Living on the Edge

Chip Ingram: What is it that God wants most from you? Your time? Your money? Your talents? I'd like to suggest that the thing God wants most from you is you. He wants a relationship with you. He wants to spend time with you. So how do you build a relationship with someone you can't see or hear or touch? Stick around and find out.

Dave Druey: Welcome to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Over the past few lessons, Chip has been explaining that living without hypocrisy isn't about willpower. It's about encounter. Corporate worship recalibrates your soul. Private worship transforms your heart.

Today Chip turns to the most intimate mode of all: personal worship. One-on-one time with God, set aside every day, that Chip says has been the single most powerful thing in his own life for keeping what he says and how he lives in alignment. Well, here's Chip with today's message titled, "How to Overcome Hypocrisy in Your Private Life."

Chip Ingram: If you're really a brand-new person, your life will be characterized—you won't be perfect, but you'll walk in the light. You will be habitually characterized by a person who is increasingly more holy and increasingly more loving.

But the dilemma is that no matter how holy you get this side of eternity, you're always going to struggle with sin. You're always going to blow it, and your motives are never going to be 100% pure. But God has a process.

He has a process whereby you're transformed from the inside out, and that process is seeing Him. In fact, it will be epitomized at the moment we see Christ. 1 John 3 tells us that we don't know exactly what it's going to be like, what we will be like eventually, one day. But this is what we know: when we see Him, we will be like Him.

And the process of sanctification, or becoming more like Christ or becoming more holy and loving, is really about moment-by-moment seeing and beholding God for who He is. In that process, the Spirit of God takes that truth and that reality, and it transforms us.

On a scale of 1 to 10, do a little inventory here. A one is: I feel totally far away from God; when I pray, I don't think He's even listening; I'm so far away. And a 10 is: I can't imagine a deeper, more intimate connected relationship with God. Scale of 1 to 10, what are you? How is it between you and God right now? Next question: when do you talk to Him? How do you talk to Him?

If you said, "Okay, Chip, how long have you been a Christian? What single thing, what single thing has had more impact, more influence in transforming your life to go from who you were, this new babe in Christ, to what God is doing in your life and will continue to do? What single thing has helped you to live a life over time where what you say and what you believe and how you live and how you think and where your real heart and motives are are in alignment, living without hypocrisy?"

And I'm going to tell you, bar none, learning to worship God personally on a regular basis has been the most powerful thing to transforming my life. So let's take a look at personal worship. What is it? Why is it so important? The priority? And then maybe most of all, how do you do it?

First, let me give you a definition. Personal worship is the regular and habitual setting aside of all other activities and relationships to give God your undivided attention, focus, and affection. Just as we come together as a large group before God, it's when you privately come before God and worship Him and hear from Him, when you talk to Him, when you share your heart, when you open His Word and He speaks to you.

And you might say to yourself, maybe this is the last part of the series and maybe you're just a little over the top on how important this is. I mean, could it be that important, the most significant thing that's transformed your life?

Let me ask you to look at a couple of passages in terms of the priority of worship, personal worship. Romans 12:1 and 2 says this: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies," how? "as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to Him. This, this is your spiritual act of worship."

"Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed," changed, metamorphosized from the inside out is the word. How? "by the renewing of your mind," as you behold Him, as you see clearly who He is, and then you see the world for what it is, and then you see yourself for who you are.

And when your mind is renewed, something occurs. "Then you will be able to test" or taste or see or approve is the idea, "what the will of God is," in your practical experience, "that is good and acceptable and perfect." Now here's something very important. Romans Chapter 12 follows Romans Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Pretty cool, huh?

Do you know what Romans 1 through 11 talks about? Paul is giving a theological treatise about the gospel. It's the clearest book in the New Testament of: this is what God has done for you. Chapter 12 looks back on all that God has done for you, and Chapter 12 opens up and asks and answers the question: "So what does God want you to do for Him?"

And what God wants you to do for Him is to be a private worshiper where on a regular systematic basis, you come before Him and you offer you. He wants you. He doesn't want just your time. He doesn't want just your money. He doesn't just want control of your dreams and your agenda. He wants you. He wants me as a living and holy sacrifice.

And by the way, the tense in this verb, you might mark it in your Bible. It's at a particular point in time. This isn't some vague notion of offering God somehow, some way, someday, your body as a living sacrifice. It's like going to the altar and making a specific decision and saying, "God, I am yours, lock, stock, and barrel."

And notice carefully, this is not a salvation passage. Salvation in Romans occurs in Chapters 4 and 5. This is people who know God, who are a part of His family, who grasp all that God has done, and they say what God wants most from me is at a point in time, I dedicate all that I am and all that I have, and I'm going to live my life as an act of worship.

And then look at verse 2. Verse 2 reminds us that this is not a one-time deal. "And do not be conformed any longer," literally, don't allow yourself to be conformed any longer to this present world, but allow yourself and your mind to be transformed. How? By the renewing of your mind.

So worship is not only at a point in time where you drive a stake in the ground, but then you renew that day after day after day as you spend time and meet with Him. He renews your mind, and little by little by little, your life takes more and more the characteristics of the intimacy of Christ. Have you ever noticed that whoever you hang out with, you become like?

You can tell who your kids are hanging out with, right? They go to school for three or four or five days and they come home saying stuff like, "Yo, dude," and you're thinking, "Oh, he's with the surfer group." Whoever you get close to, you begin to take on their characteristics. When you get close to Jesus, when you spend time with Him, when you worship Him, when you do it not only once in the morning or in the afternoon or the evening when the best time is, but as you carry on conversation, when you learn to live in His presence, little by little by little, you become like Him.

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We'll hear more from Chip in just a moment. If you'd like to go deeper in today's study, visit us online at livingontheedge.org. There you'll find Chip's full teaching library, small group resources, and the free daily discipleship tool to help you grow all week long. You can also download the Chip Ingram app free on iOS or Android. Now back to today's teaching.

Chip Ingram: Loving Jesus isn't about having a gooey feeling in worship or even spending time in the morning and saying, "Oh God," and having these good feelings. If what Jesus says about my mind and my motives and my behavior and my relationships doesn't get translated into my behavior, I can feel like I love Him a lot, but the Bible says I'm not loving Him. The test of my love for Jesus is: do I keep His Word? Do I obey Him?

And He would say in the chapter before, "He that has my commands and keeps them, he it is that loves me, and he that loves me will be loved of my Father." And then this classic picture, "And my Father and I will come and we will disclose or reveal ourselves to him." And so Jesus is teaching about private worship and there's going to be this abiding relationship.

And then He tells them why, this great reason. He says, "I've told you these things so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full." This is about the overflow of a relationship. So here's what I want you to hear. According to the last teaching of Jesus on the earth and according to the most core theological teaching of the New Testament, your abiding personal worship of Jesus is the most important appointment you have every day. It's the most important relationship to cultivate every day.

The purpose of personal worship, put very simply, and you might even jot this down, is to know God and to enjoy Him. It's to know Him. It's to enjoy Him. It's not to earn His favor. There's not a big refrigerator in heaven, and if you meet with God four mornings in a row, "Gold star for Ingram!"

No, when you miss a morning, when you miss an evening, you just miss out. It's like everyone's going to Disney World and you just miss the bus. Doesn't make you a bad person, but you miss out. It's like having a date with the person of your dreams and your car breaks down. You don't get to go on the date. Doesn't make you a bad person, doesn't make you loved any less, but you miss out.

The purpose of personal devotion is to know and enjoy God. It's to cultivate an intimate friendship and trust that results in obedience and affection to such a degree that His life is manifested in and through you to the glory of God. That's the purpose.

Now in practice, you need to figure out how to pull this off. And so what I'd like you to do, I'm going to ask you to pull out a pen. In practice, you need to have a specific time, a specific place, and a specific plan. It's just like with relationships. How many times do we see someone at the grocery store, in the mall, and they're a pretty close friend? "Hey, we ought to get together! Hey, we ought to get together! Yeah, let's get together!"

Then three months later, you see them at the grocery store, "Hey, we ought to get together!" When do you get together? You get together when someone says, "Let's do it next Thursday at 3:00." When that happens, you get together. When it doesn't happen, you don't. You must decide, in fact, you must pre-decide when daily are you going to meet with the most important appointment of your life? Where daily are you going to make the most important appointment of your life?

And then when you meet with Him, do you have a plan? Because what happens is, if you set aside that time and you don't know exactly what to do, it's not very fulfilling, you don't make a lot of progress, and chances are you won't do it very long. I'm going to give a whirl at something that I hope works, may not, but I would like to walk over here and I would like to have a quiet time. Some people call it the devotional life. And I'd like to literally, I mean, no joke, just have one. Even got a little coffee here. You ought to make this kind of fun.

And I want to sit down and just show you how I have done it for years. This isn't the only way to do it. And so with that then, I'll just kind of give you a little preview: 2-PRO-AP. Each letter stands for something. The first P in 2-PRO-AP is Pray. Ask God to speak to you. So I mean, I'm going to do this as authentically as I can, but it's kind of hard to do in a crowd.

Father, I want to thank you for the privilege to hear from you. And I know that my mind often isn't real awake, and I ask that you'd first clear it up. And then I ask that the Spirit of God would open your Word. Help me to hear from you today. In Christ's name, amen.

The second thing is then to Preview. Often we try and get way too much out of something early, and just preview, read through real quickly. So open to Ephesians Chapter 5. I'll take the first six, seven verses and we'll start verse 21: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of the water with the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church without sin or wrinkle or stain or any blemish but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church."

And so I just read through it real quickly just to figure out what the basic gist is. Then the next R is for Read. And you read the passage a second time slowly and contemplatively. And so I would kind of start off with: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Okay, key verb, idea here is submit, has to do with relationships. "Wives," okay, first relationship, "submit to your husbands." How? "as unto the Lord." Why? "for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also the wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

"Husbands," okay, shifting it around, idea submitting here, talking to wives first, another group here, new paragraph. "Husbands, love your wives." Well, how? "just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her." Well, why did He do that? "to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with the water through the Word." I wonder what that means? I'm dead serious, that's what I do. I hit passages and I go, "Man, washing of the water of the Word. What's that got to do with anything?"

"And to present her as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless. In the same way," something about what Christ did for the church has got to go with husbands, "husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church."

Then I go back through and I think. You just think on that for a while. What would God want to say to me? I mean, I'm not trying to be a Bible scholar, I'm not trying to diagram anything, just I want to meet with God. And there's something about in the body of Christ submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. And example one is how wives are to do it, example two is how husbands.

Well, I'm going to make some observations then and go back and underline key words and circle words and phrases that are repeated and highlight the most meaningful verse to me. And so, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." I'm going to circle submit just because it seems like from reading it a couple of times it pops up a lot. "Submit to your husband." I'm going to circle submit, found it again. "As unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior."

"Okay, so wives submit, Christ submitted. Now as the church submits," circle that again, "so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything." Wow, submit, submit, submit, submit. I think this is for Theresa. This is really going to be good.

Dave Druey: You've been listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and his message titled, "How to Overcome Hypocrisy in Your Private Life." Remember, you can find this lesson and every message in this series at livingontheedge.org.

Today Chip taught us that loving Jesus is not the same as having good feelings about Jesus. The test of love, according to John 15, is obedience. Day after day showing up to hear from God, bringing His Word to bear on your actual life—your marriage, your money, your motives—and doing what He says. Chip was transparent today about his own quiet time, his own drift, and his conclusion was unambiguous: if personal worship is not the most important appointment in your day, you are, as he put it, destined to a life of hypocrisy. Not because you're a bad person, but because we all become like whoever we spend time with.

And if you want to build that appointment into every day of your year, Chip's brand-new devotional, *Growing Deeper in Christ*, gives you a thoughtful, structured path to do exactly that. Grounded in a decade of Chip's most impactful teaching, when you make your first-ever gift to this ministry or sign up as a monthly partner, we'll send you a copy as our thank you.

For over 30 years, Living on the Edge has brought clear, practical Bible teaching to people who need it most. And every program that lands at the right moment in someone's life happens because of partners who believe this work matters. Give your first gift or become a monthly partner today at livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. Well, now here's Chip.

Chip Ingram: As you listen today and I talked about personal worship—often called a devotional life or a quiet time—I'd like to ask you: what new insight did you get? In the next broadcast, I'm going to talk about some very, very specific ways to enrich your devotional life.

But today, I want to take just a moment and tell you that I believe this is the most important element missing among most Christians that I meet. I know we're busy, I know we're pressed, I know we have a lot of things going, but we don't take time for the most important relationship in the world.

There is no way that we will ever eliminate hypocrisy in our private world unless we allow the truth of God's Word to get inside our private world. And the only way that happens is when in an unhurried, leisurely manner, on a very regular basis, we meet with God. He wants to help you. Even when He convicts of sin, it's to restore, it's to recalibrate your soul, it's so you don't have to live with the pressure of a double life.

Now let me give you two or three quick tips because some of you are thinking, "I can't listen to tomorrow's broadcast. I need some help today." Here's a couple quick tips on enriching your devotional life. Number one: adjust your expectations. God is not going to just boom, do some big miraculous speaking to your heart every day. It's a lot like any human relationship; there's great exciting days and then there's kind of the normal days.

Second is: realize it is a discipline. You're not always going to feel like doing it. But put it first. Make it a habit. Set your clock 15 or 20 minutes earlier and meet with God for two or three weeks and you will see a change begin to occur. And finally, just simply do it. Just choose to do it and ask God for help. He longs to love you. He wants to meet with you. On our next broadcast, I'll tell you exactly how I do it and maybe give you some help to enrich your time with God.

Dave Druey: What if 20 minutes a day could change the other 23 hours and 40 minutes? Well, next time Chip Ingram pulls up a chair, opens his Bible, and shows you exactly how he does it. I'm Dave Druey, don't miss it next time on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.