The Beauty of Balance [Part 1]

Pastoral author and Bible teacher Alan Wright.

It's amazing how much weight you can put down all sure you use the back legs and the front legs, but if you insist on using to move away, then it becomes quite unstable and that sort of the way it is and why Alan Wright welcome to an-right I'm doing the excited for you to hear the teaching today. In this series word and spirit.

The beauty of balance as presented with an older church in North Carolina.

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We want to start today talking about the beauty of balance and what that means in our lives to read about a teenager who came home with the report card had all F's and one D and exasperated father said son what he you been doing his answer was classic. He said well I guess I've been focusing too much on one subject what will you say the word and balance.

A lot of times what people mean is yeah I gotta get my life more balance.

I need to pull everything in from all these extremes that I've got going on.

I need to I need to pull it back in. We really want to be conveying out today and in coming weeks is that balance is not so much this kind of safe haven in the middle where you never try anything risky, you never feel anything deeply, but instead balance is this amazing design of God in which there is for everything that is expressed in our emotions or activities. There is kind of the seeming opposites that are it will work at all times when I was a kid, I had to lean my chair back at the kitchen table and the dinner table and my mother repeatedly warned me that such activity could be dangerous to the point of tipping backwards, and that if I were to fall backwards in the chair that it could hurt and I of course, presented such restrictions on my freedom and rejected the motherly mandate and until one evening I fell back and I don't know exactly how I secured this particular injury, but it was my chin that got split open with a complete trip to the emergency room and stitches have a scar to remind me that if you lose balance you get a boo-boo and and is so take the image start with those of a chair is a good reason that it's got her legs to it. The back to legs are good, sturdy legs and they're there for good purpose and you can use those back to legs but is also got the front two legs. It's amazing how much weight you can put down onto the chair if you use the back legs and the front legs, but if you insist on you. We use into the legs, then it becomes quite unstable and that sort of the way it is, and life.

When you see a tight rope walker or semi-riding a unicycle across a tight rope so often they'll have one of these long pull those that are sticking out to the sides. There is a a physics principle that is at work here and so I had to contact my engineering students on to ask him what this was, and it is a physics principal call the moment of inertia and don't ask me for details about this. I've been talking to some scientists in the church try to understand it better.

But you could simply identify with this if you think you're going to fall instinctively you throw your arms out. Why do you do that it's the same reason that this long pole comes out and usually has some weights at the end. The reason for this is if your way gets distributed. Further out from your body. Then it causes your body to resist rotation as much as it would otherwise case in point if if I were to spin around my arms out like this. That's about all I can do without getting dizzy.

Right there I can go to certain speed but if my arms were in like this and if you are standing trying you realize you can turn around much easier that way. Try it sometime. Not now, and if you listing by radio, don't try it in the car but anyway you seen ice skaters figure skaters you know when they're twirling around might start with arms out in the closer than they come in like this and it is going so so fast because if if all everything is in time like this, then you're more prone to be able to rotate when you put out like this, it causes you to rotate less.

In other words, what happens is several things are going along this weight is distributed out out left and right and then it gets that center of gravity down given it like it's a bigger foundation so the tightrope walker is more secure to have something far to the left and far to the right is being adjusted like this. And that's the image I want you to hold onto for balance. It's not a picture of the very middle-of-the-road safe kind of life that back to the matter is that to say that Jesus came full of grace and truth is not to say that he was 50% grace and 50% truth. He was 100%. Grace is 100% truth. In other words to say that you are. Balance doesn't mean that you have too much of one thing or not. It means that there is a counter waiting that this is the way God has designed the world you can't have too much grace is no such thing as a person got too much grace.

Now you you can have all the grace that you might ever imagine. As always, you also have truth like talk about spirit and word you can have too much of the Holy Spirit have too much of the Holy Spirit.

But if you have no word then you could run into real problems.

You can have too much a word you can't have too much love for the Bible, you can have too much knowledge of the word. You can't have too much time in the we came, but if you don't have the Holy Spirit, then there's something is going the wrong side one Witt has said is that all word and no spirit. You dry up all spirit. No word you blow up. And if you have spirit and word you grow up facing it's it's just that way and what we want to be saying is, as we start today is that Jesus is fully God.

But he's also fully human and he demonstrates in his earthly life.

What real humanity looks like, and we see that today that Jesus is probably not what you might expect of a God man but is very human and I want to show you some of the fullness of the expression of life that's in Jesus. In this sense of balance will be talking about all different kinds of arenas of life. You think about how many things there are that seem to be opposite that you are both so so vital for a healthy life right we need hard work. I believe in hard work, we need to have hard work in our lives but we also need to have real rest and recreation. If all you have is hard work and you never have rest then you're going to become sick and their relationships will become sick and you won't be able to. You won't be able to have the kind of communion with God or with people that makes for healthy life. But of all you have is rest and all you have is recreation then it'll lead you either to the poorhouse or to a poverty of purpose in this world or both be very weeny laughter, and we need to hear the challenge will have more teaching moment from today's important series being filled with the Holy Spirit shutting off your mind hearing for a wonderful surprise God's word and God's spirit were never meant to be separated spirit always belong together to keep your abundant life in Christ knowing your Bible being filled with the spirit, the answer is both word and spirit assumptions emphasize studying Scripture, and some traditions emphasize the spirit to real Christian growth both word and spirit as someone once said all word spirit you dry all spirit.

No word both word and spirit umbrella. When you make a gift of support. This month will send you Alan Wright's newest album on CD or digital download word and spirit Airlines embrace the fullness of God's word and his spirit realm like never before with wording spirit realm up helping someone else grow as well. And remember, we partner with Alan Wright Ministries to be broadcasting the love of God, 2000 every day. 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor.like today's teaching now continues your once again is I love laughter and joy and joy is a fruit of the spirit of some marketers life and so it to be that our natures is in crisis.

There's lots and lots of joy but in this world. We also have trouble and the Bible says that Blessed are those that mourn for they will be comforted and so if we don't ever have any tears if we don't ever learn how to mourn our losses. But I'll ever learn how to grieve and how shall we be comforted and so we need both and will be seen that Jesus had times where his life. The party in time.

Weep by the grave of a friend. It's important in our home life is important.

Theologically, it's important and our worship of God. I think this is one of things that sometimes we miss is that there is an our relationship with God. A balance that is very hard to describe to someone because there is at the same time a sense in which God is awesome. He is holy, holy, holy. He is the Creator of the ends of the earth. He is the Lord most high and to encounter a God is to encounter the one who is greater than imagination and so there's something that strikes all into the heart of someone that encounters God.

And yet if you know God and if you have accepted Christ you been made.

God's child, and that means that God is your father, and he's a good father is a gentle father is a loving father and so we experience God in intimacy and we are told to draw near to him and come to the throne of grace boldly in our time of need and not be afraid of him. So there's a way in which you live your life in which you have both a sense of all, and intimacy with God and in our devotional life and in our worship life.

There is a time and there's a wonderful place for the celebration. There is something that is powerful when we discover how to really rejoice in the Lord to become free to express ourselves to God. There's a time also for contemplation and there's a pathway of spiritual growth. A meditative life that steeps in his word and thinks deeply and ponders his truth in our heart, so a life that is all intimacy, but know all will miss something of who God is, in a life that was all celebration, but no contemplation would miss something of the pathway of spiritual growth. So, I'm talking about is balance.

Balance in our and our physical lives or emotional lives and in our spiritual lives and in our church life and I think it's one of the greatest secrets that is unveiled in the gospel.

Let's start here. Think about creation in creation itself in the physical universe, there is this picture this design of balance that you see everywhere. To read a number of different scriptures today throughout. If you wanted to start with me.

You could look at Genesis chapter 1 where if you look at the beginning, you'll see that what God designed has an amazing sense of the seeming opposites that are brought together in the sinless, perfect world that he created at verse three of Genesis 1, though there was darkness beforehand. God said, let there be light and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

And God called the light day and the darkness he called night there was evening and there was morning, the first day there was night and there was day there was light and there was darkness before San Everett entered the world. This is God's design for the world. These two things night and day.

This seemed to be absolutely opposite and we need both. Something about the whole design of the world in which he made all of the land and the water, land and sea. We need both verse 11, God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. Later Rosie that everything was designed according to C. Time and harvest. Seed time and harvest sowing and reaping life is not all sowing lifestyle reaping life is a rhythm of sowing and reaping and sowing and reaping, just like you see in the seasons and the cycles of the earth. God designed this way there is a balance in all things and so it is the whole of creation continues as you see this incredible design it to you finally come to where you read about God creating humanity and that he made them male and female, which is an amazing thought that men and women from the beginning of the creation of the created order men and women seemingly opposite absolutely meeting one another, not just for the procreation of life on this earth but needing each other and so so many ways. Whether you're married or not we need men and we need women and you know what is amazing to me is you know what the approximate ratio of men to women is on the face of their one-to-one bottom line after all these years we've got about the same number of men in the same number of women on the earth do you find that to be interesting. My daughter is looking at colleges and she and subvert statistics for each schools. Also see their ranking worker academic emphasis on the spiritual community is like there was to check on a variety of statistics about how big the school is how many people get scholarships and I was kinda dismayed to see there was another stat that she was also paying attention to.

There's a statistic that is published on the male to female ratio and the student body and she's not looking for one where the women outnumber the men so that bothers me but it interesting you actually did a little research on this because I don't know. Do you think that this is fact I don't think this is back to how could this be because I grew up in a family of three boys. My wife she wrote a family of three girls I know people they got five boys and a people got five girls in his whole thing just is working out all the way across the face of their as we got men and women is amazing the human body is a picture of balance everything about us is valuable you think about it how everything is working according to balance and things are out of balance, then things aren't going to work well on your skeletal system is meant to be in and balance muscular system to hold you in balance in her ear working you towards balance and the whole endocrine system of your body is at work to bring balance been trying to here recently adjust my diet just a little bit.

I've gotten a little out of balance and that there was ice cream every night and so tried to move that away from from every night.

What what I do. So my my family developed the strategy we just put the ice cream into a little coffee mug because you that limits it right. If the coffee mug and had to put some muscle behind it.

You can you give the Ben & Jerry's that in there, could give big cream cookie though.

Anyway, I just things a little out of balance right now about this so I make this point right up front that I'm saying that there's a balance and I said you can't have too much grace. You can't have too much truth, so I don't want to go home so was he. I can't have too much ice cream as long as I eat plenty of broccoli it doesn't work that way to fight them out of the way the actual balance is working in your body.

I don't know much about it but it's fascinating to me. I wish I knew more about the human body. But when I when I eat that little mug of ice cream and that all that sugar comes into my body, I don't even think about it, but thankfully my pancreas works just fine.

Some of you have a special appreciation for this. If you have diabetes you and you know what it how delicate this balance is in the body because it is a sugar comes in the pancreas is secreting just the right amount of insulin to adjust the glucose level in the blood and this is going on 24 hours a day without you thinking about it. Everything in the human body is designed according to balance the whole world's. And so it should be no surprise that when Jesus came and he showed us what a true human being is what we saw in his life was balance every aspect of his life.

Let me give you sort of a little pectoral series of snapshots of Jesus life and see if it doesn't prove the point if you want to follow along on start in Mark chapter 1 first little snapshots here of a couple scenes in his life where within just a few verses you will see what seems to be exactly opposite going on in his life. If you were to just choose out one aspect of it, you'd miss who Jesus was, you'd miss what true humanity is so you gotta put them together right and that's today's teaching it's the beauty of balance as we kick off the series by the same title. Allen is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life, and a final word being filled with the Holy Spirit shutting off your mind hearing for a wonderful surprise God's word and spirit were never meant to be separated working spirit always belong together to keep your abundant life in Christ knowing your Bible, the secret of being filled with the spirit there is both word and spirit simulations emphasize studying Scripture, and some traditions emphasize the spirit to real Christian growth both word and spirit as someone once said Pollard spirit you dry all spirit. No word both word and spirit umbrella and you make a gift to support this man will send you Allen Wright's newest album on CD and digital download word and spirit balance, embrace the fullness of God's word and his spirit realm like never before with wording spirit realm up helping someone else grow as well. And remember, we partner with Alan Wright Ministries to be broadcasting the love of God to every day, six 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website past Rowan.like you're talking to the right guy when you're talking about finding balance.

II can be very extreme and I think maybe all of us have a tendency to go extreme in one area or another in life things will go to learn Daniel is that the idea of balance is best conveyed with a tight rope walker across a high wire with that long pole that he holds our yard to the left and far to the right is a physics principle that II can't explain it but it's it's helping him balance because if you if you actually move far to the left for the ride and it's distributing his weight well spiritually that's what were going to be learning to be in balance doesn't really mean oh you never really get happier. You never get really sad and just stay in the safe little middle zone will see is that the beauty of balance is that we can move between what might seem to be extremes. But there's an equilibrium and that's where the center of all healthy emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Is it is absolutely important. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries