church2go

Life is hard to balanceEven in the bible finding the balance was difficult.Look at examples in Scripture –

David, - was the friend of God, the man after God own heart yet he made some pretty big mistakes. Adultery, murder just to name a few.

What about this for a tough job for a mum.  Imagine being Soloman’s mum the wisest kid in the world or even worse imagine being Mary and trying to balance life with the Son of God in your house!! Try not favouring Jesus as a kid. Try not comparing the other kids to Jesus. Imagine this – James mucks up at school and gets into trouble. Mary says “Why cant you be more like Jesus?” James response could be – “Arr mum He’s so good you’d think He was God” And he’d be right.See what I mean – balance is tricky. And that’s just family life.What about financial pressures.Take Annanias and Saphiria. The pressure from church just to put the money in the plate of a Sunday. Or  trying to balance the family budget when your son is the prodigal son and taken his inheritance early.  

What about staying fit? Certainly Paul had no time when he was all things to all people, how do you get to the gym when you are at people’s beck and call all the time? Even strong man Samson had certain pressure on him that stopped him exercising. 

Lets be realistic, life is a balancing act. W all have components in our lives and we need to find a balance so that we can be the best people we can.John 10:10 – states I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.I don’t think Jesus means that your time is filled up. He means that Jesus came to gives us the best life possible, both in the future called eternity and right here and now. But for us to be the best we can we need to find a balance.  

That means working out priorities, that means looking after ourselves, that means getting God’s work done as well as the work we do to make a living and then finding time for relationships and fitting in having some fun. How do you do it? Well, even though I can preach about it, and know the principles – it is as hard for me as for you. For me finding time to spend with Marianne and the boys takes writing it into our schedule, making it a daily habit. But with working, and extra meetings and such, then the occasional meeting, having a child with different needs what I find is that all I want to do is sit down and have a cuppa when I get five minutes and I never seem to get time to stay fit. It’s the same for Marianne, she also has a husband who causes her stress, really she has three boys to worry about and she doesn’t get time to herself. How do we find a balance???? 

I remember going to a course at one stage and they split life into four categories. Social, mental, physical and spiritual.  

Then they explained the balance concept as being a box. Evenly split between each division. It was a good and logical course – but the more I thought about it the more I got worried.  

Think about balancing time. – We all have the same time, 24 hours or 1440 minutes a day. Let’s split that up. 6 hours social, 6 hours mental, 6 hours physical, 6 hours spiritual. OK, some people could spend 6 hours a day socialising. Six hours a day of doing coffee, worries me a bit.6 hours of mental stuff worries me even more, although some of that would be workAs would 6 hours of physical, some would be work for some people.What about 6 hours of spiritual – now that’s a bit tougher.One thing I noticed from all of this was that sleep wasn’t included – that worried me a bit.  

So you see, even splits don’t really help us find the balance we need, after all everything isn’t quite that simple.  

Here is another concept which is a bit easier for me to identify with.  

A see saw.  

If you put all of life on the plank across the top. Say those four things we mentioned, social, mental, physical and spiritual life’s pretty flat.  

But get this, if you put the spiritual underneath, as the foundation and the central point of life – there is something to balance on.  

What it is we have to balance on is our relationship to Jesus Christ. 

What does his life show us of balance? 

Look at Luke 2:52 

52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. 

Each of these components are here.

Wisdom – is the Mental aspects of life.

Stature is the Physical aspects of life    

Favour with Man is Social and            

Favour with God is spiritual.                

Notice what it says – Jesus grew. Hang on, wasn’t He God didn’t he already know.Hey this is a tough one to get a handle on.  

Verse 40 of the same chapter says it again.40 And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. 

Another version states that He increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man. Hows this work? Don’t know. What I do know is He demonstrated a process of continually finding a balance. God demonstrates balance when we look at the trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit all working in perfection.   

Finding the balance for ourselves is vital but it is a process.  

Let me give you some illustration here. ( In the service we set up see saw) 

Say my life is on the see saw.  (In the service father and son, Mark and John had to find a balance on the see saw even tough there is considerable weight and size difference) 

I spend a bit of time studying at the moment, a bit of time socialising and not much physical work. Life is a bit out of whack. Too much study and sitting at the computer not enough running and jumping. While I don’t need to be totally even, I do need some adjustment. So we move things around. But notice the thing that doesn’t move – the Spiritual aspects. If it moves then all of life goes splat. All the rest is balanceable. Moveable if you like and at different stages in life different levels of each are needed. 10 years ago was more physical and less mental. But I still needed to be balanced.  

So where does that leave us? 

1. The whole of life rests on our relationship to God – it is truly the balancing point of life.

2. The rest of life needs adjusting at times. We need to recognise the different stages of life and learn to adjust.

              ECC 3:1 There is a time for everything,             and a season for every activity under heaven: 

3. The adjustment comes from the balance with God. Some people naturally have a different balance because of their gifts and abilities. Some are naturally more physically based. Sporting talent would come into this. Other people are more mentally based, those who are academically orientated exhibit this. Others are more socially orientated, you see my point, there is no one balance for all – we are all different and have different balance points. We need to work that out with God’s help.
4. That’s what this series is about – Finding God’s balance for us.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Sermons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.