How to Balance Your Life, Part 5

Once my relationship with God and family are established and supported, the relationship with the rest of my family becomes the next priority. By extended family I mean those that do not live in the same household as myself. My mother, father, brother, aunt, and so forth fall in this category.
Ministry and Friends are both very close to each other; they are fighting for last place. Ministry took precedence over friends because, in a sense, friendships are a sort of ministry at times. Furthermore, ministry is also closely related to my relationship with God. Jesus gave us the great commission to go out and make disciples, not friends. So ministry has a slightly higher importance in my life than friendship.

Finally, we all need people to come along side of us, encourage us, build us up. Fiends are a joy and add great value to life. Similarly, they have great potential to help one grow and learn. Carefully selecting your friends is something that I could not stress enough. Good friends will push you up, bad ones will pull you down. I encourage you to look at the friends and people you spend your time with and ask yourself the this question, "Will these relationships help me in achieving my life-long goals?" If you have selected your life-long goals carefully, asking this question is not selfish, it is wise. If your answer is no, then the group of people that you call friends should change. That is not to say that you should completely eliminate those relationship altogether. In some cases that is definitely needed, in other cases these people just need to move from your group of friends to the group of people that you minister to.

Father, help us live lives that are in balance, that are pleasing to you and bring you glory. Guide us and teach us as we make you the centerpiece of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. Let our relationship with you fill us to overflowing and, from that, spill into all the other areas of life. Let us be givers of live. Let us be an expression of your love to everyone we come in contact with, whether it is wives, sons or daughters, mothers or fathers, brothers, friends, or strangers.

How to Balance Your Life, Part 4

Earlier we discussed that the most important thing in life was our relationship with Jesus. The second most important thing in life, according to Luke 10:27, is our relationship with our neighbors. The priorities that were discussed on the previous section were selected in that order to support these relationships in a healthy and balanced way.

 "And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."" Luke 10:25-28, ESV

My relationship with my wife and children is the next more important item in the list. This set of people are the most important in my life and they take precedence over any other individuals. God specifically gave them to me so I may take care of them. After that, other things start to take priority because they support my relation to Christ as well as my family.

The third item on the list is health. Being healthy physically and emotionally is paramount to having a healthy relationship with God and Family. If the physical health of an individual suffers, the mind and spirit suffer as well. If the mental or emotional health of a person is deteriorated, the entire person is out of balance and his/hers relationship with Christ and family suffers as well.

Health was chosen to be in the third place of the list, because it supports the first and second priorities. Following health is finances and work. This priority, like health, is also in support of a previous one. Without a reasonable amount of financial stability, family life will suffer. As a husband and father, it is my responsibility to provide for my family. I believe this is a biblical idea. However, this is also a decision that we have made between my wife and I. We decided that it was more important for my wife to stay at home with the children than for her to have a full time job. She does have a home based business (she is a Mary Kay Beauty.... I mean, beauty consultant) as second priority to raising the kids.

How to balance your life, Part 3

Priorities

How do you keep your day-to-day life balanced? How do you make sure you are accomplishing those goals that are really valuable for your life?

If we are going to keep our lives in balance, we need to have a set of well established priorities to help us in our daily decision making process. Goals and priorities are not necessarily independent from one another.

My wife and I have studied and discussed what the priorities for our lives should be. They apply to our individual lives as well as our marriage and family. I encourage you to study and pray about the priorities in your life. Ask God to lead you and help you come up with a well defined list that you can review when trying to achieve balance in your life, whether it is in your finances, your schedule, your goals, or any other aspect of life. Having a carefully designed set of priorities will guide you and help you structure you life. Here is our list:

1. God
2 . A. Spouse
     B. Children
3. Health: Physical, mental and emotional
4. Finances
5. Extended Family
6. Ministry
7. Friends

Once your priorities have been established, you need to schedule your time in a way that allows all of those priorities to be accomplished. If you find yourself spending a lot of time on things that are not on your priority list, it is time to cut them out. If you find yourself spending more time on the bottom portion of your list rather than on the top, it is time to rearrange your schedule and start saying "not now" to some of those things.

When my wife and I are faced with a new project or activity that we would like to get involved with, we always ask several questions. They are, "Where does this fall in our priority list? How will our involvement in this project/activity affect the rest of our priorities? Will we have the appropriate amount of time left for the higher priority items?"

Having a well established set of priorities will help you keep a balance between the different activities that require time and energy from you. In other words, they will help you spend you life wisely.