Living A Balanced Life

Building Lasting Values

“Living A Balanced Life”

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Today I’d like to jump back into our Discipleship Series on Building Lasting Values as we build up the House of God within us.

This is a value I believe in greatly, especially as it involves our lives in the Lord, and our doctrinal positions. When I was in seminary, a professor was mostly reformed in his theology, and I’m not. When I asked if I could talk with him after class over something he said, he knew what I was going to say and even quoted the Scriptures that disagreed with his theological position.

The rest of our conversation was about taking the full of God’s word, and then what was the balance of what God wanted to say. Having a theological balance is taking the whole of God’s word and see what God is saying and not just those parts that agree with our theological position no matter how many they may be.

And so living a balanced Christian life is an important value, not only in our belief structure, but in how we live out this life.

America is a workaholic’s dream, but the people’s stress levels are over-the-top because of it.

Now, while I’ve told this particular story several times since I’ve been a pastor, when I think about this whole idea of stress, and what happens when the unexpected happens, the story of Chippie the parakeet immediately comes to mind.

Chippie kind of lived up to his name. He was chipper and kind of happy-go-lucky, that is, until the unexpected happened. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage singing, and the next he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over.

It all began when his owner decided to clean Chippie’s cage with a vacuum cleaner hose. They could just stick the nozzle in and suck up all the seeds, feathers, and other stuff in the bottom of the cage.

At that moment the phone rang, and instinctively Chippie’s owner turned to pick it up, but before they could get out “hello,” they heard a “swoooope.” Chippie got sucked in.

They immediately dropped the phone and turned off the vacuum cleaner. They unzipped the bag and found Chippie alive, but stunned and covered in heavy black soot. Quickly they grabbed Chippie and rushed him to the bathtub, where they turned on the facet full blast, and in essence held Chippie under a torrent of ice-cold water. You might say they power washed Chippie.

Feeling bad that Chippie was now stunned, drenched, and shivering they did what any compassionate pet owner would have done. They picked up the hair dryer and blasted Chippie with hot air, causing Chippie to poof out.

Needless to say that Chippie no longer lives up to his name.

This is exactly what stress does. It sucks us in, washes us up, and blows us away. Today, in our series on Building Lasting Values, we’ll be looking at how we live a balanced life in an unbalanced world.

To access our level of stress I have a small quiz. To do this I will give the beginning part of a sentence and you fill in the last word. Here’s an example. I say, “I’m becoming,” and you complete this thought by saying “unglued.” And so let’s begin.

• I’m at the end of my… rope

• My life is falling … apart

• I’m at my wit’s… end

• I’m ready to throw in the… towel

Further, here are some signs of being a workaholic. We know we’re a workaholic when:

• All our Christmas cards come from business associates instead of friends

• When we wear a cell phone to church, and then answer it when it rings.

• We go to our kids back to school night, and don’t know which school they attend

• Our family refers to us as occupant

• And we take business related reading material into the bathroom.

CNN did a pole and discovered that 69% of Americans say they’d like to slow down, but a Harris pole said that Americans are spending 8½ hours less per week at leisure. We’re spending less time relaxing than we use to. Therefore, the American dream has become a stress nightmare.

But God never made us to handle this amount of stress successfully. We weren’t created to live fast-paced frantic lives. Today, therefore, we’ll be looking at a value that is greatly admired, but universally ignored: Balance.

Now, while we all want to live balanced lives, none of us are, at least not completely. And while it is our goal, very few are even close. In fact, the only person who ever lived a balanced life was Jesus Christ.

The principle of balance is one of those laws that God established the universe upon. For instance, the earth is perfectly balanced in its orbit around the sun. If it were tilted a little bit different, or if the earth was a foot closer or further away from the sun, then we would either be burnt to a crisp, or a frozen icicle.