A Word about Balance

 

Today I want to share a word about being in balance, as I comment on Matthew 6:9-13. This passage reads:

In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

The Struggle is Real:

It is always hard to people to keep their lives balanced. When we get out of balance, some disastrous things can happen. Let me illustrate that with an example of something I see almost every working day of my life.

The offices of the Baptist association I serve are located across the road and almost even with the end of the runaway of our local airport. Airplanes and helicopters fly in an out every day that the weather allows and sometimes it get pretty loud. I have gotten so accustomed to the sound that I really don’t hear it anymore. Airplanes of all shapes and sizes land at our airport, but there is one thing that they all have in common: they all have two wings. Balance is a vital factor for aviators, because an airplane that is not in balance from side to side and from front to back will crash. The same is true for our spiritual lives and our ministries as well. We must find the right balance. 

For example, we are reminded often that we must balance outreach and evangelism with discipleship and sanctification. This is true, even if it is hard to do. In the past I believe we have over-emphasized getting people baptized, while at the present time I fear we are over-emphasizing “going deep in our spiritual lives.” We humans are frail and limited and like Goldilocks, we find it hard to get it “just right.”

I am a Baptist and one of our major doctrines is the autonomy of the local church. Each Baptist church is self-governing under the Lordship and Christ and the leading of the Holy Spirit. I agree with this position, but I also know that sometimes we Baptists turn inward, become insular and isolationist and that we forget our broader responsibilities to the world. Often, I see Baptists who seem to think, “As long as everything is going well in our church, then all is right with the world.” Truth be told, we can substitute many different terms  for “church” in that statement above, including, “life,” “family,” “school,” “job,” “community,” or even “hobby,”

God's Point of View:

Our God, however, has a perspective much broader than our own. He is Sovereign over everything, and He has a fatherly concern for all Creation, and for all peoples. While we often have blinders on, God sees everything, and He cares about everything and everyone. Because Jesus is our Lord, good stewardship of our lives and our testimony for Him dictates that if God cares about something, or someone, we also need to care about them as well.

When we consider the Lord’s Prayer, we should be reminded that the Kingdom belongs to Jesus and that we belong to Jesus. As Paul taught, we have been bought with a price, and it was a high price. Therefore, we are servants of the Sovereign King, and if He is concerned about a crisis in a nation like Ukraine, then we need to be concerned about Ukraine. If God is concerned about justice and mercy, then we need to be concerned about justice and mercy. If God is concerned about righteousness and holiness, then we need to be concerned about righteousness and holiness. If God is concerned about a different church than ours, then we need to be concerned about that church as well.

To be balanced in this commentary, I know that even when we are concerned about the issues and people God is concerned about, we may not have an opportunity to act. To that point, I assert that when we do have the opportunity to take action, we should. When we don’t have the opportunity to take action, we can always pray, and in fact we should also pray before, during, and after taking action.

God did not intend for us to belong hermit churches. The way I see it, the doctrine of the Kingdom of God is a great balance to the doctrine of the autonomy of the local church. We need to be Kingdom-minded people, churches, and pastors. 

If our Sovereign cares about something, so should we!

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt