I heard a message recently that caused me to
stop in my tracks. I'm a pastor. I had studied
this passage for many, many years, but I had
never seen it in my life the way it was taught.
And there was a sense of truth and connection
that I just couldn't hardly believe. You've got
to hear it, and that's today. Welcome to this
edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.
Our mission is to inspire Christians to be genuine
followers of Jesus and to empower them to be
active disciple makers in our world. As many
of you know, Chip's our regular Bible teacher
for this daily program. But for the next two
broadcasts, he's passing the mic to his son,
Ryan Ingram. He's the lead pastor at Awakening
Church in San Jose, California. Today and tomorrow,
Ryan will be in Genesis chapter 2, describing
the perfect environment God created for Adam
and Eve. and why, since sin entered the world,
our hearts ache to be reunited with our Creator.
But before we begin, let me encourage you to
download our message notes to help you get the
most out of these programs. They contain Ryan's
outline, Scripture references, and much more.
Get them by going to the broadcasts tab at livingontheedge
.org, app listeners tap fill in notes. Well,
if you're ready, here's Ryan with his talk, The
Longing for Home. Let me ask you, What do you
do about the ache within you? What do you do
with just that ache? You're sitting in a coffee
shop surrounded by people, but nobody actually
knows you. You're scrolling through social media
at midnight. Everyone's highlight reel, yet you
feel unseen. You moved into a new apartment and
you don't know your neighbor's names. That new
apartment's now two, three years old. You still
don't know their name and they don't know yours.
You're in back -to -back Zoom calls all day long
and not one person asks, how are you doing? There's
a quiet ache under all the noise. A restlessness.
We live in a world and a day and age where we're
more connected than ever, yet somehow we are
more alone. Packed calendars, endless scrolling,
and yet the ache remains. I'd like to suggest
to you, what if your longing isn't a problem
to fix, but a sign pointing you home? What if
that ache is there for a purpose. C .S. Lewis
in the classic Mere Christianity writes this,
our lifelong nostalgia, lifelong nostalgia, our
longing to be reunited with something in the
universe from which we feel cut off, to be on
the inside of some door which we have always
seen from the outside. is no mere neurotic fancy,
but the truest index of our real situation. That
there's this ache, this longing. Somehow sitting
on the outside, peering in. That word nostalgia
was first coined by Swiss medical student Johannes
Hofer, where he took two Greek words and put
them together. Nostos, meaning homecoming, and
algos, meaning pain. This sense of pain, this
ache. Today, the sermon title is The Longing
for Home. Would you go ahead and say that to
your neighbor, The Longing for Home? The truth
is we're all spiritually homesick, aren't we?
We all carry with us this ache. No matter what
kind of home we grew up in, we have a longing
for some idea of home. Tim Keller writes this
about home. Home is a powerful but elusive concept.
The strong feelings that surround it reveal some
deep longing within us for a place that absolutely
fits and suits us, where we can be or perhaps
find our true selves. Yet it seems no real place
or actual family ever satisfies these yearnings,
though many situations arouse them. And so we
live. With this ache, this longing, a spiritual
homesickness. In Genesis 2, we find the original
home for humanity. The place God made for humanity's
flourishing. Genesis 2, 4 says, this is the account
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
Now, Genesis 1 is the macro vision of how God
created everything and why it all matters. Genesis
2, we zoom in to the creation of humanity. Verse
5. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth
and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord
had not sent rain on the earth and there was
no one to work the ground, but streams came up
from the earth and watered the whole surface
of the ground. Then the Lord God formed a man
from the dust of the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and the man
became a living being. Now the Lord God had planted
a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put
the man he had formed. The Lord God made all
kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees
that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.
In the middle of the garden were the tree of
life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Verse 10. is the Pishon. It winds through the
entire land of Havilah, where there was gold.
The gold of that land is good, which I generally
think is gold is good. Thank you. Aromatic resin
and onyx are there also. The name of the second
river is the Gihon. It winds through the entire
land of Cush. The name of the third river is
the Tigris. It runs along the east side of Asher,
and the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord
God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden
to work it and to care for it, Lord God commanded
the man, you are free to eat from any tree in
the garden, but you must not eat from the tree
of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat
from it, you will certainly die. The Lord God
said, it is not good for the man to be alone.
I'll make a helper suitable for him. Now the
Lord formed out of the ground all the wild animals,
all the birds in the sky. He brought them to
the man to see what he would name them, and whatever
the man called each living creature, that was
its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock,
the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals.
But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So
the Lord God caused the man to fall into deep
sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one
of man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib,
and he had taken out of the man and he brought
her to the man. Then the man said, this is now
bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She shall
be called woman for she was taken out of man.
That is why a man leaves his father and mother
and is united to his wife and they become one
flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and
they felt no shame. What do you do about the
ache within you? And what if the longing isn't
a problem to fix? but a sign pointing you home.
In Genesis 2, we come across four eggs, four
signposts returning us to our original home,
the home we were truly made for. The first thing
I want you to notice is the heart aches for permanence.
The heart aches for permanence. We live in a
transient, ever -changing world. Fast -paced,
nonstop. We move more than any other time in
human history. In fact, millennials and Gen Z
move than any previous generation. The average
millennial moves every two years. Psychologists
say of this time and age that there is a rootlessness,
a constant sense of disconnection leading to
anxiety and depression. We swap cities, careers,
communities, hoping the next one will finally
be in. The heart aches for permanence. We do
this relationally. Love immediately wants it
to be permanent, doesn't it? Like when you start
to fall in love, you want to love forever. In
fact, we do this with friendships. It's a BFF.
It's best friends forever. In fact, we even do
this with homes. It's like, that's a starter
home, but that's not my forever home. Why? Because
the heart, we have this aching in a fleeting
world that passes by where the sands are shifting
underneath us and we feel uncertain, unstable.
We long for permanence. And Genesis 2 .8 says,
He had formed. See, God created a place of perfection
for humanity to flourish with him forever. This
was the intended space for flourishing for humanity
for all time in the presence of God in perfection.
We're made, by the way, for a home that lasts.
We're made for a home that lasts. Eden was more
than a location. It was a reality where everything
was right. No loneliness, no shame, no striving.
Life with God, full and flourishing. We were
created to walk with God in the cool of the day,
to work, to cultivate the earth without toil,
to live in deep, unbroken relationships. It was
home of the truest sense. You're listening to
Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. And before
we return you to today's message, are you tired
of feeling anxious about what's happening in
our world or your circumstances? Well, stick
around at the end of the program to learn about
a powerful resource we have that will encourage
your soul and help you experience real lasting
peace. You won't want to miss it. But for now,
here's Ryan to continue his talk. I like how
Ronald Raulheiser in Sacred Fire says it. We
all want at the end of the day is home, ease,
rest, someone to be comfortable with, some place
to be comfortable in, a home, eternal rest. Deeper
than our wanderlust and desire for adventure
is the desire to find our way back home. Ultimately,
we want adventure only so that we can savor it
and tell it around the fireplace. The older I
get, the stronger my ache for permanence grows.
Because the more I see how fleeting life is,
how fast things go. This last weekend, my family
and I, we got to go to the snow. We hadn't been
to the snow in three years. We picked the one
weekend there was a blizzard. fantastic and scary
all at the same time. We get up there Thursday,
Friday, like four feet of snow had dumped. We're
trying to snowboard. I've never been out there
like this before, by the way. I mean, you couldn't
see at times, you know, 40, 50 feet in front
of you. You're on the ski lift. The wind is whipping
your face. The snow's hitting you. It's frigid
cold. That night, my brother and I are sitting
on a couch. And you know one of my favorite features
about the phone, at least the iPhone, I don't
know about you Android people, is I get these
memories that pop up on my photos. No lie, I've
been in a coffee shop with a memory pop up and
I just start bawling. I'm just like, oh my gosh,
look at my kids. And so I'm sitting with my brother
and a memory pops up and it was a family photo
with our entire, my side of the Ingram family.
And I just look at, it was 13 years ago on that
day, we were taking this photo and seeing 13
years ago, the ages of all of our kids and our
families. And I pass it over to my brother and
he's like, no way. And we're like on the verge
of bawling. And then he's showing everybody else,
but it just reminds us that life's fleeting.
Even the very best moments of our lives, those
moments that you try to capture to feel like,
oh, that might've been it, that was home. It's
only a picture now. It's a memory. It's a thing
you revisit in your mind and the emotions come
back, but you can't quite hold onto it, can you?
Because the heart aches for permanence. And then
Jesus reminds us, of something so powerful and
profound. And it's some of his final words to
his disciples before he's to go to the cross.
He says, let not your heart be troubled. And
then he gives them this beautiful promise. My
father's house has many rooms. You want to talk
about home? Let's talk about my dad's home. My
father's house has many rooms. If that were not
so, I would not have told you that I'm going
there to prepare a place for you. Like, I want
you to know that on this planet where you're
traveling, there's a reason it doesn't feel fully
like home. Like, you get glimpses of it, but
it's not home. But I'm actually going to prepare
a home for you that is full and final and secure
and eternal. And if I go, and prepare a place
for you, I will come back and take you to be
with me that you also may be where I am. Our
hearts ache for permanence. And part of that
ache points us to the reality is we are created
and designed for a home that lasts. We are actually
created for Eden. We are created for the garden.
And we live in the disrupted in between. And
Jesus said, I came to restore that. And I want
to bring you back home forever. And then there's
the ache that our heart aches for presence. We
ache for presence. Experts say that we live in
what's called a loneliness epidemic. of adults
in America report to experiencing acute loneliness.
Half of our population. The Surgeon General says
that this is actually a health crisis and the
impact on our health of loneliness has a similar
impact as if you're smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
The heart aches for... And we live in a day and
age where we're constantly connected and we have
the illusion of relationship, and yet we live
in isolation, in loneliness. Genesis 2 .7 says,
The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, and the man became a living being. Our
deepest desire is to be fully known and fully
loved. Our greatest fear is to be fully known
and rejected. And so we hide, we curate, we cover
up what is deemed unlovely so that it will be
accepted in some form, but we're never fully
known. And then God breathed. The Hebrew word
carries intimacy. There's no distant decree,
cosmic snap of a finger. This was touch, intentionality,
nearness. God formed humanity like an artist
shaping clay with bare hands, tender and present.
And then did you notice like all that talk about
rivers? What is that about? See, what this biblical
text is describing is the way the royal palace
would design the garden. They would always design
it around a spring welling up that would pour
out and water the garden and the grounds. So
the Garden of Eden wasn't just a place for humanity.
It was the king's residence. It was God's residence
and presence. It's like you were designed and
hardwired to live and be at home in the residence
of the king and his presence. We were made to
be with God. And with each other. You're hardwired.
Our hearts desperately long for the withness.
You know, friends are rare these days. Not because
they've diminished importance, but because we've
increased in speed. We fill our lives with noise,
screen, and schedules. But what we crave is real
embodied presence. And the entire arc of the
Bible is all about restoring the presence we
lost in Eden. Like we were created to walk with
God in the cool of the day, the withness. And
so the entire arc of the Bible moves us that
direction of intimacy and presence lost and God
working his way. to be the with us God. I mean,
we sing the songs about Emmanuel at Christmas
time. Guess what? That's true not just then,
it's true all year long. Like there would be
one who comes that is God with us, that has been
God's heart and longing from the beginning. And
Jesus steps into history, fully God, fully man,
with us. This is Living on the Edge with Chip
Ingram. You've been listening to the first part
of our guest teacher, Ryan Ingram's message,
The Longing for Home. Chip will join us here
in studio with some additional thoughts about
today's program in just a minute. For more information
about our ministry or our many resources, go
to livingontheedge .org or call us at 888 - Again,
that's 888 -333 -6003 or livingontheedge .org.
Well, our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, is in studio
with me now. And Chip, in a world often defined
by turmoil, anxiety, that restlessness Ryan talked
about today, where can we find genuine peace?
Well, Dave, the world teaches that peace is your
circumstances working out. being financially
secure or having conflict -free relationships.
But the fact of the matter is, is there's chaos
everywhere. It's in relationships, it's in finances,
it's in racial issues. Jesus, before he left,
told his disciples that he was going to give
them a gift. He said, my peace, my shalom, I
give to you. And this is a peace that's more
than an emotion or a feeling. This is a peace
for purpose, for wholeness. for calmness. It's
the peace of God in the midst of everything.
And because this is an important issue, I wrote
a book where I walk people through the journey
of when they become a Christian and the Holy
Spirit lives within them, how they can experience
God's peace. How do you have peace in a financial
crisis? How do you have peace when there is conflict
in relationships? How do you have peace when
crises and wars and economic issues that you
can't control? It's possible. In fact, Jesus
promised it. But my experience is a lot of people
don't know how to access the shalom of God that
Jesus promised. This book is my very best effort
to help regular, ordinary people in the midst
of the chaos and the conflict of life to really
experience peace. Thanks, Chip. Well, to learn
more about this insightful resource, I Choose
Peace, visit livingontheedge .org or call us
at 888 -333 -6003. Learn how to quiet the worries
of your heart and the anxieties of this world
and experience genuine peace that only Jesus
offers. Again, go to livingontheedge .org or
call 888 -333 -6003 for complete details about
this book, I Choose Peace. App listeners tap
special offers. Well, Chip, today your son Ryan
talked about the longing our souls have for our
eternal home. What thoughts did this teaching
stir in you, and what reflections would you want
to share with our listeners? Dave, I have to
tell you, two things came to my mind that struck
me very, very deeply. Takeaway number one was
we are longing for what God gave us originally,
right? There was a place. And we long for an
actual place, a place where things are right,
a place where God is present, a place where we
relate to other people without posing and manipulation.
And no matter how hard I try, no matter how much
I can create an environment or I even receive
blessing that's close to that, it always falls
short. We belong in a place where everything's
right. And so we try to get that here. And I
think much of our satisfaction is we forget you're
never going to get it here. And all I want to
say is this message helped me remember I can
be content with what I have in a home that will
never deliver, but I have hope. I have hope that
there is a place. Second, how desperately we
are in need of an accurate view of heaven. Jesus'
hope to the disciples was, I'm going to prepare
a place for you. Not just that I'm going to be
there. I'm preparing a place. And it's not floating
around or just an eternal worship service. There's
a real heaven with a real place where there's
a real ground and a real earth and a real sky
and real relationships and music and culture
and life and work and the presence of God and
a place where we really belong. and that's our
hope. Application, if you demand that this place
on earth delivers all that only heaven can deliver,
you will be discontent for the rest of your life.
Can I encourage you today? Thank God for all
the things and all the people that you do have,
and stop wishing for all the things you don't
have. The longing will never be satisfied. Your
thirst for that place will never be quenched
until it's in the right place with the Lord Jesus
in a place called heaven. And he wants it for
everyone. That's absolutely right, Chip. Thanks.
And since he and Ryan have been talking about
our eternal home, if you've been searching for
solid biblical answers about heaven, let me encourage
you to check out our resources for The Real Heaven.
Whether you get Chip's popular book or the small
group study, you'll walk away with a more accurate
and exciting view of the place God's preparing
for us. For complete details for either of these
resources, visit livingontheedge .org and search
for The Real Heaven. We'll listen in next time
as Ryan Ingram wraps up his message, The Longing
for Home. Until then, this is Dave Drewy saying
thanks for joining us for this edition of Living
on the Edge.