(Clip) How To Balance Family and Ministry — Zac Poonen

Christ Above Family in Discipleship

I never put my family or my wife before the Lord, because then I would not be a disciple. Always Christ was first in my life. I wanted to marry a girl who would put Christ first and me second. I told her that before we got married.

All our life, put Christ first and me second, and I will never put you first in my life. And we are married now for 51 years. I can say before God that I have never put her before Christ. But Christ and ministry are not the same.

Christ is the foundation of my life. So these three floors that you saw, underneath it all is Jesus Christ and the Father. As my faith was founded there, my life is founded there even today. But I realized that I cannot do anything for the Lord if I don't walk with the Lord myself.

Maintaining a Clear Conscience and Ordering the Home

So it was very important for me to keep my conscience clear, particularly after the time God met with me and filling me with the Holy Spirit. And then I realized that if a man does not know how to run his home properly, he cannot build the church of God.

Paul’s Qualifications for Elders

Paul gave that as one of the conditions for elders. If you cannot bring up a few children at home, how are you going to bring up so many people in a church? Today Christendom is filled, I saw that, with pastors whose children are wayward, Christian leaders whose children are not following the Lord and don't belong to his church.

Family Life as a Test of Christian Leadership

And I said, what is this? This is not what the Bible teaches. I mean, they may be preaching wonderful things, and they may be teaching so many fantastic truths, great, great, amazing truths from Scripture, but look at their children.

Some of them look at their relationship with their wives. Today there are pastors who divorce their wives. So I felt I must live my life in such a way that I live in an understanding way with my wife and treat her as a fellow heir.

Marriage as Shared Heirs of Grace

Her throne is not lower than mine. Equal heir of the grace of life, it says in 1 Peter 3, 7. And then my children also must grow up like that. But at the same time, I felt God had called me to serve him.

Serving Christ While Trusting God With the Family

So wherever there was an open door to serve him, I would take that opportunity and trust the Lord to take care of my children. Now, I could not have done that if I did not have a wife who was 100 with me and to take care of the children when I was away.

A Shared Marriage Calling Enables Ministry

There was never an instance, you know, I've sometimes been away from home for five, six weeks in the ministry somewhere, or sometimes many, many weekends, but God has taken care of it. Children were sick.

My wife never said, come back, the children are sick, or I can't handle this. God gave me a wife who was willing to take care of that. And I say that if I have put my home first above as more important than my ministries, mainly because I had a wife who was 100 with me in seeing the importance of bringing up children properly.

God’s Care for a Traveling Minister’s Family

So I would say it was God who took care of my family and second, my wife. That's how the family got taken care of, even though I was traveling so much in the ministry.