FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE – A KEY TO OVERCOMING OVERWHELM
PART 1
OVERWHELMED? – FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE WILL HELP
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8; Romans 8:14; Luke 14:26)
I originally posted this in April of 2010 but felt a need to repost it today to help Believers who find themselves overwhelmed because of imbalance in their lives.
Be blessed!
Kim
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Today we live in an extremely demanding age with a myriad of voices constantly calling out after us. They call out after our mental, emotional, physical, social and spiritual resources, after our money, our attention, our time, and sometimes even after our sense of sanity.
They call out through family, friends, church, employers, co-workers, social organizations, neighbors, television, radio, Internet, cell phones, I Pods, Blackberry’s, newspapers, magazines and the list goes on.
They say, “come here”, “go there”, “buy this”, “eat that”, “dress like this”, “you must have that”, “spend time here”, “never go there”, “call me”, “email me”, “text me”, “visit me”, “give this”, “join us”, “read this”, “listen to me”, “feed me”, “change me”, “do this”, “do that”, “do the next…………..and on and on and on
We are seemingly bombarded with endless demands, and we can not be all things to all people, so the question is:
How do we find the right balance in all of this?
From a Kingdom perspective, I believe that a key to finding the right balance is:
Being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing as determined by God.
Jesus’ life was a perfect demonstration of this. He was always in the right place at the right time doing the right thing as determined by God, our Father, not as determined by His disciples, family, friends, emotions, circumstances, or even crises.
For example, in John chapter 11 when Jesus heard that Lazarus was extremely sick, He did not drop everything and rush off to heal him, but instead, remained where He was for two more days before leaving to deal with the issue.
If you read the account, in verse 2, the scripture makes it a point to let us know that the Lazarus who was sick was the brother of Mary who had anointed Jesus with the precious ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, in verse 3 it makes it clear that Jesus loved Lazarus, and in verse 5, it makes it clear that he also loved Mary and Martha.
Nevertheless, in spite of the circumstance and who it involved, Jesus did not allow the relationships or emotions to move Him out of divine position or timing. He got His instructions from God, our Father and simply did as directed.
What do you think you would you have done in this circumstance?
Had Jesus succumbed to the emotion and the pressure of the situation, He would have lost His place of right balance, gotten out of the position and timing of God and aborted the purpose of the event which according to verse 4 of John 11 was, “for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby”.
Have you ever aborted the purpose of a situation because you were not Spirit led?
Jesus’ life was driven by doing His Father’s will. In fact in John 6:38, He says that He came down from heaven “not to do His own will but the will of the one who sent Him”. His life personified right balance because He always sought to obey God our Father at all times no matter the situation, who it involved or the probable consequences.
If we desire to find the right balance in our lives, we need to approach life as Jesus did and have a Spirit driven, not people, emotion, or circumstance driven lifestyle.
In this whole process of finding the right balance, there are two fundamentally important points to take note of:
1) There is no universal state of right balance.
2) Finding the right balance is a very personal God-defined thing.
In other words, what is the right balance for you may not necessarily be the right balance for me and, what is the right balance for me may not necessarily be the right balance for you.
It is important to keep this in mind because it minimizes the temptation to be judgmental about other people’s decisions and it also reminds us that we are each personally responsible for finding the right balance in our own lives and no one else can do it for us.
To be continued………………
Be encouraged!
Kim
Copyright © 2013 by Kim Sweeting, Author of “Unwalled” Blog, All rights reserved.
“Finding The Right Balance – Part 1” Copyright © 2010 by Kim Sweeting, All rights reserved.
Image “Fleeing a Tsunami” by Frankie_8/FreeDigitalPhotos.Net
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