Living a Balanced Life

By Glenn I. Miller

Why do some people facing difficulties in their lives not only survive but thrive through such experiences, while others facing similar situations fall apart, lose their way, and have little direction or purpose in their lives? Author Glenn I. Miller holds that the difference rests on realities concerning relationshipsspecifically with ones having to do with living a balanced life.

In this study, he shows how people who listen to the teachings and follow the leadership of Jesus find ways to discover durable balance despite the adversity they face. By providing a guided exploration of the ministry of Jesus, Miller demonstrates that balance, fullness, and purpose come when you practice the threefold ways of love of God, others, and self. Devoting one section to each of these forms of love, Living a Balanced Life outlines how you can learn to live in balance by avoiding the excesses illustrated in contemporary culture, listening to the teachings of the Lord, and gaining insights from Millers experiences in military and civilian ministry. The final section draws together the insights from the first three sections and suggests ways to live with balance.

If you have taken stock of your life and relationships and hope to find a pathway to living with greater balance, Living a Balanced Life can offer you an informative and enjoyable resource filled with biblical wisdom, helpful truths, intriguing illustrations, dashes of humor, and commonsense wisdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490893839

Glenn I. Miller

Glenn I. Miller, an ordained United Methodist minister and retired US Navy chaplain, is the national chaplain for the Military Officers Association of America. He is the author of Hosea Model for Marriage—A Biblical Model for Marriage Relationships. He and his wife, Betty, three children and five grandchildren and live in Bluffton, South Carolina.

Book preview

Section One

THE FIRST REALITY: WHAT LOVING GOD INVOLVES

CHAPTER ONE

Knowing That Loving God Always Comes First!

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength (Mk 12:30) NIV. With these words, Jesus quotes the Torah, (Dt. 6:4-5).

Loving God, loving neighbor, and loving self certainly are the key ingredients in a realistic and reliable formula for living a balanced life. But these three key ingredients are not of equal measure! For a balanced life, loving God always comes first. Simply put, if God is not first in our lives then something else will be – ourselves, our children, our career, our possessions, or something else we choose to become priority number one. And when something else comes before God, not only does God get left out or shortchanged, but love of neighbor and love of self get de-emphasized and devalued as well. To have spiritual health and to be engaged and active in living a balanced life, loving God must become and remain the number one priority! It is when the love of God becomes the top priority for balanced living, that love of neighbor and love of self are able to become worthwhile dimensions and extensions of one’s love of God.

For more than two thousand years the creed of the oneness of God, the Shema, has been chanted by the Jews. Being obedient Jews, Jesus and his followers understood the Shema as a creed which declared and affirmed the existence of, and the obedience and dedication to, one God of the entire universe. The same holds true today. For modern Judaism, the Torah still declares that one is to worship only one God, and that this same God is supreme over everything and everyone else. This God alone is sovereign and the sole object of one’s obedience and reverence.

However, this priority and focus is not based on blind submission or total subjection but rather on love. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might (Deut. 6:4-5) RSV. In both Judaism and Christianity, it is love rather than legalism that becomes the imperative in honoring and acknowledging one’s devotion to God. It is an acknowledgement that one’s relationship to God is intensely personal and from the heart. For love reveals the most intimate and personal of human emotions. But it is a unique kind of love, one that has priority and focus over anything else. It is a declaration of faith that expresses a willing and wholehearted obedience, loyalty, and service to God and God alone. When Jesus acknowledged and affirmed this creed in his teachings, he not only emphasized the need to have God be the priority in one’s life but also the importance of loving God first in one’s life. He did so because he knew the blessings and benefits which can result from such observance in one’s life.

Loving God Acknowledges an Up Close and Personal God

In an interview in Time magazine the renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking was asked why the concept of God’s existence is almost universal if God does not exist. Hawking replied, I don’t claim that God doesn’t exist. God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the law of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship with an impersonal God. (TIME, November 15, 2010, p. 8).

Can it be possible for one to love an impersonal God? In a series of interviews with ex-President George W. Bush (as shown on the TODAY show on NBC during the second week of November, 2010), one of the interviews was conducted in the church where Bush made the decision to quit drinking alcohol over 20 years ago. In that interview, Matt Lauer made the comment that although no one can prove the existence of God, neither can one disprove God’s existence. Lauer then asked Bush if God was a significant factor in Bush’s decision to no longer drink alcohol. Not only did Bush respond in the affirmative, he also stated that it was his faith in God that helped keep him keep true to that decision made when he was 40 years old. Bush’s decision to stop drinking was made to a God that was revealed to him through the life and teachings of Jesus. This Christian understanding of God is a Supreme Being that George Bush considers to be up close and personal!

This is why the Incarnation (God personalized in human form) is so vital to what Christianity is and to what it believes and proclaims. Moses, Buddha, and Mohammed clearly desired that their teachings would lead others to what is sacred and holy in life. But these profound religious leaders themselves never claimed to be God. But Jesus did! This is what makes the Christian faith so profound and unique. It alone has declared that into our troubled world, and into our dark and disordered lives, a Savior has come. And because we, in our own sin and imperfection could not come to God, God in Christ has chosen to come to us, to embrace us, to redeem us, to love us, and to claim us as his own. Thus Christianity affirms and embraces a God who is up close and personal – a God who loves us – and a God who wants us to love him,

If God is indeed up close and personal, then He knows what we go through and what we need. He knows our wants and desires. He knows our failures and mistakes. And He knows that without a loving and caring God in our lives we can and do get locked in to our own desires and devices. We can get held captive and become prisoners of our own human condition of hatred, greed, violence, and neglect.

Remembering the dark days of Christmas 1944, an elderly Dutch woman reflected about Nazi occupied Holland, as the country and its people awaited redemption. Each night, she recalled, we secretly huddled around the wireless. We were eagerly hoping to receive some coded message that meant, ‘Invasion Begun.’ We scanned the skies, looking for Allied planes. People walked the dikes, hoping for ships on the horizon. We prayed. People in Holland were starving. The Jews were already gone. Could we endure another year of Nazi occupation?

What is it like to be held captive? What is it like to await deliverance? What is it like to have to be dependent upon someone or something to come from outside to break through the barriers, the prisons, and the walls to free, to release, and to save? Those who have known and can remember such experiences in their own lives also know what it means to be freed and released from such things. And their response usually culminates in gratitude and love. As a serviceman once admitted to me, following a series of dark nights of his soul, Chaplain, I never knew how much I loved God until I realized how much I needed God!

Reflecting on the importance of the Incarnation and the good news concerning a personal God who genuinely cares about his creation, Louis Cassels wrote a parable entitled, The Parable of the Birds. Cassels tells the story of a man who looked upon Christmas as a lot of humbug. He wasn’t a Scrooge or a Grinch. In fact, he was a very decent and kind person. He just didn’t believe in all that stuff about an Incarnation that churches proclaim on Christmas. How could God become a man? It just did not make any sense to him. On Christmas Eve, his wife and children went to church for the midnight service, but he chose to stay at home. It began to snow. As he sat down by the fire to read his newspaper, he heard a thumping sound. Birds, caught in a storm, and in desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his picture window. Peering outside, he could see the birds huddling miserably in the snow. I can’t let these poor creatures lie there and freeze, he said to himself. But how can I help them?

Realizing his barn provided a warm shelter; he put on his coat and boots, and trudged through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened wide the barn doors and turned on the light. But the birds did not come in. Food will bring them in, he thought. So he sprinkled a trail of bread crumbs from where the birds were to the sheltering barn. But the birds ignored the crumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow. Then he tried shooing them into the barn. But the birds just scattered in every direction – except toward the warm, lighted barn.

They find me a strange and terrifying creature, he thought. I can’t seem to think of any way to let them know they can trust me. If only I could be a bird myself for a few minutes, perhaps then I could lead them to safety. At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The man stood silently for a moment, listening to the bells announcing the glad tidings of Christmas. Then the man fell to his knees in the snow. Now I understand, he cried. Now I see why God had to send His Son!"

Martin Luther was not only a biblical scholar and a reformer; he also was a prominent and powerful preacher. Roland Bainton, a Yale Professor and biographer of Luther, pointed out that it was not unusual for Luther to preach approximately 150 to 200 sermons a year. Concerning Luther’s custom of preaching, Bainton made the following observation: He preached from two to four times on a Sunday and several times during the week at the university or in the household composed of children, servants, relatives, and student borders (Roland H. Bainton, The Martin Luther Christmas Book, Fortress Press, 1958, p. 13).

Bainton collected and translated the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany sermons preached by Luther over a thirty year period. Throughout Luther’s messages, was his continual wonder and amazement that all the characters in the Christmas story were themselves able to believe. In fact, Luther was honest enough to admit that if he had been in their respective places he would not have been able to believe as they did that God had become man. Thus throughout his sermons, Luther was able to compose incredulous reflections of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men. And as for the virgin birth, Luther believed that to be a trivial miracle as compared to the virgin’s faith. He reflected that it was easy for an all-powerful God to do a virgin birth. But how could a humble, young maiden, named Mary, believe it to be true? For Luther, this was the miracle that impressed him!

In one of Luther’s sermons concerning the Annunciation, he says this about Mary: In the village of Nazareth, she appeared as a mere servant, tending the cattle and the house, and no more esteemed than a maid among us who does her appointed chores. Her age was probably between thirteen and fifteen years. And yet this was the one whom God chose. He might have gone to Jerusalem and picked out Caiaphas’ daughter, who was fair, rich, clad in gold-embroidered raiment and attended by a retinue of maids in waiting. But God preferred a lowly maid from a mean town (Ibid., p. 21).

No wonder Martin Luther was amazed! Perhaps this is why Luke tells us that when Elizabeth encountered Mary, she could not help but cry out: Blessed is she who believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished (Luke 1:45) NIV. In response, Mary breaks out in song, declaring, He has brought down the rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble (Luke 1:52) NIV. Or as another translation puts it, He has exalted those of low degree.

This is what makes the message of the Incarnation so compelling. How unbelievable and incredible it is for a mighty, powerful, omnipotent God to invade our world as a baby and be born in a stable to a poor, young maiden, and to one of such low degree. Why would such a God choose to do such a thing as this? The answer is found in God’s love, in the transformation of human lives, and in God’s desire to become up close and personal rather than distant and impersonal.

Dostoevsky once wrote: The more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love individual people. Whenever someone is close to me, I feel my freedom being impinged upon … If I must love my fellow man, he had better hide himself, for no sooner do I see his face than there’s an end to my love for him.

Perhaps Dostoevsky spoke for most of us. We love humanity but its people we can’t stand! It is always easier to love from a distance, when we don’t have to get involved in the nitty-gritty of whom people really are and where they really live. But the radical