Luke 10:38-42 Contemporary English Version
38. The Lord and his disciples were traveling along and came to a village.
When they got there, a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.
39. She
had a sister named Mary, who sat down in front of the Lord and was listening
to what he said.
40. Martha was worried about all that had to be done.
Finally, she went to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it bother you that my
sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to come and help
me!”
41. The Lord answered, “Martha, Martha! You are worried and upset about
so many things,
42. but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen what is
best, and it will not be taken away from her.”
This is an amazing scripture which tells us so much about the dynamics between doing what God is really calling us to do and yet living by the world’s standards and sometimes by satan’s agenda. Repeatedly God tells us to rest. This message began in Genesis where it tells us that God rested from His work. He just got through creating the world.
In this scenario Martha was a hostess. She ran around keeping herself busy and falling into the world’s standards for what acceptable behavior is. Martha believed that being a person who keeps herself worried and concerned about everything was somehow a good thing. All she was really doing was making herself anxious and frantic in her attempts to make everything perfect, whereas, had she sat at the feet of Jesus first, He could have ministered to her before she started her preparations. It would have gone smoother for her.
Mary, Martha’s sister, admitted her need and chose to sit quietly and listen and learn from Jesus. All of us have a Martha in our lives that nags at us to be so busy we don’t have time to spend at the feet of Jesus. It doesn’t have to be a person. It could be a job or our own thoughts in our head. It can be just our beliefs that causes us to strive and figure things out in order to get things done in our way; in our time. This demand of ourselves usually comes from our own beliefs and it is usually an unattainable goal.
This is also a tactic of Satan. The more he can use our insecurities and lies we believe, the more he can keep us jumping through hoops so that our day is one big blur. God says that Mary is doing the best thing. All she was doing was sitting and listening to Him and yet this is what He calls necessary. He is saying that all that He requires us to do, is sit at His feet and rest. We are the ones who have created a world of doers. What would happen if everything didn’t get done. What would happen if in the middle of the preparations,
Martha just decided to sit down and listen to Jesus? No the meal wouldn’t be prepared and the house wouldn’t get cleaned, but God doesn’t seem too concerned about our agenda of fast living that requires us to be burnt out at the end of the day.
The only way for us to know God is for our heart to rest in His presence. It is a matter of being still in our hearts before the Lord and letting Him share who He is.
At His feet is where we see the best of who we really are because He brings out the best in us. In this place of perfect peace, God speaks into our hearts and we can hear Him if we do not have these distractions that cause us to live in anxiety.
Challenge: Try sitting quietly before the Lord for 15 minutes a day. Just 15 minutes with your eyes closed, no bible, no music, no prayers and no agenda and allow God to fill you up and show you what He wants you to know.
God bless
Marni
Go on to: Luke 10:41-42 Walk in Freedom
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Return to: Christian Living Articles
The
purpose of this series is to encourage people to live as loving, compassionate,
and peacemaking children of God: Jesus tells us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy
will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10) God tells us through
Micah (6:8), "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord
require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your
God." And we know from Revelation 21:4 that there will be no more mourning, or
crying, or pain, or death. Thus, Christian living requires us to set the
standards of these conditions here on earth for our fellow human beings, and for
the other animals, as a witness to the rest of the world. To do otherwise is not
Christian.