How to Achieve Healthy Balanced Growth

Recently, we have seen sensational stories about athletes with behavior issues that disqualified them from the sport they excel in. How can someone be so gifted physically yet have so little self-control that they can’t maintain a healthy relationship? Balanced growth is required!

A simple verse in Luke describes a healthy and balanced growth pattern.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Luke 2:52 (ESV)

Four dimensions to balanced growth are revealed in this passage. We will examine each one briefly and then encourage you to take steps to keep your growth healthy and balanced.

Wisdom

We have a responsibility to develop intellectually. To learn and apply what we have learned to our lives. This is not just a call for accumulated knowledge, although that is commendable. It is a call to use what we learn to improve our lives. It means that we learn and understand. It means we develop critical thinking skills.

The lack of these skills means we are easily taken in. We must ask this simple question: can this be true? We encounter fantastic claims every day, often from people of influence and leadership. We must be willing to examine them. When we have healthy minds, we are willing to discount and disbelieve even what many others believe to be true because there is an underlying lack of credibility.

Reading, questioning, researching and thinking are all part of accumulating wisdom. Doing each of these things regularly will increase your wisdom.

Stature

Our physical health is very important. We receive one body to live out our years. The healthier we keep this body, the longer we will live. Even from a spiritual point of view, we want healthy bodies to serve God more effectively and for a longer period of time.

Staying healthy is relatively simple: get adequate rest, eat a healthy diet and engage in moderate exercise. Literally millions of words have been written on living a physically healthy life, but it really does boil down to those three things!

In Favor with God

We do not have to earn God’s favor, so we don’t want to make this verse sound that way. But when we love God with all we have, our relationship with him is greatly enhanced. We live in his favor when we love him, grow in our knowledge of him. When we learn about him and know him better, we begin to experience him as he desires!

To increase in favor with God means we are growing in our desire to please God. For example, it’s a joy for a parent to have children who do things to please them.  These things don’t make a parent love their child, but it brings a special delight on top of that love! That’s what we want to do for our heavenly Father.

In Favor with Man

Jesus said the second greatest commandment was to love our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, this love for our neighbor and for one another is one of the most desirable things in all of scripture. To nurture this love, we must be willing to engage in relationships and make the effort to make them healthy and good.

It means taking time to listen and understand, express compassion and find ways to show love even in difficult situations. It also means we nurture all our relationships and seek to understand people who are different than us. In a world of increasing fragmentation and conflict, it is important that followers of Jesus are peacemakers and reconcilers.

Your Turn

What do you need to work on?

In the past I have written goals for my life in each of these four areas. I continue to work on each one. I challenge you to do the same!