How many of you here this morning consider yourselves to be unbalanced? No, I don’t mean mentally unbalanced. I’m talking about feeling that your life is out of balance, that you’re spending too much time, and money, and energy on some things, and not enough on other things. I’m talking about feeling like you spend your days lurching uncontrollably from one critical need to the next, always reacting to what seems most urgent, instead of what’s most important. I’m talking about trying to allocate your very limited resources of time, and money, and energy amongst a seemingly endless succession of demands, and always coming up short – always feeling exhausted, always feeling broke, always feeling guilty that you aren’t doing more. Ever feel like that?
It’s rare these days to find someone whose feels that their life is in perfect balance, with work, and family, and religion, and daily chores, and personal needs all being equally and adequately cared for. We all want that kind of life – a life that doesn’t have you constantly trying to cram one more activity into an already overloaded day; a life that doesn’t require explaining to the children, again, why you can’t play with them right now; a life with time for family, and time for friends, and time for some kind of spiritual life. But to most people, that kind of life almost seems like something out of a 1950’s TV show [Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver]. Because the life we’re familiar with is one in which every aspect of our existence demands more of us than we have to give. I sometimes feel as if I could easily be a full-time husband and father, or a full-time pastor and teacher, or a full-time software engineer. Any of those could occupy all my waking hours. In addition, I could probably have another full-time occupation just doing home maintenance, and making home improvements [raking the lawn alone would take up most of October]. Add in hobbies, recreation and entertainment, and I would really need about five of me to get everything done. The only problem is that there’s only one of me to go around.
What we all want, simply put, is a life in balance. What we want is to be able to do the things that are really important, without always feeling rushed and overwhelmed. What we want is for every area of our lives to receive its proper amount of time and attention, no more and no less. Is that kind of life possible?
The goal is serving God, not finding balance
First, the goal for a Christian isn’t really “balance”. Balance implies that we examine all of the pieces of our lives – work, family, leisure, etc. – and we allocate our resources of time and money as each one deserves. The problem with this approach is that God gets put in mix as just one priority among many. “There’s my career, and there’s my marriage, and there’s my relationship with my kids, and there’s recreation, and there’s God.” But God will not tolerate being just one of many items on a list. God is not just one of our priorities; He must be our first and only priority.
So the question isn’t how we balance “work” and “family” and “God”. The question for a Christian is how we follow Jesus Christ faithfully in every area of life. He demands absolute obedience, He deserves our total allegiance. At the very beginning, we must understand that the goal is not to organize our lives so as to achieve some abstract state of “balance”. The goal is to bring every area of life into harmony with God’s will. The goal is to follow and obey Him with every area of our lives. If we do that, then the “balance” will take care of itself, because God will never ask us to do more than we are able.
“What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” – Philippians 3:8 (NIV)
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. – Matthew 13:45-46 (NIV)
“After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.” – Luke 5:27-28 (NIV)
“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:33 (NIV)
What these verses tell us is that knowing and serving Jesus Christ is the only thing that matters, the only thing that has real value. It’s worth any price, any sacrifice, any labor. To paraphrase Vince Lombardi, following Christ isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing. So our relationship with Christ isn’t just one among many priorities to be balanced. It’s the center around which everything else revolves.
Another reason that “balance” isn’t the goal is that following Christ sometimes seems very unbalanced. Let me give you an example:
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor." And they rebuked her harshly. "Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. – Mark 14:3-7 (NIV)
What would you do if you had a year’s salary to dispose of? Well, the prudent, “balanced” thing would be to spread it out – 10% as a tithe to the church, 40% to pay bills, 20% to splurge on a vacation, and thirty percent into savings. But this woman spent it all on a gift for Jesus Christ.
We see the same thing in the world. Some things are worth paying a great price. Some things are worth being unbalanced for [Olympic athletes / Bush and Gore]. My point is just this: in the Christian life, the goal is not balance. It is devotion, and obedience, and faithful service to Jesus Christ. He deserves it; he demands it.
Let me pause here for a moment of application. Perhaps you’ve been trying to “balance” your Christian faith with your career, and your marriage, and your hobbies. Perhaps you’ve been trying to balance following Christ with all the other things competing for your time and attention. If so, you’ve probably already found out that it doesn’t work. As long as you are doing that, your life will never be in harmony. Because only as we put Christ first and subject everything else in our lives to Him we will ever experience a truly integrated life, where every piece has its proper place and all the pieces are rightly related to one another and to Christ. Are you putting Him first? Are you putting everything else in your life under Christ’s control? Are you seeking to follow Him, no matter how it may affect the rest of your life? That’s the only way you’ll ever find true “balance,” true harmony, and true peace.
How do we allocate our time and resources to most effectively serve Christ?
Now, having established that principle, we’re still left with the problem. Having established that our decision-making and planning and prioritizing must be done to serve Christ with our lives, and not just to achieve balance, we’re still faced with our original problem, just expressed in a different form. How do we allocate our time and resources to most effectively serve Christ?
1. Examine your obligations. Start with what you have to do. What is necessary? What is essential?
“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’” – Luke 10:38-42 (NIV)
Here we have a situation in which Jesus and his disciples arrive at a private home, where two sisters, Mary and Martha, live. Ladies, what would you do in that situation? You’re at home in the middle of the afternoon, and all of a sudden, here come thirteen unannounced guests walking up to your front door. They’re tired and probably very hungry from walking all day, and you’re expected to provide supper for them, and a place to spend the night. What would you do? Just what Martha did. Write up a shopping list and send someone off to the market! Start kneading dough for bread! Run out to the root cellar for some vegetables! Get out the good china! Send next door to the neighbors for some extra cots to sleep on! And what is Mary doing? Nothing. Just sitting and listening to Jesus talk.
The amazing thing is, Jesus praises Mary and rebukes Martha. How unfair! But Mary understood something that Martha didn’t. All of her rushing around and making preparations may have been good and useful, but it wasn’t necessary. It certainly seemed necessary. All these people had to eat sometime. They had to have a place to sleep. What kind of host would she be if she made no preparations? But they weren’t necessary. And because she was so busy doing all those things, she was missing the one really necessary thing – having personal fellowship with Christ. Knowing Him. Absorbing His teachings.
I share that example for two reasons. First, to show that often the things we think are absolutely essential really aren’t. And second, to show that often what we miss by doing all the seemingly essential things are the really important things. Like setting aside time to have fellowship with Christ – to read the Bible, and pray. Like having fellowship with his followers. Like making it a priority to hear the word of God taught.
If you’re feeling that your life is out of balance, ask yourself, what am I doing because I think it’s necessary, because I think I have no choice? Maybe even make out a list. Then ask yourself, “Why do I think that? Is it really true that this is necessary? If not, is it really something that God wants me to do?” You may come across some things that you are doing out of a false sense of obligation, things that are keeping you from doing what’s really needed.
2. Second, examine your expectations. By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have a large bag we’re carrying around, just packed full of “shoulds” and “oughts”. Everything from, “you should brush your teeth after every meal” to “you should never let a relative’s birthday pass without sending a birthday card”.
* “A family should eat Sunday dinner together every week.”
* “A man should change the oil in his car”
* “A person ought to stay informed on world affairs.”
* “A woman should have her own career”
* “A woman should stay at home”
* “Children should never have to wear hand-me-downs”
* “There should never be dishes in the sink”
* “The lawn must always be mowed”
* “A person should eat three helpings of vegetables a day”
Where do they all come from? Who knows? Your mother, your father, your relatives, your friends, TV commercials, teachers, movies, books. But after twenty or thirty or forty years of absorbing society’s lessons, we’ve all got a whole mess of them. And most of the time, we’re unaware of them, until they get challenged (like when we first get married and found that our new husband or wife saw things differently than we did – remember that?).
Here’s the problem: you can’t do all the oughts and shoulds. You can’t. Oh, you try. But inevitably, you fail. And when that happens, you feel guilty. So you work harder and harder, trying to do all the oughts, whether you even consciously recognize it or not, and your life feels out of balance because you’re being driven around helter-skelter by a constant sense of obligation. It’s the tyranny of the “should”. How to escape? Here’s a key: Shine some light on the “oughts”. When you catch yourself doing something out of a vague sense of obligation, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this? Who told me this is something I ought to be doing? Is that true? Or is it something I can just as easily bypass, because it’s keeping me from something more important?”
Do you know the worst kind of tyranny? It’s the tyranny of unbiblical religious traditions that keep people so tied up trying to follow all the rules that they can’t worship God from the heart.
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed . . . So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with `unclean’ hands?"
He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: "`These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
- Mark 7:1-8 (NIV)
Conclusion
Are you holding on to man’s traditions, man’s rules, man’s expectations – and ignoring God’s commands? Are you rushing around doing what only seems important, instead of what’s really necessary?
Are you holding tenaciously to a set of rules about how to live your life, even religious rules, that have no real validity? Is the continuing effort to keep all those rules keeping you from serving and worshiping God, keeping you from truly following Christ? Then drop them like a hot potato. Pray about them, expose these unspoken ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’, examine them in light of the Scriptures, and if they’re putting your life out of balance, discard them. Then use your newfound time and energy to follow and have fellowship with Christ.
(For an .rtf file of this and other sermons, see www.journeychurchonline.org/messages.htm)
