Articles
We Need Balance
There is no question that every one of us is constantly juggling things in our life. Here is a short list of some things we try to balance:
- We try to have a balanced diet.
- We try to balance our work time with play time.
- We try to balance being serious with being light hearted.
- We try to balance helping others with helping ourselves.
- We try to balance our sleep with being awake.
- We try to balance time with kids and our spouse.
- We try to balance spending with saving.
We could add much more to this list, which only goes to show how much we have to deal with each day of our lives. Now, all of this was said to now focus on the things that every Christian must strive to have balance with – spiritually.
Balance between studying and teaching
There is a need for children of God to grow in knowledge (II Pet. 3:18). After all, if we are going to increase our faith, we need to be studying, since our faith comes from the word of God (Rom. 10:17).
We also need to be teaching the word of God to others, whether it is defending the truth (I Pet. 3:15), or exposing error (I Jn. 4:1), or sharing the good news to the lost (Mk. 16:15), or building up our brethren (Heb. 5:12-14). However, since we can’t teach what we don’t know – we need to study, but we can’t study all the time, because we need to teach. May we not get out of balance.
Balance between worship and daily living
This might seem odd, since we gather for worship far less time than we spend walking daily for the Lord. The fact is, we know we need to worship God (Jn. 4:24; Heb. 10:25). We also know that we must walk every day in the light letting our light shine (I Jn. 1:3-7; Matt. 5:13-16). The problem comes when we think that worship doesn’t have to be consistent because we still love the Lord and are walking in the light. Then there are those who never miss an assembly when the doors are open but being godly each day is hit and miss. We all need to make sure that these things don’t get out of balance in our lives.
Balance between praising and rebuking
It is so easy to find ourselves always seeing the bad and not the good. There is no place for Christians to ignore sinful behavior (I Cor. 5:1-11). At the same time, speaking words of praise to compliment and encourage is also needed. That’s what happens when we rejoice with others (Rom. 12:15). We all need building up from time to time (Eph. 4:15-16). It’s very dangerous to get these out of balance. We don’t want to be guilty of making people feel comfortable in their sin, nor do we want to ignore the good that people do.
Balance between funds that you need to live on and that which is for the Lord
Even though Christians are to give back to the Lord as they have prospered and do so cheerfully (II Cor. 16:1-2; II Cor. 9:7), they must not neglect to provide for their own family (I Tim. 5:8). It isn’t right to give so much to the Lord that you now can’t pay your bills. Nor is it right to meet all your own needs and provide some extras for fun and frolic but have nothing to give back to the Lord. It’s easy to fall victim to giving our Lord the scraps so to speak, our leftovers. Make sure this doesn’t get out of balance by setting aside for the Lord first.
There are so many responsibilities we face in the physical and the spiritual realm. This is one of the reasons we need to heed the words of Paul when he told brethren to continually examine themselves whether they are in the Lord (II Cor. 13:5). The truth is, when our life is out of balance, we are drifting away from the Lord.
