Yes, television, if allowed to get out of balance, “eats” people. It “devours” relationships. It can quickly become the babysitter, and be an easy out for parents, simply because they don’t want to spend the time with their children that is needed.
Most everyone today is too busy to do the things they really need to do and are spending far too much time doing things that really don’t make any eternal or lasting difference.
Television in itself can be a blessing. It is relaxing to sit down in the evening after working hard all day and get involved in an interesting story, but even this enjoyable thing can become a curse if it is allowed to take control or to get out of balance.
Try It, You Might Like It!
I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. …
Revelation 3:8 KJV
Perhaps God has been speaking to you about some changes in your life and you want them, but you are afraid. I want to encourage you not to be afraid to step out. Even if you make a mistake, it won’t be the end of the world. Don’t spend all of your life looking back and wishing you had tried different things, or done things differently.
Wondering what could have been is a lonely feeling. I can promise you that you will not enjoy everything you try. But at least you will have the personal experience of knowing. You won’t have to live your whole life hearing about what everyone else is doing and wondering what it would be like.
You are not going to be able to do everything, but step out in God’s timing into the things you feel He is leading you into. Go through the doors He is opening. You may even have to take a few steps in some direction and see if a door previously closed will open as you approach it.
For example, God taught me a lesson once using the automatic doors that fly open as someone steps on the rubber pad. He said something along these lines, “Joyce, you can sit in your car at the grocery store all day long, and that door will never open for you. You can watch other people go in and out all day, and it won’t get you in the store. But if you get out of your comfortable seat and head toward the door, as you approach, you will find it opening for you also.”
Maybe you have a little direction from God, but you don’t see the full picture. God leads step by step. He may never show you step two until you take step one.
God is progressive, and I have found that my faith is also. I may have a little faith, and so God shows me a little something to do. Then as I am faithful over the little thing, He shows me the next step, and by then, my faith has grown to be able to handle it.
Maybe you need something simple like taking a different route to or from work.
You might think, “Well, what if I get lost?”
My response would be, “Well, what if you have a good time?”
One of my very favorite eating places is an Oriental restaurant that a friend and I found one day when we set out to look for it. We had heard how good it was, but could not get any exact information about where it was located.
We had some vague directions, and since neither of us are really good with directions anyway, setting out to find it without knowing exactly where it was located made us a little leery about even trying. We had talked about it several times, and each time we talked ourselves right out of it.
But on this particular day, we felt adventurous and decided to take a chance on getting lost in order to see if we could find it. Since we did step out, we found it. As a result of our willingness to step out and “try it,” we have enjoyed eating there for years and have directed many others there.
I am not advocating doing foolish things, but I do encourage you to find the balance between living in fear and living with wisdom. It would have been unwise for me to start out after dark by myself looking for that restaurant with no phone in my car. But it was daytime; I had a friend with me and we had a car phone. Basically, our only danger was getting lost and having to ask someone how to get home.
I am encouraging you to introduce into your everyday life as much diversity and creativity as possible. Even when you do the same tasks on a regular basis, try doing them in a different way, especially if you feel staleness starting to set in. You don’t have to wait until you are deeply depressed to recognize that you are having problems.
Don’t Get Stale and Moldy!
This our bread we took hot for our provision out of our houses on the day we came forth to go unto you, but now, behold, it is dry, and it is mouldy.
Joshua 9:12 KJV
If I have a loaf of bread on the table at dinner, and after dinner, we sit, talk a while and drink coffee, I can reach out and touch the bread that is not covered up and tell if it is starting to get a little dry around the edges. It may not be stale yet, but if I don’t wrap it up and take proper care of it, it will soon become hard, brittle and tasteless.
The same principle applies to our lives. If we are not careful, the enemy will deceive us into allowing our lives to becoming dry and stale.
Resist the devil at his onset!
Our daughter Sandra travels with us and is the head of the helps ministry in our conferences. When we are home, she helps me in the house. Before she began traveling, she served as our full-time housekeeper, in addition to running the nursery for the local meetings we once held every week in St. Louis, Missouri.
She spent a lot of time cleaning and doing laundry. Anyone who cleans house day in and day out, day in and day out, can get tired of it. It may be one of the hardest jobs to stay excited about, because you clean it and someone else messes it up, and you clean it again, and it gets messed up all over again. This is especially true when small children or teenagers are present.
I noticed once that Sandra was doing jobs on Monday that she normally did later in the week, so I asked her, “What are you doing?”
“I’ve got to mix this schedule up some way,” she answered, “and get a little bit of freshness into it.”
You see, sometimes it helps if you just change your laundry day, or, for diversion, watch a movie or listen to tapes while you iron. Try going to the grocery store on a different day, or even better, go to a different store. These simple change-ups can add enough variety to keep things from getting too stale.
My secretary was a perfectionist who has now been liberated from compulsive behavior. In the past, she would never have left her house without the bed being made. She began to see the need for some diversity in her life so she said to me one day, “You are going to laugh when I tell you this.”
She went on to say that just for some diversion, she had purposely left her house that morning with the bed unmade. She related that she had thoroughly enjoyed walking out and looking back at it messed up. This was a sign of freedom and liberty for her.
“I will only do it for this week,” she said, “but it sure has felt good just to get out of the mold.”
When she said that, it occurred to me that if we stay in the same mold too long, we become moldy!
Our youngest son, who was eleven at the time and not fond of making his bed or cleaning his room, overheard this lady’s story. The next day he said to me, “Well, I’m going to have a little variety today. I’m not going to make my bed.”
Of course, he was trying to be funny; he probably thought he had “bed-making burnout,” but I wanted him to burn on.
Some people say, “I have to have a routine,” or “I’m just a creature of habit.” Routine is good, and some habits are also, as long as they don’t lead to staleness and moldiness.
You are free to be as routined or habit-oriented as you like, as long as you have joy with it. As a believer, you are free to have joy unspeakable and full of glory. (1 Pet. 1:8 KJV). So go for it! Make an effort to see how much you can enjoy your life!
Creativity and Diversity in Spiritual Life
The wind [symbolic of the Holy Spirit] blows (breathes) where it wills; and though you hear its sound, yet you neither know where it comes from nor where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born
of the Spirit.
John 3:8
I have found that when I follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in prayer and fellowship with God, it produces diversity and creativity, which results in freshness and vitality. When I make my own plan, it involves rules and regulations I think will keep me on the right path, but they end up being very dry and boring after a while.
For example, I can make up a prayer list and then pray about those things every day, or I can let the Holy Spirit lead me as He wills. I am not saying that it is wrong to keep a list of things to pray about, but I am cautioning against becoming so list-oriented that the Holy Spirit is left out.
One day the Spirit may lead me to pray more and read the Bible less. The next day it may be the opposite way. Some days I worship and praise more, while other days my prayers are more personal petition. Another day, my prayers are almost all intercession for others.
Some days, I merely sit in God’s presence, while other times, I cry for no apparent reason. I will laugh, sometimes, for sheer joy at knowing Him. Or, I may play music and dance before the Lord to honor Him. Sometimes I prostrate myself on the floor and just lie there in worship.
I can promise you that the Holy Spirit is creative; He will never lead us into boredom in any area if we are willing to follow Him. I had to learn, however, that we are often more comfortable with rules and regulations than with liberty.
Many times we are afraid of liberty.
When we make free choices according to the Holy Spirit’s individual leading, we must be responsible for those choices, whereas when we do what everyone else is doing, or what the “rules” say we should do, then we will be less likely to be judged or criticized.
There are certain guidelines for many things in the Word of God, and they are the same for all of us, but there is no complete set of guidelines for the “how to” of our personal devotion, Bible study and personal fellowship time with the Lord.
Many of us have such severe difficulty in this area that it prevents us from progressing. We are supposed to enjoy God above all else, not feel dry and bored when nourishing our spiritual life.
Ministry can be a creative experience if we allow it to. The Holy Spirit will lead us in witnessing, giving, exhorting, prayer and literally every aspect of our spiritual life.
We don’t have to be in a certain posture to pray.
Sometimes I pray on my treadmill, sometimes and most frequently, in a certain chair in my office at home. It is my place to go in the mornings. But I am not in a rut. If I ever feel that I am, I do something different to stay fresh.
Ministers Need Balance
I have already mentioned how we need to avoid being so spiritual that no one can seem to relate to us. I have had to learn that the rest of my family — although they are called of God just as I am — don’t have the same call I do.
At one point I thought Dave and our children were very carnal. We would go on vacation, and I was very satisfied to spend a good deal of that time seeking God, but my family wanted to play. I can remember criticizing Dave about not spending what I thought was enough time with God. He let me know that I did not know how much time he spent with God, and that just because he didn’t do what I was doing, that didn’t mean that he was slack in fellowshipping with God.
But he also said a very important thing to me along these lines: Joyce, I am called by God to be the administrator for Life In The Word and to be your covering. I am very serious about what God has called me to do, but He has not called me to preach.”
He said, “I love the Word, and I study, but I do not have the grace to spend as much time praying and studying as you do. You are called and anointed by God to do something, but we don’t all have your call and you can’t make us prepare for something we are not called to do.”
We ministers must be careful about trying to press our families into our molds. In Isaiah 58:6,7 the Lord gives us some good insight into maintaining balance when ministering:
[Rather] is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every [enslaving] yoke?
Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house — when you see the naked, that you cover him, and that you hide not yourself from [the needs of] your own flesh and blood?
If you are a minister, do not hide yourself from the needs of your own flesh and blood while you are ministering to everyone else.
Several times in my own ministry, a pastor’s wife, or the wife of a traveling evangelist or someone married to a person who is called into prison or street ministry, has come to tell me that their marriage is in deep trouble because the minister is never home; he or she is always out doing for everyone else, but never has any time for the family.
You might say, “Well, that’s his or her call or job.”
While that is true, we all must have godly priorities. God first, family next, work third, then our personal ministry.
If you are called into full-time ministry, you are blessed that your work and your ministry are one and the same. You need time for your own flesh and blood (yourself), and your flesh and blood that is your family. As a minister of the Gospel, you need diversity and creativity as much as your family does. It will keep you “burning on” instead of “burning out.”
Add Variety in Simple Ways
… if only I may finish my course with joy. …
Acts 20:24
Adding variety to your life does not have to be expensive or complicated. If you want to do something different in the evening, take the family for an outing. Most young children love to take a ride in the car. Even thirty minutes can be just what all of you need.
Go out and get a cup of coffee. Yes, you could make it at home, but it might not be as much fun. Go get an ice cream cone or a soda. Go for a walk, or sit by the park and watch the children play. During holidays take a ride around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights on houses.
If you have a big project in front of you that is going to be an all-day task, take a few short breaks. Walk outside for a few minutes if the weather is nice and drink a glass of iced tea. If you see your neighbors out, talk with them for a while. Go sit on the couch and watch a short program on TV that you enjoy.
You must never lose sight of your goal, but those short breaks can make all the difference in how you feel about the project. It can help you “finish your course with joy.”
Whatever you do, if you are obeying Scripture and doing it unto the Lord, you should not only start the course with joy, but also finish it the same way.
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Joy in God’s Waiting Room
A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and makes them sure.
Proverbs 16:9
We think and plan in temporal terms, and God thinks and plans in eternal terms. What this means is that we are very interested in right now, and God is much more interested in eternity. We want what “feels good” right now, what produces immediate results, but God is willing to invest time. God is an investor; He will invest a lot of time in us because He has an eternal purpose planned for our lives.
God sees and understands what we don’t see and understand. He asks us to trust Him, not to live in carnal reasoning and be frustrated because things don’t always go according to our plan.
Without abundant trust in God, we will never experience joy and enjoyment. We have ideas about how and when things should happen. Not only does God have a predetermined plan for our lives, but He has the perfect timing for each phase. Psalm 31:15 assures us that our times are in His hands. Fighting and resisting the timing of God is equivalent to fighting His will.
Many times we fail to realize that being out of God’s timing is the same as being out of His will. We may know what God wants us to do, but not when He wants us to do it.
Give God Time!
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vis
ion, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am your Shield, your abundant compensation, and your reward shall be exceedingly great.
And Abram said, Lord God, what can You give me, since I am going on [from this world] childless and he who shall be the owner and heir of my house is this [steward] Eliezer of Damascus?
And Abram continued, Look, You have given me no child; and [a servant] born in my house is my heir.
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This man shall not be your heir, but he who shall come from your own body shall be your heir.
And He brought him outside [his tent into the starlight] and said, Look now toward the heavens and count the stars — if you are able to number them. Then He said to him, So shall your descendants be.
Genesis 15:1-5
Abraham had a very definite word from God about his future. He knew what God had promised, but had no word regarding when it would take place.
The same is often true for us. While we are waiting for our manifestation to come forth — waiting for the breakthrough — it is not always easy to enjoy the time spent in the waiting room.
Once God speaks to us or shows us something, we are filled up with it. It is as though we are “pregnant” with what God has said. He has planted a seed in us, and we must enter a time of preparation. This time prepares us to handle the thing that God has promised to give us or do for us.
It is very much like the birth of a child. First, the seed is planted in the womb, then come nine months of waiting, and finally, a baby is born. During those nine months, there is a great deal that is happening. The woman’s body is changing to prepare her to be able to give birth. The seed is growing into maturity. The parents are preparing things in the natural for the baby’s arrival. They are accumulating the necessary equipment to properly care for a child.