Balancing Our Great Commission
You feel like you’re not enough…or too much.
You don’t say the right things, text the right things, pray the right things.
Are you enough?
I’m asking you, what do you think?
If you are a child of God, I want to tell you, indeed, you are enough through Christ. Because he is, therefore, you are:
a child of God,
a deliverer of the Gospel,
forgiven,
enough.
Yet, we are called to a higher pursuit! We are called to faithfulness, humility, obedience.
No, we can’t serve two masters. No, we can’t walk in both the flesh and the spirit. No, we can’t say we love God but hate our brother.
Yes, we need to fix our eyes on what is unseen, and not on this flaky, faulty world. Yes, we need to be compelled to pursue an unpopular, countercultural life. Yes we need to guide our eyes, ears, and hearts.
So what do we do about this tug-of-war?
Countercultural is the way to go!
But balance- how to we interact with real-life without letting go of our convictions and relationship with the Lord?
How do we speak and live the Truth in love?
Let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
I bring up this up because the definition of love is God. Our ultimate goal as Christians is to reflect his image. It’ll take a lifetime to accomplish, but their is work to be done, spiritual muscles to tone.
Another piece of scripture that connects with this stream of thinking is Galatians 5:22-23:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
How I see the Fruits of the Spirit is like this-
they aren’t a given, they are a gift. They are the hand-written ruler on the trim that helps us measure ourselves to see how we’re growing up in the faith, more closer to our image-bearer, and away from the deceiver.
It’s a way to align ourselves with the Spirit, but be curious about the world around us.
We are to be in the world, but not of the world (1 John 2:15-17) yet we can’t hide ourselves under a rock and not interact with the world around us.
God put us in this world to have dominion over it. We’re not bossing it around no, but our influence should be gently guiding the world around us, and we very well can’t do that by hiding away with our Bibles and not coming out for air.
Balance is what we’re craving- pursuing heaven, without forsaking our God and his design for us.
Here’s how I feel led to pursue said “balance.” I look to the scriptures, and to where my hope comes from!
My basic theory is that these three character traits live at the top of that spiritual maturity ruler written on your kitchen trim: humility, faithfulness, and obedience.
Because we obey the Father and love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and also seek to love our neighbor as ourselves, we practice our Christian walk faithfully, staying humble servants, always eager to give more than we expect to receive.
Are you, while acknowledging your human frailty, measuring up? Notice, I didn’t ask if you’re doing enough.
Are you lifting the heavy weights of long-suffering and self-control to grow your spiritual muscles?
Once we establish that foundation, now we can begin to talk about balance and interacting with our broken, fallen, world.
We are made to create, experience, and enjoy.
Where do I pull that from?
Genesis!
Elohim, the name for God that means creator, designed the earth and universe intricately and beautifully, and when he created man, he designed them with community in mind, giving them an occupation- taking dominion over the earth, and fellowshipping daily with Yahweh in the garden.
It was B.C. 0, the earth was new, sin hadn’t entered the world, nakedness was still not shameful, the serpent hadn’t entered the picture, life was good.
Life is not easy like a Sunday morning in our modern day and age. Especially in our culture, profanity and anti-Christianity lives openly around us. It is hard to stay on the straight and narrow with your blinders on, without forsaking every opportunity around you.
Like Jackie Hill Perry said at her Glory event, “We can lead [ministry and evangelism] with our humanity. We should acknowledge our weaknesses and shortcomings, and acknowledge them often, as in our weakness, God’s power is made strong!”
2 Corinthians 12: 9-10-
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
Our life is our testimony, it’s not just the past moments that brought us to the foot of the cross. Our life is a living testimony. The past and present to our suffering speaks to the realness of suffering, strife, and imperfections we experience in our daily life.
Jesus connects to us through our humanity. That is so important! Just like the chosen race is , a historical, physical, and allegorical nation that represents God’s example and goodness from his position in heaven, the God incarnate came down from his heavenly throne to really live out his goodness so tangibly that it left a deep mark- it ripped a curtain in two, sent a temple to pieces, and changed the world forever like a seismic ripple.
We can trust that Jesus knows how we feel in everything. He didn’t have Playboy but since there is nothing new under the sun, we can know that there were things he had to shield his eyes from to stay pure and protect his virtue.
He shows us through his testimony how to overcome, how to strive for balance, how to touch sin, but not become unclean.
As King Solomon, the first and last wisest man of the flesh on earth ties off his book, Ecclesiastes, by encouraging us to enjoy the fruits of our toiling labor. Not that we should abuse grace ( Galatians 5:13) but that we are always acknowledging that every single blessing is rained down from heaven by God. Everything we have is all his, so let that reminder be a conviction to use his resources honorably.
We should enjoy (while not indulging) in our riches, whatever it is that God provides, whether it is monetarily, our time, our familial relationships, our friendships, our community, the earth and nature around us, our food, our clothing, our literature, the list goes on.
God created us to see him in everything, and we’re allowed to partake in his creation. Not idolize it, not demand it, not engage in sin for it, but to enjoy and appreciate it.
