River Church NOLA
2026 June 21 Sunday Living a Balanced Life
  • Look What The Lord Has Done
  • Good Good Father
  • Build My Life
  • All Honour
  • Intro
    You know you’re a workaholic when your family has to schedule an appointment to see you.
    You know you’re a workaholic when your vacation consists of answering emails from a different location.
    You know you’re a workaholic when your smartwatch tells you to stand up and you think it’s being lazy.
    You know you’re a workaholic when your coworkers know more about your life than your neighbors do.
    You know you’re a workaholic when your idea of rest is working on a different project.
    You know you’re a workaholic when your spouse asks, “Are you staying for dinner or just visiting?”
    You know you’re a workaholic when your children introduce you by saying, “This is my dad’s office.”
    You know you’re a workaholic when your dog gets excited because you’re home before dark.
    You know you’re a workaholic when you feel guilty taking a nap but not pulling an all-nighter.
    You know you’re a workaholic when your to-do list has a to-do list.
    You know you’re a workaholic when “I’ll rest when things slow down” has been your motto for ten years.
    You know you’re a workaholic when you think Martha from Luke 10 needed better time-management skills instead of a lesson from Jesus.
    You know you’re a workaholic when you have plenty of money for retirement but no idea how to relax.
    You know you’re a workaholic when you’re too busy serving God to spend time with God.
    You know you’re a workaholic when you can quote your work schedule better than your favorite Bible verse.
    You know you’re a workaholic when you treat “Be still and know that I am God” as a suggestion rather than a command.
    I want you to picture something with me this morning. Picture a circus performer stepping out onto a tightrope, high above the crowd. In her hands she holds a long balancing pole. And here is the thing about that performer — she is never actually still. From the ground it looks graceful, almost effortless. But up close, she is making a thousand tiny corrections every second. A lean to the left. A shift to the right. A constant, quiet wrestling match with gravity. The moment she stops adjusting is the moment she falls.
    That, friends, is a fairly honest picture of most of our lives.
    Let me make it even more familiar. Some of you remember the old variety acts where a performer would spin plates on top of tall, wobbling sticks. He’d get one spinning, then a second, then a third — and just about the time he got the fourth one going, the first one would start to wobble, and he’d come sprinting back to give it another spin before it crashed. That is not a circus trick. That is a Tuesday.
    Pic of Plates spinning - Because we are all spinning plates, aren’t we? There is the work plate. The marriage plate. The kids plate. The health plate. The finances plate. The friendship plate. The church plate. The aging-parents plate.
    And just about the time you get one of them spinning nicely, another one starts to wobble — and off you run.
    Let’s be honest about how off-balance we really are
    If we slowed down long enough to tell the truth, most of us would have to admit that our lives are tilted. We don’t live balanced; we live tipped over in one direction or another.
    Maybe you poured everything into work and missed all of your kids activities… maybe you even said, next season… except that season never came or comes.
    Maybe you are so busy trying to help other people all the time that you are running in empty… generous to the world, but empty inside.
    Maybe you keep getting caught scrolling until 3 in the morning and then drags themselves through the next day… wondering why they are feeling so fried.
    Or maybe you are the chronic yes person, who can’t turn anyone down for anything… and now you are being crushed under the weight of a hundred good things.
    Then there are some who look all put together on the outside, while quietly, privately, things are falling apart.
    Here is what I want you to see.

    An unbalanced life is not the exception. It is the human condition.

    It’s not just the frazzled people out there… it’s all of us in here. Even good things, when they grow out of proportion, will tip us over. A wonderful job, a favorite hobby, a worthy cause, a precious relationship — any one of them, pushed too far, becomes the very weight that knocks us off the rope.
    And if you go all the way back to the beginning, you find that this is exactly what sin did to us. When humanity turned from God in the garden, something went out of joint. Order gave way to disorder. The world tilted, and our hearts tilted with it. Ever since, we have been leaning — reaching for the wrong things, neglecting the right things, never quite level. We feel that pull every single day.
    We work without resting. In doing so we sacrifice ou health, our families, our friendships and our spiritual life. Jesus took time away to rest.
    Some rest all the time - lazy. They want all the benefits of life without having to work for any of them.
    Truth without love - Some Christians know the Bible and use it like a hammer. They have truth without any love.
    Love without Truth - Others never want to confront sin. Everything becomes acceptable. No standards exist… everything is OK. Truth and love must work together.
    Caring for others while neglecting yourself. Many people become exhausted from caring for others. Parents, caregivers, pastors, and helpers often struggle here. They pour into everyone else until they have nothing left to give. You cannot continuously pour from an empty cup.
    Pursuing success while neglecting God. Many people have full schedules and empty souls. They climb the ladder to success only to find it was leaning against the wrong wall. Jesus asked in Mark 8:36 “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?”
    So this morning I don’t want to hand you one more plate to spin. I want to ask a better question:

    What does a truly balanced life actually look like — and how do we find it?

    To answer that, we need a definition. And we have a flawless one, because we have a Person who lived it perfectly.
    Let me say thing before we go too far. A balanced life is not a perfect life. It is a life where God is given first place and every other area is kept in proper perspective.

    What does Balance look like? It looks like Jesus!

    Let’s get rid of a misunderstanding first. A balanced life does not mean equal time spent on everything. It is not a perfectly even pie chart — the same number of hours for work, family, rest, exercise, prayer, and play, all sliced into tidy, identical pieces. That kind of balance doesn’t exist, and chasing it will only make you feel more like a failure.
    Real balance is something different.

    A balanced life is the right things, in the right proportion, ordered around the right center.

    Think of a wheel. A wheel has a hub at the center and spokes that radiate out from it. When the hub is solid and true, the wheel rolls smoothly no matter how fast it spins. But if the center is off — even a little — the whole wheel wobbles, and the faster it goes, the worse the wobble gets. Balance is not about the spokes all being the same. It is about the center holding the spokes.
    For the follower of Jesus, that center has a name, Jesus. When Jesus is the hub, the many spokes of your life — work and family and health and friendship and rest — all turn around something steady. The wheel rolls true. And we know this isn’t just a nice idea, because we have watched it lived out in the most demanding life ever lived.
    Jesus lived the most balanced life ever. He carried the most important mission in all of history. The weight he carried on His shoulders was beyond anything we can imagine. But as we read the Gospels, we see that He was never frantic… never rushed… not scrambling to catch a falling plate. He moved through each day with intentionality and a settledness that’s amazing.
    There is a verse that describes this life even before his ministry ever began.
    Luke 2:52 NLT
    52 Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people.
    Look carefully at that verse, because it gives us four dimensions of a whole, balanced life:
    1. He grew in wisdom — that is the mental and intellectual dimension. His mind. His understanding.
    2. He grew in stature — that is the physical dimension. His body. His health and strength.
    3. He grew in favor with God — that is the spiritual dimension. His relationship with the Father.
    4. He grew in favor with all the people— that is the social and relational dimension. His connections with others.
    Mind, body, soul, and relationships. Four spokes, all growing together, all turning around one center. That is the architecture of a balanced life, and we see it modeled before Jesus ever preached a sermon or worked a miracle.
    Let’s look at how he lived it out…
    And then watch how that same balance ran through His public ministry.
    Look at this…
    Mark 1:35 NLT
    35 Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.
    He worked, and He rested.
    He fed the five thousand, and He told His exhausted disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a quiet place and rest.”
    He went to weddings and turned water into wine — He was no stranger to a celebration.
    He sat at dinner tables with friends.
    He wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
    He had deep, close friendships, and He also had seasons of solitude.
    He knew when to say yes to a need, and He knew when to quietly withdraw, even when there were more needs waiting.
    Jesus knew how to be with the crowds — teaching thousands, healing the sick, pressing into the noise and the need.
    But He also knew how to get away from the crowds. Again, and again the Gospels tell us He slipped off to a quiet place, alone, to pray.
    He showed compassion without compromising the truth.
    He loved sinners without approving of their sin.
    And at the very end, listen to what He was able to pray to His Father: “I have brought You glory on earth by finishing the work You gave Me to do.” Finished. Not frantic. Not scrambling. Not crushed under an avalanche of unfinished good intentions. He finished the work — the right work — without ever once being in a hurry. That is the balanced life. And it is the life He invites us into.

    The Universe is Built on Balance

    Now I want to lift your eyes up off your own crowded calendar for a moment and out toward the stars — because the God who calls us to a balanced life is the same God who built an entire universe on balance. The longing for equilibrium that you feel in your bones is not random. It is woven into the fabric of everything He made.
    The apostle Paul put it this way, writing about Christ’s relationship to the created order:
    Colossians 1:16–17 NLT
    16 for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see— such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. 17 He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.
    Look at that last phrase: He holds all creation together. The very Christ who calls you to a steady life is, at this moment, holding the cosmos in perfect equilibrium. And when you look closely at that creation, the balance is breathtaking.

    The fingerprints of a Balancing God

    Our planet sits tilted on its axis at about twenty-three and a half degrees

    — and that single, precise tilt is what gives us our seasons, spring and summer and autumn and winter in their turn.

    The earth orbits at just the right distance from the sun

    If it were a little closer and we would scorch; a little farther and we would freeze. We live in a narrow band of perfect balance.

    The air you are breathing right now is balanced

    We have roughly the right amount of oxygen, held in place by exactly enough gravity, under an atmosphere that shields us and a moon that steadies our spin.

    Gravity is Balanced.

    Too much gravity and movement would be difficult. Too little gravity and nothing would stay on the ground.

    Whole ecosystems hold one another in a delicate, living balance.

    Day gives way to night and night gives way to day. Seedtime gives way to harvest. The tides rise and fall. The water cycle lifts the sea into the clouds and returns it as rain.

    And the balance reaches right down into your own body.

    As you sit here, your body is regulating its temperature, its blood sugar, its rhythms, its salts and fluids — a thousand systems holding one another steady so that you can simply be alive. Scientists call it homeostasis. The Bible would call it the handiwork of a God of order.
    God built that rhythm right into the running of the world, and He promised it would hold:
    Genesis 8:22 NLT
    22 As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”
    Here is the point I don’t want you to miss.

    The God who designed a balanced universe and knit together a balanced body did not intend for His children to live shattered, frantic, off-kilter lives.

    That is not the world He made, and it is not the life He wants for you. The same wisdom that hung the planets in their orbits is offered to you for the ordering of your days. If He can keep the galaxies in balance, He can certainly be trusted to bring order to your one short life — if you will let Him sit at the center.

    5 Steps to Finding Your Balance

    1. Center your life on Christ.

    Everything begins here. Remember the wheel — it is all about the center. The reason most of us wobble is not that we have too many spokes; it is that we have the wrong hub. We have put our job, or our reputation, or our family, or our comfort at the center, and we have asked that thing to hold the whole weight of our lives. It can’t.
    Balance doesn’t begin by balancing activities, it begins when we put God at the center.
    Only Christ can bear that weight. Jesus said it plainly:
    Matthew 6:33 NLT
    33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
    Notice the promise. When you put the Kingdom first — when Christ is genuinely the center — everything else doesn’t fall apart; it falls into place. Get the center right, and the spokes start to settle.

    2. Build in Rhythms of Rest

    Rest is not a reward you earn after you finally finish everything — because you will never finish everything. Rest is something God built into the very design of creation. He worked for six days and rested on the seventh, and He wrote that rhythm into His commandments and into the bones of the world.
    Even Jesus, with the weight of the world on Him, rose before dawn to be alone with the Father, and pulled His disciples away to rest.
    If the Son of God built rest into His schedule, who are we to think we can run without it?
    Guard a Sabbath. Protect your sleep. Carve out quiet. The rhythm of work and rest is not weakness; it is wisdom.

    3. Order Your Priorities.

    Learn to say no.
    Here is a hard truth: you cannot do everything, and the attempt to do everything is exactly what tips you over.
    A balanced life requires the courage to say no — and not just no to bad things, but no to good things, for the sake of the best things.
    Every yes you give is a no to something else. So give your yeses on purpose.
    Ask
    Am I spending time with God?
    Am I investing in my family?
    Am I taking care of my health?
    Am I serving others?
    Am I resting adequately?
    Build a little margin into your life — a little white space, a little room to breathe — because a life crammed to the very edges has no room left to absorb the bumps.
    Decide your priorities before the week decides them for you.

    4. Manage all Four Demensions.

    Come back to Luke 2:52
    Luke 2:52 NLT
    52 Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people.
    Mind … Body… Soul… Relationships…
    Most of us are strong in one or two of these and starving in the others.
    We feed the mind and neglect the body.
    We tend the soul and abandon our friendships. Invest time in your friendships.
    We pour into relationships and let our walk with God go cold. Make sure to spend tim with God each day.
    Balance means refusing to let any one of those four dimensions wither. Ask yourself honestly this week:

    Which of the four areas am I starving? And then feed it.

    5. Recalibrate regularly.

    Remember our tightrope walker — she stays up there by making constant, tiny corrections. Balance is never a destination you arrive at once and then keep forever; it is something you return to again and again. So build in regular moments to stop and check the center. At the end of a day, the end of a week, the close of a season — pause and ask: Where am I leaning? What is out of proportion? Where do I need to confess, adjust, and lean back toward Christ?
    It is like tuning an instrument. A guitar doesn’t stay in tune forever; the strings drift, and a good musician keeps coming back to tune it again. Tend the center, and keep tuning.
    Conclusion - The Easy Yoke
    I began by saying I didn’t want to hand you one more plate to spin, and I meant it. Because the balanced life is not finally found by gritting your teeth and juggling faster. It is found by going to the One who holds the universe together and asking Him to hold you together too. Listen to His invitation — maybe the most tender words He ever spoke:
    Matthew 11:28–30 NLT
    28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
    Do you know what a yoke is? It is the wooden frame that joins two oxen together so they can pull a load as a team. A single ox, straining alone, gets thrown off balance and wears itself out. But two oxen under one well-fitted yoke share the weight — the load is balanced between them, and the work becomes possible.
    And here is the wonder of the gospel: Jesus says, come, get under My yoke. Let Me carry this with you. Stop trying to balance the whole crushing weight of your life on your own shoulders, and let Me bear it alongside you.
    That is the secret of the balanced life. It was never about you becoming a better juggler. It was always about handing the center over to Christ — the One who tilts the earth to give us seasons, who holds the galaxies in their courses, who lived the most demanding life in history without ever once being in a hurry. He holds all creation together. This morning, He is offering to hold you together too.
    So come. Step under the easy yoke. Let Him be your center — and learn, at last, to live a balanced life.

      • Luke 2:52NIV

      • Mark 1:35NIV

      • Colossians 1:16–17NIV

      • Genesis 8:22NIV

      • Matthew 6:33NIV

      • Luke 2:52NIV

      • Matthew 11:28–30NIV

River Church NOLA
robert@riverchurchnola.com
504-578-8317
https://riverchurchnola.com
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