For the love of Balance

I remember the days when I was in grade school, yes I can remember those days, I am not that old…
As I let my mind wonder to that time I could see the play ground of the school. It was filled with children busy playing, trying to get the most of the moment before having to go back to study. One thing unparticular caught my eye. It was children playing on a seesaw or some call it a teeter totter. It is like a big log or pipe with places to sit on each side. In the middle is what we call the fulcra point. The side that is the heaviest sets on ground, leaving of course the other side sticking high in the air. The challenge for the children and what made it fun was to see if they could get each side to be equal. Both sides having the same weight, the funny thing is what do small children know about weight? Kids would be jumping on and off of either side trying to get the thing to balance. It would go from 2to1, 3to 4, 4to4, 4to2…
When they would be successful they would all cheer, everyone would get off and they would start over again all of them taking turns at who was on what side and who would be the first to sit down.
Ounce in a while you would find one of the children that was either a bit older or obviously had great organizational and leadership skills. They would be standing on the side telling who to get on and who to get off. It was their job to help those involved to find a quicker and easier balance.
In my life I have seen a parallel to this story. I, like the children above have been scrambling around trying to find a balance. My challenge of Balance is between family and ministry.
The vision is clear, the plan is set, the passion and desire are raging… the needs are beyond comprehension, the hunger or should I say the starvation is easy to see both in the physical and even more so in the spiritual! If I wanted I could be speaking in a different church every week. Ministry is knocking on the gate of my compound when I get home. Everyone I meet has a story they all seem to need me…If I am not careful I can find myself on the ministry side, sitting on the ground of the ministry/family seesaw, it is all too easy to become content with what I am seeing…..everyone seems to need me everyone wants me, ministry is good and things are really happening. How do you turn it off? How can you make it work 9to5? Ministry is ringing nonstop on my cell phone. But on the other side sticking high up in the air is my family. Exposed, alone and out in the open to be preyed upon. What do I do? If I jump up and drop everything on the ministry side, my family will come crashing down from that high place where they were exposed and I risk deeply wounding them or even losing them.
Let’s turn it around; Say I have a chance to be part of an awesome ministry! God gives me incredible vision; he shares with me his plans, starts giving me strategies of how I can go about getting there. It is huge, it is scary, yet the Lord shows me over and over again that it is obviously obtainable. It is about a nationwide revival sweeping through my land (Burundi/Rwanda) and in the end effecting whole continent’s.
Where am I? I am sitting on the ground on the family side… I enjoy very much being a Dad! I love my Children more than life and it brings me great joy watching them grow up. My Wife is the greatest gift that God could ever give me besides his son. She is not only the love of my life but my best friend. I often think about how I ever lived before she was part of me. I can honestly see how over the years that Christ is really making us one, just as he says that he and the father are one. I never knew it was possible to love someone so much and only have it grow through time. Yet as I look on the other side I see this incredible ministry protruding high in the sky. It is out in the open easy for people to see it. Many learn about it and want to be part of this amazing vision but have no idea how to get up there to it. I am looking and nothing is happening, ministry is not and cannot be done because it is sitting up to high on the balance for anyone reach. I have the fear, to bring it down means I have to give up some on my family side. So I sit and nothing gets accomplished on the ministry side.
Where is the balance between Family and Ministry??? Where are the Kids (coaches) to stand on the side to help direct what to put on and what to take off in order to find that quicker balance, to make the both equal?

I have watched a great many men and women of God whom have fallen hard on both sides of this balance. One is devoting their all to the ministry with their family falling to pieces and on the other side there are many men and women that have the calling and the possibility to have the most powerful Godly impacting ministries and even may have tried to get started but have never been able to let go enough of the family side. So in time the ministry dissolves into only memories of what could have been. It is sad to think that in this instance many people would quote the scriptures out of the bible that would talk about if any one does not leave his father and mother for my sake, or anyone who puts their hand to the plow and turns back is not fit for the kingdom, or let the dead Barry their own… I have heard these terms thrown around and used a great deal to justify some ones horrifying actions as they abandon their family to run off for the sake of doing ministry, partaking in ministry events, conferences, schools, trainings, etc. These things are not bad in themselves yet are often abused and it is the family that pays the price while daddy or mommy are gone yet another week or month all in the name of working for the Lord. Sad to say but the above terms have even been used for grounds of divorce. This of course all shows an extreme lack of understanding of God his word and the context of which it is to be used and interpreted.
You see I have been on both sides of this balance but only for short times. Yet long enough to see and know that I had the balance way off. As I said above I have watched countless others with huge marvelous powerful ministries, people with an amazing anointing on their life and ministry somehow fall off the ministry/family seesaw and lose both their ministry and their family.
To be quit frank this scares me! I have asked the lord over and over to use me. I have prayed for his anointing to saturate my life and ministry. I have had numerous people with a special anointing and awesome ministry pray for me, as I wanted a double portion of what they had. I learned that it all flows out of intimacy with god. Many of these great men and women spend literally hours in the presents of the lord.
Recently I had a very hard rebuke that came to me through someone close to me who moves very much in the prophetic. This someone was my wife, bless her heart. She told me that my family had become my idol, and out of my fear of losing them, they became my excuse not to move forward in doing ministry or spend the time I need with the God in his presents. She was right!
Yet my struggle still remains, where is the balance between Ministry and family? I want to see God move so badly! I want to see him pour his spirit out on this nation! I want to see revival break out in the heart of Africa! I want to see the dead rise, the lame walk, the blind see!!!
But my first and for most command from God is to have godly offspring, I want my 4 girls to know him and become amazing women of God. I want my marriage to be the perfect mirror image of Christ and the church, the marriage of the lamb. I guess you say that I want to have my cake and eat it to…
I believe that it is possible to have a healthy vibrant marriage and awesome godly family. An at the same time have the anointing of the living God flow through me to see what most call the radical supernatural become the norm. The lord knows how hungry I am to see this happen! He also knows that I have 4 of the most beautiful girls that want time with their daddy, and a wife that desires to have quality time with her husband.
I do not want to see what happened to others before me happen to me. There must be another way…. I don’t want my family to have to pay the price to see the glory of the lord move forward and revival break out.
For the love of balance, there has to be a way….

Please pray for us as my wife and I continue to work out what this looks like, to see God move powerfully through both our family and our ministry.