How to Find Daily Spiritual Balance - Jake Smith
Balance: How to Find Daily Spiritual Balance “Any theology or any way of living that doesn’t lead back to loving God and loving others with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength is actually bad theology.” – Jake Smith, founder of Plumline www.shamahway.com www.jakesmithjr.com We want to be deliberate about finding balance in 2021 and that starts with our spiritual lives. And that’s what we talk about this week on our podcast - how to find daily spiritual balance. Finding balance is difficult for all of us but single parents find it particularly challenging. Many of us don’t experience consistent balance. Rather, we tend to live going between highs and lows as we try to juggle everything on our plates while being a solo parent. Our guest this week is Jake Smith, a former pastor who created a non-profit called Plumline which is centered on personal development and spiritual, emotional, and relational health. Plumline offers weekly groups that lead individuals through a process that helps them integrate their heart, mind, soul, and strength as they relate to God, themselves, and others. If we are to find godly balance in our lives, integrating these areas is essential. Jesus talked about this in Mark 12 when he answered the question spiritual leaders posed, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus' response was to quote the Shamah. “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” In Matthew 22, he addresses the same questions and says, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” “If we want to summarize what Jesus is all about, or if we want to summarize the Scriptures, in a nutshell, Jesus did that for us. He said this is essentially the core of everything. Any theology or any way of living that doesn’t lead back to that, loving God and others with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength is actually bad theology. So, when we talk about balance, we can pull from what Jesus said is most important by looking at our spiritual anatomy – our heart, our mind, our soul, and our strength. These are unique parts of us, and we need all four parts to developed and interconnected. This is how we can show up to life and to our relationships – with our kids, with our colleagues, at work – with the fullness of our design.” – Jake Smith So, when we talk about balance, we need to consider these four parts of our “spiritual anatomy” that Jesus talks about in the Shamah because this is how he asks us to relate to God and to others. What does it look like to show up to my life with my heart, my soul, my mind, and my strength, in an interconnected way, to the people and things who matter most? Elizabeth, a single mom through divorce, has been part of Plumline groups for the past year. As an Enneagram 7, she tends to avoid her feelings and run from them. She tends to go toward the area of strength first and foremost, but Plumline has taught her that she doesn’t need to be afraid of the other areas. It’s given her the ability to trust God more and understand that her feelings help her connect to Him more. Elizabeth uses the Shamah Way app to check in daily on how she’s feeling, be honest about it, and pay attention to all the four parts of her spiritual anatomy. Just identifying what she’s experiencing in her heart, mind, soul, and strength, helps her walk through her day with God, integrating all of them, rather than just one or two. The tendency is to live dominantly from one or two of these parts. Some of us live from our minds as “thinkers”, others live as “doers” acting in their strength most. If we only live from our...