The Balance Myth

Oh man, well, again, so grateful that you're here today.

Really excited about what we're gonna be doing today and for the rest of this summer.

Last Sunday, we kicked off a new series called The Summer of Wisdom.

We're gonna be exploring wisdom over the course of the entire summer.

Definitely June and July, maybe even a little bit through August, we'll see.

Wisdom is something that the Bible actually promises that God will give us if we ask.

God actually says in Scripture, if you lack wisdom, ask for it.

Fred did a great job kicking it off last week, and he shared that we are called to be seekers of wisdom.

We're to seek wisdom, because if you have wisdom, you have what you need.

Proverbs chapter 3 puts it this way: Blessed are those who find wisdom.

Proverbs 3 · chapter mention

So you gotta seek it to find it, right?

Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is far more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold.

She's more precious than rubies, nothing that you desire can compare with her.

Long life is in her right hand, and in her left hand are riches and honor.

Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace.

She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, those who hold her fast will be blessed.

By wisdom the Lord laid the earth's foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place.

By his knowledge the watery depths were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew.

My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight.

Preserve sound judgment and discretion.

They will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck.

Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble.

When you lie down, you will not be afraid.

When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be at your side and will keep your foot from being snared.

That is how valuable, how precious wisdom is.

And so Fred helped us last week lock in and say, I want to be a seeker of wisdom.

We're gonna be looking at wisdom from a variety of different angles.

Something a little bit interesting that we're doing in this series is we're giving you the ability to text in situations that you're actually dealing with right now and ask, what does God's word have to say about it?

What does God's wisdom have to say to help guide me through this?

And so um we put a number up on the screen last week.

We're not gonna do that this week, just for one week, and let me explain why.

First and foremost.

Wow, did we get a lot of text messages last week?

Um, and I answered, and if I missed one, let text me back at the same number.

I answered all of them except for two that came in yesterday, two or three that came in yesterday.

I will get to those right away.

But timing-wise, I realized like, oh man, my wife is out of town in Guatemala for the next seven days, and I'm I know what the schedule is at home, so I'm just asking for one week as a pause.

Okay, I think we can I actually think it's wise of me to do that so that I don't disappoint everybody.

Uh, and then next week we'll pick that back up.

But if you already have the number and you you want to text it, a few will be fine.

No, those were incredible to read, and it was a great reminder for me of just all the different types of situations that all of us are going through.

We're gonna be covering wisdom as it relates to relationships over the course of this series, wisdom as it relates to finances, wisdom as it relates to all kinds of things.

But today we're gonna get started with a conversation about something that I actually wasn't expecting, but I got multiple text messages about this same concept.

And it's the idea of balance.

I got a lot of text messages, several that said, hey, listen, I'm really struggling right now to balance all the things going on in my life.

Or another version of it would be, I'm really overwhelmed by everything that's happening right now.

I don't know how to make sense of it all, I don't know how to navigate it all.

One person specifically just asked me, how do I balance all the stuff I've got going on in my relationship with God?

A lot of people were looking for balance.

So we're gonna talk about how to have a balanced life today.

Now, I don't know what your uh understanding of that concept of balance is, or maybe the first time that you really experienced that.

I spent some time thinking about it this week.

For me, the first time I think I was introduced to the concept of balance was watching cereal commercials in the late 1980s and early 90s.

If you're in my generation and you grew up watching cartoons, you know that cartoons were filled with commercials, and about half the commercials were for different brands of cereal.

And so, you know, you had your staples, you had like your mascot cereals, you got Lucky Charms, little leprechaun guy, I think his name was Lucky.

Uh, you had the tricks rabbit, you know, tricks are for kids.

You had Captain Crunch, like the captain himself.

And every single commercial would end the same way.

They'd show you the cereal, and it was always about the new marshmallow that's inside of it, or the new fruit shape, or the new Crunch Berry, which is even the thing, but whatever.

And then it would say part of a balanced breakfast.

And there would be this image on the screen of like a bowl of cereal on a tray with some bananas cut into pieces and maybe some other fresh fruit, and then some toast and some butter that was melted on top of it, and like a glass of milk, and sometimes even like a carafe of orange juice.

And I'm thinking, like, who's what mom in the 1980s was serving their child?

Like, here, here, child that I love, here's a bowl of cereal, but also other things, because I want you to have a balance.

No, that's not cereal's what your mom put on the table.

Well, let's be honest, cereal's what your mom told you to go get for yourself when your mom was tired of cooking breakfast and said, figure it out.

No one ever had a balanced breakfast that included cereal.

It's ridiculous.

I'm sure there was some like government like rule that made them have to put that out there.

Otherwise, kids will just eat crunch berries all day, which I did.

That was probably my first introduction to the idea of balance.

Um, but but as I thought about it more this week, I had this one this one experience in life just kept popping into my mind.

I think it serves as a really interesting analogy for what we're gonna talk about today.

When I was in college, I waited tables.

I started at Chili's, and then I moved to this really fancy uh Mexican restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri.

And guys, I'm gonna ask for your forgiveness because I know that we're still like an hour and a half till lunch or so, or really like an hour.

Um, because you know, we get out pretty early.

Like, we're good at that as a church, so lunch is quick.

You can beat a lot of the other churches to lunch if you go here.

I'm just saying, if it's your first time, that's not the main reason to stay.

That's a perk.

So I'm gonna apologize because lunch is a while away, and I'm gonna show you some images because man, the food at this place, guys.

Okay, watch this.

Um this was this dish we had.

Go ahead and put this up.

This oh, okay.

These were these chicken medallions.

So it was a chicken breast stuffed with chorizo, and then it was lightly breaded and fried, and and then there was queso to pour over the top of it.

And and oh my gosh, this?

This was uh go to the next one, yeah, yeah, move on.

This was called the Los Mejores de la Casa, which meant the best of the house.

It was the most expensive thing on the menu, and it's what I recommended to everyone.

Um because tips are percentage-based.

So uh, no, no, go back, go back.

I want to describe this.

I want to describe this.

Well, I want to, guys, in the back, I want to savor this.

Look at this two fillets wrapped in bacon, cooked on a wood fire grill.

I still remember the whole spiel.

Um, those three shrimp, those are the largest shrimp you've ever seen.

They were these jumbo shrimp, each shrimp stuffed with cheese and a little bit of jalapeno, those were wrapped in bacon.

That was also served on a wood fire grill.

Or cooked on a wood grill.

It was incredible.

All right?

True story.

Judge me if you want, I don't care.

Occasionally I would have a table that wouldn't finish one of the shrimp.

And as like a broke college student who was engaged, you know, maybe by the time that plate made it to the trash, that shrimp had disappeared.

I'm just saying, maybe, maybe that happened.

Maybe.

All right, one more.

For a sense of scale, the portions were huge.

That was a dish we had called the grande.

That's like a turkey platter.

That's what it was served on.

And so that's the way this restaurant was.

Every dish we had, huge, giant.

So the challenge working there was actually balancing everything.

Like it was a huge issue.

Because when you had a table of six people and you had to put all that stuff on a tray and take it to them, like you had to balance that thing perfectly.

And if you didn't, it would come crashing down.

The food wasn't even the hardest part, though, it was the drinks.

We were a fancy restaurant.

And by the way, the closest uh abuelos to here, that's the name of that restaurant.

It's uh, I think it's there used to be one in Chattanooga, it's not there anymore.

You gotta go all the way to Myrtle Beach if you want to eat that food today.

So feel free, you might be able to make it by clothes.

We'll see.

Um the drinks were the hard part though, because we were fancy, so everything had to be served on a tray.

It was tray service.

You couldn't just take a glass and take that to your table.

You had to put it on a tray and do that.

But some of the glasses, you know, these big margaritas that are larger at the top than the bottom, and man, balance.

If you didn't balance it just right, ooh, things could get ugly.

There was a guy that worked there.

I'll never forget him, because of how bad he was at balance.

He dropped so many trays that I'm not lying.

Our manager had to meet with him and tell him, I will fire you if you drop another tray, because it was costing so much.

Every time he dropped a tray, it's just like money down the drain.

This one night he had this tray full of drinks, and there was this like group of ladies that were having some type of special occasion.

Like you could just tell, like they were out, they were really good friends, and they were celebrating something because they were dressed to the nines, and and Trey, I didn't tell you this.

His name was Trey, by the way.

That's really funny.

Like that's that's a true story.

God is really funny.

So Trey was terrible with trays, and so Trey is carrying a tray full of drinks, and he loses his balance.

And for whatever reason, his instinct when losing balance was to go hands out, which is not what you do.

Like, if anything, you know, you go in, like sacrifice yourself.

But Trey loses his balance with the tray, goes like this, and I watched.

You ever have those moments in life where you you see something and time slows down, and you're watching it, and then you think afterwards, could I have done something?

But you you're like, no, it just time no, like one of those moments.

I watched as an entire picture of margaritas went face first into this lady who was clearly the woman who had the special occasion, like she was definitely the special, the VIP.

It would have been no different if Trey had just walked up to her with a picture and went like that.

Like he was some jilted lover or something like that.

It would have been no different.

And I mean, she is absolutely soaked.

Oh, it was awful.

But it was also hysterical.

It was like one of those moments where you can't, it just was.

Yeah, working at that place was was really a it was a lesson in balance.

And I think in some ways, it's kind of cheesy, but uh Mexican food.

But it it serves as an interesting analogy for life, right?

That's how life feels a lot of the times.

Like we all have a lot going on, depending on your stage of life, it's different stuff.

But it feels like we spend a lot of time trying to get everything on the tray just right, just perfectly balanced.

And then very often we drop the tray.

So, how do you have a balanced life?

So I looked into scripture, spent some time this week researching that because those were the questions that I got, and uh turns out the Bibles really talk about this this at all.

Yep, just really nothing.

Like the word balance is in the Bible, Proverbs chapter 16, verse 11, says that the Lord demands accurate scales and balances.

Proverbs 16:11

He sets the standard for fairness, but that's not the kind of balance we're talking about.

That's like weighing things as you exchange money.

There are a few verses here and there that could sort of connect to balance, this idea of it's good in life to enjoy it.

Like the author of Ecclesiastes at one point says, listen, eat, drink, and be merry, enjoy it because a lot of life is hard.

So I guess that could technically be balance.

You want to balance out the hard stuff with some fun stuff.

But really, honestly, scripture doesn't talk about balance.

But that's a topic that we see all over the place in the world.

You can go find books right now on work-life balance, how to balance your career with your family life, or balance your physical health with how busy you are.

There's all types of books you can read or podcasts you can listen to about balance.

And yet when we go to scripture, the source of wisdom, truly the source of time-tested, eternal wisdom, the Bible just doesn't really talk about it.

And the reason is because balance is a myth.

You can't you can't have a balanced life.

That doesn't exist.

It doesn't.

You can fool yourself into thinking it exists, but it doesn't.

Here's why.

Because that whole tray analogy that I'm using, it life doesn't cooperate with you, right?

So let's say you get the tray perfectly balanced and as you're carrying it, someone just drops a huge weight on top of it.

That's what life feels like most of the time.

And I experience this all the time in my role as a human being and as a pastor.

Like I have several friends, really, really good friends, that in the last year or two years have had a loved one diagnosed with cancer.

I uh two of my friends have had their wives diagnosed with cancer in the last couple of years, and another friend, a really dear friend to them, had someone diagnosed with cancer.

Many of us have been in situations like that, or are in a situation like that.

Like, how do you balance that?

It's not like you leave room in life for something like that.

Well, I just I'll make sure I'm not too busy just in case a crisis happens, and then I have all the bandwidth in the world.

That's not how life works.

So, all of those people, they all felt like their life was full.

They all felt like they were working really hard just to keep everything balanced, and then boom, that happens.

There goes balance.

I mean, it can be anything.

Something happens to you, and and it feels like this weight that's been placed on you, and all that balance that you've worked really hard to have and have everything just right, everything organized so neatly in your life, it's just it's out the window.

And it doesn't even have to be bad things.

Like, there's an awesome lady here named Melissa, and Melissa, I'm gonna ask for your forgiveness because I forgot to ask for permission.

Um, it's you.

Hey Melissa.

So, Melissa, she's great.

She volunteers in the office, she's she's amazing.

And there was a period of time where I didn't see her in the office for a while, and then she she was back, and I was like, Melissa, where have you been?

And she said, I got a dog.

And that was it.

She's like, I got a dog, and this dog has taken everything for the last few months.

You remember that conversation, I'm guessing.

Something as simple as that can throw all the balance in your life out of whack.

And so the reason the Bible doesn't talk about balance is because it's not a real thing you can actually have in life.

You cannot have a balanced life because you're not actually in control of what happens to you.

In a moment's notice, the most difficult, challenging thing you can think of, boom, there goes the balance.

We see this in scripture multiple times.

We'll look at one with Jesus.

Matthew chapter 14.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

Jesus has just learned that his good friend, his cousin, John the Baptist, a ministry partner of Jesus, has been beheaded.

And he's broken.

He's mourning.

He's mourning the loss of his dear friend.

And so what he wants to do is get away.

He wants to balance out the grief and the shock of that with some time alone, some time with just him and his disciples, some time to pray.

And we see this in Matthew 14, verse 13.

Matthew 14:13

It says, as soon as Jesus heard the news, he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone.

But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from afar, from many towns.

It says that Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat and he had compassion on them.

He healed their sick.

We actually know the size of this crowd was over 5,000.

This is where Jesus feeds the 5,000.

But that whole story begins with Jesus needing to get away to try to balance out the pain with some time to decompress, to reset a little bit, and to pray.

And that balance gets thrown out the window, just gone.

Because a ton of people show up.

There's countless examples of this.

And again, it's not always bad things.

It can be good things.

But at any moment in time, no matter how carefully balanced your life is, something hits, and boom, there it goes.

But while scripture doesn't talk about balance, it does talk about something that is better than balance, something that we actually can experience, something that God has literally woven into all of creation.

That if we can seek after this, instead of balance, we actually find what we're looking for, and it's it's rhythm.

You don't need balance in life because you really can't control that.

What you do need is rhythm.

In fact, if your life feels unbalanced, that's a good indicator that something is just it's out of rhythm.

Let me explain.

We'll go to Genesis chapter one.

Genesis chapter one says, Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

And God saw the light was good.

So he separated the light from the darkness, and he called the light day and the darkness night.

And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.

From the very beginning, God creates a rhythm.

A rhythm to how a day works, something that we can take for granted.

But from the outset, he creates this rhythm to life.

I'm sure many of you have heard about this, but there are places in the world where in certain seasons it doesn't really get dark or it doesn't get light.

Like there's a place in Alaska that you can go.

And at a certain time of the year, just because of the position of the earth and all of that stuff, uh 30 days or so of zero sunlight.

It is dark all day for 30 days.

Who thinks you could do that, by the way?

Anyone be like, I can handle that?

Yeah.

Who would be like, I no, I would go nuts, I would go crazy.

Yeah.

Very few people live in places like that.

Because that's not the rhythm that we're we're built for.

And it's interesting, in fact, if if you know that many of you know this, but if you don't, it's such a cool fact.

It says, it says morning, it says actually evening then morning, not the opposite.

We tend to think of a day like morning then evening, but it says evening and morning.

And the Old Testament tells the story of the Jewish people and how God uses them to bring his will into this entire earth.

It's through them, it's through Jesus, who comes from the Jewish people.

Well, the Jewish day is different than our day.

And again, many of you probably know this, but it's really cool.

Uh, the Jewish day actually begins with sunset.

That's the start of the day.

It's not sunrise, it's definitely not an arbitrary middle of the night, 12 a.m.

kind of thing.

But their day begins at sunset.

And so think about it this way: the rhythm that they have, the rhythm that God instilled in that entire group of people, was not work and then rest.

It wasn't like work until you're exhausted and then crash and rest.

It was actually rest first.

Eat, enjoy your family, enjoy your friends, sleep, rest, and then wake up prepared for the rest of the day.

I really like that rhythm.

But it goes beyond just the rhythm of a day.

We see in Genesis chapter 2, verses 2 and 3, it says, On the seventh day, God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all of his work, and God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all of his work in creation.

Genesis 2:2

This is gonna go on later to be codified as the Sabbath.

God invented the day off.

I want you to know to know that.

Like understand that.

God invented weekends.

That's awesome.

But he created this rhythm in the lives of people.

This didn't exist in the ancient world.

Ancient cultures, you worked every single day because you were working to survive.

It was sustenance living.

And God says, no, no, no, every seventh day I want my people to pause to rest.

Because no matter how crazy your life is, no matter how unbalanced it feels, if you just have a day every every seven days to pause, to stop, to breathe, to reflect on God, to recognize that He's with you and He's for you, but to let Him strengthen you, that rhythm, it gets you to the next one.

So God created a rhythm for life.

He created a rhythm to the day, he created a rhythm to the week.

And it goes even beyond that.

It says in Genesis chapter 8, verse 22, that as long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.

Genesis 8:22

There's a rhythm to the world, there's seasons, and they're constant, and they change, but they always come back around.

That's how life works.

It has a rhythm to it.

In the book of Leviticus, God commands his people as they're coming out of slavery in Egypt and they're establishing a culture.

He says, Give the following instructions to the people of Israel.

These are the Lord's appointed festivals, which you are to proclaim as official days for holy assembly.

You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of complete rest, an official day for holy assembly.

It's the Lord's Sabbath day.

It must be observed wherever you live.

In addition to the Sabbath, these are the Lord's appointed festivals, the official days for holy assembly that are to be celebrated at the proper times each year, at the proper times.

And they have this calendar that included multiple feasts, multiple times when work would stop, and you would gather together and you would celebrate together and you would remember what God had done and what God will do.

So God created this unbelievable rhythm to their year.

So from the outset of creation and the way that God even established the culture of the people of Israel in the Old Testament, He builds in rhythm to their life.

You won't find anything in the Bible really about balance, but rhythm, oh, it's everywhere.

That we are meant to live in the right rhythm.

And if we do that, if we wisely make sure that our lives are operating at the correct rhythm, we have what we need.

It's better than balance because you can actually control rhythm much better than you could control balance.

So let's look at at it like this from a few different angles as we as we get ready to wrap up.

Want to leave room for the nine baptisms.

Let's look at it in kind of a a macro sense, like the the big picture.

Life has seasons.

Life has seasons.

And those seasons change.

And it's vitally important that you, if you want to live a life of wisdom, it is vitally important that you discern the season that you are in and you do what is appropriate in this season.

Because if you try to live out of season, you get frustrated and oftentimes you you sabotage your success.

I'll give you a few examples.

Years ago I had a young guy that I was working with, love this guy a lot.

I was I was mentoring him.

I had been his youth pastor and great guy, but he decided not to go to college which is fine.

College is not for everybody.

He got a really good job right out of high school like a better job than he was really qualified for.

He knew someone at this place and it was a challenging job.

He had to drive into Atlanta but it was a job that that had a lot of upward mobility.

Like this was a place that he could be and could grow.

I was really excited for we would meet and talk every once in a while and I'd always ask him how's work going and I was really proud of him.

And then one day he shocked me because we were meeting and I said hey how's work and he said I quit and I was like why?

He said man I've been working full time for 18 months and I'm just tired and I just need a few months off I imagine it was the a preview of a conversation of some kind that I'm going to have with at least one of my kids when they're adults and you have to sit there and be like what like what that is that is not the season to rest.

Not that much anyway like the rest you get when you're in if you're 19 here's your rest the weekend.

That's your rest right you get you get five paid vacation days you know twice a year take them but that's that that look the season that you're in at that point in life if you're young like hear me bust it work really hard take advantage of the weekend and and you don't have kids yet like sleep as long as you want on a Saturday sleep in.

But work hard and establish yourself in your job and in your career and get promoted and then later in life you'll have the ability to be like hey I'm tired.

I've been doing this for 20 years.

I'm going to take a little extra time off but but I was heartbroken honestly for the guy because I'm like this this is the wrong thing to do in this season of life and it actually set him back tremendously he had a really hard time getting restarted because that wasn't the right season to do that.

I had a guy that was on our staff here awesome super good friend and and he's older than this now but when he was maybe in his mid-twenties he met with me frustrated sometimes our staff meets with me frustrated and sometimes I'm the source of their frustration.

I know that's shocking I can be frustrated and he and his frustration was simple.

He was like man I just feel like you never bring me in to some of the big picture conversations that we have he's like I I don't ever get brought into the conversations about where's the church headed and vision and I appreciated the fact that he wanted to be part of those decisions.

But I I've been working here since I was 23 and so I I paused for a moment and I looked at him and I said hey man I get it.

How old are you?

And he's like I'm 24 I was like cool I was trying to think in my mind when when was the first time that the previous leadership here at his hands before I was in this role brought me in and said Justin we want your take on this Justin what do you think we should do and the the earliest memory I had of that I would have been about 29 years old and so I told the guy I said listen I appreciate your desire for that that's great noted just so you know it took me about a decade here almost six or seven years before I was ever brought into those types of conversations.

So this may not be the season that that happens but if you stick it out if you endure that will that will happen in in the right moment in the right season and he did stick it out he did endure and he was brought into those conversations later on but he was desiring something that was not for his season it is so easy for us to do that.

It is so easy for us to long for a season that we're not in just the other day my wife had this amazing interaction with a woman in a parking lot she was looking at this young mom with two or three kids load her kids into the car these kids were small and she's buckling them in and she's putting them in the car seat and they're fighting and they're fussing and all that and my wife we're at the stage where you know she just hits a button sliding you know sliding door and the kids just kind of march in one at a time.

And this mom kind of looked at her and there was like pain in her eyes.

And so my wife who's very wise said I promise one day you'll be here one day your kids will get in the car by themselves and the mom was like Are you serious?

She was like weary like you mean it for real and Megan said yes she said but they won't climb on your lap they won't want to like put their arms around you so just know that every season comes with new challenges.

And then she drove off and left the woman having an existential crisis it was great.

No but you know it's it's normal for us we look at people we look at people who are experiencing something that we want to be experiencing and we feel like why why not me?

Well maybe it's just not your season for that do what is appropriate in the season that you're in.

That's the rhythm of life.

Seasons change like right now I would love to have nice furniture I looked at our living room yesterday and I was like these couches are falling apart.

My wife has done a great job hiding it with throw pillows like so many throw pillows but if you take those throw pillows away you're like and I was thinking maybe we should just maybe we should just go buy some nice furniture like I'm sure there's a furniture store with some type of deal and a payment plan.

Let's let's go find some nice furniture and then I watched as my seven year old climbed on our kitchen counter and jumped onto our couch right on the middle of it and I noticed like oh that's why it's kind of doing this in the middle.

And I'm like if we bought nice furniture our children would just ruin it.

This is not the season for nice furniture.

A few years from now they'll go stay in their rooms they won't want to be near us.

That's when we get the nice furniture right like it's a humorous example but the reality is if you try to live out of season you pay for it.

God has created a rhythm to life and your seasons will change and so hear this if you're in a really challenging season it will not be forever do what you must do what is appropriate in this season of life and trust that God will bring you another one there's a rhythm to life follow the rhythm that God ordains and you'll find peace you'll find a unique kind of patience that comes from knowing things will change.

But it's not just the general seasons of life we could even look at this on a smaller scale in fact worship team you guys can make your way back out we have the ability to control even the rhythm of our days like the rhythm of our weeks you you have the ability to decide when you wake up I mean up to a certain point right but you can choose to be the person that wakes up at the last possible minute.

By the way I do that sometimes I'm not knocking that sometimes like I got friends that are like I wake up every day at five o'clock and I go for a run and I'm like cool that sounds great.

No I like to get up early but but sometimes it's good just to sleep as long as you possibly can there's moments for that but you actually have the ability to decide hey what time am I going to get up in the morning and what am I going to what am I going to do first?

What's the first thing I'm gonna do with my day am I just gonna get up and go go go or am I going to get up and pray?

Am I gonna get up and open my Bible and read just for a few minutes?

Read a proverb that takes five minutes.

Read a psalm read read a teaching of Jesus find some red letters do read anything because scripture is scripture it's amazing if you read Song of Solomon that's gonna be a weird rest of your day so maybe think about specifics but read but read and pause and pray and go to the Lord and ask him Lord what do you have for me today?

One of my favorite things to do early in the day I do this all the time not every day I try to every day but sometimes I don't but I just I pray the Lord's prayer our Father in heaven may your name be kept holy may your kingdom come.

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven when I pray that I think Lord may your will be done today what what do you want to do in my life today?

And then I'll think about the things I have coming up and okay Lord what is your will in this situation that I'm gonna be in in a few hours you go on and you pray things like give us this day our daily bread what do I need right now for this day there's a rhythm to that forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me like I need to ask for forgiveness every day.

That's a rhythm.

It's not that God I He's forgiven me forever but I need to remember my need for forgiveness and I need to remember to forgive others that there's a rhythm to that every day.

Pray that God keeps you from temptation delivers you from evil.

If you just pray the Lord's prayer it takes about 17 seconds I've timed it if you're a slow prayer like 30.

But there's a rhythm to that there's a recognition that I have a day ahead of me and I have a lot of choices in my day I can choose what I watch I can choose what I fill my mind with I can choose when I go to bed I can choose what I do right before I go to bed I can choose what I eat.

But there's so much power that you have in your everyday and God has designed it that way and that's what leads to the rhythm of life.

If you feel overwhelmed if you feel like everything's out of whack you feel like you're barely hanging on I've got great news for you it's probably because it's true like my wife and I are in a crazy season of life right now we have four kids my old my oldest son's calendar for the month of June is busier by itself than like I think I ever was before I was 30 years old.

Doesn't make any sense that's just one of our kids our daughter her calendar is crazy full like we're we're at that stage many of you can relate to this we're at that stage of life where shout out to my my buddy Chris he's here and Chris taking Judah to Amos's birthday party at 2 p.m I've got it on my calendar we're good but we're at that stage of life that like when someone schedules a birthday party you're like yeah we'll be there you know and then you figure it out and then your wife calls you like hey do you know what this kid likes and like I don't know what he likes.

I'll call his dad hey what does he like and then the wife's at target and you're like just get just get something get a thing wrap it make it look nice we'll we'll do it tomorrow and then I'll take this car and you take that car we're in that stage of life just a crazy absolute insane stage of life but that's our season that's our season I know what will end I know what will change like I'm still driving my oldest son to all of his stuff and and one day he's gonna drive himself and I'm gonna love that.

I'm also gonna hate that because I like the time I have in the car with him seasons change.

God has designed it that way there's rhythm so here's the the thought to have actually I'll I'll end with with one little final story um a gentleman on our staff a few years ago met with me and he was struggling.

He felt overwhelmed he felt like his tray had too many plates on it.

You know what I mean?

And so he was listing everything out for me said okay okay let's take a breath just list it all out and so he made this list this absolutely comprehensive list of everything he had to do and I'll admit that on paper that list looked like too much.

But as I started reading through the list I recognized well okay well some of these things are things that you got to do all the time like every day.

Some of these things though are like yearly and so we started looking at the list together and we stopped and I asked him to do something.

I said I want you to make like a chart basically he's a really visual guy.

I said I want you in that chart to have daily weekly monthly quarterly biannually and annually categories.

Like I literally want you to have and I want you to take all your tasks I want you to divide them into that.

And he did it and it was actually really cool he he ended up making a really cool version of it and he framed it and it was sitting on his desk for a long time and I'd walk in and I'd be like oh that's cool that's that thing we talked about and he took everything that he had to do and instead of looking all of it at once and feeling overwhelmed he recognized that there's a rhythm to all of these things and he he put it out like that and so all of a sudden it was 10 times more manageable because these are the things I've got to do every day.

And it wasn't that big of a list.

And these are the things I need to do every week.

And then I've got a few things that I've got to do this once a month and a few things I've got to do once a quarter and once every half year and once every year and now all of a sudden that panic that feeling of that being feeling like he's overwhelmed and the tray's about to tip over that went away and he realized oh I can breathe I just have to do the right things in the right rhythm.

So as we close just recognize that balance is a myth you can't have a balanced life can't do it.

You can try and for a while it may be great but at any moment boom I like I said I have friends going through really hard things right now you might be a caretaker of one of your parents and all of a sudden your house has to change and you have to drive them to the doctor's appointments and and all of that is going on.

You could have you could have something at work I got a good buddy who had a his boss came to him and said hey I've got a project I need you to do and he gave him this project that would take about three months he said I need it in like two weeks and that guy already felt overwhelmed but now he's got to do in two weeks three months work there goes the balance don't worry about balance it's it's a myth you can't have it God doesn't speak about it really at all but what he speaks about over and over again is rhythm.

So here's the prayer Lord what season of life am I in help me discern that what is my season and what is appropriate in this season what do I need to do right now Proverbs chapter 6 verses 6 through 8 says look at the ant you sluggard it's actually talking in this situation kind of like a lazy person.

Proverbs 6:6–8

Consider its ways and be wise it has no commander no overseer or ruler yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers food at harvest.

It does what is appropriate in the appropriate season.

If you live life with that rhythm you will be blessed.

So pray Lord what is my season help me discern it what do I need to do right now in this season and trust that the rhythm of life will bring another season your way and the challenges you have in this season will dissipate.

And then beyond that pray Lord what do you need me to do every day?

What's the right rhythm for my day?

When should I rise?

What should I do when I first wake up what should I do before I go to bed what kind of things should I build into my day?

Lord what do I need to do every week what's the right rhythm for my week is there just sometimes it's as simple as looking at one afternoon one evening and realizing you know what if we blocked that out if we set everything else aside and said we protect this one five hour period you rest you breathe and you reset my wife and I had one of those this last week it was our 20th anniversary we went to the we went to the exotic town of LJ Georgia for oh but you know what it was crazy we were by ourselves just the two of us for four days we had had one night in the last 12 years oh sorry we had had multiple nights in the last 12 years or so with with no kids like a night you know it's happened a couple times grandparents take the kids the only time we had had more than one night without all of our kids in the last decade plus was when we went to Guatemala a few years ago on a mission trip.

It was amazing it was like and we decided that every 20 years we need four days that's the right rhythm for our marriage you know so just build that in no it's it was it was just a chance to breathe to rest to reset and it was wonderful because it was it was rhythmic.

It's like breathing that's how life is that's how it's been designed by God.

You don't need balance you need rhythm ask God to show you what it is and then go with it.

Do what is appropriate in the season that you're in and build the right rhythm into your day your week your month and beyond you'll be blessed for it.

That's wise living all right we're gonna wrap up by taking Lord's Supper and then uh I think I have it.

Ooh back pocket got it and then after that stick around please please stick around because we've got a bunch of baptisms we've got to celebrate this all right we're gonna be like a baptism assembly line this morning it's exciting all right you know it's it's amazing that we're talking about rhythm and I was thinking about Lord's Supper and how this has become such a part of our rhythm on Sundays.

Like almost like clockwork.

Sometimes we mess with it a little bit but almost every Sunday this is the last thing we're gonna do.

We're gonna stop we're gonna take this little meal and by the way if you're new we have these cups with bread and juice you can go grab them at the back you're not gonna mess anything up if you do that.

The juice represents the blood of Jesus the bread represents his body and we we pause and every Sunday we do this together we take the bread we we drink the juice we remember what Jesus has done for us and it's it's just the rhythm of our worship.

It's how we get our minds focused on him.

It's like breathing we just thank him for what he's done for us and we move on.

And so with that in mind let's let's take the bread let's pray for it Lord we thank you for what you've done for us we thank you for the sacrifice that you made for us you defeated death on our behalf and now we don't have to fear it death does not win death does not have the final say sometimes in our world it feels like that feels like everything's falling apart feels like everything's too much but nothing is too much for you you prove that when you died on the cross and rose again even death wasn't too much for you.

So Lord as we take this bread help us rest in you help us get in sync with with your rhythm Lord like a heartbeat of a small child that gets in sync with its mother's heartbeat help us live and breathe the right rhythm with you let's take the bread now the juice Lord we thank you for this juice this is your blood poured out for us as a as an offering cleansing us from our sin Lord we love you so much help us take this in help us rest in in you and your love for us and help us continue to be seekers of wisdom doing what must be done in the season we're in just like you did Jesus this is what had to be done at the right time help us live like you let's take the juice