Unlimited Grace

Bryan Chapell: My God’s got this! I don’t have to stay on 24/7. That I’m able to relax and pull back and trust him with some things. Yes, do I serve him in obedience? Yes, do I serve him in loving gratitude? Of course I do. And that fills me with energy and zeal. But even our businesses know that if you have no rest, you can’t work.

Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today’s Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today’s episode, Pastor Bryan shares the second half of a lesson from Psalm 127. In this study, Dr. Chapell shares the freedom found in relying on God to provide what we need as we seek to keep our priorities in the order that he desires for us.

You can find this lesson and many others when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. And while you’re there, check out the new daily devotional podcast called Daily Grace. Pastor Bryan will guide you through a devotion each day to help focus your attention on God’s grace as you study his word. Watch and listen to each episode when you visit unlimitedgrace.com today. Let’s hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the second half of the lesson: Balance.

Bryan Chapell: We have been looking at our mission at work, how we as Christians bear the name Christ into the workplace wherever God calls us, recognizing that if God is calling us into the workplace, then all honest work is holy work and every place we work is holy ground. Well, that creates some competing voices in our heads at times and some pressures upon us.

If my work is not just meeting my boss’s expectations but meeting God’s expectations, how do I keep all of that in balance? Well, Psalm 127 is helping us to think about God’s priorities wherever we are as we serve him. It’s really a Psalm about balance. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Comedian Jim Carrey, remember Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty, made some rather amazing statements at the Golden Globe Awards as he was introducing a particular prize and talked about the in-honesty, not a lie anymore, nor with any sense of almightiness, about what was driving him. Here’s what he said as he introduced himself to introduce the award:

"I am two-time Golden Globe Award winner Jim Carrey. You know, when I go to sleep at night, I’m not just a guy going to sleep. I am two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. And when I dream, I don’t just dream any old dream, no sir. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe Award winner Jim Carrey. Because if I could win three, then I know that I would be enough and I could stop this terrible search for what I ultimately know will not fulfill me."

Wow, the humor kind of got lost there, didn’t it? Amazing truth. If I just keep trying to find significance in what I can accumulate and what other people think, I know it will never be enough. And yet you find the workaholic, the anxiety is still driven, driven, driven to do work because of what is working on us.

New York City pastor Tim Keller talks about it that way. He says, what is the work under the work? Not just the work you do. What is working on you that's driving you? Fear of loss of significance, possibly? Loss of stuff? Whatever it is, it's a loss of the gospel because you recognize what God is saying to us is, I don’t love you because of what you’ve accomplished.

I love you because I’ve given my son for you and you put your faith in him. And because your faith is in him, you have his identity before me. You are my precious child. I will take care of you as I know is best for earth and for eternity. And because you are mine, not only do I love you, I’ve given you purpose and calling in life to reflect in gratitude and thanksgiving the wonder of my heart for you.

And that reality of the gospel that I am preciously held by God is what is actually supposed to give us freedom from fear to keep us from the drivenness that makes us tyrants or keeps us under the thumb of tyrants. Do you recognize that what balance actually is in the Christian life is freedom from fear? I can rest. I can take some time off. I can balance my priorities because God loves me.

And by the way, whatever I’m worried about, he’s got this. He’s got this. I think of how dear it is when I hear people at times say, I was so struggling with anger or bitterness or anxiety and then I just had to turn it over to God. And I actually think that is a treasured statement. I had to turn it over to God because he’s Jehovah and he loves me at the same time.

So I had to turn it over to him. When you turn it over to God, what’s the consequence in your life? You can sleep! What keeps us awake? Well, you know what keeps us awake. Oh, I’ll just tell you what keeps me awake. What keeps me awake is I replay and fume and fret. Does that happen to anybody else? Oh say yes! It’s not just me.

We replay and we fume and we fret, and it doesn’t change a thing. And the reason we’re doing that is we’re kind of thinking, what can I do or what should I do or what should I do to them? Instead of being able to say, God’s got this. It’s in his hands. The evidence of the imbalance in our lives is that we can’t rest. And it’s the very thing God intends for us. He gives to his beloved sleep.

What keeps us from that sleep? Well, our obvious idols of self-importance and ambition and recognition, all the needs that are driving us that we have to take care of without God’s help. I and you both recognize that there are many things in our society that just keep us from rest. The technology that is supposed to make our lives easier, does it really?

I mean, in some ways it does, but just honest confession here, I can remember when I loved getting on a plane, and the reason was no phone, no text, no email. Now what have they done to me? They’ve put wireless on the planes. You can’t get away from it. I’m not the only one. For so many of us, what is technology doing to us?

The researchers at the University of Oxford say it causes us to be available 24 hours a day, not just to the boss, but to our social media friends. So what’s the last thing we do before we go to bed at night? Check our messages. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, what do you do? Be honest, what do you do? Check your messages.

Can’t be off. Got to stay on. People have expectations. I read an article recently which was simply entitled, What Would Jesus Do with a Smartphone? Well, I don’t know, but one thing I think he would do: I think he would turn it off occasionally. I think he would find some time for awe renewal. I need to remember the Lord. I need to remember my father. I need to remember he loves me and he’s got this.

And for that reason, I can sleep and I can turn this cell phone off. More and more we are discovering the real wisdom of the biblical notion of Sabbath. That God could actually do more with our lives in six days than we can do with our lives in seven days of nonstop. That Sabbath is among other things just a declaration of freedom.

Guest (Male): You’re listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell.

Chris Sobak: This is Chris Sobak, executive director of Unlimited Grace Media. I hope you have been enjoying this encouraging message from Pastor Bryan. If this program has been a blessing to you, I want to share with you a new way in which you can receive daily encouragement from Dr. Chapell. We’ve recently launched a daily devotional podcast entitled Daily Grace.

If you’ve already signed up to receive daily devotions by email, this podcast is a great companion piece. You can watch and listen to Pastor Bryan share these devotions daily when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. You can also find this podcast on all major podcast platforms or watch it on YouTube. This is just another way that we want to serve you with Christ-centered content and help focus your attention on the grace of God that pervades all of scripture. Let us know what you think of this new podcast. We’re always encouraged to hear from you. And now, more from Bryan Chapell on today’s Unlimited Grace.

Bryan Chapell: The reason I can be free from slavery, free from drivenness, free from other people’s expectations is he gave Jesus for me. Sometimes our ability to incorporate that thought into our lives—that despite my personality, my drivenness, my anxiety, that I can actually rest—is understanding that there are seasons in life that anybody needs to recognize God himself has provided.

Now, granted, there are seasons in life at which the business is growing, the family is growing, we’re somewhere in med school, we’re applying medical applications, whatever it is. There are those intense times when we just can’t let up. But that’s not the pattern of life that God intends for us all, that we can never let up. There are intentional seasons.

Some time ago, my wife Kathy was on a minister’s wife’s panel. And as she was on that panel, a question came from one of the people in the audience, "What are the obligations of the pastor’s wife?" And one of the first persons to speak was the wife of one of the senior statesmen in our denomination. And she began to speak and she said, "Well, if you’re a pastor’s wife, you need to be at church every time the doors are open.

And you need to be there before time and you stay late after time. Your responsibility is to support your husband and everything he does. You need to be there all the time, every time." Now, as she was talking, the other wives on the panel began to look at one another. And the more they looked at one another and the more she talked, they began to look a little desperately at one another, and then they began to look a little angrily at one another.

And then finally they said, we’ve got to talk about what you just said. And they began to talk, they actually were kind of doing it in front of everybody, and began to recognize that the person who first talked was an empty nester. No soccer games, no nursing babies, just she and her husband were able to kind of devote themselves entirely to that work.

But the others were in very different life circumstances. And they began to recognize there are seasons. There are different seasons of life that will call on different things from us that help us to recognize that as we are thinking through priorities and pressure, there are different seasons of life. They’re actually indicated here. Verse three: "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.

The fruit of the womb, a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth." There is a time of raising children. But there’s another time, too. Verse five: "Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate." Now, this is a man who is older.

The gate, we have trouble kind of remembering the circumstances in our society, but in an ancient city, the gate was kind of like the capital. It was the courthouse of the city. It’s where the seniors, the elders of the city would gather to make decisions, to govern, to make court judgment. And now if you’re talking about somebody who’s at the gate, this is now somebody who’s later in life.

This is senior time. This is not the time of raising, this is the time of reckoning. And each has something to consider in the different seasons of life. For those who are in the time of child-rearing, that’s verses three and four. You recognize what’s being indicated is that children are to be understood as precious to you. There is a priority on children because they are a heritage from the Lord.

Now, that word heritage comes from the same word of which we get inheritance. Now, usually you get an inheritance when somebody dies. God isn’t dying. He’s reminding us instead that the children that we receive are from him and remain his, so that we are stewards for a time of the eternal souls that God has put into our homes, into our families.

And we are to perceive that because they are his and we are stewarding their inheritance, their eternity, that we are to care for them as though they are eternally precious. We're in the information age, and that means information is viewed as the commodity of the moment that is of most value. But here’s a problem: we've not got a way of storing information.

I mean, all that digital material that we have, the best storage we have will last what, a few decades at the most? Except some scientist in England has recently discovered that you can put data on a quartz glass chip that will last, they claim, for 13 billion, that’s with a B, 13 billion years. Now, I must tell you, I don’t know whether to believe that.

But you know what I do believe? Even if it’s 13 billion years, it is a drop in the bucket of the eternity that God intends for those who are his children. And when we are maintaining the spiritual priority of our children, one of the things that we are doing is we are thinking of our priorities of our balance. God puts us in periods of life that sometimes seem upside down. Have you ever noticed that?

You know, you have the least money when you have kids, and you have the most money when the kids are out of the home. Who thought that was a good idea? God! Because part of the protection that God intends for our souls is that by the affection we just naturally have for our own children, unless society and pressures and work are driving our priorities out of our hearts, the affection of our own heart says, this is the priority of my life.

My family is more important than my business, my family is more important than my bank account, my children are more important than my checkbook. When God is using the affections of our heart to help us balance things, we’re being driven from the earliest moments of raising our children to keep the balance that’s appropriate for our souls. Do you recognize that in so many ways, what this passage is reminding us that our children—I don’t mean to be disrespectful here—but our children are in some measure the canaries in the mineshafts of our souls to see have we maintained the balance that is appropriate there for eternal things?

And because we are assessing, have I prioritized my children, their souls, their eternity, as I’m thinking about all the things in my life, then all those pressures of how much time, how much income, how big a house, how long a vacation—all those things that we are weighing out are being forced into a spiritual grid to consider for balance. Yes, I’ve got these things to be concerned about. Are the most important things still on the page?

And as we are weighing those things out, we are ultimately discerning that our children are not merely precious, they are protection. Did you catch that? Verse four: "Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them." Now, let me tell you honestly, I don’t know how many arrows in a quiver. What’s the right number?

I actually think there’s a reason the Bible does not say how many arrows should be in your quiver, because we would either make it an idol or pressure, right? You’ve got to have this many or you’re not really holy. No, the Bible’s not doing that. There are different quiver capacities based upon age and health and income and priorities that are in different people’s lives. We’re not taking Christian prudence out of the equation.

But God is simply saying to his people, remember, you are raising eternal souls. And one measure—not everybody has children, not everyone is in the stage of life to have children, we recognize there are seasons and there are different persons and family categories, we understand all that—but if God has put children into your life, then it’s one of the measurements of balance there.

So much so that God would say, so when you are older, when you’re a senior, your children will not be used against you. It’s really just saying, children invested in young are a wise, mature investment. That what happens over time is good for them, but it’s also good for you, so that God is actually not just thinking when you have arrows in your quiver of protecting you from earthly enemies.

Did you ever think that our children, rightly balanced in our lives, are actually protection from the enemy? As Satan is after our souls by being after our priorities, that God puts precious things in our lives to draw our heart's affection, our attention, and our priorities into balance in the very things we most want to do if we will remember him and their status before him.

Now, let me tell you something. If you’re like me, whenever I get to hear a sermon on responsibilities of parents to children, I feel guilty. Because I know I can’t get it all right. And that’s why it’s important that you remember what this Psalm is about: it is about God’s provision. He gives to his beloved. How can he love people who mess up all the time?

Because he has made a pardon for them in his provision. And I need to remember that as you do, too. If all you’re going to do is now pay attention to your kids more or feel guilty longer with your adult children, let me tell you that will accomplish not a thing. But if what you can do is this—if you can say, you know what? I’m learning that Jehovah God has made a way to himself for people who love him.

Then I can celebrate his pardon and I can celebrate his provision. It’s not guilt, it’s not dread of the things in the scripture, it’s actually celebration. Yes, God has given us these little checks in our heart and life. But his purpose is that we would celebrate the wonder and the goodness of the grace that we have forever.

And that as we have that joy in us, fountaining from us, so that our children and grandchildren and neighbors want what we’ve got, that’s the joy that God intends by his grace that we can make a little progress. And where we haven’t, we’ve got God’s pardon. So we can trust he’s got us. And because he’s got us, we celebrate him forever.

Guest (Male): That’s Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you’ve been listening to Unlimited Grace. If this message has been an encouragement to you, you can find a collection of more valuable resources at unlimitedgrace.com. When you visit, you will find today’s message and many others from Pastor Bryan. While you’re there, you can sign up for Pastor Bryan’s daily devotional sent right to your inbox.

Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his unlimited grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.