Balancing Life's Demands - Warning: Personal Discipline Can be Hazardous to Your Health, Part 2

Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram Daily Podcast

Living on the Edge

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You’re doing all the right things - reading your Bible, going to church, being generous with your finances - but you feel spiritually dead inside. What’s wrong? Chip shares how to break the spiritual activity trap and begin experiencing the peace and power you’re longing for.

To what degree have you taken specific steps in the following areas? (1=none; 2=little; 3=started & doing okay; 4=making good progress; 5=vigorously pursuing)

Objectives: Moving from vague ideas to specific decisions about the kind of person I want to become and what I want to accomplish.
Priorities: Ordering my life in such a way that the important and eternal are not forfeited by the "pressing" and the "urgent."
Schedule: Determining specifically how and when I will place the important and eternal in my daily life.
Discipline: Doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done.
Accountability: Enlisting the support of those who love me to help me keep my commitments to God.

Jesus' Warning #1: In our pursuit of "seeking first" His righteousness there is the danger of DISTORTION.

Application of Matthew 5:20 to...

Murder –5:21-26
Adultery –5:27-30
Divorce –5:31-32
Oaths –5:33-37
Retribution –5:38-41
Enemies –5:43-48

Jesus' Warning #2: In our pursuit of "seeking first" His righteousness there is also the danger of DECEPTION. -Matthew 6:1-18

Giving: Key Issue = MOTIVE -Matthew 6:1-4
Prayer: Key Issue = DISCERNMENT -Matthew 6:5-8
Fasting: Key Issue = PERSPECTIVE -Matthew 6:16-18

Application: SECRECY is God's method of keeping our motives pure.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you ever feel stuck in your spiritual life?
0:04.0	I mean, you're trying hard, and you are doing all the right things, but it's like, where's God?
0:10.0	Where's the power?
0:11.0	Where's the presence?
0:12.0	Where's the love?
0:13.0	And you just can't figure out what's wrong?
0:16.0	I've been there, and today, I want to share some things I've learned to help you get unstuck.
0:26.3	Thank you for being with us for this edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.
0:31.6	Chip serves as our Bible teacher for this global teaching and discipleship ministry,
0:36.0	helping Christians develop an authentic faith.
0:39.1	Well, in just a minute, we'll pick up where Chip left off in our series, balancing life's
0:43.1	demands. Last time he explained how hypocrisy can derail our honest pursuit of a moral,
0:48.6	God-honoring life. Today, Chip will unpack the second threat Jesus highlighted for us in Matthew Chapter 5.
0:55.6	So go there now as we join Chip with part two of his talk, warning.
0:59.6	Personal discipline can be hazardous to your health.
1:03.6	He said, you have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemies.
1:08.5	But I tell you, love your enemies.
1:12.3	And then listen to this,
1:17.8	pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven. And the idea of sons, especially in Hebrew culture, it has family likeness, is the idea. You'll be like your
1:23.7	father in heaven. He causes the son to rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the
1:28.1	righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, duh, you know, what reward is that?
1:35.4	I mean, don't tax collectors and sinners do that? And so he makes this point. He says, I want you
	...

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