How to "Break Out" of a Destructive Cycle, Part 1

Chip Ingram: Do you know someone who says they're a Christian, but doesn't live like one at all? I mean, they might even go to church and you say to yourself, I want to help them, but I don't know how. If you know someone like that, or honestly would say, I could use a little help myself, then stay with me. Today's for you.
Dave Druey: For a Christian, real transformation is more than just a goal. It's a certainty. You just have to understand God's process. Today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram continues our series called Free at Last: How to Break Out of a Destructive Lifestyle. Remember, if there's ever a message you miss or want to revisit, all of these lessons are available online at livingontheedge.org. Now let's open our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4 starting in verse 17 as we join Chip for today's message: How to Break Out of a Destructive Cycle.
Chip Ingram: Once upon a time, there were two small little green caterpillars. And they crawled upon this little twig and connected themselves and spun a little cocoon. And after a fairly short period of time something happened actually magically, supernaturally, amazingly inside, and metamorphosis occurred, and two little butterflies burst forth. And one butterfly's name was Barbara. And the other butterfly's name was Benny. They had this conversation if you can imagine with me. The wind is blowing kind of gently and the leaves are rustling and their wings are still wet. Barbara turns to Benny and says, "Benny, look at this. This is amazing. Look at the sky. It's blue. I'm not sure what those white things are." And then she looked down from the limb and thought, "I think those are flowers." She was getting very, very excited then having known him prior, "You're not a green worm anymore. I mean, you are beautiful." She goes, "Benny, watch this," and takes her wings and steps off. 45-degree angle, swooshes down, sniffs a flower, comes back up, lands next to him. "Oh, Benny, you've got to try it. It's great. It's fantastic. It's a whole new life. It's nothing like the old days when we would crawl around." Benny kind of looked down and he goes, "It's a long way down. I'm afraid of heights. I don't know if these wings are going to work. And besides, what if I die when I get near one of those flowers, something grabs me?" They had this conversation back and forth and Barbara did everything to get Benny just to see, "You're new, you're different, take the step." Unfortunately, Benny said, "I know I was uglier, but I knew what I was doing when I was crawling." He took his wings and he kind of folded them down and he laid down on the twig. He says, "I'm just going to pretend. I know you know and I know I'm a butterfly, but I think I'm just going to kind of go back to the old days." Now, I've never had a personal conversation with a butterfly, but I can tell you this: God in nature has created one of the most amazing pictures, as he does often, to express to you and me the difference and the miracle of when he changes our life. If any man or if any woman is in Christ, in relationship in Christ, it says you're a new creation and the old things pass away and behold, it's a process, but all things become new. As we've been through Ephesians chapter 4, the apostle Paul speaking empowered by the Holy Spirit wants you to know and wants me to know that a new life demands life change. Your new life demands a new lifestyle. What he's going to do in verse 17, he's going to remind them of what their life used to be like. Let's read the whole passage to get an overview. He says, "So I tell you this and I insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking." "They're darkened in their understanding and they're separated from the life of God." Well, why? "Because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardening of their hearts. As a result, having lost all sensitivity, they've given themselves over to sensuality as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more." He's describing a culture of violence and sexual immorality and disregard for people and slavery and the dehumanizing of people and greed that's just off the charts. "But you, however, did not come to know Christ that way," speaking of their conversion. "Surely you have heard of him and you were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus." And then he reminds them of what he taught them. "You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." In essence, the very top you'll see it: a believer whose life does not change is an oxymoron. In other words, it's incompatible, it's inconceivable. And yet the Barna and Gallup research would say that about eight out of ten people in America who verbally profess that Jesus is Lord, their life hasn't changed. We divorce at about the same rate. We lie at about the same rate. Our morality's about the same. We do about the same with our dreams, our money, our relationships. We lie about coming into work about the same as those that are outside of Christ. The apostle Paul says, "Wait a second. This isn't about some intellectual knowledge about God and you pray a little prayer." A new life demands, creates a brand-new lifestyle. But what he's going to teach them is some of you don't know how that works. I want to give you grace, I want to give you understanding about how this really works. Three very specific truths flow out of this passage. Truth number one is this: as believers, our lives must be progressively—underline the word progressively, it doesn't mean you're perfect—progressively characterized by moral purity. Notice verse 17, he says, "So I tell you and I insist upon that you must no longer live." Circle the word "live" and write above it "walk." That's our word. In other words, it's a process, it's a journey. You must not walk as the Gentiles do, in other words, as unbelievers. In the next line he tells us the why. "Because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts." The word ignorance here is not an intellectual ignorance. This isn't that they don't know intellectually this is right and this is wrong. This is a moral ignorance. This is an ignorance where you know when you do something wrong and you feel kind of bad about it and you feel guilty and you say, "Man, I shouldn't," and then you do it again and you feel a little bit less guilty and it doesn't really bother you. He says there's a progress where you can get where you don't feel anything, where you can sear your conscience, where you get to the point where in terms of right or wrong, who's to say what's right or wrong? And "No one's going to tell me what to do about anything. If I want it, I'll take it." There's just this total disregard. And that's he says this ignorance, and the ignorance happens because there's a process, he says, due to the hardening of their hearts. And then he says there's a result: having lost all sensitivity—literally we get our word "calloused." In other words, your soul, your spirit, your heart, layer after layer after layer of turning away from God and doing what is wrong, you lose all sensitivity or you're calloused. They've given themselves over to sensuality as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more. One commentator writes it's a surrendering of oneself to all the passions with gusto with no regard to whom it may injure or hurt. There is no shame, no remorse, no regret. The apostle Paul is saying in the darkness of people's hearts turning away from God, he said you were on a journey toward that kind of life and that's what it's like apart from God. And so here's his point: he says it's inconceivable for a believer's life not to change. Be holy, first Peter would write, even as I am holy. John the beloved disciple would say, if you say you love God and hate your brother, you're a liar and there's no truth in you. If you say you love God and you don't keep his commandments, you're a liar and there's no truth in you. Our vertical relationship with God through Christ must get played out in how we treat other people. In this church, like in America today, a lot of people's lives weren't changing.
Dave Druey: We'll continue in a moment here on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. While you're with us, if you've never checked out the Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram YouTube channel, you're missing a whole other side of this ministry. It's full of teaching series you won't see anywhere else. Things like BIO: Three Essential Practices to Becoming Like Jesus, and the I Choose Joy series, just to name a few. It's a great way to go deeper with Chip's teaching or to send a friend something to watch. Just search Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram on YouTube and take a look around. Well now here's Chip.
Chip Ingram: And so first of all, he sets the bar and he says, look, your life not changing, you progressively not allowing God's spirit to control your tongue and your thoughts and your appetites so that you progressively become less sinful and more Christ-like—moral purity isn't an option. It's not like a salad bar like, "I love Jesus and seven out of the ten commandments sound pretty good," but God will grade on the curve. No, it's that you walk with him. I was in Atlanta and meeting with a young couple and they had listened to something on the radio and they were excited about it and had their Bibles and were telling me how neat this was and that was and they'd been coming to this Bible study a couple times and were sharing a couple things with me and I said, "Well, where do you live?" I was expecting her to say, "I live here," and him to say, "I live here." They were going to a very fine Bible teaching church. And they said, "Well, we live here." I said, "What do you mean, in the same apartment complex?" "Oh no, no, we live together." I said, "Hold it, help me. So you live together like man and wife but you're not man and wife and so sometimes I can be blunt. So you live together having sex and you're not married, is that right?" "Yeah. Yeah, I mean we really love God, we really follow Jesus, we just don't really think that stuff about no sex before marriage is all that important." I said, "You know, there's a lot of Christians that do that with a lot of different passages but God's not really happy with that. And here's the deal: you know why he's not happy? You're embarrassing him in terms of how you're living and can I tell you this, you're hurting your relationship. Any time God gives commands and rules, he's not a prude. He actually invented sex and every other good thing. He wants to give you the best thing at the right time in the right way and you guys are short-circuiting the process." But that's sort of one of those easy ones for those out there. I think all of us have a few things where we say, we know we're supposed to pay our taxes right, but the government's wasting so much money. We know that we're supposed to put good things in our mind but when you're tired... And we know that our bodies are the temple of God but... See, we baptize certain sins or we all struggle with them so much we just pretend we don't. Paul's saying a new life demands a new lifestyle and that moral purity is first and foremost one of the things that distinguishes us. And then he gives the reason why. I mean, why is that so important? The second truth is an immoral lifestyle is inconceivable for us as believers for two reasons. In other words, look in verse 20 he says, "You, however, did not come to know"—that's in a point in time, he's talking about your conversion. He goes, "That was before. That's for people that aren't in Christ, but you, you didn't come to know Christ in that way." Surely you heard of him, speaking of when you heard the gospel and understood that Christ died for you in your place, paid for your sin and rose from the dead. And you were taught in him, that word has the idea of the fellowship and the connection and the community and what God was doing in your life and doing life with people and the progress. And then "according to," notice, "the truth that is in Jesus." This little phrase "in Jesus" put this way is here only in the New Testament. It's a reference to the historical Jesus, the Jesus that lived and walked and taught. The Jesus that said to the woman, "Go and sin no more." The Jesus that said, "Has anyone seen me sin?" Jesus was holy and pure and he said, "Follow me and I will make you like me. Your life will be transformed." And so here's the two reasons why it's inconceivable for us to live immoral lives. Number one, it contradicts who we are. It contradicts who you really are. You are not a green worm caterpillar anymore. You're a butterfly. You're a new person. You're not a slave to sin. You're a son, you're a daughter. You've been redeemed. You're loved, you're precious. His spirit lives within you. You have a Father who's created all that there is. He's got a plan for you. You're brand-new. Your life, you need to fly, not crawl. See, here's the issue and here's how moralism plays its way out: most of us think that the issue of sin is a behavioral problem, and it's not. The behavior is the symptom. The issue of sin is a relational problem. See, when people are asking questions like, "Well, how far can I go?" or "Should I do this or not?" and it's kind of gray and "Is this right or is this wrong?" and you kind of know what's right already, the focus is on these external behaviors instead of, wait a second. There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. What's it look like to draw closer to God? And what are the things that put a barrier? For those of you that are married, you've been down this road. Something happens in your relationship and you've hurt them or you neglected or you forgot something or you blew up in anger or you have a history of something and you've done it again. And then you walk in the house—it happens with roommates as well—and there's sort of this funky stuff in the air and you know there's a problem. And you can say something like, "I'm sorry." And the funkiness in the air doesn't go away, does it? Focus on behavior, "I'll try not to do that again." And if it's one of those like that, if it's "I'll try not to do that again, I'll try not to do that again," you keep on doing it. What do you get? There's just this distance. But when you see violations in a relationship as "I hurt that person," there's a breach. Our love is broken down. There's not a connection. There's that weird thing in the air. Until you sit down and look them in the eye and often with a few tears in your eye and say, "You know something? I told you I would do this. I did it again. I'm sorry. I blew it. Will you forgive me? I'm really, really sorry." And when there's a confession that's followed by a reconnection of the relationship, then what happens? See, the issue of sin is like just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you're not going to sin anymore. It just means that your sins have been forgiven and it means the power has been broken. You don't have to sin anymore. But when you sin what it does is it separates you in your fellowship with your heavenly Father. And so the issue isn't about just these external behaviors. And so there's lots of people who are going to start doing that, "I'm going to stop doing that. I try hard, try hard, try hard, fail. Try hard, try hard, try hard, fail." It's not until your mind gets renewed and you realize, "I'm breaking God's heart. I'm a son. I'm a daughter." And that's why a lot of people, you don't feel his presence. The reason you don't want to read the Bible or praying for more than a few seconds your mind wanders everywhere is because of unresolved issues. The issue is your identity. The issue is who you really are. And an immoral lifestyle contradicts who you are. That's not who you are. But it also contradicts who Jesus is. Jesus was not someone who sinned. Jesus was someone who loved. Jesus is someone who's pure. "In accordance with the truth that is in Jesus." So if externally trying to keep these rules isn't at the heart of the new life, how do you become transformed? How does it really work? And he's going to give us the general outline in verses 22 to 24. And he's going to say there's a threefold principles of renewal. Three specific principles that progressively, yes, at a point in time you're justified. God fills you with his spirit, he forgives your sin, he declares you, he sits you in the heavenly places. He says, now this there's a journey of walking. We achieve personal purity by following God's threefold principles of transformation. Number one, we put off the old. Notice what it says, put off the old self. It's a metaphor, it's a picture of like having shabby, dirty, stinky, torn clothes and it's an intensive verb that means at a certain time at a certain point you make a decision and you take them off. For some of us, you've come to Christ and you struggle with an addiction to alcohol or codependency or drugs. For some of us, you have an addiction to pleasing people or you find your worth in work. We have a lot of these sins that we kind of get rewarded for. And it says at a certain point you need to make a decision that you need to take that off. "My identity, I please people because I think I'm only acceptable, my identity is everyone likes me all the time," so you're overextended. Or you're a workaholic like I have been. And you feel like "I am my performance, how much I do, how much I accomplish." When I have those uneasy feelings, I just start working because when I work I feel better. Some of you have eating problems. When you have that dissonance in your soul, you eat and go to the refrigerator because when you eat you feel a little bit better for just a little while. He says at some point you make a decision and you say, "I drink every night after dinner because there's this stuff going on inside of me and it used to be just an occasional glass of wine but I can't not do it and it went from an occasional glass of wine to a few margaritas and then it went from that to a shot of Jack Daniels really kind of helps you sleep better." And you've had friends and people talk to you and say, "You know, hey honey, I think that's an issue." "I'm just social. I've got this freedom in Christ." And you do, but if a number of people were saying that you have a drinking problem, here's all I would say: well, just don't drink anything for the next seven days. "Oh, I could do that." Okay, do it. Bet you can't.
Dave Druey: This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and a message titled How to Break Out of a Destructive Cycle. It's part of our series called Free at Last: How to Break Out of a Destructive Lifestyle, which you can find online at livingontheedge.org. And the Living on the Edge podcast lets you catch every message on your own schedule. Search for it wherever you listen and hit subscribe. And for Chip's sermons in full, unedited from start to finish, look for the Chip Ingram Sermon podcast wherever you listen. You're not who you used to be, but living like it takes more than good intentions. Chip's book, Yes! You Really Can Change, unpacks exactly what Chip taught today, how your new identity in Christ actually produces a new lifestyle. And right now, when you request this book, we'll send a second copy along with it so you can hand it to someone who's ready to leave their old self behind too. Get your copy and one to give away at livingontheedge.org/offers. Real change doesn't happen in a vacuum. It takes teaching like this reaching people day after day. That's only possible because listeners like you decide to invest in it. Whatever you can give today helps keep this kind of practical biblical teaching on the air right where people need to hear it. Join us at livingontheedge.org or give us a call at 888-333-6003. You're also welcome to mail your gift to Living on the Edge, PO Box 3007, Suwanee, Georgia 30024. Well now here's Chip with some final thoughts.
Chip Ingram: There are some things in the Bible that are very, very clear and today's was very, very strong. Those of us that are brand-new creatures in Christ have the spirit of the living God dwelling in us and what we learned today, unequivocally, is that a new life demands a new lifestyle. Now I want to talk just personally and as a pastor to you. Where are you at? How are you doing? When I talked about the sensuality and the discrepancy between what people say and how they live and these very—I mean very—strong words that the apostle Paul says and then he follows them up by saying, but you didn't learn Christ in this way. Can I ask you—and not in a condemning way—does your present lifestyle match your new life? I mean, does it really? Do you watch the kind of things that would be honoring to God? Are you involved in relationships in a way that honor God? Do you put things in your mind that honor God? Or quite honestly, when I was talking, did a little light go on and the Holy Spirit say to you, "You've got to change. This is wrong. You've been in denial." The spirit of God convicted you. And you might be saying to yourself, "Well, what do I do, Chip? I mean, what exactly do I do?" It's a biblical word. What you need to do first is be honest and identify and say, "God, it is true. My lifestyle does not match my new life, and so I'm going to admit that." It's called confession. The second thing you need to do is repent. You need to have a change of mind. And I want you to imagine your life is like someone driving on a freeway and they realize, "I'm going the wrong direction." And so you repent. You have a change of mind that leads to a change of action. Whatever you need to do to turn the car of your life around and get on the path of righteousness, do it today. You'll never regret it. And you will meet a God who loves you and cares for you and has a tremendous plan for your life. But you need to obey what you've heard, so go for it.
Dave Druey: I'm Dave Druey. Chip's not finished yet. Next time he shares two of the most practical reasons your life is designed to keep changing, no matter how long you follow Jesus. Don't miss the rest of How to Break Out of a Destructive Cycle next time on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.