Reliance - Balance and Obedience 2024.06.12

[00:00:00] Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life. Bright is crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also, on

[00:00:10] either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer

[00:00:20] will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be

[00:00:28] on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. And he said to

[00:00:40] me, These words are trustworthy and true, and the Lord the God of the spirits of the prophets has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place. And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy

[00:00:56] of this book. I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me. But he

[00:01:06] said to me, You must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God. And he

[00:01:16] said to me, Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoers still do evil and the filthy still be filthy and the righteous still do right and the holy still be holy. Behold, I am coming soon,

[00:01:31] bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life

[00:01:47] and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the

[00:02:02] churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. The spirit and the bride say come, and let the one who hears say come, and let the one who is thirsty come, let the one who desires take the water of life

[00:02:16] without price. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy,

[00:02:29] God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book. He testifies to these things says, surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with y'all.

[00:02:44] Amen. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for your promises. Thank you for your marvelous mercy and your grace and your love towards us. Jesus, we bless your holy name. We worship you. We declare that you are righteous and

[00:03:02] holy and true. We love you Lord and we pray that your will would be accomplished in our hearts and across this entire world, all of your creation. God, we need your guidance. Holy Spirit, lead us. Show us in your word what you would have us to do.

[00:03:21] Give us teaching and correction and demonstrate to us your loving kindness and your patience towards us. Help us Lord. We need you to lift us up. We need you to purify our hearts.

[00:03:38] We need you to organize our thoughts. We need you to direct our paths. We need you for salvation. We need you for provision. We need you for everything. God strengthen us in this time.

[00:03:53] Let our faith grow and grow and grow until it spreads to those around us. God, we lift you up and we declare that all authority has been given to you. We can say with John, amen,

[00:04:11] come Lord Jesus in your wonderful mighty precious name we pray, amen. I always find it helpful to take a step back every now and again to think about the bigger picture, to refocus on what really

[00:04:28] matters and to zoom out a bit, especially having three young kids and so many things to attend to, whether they're well or sick, whether they're happy or sad, there's always something. There is always a variety of different things that need to happen in our day-to-day lives. There's hard

[00:04:48] work to be done. There are difficult decisions to be made. There are emotional challenges to face. There are responsibilities to fulfill and all that can of course be so overwhelming,

[00:05:01] but useful and full of joy if we have the right perspective. If we don't, then it can get worn down and finding that balance is incredibly important. And one of the things I've found in my own life

[00:05:19] is that if I am engaged heavily and directly with work or family exclusively, it's a different kind of approach. It's a different kind of situation than if I'm involved with both at the

[00:05:37] same time. Now, I don't know if this speaks to anyone else here, but I can say it for myself that to me it feels very much like I have two different batteries for those activities,

[00:05:51] and not just one battery that drains all the way. And I think part of this is a function of how much joy and how much meaning and purpose I find in both the work that I do and in the family

[00:06:07] that I have. And the first thing that I should remind myself of is not to take that for granted. That is certainly not the case for a large, large number of people. And so I'm speaking

[00:06:20] specifically about a dynamic that applies in this situation that I am in. And in that situation, what I find is that if I have a full day of work, and yet I'm done with that day of work

[00:06:38] where I still have time set aside to be with my family, I have not depleted the battery that I have for my family, the attention and the devotion and the service that I can give them.

[00:06:52] I just haven't depleted that by doing work. Vice versa, if I am spending a lot of time with my family and serving in that way, that doesn't deplete the energy that I have for work. And to me,

[00:07:08] this very dynamic is an indication that both of those activities are meaningful for me. Now it is true when things get out of balance and all I'm doing is working, then that battery can get

[00:07:24] drained. I get worn down with work a little bit and need to take a break and recharge. And if all I'm doing is with family, then I need to take a break and recharge from that. But one effort,

[00:07:39] whether it's work or family, doesn't impact the other in quite the same way. And so in that sense, when I'm thinking about these different sort of reservoirs of patience and energy

[00:07:55] and focus and cognition that I have, the balance of those things is becoming even more clear to me. And part of this, part of the structure at the root of it, at the foundation of it,

[00:08:12] is that I know that I am following the leading of the Lord and being obedient in my role as a husband, as a father, and as a provider. These are all aspects of the Bible that the Holy Spirit has

[00:08:29] impressed upon me. Not everyone is called to be a husband and a father. Not everyone is called to be a provider in exactly the same sense of running their own business and everything else like that.

[00:08:42] But everyone has to be obedient to the call that God has placed on them. And it is a common thing for a man to be called to be a husband, and a father, and a provider for that family as

[00:08:56] part of that duty. So when I think about this, this comparison between the work side and the family side, and I see in myself this idea that if I'm working throughout the day, when I'm done,

[00:09:13] I still have a full set of my family battery charged up so that I can pitch in with the kids and enjoy their company and everything else like that. Whereas if I spend too much time in one of

[00:09:31] those things, then the little aspects of it that can be minor frustrations, minor annoyances, these ongoing things are just part and parcel to anything that anyone is doing.

[00:09:46] They just have a tendency to build up. It's harder to shrug them off. And so this is why I think that for most people, for the vast majority of people, it is incredibly important to get

[00:10:02] meaning and purpose and value from multiple different areas of your life. And if you are going to do that, you have to understand where meaning and value and purpose come from to begin with.

[00:10:19] An understanding that we are created by God. An understanding that God wants a loving relationship with us. An understanding that Jesus paid the price for our sins so that that relationship could be

[00:10:34] established. The promise that Jesus is indeed coming again to establish a new heavens and a new earth beyond our wildest expectations and our wildest understandings and even our speculations. The promise that we will see God face to face. The promise that we can know God even now.

[00:10:57] The opportunity that we have to go to his word, to seek his face in prayer, to understand and try to take in his promises and to invite the Holy Spirit to write them on our hearts and to

[00:11:11] establish the word inside of us and to strengthen our faith and to give us the strength that we need. If we don't have that grounding, if we don't have that core perspective,

[00:11:24] not just in an intellectualized worldview sense, but in a how does this apply to me today sense? How is this moving my life? How is this informing my decisions? How is this impacting the way I

[00:11:39] treat others? Is this bringing forth the love that only God could give to me because I know it's not part of my own nature? If I see these things, if I understand these dynamics and I know

[00:11:55] why it is I'm doing what I'm doing then that can set me up for having multiple different areas of meaning and purpose and fulfillment. Many times and this is what happens to the most dedicated, the most passionate, the most high performing, the most successful people

[00:12:16] in a very real way. They are one track minded. They have a single solitary pursuit and we look at them and we say, wow, this person really, really cares, really gets a lot of meaning

[00:12:31] and purpose from this one thing and they spend all their time on it, all their energy, all their actions and everything else suffers as a result in the vast majority of cases. There are

[00:12:44] certainly exceptions to the rule, but we are meant to be creatures of variety. God is a God of endless novelty and creation, multifaceted. He is capable of and enjoys and desires and

[00:13:05] loves to express his beauty and his glory in many, many, many different ways. Even ways that we can't even perceive or see, even ways that we couldn't have understood until recently and there are still

[00:13:21] ways in which his glory is being demonstrated that we don't have the capacity to understand right now. Think about the genetic code that's in our cell. When we see the artistry of that, the elegance of that, the information that's implanted into that and we understand that the

[00:13:40] source for that is best explained by a mind. In our case for Christian Theists, we would explain it as God's handiwork. It is the mind of an omnipotent God that designs such a system

[00:13:58] and deploys it with such elegance on a scale that is really difficult for us to comprehend because it is so small, so minute, so diverse, so effective, so potent, so powerful, even in a world full of

[00:14:15] sin and decay. The precision of what is established at the chemical and the physical level inside of our very cells is nothing short of a miraculous accomplishment. And not everybody looks at that and automatically points to God, but speaking to fellow believers here, the point

[00:14:38] that I'm making is that God placed this creation. God used this aspect of creation and it was inside human beings for a long period of time before we even had the capacity to understand it.

[00:14:56] It was there. It was part of our existence. It was part of the creation. It was part of our physical makeup, so truly we can look at the Bible and say, we are fearfully and wonderfully

[00:15:08] made. And to bring it back, this is just one of so many indications of the manifold ways in which God, the Alpha and the Omega, an omnipotent, an omniscient and an all loving God

[00:15:24] can demonstrate the beauty of his creation and the beauty of his power. And when people find ourselves, when we get on a one track thing, it is all about this or that, there is no

[00:15:40] there is no balance of multiple things that can give us meaning. Then we can get into a situation where we are making sacrifices that we are not necessarily called to and that end up hurting

[00:15:54] us. So whenever we choose to do something, we are giving up something else. We're giving up the opportunity to do anything else that we could have done. It's a classic notion of opportunity cost. And so, because there are learning curves to any activity, the people in

[00:16:12] general who are going to rise to the top of a particular hierarchy, a particular pyramid, a particular learning curve are going to be the people who are spending the most amount of time on it. And potentially, if someone is extremely talented, they could still be better at something

[00:16:32] and more successful at something than someone else who is less talented but has spent more time. But at the top of all of the major aspects, at the top of the pinnacles of these various facets

[00:16:46] in our society and our lives, there are people who are not only immensely talented at a particular thing, they have spent an incredibly large quantity of time on those particular endeavors, whether it's sports or business or anything else that you could imagine. And as a result,

[00:17:08] the more they've gotten up the learning curve, the more they're able to learn, the better they're able to perform and the faster they get up the learning curve. So there's this exponential separation that comes with both talent and time. But when we dedicate 100%

[00:17:25] or essentially 100% of our talent and time towards something, then it precludes us from building up these other areas. And there's the potential for us to be missing out on something

[00:17:40] that God has called us to do. By all means, if God has placed a call on your life and you know from the Holy Spirit that it is God's will for your life to spend essentially 100% of your time

[00:17:53] on one particular pursuit, then by all means you must be obedient to that call. Now it is true, the apostle Paul was a tent maker and he had other things going on. He wasn't in the synagogue

[00:18:08] and planting churches every single moment of his life, but that was his overwhelming and overarching pursuit. He saw the risen Lord and Jesus called him and he obeyed that call and it was the fullness of the labor of the rest of his entire life. It was his exclusive,

[00:18:29] motivating force. Everything else was in service to that. His life was organized around it and he was obedient. In my position, I haven't to the extent that I haven't perceived it yet, and maybe this will change but I haven't been called to that kind of focus. I've been

[00:18:50] called to be a father, I've been called to be a husband, I've been called to be a provider and a business owner, and I've been called to be a teacher. The interesting thing about that particular

[00:19:04] approach and that particular calling is that in every single one of the aspects of my life that I'm involved with, I get to teach to a certain extent and I get to learn. The better a learner I am,

[00:19:21] the better a teacher I can be because the better I can understand the process of learning for the sake of giving better instruction. For me in my situation, everything is synergistic and it actually benefits me a great deal to spend my time in a variety of different pursuits,

[00:19:42] a variety of different interests. This is not necessarily for everyone but I can tell you from my own personal perspective that at the very least we should be curious about asking the Lord

[00:19:56] if we have this foundational understanding of where meaning comes from and why do I have it and what should I be pursuing. It may very well be the case that God will call us to multiple different roles and multiple different responsibilities and if we are in that situation

[00:20:14] then we should be sensitive to that kind of balance. When do we have to focus on this or that and bring it all the way back around to the beginning scripture from the very end

[00:20:26] of the Bible in Revelation 22? I say all of that to say this, that when we have multiple pursuits of responsibility when there are multiple aspects of the calling that we have on our life, it is incredibly easy for the variety of responsibilities to build up and build up

[00:20:51] and build up in such a way that we lose the forest for the trees. There's so much in front of us, there's so much brush to clear, there's so much progress to be made, there's so much in many

[00:21:03] cases backtracking to be done to sort things out that we don't reflect and recall the bigger picture and that's why it is critically important to be in the Word. It's critically important to

[00:21:16] be in fellowship and be talking about the things of God with like-minded believers. It's important to be consuming content that is edifying, listening to good preaching and good teaching, being in the

[00:21:29] church, serving others in that capacity to balance out the rest of the pursuits that we have and to continually motivate us and to fill our calling in the body of Christ. And it is incredibly

[00:21:42] important for us to remind ourselves of the bigger picture, not just to sort of wave it off. And yes, we are intended to live in and focus on the present. Jesus says sufficient to each day

[00:21:57] are the evils thereof. But we have to keep in mind always what the bigger picture is. Jesus is coming back. We don't know when exactly. People have guesses, people have made prognostications on that and been dreadfully wrong before. But we know that the Word of

[00:22:19] God is faithful and that Jesus is coming back. And that the things that he has promised us are so good that they can't even be fully contained by whatever our mind can cobble together

[00:22:35] in fact that is part of the promises. And I think we should take it at face value when the Bible tells us that I has not seen, the ear has not heard when it refers to the glory of the things that God

[00:22:49] has prepared for those who love him. And so brothers and sisters, if we love God, and we certainly should for he is so worthy of it, we must take time particularly as we pursue multiple aspects of our calling and the variety of different responsibilities that we have and

[00:23:10] all of the decisions that we have to make. It's not necessarily that we should be spending 12 hours a day contemplating what heaven is like. It wouldn't be the worst use of time potentially, but there are things that we need to handle. And there are things that when we

[00:23:26] handle them here in this earth, we are being obedient. When we take the necessary steps to raise our children in the way that they should go, we are being obedient just as the theological scholar when they dive deep into arcane and challenging biblical questions and

[00:23:45] textual issues and matters of God's attributes just as they are being obedient in their search of God. We are being obedient to the call that's placed on our lives. And of course, those two are not mutually exclusive if you are in some academic post, if you are a

[00:24:01] research and linguistic expert, if you are an apologist, if you are involved in those sorts of conversations. Those questions are critically important and those people can have families and other responsibilities and people underneath them or and other people that they're serving

[00:24:17] and helping all of that is important in a balance. But I want to remind you, brothers and sisters, that wherever you are, whoever you are, if you are looking to God and you have things that you are

[00:24:32] responsible for in your life and you know that God is placed a call on your life, then take some time every now and again to remind yourself that Jesus is coming and take a quiet moment.

[00:24:45] Take several minutes, take a couple hours if you can and if you need to and really try to think that over. Really try to understand what that means and if you're having

[00:24:55] trouble, ask the Holy Spirit for help. Even if you're not having trouble, ask the Holy Spirit for help because these things are too big for us to grasp so we can pray and we can ask the Holy Spirit

[00:25:06] to place in our heart an expanded understanding of what this means. And what I'll find for myself, brothers and sisters, and what I hope is the case for you is that that will bring you

[00:25:19] peace, that that will bring you joy, that that will bring you rest, and that that will bring you excitement and continued vivacity and energy for taking on the day to day tasks and responsibilities

[00:25:34] that God has equipped you and called you for. To have that renewed sense of purpose and direction and focus with eternity in mind. To have that big picture in hand so that everything else can

[00:25:49] fall into place and that we don't get off balance one way or another because that is our tendency to get off balance. But the Lord can bring all things into proper order and when we invite

[00:26:03] him in to do just that, he will surely accomplish it. So let's close in prayer and let's ask God to help us to understand the big picture as much as we can, as much as we need to,

[00:26:16] and to help us order our steps. God thank you for this time. Thank you for your promises. Thank you for your word. We pray, Lord, that you would help us. God, you have called us to in most cases

[00:26:32] a variety of different things, many different pursuits. We know that there is meaning and obedience for us in several different areas. Help us to understand and how to get that balance right. Lord, give us what we need to have the wisdom and the discernment to know

[00:26:54] how much of our time we should be dedicating to different pursuits. And Lord, help us to make time deliberately to think about the bigger picture, to hear from you and to learn from you and to remind ourselves about your second coming, about the judgment, about eternity,

[00:27:13] about its implications, about the tangible, inconceivable joy that will result and should echo in our hearts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is placed in part as a guarantee of our inheritance. Holy Spirit, fill us now, Lord. Be with us. Give us an expanded

[00:27:38] understanding of the purpose and the calling in our lives, and help us to be dedicated to obedience to the calling and the callings that God has placed upon us. Help us to study and to

[00:27:53] know and to act out the entirety of the revealed will of God through the counsel of God in the books of Scripture. God, we love you. We bless you. Jesus, thank you for comforting us. Thank you

[00:28:09] for directing us. Thank you for inspiring us and leading us. And thank you for the promise that you will come again and that we will see you face to face and that we will be with you forever.

[00:28:23] We love you. We bless you. We praise you and we worship you. You are holy and righteous and true. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.