Howdy and welcome back to Beyond the Pew. We are out here recording in the hot sun in front of Brian high school preparing for the new school year to start as I am sure that you are as well. One thing I want to talk about as school is getting started is balance and scheduling and the importance of this.

You know as well as I do that our lives are crazy busy. Your students lives are very very busy. And I’ve been learning more and more as I go through life that when these seasons change where you go from school to summer from summer to school it’s hard to get that new schedule into balance.

So I’ve also been learning this summer that what gets scheduled gets done. I promise you that if I don’t put something on my schedule it’s not getting done and I’m forgetting about it. And I heard recently that your schedule is a theological statement. That where you spend your time is showing what is actually important to you.

There’s a verse in the Book of Luke and it’s the only verse that we have talking about Jesus as a teenager and all we have from the time that he ran away from his parents that whole story from there until his public ministry starts all it says that he grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. And I’ve heard this talk on this many years ago about how that actually should be our model for how we’re scheduling things.

So how can this verse of Jesus as a teenager help us in our scheduling. So how this works is let’s say these are the four areas of our life the four areas that it talks about with Jesus it says that he grew in wisdom so that’s school. So we can you know put a little bit of work into our school. And then we also need to take care of ourselves physically be able to get some activity so that we’re not always studying all the time and that sort of thing. So we put a little bit into that. And then it also says that he grew in favor with God and man. So we put a little bit of time into our prayer, a little bit of time to spend in time with our friends and family. And if we do that evenly this is our life and it stays balanced.

So when these things get out of balance if we start you know focusing too much on school or too much of our time with friends, you already can see what happens. The whole thing falls apart and it’s not good. So what does this mean for you guys and for your kids as you’re starting this year off.

What has really helped me is creating an ideal week. Now we all know that things always pop up but in the ideal school week for your kids what does their life look like? Obviously their school time is scheduled but scheduling the evenings that they’re home, maybe one evening you put a family time where you have family dinner or maybe you do that every evening that’d be awesome. You help them to schedule in in an ideal week where would they pray, where would they spend time with their friends, where would they take care of themselves physically, all these sorts of things.

So I hope that this assists in talking to your kids about creating the ideal week for them and creating some scheduling and balance as they start the school year. God bless and we’ll see you next week on Beyond the Pew.