insensitive. So I wrote on this card: "My desire is to love Theresa sacrificially and in a way that makes sense to her each and every day." I just kept reading that over, and a weird thing happened. I started seeing little times on this day, on Sunday night, on this day, where I could be more sacrificial. Believe me, it goes from glory to glory and with plenty of relapses. But are you seeing how it works? You see how you refocus and your mind gets renewed?

Second thing is I want to tell you it's a battle. Renewing your mind always involves a battle. The spiritual life, the battle for your soul, primarily is happening between your ears. The apostle Paul would say in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, "The weapons of our warfare," listen to that language. He's in a battle for his soul. "The weapons of our warfare are divinely powerful for the pulling down of strongholds and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God."

People-pleasing, workaholism, having, possessing, working like crazy, accumulating, impressing, image management, addictions. The weapons of our warfare—he's talking about the power of the Word of God, community, fasting, prayer. The world's powerful. There's a battle, and it's for your soul. There's a reason why the second most optimal time for couples to divorce is about between 20 and 25 years.

It is because she buys the lie that "it's me and the kids and all that I do for them," and he buys the lie that "someday, some way, if I can work, work, work, do, do, do..." Then they wake up 20 or 25 years later and they don't know each other. They've not shared anything, and they both bought a lie. They used to teach a Sunday school class, and they've been married 30 years. Now their kids are young adults who grew up in that home and mom and dad divorce, and they're going, "What in the world? I guess this Jesus stuff isn't true." That's reality. For some of you, that's your experience.

The third thing you need to remember is that renewing your mind is supernatural. It's a work of the Spirit. Renewing, reviewing cards, reading the Bible, doing this, doing that—I have news for you. The Spirit of God has to take the Word of God and do something in you. All of these things are about a heart love relationship with Him. Romans 8 says the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.

So in summary, let me just tell you, for me, for you, for every believer: you are what you eat. Period. You are what you eat physically, and you are what you eat spiritually and intellectually. You tell me how much time on your phone, how much time in video games, how many movies you watch and the messages in those movies, and what are you putting into your mind versus how much truth, how much of God's Word, how many renewing relationships? It's pretty easy. I can tell you your lifestyle because you are what you eat.

So my question is: what's your diet? Are you getting God's best? Now, let me walk through and give you some very practical, specific ways to renew your mind. Because it's one thing to know the principles and the truth, but here are some practical methods for renewing your mind to say no to the world and say yes to God. First, hearing God's Word. Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

On a regular basis, you must hear God's Word. It births faith. One way to do that is—this is a novel idea for some of you—come to church regularly. I'm not down on you. I just know for the first three years I was a Christian, if I made it twice a month, I was high-fiving myself. "Way to go, Chip. I never did that before." Second is use your time in the car wisely. Hear God's Word. My seminary training hasn't stopped.

Second, read God's Word. Revelation 1:3 says, "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near." If you don't know much about the Bible and need some structure and a plan, for at least the first 15 years I was a Christian, I read the Daily Walk Bible. I tell you, it was just like, "Okay, here's the structure. Here's what it means. Here's an overview." But you dig in for yourself. Or go on the internet. There are enough reading plans. Just log on to the App Store and search Bible. Believe me.

Dave Druey: 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 materials, and discussion guides to take you further. Find it all at livingontheedge.org. Now let's rejoin Chip with today's message.

Chip Ingram: 2 Timothy 2:15 says, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman that need not be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth." God wants the best for you. Some of us have been so trained we eat only processed food. Can you imagine if you ate only processed food instead of the organic, real, good stuff? The picture that comes to my mind is some of that processed cheese. You take it out of that plastic and think, "I don't know where this has been."

Well, it's a good start, right? But processed spiritual food is like there's a little book, and it's a good little book, and it has two or three verses, and then someone who studied a lot tells you a little inspiring story and tells you a little something about those two or three little verses and says, "And now, here's what you might do." You read for almost three minutes and go, "Oh Jesus, Jesus, help me, help me really follow you. I've really renewed my mind." Now I spent 40 minutes in the Wall Street Journal, but now I've spent my four or five minutes, so what I know is what someone else thinks of that passage.

The little card is how you can study God's Word on your own. I learned this from a missionary about 30 years ago. I think it was Brazil. It's called the 2-Pro-APT method. That's just an acronym. I'm not going to go through it all other than just to say, if you would choose a New Testament book—the book of John, the book of Mark, one of the small ones—and just read a paragraph or maybe two.

The P is "Pray." "God, please help me." The second P is "Preview" it. Read it quickly just to get a feel. It's all written on here. Then the R is "Read" it slowly, methodically. Then the O is read it "One more time" and underline words that are alike or thoughts that you have. The A then is what "Application" from this paragraph is God showing me? Then realizing since I don't have the power to do it, you "Pray" again. "God, will you help me?" It says be generous in this passage, so will you help me be generous in some way specifically today? Then the T is "Tell" someone.

It's just a very simple way to study. Here is what I can tell you: processed food is helpful, and if you're just beginning, that's fine. But when you are tempted sexually, when you want to break out of habit patterns, when there's addictions, when there's a crisis in your marriage, when you have a kid who's going through a terrible time and you're trying to cling on to God, you have to have Him speak directly from His Word to you because that's where convictions come from. It's great that those people who wrote those little devotionals believe that, but what do you believe? And what do you believe under pressure? It's birthed in study.

The next is memorization. Notice it says in Psalm 119:9-11, "How can a young man, a young woman, keep your way pure? By guarding it or keeping it according to your word. Your word I've treasured or hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee." I don't know if there's any greater return in the Christian life than memorizing scripture or one that's probably more neglected. I can tell you a brief story. I was in a school where there were four girls to every guy. I had started to grow. I'd been a Christian about three years. I'm reading the Bible three or four mornings a week. I'm starting to go to church, which is really radical for me.

I was making progress in a number of areas, but not in one in particular. My roommate was going to go to this Christian summer something, a para-church organization, where they go there for training and they get a job and share Christ and learn all good stuff. I didn't want any part of that. But before he could go, he had to memorize these 60 verses. It was called the Topical Memory System put out by a group called the Navigators.

I've always been very competitive, along with being insecure. So he left the room one day and I just thought—because he was going to memorize one or two verses a week and he had it planned out over 30 weeks—I just thought, "You chump." So my goal secretly, after he left, was I literally copied all the verses down on these little cards. I still have them. I got these 60 verses down and then I had an amazing gift. I had a psychology professor that was about 99 years old who'd been tenured for like 40 years because he couldn't get a job anywhere.

He would drone on and on. So I would put my psychology book up and for an hour every day, I memorized one verse the first day. So I decided in 60 days I'm going to be done and I was going to have them perfect because here was the goal. I was going to say, "Okay, hey Bob, how's it going with that thing, that training program you're going to? Why don't you go ahead and start and list the verses?" And I was just going to go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, 60 in a row. Is that sick or what? Memorizing God's Word to impress someone out of your ego and your pride.

Well, to show that God can use anybody even in our nuttiness, it's day 21 and I'm getting into this. I can still remember hearing my cleats when I was running to baseball practice putting it in the back. Day 21, I walk around the corner and there's a very beautiful young co-ed involved in the ministry. What men will tell you if they're honest is that we struggle deeply with lust, and I was struggling very deeply.

The external things were changing, but my eyes were going everywhere and my mind was going all kinds of places. When you lust for a girl that's not a Christian, you feel guilty. When you lust for a very godly girl, you feel really guilty. So oh no, this is her. We turned the corner, we started to talk, and we had a little conversation. We got done, and I remember walking away. I got about four steps. I didn't lust.

I didn't know the correlation. I had no idea. I didn't know about mind renewal. I didn't know how change happened. All I knew was following Jesus is really hard and a lot of it's not working very well for me. Some things undeniably are radically changing, but some other things I just feel like I was stuck forever. Day 21, I'd memorized 21 verses word-perfect. What I didn't understand was the supernatural work God had done. He'd taken the written word and made it the living word and changed my want-tos and my attitudes.

I looked at a sister in Christ in the eye, and a new relationship with women completely changed my life. When I got to 60 verses, it was like a drug. I couldn't stop. Then I started memorizing chapters and then I put my own topics together. For the next five years, probably more than anything else, I memorized God's Word. I will tell you, how I looked at the world was completely different. Completely different.

There was a level of peace and joy. I remember I'd have a question and I'd be praying, and as I was praying, God would bring a verse. "Oh, that's the answer." Or I'd be in a conversation and I wouldn't know what to say or what's going on, and God would bring a verse. All of a sudden, I realized we have the mind of Christ. The Bible says it: we have the mind of Christ. But most of us don't know what His mind is. But it's in His Word.

The final thing He says is that you meditate. This isn't like you do all these little things to become a little religious robot that drives other people crazy. I mean, there are some people like that. This isn't about how many verses you know. The word meditate here carries the idea of ruminating. It's the picture of a cow that has four stomachs. A cow chews on some truth, swallows it, regurgitates it, swallows it, regurgitates it.

This is reading and God speaks to you through a verse, and you write it on a card and you stick it in your pocket. Then as you're driving to work, you try and see if you can remember it. Or you're at a light and you're at a doctor's office, and you just bring it up. Something happens. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you should meditate on it day and night in order that what? So you can obey it. For then you'll be prosperous and have good success.

I put a few tools together that I think would be very helpful to you. Can I just close with this? Why do this? If you're listening, you're thinking to yourself, "You mean I'm going to limit my games and limit my movies and limit this and limit that and say no to some stuff that is just a part of my life and start saying yes to God's Word and do some things probably some of you have never ever done? Why would I do that?"

So that you could get the best from God. So that you could experience and taste what He wants normally for every person. His good. His good means winsome, beautiful, attractive, richly satisfying. Well-pleasing. Well-pleasing to Him and well-pleasing to you. Perfect. There's a will that's according to a specific design just for you that when you fulfill it, you explode with joy and live with peace. How does that happen? No, I won't be conformed to this world. Yes, I'll be transformed by the renewing of my mind so that I might experience it. Would you like that?

As I close, here are two questions, because you could feel overwhelmed and I don't want that. What one thing do you sense God is saying you need to say no to? What's going into your mind or what relationship or what is one thing that woos your heart away from God? Just say for a first step, "No." And what one thing of all the hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, meditating—because we're all in different places—what one thing do you sense God would want you to take a baby step in and begin to renew your mind?

Lord, I pray that You'd show every single person right now what they need to say no to that is drawing their heart away from Your deep, abiding, amazing love. And Lord, what You want them to say yes to in order to enjoy and experience Your grace, Your goodness. Will You please do that, Lord? And then will You birth faith in people right now? Would You even give them the idea of what one person could they share this with and ask them in a couple days, "Will you give me a call? Will you text me and I'll tell you how I'm doing?" Oh God, what would happen if hundreds and then thousands of people started to experience Your good, well-pleasing, and perfect will? That's our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.

Dave Druey: This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. If you want to revisit or share this lesson with someone you care about, find it online at livingontheedge.org. And don't miss Chip's weekday broadcasts every Monday through Friday. You can also find them by subscribing to the Living on the Edge podcast on your favorite podcast app and hear Chip daily wherever you are.

Friend, Living on the Edge exists as a nonprofit ministry, which means your partnership fuels everything we do. Whether you've partnered with us for years or today marks your first gift, we're inviting you to join this mission. Monthly giving provides the stability we need for strategic planning. One-time gifts meet immediate opportunities and urgent needs. Every amount matters because every gift extends our reach into homes, cars, and hearts where real transformation happens. Will you join us today? We've made it easy to sign up as a monthly partner or give a single gift online. Just go to livingontheedge.org.

Or write to us through the mail at Living on the Edge, PO Box 3007, Atlanta, Georgia, 30024. You can also call us and give over the phone. Just dial 888-333-6003. By the way, full sermons are now available on the Living on the Edge podcast with a feature called the Chip Ingram Sermon Podcast. Find these episodes right alongside our regular broadcasts on your podcast app. Now here's Chip with some final thoughts.

Chip Ingram: As we wrap up today's program, I have three questions for you, and I think you know what they are because we've sort of addressed them already. But I want to get you in the back of your mind thinking I was talking to someone else because I'm actually talking to you. In fact, it's not even me, it's God. And here's question number one. What do you need to say no to? What person, what relationship, what activity, what are you viewing that you just need to say today, "No, I can't go there anymore"?

Second, what do you need to say yes to? What needs to get into your mind, your heart, your life that you're not getting right now? And maybe it's time in God's Word, or it's a quick thing, or maybe it's time in a local church, or maybe it's time actually memorizing a couple specific passages that address the biggest struggle in your life? Because it's when the Word of God gets in your heart and life that the Spirit of God ignites it with power to give you victory over some of those things. So what do you need to say no to? What do you need to say yes to?

And here's the third question. Who today are you going to text, or call, or Facebook, or email to say, "Will you help me? I'm saying no to this and yes to something else, but I can't do it alone"? You ready? You answer those and God will show up.

Dave Druey: I'm Dave Druey, signing off. Join us next time as we continue this practical series on "God's Dream for Your Life." That's coming up right here on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.