The Beauty of Balance [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. It's amazing how much weight you can put down onto the chair if you use the back legs and the front legs.

But if you insist on you only using two of the legs, then it becomes quite unstable. And that's sort of the way it is in life. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Word and Spirit, The Beauty of Balance, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. Now, if you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you this resource, today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news in this crazy, overstressed, mixed-up world where you feel so much push and pull on your life and tugged in different directions and at times wonder if it's better just to play it safe in the middle somewhere. God has an answer, an answer for the fullness of life and health and the prospering of those lives of ours physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

And it is a secret that is woven into the very fabric of the whole universe. And then a word is called balance. And we want to start today talking about the beauty of balance and what that means in our lives. So I read about a teenager who came home with a report card, had all Fs and one D. And the exasperated father said, son, what have you been doing?

His answer was classic. He said, well, I guess I've been focusing too much on one subject. When you say the word balance, a lot of times what people mean is, yeah, I got to get my life more in balance. I need to pull everything in from all these extremes that I've got going on. I need to pull it back in.

But what we really want to be conveying today and in coming weeks is that balance is not so much this kind of safe haven in the middle where you never try anything risky, you never feel anything deeply, but instead balance is this amazing design of God's in which there is for everything that is expressed in our emotions or in our activities, there is kind of this seeming opposites that are at work at all times. When I was a kid, I like to lean my chair back at the kitchen table and the dinner table. And my mother repeatedly warned me that such activity could be dangerous to the point of tipping backwards and that if I were to fall backwards in the chair that it could hurt. And I, of course, resented such restrictions on my freedom and rejected the motherly mandate until one evening I fell back.

And I don't know exactly how I secured this particular injury, but it was my chin that got split open with a complete trip to the emergency room and stitches. I have a scar to remind me that if you lose balance, you get a boo-boo. And so take the image, start with this, of a chair is a good reason that it's got four legs to it. The back two legs are good sturdy legs, and they're there for a good purpose. And you can use those back two legs, but it's also got the front two legs. It's amazing how much weight you can put down onto the chair if you use the back legs and the front legs. But if you insist on you only using two of the legs, then it becomes quite unstable.

And that's sort of the way it is in life. When you see a tightrope walker or somebody riding a unicycle across a tightrope, so often they'll have one of these long poles that are sticking out to the sides. There is a physics principle that is at work here. And so I had to contact my engineering student's son to ask him what this was. And it is a physics principle called the moment of inertia. And don't ask me for details about this.

I've been talking to some scientists in the church trying to understand it better. But you can simply identify with this. If you think you're going to fall, instinctively you throw your arms out.

Why do you do that? It's the same reason that this long pole comes out and usually has some weights at the end. The reason for this is if your weight gets distributed further out from your body, then it causes your body to resist rotation as much as it would otherwise.

Case in point. If I were to spin around with my arms out like this, that's about all I can do without getting dizzy right there. I can go at a certain speed. But if my arms were in like this, and if you were to stand up and try it, you'd realize you can turn around much easier that way. Try it sometime.

Not now. And if you're listening by radio, don't try it in the car. But anyway, you've seen ice skaters, figure skaters, you know, when they're twirling around. And they might start with their arms out and they get closer and then they come in like this and they're just going so, so fast. Because if all, everything is in tight like this, then you're more prone to be able to rotate. Well, when you put it out like this, it causes you to rotate less.

In other words, what happens is several things are going on. This weight is distributed out to the left and right, and then it gets that center of gravity down, giving it like it's a bigger foundation. And so the tightrope walker is more secure to have something far to the left and far to the right that is being adjusted like this, you see. And that's the image I want you to hold on to for balance.

It's not a picture of the very middle of the road, safe kind of life. The fact of the matter is that to say that Jesus came full of grace and truth is not to say that He was 50% grace and 50% truth. He was 100% grace.

He's 100% truth. In other words, to say that you are balanced doesn't mean that you have too much of one thing or another. It means that there is a counter weighting that this is the way God has designed the world. You can't have too much grace. There's no such thing as that person's got too much grace.

No, you can have all the grace that you might ever imagine as long as you also have truth, right? It's kind of like talking about spirit and word. You can't have too much of the Holy Spirit. You can't have too much of the Holy Spirit.

But if you have no word, then you could run into real problems. You can't have too much word. You can't have too much love for the Bible. You can't have too much knowledge of the word.

You can't have too much time in the weekend. But if you don't have the Holy Spirit, then there's something that's going to be wrong. It's like one wit has said it. It said, all word and no spirit, you dry up. All spirit, no word, you blow up. And if you have spirit and word, you grow up.

You see, it's just that way. And what we want to be seeing is, as we start today, is that Jesus is fully God, but He's also fully human. And He demonstrates in His earthly life what real humanity looks like. And we're going to see that today, that Jesus is probably not what you might expect of a God-man, but He's very human.

And I want to show you some of the fullness of the expression of life that's in Jesus in this sense of malice. We'll be talking about all different kinds of arenas of life. You think about how many things there are that seem to be opposite that yet are both so, so vital for a healthy life, right? We need hard work. I believe in hard work. We need to have hard work in our lives, but we also need to have real rest and recreation. If all you have is hard work and you never have rest, then you're going to become sick and your relationships will become sick. And you won't be able to have the kind of communion with God or with people that makes for a healthy life. But if all you have is rest and all you have is recreation, then it'll lead you either to the poor house or to a poverty of purpose in this world or both, which will be very discouraging. We need laughter and we need tears.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. If you've ever thought that being filled with the Holy Spirit meant shutting off your mind, you're in for a wonderful surprise. God's Word and God's Spirit were never meant to be separated. Word and Spirit always belong together.

The key to abundant life in Christ isn't knowing your Bible. The secret isn't being filled with the Spirit. The answer is both Word and Spirit. Though some traditions emphasize studying Scripture and some traditions emphasize the Spirit, the path to real Christian growth is the fullness of both Word and Spirit. As someone once said, all Word, no Spirit, you dry up. All Spirit, no Word, you blow up. Both Word and Spirit, you grow up. When you make a gift of support this month, we'll send you Alan Wright's newest audio album on CD or digital download titled Word and Spirit.

It's about the beauty of balance. Embrace the fullness of God's Word and His Spirit and grow like never before. With Word and Spirit, you'll grow up and you'll be helping someone else grow as well. And remember, when you partner with Alan Wright Ministries, you'll be broadcasting the love of God to thousands every day. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. I love laughter and joy. And joy is a fruit of the Spirit and it's a mark of the Christian life. And so it ought to be that our natures is in crisis.

There's lots and lots of joy. But in this world, we also have trouble. And the Bible says that blessed are those that mourn for they'll be comforted. And so if we don't ever have any tears, if we don't ever learn how to mourn our losses, if we don't ever learn how to grieve, then how shall we be comforted? And so we need both.

And we'll be seeing it. Jesus had times where He's the life of the party and times where He'd weep by the grave of a friend. It's important in our home life. It's important theologically.

It's important in our worship of God. I think this is one of the things that sometimes we miss is that there is in our relationship with God a balance that is very hard to describe to someone because there is at the same time a sense in which God is awesome. He is holy, holy, holy.

He is the Creator of the ends of the earth. He is the Lord Most High. And to encounter God is to encounter the One who is greater than imagination. And so there's something that strikes awe into the heart of someone that encounters God.

And yet if you know God and if you have accepted Christ, you've been made God's child. And that means that God is your Father and He's a good Father and He's a gentle Father and He's a loving Father. And so we experience God in intimacy and we are told to draw near to Him and come to the throne of grace boldly in our time of need and not be afraid of Him. So there's a way in which you live your life in which you have both a sense of awe and intimacy with God. And in our devotional life and in our worship life, there is a time and there's a wonderful place for celebration. There is something that is powerful when we discover how to really rejoice in the Lord, to become free to express ourselves to God. And there's a time also for contemplation. And there's a pathway of spiritual growth, a meditative life that steeps in His word and thinks deeply and ponders His truth in our heart.

So a life that is all intimacy but no awe will miss something of who God is and a life that was all celebration but no contemplation would miss something of the pathway of spiritual growth. So what I'm talking about is balance. Balance in our physical lives, our emotional lives, and in our spiritual lives, and in our church life.

And I think it's one of the greatest secrets that is unveiled in the gospel. Let's start here. Think about creation. In creation itself, in the physical universe, there is this picture, this design of balance that you see everywhere.

And I'm just going to read a number of different scriptures today throughout. But if you wanted to start with me, you could look at Genesis chapter one, where if you look at the beginning, you'll see that what God designed has an amazing sense of these seeming opposites that are brought together in the sinless perfect world that He created. At verse three of Genesis one, though there was darkness beforehand, God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. There was evening, and there was morning, the first day. There was night, and there was day. There was light, and there was darkness.

Before sin ever entered the world. This is God's design for the world, these two things, night and day. They seem to be absolutely opposite, and we need both. There's something about the whole design of the world in which He made all of the land and the water, land and sea.

We need both. And then at verse 11, God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. Later, we see that everything was designed according to seed, time, and harvest. Seed, time, and harvest. Sowing and reaping. Life's not all sowing. Life's not all reaping. Life is a rhythm of sowing and reaping, and sowing and reaping.

And just like you see in the seasons and the cycles of the earth, God designed it this way. There is a balance in all things. And so it is that the whole of creation continues as you see this incredible design until you finally come to where you read about God creating humanity and that He made them male and female, which is an amazing thought that men and women from the beginning, the creation of the created order, men and women, seemingly opposite, absolutely needing one another, not just for the procreation of life on this earth, but needing each other in so, so many ways, whether you're married or not. We need men and we need women. And you know what is amazing to me is do you know what the approximate ratio of men to women is on the face of the earth?

One to one. Bottom line, after all of these years, we've got about the same number of men and the same number of women on the earth. Do you find that to be interesting? My daughter is looking at colleges and she looks at various statistics for each school. She wants to see their ranking, what their academic emphasis are. She wants to see what the spiritual community is like there. She wants to check on a variety of statistics about how big the school is, how many people get scholarships. And I was kind of dismayed to see there was another stat that she was also paying attention to.

There's a statistic that is published on the male to female ratio in the student body, and she's not looking for one where the women outnumber the men. So that bothers me, but it's interesting. I actually did a little research on this because I don't know, do you think that this is by accident? I don't think this is by accident.

How could this be? Because I grew up in a family of three boys. My wife, she grew up in a family of three girls. I know people, they got five boys.

I know people got five girls. And this whole thing just is working out all the way across the face of the earth. We got men and women.

It's amazing. The human body is a picture of balance. Everything about us is balanced. You don't even think about it, how everything is working according to balance. And if things are out of balance, then things aren't going to work well. Your skeletal system is meant to be in balance, muscular system to hold you in balance.

It's meant to hold you in balance, inner ear working you towards balance. And the whole endocrine system of your body is at work to bring balance. I've been trying to here recently adjust my diet just a little bit. I'd gotten a little out of balance in that there was ice cream every night. And so I'm trying to move that away from every night.

What I do, somebody in my family developed a strategy. We just put the ice cream into a little coffee mug because that limits it, right? Yeah, how much can you fit in a coffee mug? I tell you, you put some muscle behind it.

You can get the Ben and Jerry's down in there and cookies and cream, cookie dough. Anyway, things are a little out of balance right now. Now I just want to make this point right up front that I'm saying that there's a balance. And I said, you can't have too much grace and you can't have too much truth. So I don't want you to go home and say, well, see, I can't have too much ice cream as long as I eat plenty of broccoli.

It doesn't work that way. In fact, it doesn't matter the way the actual balance is working in your body. I don't know much about it, but it's fascinating to me. I wish I knew more about the human body. But when I eat that little mug of ice cream and all that sugar comes into my body, I don't even think about it, but thankfully my pancreas works just fine.

Some of you have a special appreciation for this. If you have diabetes and you know how delicate this balance is in the body, because as soon as the sugar comes in, the pancreas is secreting just the right amount of insulin to adjust the glucose level in the blood. And this is going on 24 hours a day without you thinking about it. Everything in the human body is designed according to balance.

The whole world is. And so it should be no surprise that when Jesus came and he showed us what a true human being is, what we saw in his life was balance, every aspect of his life. Let me give you sort of a little pictorial series of snapshots in Jesus's life and see if it doesn't prove the point. If you want to follow along, I'm starting in Mark chapter one, the first little snapshots here of a couple of scenes in his life, where within just a few verses, you'll see what seems to be exactly opposite going on in his life. If you were to just choose out one aspect of it, you'd miss who Jesus was.

You'd miss what true humanity is. So you got to put them together. Alan Wright. And that's today's teaching. It's the beauty of balance as we kick off this series by the same title. Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. If you've ever thought that being filled with the Holy Spirit meant shutting off your mind, you're in for a wonderful surprise. God's word and God's Spirit were never meant to be separated. Word and Spirit always belong together.

The key to abundant life in Christ isn't knowing your Bible. The secret isn't being filled with the Spirit. The answer is both Word and Spirit. Though some traditions emphasize studying scripture and some traditions emphasize the Spirit, the path to real Christian growth is the fullness of both Word and Spirit. As someone once said, all Word, no Spirit, you dry up. All Spirit, no Word, you blow up. Both Word and Spirit, you grow up. When you make a gift of support this month, we'll send you Alan Wright's newest audio album on CD or digital download titled Word and Spirit.

It's about the beauty of balance. Embrace the fullness of God's Word and His Spirit and grow like never before. With Word and Spirit, you'll grow up and you'll be helping someone else grow as well. And remember, when you partner with Alan Wright Ministries, you'll be broadcasting the love of God to thousands every day. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, you're talking to the right guy when you're talking about finding balance. I can be very extreme. And I think maybe all of us have a tendency to go extreme in one area or another in life. One of the things we're going to learn, Daniel, is that the idea of balance is best conveyed with a tightrope walker across a high wire with that long pole that he holds out far to the left and far to the right.

There's a physics principle that I can't explain, but it's helping him balance because if you actually move far to the left, far to the right, and it's distributing his weight. Well, spiritually, that's what we're going to be learning. To be in balance doesn't really mean, oh, you never really get happy or you never get really sad and you just stay in this safe little middle zone. What we're going to see is that the beauty of balance is that we can move between what might seem to be extremes, but there's an equilibrium. And that's where the center of all health, emotionally, physically, and spiritually is. It is absolutely important what we're going to be learning. Today's Good News message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.