AVOIDING LIFES CLIFFS SURVIVING STRESS Luke 10:38-42 The key to surviving stress is to refocus your on Gods purpose for your life.
INTRODUCTION
ILLUSTRATION: A woman took her husband to the doctor’s office. After his checkup, the doctor said, "Your husband is suffering from a very serious infection."
The husband, who was hard of hearing said, "What did he say?"
His wife said, "He says your sick".
The doctor went on. "But there is hope.
You just need to reduce his stress.
Each morning, give him a healthy breakfast. Be pleasant, nice, and kind. For lunch and dinner make him his favorite meal. Don’t discuss your problems with him, it will only make his stress worse. Don’t yell at him or argue with him. And most importantly...just cater to your husband’s every whim.
On the drive home, the husband asked his wife what the doctor said
She replied, You’re going to die.
Everyone understands stress. I was originally going to entitle this message, Overcoming Stress, or Avoiding Stress. However, that is a misconception.
No one can avoid stress. It is all around us. We deal with it every-day.
There is much in this world we get stressed over. There is the ever worsening economy. Each day the gas prices go up, we wonder how long it will be before our country experiences another ‘Great Recession”
Then there is the ever growing conflicts in the middle east. How long will the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Isreal and now Mali last?
Then every night we turn on the TV news and another murder has taken place and we wonder if the next one will be closer to home.
Nevertheless, it is not these events which cause you to stay up at night. I am sure if you have trouble sleeping it is not because you were worried about Chief Theresa Spence, or the teachers struggle, or what is happening in Japan.
No, if you are feeling stressed, it is due to the ever increasing amount of STUFF that life is placing on your shoulders.
Stress is a part of life. You cannot avoid it and try as you might you cannot deny it. The only reason you are not stressed is because you might be DEAD!
Stress is what holds the world and universe together. Stress is a necessary part of life.
However, it is when we take on so much ourselves that we get to the point of either IMPLODING and running from God and ,life, or like Martha we EXPLODE and rant and blame God for the troubles of your life.
I am glad that the Word of God is not silent concering this very real expereince we all face. The Bible gives us many examples of men and women of faith you lived with stress. Some handled it in a way that strengthened them. Others sadly responded to stress by running from God.
In our scripture today, we have an example of a person who experienced stress and we see how Jesus gave her a word to be able to handle it.
Lets look at it together.
Stress is a part of life. You cannot avoid stress but you can survive it. I am glad the Bible is not silent on this common human experience. The Bible also gives us examples how we can face and survive the stresses of life.
One such example is found in the Gospel of Luke 10:38-42. Lets read this familiar story together.
Mary and Martha, along with their brother Lazarus were friends and supporters of Jesus and his ministry. They lived in the tiny village of Bethany which was a few miles from Jerusalem.
Luke tells us that one day following and incredibly busy season of ministry, ‘As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ‘
When Jesus and His disicples enter the village, Martha welcomes him into her home as her guest, Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught.
This is an unusual scene, as in first century culture Jewish teachers did not allow women to sit at their feet. What Jesus does is highly unusual. He is the guest of a woman in her home and he teaches a woman. This is an encouragement to every woman that Jesus cares and enables all to be His followers. He is interested in everyone men and women.
This is also a reminder for the men that you and I are not excluded from ministry from and to Jesus. There are times when we need to set our lives aside and simply spend time with the Lord, praying, meditating on His word, and getting refreshed for the next season of service.
While Mary is taking notes, her sister Martha is taking aim.
“ But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”
Now, traditionally Martha has been painted to look like the insensitive person in the story. She had her priorities mixed up. Mary understood being with Jesus takes priority over working to please Jesus. And while there is truth in having our priorities in line, lets not be so quick to judge poor, bedraggled Martha.
In biblical times, homes were typically one-room structures without much extra space. (Imagine this ancient home, with at least 13 extra bodies crammed inside of it—and bodies of full-grown men, at that.)
As the hostess of the home, Martha would have been facing a serious challenge in accommodating everyone. If a meal had been offered—which is very likely, according to common customs of that day—it would have added tremendously to her workload. Preparing food was an extremely time-consuming process. Fires had to be lit, and in many cases an animal had to be killed and dressed before it could even be cooked.
On top of all this, and within that cultural context, a woman’s social reputation was inseparable from her performance as a hostess. Communities were so small that word—whether good or bad—got around fast. Martha knew that her failure or success in taking care of her guests would soon be the “talk of the town,” putting even more pressure on her.
We can picture this woman darting about here and there, tripping over bodies that were wearily sprawled out on her floor. She would have been feverishly trying to pull everything together for her guests, making sure the fires were burning properly, testing the flavor of this and that, and calculating how much food was needed to ensure there’d be enough on the table.
I think we can relate to where Martha is coming from can’t we? . After all, she was doing her best to be hospitable. She needed help, and her sister was sitting on the floor seemingly doing nothing. Isn’t it a reasonable request to have her help out? Shouldn’t Mary have been serving alongside her sister?
But Christ’s response to Martha’s request casts a completely different light on the situation,
But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”
I want you to notice three things about Jesus response to Marthas breakdown.
First, he affirms her work. “Mary you are working hard and I see you are troubled” Jesus sees what you are doing for Him. He understands the hard work that you are doing
Secondly, he pinpoints her stress. Jesus says, Martha you are troubled about many things, but on ONE THING is needed. One thing. Simple. We think that if we do more maybe God will notice us. But what God wants is for us to be focused on one thing, JESUS
Martha had clearly lost her focus. When you lose focus you will
1. Resort To Self-Pity (v. 40)
All of you ladies can know what enter-taining unplanned visitor’s is like and why Martha is flustered and feeing more and more frustrated with each passing moment. The first part of verse forty tells us, “But Martha was distracted with much serving,…” the sense of the word translated “distracted” here is “to be pulled away” or “dragged away.” The implication is that Martha wanted to hear Jesus herself, she wanted to be seated at his feet too, but she was pulled away by her sense of her “duties.” Fretting about the meal has robbed her of the joy of her service to the Lord. We should of course, take our responsibilities seriously, but not ourselves to the point that we overestimate our importance. The problem did not lie in the work that Martha was doing. It was the attitude that she was doing it with that became the problem. Martha’s problem was one of balance, between the going and doing and the sitting and listening.
My greatest fear in saying that is that is that someone out there who is doing nothing will gratefully say “Amen” to what they think I said, and so excuse themselves from doing anything except ‘sitting”.
The truth is that there are too many ‘sitters” now. The difference between Martha and Mary is not that one served and the other did not, but one served out of duty and the other out of devotion.
In our daily lives we can become so busy with the everyday things of life that we neglect the most important. In is interesting to think back, when I was a child there was a cartoon series on television called “The Jetsons” many of you may remember it. This show conveyed the common misconception of the time, that in the future modern conveniences would produce more and more leisure time in people’s lives. The facts are that today, many of you are overworked. You quite simply work too many hours. Stephen Covey comments on the unreal expectations of our day in his book, “First Things First” when he says, “People expect us to be busy, overworked. It’s become a status symbol in our society – if we’re busy, we’re important; if we’re not busy, we’re 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 in our lives.”
[Stephen Covey, A Roger Merrill, Rebecca R. Merrill. “First Things First: To Live, to Love, To Learn, to Leave a Legacy.” (Simon & Schuster, 1994). ]
Loss Of Focus Causes us To Resort To Self-Pity and
2. To Become Angry At Others
Our world is full of distractions. And the more the pressure, the most tempting it is to focus on the urgent rather than the essential.
I truly believe that Martha wanted to honor Jesus. I even believe that she began her work with the right attitude. All of you ladies can identify with what I am about to say. You begin the task of huge festive meal (like Thanksgiving) with the greatest of enthusiasm, but as time passed you came to realize that you are running out of time and you can not possibly finish everything that you planned to do.
When that happens, you get angry – angry at yourself for letting yourself get in this fix and angry with anyone else who might have made a difference in accomplishing your goals. Martha was like that, the harder she worked the more worked up she became. Some people “burn out” in service but Martha was “burned up” in her. It is bad enough to have everything to do. It is even worse when we can think of someone who we do not feel is pulling their weight and who has let us down. That is what I see happening to Martha.
Loss Of Focus Causes us To Become Angry At Others and
3. Loss Of Focus Causes us To Find Fault With Others.
In second part of verse forty, Martha finally exploded and she comes boiling out of the kitchen, red-faced and furious and says; "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me."
She doesn’t even call her sister by name. In her defense perhaps she had already done everything she could think of to attract Mary’s attention and signal her that she needed help. We all have ways that we use to get a message across. We clear our throats. We make attention-getting motions. In my wife’s case she gives me “the look.” Men you know what the look is don’t you?
We have a situation like that in this text when Martha cannot get Mary’s attention. We are even more irritated when the other person ignores us. Mary was willing to face Martha’s anger, because sitting at the feet of Jesus meant everything to her at this point. No one can force us to be devoted, it is a voluntary decision.
Loss Of Focus Causes us To Find Fault With Others and
4. Loss Of Focus Causes us To Question God’s Care.
Whatever Martha has already done to get Mary’s attention, she is totally exasperated now and speaks directly to Jesus. There is an accusation in her voice when she says, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me."
Martha was angry at Mary for being so selfish and she is angry at Jesus for allowing this to go on. Notice that Martha addressed her irritation to Jesus, you have to admit that she is one gutsy woman. Martha is accusing Jesus of not caring for her, because she was sure that if Jesus really cared for her He would tell Mary to get up and help her. Today she would say something to the effect of “Lord you know what a ding bat my sister is, but you are a part of the problem too. You tell her to get her sweet self in her and help me!”
In saying this she not only rebuked her sister but also the one for whom all of these preparations are being made. Whenever our service causes us to criticize others and pity ourselves because we feel overworked, we had better take time to examine our lives!
It is interesting how Martha links Jesus’ care for her with His willingness to tell Mary to get busy helping her. Martha thought that she knew how Jesus should demonstrate his care for her. I wonder do we do that? Do we ever accuse God of not caring for us, because we have already decided what his care for us looks like? Part of the Martha’s problem was that she worried to much about what others were doing.
In today’s text Jesus by his refusal to do as Martha had asked demonstrates that although what she was doing was valuable work, she should worry less about Mary’s choices. It all boiled down to the fact that Martha wanted to force Mary to serve Christ her way.
Jesus responds to Martha with an affirmation of her ministry, a redirection of her focus, and finally, Jesus gives Martha an INVITATION to rest.
He says to Martha, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Was Mary better or more spiritual than Martha? No, the only difference was Mary had the focus of her life in the proper place. Jesus does not rebuke Martha for her faithlessness, rather in tenderness he invites Martha to come and join Mary and enjoy the presence of Jesus.
P.S. The key to surviving stress is to refocus your on Gods purpose for your life.
We need to refocus our lives and attention on what God wants for us to be and do. To refocus our lives we must first of all,
1. Rest your body.
This deals with the physical side of stress and burnout. This is God’s first step. Get your mind and body in focus by getting the proper rest and nutrician.
God understands your body better than you do. Psalm 127:2 (Living Bible) "God wants his loved ones to get their proper rest."
Sometimes in life the most spiritual thing you can do is go to sleep. When you’re tired you just can’t handle a whole lot. When you’re worn out, beat, you can’t handle stresses and pressures that normally wouldn’t bother you. Sometimes, one good night’s rest changes your perspective overnight. Never make a major decision when you’re depressed. It will almost always be wrong. Never make a major decision when you’re tired. It will almost always be wrong. Wait until you’ve got that good night’s sleep, gotten yourself recharged a little bit.
That’s a given, a no-brainer. Rest your body.
2. Release your frustrations.
This deals with the emotional side of stress . Revealing your feeling is the beginning of healing. You’re not going to get well, you’re not going to get feeling good again, until you learn to express those feelings in your heart that you’ve been holding in. Any area of your life that you can’t talk about is out of control. If you can’t talk about it, you can’t manage it. So the second step in burnout is to face your frustrations and talk to God about it. Don’t complain to other people, talk to God. Just say, "God, this is the way I feel." Express your feelings, lay them all out.
You remember Job? He had it all, a home, a wife and kids, a comfortable life. God allowed Satan to afflict him and inflict him with death, trouble and sorrow.
When news comes to him that everything he owned, oved, and cherished was destroyed he looks to heaven and cries,
Let the day of my birth be erased, and the night I was conceived. Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let no light shine on it. Let the darkness and utter gloom claim that day for its own. Let a black cloud overshadow it, and let the darkness terrify it. Let that night be blotted off the calendar, never again to be counted among the days of the year never again to appear among the months. Let that night be childless.Let it have no joy.( Job 3:1-17)
I get the feeling Job is not having a good day. HE does not try masking his feelings in denial and singing, “Don’t worry, be happy’. HE is simply being honest with God about his feelings.
God won’t be shocked with your feelings and emotions. He isn’t shocked with the way you feel. God knows your feelings better than you do. He wired you up. He just wants you to understand them and by talking them out it helps you get in touch with what you’re feeling and thinking.
God just says, "I’ll listen as long as you want to, until you run out of words." Have you ever wondered why some of the Psalms got into the Holy Bible? Some of them are pretty vindictive. In some of them, David is really spouting off, blowing off steam. "God, I hate my enemies! I can’t stand them. I want to see them all dead. I want to see their whole families slaughtered. I want to kick their teeth in!" How did that get into the Holy Bible?
God allowed those Psalms in because David was blowing off steam, but he was doing it with the right person. God put them in the Bible so you could know it’s ok. There is no emotion that you could express to God that is going to make Him stop loving you or make Him mad. You can come to him as a child and say, "God, sometimes I doubt that You even exist. God, I am worried.... God, I’m lonely.... God, I’m frustrated..." You can talk to God about anything and everything and He’s not going to be blown away by it.
He says if you want to get well, first you rest your body and then you release your frustrations, your emotions. So are you feeling down today? a little stressed out, uptight, overloaded? Do what the Bible says to do.
"Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for you." He’s talking about Jesus. He says tell God how you feel. Pour out your heart to Jesus. Dump the load on Him. God never meant for you to carry that load by yourself.
To renew your focus we need to release our frustrations then we need to
3. Refocus on God’s Purpose for your life
Get your eyes off your problem and start looking at Jesus. Get a fresh awareness of God’s power and presence in your life. This is the key to Marthas overcoming her stress and burnout. Jesus was calling her to refocus her attention on one thing, a Person, Jesus.
Part of our problem is we want to be in control of our situations. At the root of most burnout and stress is the desire to control our own lives. God knows that we are flesh and cannot possible live our lives in constant energy control mode. Eventually we will break unless we learn what Martha had to learn and that is to relinquish control of her life and service to God.
In Isaiah 40:27-29 we have Gods promise to His people ISreal to refocus their eyes of faith on Him.
O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights? Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless.
God never meant for you to be the manager of your life. He wants to manage your life. He made you. You were made by Him and for Him. Until you understand that life isn’t going to make sense.
He’s saying, "Let Me be God and quit trying to be God yourself." That’s why you’re so tired. You weren’t wired to be God. You’re human and you’re not a super human and you’re certainly not God.
God says "I want you to focus on Me. I’ve got the power."
Rest your body, Release your emotions, Refocus on God. One more step and unless you do this one you’re never going to get back the wholeness, never going to get back to health, never going to get back to be what God meant for you to be.
4. Resume serving others.
Did you notice that Jesus never condemned Martha for her work neither did he tell her to stop. Niether did he rebuke Mary from sitting at His feet.
In His own, special way Jesus was affirming Marthas service. His call to her was both an affirmation and an invitation. He was affirming what she was doing was important. But he was also inviting Martha to refocus her priority of service on the Lord. The inference is that He expected Martha to continue the work, but with a refocused attitude. Her service would be with the attitude that Paul explains in Colossians, To do all things as unto the Lord!’
Do you want to know how to reboot your life and sense of purpose? Start by serving others. Stop thinking about yourself all the time. Start thinking about others who are in need of the love of Jesus.
God didn’t put you on this earth just to live for yourself. The way you come out of burnout is again, by start giving away, not by being this dead cesspool where you take but you begin to focus on the outside and begin to help others.
When you get involved in helping somebody else. Get your eyes off yourself.
Conclusion
Martha was not wrong nor was Mary. It is case of where one did good and the other better. The Christian life is learning to balance duty and devotion.
Sitting without serving is powerless
Serving without sitting is directionless.
Serving after sitting produces power and balance.
Prayer: You can make it with God’s help. "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
Pray this prayer in your heart. "Dear Jesus, You know how tired I am. You know how frazzled my emotions are. You know how often I feel like I can’t make it. I need Your help. I need You to restore my soul. Today, I am surrendering the control of every area of my life to You. I’m going to follow Your direction even when it doesn’t make sense, because You’re God and I’m not. Help me to take action on these four steps this next week. Help me to get the rest I need. Help me to spend time with You every day, reading Your word and talking to You about my feelings and frustrations. Help me to say focused and centered on You. Help me to get into a small group where I can receive support. Help me to give my life away in serving others. In Your name I pray. Amen."."
