Balancing Work and Life

Well, I love your church. Thank you for having me back. René is such a dear friend and Mark and Valerie and all the staff that I know are just such amazing people. And you need to know if you need somebody from the outside, I'm in church every Sunday, but I'm in a different church every Sunday. So I get to see a lot of places. You are really connected to a great church here. You have made a wise choice to plug in here at Twin Lakes. And so thank you staff for doing such a great job here. And it's a delight to be with you.

Now, the topic that we want to talk about today is very appropriate even in view of what Mark was saying about summer starting to wind down. And before you know it, we're going to be back into that whole fall grind and scheduling and priorities and all that sort of thing. So let me set it up with a story from our family that hopefully will create a little bit of a metaphor for what we want to do in our time together this morning.

There are five children in the Butterworth family. They're all grown, a daughter and then four sons. They're all grown and gone. And so, but when they were growing up, every summer, I mean every summer part of the routine was that I would be invited to speak at week long summer family conferences throughout the country. There are many great conference centers even right here in your own backyard. And we visited so many different ones and there was this one, we were living in Southern California at the time, there was one that was right outside of Los Angeles to the east up towards kind of the Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead area. We'd go up there every summer.

And if you've never been a part of a week long family conference, the schedule was kind of like you'd start Monday morning with a meeting for the adults and they had meetings for all the kids at their levels. And then the whole family was reunited at lunch and we'd spend the afternoon together and we'd have dinner together and then there would be an adult speaker for the adults in the evening and there would be meetings that were child centered for the kids as well. So this particular year, it's Monday morning and I'm the morning speaker. I give the presentation in the morning and the whole family comes together at lunch and my kids come back with one of the classic illustrations of child psychology and reverse psychology that I've ever experienced.

Because my kids come back and they go to the dining room and they say, "Dad, guess what our teachers told us today?" I said, "I don't know, what?" They said, "Boys and girls, there's something new up at the lake. It's really big and it's really scary. It's called the blob. Don't go up to the lake, boys and girls. This is very scary. You tell your mom and dad at lunch, 'We can't go to the lake, mom and dad, because the blob is up there.'" And then of course after like a five second beat, they quickly say, "So can we eat our lunch real quick and go out and see the blob?" You know, just classic.

So all the kids end up there with their parents and I'm curious, how many of you know what a blob is before I describe it? Okay, good. We're, we're, we got five people. Anyway, let me tell you what a blob is. It's really not that hard. You just kind of stay with me here. It's like an inner tube. It's rubber. It lays in the water except instead of a doughnut kind of thing, it's a giant long hot dog. Okay? The blob that I experienced was about 10 feet wide and about 40 feet long, made out of rubber. You inflate it and you put it in the lake. You put one end of the hot dog by the shore underneath a diving board, like a high dive. And then the other end of the blob goes out to the center of the lake.

And the way you play with the blob is one by one, kids are lined up on the high dive and they jump off one at a time and they land on the back end of the blob. And then they scooch up to the front end of the blob and they give an okay sign that they're ready. And then the next kid jumps off the high dive and hits the back end of the blob. And in blob terminology, this is known as being launched. Because the kid on the front end of the blob now goes flying into the air, legs and arms flailing, lands in the center of the lake, and there's a segment of the population that thinks this is entertaining.

So it was the first summer of the blob. Apparently Arnold T. Blob had just invented the device and all the glitches weren't out of blob technology at this point. We go up there the first afternoon, my kids are all in line, and the first thing we realize, well let me put it this way. You remember when we were kids and we used to jump into those inner tubes that had been kind of baking in the sun all afternoon? That's one hot blob. So that was an immediate fix. They got a garden hose set up and it just kept wetting down the blob the whole time. Problem solved, no longer hot blob.

New problem. That is one slippery blob. And I would watch these kids one after another wait, it seemed like an hour in line to get their shot. And they'd jump off the high dive and they'd hit the back of the blob and immediately whoop, just slip right off. Swim over to shore, get in line, start again. So as the week proceeded, these kids are getting a little better as the week goes on. Some of them would get about halfway out before, you know, they'd slip off. The most frustrating, you've got to feel for this guy, he lands on the back of the blob, he gets all the way out to the front, and while he's giving the okay sign, he slips off and falls into the lake. That's frustrating.

Well I tell this story with a certain degree of pride because my oldest son, Jesse, was about ten years old at the time. And he was one of the first ones to actually master the blob. He landed on the back and he scootched all the way out to the front and he gave the okay sign, he was ready to be launched. And with great pride I looked up on the diving board to see who would be launching my son and I was a bit surprised because it was someone I had met earlier in the week at the adult meeting. He came up to me and he said, "I thought I recognized you." They said in the intro, "You used to speak to all the NFL teams." Do you remember me? I used to play for the Raiders. I was an offensive lineman. Now I've been retired so I put on a little weight, but I mean, this was the guy that was going to launch my son.

So he goes off the diving board and he hits the back and folks, launch doesn't really capture what happened at this point. Because Jesse goes flying, I mean, forget the lake. He's beyond the, you know, radar picked him up in Albuquerque. You know, I think he ended up in Texas and by the time he got home he was like 18. But anyway, it was just an amazing experience to watch that they had not yet figured out a small weight differential. You know, the person launching you ought to weigh about the same as the person being launched.

But I tell you this story for a reason. You know, as a guest I don't ever want to just overlap material that you've already heard. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this following statement is not one that you're used to hearing all that often. Ladies and gentlemen, life is a blob. Let me tell you what I mean by that. To successfully operate the blob, what you need to have in the language of the eighth grade science teacher is you need to have dynamic equilibrium. That you are able to get to the front without falling to either side. We know dynamic equilibrium as balance. Okay?

But the reason dynamic equilibrium is difficult to achieve is because of another eighth grade science term that you're much more familiar with. It's gravity. Gravity is pulling you every direction making balance difficult to achieve. Now I always start with that when we talk about balance in our life because you may erroneously be thinking, "Well, I could be more balanced in my life if I just got rid of all the bad stuff." You know, I do all these things that just are a waste of time. If I just had the good things in my life, I would be balanced. That's not necessarily so. I mean, gravity is a good thing. You are grateful for gravity today or you'd be floating on the ceiling in a very uncomfortable position.

Good things still need to be balanced in our lives. And so this morning wherever you are in the life cycle, whether you are in the midst of raising a, you know, SUV full of kids or whether you've raised them and they're gone or whether you're in your retirement yet, wherever you are, you've probably discovered it really doesn't necessarily get any easier to balance all the demands that we have in life. What we need is a model, is a paradigm, somehow a way to develop a plan, a practical program of how to achieve balance in our lives.

So what I want to do for a few minutes this morning is take a look at a model for balance. It occurred to me that the most balanced person we could ever study from the Scriptures would be the Lord Jesus when He was on earth. I mean, think about it. He was fully God yet fully man, which meant He had balance issues that He needed to develop as well. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if in some passage of the four Gospels we could find as close to a 24-hour period in the life of Jesus so that we could see how He spent a day? Well, I think I've come as close as I may in the sixth chapter of Mark.

And so if you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Mark 6. I know you have an outline in your bulletin. I'd love for you to pull that out as well because what I want to look at is a day in the life of Jesus and specifically identify three things that characterized His day. And then I want to use them as a way to help us live our days in a more balanced way. Mark chapter 6, we're actually going to begin in verse 6. Mark 6, 6. And just a note of Bible trivia here. As you know, the Bible is written in paragraph form. And interestingly enough, Mark chapter 6 is one of those rare verses where a paragraph actually begins in the middle of a verse, which is very unusual. Mark 6, literally 6b is where we're going to start.

And He, speaking of Jesus, was going around the villages teaching. He was going around the villages teaching. So the first thing we see in a day in the life of Jesus is number one, He taught. Okay? Your first fill in is, He taught. And that says to me that tasks were a part of His life. Now let me tell you why I think that's important. It's from a personal outgrowth of my church-related experience. I grew up in church. I was in church every Sunday from the time I was little. And I knew about Jesus from all the Bible stories that we were told.

And the way Jesus was always portrayed to me was that Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins, but while He was on earth, His main role was to invest His life into twelve other people, the twelve disciples. And so He would live life with them. He would mentor them. He would hang out with them. And I heard that so much that there was a point in my life where I kind of concluded, you know, Jesus had a pretty cool life because He really didn't do anything. He just kind of hung out. He just was there hanging, being available. That's a pretty good deal. And that's why this first element is so important. He had a job. He taught.

I mean here's an interesting way to think about it. Here's a concept we don't know about much anymore. Any of you old enough to remember when people used to carry business cards? Anybody remember those days? Business cards. Ask your grandparents when you get home what that was all about. Business cards. What would Jesus' business card look like if He had carried one in the first century? That's an interesting question. Because it could go a lot of different ways, right? I mean He could go full force, full on, the Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the universe, Savior of the world. Now that might be a little over the top at a meet and greet, you know, but He could say it. It was true.

But if He wanted to take a quieter and more humble approach based on just this little phrase that we read, He could have simply put "Jesus of Nazareth, teacher." He was a teacher. He conducted studies. He participated in activities. Tasks were an important part of His life. Now on the other hand we immediately go to the next verse, verse 7, where it says, "And He summoned the twelve and began to send them out." This is the second part. He interacted with people. Alright. He interacted with people which says to me that relationships were a part of His life.

This is the Jesus that I learned about growing up. The Jesus who did hang out, lived life, mentored, discipled, built into those twelve men. Okay? So what you have in just those first two elements is some pretty classic stuff. You have tasks and you have relationships. Now at your place of business, if you are in management or you have ever been tapped as one with leadership potential, I mean organizational psychologists have been teaching this stuff for years. They basically say people who lead effectively have one of two leanings, tendencies to which they gravitate.

Some leaders are very task oriented. It's all about the job. Other leaders are relationship oriented. It's all about the people. If you have a boss who gives you an assignment, you got six weeks to do it and I want to see the finished product at the end of six weeks. Task oriented leaders immediately start looking at the calendar in their mind. This is how much I want done by the first week. This is how much I want done by the third week. I want to be completely done by week five so we have a full week just in case there were any problems we can do damage control. And they finish the task beautifully.

Alright. Relationship oriented people. You got six weeks to do this task and I want to see it. Relationship oriented leaders say to themselves this is going to take some work. I need a team. I need a dream team. So I'm going to need you to help me out on the sales on this and you to do promotion. I'm going to need you to do it. And at the end of six weeks you're going to have this all done and it's going to be really, really great. Okay. Equally as effective but their emphasis is different in how they get there.

Now usually people with that as a description can kind of figure out how they're wired. If you need a little more help, let me give you a couple of obvious things. Task oriented people. You are known for your love of the to-do list. You love to-do lists. Whether you write it out on a three by five or it's on your iPhone or it's on your laptop. Somewhere you make every day a list of things you want to get done. It's exhilarating. The only thing that's more exciting is putting that little check by each little thing that you have accomplished. I mean it's the highlight of your day. Those are task oriented people.

Relationship oriented people. What you love is getting everybody together. You are a meeting freak. Let's get together and then to make it even more colorful, meetings with food. I'll bring the bagels. Let's talk this through. Okay. Let's meet at lunch. I think we should throw a barbecue and we'll get ... And it's always like meeting, meeting, meeting. And everybody is just amazed by all that's accomplished in the meetings. Except of course the task oriented people who think it's disgusting.

So let's get the elephant out from under the rug. Task oriented people don't have that much respect for relationship oriented people. And equally relationship oriented people don't think task oriented people are all that cool either. Task oriented people say, "Oh this is relationship oriented people. They drive me crazy." I get into the first thing they have and they go, "Let's have a meeting. We'll have donuts and we'll have a meeting." And I have this meeting and I leave that meeting. I got like eight more things on my to-do list and I've gained five pounds on those bear claws. Alright.

Well the relationship oriented people say, "Oh well you task oriented people. You drive me crazy and I'll tell you why. You're all, you're all cold, distant, aloof, alone." And the wise task oriented responses, "Well I'm not alone. I got it right here on my to-do list. Make a friend." So if you have never heard me teach before, don't keep looking for the deep rocket science part of this talk. Alright. I mean this is as deep as it gets folks. And I realize it's very elementary and very basic. And I don't mean to insult your intelligence. But honestly, don't those two orientations explain why so many of us struggle with balance just in that one area alone?

I mean what task oriented person can identify with putting your head on the pillow at the end of the night having two simultaneous thoughts both good and bad. You hit the pillow and you think, "Wow what a day. I checked everything off my list. It was beautiful." Followed by, "And I don't think I talked to a soul." Or the relationship oriented person, "Hah-ho man donuts with Sally and bagels with Charlie and the all you can eat buffet. What a great day." Followed by, "I got to get some stuff done." I mean there's enough explanation for imbalance right there. Trying to be task oriented and have relationships in your life. Trying to be relationship oriented and get stuff done. How do you balance that out?

Well somehow Jesus had to do that. Because remember now theologically He was fully God yet fully man. There's a verse that describes His humanity as He was tested in all points just like us. And that's not just the big sins. To me that means He struggled to bring balance to His life every day as He approached a new day. That's why the third element in this routine is very, very important. We have the tasks, we have the relationships and then part C is He found time alone. He found time alone. It's all the way down in verse 31 if you're following along still in Mark 6.

"And Jesus said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest awhile.'" He found time alone which says to me that privacy was an important part of His life. Privacy was a part of His life. Now when I say time alone, when I say privacy, I'm talking about a time of introspection. I'm talking about a time of reflection. If you follow the traditions of the church, it's as many of us grew up with being told as having a quiet time, a devotional hour, a time of energizing by reading God's Word and praying and understanding how to make the best approach at each day.

All right? Yet interestingly enough, time alone is thought about very disparagingly in our culture. I mean privacy. Just think about a couple of examples. In prison, for example, what is the most severe punishment you can have as a prisoner? Solitary confinement, right? You go to the whole by yourself because of the deeds you've done here in the prison system. We take our parenting cues from that too, don't we? You go to your room, young lady. You think about what you've done. "Oh, mommy, don't." No, you go to your room. You watch the small TV. It's tough love, darling. I mean privacy is thought of as a punishment.

But yet Jesus used it as the optimum time for him to prioritize what was really important in his day. So if you take a day in the life of Jesus and you modernize it, what I want to do in the next section is I want to talk about a day in your life. And I want to use the same three concepts that we saw in Mark 6, but I want to give them different terms so that maybe they'll be a little more memorable for you. Okay? So under a day in your life, the very first word I'd like you to write down is the word attention. Attention. As in giving attention to the tasks that I want to accomplish. Attention.

Now under that point you have one of my favorite verses on this whole area. It's 1 Peter 4:10. And it says, "As each one has received a special gift." And if you're into circling, circle that phrase "special gift." And then circle the very next word. "As each has received a special gift, employ it." Isn't that an interesting word? It kind of just screams your job. Work with it. Employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Stated in common terms, that means every one of us in this room has something that God has given us as a gift. And we are to use that gift and work with it for His glory and to help other people.

Now the reason why I think this is so important is I've been talking about the topic of balance for years now, both in Christian organizations and out in the corporate circuit. And there's always this kind of thing for most folks who are still raising their kids and in the job world. It's like, well, I admit I spend so many hours working I'm not home as much as I should be. I kind of neglect the kids and I neglect my spouse. If I didn't have to work so much, I would be able to be at home more. And kind of in between the lines what they're implying is the job is the villain. The bad guy. If it wasn't for the bad guy, my job, I could be a better dad or a better mom or a better wife or a better husband. And that's not true.

That's not what God is saying. God doesn't minimize our work. God says you've been energized. You've been gifted to do certain things and do them in your job. Your job is not a villain because the cure for workaholism is not unemployment. You've just gone to another extreme. All right? It's managing your workaholism so that you're balanced between the tasks you're fulfilling and the relationships you live out. Two important sub-questions that might be helpful here under the whole idea of attention. Question number one. What is my mission? What is my mission? Why has God left you here on earth?

Now I realize this can sound a bit morbid. I don't mean for it to be morbid. But honestly, why aren't you already dead? God must have something for you to accomplish while you're here. That's one of the reasons why you're still around. What is it that He wants you to do? What is my mission? Well the place to begin, if you're absolutely clueless on that, is you absolutely have to discover your spiritual gift. What is it that God has given you that you would call your spiritual gift? Now if you're in the dark on that, this is perfectly timed and I didn't even realize it until I got here this weekend. The church is offering in a couple of weeks a class on how you can discover your spiritual gift.

So stay close to the bulletin and the announcements. You can plug in and understand how God wired you. But what I'm saying by this statement of what is my mission is after you discover your gift, now how can you take that gift and use it through your personality to do specifically what God has asked you to do? What is my mission? And then secondly, why do I work? Why do I work? Now I can think of a dozen punch lines and sarcastic statements to make. But why do I work? I mean from Scripture there's a lot of legitimate answers. I mean from God's view, work is a stewardship. You've been gifted and you use those gifts for His glory. In terms of my wife, I work as a provider. I provide money so that we can live for my kids. Work is a legacy.

Look at what I'm doing and you follow suit. I mean I still think back. Like I said, I have my daughters the oldest and then the four boys. The four boys. The four boys when they were teenagers. It's the summer. It's like noon. They're all still in bed. And I go into their room and I go, "Boys! Boys!" And I wake them up. "Boys, look at me. I'm your dad." "Boys, I'm dressed. I'm going to leave the house. And when I come back, I will have money. Boys, you can do this too. Get up. Put something on. Get out there." Now I don't know whether they all caught on or not. I think some are still asleep. But nonetheless, it's a model. It's creating a legacy for my children.

And then of course in the community, work is a ministry. When I go into a business, the comment that makes me shudder the worst is, "Oh, I can tell you the Christians that work in this company. Last one's in. First one's to leave. We always have to go back and double check their work because they just do shoddy work. They're not committed to it at all. That just, that makes me sick." As opposed to what I really love to hear is, "Oh yeah, I can tell you the Christians in this company. They do the best work of any employees that we have. They are so committed to integrity, I don't have to worry about looking over their shoulder all the time because I know they will do an excellent job." And somehow they balance out that excellence and that integrity with the relational side of it as well.

So don't think of work as bad. It's just as good. Relationship oriented people, task oriented people are not the devil. All right? They're good people. All right? Now that's attention. The second area is connection. Connection. That's the relationship part of it. Alright? Jesus in his farewell address to his disciples, John 13. I mean the setting is, it's Thursday night. He's going to go to the cross Friday at noon. And this is his last set of comments to the men he's built into. And he says the classic verse in 13:34–35, "A new commandment I give you that you love one another even as I have loved you that you also love one another because by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." I still can't get over that verse.

That of all the things Jesus could have said as the defining mark for one of his disciples, what he chose was the characteristic of love. Of being connected together. Of relating to one another. Two questions to think about under that. Question number one. Are my relationships more about giving or getting? Are my relationships more about giving or getting? Just wanting to probe on this a little further. Even some relationship oriented people fall into this tendency. And that is I want to get to know people. I want to get to know you because I bet someday you can help me somehow. Or you can do something for one of my kids. Or you would just be an important person to know. So I just want, you know, and there's a motive. There's an ulterior motive that isn't a giving kind of motive. It's I need you in my life so I'm going to, you know, make nice to you. Okay?

That's not what Jesus is talking about here. It's more in the second question. A relationship characterized by love. Are my relationships loving? Are they characterized by love or is it just kind of going through the motions? I have a wonderful story that summarizes this that I want to share with you. Years ago at a corporate event I got to hear a wonderful communicator, wonderful speaker, wonderful storyteller, wonderful author, Rabbi Kushner who wrote the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." He has a great story to encapsulate the value of relationships, the value of connection that I want to share with you.

This is what he told us that day. It's the story of a man sitting on a beach watching a boy and girl playing in the sand and they were building an elaborate sand castle. Just when they were almost finished, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing the sand castle to wet mud. The man was sure that they would burst out crying because all their hard work had gone to waste, but the children fooled him. They didn't cry. They ran up the shore laughing and holding hands and they sat down and started building another sand castle. The man realized the important lesson that they had taught him. No matter how good you are, no matter how smart you are, sooner or later a wave may come and knock down all that you have worked so hard to build up. And when that happens, only the person who has somebody's hand to hold will be able to laugh.

Is that a great story? That I need you, you need me. It's not about usury. It's not about getting tasks done. We were built to connect with one another. So we have attention in our life. We have connection in our life. The last area is what I call reflection. Okay? Reflection. You'll notice I've quoted both David and Isaiah. David says in Psalm 119, "The word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." The Scripture is what God uses to enlighten me on how I go about my day, how I prioritize decisions I make, people I talk to, tasks I accomplish. And I do that, as Isaiah says, in quietness and trust.

Again, this is in the tradition of the church, the classic quiet time that we spend together with God. So that's the first little sub-point there. Am I willing to regularly read God's word and pray? That every day I can spend some time allowing God to speak to me. Now, for me personally, where this has kind of stepped it up more than a notch or two is by this second question, and that is, am I willing to listen to God for balance in my life? It may sound silly to you, but again, having grown up in the church, I understood from the earliest days you read your Bible and you pray every day. I got that. I was even taught how to pray from the Scriptures. You pray for your leaders. You pray for the missionaries. You pray for the people that are sick. You pray for the people that don't know Jesus.

And only a few years ago did it occur to me, you know what? I bet I could pray and ask God to help me live a balanced life every day, and God won't refuse that prayer. He won't be insulted that I would pray for something so basic or so practical. All right? I think it's very, very important that we understand something that seems very counterintuitive. I got two issues that I'm trying to juggle, attention and connection. How am I going to do this? By adding a third element. It's reflection. It's what I call the tripod principle. You put a camera on a tripod. It's the third leg that keeps it up. You'd be very upset if I said, "Can I borrow your camera for a second? I'd like to put it on a bipod that I'm using." You get one shot off a bipod. I mean, I learned this as a child growing up back East. I used to play ice hockey. And I can't ice skate, but I could play ice hockey. You know why? Right skate, left skate, stick. The stick kept me up, which is why, of course, I only played goalie because if I ever lifted the stick, I'm sprawled out on the ice. But I was large enough I covered the entire goal. We were undefeated in pond hockey. All right?

So anyway, you need the third element. So as you look at the inside, we've taken these three things one more time and put them in a triangular form. You're going to put the word attention in the upper left-hand corner. You're going to put the word connection in the upper right-hand corner. And you're going to put reflection down at the bottom, and you're going to draw an equilateral triangle. But most of us instinctively draw it like a pyramid. This has the point at the bottom, and that's intentionally so that you can see that reflection is kind of the fulcrum to help you determine how to balance out your tasks and your relationships.

At the bottom of that, you'll notice Paul's verse from Romans 6, "Yield yourselves to God." To me, when I draw the triangle that way, it looks like a yield sign. And I've written the word yield right in the middle of that triangle because it helps me realize if I'm going to achieve balance in my life, it's not going to be because of my ingenuity, but it's going to be because I've surrendered this to God. I've yielded it to God, and He's going to help me figure out how to live in an effective way so that I can maximize the relationships that He's given me and the tasks that He's given me to perform.

From Mark chapter 6, that's how I believe Jesus would teach us about the subject of balance. Let's pray, shall we? Lord, I just pray this morning for each and every person that hears these words that You would help us achieve balance in our lives. For many of us, this is an overwhelming issue that brings us great discouragement. We want so much to be effective, but we're just overwhelmed. Lord, I pray that today would offer a good starting point for us to work on a balanced life. Lord, I pray for the one who is so burdened with the pain and despair and the hurt of life that You would just draw yourself close to them today, wrap yourself around them. May they feel Your love. Thank You, Lord, for being a God of balance. In Jesus' name, amen.