The Never-Ending Quest for Balance

I was fortunate enough to have lunch with an old friend of mine this afternoon.  It was probably one of the most spiritually edifying times I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in a while.  He literally poured into me spiritual encouragement.  I felt like I was getting a spiritual massage as he was ministering to me.

One of the things that was mentioned in the conversation was the need for balance between prayer and study.  Here’s the long and short of it.

There are far too many Christians, myself included, who take a one sided approach to the relationship you have with God … and I do mean relationship.  It is a two way communion.  He speaks to us through scripture, and we speak to him through prayer.

Some people focus far too much on spiritual experiences.  “I really felt the presence of God there” … “God just surrounded me with love”.  There’s nothing wrong with either one of these things, but by themselves they lack balance.  Talking and listening are both equally important.

For instance, I know way too many people who treat Christianity as an intellectual indevor.  The spend hours reading scripture, studying commentaries, preparing notes, absorbing quotes from Spurgeon and others.  They treat God as if He is barely anything more than a subject to be understood.  Their worship consists of stating his attributes back to him … prayer is a time to quote back to Him the scripture He wrote.

On the other hand, there are others who live for the experience.  They spend hours in prayer … they drive miles to experience what’s happening at a church hours away … some even claim to have special revelations from God Himself.

Neither one of these people, without a proper balance, is in the right.

God is not an academic subject.  He is not just to be studied as an art.  He is a living being worthy of worship, yet loving enough to want a relationship with me.  He isn’t just to be feared.  He is a friend, a Savior, and a hope for every one of us.

But God isn’t just your friend (although He very much is your friend).  He is also very interested in our appreciation of Himself.  He wants to talk back.  If we aren’t balancing the study of scripture with our prayer relationship, we’ve made a mistake and fallen out of balance.

The Christian walk is many times perverted by people with wonderful intentions.  They want to focus on  experience because it has been neglected for years by the church, but in the process they end up neglect the study of His Word.  The same is also true of those who are too focused on God as an academic study.  Too much emphasis is put on experience and the react in the same way the other folks did by letting their focus become unbalanced.

So let me encourage you like my friend did to me.  See God as a person. He is complex.  Don’t ever think you have him figured out completely.  He may just blow your mind some day! 

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