Balancing Life's Demands - The Peace And Power Of A Prioritized Life, Part 1

There are few opportunities where you get to pause and reboot your life. Now, before the new year starts, we want to begin a journey and help you learn to balance life's demands.

Let me show you how to make this year your best year. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. In just a minute, Chip will launch his series, Balancing Life's Demands. For the next several programs, he'll explore God's plan for us to have a life filled with joy, peace, and purpose. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, it's absolutely possible with God's help, so I hope you'll join us for every part of this series.

It'll change how you look at this upcoming year. So with that set up, let's join Chip with his talk, The Peace and Power of a Prioritized Life. Well, as we get started, we're going to talk about balancing life's demands, and we're going to talk about biblical priorities. We're going to talk about aligning your life and your priorities, doing what's important in a way that God says for two purposes. One, so that you fulfill His purposes and bring glory to Him. And second, because when you do that, it is good for you. His highest and best is achieved and accomplished when there is an alignment of your priorities with the way He has designed you and designed life to work.

And when your priorities get out of whack, when the balance gets out of whack, it produces some painful things in you, in relationships, and often significant damage. Just so this isn't theoretical, 1983, I was a full blown workaholic. Early 30s, driven, focused, and disciplined. I learned some of that from my dad.

I won't give you all the family of origin histories and how children of alcoholics do stuff, but here's what I'll tell you. I got focused early on about sports. This is what you do. You set a goal and you get focused, and I was focused, I was disciplined, and I was driven. And then I came to Christ, and it took me a while to get going, but once I got going, I got focused, I was disciplined, and I was driven. And then God called me into ministry, and so once I started with this church, about two or three years into it, I was focused, I was disciplined, and I was driven. And how in the world, in a church of 35 to 50 people, you can work 80 hours a week, I don't know, but I figured out how to do it. 1983, I was sitting in a doctor's office and my wife went with me, and he evaluated everything, he asked about my schedule, he asked what I did, why I did it, they had run some tests, there were some problems with my liver. And he just said, you keep living like you live, and you're going to die young. And he said, your life is out of balance and out of control. I'd never heard the word workaholic, but I learned about it about then.

Now because I had a couple core values, one is I did not neglect my time with God, and because of some real deep convictions, I did not neglect my wife or my kids. That's kind of a neat thing. So what happens is I got up earlier and earlier and earlier. Sometimes I had three or four hours in before they ever woke up, and then I had breakfast, take them to school, do whatever, and then man, I busted it.

And then I was out all kind of times and I was with them, and then they'd know to get, and I'd work. And this drivenness, this need to please people, this performance, I've got the search for significance, the search for security, that wondering how do you ever please God, how much is enough. And I mean to tell you, what I want you to hear is it has been a very significant journey, and you don't have to be that way, and you can change, and priorities can change, and you can be motivated and not driven. And you can have good priorities and discipline without being so focused that you're out of whack. But I say that so you know.

What I'm going to talk about is not like theoretical. Fast forward 25 years, and I was in a time of reevaluating God. Where's my sweet spot?

Where are my gifts? And so I found myself in a room with eight or nine other guys, all who were very, very successful, all very wealthy, very powerful, had kind of been there, done that with various levels of spiritual maturity for 26 hours evaluating how should I spend the second half of my life. Most of us would say they have what people look for.

I mean, they kind of have it made. They've got the houses, the cars, the money, the businesses, and yet there was for some major damage, lost families, lost kids, and pain. And now they've come to know Christ, and how do I do it different? For others, it was they were really pretty spiritually mature, but their focus was so in their business and so in things, and they were so, it was like, you know what, I've got more money than I'll ever need for the rest of my life. How can I leverage my life for more God's kingdom and use my gifts rather than this rat race that I'm living in? And then some had a pretty balanced life, and it was, you know, I'm doing this for the kingdom of God.

How do I leverage it? What are my gifts? What's the unique purpose God has called me to? What's that Ephesians 2 10, that good work that God's called me to, that He's prepared? And so they take you through a process for 26 hours, and so I only share that to let you know, you know, whether you're young in the Lord or old in the Lord, whether you have had a long history with God or you're relatively new in Christ, whether you're like super successful and really need to reevaluate or you're in crisis and overwhelmed, you know what, everyone needs to stop and look and evaluate at your priorities. Is your life in balance?

Is it being lived the way God wants it to, for His glory and your good? And so to do that, here's the format that we're going to use. I'm going to give a little diagnosis. I'm going to give you six warning signs, you see those, of misplaced priorities. So I'm just going to go through boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you're going to say, hey, you know, I think my priorities are here. Good, good, good.

Mmm, better check that one. Second then, after the diagnosis, I'm going to give a little definition. What are God's priorities for our lives? I mean, how do they fit together?

I mean, what does God expect? What are the right priorities? And then third, I want to just get you started. I'm going to give you two tools, two tools to start getting a handle. When you hear these two tools, listen carefully, everyone, when you hear these two tools, don't feel like, I got to have that down tomorrow.

You're not going to get it down tomorrow. You're going to recognize God will give you a tool for this hand and a tool for that hand. And now you will start on a journey using these two tools to bring, they're the beginning steps of bringing your priorities under the submission of God to get them in line for His glory and your good.

Okay? So let's jump in together and let me give you the six symptoms of misplaced priorities. The first symptom is busyness.

You can write that word in. Busyness, but barren of fruit. If your life is characterized where you're hurrying all the time, you're rushing, you're driven, you eat on the run. If I went into your desk and if you have an office or your dresser and there's much piles of many things, and then over underneath of it, there's piles on the floor, and if we went in the garage, we wouldn't even want to go there. If I went to your office at work, there is stuff. Stuff everywhere.

And you're going to get to it, but you're just putting it in stacks now because there's just too many balls to juggle. People who love you are saying things kindly and lovingly. Some of them you're married to, others are business associates, others are people that just say it casually when you say, hey, let's get together and say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you've been saying that for like 18 months. They're saying slow down. If you're a fairly young follower or maybe you remarried and now you have some kids and you have some smaller kids, five or six or under, they hang on your knee with their arms around you as you're leaving out the door. That's a symptom that you're doing too much and that you're too busy. Busyness.

I call it the activity trap. Dawson Trotman, the founder of The Navigator said, emotion is no substitute for action and action is no substitute for productivity. Sometimes we get very, very active, very, very busy.

I believe it's the new worldliness. We are important because we're busy. We're on the move. I've got to do this.

I've got to do that. I'm involved in this. Second is emotional stress and pressure, anxiety. People whose priorities are out of whack have symptoms like a tightness.

They sometimes have chest pains, migraine headaches, trouble sleeping. You have this uneasy feeling. You feel restless a lot. It's hard to sit still. You wish you could get your mind to slow down. Sometimes you find yourself going, I just need to take a deep breath. Because the RPM is inside your head. You're multitasking about everything all the time.

There's no windows of real rest. You're indecisive. Sometimes it's hard to make a decision. If the truth is known, you're not very happy. You get fulfillment and little windows of when you accomplish things and you love to check things off.

Did that, did that, did that, did that. But when the things are done and when you're alone and when the media is off, there's this dis-ease, this sense that I'm not really very happy. I don't have a lot of joy. For some, it ends up in burnout. Others break down and others blow up. And the anger issues flare up and then lots of big apologies follow. Often it comes out in conflict with family, irritability.

When there's this emotional stress and anxiety, often it's characterized with a lack of intimacy and connectedness with your family and especially in your marriage. You're busy and it's going to change. It's going to change soon.

As soon as this big deal is over, as soon as soccer season is over, as soon as this happens, as soon as that happens, it's going to change. And you're sensing this drift in relationships. And you keep telling yourself, well, it's temporary. The third is what I call low grade nagging guilt. You feel bad about yourself.

Again, it's not just the restless feeling, but it's not fulfilled. There's a lot of things that you know you're supposed to do. In fact, you did them in the past. You actually tell other people they should do them, but you don't do them anymore. But you know enough verses and you have enough background spiritually that you fake it well, but you hate this feeling of this duplicity, this level of hypocrisy. Now, you know no one has it all together, but right now is not the way it used to be.

And you keep telling yourself, you know what, those times in the morning that I had are those pretty kind of significant times in prayer. I'll get back to that, but right now, and you just have this low grade nagging guilt. Relationships become superficial, little time for celebration. Daily pressures push aside the need to stop, envision, plan, think about the future. The fourth is financial debt, financial problems. When priorities really start unwinding, you realize, you know, we were really committed to giving the first portion. We, you know, we meant to do that, but then we had this little hiccup, and then this happened, and then that happened.

We had a little hospital situation over here, and the company we thought was going to do a little bit better, and that didn't work out. And so the debt begins to pile up, the giving begins to deteriorate, and by the way, God speaks through your money. Jot down just in your notes Habakkuk 1 verses 1 to 10.

God speaks to the prophet, and here's a paraphrase of those 10 verses. Because they were building their own homes and their paneled houses and neglected the house of the Lord, God put holes in their purses. They made money, but it seemed to evaporate. God was lovingly trying to get their attention.

You can't figure it out. You know, we're making this much money. We're making more money than we ever have, but it just seems like, oh, it seems like God puts holes in our finances. That's because He loves you.

He's trying to get your attention. The fifth symptom of misplaced priorities is prayerlessness or leakage in the devotional life. If the truth is known, and you hope the truth doesn't get known, but your deepest times in prayer are in the car by yourself. Most of your prayers are very quick.

Mostly the best times are with other people. You have a hard time concentrating by yourself because it's been a very long time since you had an extended, honest, repentant, tearful cleaning of the slate with you and God. You're going to get to it, and you really are, and you've been there before, but just not right now. There's just too much on your plate.

There's too much to jungle. God, I mean, you mean to, but the superficiality is with God. Down deep, you don't feel very close to Him. You're on a spiritual kind of up and down roller coaster. You have an experience at church or maybe a little something here, and then it's very up, down, emotional, and you realize just there's leakage. There's just too many balls.

There's just too much. You feel under pressure. The final one is escapism behavior. We do it in a lot of different ways, some thrill-seeking behavior, at least when you're younger.

There's just nothing like a good bungee jump to make you feel better about life very temporarily or going fast in a car. As you get older, it's impulsive buying, vacations you can't afford. For others, you're so daggone tired that you've got to take a pill to put yourself to sleep, and it takes a couple pills to get you going. And you've never been a real heavy drinker, but you're finding yourself drinking a little bit more than in the past.

You eat when you're not hungry, but it makes you feel better just a little while. And for us good Christians, it's just a lot of excessive TV and a lot of time on email and a lot of time doing things that make us feel like we're accomplishing something because down deep we don't know where we're going, and our North Star feels like it's moved, and you don't know is there any way out. And I wish that did not describe an awful lot of believers' lives, but I will tell you as we get thousands upon thousands of emails, I hear it over and over and over and over.

In conclusion, these symptoms are always in our minds. They're temporary. They're just small concessions. I mean like one or two of those sayings, it doesn't mean you're like out to lunch and you don't love God anymore or you're ready for a divorce next week. They all start as just a little thing, and you're going to fix them next week, and as soon as this season's over, when this, you know, but here's what I want you to hear. They all begin a process.

The big falls always start with little things like this, and one or two that you juggle, and then pretty soon there's three or four. He who is faithful in a very little thing will be faithful also in much, and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing, Luke 16, 10, will be unrighteous also in much. And we're going to get reconnected as a couple when in the family we'll start some of that devotional stuff again, and we'll get our finances in order, and I'll be able to give like I used to, and I know we need to have a budget, but I mean those credit cards, hey, you know what?

Everyone has a window like this, but it's real temporary because, and yeah, it's not a life or death deal. But 2 Samuel 11 verses 1 and 2 says, At the time when kings went out to battle, priority issue. After great success, at the time when kings went out to battle, when a king did what a good king is supposed to do, David decided he'd stay home, and then Bathsheba and Uriah get penned in his autobiography, and that's the way it happens with good people, people who make great moral, financial failures, families split, divide, churches get killed, kids wonder what happened, they don't wake up and go, you know something? I get this great marriage, I love my wife, I love my husband, I got a couple kids, I got one grandchild, whatever it is. You know what? I just think I'll take about 200 grand from the company. That CFO and I are good buddies, and I think together we could embezzle a little money and just have a lot of fun. I mean no one wakes up and does that, or that's Thursday, you know Saturday I think I'll have an affair.

I'm going to put that on my calendar just so I don't forget. I'm just going, that's not how it ever happens. These symptoms start to weave into your life, and you get vulnerable, and you get hurt, and you just want some relief, and you never think it's possible for someone who loves God the way you love God for any of that to ever happen, but the right place at the right time in a weak moment with these things happening, bang.

And all of a sudden you're the feature film in your own nightmare. Those are the symptoms, and it raises a very important question then. If those are the symptoms, then what are the right priorities? I mean God, help. What are the right priorities? And I like to say that I would like you to turn in your Bibles to First Priorities 1-9.

But I don't have that, you know. But there's two books that were written about the same time. They're called the Twin Epistles, and I put a chart in your notes. In the Twin Epistles, one is written to say, Church, first three chapters, this is what Christ has done for you. Last three chapters of Ephesians, this is how to live it out.

Colossians, Church, this is the preeminence of who Jesus is, and this is how He wants you to live. Last two chapters, and this is how you live it out, written about the same time. Now what I want you to see, sometimes the structure of a book can tell you as much as the content.

And so the first half of both those books are all doctrine. This is who Jesus is, this is your relationship with Him, this is who you are in Christ, this is your adoption, this is your inheritance, this is what you actually possess. And then if you look at those charts, when they start talking about how to live it out, chapter 4 opens, I love chapter 4 verse 1. I, Paul, a prisoner of the Lord, what's he say? Urge you, command you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling, and that word for worthy, it's, we get our English word, axis. And it's this idea of, for three chapters, I've told you all that you possess, beliefs, now let your behavior bring it into balance so that your beliefs and your behavior tell the same story. And the whole rest of the book is how you do that.

And it's really interesting, and this is why small groups are so important. He doesn't tell you right after that to go to church, read your Bible, or he starts with relational issues. Then he says, with all gentleness and humility, bearing with one another, with patience, making every effort to maintain the bond that you already have of peace.

You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We'll get back to today's teaching in just a minute. But quickly, time is running out for you to be part of our year-end match. Thanks to some ministry friends, every gift we receive until midnight December 31st will be matched dollar for dollar.

To partner with us financially, go to livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003. We appreciate your generosity. Well, with that, let's hear the remainder of Chip's talk. And so what I want you to see is when he opens up each of those chapters, notice the topic, Colossians 3, how it starts. How it starts, you have God, mate, family, work, ministry, and it's not in here, but implied elsewhere is you have kind of re-creation.

There's a need to get recharged. And so I think it's just interesting as you go through those passages, it's okay, you know, Ephesians 5, we're gonna learn that, hey, I need to be filled with the Spirit, my relationship with God. It goes right there to my marriage, to my children, to my work, and then to my ministry. And by the way, everyone's in full-time ministry. Some people are called in a vocational way, and what we do is we pay their time so they can study the Word to give us what we can't get on our own. But you are a priest. You're an ordained, full-time minister of the gospel, posing as housewives, soccer moms, computer operators, business owners, lawyers, doctors, and nurses, and grandmas. And God has you, as in Ephesians 4, the leaders of the church equip the church to do the work of the ministry.

All of us are ministers until the church fulfills our calling. And so these priorities are for all of us. Now, the problem, I think, when we look at priorities, however, is we tend to view them linearly. You know what I mean?

Like in a straight line. And so here's how I used to think about priorities. Problem is it didn't work. God is first in my life. Good. I love you, God. Okay, my wife is second. Teresa, okay, I love you. God, God, are you sick? God, Teresa, I got that one down.

Okay, hold on. What's it gonna say? Family, family, kids, kids. Okay, God, Teresa, kids, that's good.

Okay, now what comes after that? Ministry? No, no, no, it doesn't say it.

What's it say? Work. Work? Yeah, because that's your first ministry.

That's where you spend 60, 70% of your time. Okay. And then it would be like, well, wait a second, Teresa's sick, but Teresa, I would love to help you. I know you're vomiting on the couch, but God's more important. So I'm gonna have my quiet time. See you later, honey. Or you have a crisis at work.

The plant blows up. Yeah, I'll be there in a couple of days. I'm getting refreshed with my wife.

Yes, we're in Maui. Having a great time. Yeah. Well, you don't understand. See, it's God. See, they don't work that way. Life's very confusing.

It's very demanding. You're pulled in different ways. And so I put a picture. This is kind of a picture that's really, really helped me with priorities. It's a fountain, okay?

It's a multi-tiered fountain. And here's what I want you to, let me read one verse and jot this passage because it's really powerful. Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well. And I'm in John 4.

I'll read both 13 for context and 14. And he says to the woman at the well, everyone who drinks the water, this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again. Indeed, the water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Welling up to eternal life. You might jot down Proverbs 4.23. Solomon would say the same thing.

Watch over your heart with all diligence for from it flow the issues of life. And so what I want you to see is I want you to imagine that top rung where it has God, I would like you to imagine there's little slits in it, little Vs. And some of you will get this. I learned this when I was a kid. Does anybody remember before ice makers what an ice cube tray was?

This is a great group. Those of you like under some age that are thinking ice cube tray, never heard of that. Well, let me give you a little lesson in sociology. People would take these plastic little trays and they had all these little square boxes and you would fill them, but then it was real hard and you usually spilled them, especially when you try to get them in the refrigerator. So some brilliant person made little plastic trays and they put a little V between all the little boxes. So you could put it under the water and when this one got filled, it would fill this one and this one and this one and this one and it wouldn't spill.

And then you would put it in and it was great. I want you to imagine a fountain and each one of these, God, your mate, your family, your work, your ministry, is I want you to imagine they have those little slits. And here's how priorities actually work. Living in you is the Spirit of God.

In John 6, he would say, the word that I speak to you is spirit and it is truth and dwelling in you is the same power that raised Christ from the dead. And what our priorities are really all about is what do you need in your relationship with Jesus and the Father and the Spirit so that you're full of him so that there is connection and abiding so it can overflow into your relationship with your mate. And he'll show you what's it look like, how much time. It's different for every couple. I mean, my poor wife, she married this super high-need guy. I mean, I've seen couples that, you know, they have a couple good talks a week, man, they're both doing great. Poor Teresa, I mean, I come home, I gotta have 15 minutes.

I gotta tell you what's going on with my day, you know, how are you doing, what's going on? I gotta have like one date a week, like two or three times a year, I wanna get away from everybody. I mean, I'm like really high-need.

But that's to be filled up for our kids. I mean, even in all those young years, we'd eat and I'd tell the kids, I love you, scram. And I'm gonna spend some time, or we'd sit and have coffee at the table or take a little walk. But just listen, what do you need? Is it 15 minutes in the morning in practice in the presence of God?

Is it an hour in the morning? I don't know what you need, but I know it's the Word, it's prayer, it's the community of believers and it's application, and you walk and abide with Christ, and then the overflow of that is you treat your mate empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then that overflows to your kids, and that overflows to a high-capacity, nurtured, loved husband or wife who walks through the door and goes to work. And then your work is done in the power of the Spirit with the support of those relationships, and people wish they had a boss like you or an employee like you because of who shows up. And then your work is a testimony, and then your ministry in local church or kingdom expansion.

Do you see the difference? And so it's a fluid thing, and it's the Spirit of God leading and showing you in this situation on this day. Now, you develop certain structures we're gonna talk about. I mean, there's certain things I need to do with my time on a regular basis. Certain things I need to do, develop that with my wife, with my God, with my kids, in my work, and we'll talk about those. But don't think of them as just linear. It never works that way.

Just a linear one, two, three, four. Think about it as what do you need in every relationship so that the Spirit of God can allow love that you possess in your relationship with Jesus to come out of you into that relationship and so you, especially if you're married, with your wife or husband, love in such a way that that flows into the life of your kids. And you know what?

If it's not happening here, don't export it. See, what people do is they get the flow in their relationship with God and maybe, but often not with their mate, and then since you get a lot more strokes at work, then they take all that energy and take it to work. Or what a lot of women tend to do is they may have it with God, and pretty soon there's all these needs and there's such fulfillment. Mommy, I love you and I need you and you helped my knee and you did this and you helped me with my homework, you're the most wonderful person, and that nurturing, and pretty soon, her second priority becomes the kids.

And so he goes to work, she loves the kids, and they reconnect after 25 years of marriage and that's why, other than the first five years of marriage, the most dangerous zone of divorce is about 20 to 25 or 25 to 27 years, depending on when your kids leave the nest. Priorities are about walking in the Spirit and you can see a clear structure, but you don't necessarily do them one, two, three, four. Dwight Eisenhower made an interesting comment as president. He said, the urgent is rarely important and the important is rarely urgent. The things that matter most, the things that will just take you down the road and help you become the person you long to be, there's no gun to your head that says, develop a deep, intimate relationship with God. Study his word. When there's 15 emails or 150 emails to answer, well, how do you get ahold of them?

How do you get a grip on it? We've looked at six ways that say, you know what, these are indicators. These are like six lights on the dashboard of your life telling you what's going on in your soul.

And you know what, if you got two or three of those flashing, God's saying, hey, time out. And by the way, something I want you to hear. It will require, this is not one of those issues that you say, oh, I heard from God.

I'm gonna start tomorrow and everything will be fine. You didn't get your priorities where they are that affects so many relationships like overnight. They don't change overnight. Someone has said significant lasting change never occurs without serious, prolonged thinking. The issue is not tweaking something. I'm not an expert, but I can just tell you, this is a smart group of people. If tweaking your priorities worked, they would already be fixed, because you're smart people. I'm telling you, for many of you, what you have to realize is, what is my purpose? Why am I here?

What season am I in? And it's not tweaking, it's saying, I've got all these things on my plate. That doesn't belong on my plate.

That's not God's will, that's expectations. That doesn't belong on my plate. That was for the last season, but now this doesn't belong on my plate. Wait, this does, but I've gotta make room.

But that's really good and I've always done it and I love it and people give me so many. Lordship, okay, Lord, this does. So it'll take time to think, to ponder. Priorities and balancing your life really have to do with getting really clear on who you are, what God wants you to do, and then getting a sense of holy urgency and realizing life is passing and you're gonna die and I'm gonna die.

And this unconscious human thought that we had that, you know, I'm gonna kinda work on that next week. And so we spend our life responding to details and data and feeling good about, I answered 75 of the 150 emails. I returned all the calls. I did my list.

Is it the right list? Are you doing the right thing? You know, you gotta stop. I mean, that's why coaches, I mean, they just call time out. The momentum's going this way.

They scored three times in a row. Hey, I don't know what we're doing, but it's not the right thing. And some of us, we have those misplaced priorities and some of you have four or five of those symptoms and instead of stopping and saying, whoa, I gotta really reevaluate, we go faster. I'll multitask more. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and you've been listening to part one of Chip's message, The Peace and Power of a Prioritized Life from our series, Balancing Life's Demands. Chip will be back shortly to share some helpful application for us to think about. Do you long to get out from under the pressure to do more, have more, and achieve more? In this 10-part series, Chip provides practical biblical steps to help you move your life from chaos to contentment. You'll discover what it means to prioritize your hopes around God's hopes for your life and how to not only put first things first, but keep them there. To learn more about this series, go to livingontheedge.org.

That's livingontheedge.org. Well, I'm joined in studio now by Chip, and Chip, you have something really important you'd like to share with our listeners. And we have a few minutes left here, so why don't you go ahead and do that?

Thanks, Dave. And I just want to remind all of you, as the year is coming to an end, our year-end match is coming to the end as well. And I know it happens every single year. Literally thousands of people say, I meant to, I'm intending to, I was going to give, but you haven't done it yet. I don't want you to miss out. Until December 31st at midnight, every gift given is going to be doubled dollar for dollar.

That means the impact will be doubled as well. If you've intended to, if you've prayed about it but not yet done it, or if you just have thought, you know what, I need to do that, can I encourage you, go online or get out that checkbook, make sure it's dated December 31st, get it in the mail so your gift will be doubled and we can make a bigger difference than ever before. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Chip. And let me just add, when you partner with Living on the Edge, you're helping us train and encourage pastors across the globe, create new discipleship resources, and engage this next generation with the hope of the gospel. All of this is possible through your support during our year-end match. Now to give a gift, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003 or go to LivingOnTheEdge.org. App listeners, tap donate. We're deeply grateful for you giving whatever the Lord leads you to give.

Well, with that, let's get to Chip's application for today's message. You know, the older I get, I realize that life is lived in seasons. You know, there's different seasons and there's different priorities in different seasons. Whether you're kind of like young and a student, there's a set of priorities and, you know, life changes for many. You get married, you have kids, empty nester, grandparents. Some of you are grandparents raising kids again.

Physical limitations, job and career changes. Every season of life demands that we stop, begin to ask ourselves, Lord, what season am I in and are the priorities that I have right now the priorities that you want me to have? We're going to go on a journey about balancing life's demands and let's face it, most of us, at least everybody I know, we try to take on too much, we're really busy, we feel overwhelmed. This series is about helping you balance and align your life. But I just want to warn you, it takes courage to evaluate what am I going to let go of because it almost always means that someone gets a little bit disappointed. But here's the good news. Your life is given to you by God. He's got a set of priorities. He wants you to richly enjoy it and when you're doing what he wants you to do, it's not just good for you, it's best for everyone around you. Hope you'll stay with us for this entire series.

I think it's going to be a great time together. Thanks, Chip. As we close, I want to thank those who financially support Living on the Edge. Amazing things are happening all around the globe and you help us do that. So if you're not yet on the team, but you want to be part of what the Lord's doing, now's a great time because every gift we receive until midnight, December 31st, will be doubled for greater impact. To donate, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003 or visit LivingOnTheEdge.org. App listeners, tap donate and thank you for praying and giving whatever the Lord leads you to. Well, be sure to join us next time as Chip continues his series, Balancing Life's Demands. Until then, I'm Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.