Is Your Busyness A Help Or A Distraction?

Distractions: Busyness

Title: Is your Busyness a help or a distraction?

Main Point: Use your busyness for what’s most important

Intro:

“Busyness makes us stop caring… about what we care about”

“It is not so much how busy you are, but why you’re busy… the bee is praised, but the mosquito and fly are swatted”

“Never get so busy making a living …that you forget to make a life”

“Busyness is the unrivaled archenemy of spiritual authenticity”

These are some of the many quotes about busyness…

If you were with us last week, Pastor Alex spoke about how our technology can be a distraction for what’s most important in life. Today, I want to talk about how we can use our busyness the same way. And just as Alex confessed that he gets distracted by his technology, I can easily get distracted in my busyness. There is a real reason why each of us chose our topics. My family says I‘m a workaholic, I don’t think so. If I am, my guess is that I’m not alone.

In the same way that we can use our technology as self-medication to help us avoid the hard things in life, we can also wrap ourselves up in busyness for the same reason. We can dive into the deep end of the pool of life’s commotions and get so busy that we don’t have time to deal with the things we really should be devoting our life and energy to. So, here’s my fist question, What important reality is your busyness enabling you to ignore?

We live in a busy culture…. most of us would say, “too busy!”

There is a saying that goes, “an idle mind (and in turn idle hands) are the devil’s playground” and as followers of Jesus we don’t want to give Satan a foothold, right? But today, most busy people (Christian & non-Christian alike) wear their busyness almost like a badge of honor. Here’s how it works; “Hey Tim, how was your week?” to which I reply, “Busy!” As if it wasn’t busy, I’d be labeling myself as lazy, or something. We even buy into the lie that our busyness is really helping us serve the Lord and others. We, busy Christians, know that the Bible says that God has designed us for work and work is a good thing, right? So, we convince ourselves that “overwork and lack of rest are attractive because they produce results” and we all want to produce results. The problem is that many of us have let our so called “busyness” become the master of our life rather than the Lord. And I believe this is a great tactic of Satan; he convinces us get so busy doing, that we get distracted from doing the right things.

Even the medical field has proven that we aren’t physically design to operate in a constant state of busyness. Studies are proving that when we’re in a chronic state of stress and busyness our bodies release adrenaline and a number of stress hormones which actually fight against each other. This constant state of busyness is causing problems for several of our body systems.

Last week Alex used a passage to introduce his topic. Today, want to use the parallel passage that is found just before our main text: Luke 10:25–28.

25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he (Jesus) said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

Like this lawyer, many people think their busyness can earn them favor with the Lord. But our distraction of busyness causes us to miss what the point is at the heart these commands… a personal and deep relationship with our Heavenly Father and others. We have to make that the focus of our busyness… loving the Lord first and others next.

When it come to being distracted by busyness, there’s probably no better passage in Scripture than the one we’re going to look at.

Biblical text:

READ: Luke 10:38–42

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving (busyness). And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good (best) portion, which will not be taken away from her.”