The idea of achieving work/life balance is a modern-day knockoff of the American Dream, rooted in the minds of ambitious yet overworked professionals who want to “have it all” – work and play, career and family.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as “work/life balance.” You don’t hear people talking about finding a “family/life balance” or an “eating/life balance.”
In today’s fast-paced go-go world, work usually takes priority over the rest. Why? Because work is what we spend the majority of our day doing, it financially supports our dreams, and it’s a core part of our identities (the first “small talk” question people usually ask is what you do for a living). Add mobile technology to our career-driven lives, and work priorities now have the potential to take over our personal lives. When this happens, you are putting your relationships, mental and physical health, and overall happiness at risk.
The key to contented living is to walk the middle ground between extremes. In Parenting, we are trying to walk the balance between being too strict or too permissive. In Finances, we are working at avoiding the extreme of hoarding on one hand and indulgence on the other. In our Personal Lives, we’ve got to find the balance between ambition and contentment. We need to strive to do better, but we also need to discover contentment with what we have.
The Fourth Commandment reads... “Remember the day of worship by observing it as a holy day.” (Exodus 20:8). Obviously, to God there is to be a balance between work and our worship of Him. But as we read Scripture we also see that we are to spend time with our family, to take care of our bodies, to rest. To keep the proper tension between work and the rest of life is a very complex problem in today’s world. How can a modern worker give the proper amount of attention to a career and at the same time not neglect family, the church and personal time?
Start by identifying your particular perspective on work, family, church and personal time. Stack-rank them in order of importance and priority... this exercise will help you acknowledge whether you have extremes or you’re close to a balanced life.
Some people are driven by career and personal pursuit of success. That would be the extreme on the achievement side of a spectrum. Many today, for many reasons, are prone to underachieving, doing as little as possible to earn a living and provide for their family. The extreme of laziness.
Ecclesiastes 10:18 says of such people... "If someone is lazy, the roof will begin to fall. If his idleness continues, the house will leak". In other words, laziness produces a poor end result from inactivity and lack of attention to circumstances and environment.
The Bible has some harsh words for the lazy. 1 Timothy 5:8 says..."If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." The book of Proverbs has all kinds of admonishment against laziness. It says a lazy person sleeps in instead of doing what he should. "As a door turns back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person turns over in bed" (Proverbs 26: 14). Proverbs 22:13 says... "The lazy person is full of excuses, saying, ‘If I go outside, I might meet a lion in the street and be killed!’" He rationalizes his inactivity. I can’t work today, the pollen count is too high. It’s Monday, people don’t buy on Monday. It’s Friday, people are knocking off early on Friday. Everything in God’s creation, from the ant to the human being, has a function and is supposed to work. But the lazy person spends his energy finding ways to avoid that [God mandated] responsibility. Okay, you’re not a lazy person. But are you a workaholic?
The workaholic gives an inordinate amount of time and energy to a career. Jesus gave an excellent example of a workaholic in Luke 12:16 – “A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops. In fact, his barns were full to overflowing… But instead of enjoying that success that God had given him, what did he do? He said, ‘I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll have room enough to store everything…’” Jesus was not saying that we should never prepare financially for the future, but He was making the point that this man’s things were his future! He was so wrong. “But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get it all?’" (Luke 12:20).
The workaholic becomes obsessed with achieving. Such people convince themselves that they’re doing it for tomorrow, saving and storing for the proverbial “rainy day.”. Such career-driven folks easily rationalize that there’ll be a day in the future when he’ll be able to relax and enjoy his family and get his spiritual life together. But somehow that day never comes. Where the lazy person produces a poor result, a useless faith and contention, a workaholic produces greed, selfishness and a false sense of security. They think they’ll always have enough time to turn things around; they count success in dollars and cents and yet have no sense. For they have put their security in temporary things. Jesus says that’s foolish, because you don’t know the future and the things you have can’t be taken with you - "Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God." (Luke 12:21).
We’ve traded the good for the best. It’s not bad in the eyes of God to have nice things or to work hard. But we’ve become so caught up in giving our time to the job that we have, in our stress and worry, neglected the best things – our relationships.
In Luke 10:38-41 Jesus says something to a woman named Martha that we need to hear. "As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. But Martha was worrying over the big dinner she was preparing…...” But listen to what Jesus says to her.."My dear Martha, you are so upset over all these details!" What had Mary chosen? She had chosen to sit at the feet of Christ.
Might not Jesus have been just as pleased with a bologna sandwich that took three minutes as He might be with a four course meal that took three hours? There is something better than our career, than getting our "to do" list accomplished... and that’s knowing Jesus. In her business, Martha forgot what was really important.
There is also the pursuit of stuff, material things. Materialism contributes to becoming workaholic. You work more to get more to buy more. Like the rich farmer, we get caught up in the "I want" syndrome. We aren’t satisfied with anything ordinary; we’ve got to have a lot of whatever we desire and it’s got to be the best. And to get it, we’ve got to work harder and longer. There’s also the “keeping up with the Jones” where upper-middle class suburbia keeps score by the number of cars in the driveway, the luxurious vacations, big boats and so forth. You’ve heard the expression... “he who dies with the most toys wins...” maybe so, but you’re still dead! For many people, peer acknowledgement and prestige matters more than anything else.
Another stumbling block is escape, where the only real satisfaction in life is found at work. But the time is only part of the problem. People hung up on career achievement give their primary emotional energy to their work. We give our best efforts to work, and then our family and our faith get the emotional leftovers.
The philosophy of this age says, Success at work equals success at life. But that is so far removed from what God calls success. The world evaluates our success in life by status symbols. God evaluates our success in life by spiritual depth and by balance, neither lazy nor a workaholic.
If your life is out of balance, how do you get re-balanced? Here’s a short list of practical strategies that may help you.
Recognize that it is God’s desire that you live a balanced life. The fourth commandment in Exodus 20 instructs us to work. But it also commands us to rest. Why did God say to rest at least one day a week? Because He knows how we are constructed. He knows in the long run we’ll be more productive and effective if we have balance, if we have a change of pace. When you take time off, you’re not disobeying God – you are living life His way, by His design and in His desire.
Schedule a personal appointment with your family. You get the necessary things done at work probably because, for the most part, you’ve scheduled it. You know what time you’re supposed to be there, what time your deadlines are due, when your appointments are. One of the real secrets in living the balanced life as God has planned is to schedule the other areas of life too. 1 Timothy 5:8 says that if you neglect your family you are worse than an unbeliever! At least once a month, choose a Saturday or an evening and make a "family night" out of that time. Have devotions together, play a game together, eat supper by candlelight and don’t answer the phone... any phone, text, messages, emails, etc. etc. . Make it a time where just your family is together. Put your kids’ ball games and activities in your calendar. Pick one other night or Saturday a month and make that a "date night" where you and your spouse get out of the house without the kids. Do it! We budget our money; why shouldn’t we budget our time as well?
Cultivate an interest outside of your work. Some people say, "Well, my work is my hobby, I don’t really need anything else." It is good if you enjoy what you’re doing, but all of us need some diversion, something that gets our minds off the job. Proverbs 14:30 says, "A relaxed attitude lengthens a man’s life." There’s an old Indian proverb that would agree with that. It says, "You will break the bow if you keep it always bent.” I hear people say, "I’m too busy to play tennis, no time for crafts." I believe people who say that are busier than Jesus. He often took time away, to relax and to renew His mind. Develop something where you can find fulfillment – painting, gardening, sports, hunting, fishing, hiking, browsing antique shops... you decide what works for you.
We must keep reminding ourselves of the “one thing” that is the most important. Remember what Jesus said to Martha? “There is really only one thing worth being concerned about.” It was knowing Him. As it says so succinctly in Matthew 6:33... “Our heavenly Father already knows perfectly well what you need, and he will give it to you if you give him first place in your life." So we can say, “Sunday is God’s, along with a regularly scheduled quiet time with Him. That is going to take priority.” That’s the best tangible way to put Him first. For many, Sunday can be a work day. So, make sure you still have a time with God on that day. A time when you are learning about Him, a time when you are talking to Him.
Is God important to you? Your actions will declare your true heart and attitude towards Him. Many folks use excuses like... “I’m too tired to go to church, Sunday is my only day to get all my errands done...” seriously, God just wasn’t important enough for such people to be in church. We know all the excuses, because we’ve all used them. The plain hard cold fact is that the other things are more important... than honoring God with your worship.
But it’s not just about going to church. Jesus is to be first all week too. When we study Jesus’ life we see Him scheduling daily time to be with God. Every day we are saturated with worldly values of materialism, prestige, popularity, or power. But Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters, either you will hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Luke 16:13).
I suspect that we have made our lives a whole lot more complicated than God intended. In the end, it’s not so much a matter of our schedules or the demands of our jobs... it is a matter of our hearts. When our heart is in the right position then everything else falls into place. That’s why Jesus said, "Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.” (Luke 12:34).
So, where are yours?
