Do you wish you could put the brakes on the speed
of life? I mean, between work and family, ministry,
financial pressures, carpools. Is it any wonder
that our lives and relationships are living on
the ragged edge? If you long to start loving
more by doing less, then stay with us. You won't
want to miss it. Welcome to this weekend edition
of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission
of this daily program is to intentionally disciple
Christians through the insightful Bible teaching
of Chip Ingram. And are you ready to embrace
that radical idea Chip just posed? You want to
shift your life from busyness to loving people
more? Well, this past week, Chip kicked off his
insightful series, Spiritual Simplicity. Over
the next handful of days, he'll continue identifying
practical steps from 1 Corinthians chapter 13
to help us slow our lives down and refocus on
what truly matters. Today, we're revisiting this
first program in this study. And because we all
wrestle with this delicate balance, let me encourage
you to ask a few friends to join you for the
remainder of this series. Now, you can listen
through the Chip Ingram app or wherever you listen
to podcasts. If you have a Bible, go now to 1
Corinthians chapter 13 and settle in for Chip's
talk, All You Need Is Love. I've observed something.
I've observed there's a dance that is done. It's
done all over the country. In fact, many places
around the world. And I call it the Silicon Valley
Shuffle. The music is very, very fast. The rhythm
is very, very upbeat. And the people, I mean...
They dance with intensity and passion and often
to the point of fatigue. There's four words that
describe the Silicon Valley shuffle as I watch
it at times in my own life and in the lives of
lots of friends. It's bigger, better, faster,
and more. And so we live at a pace where if you
don't want to work till seven or eight o 'clock
at night, go work someplace else. And then pretty
soon you think about, well, you got to do that
with your kids. See, the Silicon Valley shuffle
is about pressure and about demand and about
making it happen. And it's very unconscious.
And the music is always playing 24 -7. Wherever
you're living, there's this pressure. It's got
to be better. It's got to be bigger. It's got
to be faster. And then if it gets better and
bigger and faster, then you look at what you've
got, and then it's got to be more. And the music
just speeds up. And it produces something. It
produces this desire to be all and to do all
and to have it all. We don't say it, but our
lives reflect it. You know, I've got to be it
all. I've got to do it all. I've got to have
it all. And you'll notice on your notes, I put
three things that over time this will produce.
It's created a very, very complex world that
moves too fast, that delivers too little, and
demands too much. So the question I want to ask
and answer with you is, is it possible to break
free of the high speed, high pressure, high demand,
guilt -producing dis -ease of our complex lives?
I took the word disease because it means something's
wrong. And I put the hyphen in it because there's
sort of a dis -ease. There's a lack of ease.
There's a lack of sense of pace. There's a lack
of peace. And when you have a physical disease,
what do you do? You go to the doctor, right?
I mean, you know, your temperature goes up, you
feel terrible. And usually if you're doing the
shuffle, you say, well, you know, I'll just get
through this. I'll keep going to work. But eventually
you go to the doctor. When you go to the doctor,
You want a doctor who does something very, very
important to make a proper diagnosis before they
give you a prescription, correct? I mean, if
you went and say, I don't feel very good, he
goes, hey, I got some pills on the shelf, take
these. Well, wait, wait, doc, doc, hold on. Or
you know what? I'm really struggling with, and
you tell him one thing, he gets good. Tomorrow
morning, 6 a .m., surgery. You're going, whoa.
See, the key to the right prescription is a proper
diagnosis. You want them to really figure out
what's wrong before they start pumping drugs
in you or cutting you open. And the same is true
spiritually. So I want to take you this morning
to just a little stop to the simplify your life
doctor. And in order to do a little diagnosis,
I'm going to ask like a doctor does, right? When
you walk in, he goes, well, how long you been
having this? Is there any of this in your family?
Tell me about your diet. Tell me about your exercise.
Do you have any stress in your life? And then
you laugh. But they ask a lot of questions. That's
how they do a diagnosis. And so the question
I want to ask you is what do you want to be known
for? That's the first question because there's
something behind the bigger, better, faster,
more, bigger, better, faster, more. There's something
in you and something in me that creates this
momentum and this drive and this pressure and
this demand. And part of it is going to be rooted
in what do you really want to be known for? And
we heard, I want to be known as a kind and loving
person. I want to be known as a person who's
fair. Other people would say, I want to be known
to be a great mom or a great dad, or I want to
be known as an excellent student. I want to be
known as, one person said, a person who solves
some problem is very knowledgeable. I want to
be known as someone who's very wise. I want to
be known as someone who's, and if you had to
write down, I want to be known for, what would
you write on your notes? What would you write?
Now, the problem with this question that was
kind of interesting is we all have two lists
of what we want to be known for. There's the
list that when someone like me asks you this,
I mean, no one is writing, I want to be known
as an ax murderer, okay? I'm thinking we're okay
on that one, right? But I'm figuring there's
not a lot of you who say, I want to be known
for being a driven, overextended, hurried parent
who doesn't connect with my kids. No, that's
not a good one. I want to be known for a very
successful business person who has been through
two or three marriages. No, no, no, no. I want
to be known for someone who's way too busy to
have any meaningful deep friendships. See, what
I'm going to say with my lips and what I intellectually
want to be known for is one list. And then your
schedule and my schedule And your words and where
your time and energy and money goes is a separate
list. And the bad part about life is like when
we go to the doctor, when they ask, how are you
eating? We tell them stuff like, I think pretty
good. You know, I mean, fairly healthy. You know,
I roll out of bed, coffee, no breakfast, get
a Danish, have a candy bar at noon and eat a
decent supper. I mean, isn't that good? Not that
I do that. I'm just, that was hypothetical. Do
you see the difference? Well, let me ask one
more question. If you could get it down to one
word, just one word, what would you want to be
known for? And I realize that's super hard, but
if there was one word that could describe you,
one word where if you're a parent, your kids
would say, this describes my dad or my mom. Or
if you're married, your spouse would say, this
is the one word that epitomizes when I think
of my mate, it's this. Or one word that really
epitomizes what my closest friends think of me.
What would it be? Got it? I'm going to suggest
that there might be a lot of good solutions,
but there is one word that No matter what word
you came up with, if it's not this word, that
your word is a distant second. And not there's
anything wrong with wanting to be a good mom
or a good dad or a hard worker, a successful
business person, or to start your own company
or to be a great athlete or a great artist. I
mean, those desires are fine, but you can do,
you could fulfill all those desires. But if you
didn't fulfill this one word, according to God,
all of those are not like a close second. They're
like such a distant, distant, distant second.
If this one word does not describe my life and
your life, we will find ourselves missing what
matters most. And I'm convinced the only way
to simplify your life is to get clear on what
really matters. The Apostle Paul would write
one very overarching principle. And he's going
to tell us that anything minus love is nothing.
Anything. Any success, anything powerful. And
then he's going to tell us, put another way,
that everything minus love is nothing. And you
might say, well, Chip, where did you get that?
The Apostle Paul is writing to a church. I mean,
they're high capacity. They're very gifted. They're
situated in a part of the world that where they,
I mean, they have just great influence. It's
the Corinthian church, but I mean, they have
a lot of shuffle problems. They have dysfunctional
relationships. The things that matter most aren't
going very well. And so there apparently was
maybe a tattletale, a good tattletale who sort
of said to Paul, you know, that church, they're
not doing very well. Here's all the issues. And
like the first four or five chapters, he talks
about, you know, they're suing one another and
there's divisions. And it's, you know, all the
things about living the way Jesus said, they're
just not doing very well. That's not what you
taught. And then later, Paul gets a letter. And
they have a number of questions. They have questions
about marriage and questions about singleness
and questions about divorce and questions about
lawsuits and questions about the Lord's Supper
and questions about all kinds of things, the
gifts of the Spirit and spiritual maturity. And
so Paul is writing this letter to address all
these specific issues. You're listening to Living
on the Edge. We'll get you back to our series,
Spiritual Simplicity, in just a minute. But first,
if this teaching has ministered to you, consider
becoming a monthly partner. Your regular financial
support goes a long way to help us encourage
pastors, create resources, and share Jesus with
today's youth. Visit livingontheedge .org today
to learn how to support us. Well, with that,
here again is Chip. And one of the issues, he
opens it up in chapter 12, verse 1. He says,
Now, most of your Bibles, you can actually open
up because we're going to go to chapter 13 in
just a second. But if you open your Bibles to
chapter 12, it'll give you some context here.
He says, now, concerning spirituals, literally,
it's spirituals. Now, most of your Bibles will
say spiritual gifts because when it's not completely
clear, it'll be in italics, and then 12 is about
gifts and 14 is about gifts. But if you study
all three of those chapters very carefully, what
you understand is... The major overarching issue
of chapter 12, 13, and 14 isn't gifts, it's spiritual
maturity, or what's it mean to be spiritual?
Because the Corinthians believed that what made
you spiritual was they were really into the gift
of tongues, speaking a language that they hadn't
learned, and they felt like really spiritual
people had this gift. Paul will argue in chapter
12, that may be a very important gift, but the
most spiritual gift is prophecy because it benefits
other people and it reveals God's truth. And
look at chapter 12, look at the very end, look
at verse 31. He says, now he makes this, talked
about all the gifts and their role in spiritual
maturity. And then he says, now let me show you
a more excellent way. And then he opens it up
and he says, if I speak with the tongues of men
and of angels but have not love, I'm a resounding
gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift
of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and
all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move
mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give all my possessions to the poor and
surrender my body to the flames but have not
love, I gain nothing. Could you go in your notes
and just underline but have not love, but have
not love, but have not love. Three times, right?
But have not love. And did you notice the progression?
It goes from not very good to bad, then to worse.
And so he takes that gift that they esteem, and
he says, this ability to speak in another language
that you haven't learned, if you could even speak
it in angels' languages, but if you don't do
it with love, I mean, you guys really think this
is the biggie? If you don't do it with love,
you just become like a gong and a clanging cymbal.
And he's referring to their background. In their
background, in pagan worship, they believe that
you had to wake up the gods. And the way they
would wake up the gods as they would start their
pagan festivals is they got bong, bong, ching,
ching, ching, bong, bong. And they would make
all this noise that didn't have any music or
any sense to it to get their god to wake up.
And so Paul's giving a little dig to them because
there's not love in this group. They've got a
lot of gifts. They treat each other badly. They
gossip about each other. There's division. There's
disunity. And they've got all kinds of dysfunctions
in this church. And he's saying, you want to
really be spiritual. He said, if you had this
greatest, greatest gift ever that you think is
so hot without love, you just basically come
like the beginning of your old pagan worship
services. And so actually it produces nothing.
Then notice he goes on to say, if I have, so
he moves from a performing something that you
do to something that you possess. And then he
goes back to his spiritual perspective of if
prophecy is the highest one. And he goes, even
if you have that and you knew mysteries, you
had all this knowledge and you had this faith
that you could trust God that I mean, supernatural
things would occur. If you do that without love,
not only does it not produce anything, you become
nothing. Think of that. Just, I mean, that's
your essence. And then finally says, if you exercise,
I'm sure he's thinking here of the gift of giving
that he explains to him later. If you are so
sacrificial in your giving. That I mean, it's
lavish. I mean, 10%, I mean, you blew by that.
20%, you blew by that. 50, 60, 70 % of your income.
You're lavish. In fact, you decide at one point
in time, you would actually lay down your life.
Allow your body to be burned, be martyred. Sacrificially,
you are providing. But he says, if you didn't
do it out of love, profits you nothing. I want
to summarize love supremacy. And what I've done
here, I've taken a little bit of liberty because
in the context, Paul is speaking to them about
the focus they need to have. They lived in a
complex world. They were a very gifted church.
They had a lot going for them. And so I wanted
to apply this passage to us. And so performing
in your world with the greatest gifts and abilities
without love, jot down. produces nothing. Performing.
Some of us are good at performing because we
have learned that when you perform, you get strokes
and affirmation and strokes and affirmation.
Although it's not like real love from in -depth
relationships, it feels pretty good and it's
a cheap substitute. Second, possessing the best,
the finest, the most amazing things you can imagine
without love, you become nothing. Now in the
context here, he was talking about possessing
these amazing gifts and what you possess in terms
of position and privilege and what you possess
in terms of the esteem of other people and what
you possess in terms of reputation and how old
are you and how quickly are you moving up and
what you possess in terms of your little kids
and can they hit the ball or run faster or farther
than other little kids. And what you want to
be known for, these get into the things that
drive you. This is why so many people are living
in SUVs and eating fast food five nights a week
from minivan to minivan, from practice to practice.
This is why people don't eat dinner together
and don't have time to eat dinner together and
why couples see each other briefly in the morning,
see one another with blurry eyes and reconnect
not very well at 10 o 'clock that night. And
keep thinking, okay, there's more to do. There's
more to get done. The to -do list is longer.
I just got to keep it going. And then the lie,
but when this season is over, it's always just
a season. But it seems like the seasons stack
up on one another. And third, sacrificially providing
for those you love, the neediest, the greatest
cause on earth without love profits you nothing.
I mean, a lot of us with our motives and our
heart, it's not like we're trying to live insane
paced lives. I can't tell you how many people
I've talked to said, I've tried to slow down.
I've tried and I just keep getting pulled back
into the rushing river of movement, demand. Now
listen very carefully. Every time you buy into
a lie and the biggest ones are so subtle, they're
coated with such significant amounts of truth.
That you feel like you're between the rock and
the hard place and you can never get out. Here's
what I wrote. Many of us live very hurried, overextended,
complex lives with shallow superficial relationships
even with our closest friends and families because
we have unconsciously learned to believe. Performing
well, possessing much, and providing stuff. is
what life is all about. This is Living on the
Edge with Chip Ingram, and you've been listening
to part one of Chip's message, All You Need Is
Love, from our series, Spiritual Simplicity.
Chip will be back shortly to share some helpful
application for us to think about. Have you ever
felt like there's never enough time in the day
for yourself, the people you love, even God?
If you can relate, don't miss this series. Chip's
going to challenge the unrealistic standards
and expectations we all feel pressured by. Join
us as we learn how to break free from this demanding
cycle and discover the simpler, more fulfilling
life God has in store for us. I hope you'll be
with us for every part of this study. Chip's
with me in studio now. Chip, since you're teaching
from a pretty familiar passage in 1 Corinthians,
highlight what you're wanting our listeners to
walk away with. Why are these truths so necessary
for all of us right now? Well, that's a really
great question, Dave. And it is a classic passage,
right? 1 Corinthians chapter 13 are often called,
you know, the love passage. Even people that...
Don't think anything about religion or God or
the Bible. Have read, you know, love is patient,
love is kind, and is not envious. This kind of
poem, if you will, by the Apostle Paul as he
was directed by the Holy Spirit. And it happens
to be sandwiched in between two passages about
how different we are and how we have different
gifts and how we really need to take all of our
differences and how they fit together. And the
Apostle Paul says there's a more perfect way.
There's a way for the church to get along. There's
a way for people to get along. There's a way
to, instead of comparing with one another and
being against one another and seeing all the
things where we're different, this is a passage
that is sandwiched in between those differences
that says the more perfect way is loving one
another. And contrary to kind of popular culture,
Dave, where love is basically a feeling and you
hear love is love, well, love has some boundaries.
It has some clarity. There's some objectivity
to what it means to love a person. And this passage
is very unique in that it's the way God is toward
us. If love is patient, that means that God is
patient. God is understanding. And in a world
that is so polarized right now, in families,
in politics, in racial conflict, in, you know,
all the things that we face coming out of those
years of pandemic. What's it look like to really
love? Because love covers a multitude of sins,
and love never fails. Thanks, Chip. Well, I hope
you'll join us for every part of this series.
And to help you get the absolute most out of
Chip's teaching, let me encourage you to get
his message notes. They include his outline,
the verses he references, and some key fill -ins
to help you remember what you hear. Download
them under the Broadcasts tab at livingontheedge
.org. App listeners, tap Fill in Notes. Well,
now here's Chip with a few final thoughts from
what we heard today. Thanks so much, Dave. You
know, I want to repeat the very last line of
today's message because it really struck me,
and I'm guessing it struck you. Many of us live
very hurried, overextended, complex lives with
shallow, superficial relationships, even with
our closest friends and families, because we
have unconsciously learned to believe performing
well, possessing much, and providing stuff is
what life is all about. And I know intellectually
as a follower of Jesus, you don't believe that.
But the fact of the matter is our behavior, our
rush, our hurry. Because I live out here in the
Silicon Valley. I call it the Silicon Valley
shuffle. How many of us, hey, let's get together.
And, you know, yeah, someday, sometime. And then
this badge almost of honor. Well, I'm really
busy. And when things slow down, and you know
what? We'll always be busy. Things never slow
down. As we begin this journey about learning
to do less and to love more, I'm going to ask
you to really pause today, to pause and say,
why am I in such a hurry? Where am I going so
quickly? And why are tasks dominating my life?
And who's the person in the cubicle next to me?
Or how will I greet my roommate when I get home?
Or my wife or my husband? Is it just hurrying
the kids off to get them here and to get them
there? Have you looked into their eyes? Have
you wondered what's really going on inside? Do
you have some margin where you can turn off the
TV and everyone kind of shut off their screens
and sit around a table and eat a meal and just
say, what was your day like? How are you really
doing? And pause before those kids go to bed
and take your time. sit down on the bed, and
if they're little, you can still tell them a
story, and if they're older, you can just probe
into their heart. Margin, unhurried lives develop
deep relationships, and deep relationships is
what fills our heart and gives us meaning. Could
I encourage you? Let's live more simply. Great
challenge, Chip. Let me take a second before
we go and thank the generous people who support
this ministry every month. Your faithful gifts
help us inspire Christians to live like Christians.
If you haven't partnered with us, would you prayerfully
consider joining the Living on the Edge team?
Now you can set up a monthly donation at livingontheedge
.org or by calling us at You've been listening
to a selected program that we wanted to share
from this past week. To hear more from Chip's
series, Spiritual Simplicity, go to livingontheedge
.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. Until
next time, I'm Dave Drewy saying thanks for listening
to this weekend edition of Living on the Edge.