Hi. Our next session is going to be on the five Fs. The five Fs are an excellent tool to help you achieve balance. What are the five Fs? The five Fs are faith, family, friends, fitness, and finances.

We're going to talk later through some exercises on how you can use these as a tool in your life to help you achieve the balance that we all need. The first thing we're going to talk about though is how important it is to avoid extremes.

In Ecclesiastes 7:18, it said, "It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes." The problem with extremes-- I think our culture tends to push us to extremes-- is it puts us way out of balance. Granted, we might have huge success in one specialized area or arena. The problem is that our family, and our friends, and our faith may pay the price for that kind of extreme.

Baseball, many people still think of as the American sport. It's a big sport here in the United States. And I saw recently that when they define a top baseball player, they call him a five-tool player. What they mean by that is, he's got all the weapons. He can throw, he can catch, he can run, he can hit with power, and he can hit for average. That's a five-tool player. And coaches will say they would much prefer to have a five-tool player on their team than someone that excels in three or four tools even if the five-tool player isn't as exceptional in all five of the tools. But the problem with the guy that's just a three-tool or a four-tool player, he's got a hole in his game or a weakness. It's a liability. It's something that the coach can't cover up on the field.

And in the same way, the five Fs of life kind of fit that. You can excel at one, or two, or three of the five Fs - maybe family, and friends, and fitness. But it's the Fs that you ignore that will come back and give you pain. It's the Achilles' heel of your life. So we don't have to excel at all of them. We just can't ignore or be bankrupt in any of them, because I’ll guarantee you, the F that you ignore, that's the one that's going to come back and bite you.

Granted, we're not all wired the same. God's made us differently. He's gifted us differently. It's going to be much easier for us to excel in some of these Fs than others. But we don't have to hit home runs. Just get on base on all of them. I'm sure many of you have examples of public figures or celebrities - very talented, exceptional in some of the Fs. Or maybe businessmen that excel in the financial piece. But they put so much effort in that, that they have a lack of balance in the other parts of their lives, and it causes a lot of pain. And I think when they look back on their lives, they wish they would've done things a little bit differently.

There are serious consequences when you ignore any of the Fs. For instance, if you ignore faith. Well if faith isn't your life's foundation, you're going to make something the foundation. It may be wealth, it may be power, it may be fame, it may be pleasure. You'll find something that defines your foundation. The problem is, other than faith, all these other alternatives will leave you empty. Faith is the only foundation that doesn't have a hole in the bottom of it. You can actually pour your life into a faith foundation and fill your life. It won't drain through. But you can't build a fulfilling life without faith. It's the only foundation that can be relied on when life's storms come. And life's storms, they will come. It's just a matter of time.

The consequence of ignoring the F of family is the pain of broken relationships - divorces, separations, kids grow up you don't even know. You basically miss out on the joy of family. And ultimately, ignoring your family leads to a feeling of being alone. And you will be.

If you ignore the F of friends, you won't have peers that will recharge you - just doing life together, the joy of experiences, and events, and activities, and some of the common bonds and trusts that you build with close friends. I saw a story recently in the St. Petersburg Times that kind of caught my eye because it had to do with friends. And it talked about a young man that was devastated over his father's recent funeral. It wasn't about his dad's death. His dad lived a full life. He was an older man. What he was devastated about was at the funeral, he couldn't find enough friends to carry his dad's coffin out at the end of the funeral. He had to recruit two landscapers, and the hearse driver, and the assistant. And I think it really hit the young man that his dad had not made much of an investment in friendships over the years. And I think there's something you learn there from all of this.

The consequence of ignoring the fitness F, I think that's pretty obvious. We're going to have poor health. And if we have poor health, it leads to a poor quality of life. It's a life cut short. You won't have the life that God intended for you. Our body is a temple, and we need to be a good steward of it. And we can't enjoy our other Fs half as much when we have bad health. So it's important.

I know some examples of people who do really well in the other four Fs: faith, and family, and friends, and even finances. But they're 100 pounds overweight. It's kind of sad to think that they might not be able to walk their little girl down the aisle someday. But they've done so well in the other four Fs. But the one they ignore may drop them. Be very cautious. You can't be bankrupt in any of these.

If you ignore the F of finances, well, you've got a lot of stress in your life. Many statistics will say it's the number one cause of breakups in a marriage. It leads to divorce. And you know what? The finance F, it can't be isolated. You can't compartmentalize it. It'll bleed over into all aspects of your life, and it'll pull you down in everything you do, including your faith.

So hopefully, we can agree that the five Fs are important, and it's important to be intentional about all of them. Because ultimately, what we want to avoid is define your balance before burnout or the triple B. Be proactive. Pursue the five Fs with some intention. Don't wait for a crisis.

For example, you hear about businessmen. I know some personally. They work long, long hours for many, many weeks, months, and years, and several have come home to a note on a kitchen counter from their wife that they're leaving them. That's waiting too late. That's out of balance. And that's reacting to crisis.

Or the example I gave you earlier. Somebody that's way overweight and keeps putting it off, and putting it off, and putting it off and someday, it's too late. It can be a heart attack or stroke. That's a crisis. That's waiting too late.

Be on the front end of this. Be proactive. Be intentional.

There are also some seasonal balances to life though. And I understand that. I went through that myself. I emphasized certain Fs at different seasons of my life based on where I was at - with marriage, with young children, trying to start a business. I don't think that's unusual, but what's important is to get back in balance after that season ends. The problem is, is when the season ends and you stay out of balance. And of course, faith is always in season.

Now I'm going to take a little bit of time just to focus on faith. Faith is the foundation of your life. It's the first F. It's very important. So we're going to explore that a little bit in more detail. I find it interesting that many times Jesus will use the metaphor of building a home as building a life. And in Matthew 7:24-27, he says, "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

You know what's interesting about that verse is both men heard the same information. They heard about where to build their house, build their life. They both heard it, but only one listened. Only one actually experienced transformation. So one heard, and didn't act, and built his house on the sand. One heard, and acted, and built his house on the rock.

So I think there's a lot of information in the world. But unless you have transformation, information doesn't do you a whole lot of good. It's like having good intentions without following through. One man might have had good intentions but didn't follow through. The other heard the same information, and he acted on that information. He had transformation.

What's also interesting is until the storms came, both houses looked fine. They looked great. So until a life is tested, whatever foundation you choose doesn't really matter. It matters when the storms of life come. And that's where you'll hear a lot of people today say, "I don't need God. My life's fine without faith. I'm doing great," until it's not doing great until the storms come. And then these people have nothing to fall back on, nothing solid. There's a hole in it. Whatever they've built their life around foundation wise unless it's faith, there's a hole in it. So we know that no other foundation will support our lives when the storms of life roll in.

Another verse that I think speaks to this is Matthew 7:24-27, which is "Unless the Lord builds the house, the work of the builders is wasted. Actually, that's Psalm 127:1. But that speaks to how important building the right foundation is.

It also brings back kind of a story early in my marriage. That was actually our first home. It was an older home, but we were really excited about it as anybody is over their first home. And we had a lot of cracks in the wall. So I bought a painter in. We repainted anyway. And my wife and I had them repaint, and within two or three weeks later, we had to call the painter back. The cracks had re-appeared. And then, it happened again. Again, it was two, three, four weeks. We brought the painter back again. At some point, the painter kind of pulled me aside and he said, "Dave, you don't have a paint or a drywall problem. You've got a foundation problem."

Isn't that true of our culture in the world today? There are cracks everywhere. There are cracks in the wall, but there are symptoms of a bigger problem. There are symptoms of lives that are being built on a faulty foundation.

Unless faith becomes our foundation, we're just going to continue to spend our time painting over and trying to cover up cracks. And we're never going to stop doing it. The core issue will never change. And until that's addressed, I don't think it ever will change.

Bottom line, is we build our own house and it starts with picking the right foundation. I want to read you a story now that I really think speaks to this. And it's called The Carpenter Story. Think about this. An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife, enjoying his extended family.

He'd miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by. The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes.

But in time, it was easy to see that his heart just wasn't in the work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career.

When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect the house, the contractor handed the front-door key to the carpenter. "This is your house," he said. "My gift to you." What a shock! What a shame! If he'd only known he was building his own house, he would've done it very differently. Now he had to live in the home he built none too well.

So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting rather than acting, willing to put up less than the best. At important points, we don't give the job our best effort. Then with a shock, we look at the situation we've created and find that we're now living in the house we built. If we'd realized that, we would've done it differently. There's a lot to learn in that story.

We build our own house. And you know what? We should always be remodeling. We should always be working on our house: improving, growing, learning. Because faith's a journey. It's not a destination. It's kind of like a river. It's always moving. But it's moving in the same direction towards God. And we get off the bank at different times, but we all get in the river. And that takes a leap of faith. But I believe God honors that when you take that first step into the river. And then God will continue to guide you safely down the river. Sure, you're going to hit some rocks, but God will be there when you do.

Faith's also a muscle. Like any muscle - our muscles in our bodies - they've got to be pushed, tested in order to grow stronger. No different.

One of my favorite sayings, I believe it comes from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. But it speaks of this. And it says, "The strongest steel is tempered in the hottest flame." That's how you get stronger. You get tested.

James 1:2 and 3 say, "Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters wherever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. James says it very well.

This leap of faith that we're talking about, taking that first step, knowing that God will honor that and meet you there, I think it's summarized very well in this poem, "Edges". When we walk to the edge of all the light that we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe one of two things will happen. There'll be something solid for us to stand on, or we'll be taught how to fly. It's by Claire Morris. That speaks to me.

Now we're going to shift gears a little bit. One of the things I'd like you to consider, I'm going to suggest an exercise. And you can do this preferably with a friend, a peer, maybe a group of people. But take a big sheet of paper, and on this sheet of paper, I'd like you to kind of review your life's personal faith journey. It can be a timeline. It can go back to as long as you can remember. But on this large sheet of paper, I'd like you to chart out what are some of the things that impacted your faith walk the most. This could be people, places, events, or experiences. But it's kind of a look backwards so you can see how you got to where you are right now today.

Take some time to do that. I would suggest being alone when you create it and then share it with some others that you trust. Then on another sheet of paper, a smaller snapshot to look back at just the last year of your experiences with family, friends, fitness, and finances. This is kind of a smaller snapshot. But again, more important to kind of bring you up to the speed of where you are right today in each one of these categories.

Then what I'm going to ask you to do is do a self-assessment on each one of them on a scale of one to five, five being you couldn't be doing any better. Just keep doing what you're doing. And one meaning you really need to work on it. It's weak and God's kind of nudging you that you have to make some changes in this area.


Last modified: Monday, August 6, 2018, 1:05 PM