Living on the Edge

Chip Ingram: Whether you know it or not, you have a calling. You may have not thought about it exactly in those words, but God has a unique plan and purpose, and it's not a secret. In fact, you have the potential to make a difference in ways you've never imagined. That's today, on Living on the Edge. Stay with me.

Dave Druey: Chip Ingram has counseled thousands of people over the years, and he says two of the most dangerous beliefs a person can hold are these: that their life has no purpose or meaning, and that happiness is just one more achievement away. Well, both are lies. Today, on Living on the Edge, Chip takes us into Ephesians to show us that before you ever did a single thing to deserve it, God called you—not to a set of rules, not to a religion, but to himself. If you have your Bible handy, go ahead and open to Ephesians chapter two. Here's Chip Ingram.

Chip Ingram: I'd really like to start a little bit differently. If you would pull out your notes and go to the back page, I want to start at the very end. There are two misbeliefs there, and I want to share these because these perhaps are the deepest misbeliefs that both myself and my wife have had in a season in our life. Misbelief number one is that I am not wanted or needed by anyone. My life has no purpose or meaning. I'm a victim of an unfair, uncaring world that brings me pain.

Four and a half years before I met my wife, she believed that with all of her heart. Many of you know her story. She came from a very difficult home life, abandoned by an unbeliever who went someplace else with another woman that he'd been seeing for a year or so. Two little babies, no money, broke, and her heart broken. She believed that. Dangerous emotions and thoughts went through her mind that, apart from those two little babies, she probably would have not stayed around. She felt so hopeless. Some of you know what that feels like. They're scary thoughts.

The second misbelief is that significance and meaning come from success in life. I will be happy someday when my relationships, career, and finances reflect my success and accomplishments. Many people get very hopeless when, after working for years and years and years, that doesn't happen. In my case, my upbringing actually helped in a few ways. My Marine father and workaholic tendencies meant that by 12, I had very clear written goals. I mean, I was going to get a basketball scholarship, I was going to have great grades, and I would date a very pretty girl.

I graduated and I did all three. I sat at a party afterwards and a good friend turned to me and said, "You must be very happy." I had an experience that I'd never had in my life because I'd already set the new set of goals, and there was a wave of emptiness in my soul. I thought, "No, I'm not really happy at all. I thought these things would bring it, but it didn't." I had by that time drifted away from church, questioned God, and prayed a prayer on the way home.

"God, if you exist, you better reveal yourself because life makes no sense. Why live? Life's meaningless. All the people I love will die before I die, and if accomplishing things is not what life's about, then life's a crapshoot." I think I said something a little bit stronger which probably was not very reverent. If you open your notes to the front page now, I want to talk about those dangerous emotions and how you deal with them. It's hard to give one emotion, and I chose a word that's kind of vague, but I think you'll get it. It's angst.

Angst. The actual dictionary definition comes close. It's a feeling of deep anxiety, but it's not worry, it's dread. But angst has some emotional cousins. Thoughts start going through your mind—meaninglessness, feeling like my life doesn't have any value or significance. That's where Theresa was. No value. There's no use in me being here. Thoughts like purposelessness, without an aim or goal or plan. Life is pointless. It's senseless. That was me. Why do this?

And then there are times where you just get hopeless. There's despair and despondency. Here's the core belief: somehow you start thinking it'll never get better. A happier day or change is never going to happen. When you lose hope, that's when horrendous things happen. So, what's God's antidote? Before you turn the page, let me ask you the question that I always ask in these series: what, apart from Christ, do you use to medicate or sedate your sense of angst? What do you do when you feel like life is senseless? What do you do when you get discouraged and depressed? What do you do when you just feel hopeless?

Do you eat? Do you work more? Do you drink? Prescription drugs? Sex? What addictive behavior? Everyone deals with it. What's yours? Because here's the deal: we all have stuff, but if you'll identify yours, if you'd be willing to be honest just privately with God, then the antidote is really going to make sense. Turn the page. What is God's antidote to angst, meaninglessness, and purposelessness? What do you do with those feelings when you feel absolutely insignificant and there's no hope? Number one, remember the hope of your calling. Circle the word hope. Remember the hope of your calling.

In chapter one, verse 18, Paul prayed this. He says, "I pray that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation into who he really is, a true knowledge, an experiential intimate knowledge of him." And then in the very next verse, he says, "I also pray that your eyes would be enlightened of your heart, that you would know as a fact the hope of his calling." What he was really praying was what we've just been learning. What's the hope of your calling? You're chosen. You're accepted by God no matter what anyone says.

You're adopted. You have a father. You're redeemed. You're infinitely valuable. You've been purchased by the blood of Christ. You're sealed. You're amazingly secure by the Holy Spirit. And you're empowered. The same power that raised Christ from the dead actually dwells in you. That's what it means to be called. This idea of being called is a little foreign, I think, to 21st-century Christians, and so I gave you a definition here out of the theological dictionary. Call is one of the biblical words associated with our salvation. In other words, God's called you to himself and you responded in faith.

In both Hebrew and Greek, call can be used in a sense of naming, and in biblical thought, to give a name to someone bestows an identity. Would you put a box around identity? Your identity is not your work, your identity is not your looks, your identity is not your family, your identity is not your money, it's not your zip code, it's not what other people think. God has called you. You have an identity. Son, daughter, beloved, secure.

Notice that it goes on. When God is the one who bestows names, the action is almost equivalent to creation. I gave you a passage there from Isaiah 40. It says where he calls the stars out one by one. In other words, God spoke, and billions of stars and galaxies came out. Guess what? God spoke. He spoke to you and you turned in response. You said, "Yes, I do fall short, I'm not perfect, I need help, I need forgiveness," and in the empty hands of faith, you said, "Lord Jesus, come into my life," and he did.

Just like he spoke creation, he spoke recreation so that you're a new person. The old things have passed away. Now, how do you experience that? That's what the Christian life is all about. So one, you remember the hope of his calling. Second is to really ponder, to reflect on the magnitude of your calling. Would you put a box around magnitude? Here's the thing: I don't think we get it. I don't think we grasp what's really true of us, but as you do, all those issues that we face that we're challenged with, all those ways that we respond that we know aren't healthy but we keep doing, they dissipate.

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Stay with us, there's more ahead. We're currently in a series called The New You: Claiming Your Birthright as a Child of God. If you've joined us late or if you want to share any of these messages with a friend or family member, every lesson in this series is available free at livingontheedge.org. You'll also find study resources there to help you go deeper on your own or with a group. That's livingontheedge.org. Well, now back to Chip.

Chip Ingram: In our time together, here's what I want to do. I'm going to start with a little brief review, and then from chapter two to the end of chapter three, I'm going to show you five specific ways that God has called you. Here's my goal: I want you to see the magnitude of what's true of you, that you are called. I want you to get it to soak into your head and drip right down into your heart so that you will go, "Oh my." Number one, you're called into a new relationship.

He chose you before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. You were called not to religion. You didn't get called to morality. You didn't get called to duty. You didn't get called to, "I'm supposed to do this and supposed to do that." You were called to a relationship. You were called into a relationship with Jesus. A person. A real person who walked on the earth. A real person who really cares about you and knows you and loves you.

On the very last night, Jesus was at a vineyard and he was preparing his disciples. He says, "No longer do I call you slaves, because a slave doesn't know what his master is doing, but I've called you friends because all the things the Father has revealed to me I've made known unto you. You did not choose me, but I chose you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain so that you could ask whatever you want and the Father will give it to you." You know what he's saying? Are you ready? Write this down: God is my friend.

He called you into friendship, not weight, duty, guilt, or stuff. Second, God calls us to a new purpose. You are his workmanship, right? You're his tapestry, you're his masterpiece, you're his unique. All the people in all the world, there is no one like you. There's no DNA like yours. But it's not just the physical DNA. You are his masterpiece. He's created you exactly the way he wants you, and he's created you to fulfill something that no one else can do it quite like you because no one else is you.

But notice it's not just who you are. He created you to do good works, which he has prepared for you. This isn't a last-minute thing. He prepared for you from the foundations of the world that you should literally walk in them or live in them. Now, here's what I want you to do. In your notes, I want you to write the word "general," and then under that, I want you to write the word "specific."

You're called to a general purpose, a new purpose of good works. You're called to love God and to love people. Jesus, in that same moment with his disciples, said, "By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and that your fruit should remain." Well, what's the fruit? The fruit is your character. As you allow Christ to live his life in you and through you, you become kinder, more loving, more patient, less envious, less arrogant, and more generous. You begin to think and to act and to speak more and more like Jesus. His goal is to make you like him. That's the fruit.

To love God and to love people. That's for everyone so that your light so shines before men that they glorify their God in heaven. They see your good works. They see how you live. That's general, that's for all of us. But he also has a specific good work for you to walk in. Imagine, if you will, this colossal, huge puzzle of the body of Christ all over the world, and there's this piece of the puzzle that is you. It's your gifts and your passions and your backgrounds and your history and your hurts and your struggles and even your failures.

All those things are put in to make you a unique you and you fit and you do something in a way that helps people in a way that no one else can quite like you. I call it your holy ambition. It's very specific. I will tell you this: when you discover your unique purpose and you begin to give your life away and he uses you, and the Spirit of God takes the grace of God through the PVC pipe of your just ordinary life and does something that changes people, I will tell you, there's no drug like it.

God called you to a relationship, and then he called you to a new purpose. Discover it, pursue it. Third, he called you—so you'll never have to be alone—into a new family. Chapter two, verses 11 through 22. It's a new family. Now, I can't read the whole passage, so let me give you the context. As you're looking at your Bibles, look at verses 11 and 12. Basically, Paul is writing to this Gentile church and they've received the Gospel; they're now followers of Jesus. But do remember Jesus was a Jew, the Messiah, who fulfilled all those Old Testament prophecies.

So basically he says, "Look, you guys, you need to remember where you came from. You were formerly haters of God, alienated from God, you had no hope, no promises. You were on the outside looking in." And then he says, "And by the way, you Jews, get a life. Do you understand what Jesus did? He broke down the dividing wall." In fact, if you look at your text, notice peace, peace, peace, peace, and the word unity. Jesus came and broke down the wall and the barrier between Jew and Gentile and he made one new thing.

One new man. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, you Gentiles, but you're fellow citizens with God's people, and you're members of God's household. Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone. In him, Christ, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple. What's a temple? Why do people go to temples? To worship, to experience God's presence. Jew, Gentile, one new family. In him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives in his Spirit.

God's presence dwells in you as a believer individually. But God's manifest presence when we come together, two or more, three or more, he then dwells and manifests his power and his presence. Now, here's what you need to get: Jew and Gentile, because our culture, most of us don't have a clue. This would be like hundreds and hundreds of years of, I don't mean they don't like each other, I'm talking hostility. If I was a Jew, I would not walk into the house of a Gentile. If a Gentile drank out of a cup, I would not touch the cup or I wouldn't drink out of it. Jews called Gentiles dogs.

What he's saying is Jesus now has taken all these people from different places and now there's unity in him. This is like someone from Hamas and the head of the Israel state saying, "We are now family." This is like it's 1950 and the KKK and the NAACP, the two presidents come together and say, "We are now family." That's how radical it was. Yes, we're multicultural here, but we're multicultural where by and large, Korean, Chinese, Indian, black, white, rich, not so rich, single, married, married again. Yeah, we're really diverse.

What happens in churches—and ours is no different—is that by and large, you stay in your affinity group. I hang out with these people. We all speak this language. I'm with people I like, and so we have all these little silos of all these different people and you like each other. Being in a big room with people from all kind of backgrounds is not the same as being in a room where you get to know them, where you learn to love people that are different, where you learn things that are different, where you hear words and backgrounds and hurts.

Can you imagine you're a Roman soldier or you're just a person in Judea or Galilee and all of a sudden these Christians, these wacko people that say this guy rose from the dead, there's a Jew and a Gentile, a slave and a rich person, a rabbi and literally, they had the Hamas of their day, one of the disciples basically was a zealot, that's called a revolutionary. And they're all arm in arm. They're walking into a stadium singing. And that motley group of people that would hate each other apart from Jesus singing and praising God and asking God to forgive the people that are about to kill them.

God doesn't want you thinking following Christ is coming to weekend services, maybe being in a group, giving a little money, and going your way. He wants you to get connected in community. He wants you to learn to love and experience the kind of things that people would say, "Gosh, aren't you both from India? But in India these two groups don't get along. How does that happen?" Or, "Aren't you from Taiwan and you're from mainland China and isn't there some rub with some of that stuff? And aren't you black and aren't you white?" Are you ready for this? "Aren't you a Republican and he's a Democrat? And you pray together and love each other?" I'm not kidding you. That's what God wants to do.

What if the problem is not the internet? What if it's not lapsing back into the third or fourth or fifth drink? What if it's not anger management? What if at the heart of it it's not about how much you work or why? What if it's not about ego? What if all those things are symptoms and if you would ever come to the point where you could grasp in your head and your heart, "I am secure and loved, I don't need people to like me, I don't need all my circumstances to work out perfectly?"

I have all that I need in him and I give my life away, and as I give my life away, I do not understand in any way the mathematics of the Kingdom of God, but every time I give my time, every time I give my heart, every time I'm willing to serve, God chooses to multiply that back and give to me far more than I gave. That's the call of God.

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and a message titled You Are Called. Stay with us; there's more ahead. We're currently in a series called The New You: Claiming Your Birthright as a Child of God. If you've joined us late or if you want to share any of these messages with a friend or family member, every lesson in this series is available free at livingontheedge.org. You'll also find study resources there to help you go deeper on your own or with a group. That's livingontheedge.org.

Now back to Chip. This month Chip has a brand new devotional called Growing Deeper in Christ: A 365-Day Journey to True Discipleship, and it was built for exactly the kind of transformation this series is pointing you toward. Here's what makes it different: it's not a devotional that simply gives you something to read each morning; it's a guided journey drawn from 10 books Chip has written over the years, following the same pattern of discipleship that Jesus himself modeled.

Each day a short passage, a focus truth, one step of obedience, and day by day the reality of who God says you are—chosen, called, and purposeful—moves from something you know in your head to something you actually live. If you've never given to this ministry before, we'd love to send you a copy as our welcome gift when you make your first donation. Or if you're ready to join us as a monthly partner, we'll send one your way as our thanks. Either way, your gift keeps this ministry going, reaching people every single day who need to hear exactly who they are in Christ.

To become a monthly partner or to make your first donation, just go online to livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. And if today's message connected with you, share it. The Living on the Edge podcast makes it easy to send any message to a friend, a family member, or someone you know who's been wrestling with their sense of purpose. Search for Living on the Edge wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe today. Well, now here's Chip Ingram.

Chip Ingram: As we wrap up today, I am super excited about what we talked about and where we're headed in our next broadcast. Remember the hope of your calling. I mean, that is an amazing thought. The fact that the God of the universe has accepted you, wants you, loves you, and has made you valuable, secure, and competent. Can you imagine what would happen if people begin to see themselves that way?

And then realize that you are his masterpiece and that he has something for you to do, a purpose, a calling that no one else can do quite like you. It's part your personality and your family background and your spiritual gifts and your passions, and all those things wrapped up in this special package that God calls you that motivates you to want to do or help or take on some project that makes a difference.

I actually remember teaching this concept at the church, and I wrote a book called Holy Ambition that helps people kind of go from an idea to discover their calling and put it into practice. So we went through that book together and I remember a guy who had this passion because of his background to get coats for homeless people. It started with three or four people in his family and then a small group, and he shared it with a couple people, and before long, it was crazy. We had these big bins everywhere and thousands and thousands of coats to homeless people here in the Bay Area.

Here's what I want you to know: when you discover your purpose, when you discover what you're designed to do, the greatest joy you'll ever experience is not what you get and it's not what other people think. It's when God uses you to love other people. In our next program, we're going to talk about practical ways to learn exactly how he made you and how you can be a difference maker. Hope you'll be with me.

Dave Druey: I'm Dave Druey. Join us next time as Chip Ingram continues unpacking the magnitude of what it means to be called by God and how that calling gives you a purpose no achievement could ever match. That's next time on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.