Latest / Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies / Words of Wisdom | Tony Hoover | Week 01 - In Search of Life Balance

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Words of Wisdom | Tony Hoover | Week 01 - In Search of Life Balance · Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online@madisonchurch.org be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
• 0:37
  Speaker B: I want to thank everybody for being here tonight for our class. Jason said this class is Words of Wisdom, but this particular class is called Words of Limited Wisdom. So with that said, we'll get into some thoughts. You notice we don't have the screen on tonight. I hope everybody has a piece of paper and a writing implement because this is going to be a participatory class. And so that means not only that you'll be involved in what we're doing rather than me just lecturing the whole time, but it also means that anytime you have a question or you want to raise a comment, you're welcome to do that as we move into our class tonight. I had originally titled this class Attaining Life Balance, but I've changed it to In Search of Life Balance because we are all seekers. It's just like Paul the Apostle said in Philippians Chapter three. He said he had not yet attained, but he pressed on to the mark. And that pressed on, press on is something that we're going to come back to because it means that we need to exercise initiative in seeking life balance. It just doesn't happen. And we'll talk more about that as well. I'm going to read you a definition of life balance so we know what we're talking about. There are some key points in this definition that we'll bring out, but listen to me carefully because it's rather long. Life balance is achieving equilibrium between the various demands of living life, encompassing work, family, health and etc. Not necessarily by splitting time equally, but by feeling content and managing investment across the various areas of your life in a way that no single part overwhelms others, which in turn leads to better well being and satisfaction, or as it is called, good life balance. A couple of things in that definition we need to hone in on as we move forward. We one is that the concept of splitting time between the various responsibilities in your life and mine is not an equal thing. Those responsibilities carry different weights and they carry different weights for everybody in this room individually. That's why you have an individual piece of paper and an individual writing implement. Hopefully we are short on writing implements, but I believe we're doing okay with that. But it says you focus on these areas in a way that no one thing overwhelms others because they're all significant in our lives and we'll look at them closely in a minute. And so the ultimate thing is good life balance, I believe. Oh, I need to tell you why I'm qualified to teach this class. I am eminently qualified to teach this class because I have probably searched for it longer than anybody else in the room since I think I'm the oldest. So I'm qualified for that reason. I am totally, eminently unqualified because I'm still seeking it and I have to seek for it every day because it's not something that just happens. You have to seek it and find it. They say that good speakers start off with something humorous. So let me share a little humorous thing with you. As some of you know, I'm a general contractor and that's been my career for the last 25 years. But when I think about balance, I think about my friend Buck Buchanan, who's deceased at this time. But I had just started in the business. We had a rather large job we had to do. Somebody had lost their home in a fire. We had to rebuild it. And I did not at that time we started the business, I didn't have a crew, didn't know who I was going to call. And I, through somebody else, I met Buck Buchanan. Buck was an old country guy and I enjoyed talking with Buck and working with Buck. Buck was when I think about balance. We used to call Buck the level headed contractor. He worked for us a good bit. He was very level headed. See, Buck didn't have a single tooth in his mouth and he liked to dip snuff and he dipped it all day long. Consequently, balance, because it dripped down both sides of his beard. So that's not a good word picture, but that was true. Okay, so that's not the good balance we're talking about here tonight. Let me tell you what the goals of this time, this class tonight are the goals that we want to focus on. I want you to think about these. We want to stimulate your thinking about your own life balance as it relates to your personal Life priorities. And you can't achieve good life balance without starting with life priorities. A lot of people in talking about life balance, talk about time management, but first you have to talk about priorities. And so that's one of the things we'll focus on. We're not talking about what might be considered ideal priorities. These are not ideal. There's no set of ideal priorities for everybody. It's for you personally. And what we want to get to tonight is where are you with respect to your priorities and how well are you focusing in on those priorities in your life? So we want to, as Paul said when he was talking about the Lord's supper, we want every man to examine himself tonight. This is a class where it's kind of a personal thing and it involves a lot of self introspection. And so we hope everybody will participate in doing that. One of the things that I said I was eminently unqualified to teach. I've never taught a class on life balance. And I spent a lot of years working on the problems associated with imbalance. And so when I got to studying this, I noticed the plethora of information regarding life balance. We're going to study like seven different areas of your life, but I've seen As many as 16 being discussed by different professionals in the field. So we're only going to touch the kind of the hem of the garment this evening. But just be aware that it's a big problem. There's a lot of information out there on this because it's such a big problem. So I'm glad we're studying this. So tonight we're going to identify key life areas that affect good life balance. We want to reflect on your own current life balance. We want to learn two or three practical strengths to improve life balance. And most importantly, we want to bring this to our attention tonight and let this be a launching pad for introspection about this particular topic as you work through the rest of your life. And I think you'll probably find, as I did, that it requires regular attention. And if it doesn't require regular attention, you don't give it regular attention. We have what's called life imbalance, which makes us suffer sometimes. So we want to avoid that. So life balance is not doing all of your responsibilities equally. It's about intentionally prioritizing what matters most in the different arenas and in the different seasons of life. Now, my ability and my achievement of life balance is much different than yours because my children are raised, I'm retired. And so my biggest balance thing is Standing up and not falling. So our balance issues are a little bit different. But I have gone through your balance issues, and I dare say there's probably not anybody in this room that has not dealt with this problem in their own lives. If I'm wrong, raise your hand. I don't do that. So I want to give you seven areas of life responsibilities. We're only going to work on seven tonight. And I want you to write these on your paper. That's why we handed out the paper. We're going to do some exercises on this paper tonight. It's a very practical class, I hope. And so let's give you these seven areas we're going to look at tonight. Seven areas of responsibility that you and I deal with or I have dealt with through our lives. Number one, and these are in alphabetical order so as to not give emphasis on anything in particular. Number one, I've got family. Next. I have. Write these down if you. Family. And next is finances. Next is health, Then rest and leisure. Next is relationships. Number six is spiritual growth. Number seven, work. Do I need. Let me repeat these because I went a little quick on some of them. First one is family, then finances, then health, rest and leisure. Relationships, spiritual growth and work. Okay, we're good. Okay. I want to take just a minute and speak to you about this topic, these issues here, these responsibilities from a spiritual context. And then we'll move into some other practical aspects of dealing with this. Each of these areas of responsibilities is very important. And Ecclesiastes 3, verse 1, to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose unto heaven. Those purposes are the areas of responsibility that we listed are purposes. And God tells us there's a time for every purpose under heaven. That means we need to give attention to these things. God designed life with certain rhythms, if you will. Work, rest, worship, relationships and imbalance is the result of when we ignore any of these particular areas that we're talking about. Secondly, God has a design for life balance. Matthew 6:33, Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you. God helps us prioritize some things. When God is centered, other areas align more naturally. Do y' all remember something that was said in Andrew's sermon Sunday about that? As I was writing this down, I recall that what he said was he was talking about the movie the Chosen, and somebody had asked Andrew, how does it feel to have. To have given up this lucrative business you have of tax collecting? And the response was, it seems to me, he said that I Noticed that when I am able to do what Jesus said, everything else seems to fall into place. And that's what God ordained. You know, Jesus Christ is our example, and he practiced balance in his own life. If we read about his life in the New Testament, very early in the morning, Jesus got up and left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Mark Jesus balanced a hectic ministry schedule with solitude and prayer time. He lived a life of balance. And he told his apostles in Mark 6:31, he said, come over by yourself to a secluded place and rest a little while. And then it says, for there were many people coming and going and they did not even have time to eat. So Jesus not only practiced balance in his own life, he taught it to his apostles that they needed to take time to assess, to realize their own lives, what was going on, and to make adjustments as necessary. I saw this quotation and it struck home with me and I want to share it with you and get your thoughts about says taking time to rest is a sign of trust in God. What does that mean to you? Taking time to rest is a mark of trust in God. Okay, so you liken it to being able to sleep good at night knowing that God is in charge and is working all the time. Well, I think so. I think those are all accurate statements. But when we take out time to rest, most of us are looking at our list, the next thing we got to do. And so to say, I'm going to rest and I'm going to trust God to deal with some of the things I'm having to deal with. It means that we do indeed trust God to be working those things in our life. You know, Philippians, Paul in Philippians said, God, he said, work out your own salvation. And then he said, God works in you as you work out your salvation. God is working in us. Sometimes we forget because we're his children, he's working for us, but he is all the time. I remember the challenges early on when we started our company on a shoestring, that there was a lot of uncertainty. I don't know how many of you have had to meet a payroll on Friday or had to make sure that things were done properly so that you didn't get sued. But there's a lot of worry associated and fret associated with God. And I just want to stand before you this evening and tell you what I experienced early on in that business because the first year or so were great struggles for me financially and life balance issues as well, because I was focused on that business because that was our means of support for me, my wife and three children. So I wrestle with that. And I fretted over it. And like some of you, I lost some sleep about it. But I still remember this time when I was frustrated and I was worried, worried sick over some things. And I just sat down and I really prayed. I was really talking to God, praying to God. I said, lord, I'm going to give you this. I'm going to give you this business. It's a little bit more than I can handle. I want to give it to you. You do with it like you will, and I'll work as hard as I can and I'll trust you to bring about good. And he did. And that was one of the things that I remember about struggling with life balance. I was overbalanced in my focus on my work at that time. And so I not only paused for that occasion to give God that. You know, God, Scripture tells us to cast all our burdens on him, for he cares for you. And so what was I doing? I was just throwing those burdens out there and I was reeling them back in. I was trying to handle it myself. And God didn't build us that way. God made us to trust him and to depend on him, and that's what we should do. Okay, so one other scripture we want to look at is that First Corinthians 4, verse 2. And it's about stewardship. Moreover, it is required in stewards that one be found. Faithful. God has placed the responsibility on each one of us to be good stewards of. We used to think about money, don't we? But not only money, but our time, ourselves, our whole selves. We're stewards of what God has given us. Ourselves. He gave us life, and we're stewards of that. And sometimes we forget that we have responsibilities not only to family, work, whatever these areas we're talking about, but to God to do for God a good job with the things he's given us, with our management of ourselves. And he'll bless that. So I want you to go back to those seven areas of responsibility you wrote down. And I want you to. I'm going to give you a minute to think. I want you to look at those seven areas, and I want you to give yourself a ranking from 1 to 10 overall, how well, how good is your life balance at this point? We're not going to share those. I want you to think about that and reflect on it for yourself for just, just a few, few minutes. Here you don't have to write each area, just write your overall Life balance score 1 to 10. How do you feel about your life balance right now? Okay. In the interest of time, we will move on. A lot of what we're going to do tonight is I'm going to be asking a lot of questions, self reflection questions, because they're self reflection because there's no right answer. For many of these, the right answer that's arrived at is your right answer. It's not the overall right answer, it's your right answer. So we'll be asking some questions tonight to make us think about this concept of life balance. So I want you to look at those seven areas and ask yourself, number one, I've got four questions here. Which area or areas am I neglecting? Do you see an area that you're neglecting? If so, mark it somehow. Secondly, identify what you feel like is your strongest area and then identify one area that needs attention. Which area of my life may be demanding more than God intended? Which area or areas of my life may be taking more of my time than God intended? I'd like to ask the group of these seven areas, which one of them gets pushed aside the most often when you get really, really busy? Rest, rest. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's our society and culture. And you go, go, go. Yeah. Anybody else? Yeah. Spiritual growth. Okay. Spiritual growth. Yeah, yeah. It's easy to. It's easy to find to fill those fur other than sitting down quietly and praying and reading, studying. And I suppose we could go around the room and find it's a little bit different for everybody. But I want to say this, that at different seasons of your life and at different times in your life, you'll find yourself lacking in one of these areas, probably if you're like me, and that's why I'm still in pursuit of good life balance is because it's elusive. Because of our focus. We get focused in on a few things and we forget about things that are priorities but need our attention. And so that's why we're having this class right now. Now go Back to your 7 things on your page and I want you to look at each area specifically and assign a number from 1 to 7 according to its importance to you. Rank them from 1 to 7, 1 being the most important down to 7, which may be the least important to you. Again, there's no right answer. This is your deal. So you do your work. Yes. Intellectual. I know this should be most important, but I put this. Let's be honest with Ourselves. Okay, whatever. I mean, whatever you are is what we want to find out for yourself. Now, with that same list in front of you, I want you to rate how you're doing in each life area, each life area, rank each specific life area from one to 10, 10 being the best, one being the worst. Rank how you think you're doing in each area. Give it a sign it a number how you're doing. And you could have two of them that are fives or two of them that are sevens or whatever. Just rank each one according to how you think you're doing in that area. Okay. The third exercise that we want to do at this point is I want you to assign a number from 1 to 10 to each area according to the amount of time that you invest in that area each week, With 10 being where you invest the most time down to one or ranking down to one that you do the least time in, maybe. And again, you could have the same score on two different areas. And what we're focusing on here are perhaps discrepancies between the significance that you assigned to these areas of responsibility and the time you actually spend in doing these activities or dealing with these responsibilities. And so if your list is like mine, you'll see some discrepancies there. Okay. And that's one of the things we want to take from this class, is that we all have some work to do with respect to attaining life balance. So there are some truths about life balance that we need to bring out at this point. Number one, balance does not mean everything gets equal time. I think we all know that. Number two, balance does not mean that you've removed stress from your life. If you have a wonderful life balance, it may be because you're stressed out and just working real hard at it. So it doesn't mean no stress. Balance changes during different seasons of life, as we pointed out earlier. You know, your life balance is going to look different from mine. And so that's just the way life is. And balance is different for different people. And we pointed that out as well. Your sheet is in an individual sheet and doesn't look like. Doesn't have to look like the average of the mean or average of what everybody else has got. This is us. Well, let's talk about some practical things, about strategies for better balance in our lives. One of the things that's challenging has been all my life, I don't know about you, is that to focus on the moment, focus on what you're doing right now. I used to work for a guy and this was in another career insurance. And my boss was in Atlanta, and he always had a statement that stuck with me. He's passed on years ago. But he would get in meetings and he would be talking and people would be going, mmm. And finally one day he said, I want to tell you young men something. He said, you need to learn this throughout your life. He says, no matter where you are, be there. What he was telling us is, whatever you're doing, wherever you are, focus on that moment, give attention to that moment. And so that's a practical idea for dealing with life balance. One of the things that has challenged me throughout life, and perhaps you're dealing with it now, even, and that is the ability to set boundaries in your life so that you can devote the energies, the investment of time, energy and whatever into dealing with each of these areas. And sometimes we don't do boundaries. Here's some examples. Can you stop your work day at a certain time? Can you turn that switch off? I confess to you, I had a problem with that early on in my construction business when I was working for myself. Because you get off work, you go home, you have dinner, interact with the family, and your mind's racing. Did I do that? Did I tell him about that? Did I pay that bill? Been there and done that. Maybe some of you, it's hard to flip that switch off. But that's part of setting boundaries for yourself that benefit not only you, but everybody around you. And so it's something we need to work on. I'm not going to ask for a raising of the hands here, but one of the boundaries you can do. How many of you have children? A lot of dads. Okay, good. One of the things you can do is you may already do this. I hope so. You can have a phone, Free meal, phone, free dinners. We don't do phone. We don't bring our phones to the table. And what that means, dads, is that the kids are going, what do I do now? Where's my phone? One of the things you have to do in your leadership role at home as a spiritual leader is you have to set the agenda. You have to be creative in things, to talk about, to involve your children. Because it's like the rest of this. It doesn't just happen. You have to be. You have to have initiative about it. One of the challenges that you'll encounter along life's journey is that sometimes you have a reluctance to tell people no. Every time you tell somebody yes, it means no to something else. You have only so much time, energy, Money, effort, interest. But every time you say yes to something that somebody offers you, you say no to something else. So just be aware of that. One of the things that drives my wife crazy is my cell phone will be in my office in the other part of the house. It'll start ringing, and I'll just sit there and let it ring. I might be doing something this. Aren't you going to answer that? And I always say no. If it's important, they'll leave a message. They will. If my business is burning down, they'll call me. They'll leave a message. So that bothers some people because that phone dictates their day, it rules their time, and it demands them to respond when it calls. So don't be hesitant to realize that you can return phone calls and it's okay as long as you return them. I had a son. My son worked for me about 10 years in our business, and then he went on his own with our blessing, and he was asking me, dad, how can I be successful? I said, just answer your phone and be there when you say you're going to be there. I said, you can't miss, not in this world. So many people don't even answer their phones, and so many people don't show up when they're supposed to. So, anyway, he's on his own, doing well. I want you to write something on your paper. We're going to. This is. I don't know how much time we got. Anybody got to watch? I'm not paying attention. We got nine minutes. Okay. We'll forge ahead. Based on what we've talked about so far, I want you to try to write down one thing on your paper that you can do differently this week to improve your own personal life balance. Yes.
• 29:41
  Speaker A: Could I ask, in times of your life, when you felt the most beneficial, what did that look like for you? Did you feel content, joyful, fulfilled? What kind of things made you realize that you were.
• 29:58
  Speaker B: Thank you. I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back on my life, there was a time when I felt I had good life balance. And looking back on my life, I believe I did. In 1982, I received a promotion. I was an insurance agent here in town, received a promotion from the company, and they moved us to Guntersville. And so we raised our children for 15 years in Guntersville, went to the Guntersville Church of Christ and served as a deacon there, and kept moving ahead in my career. I was fortunate to have a job where I worked on my own pretty much, and managed about 20, 20 guys. And during that time I was really involved in church work. I was deacon over the youth over at Guntersville and was enjoying my work. My kids were all in school, doing well in school. My wife is a nurse, was a nurse. And so she had a good career going with a local doctor there. We had a loving community around, a small community, had a beautiful home overlooking the lake. And just life was good, Life was real good. And to tell you how life can suddenly become imbalanced, that period of time was I felt like I had good balance. I was working well, growing in the company. In 1996, approaching Christmas, two guys from Atlanta came over from the home office. This was right after I'd been made manager of the year. But they came over and said, we're not going to need your services any longer. So what had happened is the company I worked for had kept downsizing, getting smaller, and they eventually sold the company. But anyway, I got downsized out. Well, with a couple of kids in college and a sizable mortgage, I naturally had some concerns about what I might do for another career. I was 50 years old when that happened and so know what I was going to do. But I'd like to share that with you guys because of the outcome of that. It's almost like Joseph in the land of Egypt when he said, you guys, my brothers meant it for bad, but God meant it for good. So I lost a job and I struggled for about six months trying to figure out what I could do because nobody wants to hire a 50 year old ex insurance manager. So God worked some things out. I spent a lot of time in prayer, spent a lot of time in the Word during that time. It was a good time to just rest and refocus and rededicate myself. I tried to do some of that and got to noticing the birds down there at the bridge in Guntersville. And the birds got out every morning and flew out from under the bridge and perched on the power lines. And I noticed what they would do. They would get dressed up for the day, they'd preen their feathers, and then they'd sit there and visit with each other and sing a song to God. And then they would go out to receive what God had given them for that day. And I remembered what Jesus said about the birds in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. And so I said, well, the birds can do it. I can go get dressed up and I can get out and look around and I can trust God like they do. I can go out and see what he's got for me. So I started from that moment to look and wound up as a general contractor here in Huntsville, which ultimately was a much better career than I ever could have had where I was. So we never know about what God will work to help us achieving life balance and restoring life balance when we get out of sorts, if we'll trust him for that. But thank you for that Question. Yes. Did you ever have maybe an older man or I guess probably a time.
• 34:04
  Speaker A: Of even your wife, when other people saw that your life maybe wasn't quite as in balance as it needed to be?
• 34:11
  Speaker B: Did you ever have those experiences? I did once. I can think about one off the top of my head. It wasn't a corrective thing. It was just a mentoring thing. I was a deacon at the West Huntsville church back in 75 or so. And then we went to a seminar in Oklahoma. We rode a bus out there to soul winning workshop in Oklahoma. And I was sitting next to an elder named Leon Burton. And he loved my family. He loved me and loved my family. I could tell he did by the way he tried to mentor me and always looked for me at church to shake my hand. And we were on the way up there and he mentioned to me that he said, I believe you're going to make a good elder someday. I said, well, thank you. You know, young, young guy, full of myself a little bit, you're probably right. But I said, okay, I'll keep working. He said, I want to tell you one thing, though. He said, whether you're a deacon or an elder, he said, the first thing you've got to do is take care of your family spiritually and every other way. You don't need to focus too much on one area of your life to the detriment of any of your family or anything like that. And so that was some mentoring advice. I had forgotten about that almost until you mentioned it. But yeah. And it's important that you guys in this room, younger guys, seek out some time with somebody you trust that's older. You know, we tend to not seek out help. We don't do that much. But, you know, I had some rough times in my life and struggles spiritually and every other way. And you do, too, and seek out some help. Seek out some help. We were looking the other day, Ronnie, how many ex elders do we have in this congregation? Seven or eight at least. Yeah. So we got a bunch of folks here that would love to help if we ever could. So if you hit a snag, the worst thing you can do is Say, well, I'm just going to work this out myself. Why would you do that when you have people that's undergone the same thing you're going on that can maybe guide you a little bit. But you're welcome to do that with any of us. I know I speak for all the other elders, current elders and ex elders. That's why we're here to help one another through this life. Still got a couple of minutes. The last thing, one of the last things I want to. I've got two things I want to share with you. One is Sir Isaac Newton. Most of you don't know him. One of his first laws was the law of motion. And do you all remember what he said? An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless impacted by an outside influence. Where you are right now in your life balance is where you will be a year from now if you don't become that outside force that deals with it. So I want to talk to you about be intentional, being intentional. Now, you may perhaps see something on your list or your chart there that you're maybe lacking a little bit in that needs a little work. I found some things I need to work on in mine, and so maybe you did, too. But nothing's going to change unless you're intentional about this. So if you want to be a better husband, a better worker, a better Christian, a better servant of the church, a better help to other people, you've got to change. So we've got to be intentional about it. And if you're like me, I don't know if you are. If it doesn't get on my list, it doesn't get done. So if you're not a list maker, give it some thought and try to focus in on these things that we talked about tonight. Working in these areas, seeing what you need to do, and, you know, you might move in a different direction, a good direction this week and then next week you look at it again. Oh, I've got this over here. You have to keep working on. Doesn't happen. It's a continual battle, having good life balance. The last thing I want to leave you with tonight is I want to talk about your wives. I've already talked about my wife. I want to talk about your wives. Your wife has been given to you by God as one of your greatest assets in life. I remember early on in my marriage when I might say something she wasn't doing right or acting in a way I wish she didn't act. I finally realized throughout the years that the only person that I can change in my relationship with my wife is me. As part of this good life balance thing, I want you to think about your good wife God gave you and all she does for you. Count your many blessings about her and be intentional about helping her in her walk with God through life. And what that will do for you is that will mean blessings from her far beyond what you could ever have hoped for. Change yourself if you need to and you'll achieve good life balance at home. Thank you all for your kind attention and participation. We appreciate you.