Focus: Balanced Life

Text: Mt.4:23

"And Jesus went about all Galilee, TEACHING in their synagogues, and PREACHING the gospel of the kingdom, and HEALING all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people."

We have this local parlance in my place that says, 'This life no balance!' Putting it correctly, it says, This life is not balanced. In this world life seems so much out of balance. Life has become zigzag-like - so twisted, and so tilted to one side. One beautiful thing about our God is that He "writes straight on crooked lines."

Just by a word, God forms lives and fills voids.

Our text makes it clear that the whole ministry of Jesus Christ was three-dimensional and touched on the whole need of man.

Jesus Christ went everywhere preaching, teaching, and healing the people.

*Preaching is directed to the HEART.

*Teaching is done to the MIND.

*Healing focuses on the BODY.

And that is the total man. Jesus Christ was committed to caring for human needs holistically. In Mt.9:35, our text reoccurs: "And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, TEACHING in their synagogues, and PREACHING the gospel of the kingdom, and HEALING every sickness and every disease among the people." Jesus Christ wants our whole being to be well. He aimed at and worked for balancing life. When He healed and restored, He did so completely. He touched and stirred the heart with His preaching, informed and transformed the mind with His teaching, and healed and restored the body to wholeness with His healing power.

God wants you to experience balance in your life. He wants your spirit, soul and body to become well aligned and functioning together.

John's prayer for Gaius says, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest PROSPER and be in HEALTH, even as thy SOUL prospereth" (3Jh.1:2). This prayer for prosperity is three-dimensional: material, physical, and spiritual. Praying for the sanctification of the church, Paul says, "And the very God of peace sanctify you WHOLLY; and I pray God your WHOLE SPIRIT and SOUL and BODY…" (1Thes.5:23). This is total sanctification. God is focused on the whole man, not just a bit or part of him.

Whenever God steps into action in your life, all He does and targets is harmonizing your whole personality. He deals with the whole person. The Lord Jesus Christ tells His disciples, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost" (Jh.6:12). God doesn't want us to live a life of fragmentation, but of integration. Christ is not interested in a fragmented life, because it leads to ruin, disintegration and destruction. That is exactly what the word 'lost' means in the Greek. God wants all of you together. God knows that it is quite unhealthy to have an unhealthy soul in a healthy body. 

In Romans 12, we are required to present our body as a living sacrifice to God. We are instructed to get our whole personality transformed by mental renewal or renovation. We are also told to be fervent in spirit. So God has made provision for every part of our being - body, mind and spirit. True preaching will awake and stir the heart. Spirit-imparted teaching will impact, inform and transform the mind, and divine healing will surely take care of the body. 

Listen, God wants you hale and hearty - every whit whole! He designed that you live a balanced life. He does not want you to have a situation where your life is sweet on one side and sour on the other side.

I pray you experience spiritual congruence, even internal and external equilibrium. John Lennon said that "one thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside." I pray God helps you to overcome every crippling situation in your life! I pray you rise above that sense of inadequacy, sense of insufficiency, and sense of insignificance! Let Jesus Christ be the center and circumference of your whole life! In Him you can live a balanced life - a life of wholeness, integration, cohesion and coherence. I have used those words intentionally, but they mean the same thing. You are better being together than falling apart. A one-sided life loses balance. It is life gone amiss. Christ alone is the invisible axis around which spiritual balance is sustained and a movement in the right direction is maintained. Christ is our life, says Paul. Only the source of life can balance and sustain it, and that is God Himself, and He does it by getting you to live by His rule. Do not reject or resist the rule of God in your life. Amen!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter