Are you down today? Discouraged? Maybe even really,
really depressed? Something happened to your
life that you just feel like, I can't go on and
I don't know where to go from here? If that's
you, stay with me. God has a word of encouragement
for you 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. Thanks for being with us
as we begin to wind down our series, The Real
God, How He Longs for You to See Him. For these
last couple of programs, Chip dives into the
seventh foundational characteristic of our great
God, His faithfulness. Today, we'll learn how
we can not only know about this attribute, but
genuinely experience it in our everyday lives.
So with that, grab your Bible and notes as we
join Chip for his message, The Faithfulness of
God. If you would come into my home, we have
a foyer. And at the very end, before you go anywhere,
there is a picture that hangs. And as you get
a close -up, we happen to take a good one. It's
about a year old. The pastor's family, everyone
looks nice and happy. You know, each one of my
sons and daughter, they've married well and they're
all walking with God and they're raising these
kids. And you would just kind of think that,
you know, that stereotypical, you know, God must
bless pastors and their lives are kind of pretty
easy and wonderful and things just turn out right.
That's not why it's at the hall. It's not so
much for other people, but every day I have to
walk past it. And this picture for me, is a reminder
of the greatest trophy of God's grace is what
he did in that group of people. My wife and I
neither grew up knowing God. We both came to
Christ as adults. Both of us came from alcoholic
families with fathers that were deeply wounded
from World War II, and it produced some very
unhealthy things. We came to Christ, and by God's
faithfulness, Some people came into our life
and helped us get into the scriptures and gave
us good counseling. And we did life and community.
And little by little, we changed. And we grew.
And then we got married. And we thought, wow,
this is going to be great. I love God. You love
God. First generation. And then after about six
months, we realized that we couldn't communicate.
We didn't know how to resolve conflict. And we
both had boatloads of baggage from alcoholic
families. By God's grace, he brought a professor
and a counselor into our life. And we started
going to marriage counseling, and he began to
heal us. Well, Teresa had been married before
she was a Christian. And when he found out that
she was pregnant, he left with another woman
that he'd been seeing. And I just couldn't figure
out how to love my wife because it was like BBs
off of a tank. The way she saw herself from her
background and being rejected and abandoned.
is that she saw herself so negatively, and I
saw her as beautiful and godly. And then I saw
God's faithfulness where, again, we got some
help, and we dug into some books together, and
I watched God begin to heal her. Well, then these
poor, you know, these were twin boys, you know.
I got to adopt them, great privilege, when they
were five and a half. And so they had this overachieving,
workaholic, over -the -top dad who was way too
hard on them. And my one son was, just because
of his early background, very fearful. I had
to make him learn to ride a bike. The other had
a four -year rebellion that was the biggest heartbreak
of our life. And the one that was afraid of people
is now a physical therapist and has the best
people skills in our family of loving people.
And the one that we thought, will he ever come
back to the Lord, is now writing music that the
world sings. My other son, his senior year, he
had a pornography problem, and it happened, quote,
by accident. It really did, and it was hidden
for a year, and he took some major steps, and
still all the passwords his wife keeps. He's
a pastor now. My daughter was a lot younger.
She's six years younger than my youngest son,
who's six years younger than the older boys,
and she kind of grew up with these sort of You
know, psycho dad who's really intense and a very
loving mom. And so she got a little bit perfectionistic.
And so my one son didn't like school, and then
he lied about it most of the time. And does this
ring true? Anybody else has families like this?
He's a pastor now. And my daughter. somehow got
thinking that she probably needed to do really,
really well. So when my one son got a B, I took
him out to dinner to celebrate. And when my daughter
got a B, I took her out to celebrate for a different
reason. It was like the first one in like nine
years, all A's. I said, you need to lighten up.
In a word, our family and our family picture
are nothing more or nothing less than the faithfulness
of God. This is what God does with people who
have messed up backgrounds, who make big mistakes,
who struggled with sin, who had problems in their
marriage, who really wanted to do it right but
often found they didn't do it right, but had
one passion. In the midst of it all, to say,
Lord, we don't know how life works, but we want
to break the cycle of our backgrounds, and we
want to pursue you with all of our heart, and
we experience forgiveness and healing and restoration,
and often three steps forward and two steps backward,
because God is faithful. The Lord's mercies,
his kindness never ceases. His compassions, his
heart, his tenderness never fails. Great is his
faithfulness. Three observations that you already
know, but because I like to be logical, I wanted
to give them to you. Observation number one is
all of us depend on something or someone to hold
us up inside. We all do. For some, it's your
mate or a relationship, a job. For some, it's
how you look or how much money you make or how
successful your kids are. But we all have something
or someone, can be money, can be fame, that hold
us up inside. then what we know is when that
something or someone is coming through for us,
we have a sense of satisfaction and optimism
and things are going well. When that something
or someone doesn't come through for us, we have
anxiety. We have no peace. We have fear and often
despair. And all I want you to know is that there
is no one And there is nothing that can come
through for you 100 % of the time except the
Lord Jesus Christ. So if you put your hope in
a job or in a mate or in kids or in money or
how you look or whatever it is, I mean, you're
a blink away from that completely changing. And
so your life goes up and down with circumstances
and relationships. And so the key or the secret
to life is to find someone who will come through
for you 100 % of the time in any and every circumstance.
And I just want to tell you, the real God, His
faithfulness is, that's what He'll do. His mercies
are new. His loyal love for you. In the midst
of your hurt, your pain, your weakness, your
sin, your failure, if you would, out of this
study, say, I'm going to pursue. I want to make
knowing God the most important thing. I want
to get close to Christ. I want my life to revolve
around what his word says. I want to be wise
and do life his way. I will tell you, there is
a friend with supernatural power who is fully
God and fully man, who rose from the dead, who'll
never, ever let you down. As you open your notes,
let's define faithfulness so we're all on the
same page. Dictionary says it's steadfast in
affection. I like that. Steadfast in affection.
He's in love with you. Allegiance, loyalty. When
we say God is faithful, we mean he's dependable,
trustworthy, staunch, resolute, constant, reliable,
true to one's word, keeps his promises, always
comes through. And then you ask yourself, well,
how can God be faithful all the time? And it
kind of allows us to do something that's really
important because if you're not careful, you
can think of, okay, we talked about his holiness
and we've talked about his love and we've talked
about his justice, but those things operate all
together in unity, simultaneously in harmony
with one another. God can come through for you
and me. 100 % of the time because he's all powerful.
He never encounters anything that can thwart
his plan or his purpose. He can come through
because he's holy. He's pure. He's full of integrity.
He's unable to lie. He's absolutely unapproachable
light. He always does the right thing. He can
come through because he's eternal. He's not affected
by space or time. He sees the end from the beginning
and the beginning from the end. He can come through
because he's omnipresent. Nothing can ever happen
outside this sphere of his influence. And finally,
he can come through for you because he's immutable.
He never changes. He's consistent. God never
has a bad day. You never go to him and pray and
he goes, you know, maybe later. I'm having a
really rough day. He's love, his justice, his
kindness, his compassion 100 % of the time. A
.W. Tozer writes in his book, The Knowledge of
the Holy, all of God's acts are consistent with
all of his attributes. And then I put in bold
because this is one of those sentences that it's
so profound it hurts my head. No attribute contradicts
any other, but all harmonize and blend into each
other in the infinite abyss of the Godhead. the
infinite abyss, his love, his majesty, his power,
his goodness, his holiness. In the infinite abyss,
this God who spoke and galaxies, billions of
them come into existence and yet says to you
and me, I want to be your friend and I will never,
ever leave you and I'll never let you down. And
anything that I have ever said, any promise I've
ever made, I will guarantee based on my character
and my track record that I'll be with you. It's
absolutely amazing. You're listening to Living
on the Edge. We'll return you to today's message
in just a second. But let me quickly ask you,
do you often find it difficult to read and understand
God's Word? If so, join us after today's program
as Chip talks about our useful resource, Daily
Discipleship with Chip. This tool has helped
tens of thousands of people study the Bible and
develop a deeper connection to God. Stick around
to learn how to sign up. Well, with that, let's
rejoin Chip for the remainder of his message.
So what I want to do in our time is talk a little
bit about intellectually and biblically, well,
how has God revealed that? But I want to spend
the great majority of our time on how that faithfulness
impacts the deepest struggles and challenges
of our life. So let's talk about how has he revealed
his faithfulness first? By creation. Psalm 119,
89, and 90 says, Forever, O Lord, your word is
settled in the heavens. Your faithfulness continues
throughout all generations. You establish the
earth and it stands. My dad was a science teacher
and I had many majors in college and science
was one of them. And I liked the physical sciences
and, you know, you learn about the planets and
you realize this. This planet of ours is going
around the sun. I mean, I think it's like 24
,000, 25 ,000 miles an hour. It's crazy. And
we're spinning around very fast. And yet, year
after year, thousands of years after thousands
of years, we go around the sun within a fraction
of a few seconds exactly the same. Exactly the
same. When our atomic submarines, because of
the magnetic pulls of the earth, want to come
up and they've got those really powerful rockets
inside of them and they can't be off. They have
to surface every 90 days and they put up an antenna
and what do they do? Lock onto the North Star
because the North Star is more accurate. We call
it science because what we have learned is these
things are predictable. They're the same. And
so we say, oh, that's mother nature. That's the
first or second law of thermodynamics. And we
observe all this consistency and God would say,
well, you can observe it, but it's there and
it's consistent. Because I hold it together by
the word of my power. I am the creator and the
sustainer of all life. Second, it's through people.
God shows his faithfulness through. He made promises
to Abraham and the patriarchs. Abraham, he said,
I'm going to make you a great nation. Now, can
you imagine this one little nomad guy running
around in a tent 4 ,000 plus years later? The
nation of Israel, it's endured. Jesus said, I'll
build my church and the gates of hell can't prevent
against it. And so you've got 12 little followers
and one betrays you. And you start this big movement
with 120 people and you're going to change the
world. You'd never travel 40, 50 miles beyond
where you were born. And you're living in a world
where there's 2 billion followers of Christ and
law and culture and all of history is defined
by the God man, the Lord Jesus Christ. I could
tell you of a time when I prayed for one of my
sons in the ICU just before he went into surgery
and God healed him. I could tell you about times
in my marriage when I thought there's no way
this isn't going to work and crying out to God
and the light's coming on. God's faithful to
his people. Third, he's faithful by virtue of
his character. I mean, if you want to know what
the father's like, the son is like, the scripture
is absolutely clear. The Old Testament picture
of God the father, classic verse. Numbers 23,
19, God is not a man that he should lie or the
son of man that he should repent or change his
mind. Has he spoken and will he not do it or
has he said it and will he not bring it to pass?
In other words, God is always consistent and
faithful. If he speaks, if he promises, 100%,
he does it. The spirit, we talk about the fruit
of the spirit in Galatians 5. Love, joy, peace,
patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, self
-control. The character, the Holy Spirit develops
faithfulness because it's the very character,
it's the fruit of God the Spirit. Or Jesus. You
could read the entire New Testament, and you
get to the end, and he came as the Savior, but
the whole book of Revelation, the theme is he's
going to come back and judge righteously. He's
going to make things right. And at the very end
of history, we have the conqueror, the righteous
judge on a white horse, and he has a robe, and
on his robe has two words, and on his thigh,
you ready for the words? Faithful and true. He
could have chosen any words. He wants you to
know, you can depend on me. And finally, I don't
know about you, but I did not grow up ever reading
the Bible. I didn't understand it. But his word
is true. You can depend on the promises in Scripture.
On the last night, Jesus prayed in John 17, Father,
sanctify them or set them apart or make them
holy. These followers now and followers in the
future, make them holy by your truth. Your word
is truth. In Deuteronomy, it says, God, or is
faithful to the covenants that he makes with
us to a thousand generations. In Hebrews it says,
let us not sway or swerve or fall away for he
who promised is faithful to us. And then we have
in Christ's first coming hundreds of very specific
predictions. I mean, 700 years before Christ
was born, he'll be born Bethlehem of a virgin.
This is what will happen. I mean, hundreds of
specific prophecies all for you to say and to
learn. God's faithful to his word. So that's
the intellectual biblical basis for trusting
God's faithfulness. What I want to do now is
talk about when it really matters. I mean, I've
got to have that because I'm not going to throw
my brains in the trash. But the fact of the matter,
the final one I think is most important to digest
and to apply. God shows us his faithfulness in
the way that he shapes our life. The way he intervenes
in our life when we're weak, when we're tempted,
when we sin, and when we utterly, utterly fail.
It's when you feel like you don't deserve it.
When I feel like I could go back to this picture
and I could go through seasons. Where my wife
and I just sat up in bed and cried over one of
our kids and thought this was never going to
work. I've had seasons where I've been so mad
at her and thought this marriage will never work.
And oh, I'm going to hang on to your promise
because I don't have any other option. And God
worked in our life. The Apostle Paul was having
a conversation with God in a moment of weakness.
He had some physical issue that God allowed him
to have. A thorn in his flesh, he called it.
Some people think malaria. Some people think
an eye disease. Personally, I think it was a
bad back. Constant pain. And God speaks to Paul.
After Paul asks, God says no. Paul asks, God
says no. Third time, God says, my grace is sufficient
for you. For power is perfected in weakness.
Most gladly, therefore, I'll rather boast about
my weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell
in me. And then look at this crazy application.
Therefore, I am well content. Literally, the
word is I will delight in. It's a choice. With
weaknesses, plural. With insults, plural. With
distresses, plural. With persecutions and difficulties.
Why? For Christ's sake. For when I'm weak, then
I'm strong. What you need to know, and the reason
I showed you that picture, is this is a testimony
not of a family or of a marriage or of a man.
This is a testimony of struggling people that
didn't know anything. God was faithful in our
weakness. In my weakness, I wanted to bail out
of my marriage. In my weakness, I wanted to knock
one of my kids' heads off because he made me
so crazy. In my weakness, as I struggled with
lust, there wasn't even the internet back then.
Praise God. Praise God. But there were four girls
to every guy. And I struggled and struggled and
struggled. In my weakness, God met me. See, when
we're weak, we tend to run and we want a silver
bullet or we'll find that person or we go eat
or we open the refrigerator and put something
into us that we know is not good for us. In our
weakness, we try and fill the holes. And here's
the deal. God is faithful if in your weakness,
rather than running to shopping or to work or
to prescription drugs or to focusing on your
kids or focusing on your work, defining who you're
going to be. In your weakness, say, God, here's
his promise. I'll sustain you. My power is perfected
in weakness. And your prayers are, I can't do
this. I remember a little rhyme that my wife
learned from some lady. It goes something like,
when you say, I can't do this, God says, I never
said you could. And then he says, but by my strength,
I promise you always can. And God wants to meet
you in your weakness. He wants to shape you.
He wants to change you. Your character gets changed
in weakness. This is Living on the Edge with
Chip Ingram. And you've been listening to part
one of Chip's message, The Faithfulness of God,
from our series, The Real God. Chip will be back
shortly to share some helpful application for
us to think about. You know, we've all unintentionally
projected some of humanity's worst qualities
into our Creator. Many view God as moody, weak,
unfair, impatient, and merciless. But those ideas
couldn't be further from the truth. Through this
series, Chip explores key Bible passages to reveal
seven fundamental characteristics of our Heavenly
Father, attributes that reflect the very essence
of His divine nature. Join Chip on this journey
to reshape your perspective toward God, which
will deepen your relationship with Him like never
before. You won't want to miss a single part
of this study. Well, our Bible teacher, Chip
Ingram, joins me in studio now, and Chip James
1 tells us to consider it pure joy when we endure
trials. For many of us, we believe that in theory,
but it can feel impossible to live it out. We'll
take a minute, if you would, and talk about a
resource we have that's helping Christians put
this difficult lesson into practice. Super excited
to do that, Dave, because it's one of the daily
discipleship series that I think has had the
most impact of anything that we've done. We live
in a world that is more broken and more hostile
and more difficult to live in as a Christian
than ever before. And so the issue is, how do
you endure? Because as we endure, that's how
God changes us. And so let me invite those that
are listening right now to join me for the daily
discipleship series, The Art of Survival, based
on James Chapman. As we walk through this passage,
we'll better understand the Bible's perspective
on adversity and how to actually be victorious
rather than see ourselves as victims. If you're
ready to learn not just how to survive, but to
thrive in a culture that's very, very challenging,
join me for Daily Discipleship, The Art of Survival.
Great word, Chip. Well, to sign up for this study
in James chapter 1, visit livingontheedge .org.
As you walk through this passage with Chip, you'll
learn about the attitude God wants us to embrace,
a resource we can ask for, and an encouraging
theology to believe in. Again, for complete details
about our daily discipleship series, The Art
of Survival, go to livingontheedge .org. App
listeners, tap Discipleship. We'll hear again
as Chip to share some insightful application
as we wrap up. We began today's program by making
three observations about the human species. You
know, regular people like you and me. We said,
number one, that we all depend on something or
someone to hold us up inside. Now think about
that and then ask yourself, what is that for
you? Second, we said that when that something
or someone is coming through for us, we experience
a sense of peace. satisfaction, and optimism
about the future. Third, we said that when that
something or someone fails to come through for
us, we experience a sense of anxiety, dissatisfaction,
and ultimately despair. And I walk through this
rather quickly, but I want you to process it
now in light of what you've just heard. And my
conclusion in the introduction was that it seems,
and I think this is accurate, that the secret
to a life of unending joy and genuine peace is
to find something or someone who will come through
for you 100 % of the time in every situation.
And what we learn today is that's who God is.
Often we think that God is a lot like us, that
he has mood swings and he has good days and bad
days. And we get this feeling that when we're
good, God will be there and come through. And
when we're bad, well, you know, we're on our
own. Did you listen to the teaching today? Did
you hear the definition that God in and of himself,
his innate essence, his character, he's faithful.
He's faithful to his people. He's faithful to
his word. He's loving 100 % of the time. He's
just 100 % of the time. He's holy 100 % of the
time. He's compassionate 100 % of the time. And
God has revealed this faithfulness through creation
and through his people. And I'd like to suggest
that he's also revealed it to you in your life.
And so what I would like you to do is to literally
out loud before God recall in the last week or
two or even the last month, two or three or four
specific things where you can say, God came through
for me. He loves me. He's for me. And then as
you do that, here's what I want you to do this
day, this hour. Then I want you to think of the
most difficult thing you're facing and then say
to the Lord, Lord, if you came through in those
areas because you're faithful, I'm going to choose
to trust you in what seems so hard and so difficult
to face today. He is faithful. He is for you.
He loves you. And he will see you through. Powerful
reminder, Chip. Thanks. As we wrap up this program,
Living on the Edge depends on listeners like
you to help us continue encouraging Christians
to live like Christians. So would you consider
becoming a monthly partner to help others benefit
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donation at livingontheedge .org or by calling
888 -333 -6003. That's 888 -333 -6003 or visit
livingontheedge .org. App listeners tap donate.
And thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads
you to do. We'll listen to next time as Chip
wraps up his series, The Real God. Until then,
this is Dave Drewy saying thanks for joining
us for this edition of Living on the Edge.