Choosing What Matters Most
When You’re Running on Empty
Luke 10:38-42
How many of you consider your lives less busy than they were a few years ago? Raise your hands. How many of you consider your lives just as busy as a few years ago? How many of you consider your lives to be busier than a few years ago? How many of you would like your lives to be less busy than they are today? Busyness now defines our lives. And it seems to be taking a toll. As we learned last week, when busyness fills our lives, we feel more stressed, you’re actually less productive, you’re more run down and tired, you begin to lose the joy of life and you can’t hear God in your life. That’s a high price to pay for a life defined by busyness. And what we know is that busyness is an equal opportunity demon.
Kirby Anderson writes, “In the last two decades, free time has grown scarce and hence become a valuable possession. This is the decade of the time famine. Leisure time, once plentiful and elastic, is now scarce and elusive. People seeking the good life are finding it increasingly difficult to enjoy it, even if they can afford it. According to a Lou Harris survey, the amount of leisure time enjoyed by the average American has shrunk 37 percent since 1973. A major reason is an expanding workweek. Over this same period, the average workweek (including commuting) has increased from fewer than 41 hours to nearly 47 hours. And in many professions, an 80-hour week is not uncommon.” This has caught most people off-guard. Optimistic futurists in the 1950s and 60s predicted Americans would enjoy ample hours of leisure by the year 2000. Computers, satellites, and robotics would remove the menial aspects of labor and deliver abundant opportunities for rest and recreation. Testimony before a Senate subcommittee in 1967 predicted that "by 1985, people could be working just 22 hours a week…." The major challenge facing people should have been what to do with all the leisure time provided by our technological advances. Instead, technology has been more of an enemy than an ally. It only enabled us to do more. Thus, most people are busier than ever, speeding up life and heightening expectations to accomplish even more. This efficiency has also fostered a desire within us to take on additional responsibilities and thereby squeeze even more activities into our already crammed calendars. As the pace of our lives has increased, over-commitment and busyness have been elevated to socially desirable standards.
The busyness of our lives has given rise to three myths. First: there’s not enough time to do everything. How many of you would like just one more hour in the day to accomplish what you set out to? The truth is there’s just enough hours in your day to accomplish what God has given you. So when we come to this feeling “I wish I had more time”, that means somebody mismanaged their time and there’s only two options: you or God. I’ll let you figure that one out but know this God has given just the perfect amount of time to accomplish His will for your life.
The second myth is: It’s just a busy season I’m in right now. The arrival of Fall reminds us that seasons always come to an end. And we believe that when we accomplish everything keeping us so busy, life will slow down. That’s just not true. Today people don’t have seasons. They have only one season and it’s called busy. It’s not the season that’s busy. It’s the person. And many of us have become busy addicts. We just don’t want to admit it. Even when we have the opportunity to slow down, we look for even more activity to fill our time.
A third myth is that if I am busy then I’m important. People almost expect us to be busy and overworked. Steven Covey writes, “It’s become a status symbol in our society - if we’re busy, we’re important; if we’re not busy, we’re almost embarrassed to admit it. Busyness is where we get our security. It’s validating, popular and pleasing. It’s also a good excuse for not dealing with the first things (the most important things) in our lives.”
In our Scripture today, Jesus visits with two sisters at their home, one who chooses wisely and the other doesn’t. Now the custom was when you entered somebody’s house, your feet would get washed and then you would be fed as an honored guest. The impression we get from this text is that Martha was not only hospitable but that she was probably going overboard because it was Jesus. It’s quite possible that this Martha was the original Martha Stewart. She was busying herself making some lavender place mats out of yak hair or something like that. While she’s consumed by all her busyness in trying to be hospitable, her sister Mary chooses instead to enjoy Jesus’ presence, sitting at His feet and taking advantage of every opportunity to be with Him. Mary chose the more important option while Martha chose to remain busy.
In Martha we see the pattern of busyness. Busyness begins with good intentions. Martha knew her guest and only wanted to provide the best possible experience for Jesus visiting their home. We’re just like her. When you started your life, it began with good intentions. You had good intentions for your kids, good intentions for your career, good intentions for your marriage, good intentions for your faith journey. Butt somewhere, somehow, something got sidetracked.
The second thing that happens is that distractions moved in and you were derailed. That’s what happened to Martha. She was distracted. Think about this. God in the flesh is in your living room wanting to visit with you and you’re so consumed trying to play the good hostess that you stay in the kitchen preparing the meal. Martha was distracted by all the wrong things! When you’re derailed by distractions, they can appear as priorities. It’s not that they were necessarily bad things, it’s just that they weren’t the best decisions given all the options.
Third, as the pressure begins to build up, stress increases and the demands only grow, pity arrives because nobody appreciates what you’re doing. Martha says in verse 40 “Lord, don’t You care?” We’re not told in the text what the boiling point for Martha was. She might have spilled over the pot of boiled eggs which splashed on the date and fig appetizer which scared the camels who started spitting. At the same time, the disciples may have been asking for refills like it was the Damascus Denny’s. It was too much and she snaps at Jesus, which by the way, is usually a sign that you’re running on empty. When you have no margin in your life, you have no emotional reserves to pull from when things go wrong. You say and do things you later regret. “Lord, don’t You care?” Jesus must have only laughed at that moment. You’ve been there. My husband doesn’t understand the pressure I feel to get the house clean and take care of the kids. My wife doesn’t understand the pressure I have at work. My parents don’t understand the pressure I’m under in school. My boss doesn’t understand the pressure I feel when he gives me all those extra projects. No one understands how hard it is to be me! The problem is when pressure and pity show up, guess what’s right around the corner? Anger and Resentment. Verse 40. Martha says to Jesus, “Tell her to help me.” You can almost hear the resentment in her voice. “Jesus, tell her to get off her can and get to work helping me out. That’s the least she can do.” Resentment is a sign of busyness.
The story of Martha teaches us that busy isn’t better. The solution is Choosing better. Our problem is that we’ve come to believe that everything is important. So we don’t choose some things, we’ve chosen everything. Most of us haven’t taken the time to consider what’s really important in life. As a result, we elevate things that aren’t really that important and we devalue things that are really important and we wear ourselves out in the process. Our culture says busy is better. But it isn’t. Choosing what’s important is the key. I’m convinced that until we learn to choose better then we’ll always be running on empty. Doug Fields tells the story of meeting with Truett Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is the largest privately owned restaurant in the United States. He is a wonderful godly man, very committed to Christ and serves as a volunteer youth worker in Atlanta at his church. Doug and Truett were sitting and talking and they clicked. They hit it off. Doug says, I’ve had this idea for a book for about 10 years but I knew I had to write it with somebody who worked in the secular marketplace.” In that moment, I presented the idea to him about the book. He got pretty excited about it. So he pitched the idea of co-authoring the book with him and sheepishly said “I know you’re probably one of the busiest guys on the planet and you probably don’t have time for something like this but I wanted to throw the idea at you.” He said, “I am really busy. But really busy people always find time for what’s really important.” Busy people always find time for what’s really important.
While Martha worked, Mary worshipped. She chose better. While Martha was distracted, Mary was focused. Mary chose better. While Martha felt pressure, Mary felt peace because she chose better. While Martha was filled with resentment, Mary was filled with enjoyment because Mary chose better. Mary had her priorities straight. Mary appears three times in the Gospels and all three times, she’s at the feet of Jesus. Our Scripture today is the first. The second is in John 11 where she’s grieving the loss of her brother and she’s at the feet of Jesus. In John 12, we once again see her at the feet of Jesus when she brings perfume, kneels and pours it over His feet as an act of worship. Mary got it right. She knew what and who was the most important. My gut says that if you and I had a choice, we’d want to have the heart of Mary. You may live in a Martha world, you may even be wired like Martha, but in your heart you want what Mary had. You want to be able to choose what’s most important and to be close to Jesus. That’s why you’re here today. How do you get there? How do you have that Mary heart?
It starts first with evaluating where you are. Enclosed in your bulletin is an Ideal Week spreadsheet. Please use this to track your activities this week and how much time you’re spending on them. Then tally those totals up to see where your present priorities lie.
Second, identify your priorities. “Proverbs 20: says: The purposes of the heart are deep waters, but a person of understanding draws them out.” You’ve got to sit down and look within to really identify what’s most important to you. On the back of your outline is a list of possible priorities. I would suggest that you take a personal retreat- an afternoon or even take a day off from work to evaluate what’s most important to you. Ask God to reveal them to you. Select the no more than seven which are important to you. Once you have done that, set goals of what you would like to accomplish under each priority and how you will do that. That’s your action plans. Living by your priorities is all about intentional action. Set out your actions steps for each priority and then put them in your calendar. If you don’t schedule these first then you will never get around to them.
Another way to go at this is to take a piece of paper and list all the responsibilities that you have: all the things that you have to do, the events that you go to, the activities that you show up to, the commitment you’ve made. And then ask, “Are any of these distractions?” In other words, do any of these activities fall outside my life priorities? One way to tell whether something is a distraction is when you later regret it. That’s how I know it’s a distraction. You feel guilty because you know doing that is displacing time from somewhere else it should be. Andy Stanley wrote a book called Choosing to Cheat: Who wins when family and work collide? The idea behind the book is that every time you make a decision you’re cheating somebody. So when you say yes to staying late at work, you just cheated home. If you say yes to watching “Deal of No Deal”, you just cheated a friend out of a soul nurturing conversation that you could have had. Martha said yes to work. She cheated herself out of being at the feet of Jesus. We choose who we’re going to cheat by the decisions and commitments we make. Let me ask you a question: who or what have you been cheating lately in your life?
Remember busy isn’t better. Choosing better is the way to a life without busyness. Maybe the most spiritual and God-honoring thing you could do this week is to say No to some of those distractions in your life. Again, they’re not necessarily evil. Martha’s duties to prepare a wonderful meal and experience for Jesus weren’t bad. She just needed to say no to busyness so she could say yes to Jesus, which was the better option.
Third, get an accountability partner. You can identify where you are, name your distractions and even claim your life priorities but that’s not enough. If you had been able to change your life by yourself, you would have already have done it. That’s why you need to be held accountable. Choose a spiritual brother or sister and share your life priorities with them. Then give them permission and authority to question how you’re doing. Get together with them at least monthly and report what progress you’ve made in living by your priorities, where you have allowed distractions to come in and what steps you’re going to take until the next time you get together. You will never take the steps you need and make the continued progress God wants in your life until you get an accountability partner.
At the end of each day wouldn’t it be great to hear the voice of Jesus say to you as he said to Mary, “You’ve chosen what is better.” Being a follower of Christ is choosing what is better. What do you need to choose to say no to today? This week. This month. This year. Just imagine what your life might look like if you had some breathing room in your schedule. Imagine what would it look like if you had space for significant relationships, if you had time to choose what matters most?
Tim Zingale writes, The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable. A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it. I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles".
I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say. "Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital." He continued, "Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities." And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about 75 years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about 75 years." "Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I’m getting to the important part." "It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy."
"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."
"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday, then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time. It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band.
Tim writes, You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles."
