Juggling Act
“‘On the very day they sacrificed their children to their idols, they entered my sanctuary and desecrated it. That is what they did in my house.’”
Today’s Text: Ezekiel 23:36-49 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
Everyone has to live. For the most part, everyone has to work and make a living sooner or later. And once we have children, for the most part, parents want them to be “happy.” And in the eyes of many parents, if not most parents—even Christian parents, “happiness” means “success” on the world’s terms.
Today, we may not burn our children on the altar of gods, but we do sacrifice our children on the altar of worldly “success.”
That drive for worldly “success” comes hand in hand with a Christian tendency to compartmentalize our lives. We have our family life. We have our work life or school life. We have our friends life. And then we have our church life. And that compartmentalization, in a way, has caused us to have different personalities in each life. Also, that compartmentalization leads us to prioritize each life relative to one another.
And maybe one of the greatest struggles for Christians in this world is juggling all these different lives in such a way that we find “happiness” and “success” in each one of them. But the problem we face is that if any one of those lives begins to suffer, we shift our priorities to give more attention to those areas. And more often than not, church is the area that will receive the least amount of attention. And not only that, if it is the church life that is struggling, the solution that people often come up with is to disengage or to even find another church.
We think that church is just another distinct platform in our lives that exists only for the sake of making me “happy” and “successful.” That is what our parents taught us, whether we realize it or not. But the pursuit of worldly “success” will always lead us to prioritize church behind family, work, friends, hobbies, and so on—even if we say that God is the #1 priority of our lives. That is because, in our minds, the relationships in our church community are less important than our relationships in the other compartments of our lives.
The heart of the issue is that worldly values compel Christians to conscientiously separate our relationship to Jesus from our relationship to His church. But that separation is not biblical.
I’m convinced that God never meant for us to compartmentalize our lives like that. The one thing that is common in all those different lives is the “me.” And if there is one truth that the Bible makes very clear is that God wants all of me, every part of me.
Not only that, if we would really listen to the Scriptures and what they are telling us, we would understand that communal worship is the main thing that God has created us for. And how does that jive with always putting our church life at the bottom of our priority list.
Obviously, God knows that we all have to live and work. God knows that family, friends, and even leisure are important for our lives. And God knows that there is a season for everything under heaven. But the questions we need to ask ourselves is: Why am I pursuing worldly success so zealously? Am I prioritizing worldly success more than worshiping with my church? Are there adjustments that I need to make in my life to prioritize worshiping God with my church?
The more that a church community aligns itself with biblical priorities, the more happiness and success that the members of that community will find.
Father, You are worthy of all glory, honor, and praise. And as the song goes, You are worthy of it all, especially me. Help me to truly prioritize You above all things. Teach me what that really means in my life so that You may be glorified in every area of my life. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
