Teach Them to Live Grace Filled Lives, Part 2

The transferrable concept we must pass on to our kids and to our grandkids is this: Teach them to live grace-filled lives.

Let me ask you: How do we pass this radical, radical concept on to those we care about most? I think the first step is for you to write in your name. In my notes, it says: I, Chip Ingram, choose to believe that, with God, my failure is never final.

Now, let’s talk about: How do you experience that? Let me give you three specific ways.

First, encourage them to meditate on the lives of David and Peter. Murderer, adulterer, and betrayer who are among God’s most beloved and mightily used servants.

Did you ever wonder? Some people wonder, Is this really God’s Word? Can you really trust it? Did God really write this? I’ve got news for you. No man would ever write such a self-revealing book and allow the heroes of the story to be so messed up.

This is God’s dream team! And we have the audacity to say, “Well, God could never forgive me. I don’t think He could ever use me.” Are you kidding?

I remember I had not read the Bible growing up at all. And I remember probably after a year or so and dealing with all the stuff that I had to deal with and just sort of a naïve thought, I thought, You know, I’ve not killed anybody. I think God could use me! Because so far, the people that are used the most, they have all at least killed someone. I’m thinking, How much worse could it be than that?

And with your kids, they are going to fail. Now, does it mean that there’s not consequences for sin? Absolutely not. Does it mean you don’t discipline? Absolutely not.

And part of that is we have to tell stories, we have to tell the stories of Peter, more than walking on the water, and saying, “You are the Christ,” and talk about what goes in a human heart to betray the person who loves you the most? And how did God treat people who blew it that badly? He caused some loving consequences and He restored and loved and used them. Some people think, Oh, God could never use me now. I’m thinking, Peter did okay. And I don’t think there is a more grievous sin to God than betraying Him.

We need to meditate, we need to think about, we need to tell, not just the Bible stories where they are heroes, but let’s peel back some of the layers and talk about where they blew it and make it into real life and talk about that pastor that we all know who fell, morally, with a little bit different spirit. And maybe assume that it was a good man in a weak moment.

And maybe talk about, You know, in a weak moment, that could be me or that could be you or you, when you talk to someone that you’re trying to help pass on the things that matter most.

Secondly, help them remove the power of secret, secret is the key word, and condemnation by practicing repentance – James 4:7 to 10 – and confession – James 5:16 – with some mature believers that they can trust.

The way the enemy works is this: When you sin, when you blow it big time, when you make a mistake, when you do something you’re ashamed of, what happens is we do exactly what David did. We start to cover it up. We don’t want anyone to know. We are embarrassed by it, we don’t want the consequences of it, and we cover it up.

And then a little secret and, by the way, I will tell you, what the enemy does is then, Oh my lands, some of you, you have lived with stuff for years, some with decades, and anytime you start to take a step here or a step here, You don’t think God’s really going to use you? Don’t you remember that hotel? I mean, yeah, you were young but remember that hotel room? What would happen if your mate ever found out that it was actually her best friend? And what about when you worked in, remember that time in the service and you were overseas?

And that starts playing the tape. And then you just cover that back up and then you push it down and if the truth were known, probably some depression and physical issues and unresolved conflict has been brewing for years and years and playing itself out.

God says, “I have a remedy.” When you take bacteria that is growing and you take it out of the darkness and you bring it into sunlight, you know what happens? It dies. You just bring it into the light.

And the process of bringing those things into the light are given to us in James 4. It says, “Therefore, submit to God.” You realize, Okay, I submit to You, and then notice that there is an enemy, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

You have to say, I am in Christ! Did I blow it? Yes. Was it wrong? Yes. Am I ashamed of it? Yes. But I am going to now bring, I am going to submit to God, I am going to resist the devil, I am going to quote Romans 8:1. “There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.”

And then I am going to draw near to God instead of feeling like I don’t deserve Him and I can’t come close. And He promises He is going to draw near to Me. Then I’m going to start this process and it’ll start with the external things and it says, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you double-minded.” And so I am going to look at the outward things that I have done and then I am going to look at the motives of the heart, and then I am going to allow it to emotionally get down to my gut and to my soul, lament and mourn and weep.

I am going to embrace the emotions and the pain and the grief of what I have done against God. It’s a Psalm 51 moment. “Against You and You only have I sinned.” God, forgive me. Forgive me. I am sorry.

And then notice what happens. “Turn your mourning and your joy to gloom.” It’s a process. And this he is describing humbling yourself in the sight of God. And what is the promise? He will, He will lift you up.

But until you come clean, until you get the secret out in the open, in fact, later in James 5, until we confess our sins to one another, you don’t get healed.

I had a man in our church in California. And, man, it was just like, as a pastor you meet these guys. And he’s just a “with-it” guy. And he was committed and he was driving about thirty-five or forty miles to church.

I said, “Andy, can’t you find something a little closer?” He goes, “Look, I commute fifty-five minutes to work. God is speaking to me, He is speaking to my kids,” he had four or five kids. And he said, “We are all growing; it’s worth the trip.” I said, “Well, okay, but I’m just thinking there has got to be a church closer for you and etcetera.” He said, “No, no.” And it’s just one of those guys where you met him and, boy, he’s growing, he’s in the Scriptures, and pretty soon he is involved in ministry.

And you just dream about this, as a pastor, these really solid people that are going to make a huge difference, and they do. And ministries get built around them and you become friends with them.

And he said, “Hey, can I get some time with you?” I said, “Sure!” He said, “I need to do something.” I said, “Fine.” So he came to my office and grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down and he was kind of shaking. And I’m going, “Andy, what’s wrong?”

He said, “The last four months I have been traveling, secretly, to another city.” And I’m thinking, Oh man. I said, “So what is going on?” He said, “Well, it’s been going on for over thirty years.” He’s in his mid-forties. He said, “It started when I was seven years old and these magazines would come in, it was like the Sears catalogue. And I was just a kid, but I found the lingerie section. And it was like a magnet.

“And then I was about twelve or thirteen and I don’t know, accident or what, but my dad kept Playboys in between the mattresses. And I had a steady diet of those. By the time I was in my late teens, I moved and progressed to some hardcore stuff. I have never told anyone this. I have been living with this for thirty years."

“And the guilt that I have lived with and the turmoil inside, I can’t even explain to anyone. And so I heard about one of these sexual addiction groups, kind of a Celebrate Recovery type thing in this church about sixty-five miles away, because I didn’t want to do anything near us. And once a week, for the last four months, I have been driving there. And I got this secret out in the open. And something broke inside of me. And I wept with other men with the same problem and I have been clean now for, not just these four months, but a pretty good season of time afterwards. Now I have shared all this with my wife. It was horrendous. But, boy, do I have a godly woman.”

And he said, “Now, after this season, I feel like, I don’t know about the statistics, but probably twenty-five to thirty percent of the men in our church are dealing with this in some way. You are doing this series and I see where you’re going and you’re going to talk about sexual purity. With your permission, I’d like to tell my story. And I have asked my wife to sit on the front row, because I need to apologize to her publicly.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I really knew this guy and we prayed about it and I will never forget. I got to a certain point in the message and rather than giving an illustration I said, “I just want to stop for a moment. Andy, would you come up?” He was super respected in the church. “He has a little something he would like to share.” And I just came over here and Andy told his story.

And with tears streaming down his face, he apologized to his wife and his kids. And at the end of that, I said, “We need to get secrets out. Whoever has an issue like this in your life, Andy is going to be here tonight and we are going to start some shoot-it-straight, small group, sexual addiction for men.” We launched five groups that night.

It multiplied after that. I told this story and had people calling me from all over the country and all I do is I say, “Andy, can I have permission,” because he is gifted organizationally, I said, “can I have permission to just give your name?” He has launched, now, groups all over the country.

God has taken his greatest secret and pain and sin and not only forgiven him, but restored him and used the thing that was the worst in his life to become the conduit of grace for others.

What is your secret? What is it, in your past? Is there something that you would never want anyone else to know that needs to come to the surface, that you need to bring to God, first and foremost, submit to Him, resist the devil, draw near to God, cleanse your hands, purify your hearts, mourn, humble yourself, and let Him lift you up? And then share that, in an appropriate place, with a safe person who is very mature, so God could bring healing to you and then use it as a redeeming, powerful ministry to others.

Did you ever hear the apostle Paul, when he gets really personal in the New Testament? “I am chief among sinners. And God revealed Himself to the apostles and also to me as one unworthy.” It was his depth of understanding of owning his stuff.

See, grace doesn’t mean much if it’s a little word that you say, “I am saved by grace. I believe in Jesus. I went to a camp. I raised my hand. I got baptized. Yipee-do. Yipee-do. Now I try and be a good, moral person. And in my functional Christianity, I realized there was a big blackboard in the sky. Good deeds, bad deeds, when I do, do, do, do, do, I feel good, good, good. When I’m bad, bad, bad, bad, I feel bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. So I will try really, really hard. I get really exhausted, I have to hide a number of things. And it doesn’t feel really good and I know I’m supposed to be a good guy but, but, but, but…”

That is American and much of Christianity around the world. It is not supernatural. It is not Christianity. It is performance oriented. It is not grace. Grace produces powerful life change from the inside out.

Third, teach them to refuse to continue living with a performance orientation in their relationship with God.

It is and always will be a grace orientation. Sometimes when we think about grace, it’s still hard to get your arms around. There are a lot of Bible words like that, you know?

And sometimes a word picture gets it. So here’s a word picture. Here’s what grace is. If, in your flesh and frailty, is a human being, you make a mistake and you fall into a ten-foot hole. And you’re looking up and it’s a ten-foot hole and there is no way to get out of this thing. Grace is God will extend an eleven-foot rope with knots on it and you sit on the little chair at the end and He will pull you up out of it.

But if you happen to be one of those people that makes even a huge mistake and you drop into a ninety-nine foot hole, and you can barely see the light and there was no way out of the ten-foot hole but this is, there’s not even any hope, God will drop a one hundred-foot rope with knots in it, with a little wooden thing that you can sit on and He will pull you up. That’s what grace is.

It is all that you need. Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Grace extends a foot beyond whatever your need is. Totally apart from your performance. Totally apart from what you could earn, try hard, get back together, If I’m really good, well, maybe then, all that thinking.

And I will just tell you, I think it’s a very long journey, especially if you are goal oriented, fairly strategic, happen to be driven, a little OCD, came from a legalistic background, can I continue or have you got the idea?

Let me give you a couple of tools that might be helpful. One for me is I realized, it’s so deeply embedded in me, my performance orientation. I feel close to God when I am doing good; my emotions, I tend not to feel close to God when I’m doing bad.

Left to myself, I will think, Well, I’ll read, I used to be, when I was a young Christian, like, if I missed a day I would have to read that many more chapters to get it back level again. You know?

But that mentality, it’s so deep in me. And I realized, what needed to change was not my behavior, but my thinking. And so I began to take, these are called “desire cards.”

And I just thought, I’m not going to try and memorize them. I need to learn to think in a new way. And so I began to begin to think of ways that I could begin to think and re-orient my mind around what is true in relationships and with me and with God. And so: I desire to communicate unconditional love and acceptance toward my children, regardless of their performance. I thought if I could learn how to do it with my kids, maybe I would get it myself.

And then I said, I desire to please God and find my worth and security in Him, rather than seeking to please people to get their affirmation in ministry. Because, see, what I realized was, if I had a good sermon and people said, “Oh, that was really good,” Oh, good, good, good. “Oh, that wasn’t a very good sermon.” Oh, really bad, bad, bad, bad.

And I would live like this. Anybody do that? See, that’s a lack of understanding of grace. And my point is, you can write down what’s for you. These are ones I have been…and I just read them over, put them on the bed stand, just read them over. No pressure.

When I first wrote them, I wrote them as goals. Ingram, right? “My goal is to be more grace oriented.” Wait a minute, Ingram, a goal is something you can…

It’s a desire. “My desire is to focus on my faithfulness to God rather than my success in ministry.” Just read that over. “My desire is to enjoy my relationship with Jesus Christ each and every day.” I realized I was getting, Hey, Lord, you know what? Aren’t You glad I’m on Your team? I get a lot done. I get a lot done. Hey, give me the ball. I’ll run it! I get a lot done!

And it was like, Chip, lighten up. I want you to enjoy Me. And I jotted Psalm 16:11, “You have made known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy, and at Your right hand are pleasures forever.” To enjoy God. To not get anything done when you’re in His presence always.

“My desire is to allow my children the freedom to fail, to make our home a pressure-free environment.”

“My desire is to have some good fun, once or twice a week, limiting my work hours to fifty-five or sixty hours.”

The final one here is, “My desire is to worship God for who He is in praise and adoration at least once every day.” I got to the point where, when I met with God it was, Okay, let’s get something done here! Who do You want me to pray for?

Another tool, along with the cards, I didn’t used to do this but what I found is I lied to myself and I needed to be reminded of God’s grace. And this is a super-duper, $5.99 little notebook where, as I just try and be more honest. And I find, when I write it out, it’s harder to lie to myself. And I just got in the habit of writing out what I really think and what I really feel and when I’m really mad and when I’m really afraid and when I’m really hurting.

And they often start out, Yesterday started poorly, ended well. It seemed like all of life was pressing against me yesterday. I was angry and disturbed and very frustrated.

For a guy like me, that is like, you don’t measure up. You need to be in control, you need to have it together, you need to get with the program. And this tool has helped me just come before God. See, grace always flows downhill. Grace always flows toward humility.

Performance control is always rooted in pride. Now, there is responsibility that is healthy. But some of us feel like we’ve got to be in control and manage everything and manage outcomes. You can’t.

And so God’s loving grace for some of us, well, He’ll just keep overloading you until you can’t handle it so that you come to this amazing discovery: I can’t handle it!

And I think God smiles and goes, Well, it took a while but, you know? I have known that from day one! I want to help you! Oh! Really? Yeah.

You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. So, the life message here is you were created to receive grace and give grace.