Saturday, July 30, 2011

Maintaining A Balanced Life Part 2: Social Balance

In part one; we discussed having mental balance, physical balance and emotional balance. And we need balance in those areas of our lives, but we also need social balance. You can have everything right in your life, but if your relationships with people are not balanced, your life will still seem like it stinks. A lot of people don’t want to be Christians because we don’t balance our social life. Social balance does not mean balancing going to church with going to the club. That’s not what this is about. It means being open minded enough to allow others to experience the Christ in us. We have to be open enough to allow people to have and share their beliefs with us, even if they are different, while maintaining our Christian beliefs. One of Jesus’ main characteristics was His ability to socialize with everyone. In fact one of the Pharisees major criticisms of Jesus was that He hung out with sinners. (Mark 2:16).

Social balance is being in harmony with each other. God wants us to be in harmony with each other. (Romans 12:16-18) People that are high achievers are people who help and work with all types of people. And one of the benefits of having social balance is you will develop meaningful relationships with all types of people. With the right attitude and motivation; long lasting relationships will be developed. Your attitude alone can be your testimony to the people you come in contact with. When people experience you, they will want to know where your light comes from. We are not the light. We are just following the light. Jesus is the light. (John 8:12)

Having social balance is necessity if we are going to win souls to Gods kingdom. We do that by being open to the lost, keeping a righteous attitude and being motivated to build meaningful relationships with people. That’s a balanced social life.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Maintaining a balanced life

As Christians we need to maintain balance in our lives. We cannot be so Christ centered within ourselves that we forget to do the work God sent us to do, win souls to Christ. We need to have balance when it comes to winning souls to Christ. We have to balance sin & grace. We cannot just talk about the sin and leave out Gods grace for the sinner. On the other hand we cannot just talk about the grace of God without telling them why they need Gods grace. "Because we have all sinned and fallen short of Gods glory." We also need to maintain personal balance in our lives as well.
 
When you’re out of balance in your personal live you don’t really understand what is going on around you. Two things happen when we get out of balance. 1) You get frustrated. You’re doing a lot of things for people, making sure everyone else is taken care of. Making sure everyone else is happy. But you realize that there is no one making sure you are alright and happy. You pour out, pour out and pour out, but there is nothing coming back into you. No one is restocking you, encouragement and strengthening you. And now you’re out of balance. If you get past the frustration and your still out of balance, you then get fatigued. You get fatigued because you’re trying to get the attention you think you need. You start doing drastic things (conforming) to get the attention.
 

So how can we maintain balance in our lives? Here are some areas to examine and keep in balance.
 

The first area is mental balance. You maintain mental balance by stretching your mind, by screening your input. You have to watch what enters into your mind. Romans 12:2 tell us to renew our minds. Once you get your mind renewed, you have to keep going back and doing it again and again. Renewing your mind must happen on a continual basis. I would say daily, but many times it’s hourly. This may not be the best example to use, but it will help. Most people take a shower or wash daily. Why because you get dirty daily. And sometimes more, so you shower again. When you get dirty again you shower again. Dirt gets on, and you wash it off. Renewing your mind is the same way. Unless you live in an isolated world avoiding all forms of communication, you will have things that enter your mind on a daily basis; through television, radio, work and many more ways. And you need to renew your mind every time. We cannot let the world conform and mold us. We came from the world, but at some point we have to stop acting so much like the world.  People who don’t renew their minds are like open receptacles for trash, and everyone has access to them. Anyone can throw an idea out at them and they’re gone with it. You have to screen what you allow to come in and out. It’s our responsibility to renew our own mind not anyone else’s.
 

The next area is physical balance.1 Cor 6:19-20 We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Our bodies are not ours, but Gods. He lives within us! It’s not your body; you’ve been given a body to glorify God. It is the vehicle that God gave us to spread His Word. And we need to take care of them.  But, what satan likes to do is try to get to someone early in their life to make them mar and deface Gods body before they know they are the Lords workmanship. What satan did to a lot of Gods children was he got to them early and deceptively talked them into marking up Gods body, before they knew better. Now, this is not said to be a condemning statement. If you’re in Christ now you are saved. If you got a tattoo in the past, that is not going to cause you to lose your salvation. So if you did that in the past, do not feel bad or guilty. But, this is said for someone who may be thinking of getting one. That is not Gods desire for the body He gave you (read Leviticus 19:28). Remember the body you have is not yours. Its Gods body, He bought you out of the world with a price. So take care of yourself. Get physical check-ups and examinations. Keep yourself physically balanced.
 

The third area is emotional balance. There are some things that God placed inside of us that work involuntary, without us even thinking about them. Physically our heart beats without us thinking about. Our stomachs digest food without us having to sit and concentrate on it. Our lungs work without us thinking inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale again…and exhale. God placed all of these organs inside of us and we cannot actually see them. But we know that they are functioning. Why? Because, we are alive; because we are breathing; because we eat food through our mouths and later... Well, my point is God placed stuff inside of us physically.
 

 God also placed spiritual things in us when we accepted Christ. Galatians 5:22 gives us a clear picture of an emotionally balanced person. the fruit of the Spirit paints a picture of who Jesus is. It gives us a picture of the anointing of Jesus in us. The anointing on your lives is what people see. And it’s an insult to God for us to say that we are His and don’t have the fruit of the Spirit functioning in us (emotional balance). That your love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self-control are not functioning. To say you don’t have that is to say that God made you incomplete. God put the fruit of the spirit in us. He didn’t tell us to go get it. HE put it there. What the devil tries to do is to defect us emotionally, so we insult God publicly. We’ll say we are Christians, but only be kind when people are kind to us. There may have been a time when you got upset when people talked about you, but know that you’re mature. The Holy Spirit and self-control says “be quiet, smile and let it go. Let them see the Christ in you”.
 

As you mature your fruit matures. And now you’re able to love easier, rejoice more and suffer longer. You’re a peace keeper now. In more control of yourself and have faith greater than a mustard seed. Just like you cannot see your heart or lungs, you cannot see the Holy Spirit. You see the result of the Holy Spirit. You don’t see love, you see someone who is loving. You don’t see joy, you see someone re-joy-cing.  You see the fruit of the Spirit.
 

So, how do you stay emotionally balanced? Through the word of God. As long as you are getting the Word of God you stay emotionally balanced. You have to meditate of the Word of God. You cannot just simply go to church set there not take notes, waive your hands, say amen and wonder why nothing changed. The Word may have got on you, but, it’s not getting in. Because you’re not meditating on it. That’s like the doctor putting someone on high blood pressure medication, but they don’t take it. They sit it in the cabinet, but they won’t take it. That’s not going to help their condition at all. You need to get the Word and reflect on it daily. That’s how you maintain an emotionally balanced life.

In closing we need to maintain mental, physical and emotional balance in our lives. In order to have mental balance, we have to renew our minds every day. And we have to screen and filter what comes into our minds. We need to maintain physical balance as well. Take care of our bodies. God gets glory when we take care of our bodies. And we are able to better carry the Word of God to others. Finally we need to maintain emotional balance in our lives. Satan wants to defect us emotionally so we insult God publically. But if we meditate on the Word of God we will stay emotionally balanced. If you don’t already have one. You need to find a church home where you can receive the word of God; sow seeds (give tithes & offering). The bible says give and you will receive. That’s balance.
 

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Personal Evangelism


Evangelism is communicating the message of the gospel to unbelievers; the message that Jesus Christ died to save them. As Christians we are to be ready at all times to tell anyone why we go to church. Because "I once was blind but know I see." One key point in the process of evangelism is balance. We must keep our desire to tell other about Jesus while being open minded enough to understand that others can have their own opinions and beliefs, and they may not always agree with ours.

Real evangelism begins when we surrender ourselves to Christ. He is to be our life and our consuming passion. He is the one who is in control. And since he is in control, we must trust him to tell us when, where and how to share the gospel. When we surrender ourselves, God will make us so interesting to non-believers that they'll want to know about our lives. They will notice something about us and they will begin to ask questions.

When they ask questions it is important for us to be ourselves and be real. God works through our personalities. So it’s important for us to remain gentle and courteous when sharing the gospel. We must be polite, pleasant and approachable. Seventy percent of evangelism is being approachable. Patience is also important because change takes time. It could take years for an unbeliever to begin to change and want to be saved. But it’s not up to us to change them. God is the one who will make the change. All he wants us to do is plant the seed. Our actions and attitude are also important; Our Character, Conduct and Conversation; because non-believers have a high standard for Christians. They don’t expect us to act and react in certain situations the way they would.

We will have bad experiences while witnessing to non-believers. They may push back against the gospel we are sharing with them. But we cannot give up because of bad experiences. The process is painful, but when lives are changed we will forget about the bad experiences.