“WHATEVER IT TAKES” Luke 10:38-42
INTRO – The little girl’s father had just given her a silver dollar to put into her bank. She excitedly ran off to her room to "deposit" the coin. However, in a few minutes she returned and handed the silver coin back to her father.
"Daddy," she said sadly, "here’s your dollar back. I can’t get it into my bank." "Why not?" her concerned father asked. "It’s too full," she said, obviously disappointed.
Her father accompanied her back to her room and, sure enough, her bank was too full to accept even one more coin. It was filled with pennies!
Sometimes our lives are like that bank. So full of errands, obligations and activities that neither nurture us nor help anyone else, that there simply is no room left for what is truly important -- the silver dollars.
If we are going to be people who do whatever it takes to be the people that God desires for us to be and become the church that He desires for us to be, we are going to have to get rid of some of the “pennies” of our busy lives in order to make room for the “silver dollars”
Read a story that speaks to the busyness of our lives. It seems that Satan called a worldwide convention. In his opening address to his evil angels, he said, "We can’t keep the Christians from going to church. We can’t keep then from reading their Bibles & knowing the truth. We can’t even keep them from conservative values.
"But we can do something else. We can keep them from forming an intimate, abiding experience in Christ. If they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken. So let them go to church, let them have their conservative lifestyles, but steal their time, so they can’t gain that experience in Jesus Christ. This is what I want you to do, angels. Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection throughout their day!"
"How shall we do this?" shouted his angels.
"Keep them busy in the nonessentials of life and invent unnumbered schemes to occupy their minds," he answered. "Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, then, borrow, borrow, borrow. Convince the wives to go to work and the husbands to work 6 or 7 days a week, 10-12 hrs a day, so they can afford their lifestyles. Keep them from spending time with their children. As their family fragments, soon, their homes will offer no escape from the pressures of work.
"Overstimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still small voice. Entice them to play the radio or cassette player whenever they drive, to keep the TV, the VCR, & their CDs going constantly in their homes. And see to it that every store and restaurant in the world plays music constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ.
"Fill their coffee tables with magazines & newspapers. Pound their minds with the news 24 hrs. a day. Invade their driving moments with order catalogues, and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering, free products, services, and false hopes."
"Even in their recreation, let them be excessive. Have them return from their recreation exhausted, disquieted and unprepared for the coming week. Don’t let them go out in nature. Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, and concerts instead.
"And when they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences and unsettled emotion."
"Let them be involved in soul-winning. But crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek power from Christ. Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family unity for the good of the cause."
It was quite a convention in the end. And the evil angels went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to get busy, busy, busy and rush here and there. Has the devil been successful at his scheme? You be the judge.
If we are going to be WIT people, we must learn to survive & thrive in the midst of our busy lives. How can we do this?
I. LET CHRIST IN – v. 38
A. Martha opened her home to Jesus. Many times this story is told in way that contrasts Mary and Martha as though each believer must make a choice: a worker like Martha or a worshiper like Mary. Truth is that we all need to be workers AND worshipers!
a. To fulfill our WIT commitment we must be both workers and worshipers.
b. All have different personalities, gifts, and abilities. But does not mean that Christian life is and either/or situation – either a worker or a worshiper.
B. When we invite Christ into our hearts, we must allow Him to have complete control over all of our lives. When we do that, we will worship Him and we will work hard for Him. He is our Lord, our Boss, our Master.
C. Robert Boyd Munger – My Heart, Christ’s Home – “One evening I invited Jesus Christ into my heart. What an entrance He made! It was not a spectacular, emotional thing, but very real. Something happened at the very center of my life. He came into the darkness of my heart and turned on the light. He built a fire on the hearth and banished the chill. He started music where there had been stillness, and He filled the emptiness w/ His own loving, wonderful fellowship. I have never regretted opening the door to Christ & I never will.
In the joy of this new relationship I said to Jesus Christ, ‘Lord, I want this heart of mine to be Yours. I want you to settle down here and be perfectly at home. Everything I have belongs to You. Let me show you around.”
a. The study – the room of the mind. Filled w/ our thoughts, imaginations, and images that we’ve put there through the years.
i. Need to fill our minds w/ Scripture. Hear it; read it; study it; memorize it; meditate on it.
ii. Center our thoughts on Christ, His purity and power.
b. The dining room – the room of appetites and desires. Spend a lot of time here trying to satisfy our wants. Favorite dishes: our money, position, power, status, our image in eyes of others.
i. Only food that will really satisfy – knowing and doing God’s will.
c. The living room – the room of intimate fellowship.
i. Need to come here often to spend time with Him.
ii. He will always be waiting for us. He’ll never miss a QT.
d. The workroom – In our own strength, we can’t produce much of anything. But when we relax in Christ and let His Spirit work through us, we are able to do so much more with our lives.
e. The rec room – the room of fun and fellowship. Do we have some activities and associations that we don’t want Him to be a part of?
f. The hall closet – filled w/ those rotten things that we still try to hold on to and hide. We don’t want Him or anyone else to go there. And yet if He is truly going to be the Lord of our lives, we must give Him the key to that private place and let Him clean it out. And He will!
i. Until we let Him do that, our fellowship w/ Him will be hindered.
g. Transfer the title to Him – No longer just a guest, but the owner and Master.
II. LISTEN TO HIS WORDS – v. 39, 42b
A. “Busyness in the King’s business is no excuse for neglecting the King.” How many times have we gotten so busy in our lives – even doing good and honorable things – that we’ve neglected spending time sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to His words?
a. Jesus did not tell Martha that she was wrong in doing all the things that she was doing. She just had her priorities mixed up.
B. The only way we can grow in our spiritual lives is by regularly sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to His words, and responding in obedience.
a. “To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you.” – Oswald Chambers
b. The more we neglect listening to the words of Christ and applying them to our lives the more those “other things” will have a growing fascination for us and the more unspiritual we become.
C. We simply must determine when and where we will have our QT and then, as Nike says, “Just do it!”
a. His words will change us; challenge us; convict us; encourage us; embolden us; empower us. But they will never do those things if we’re not regularly sitting at His feet to hear them.
i. Sunday AM at 11:00 is not enough!!!
b. Our assoc. has a Time, Place, & Preacher committee – determine the time and place of our next assoc. meeting and who will speak.
i. You need to determine the time and place of your next meeting with Christ. And you know who will be the speaker!
III. LIMIT THE DISTRACTIONS – v. 40-41
A. Again, the problem is not that Martha was working so hard. Definitely nothing wrong with that. We all have many responsibilities that we simply have to fulfill in our lives. Nothing we can do about that.
B. Problem comes in when we allow all those responsibilities to distract us and pull us apart.
a. If our lives are distracted and out of focus, we are very susceptible to becoming critical of others. Susceptible to having a pity party.
C. We need to take a look at our lives and determine if there are some places where we can limit the distractions – Are there some places where we need to say NO? Are there some places where we need to say YES?
D. And when we determine that we have limited all the distractions that we can, we need to bring the remaining responsibilities to the Lord.
a. “Lord, thank you for the privilege of being a husband/wife, mother/father. Thank for the privilege and ability to work and make a living. Thank you for the privilege of serving you in my church and in your Kingdom.”
CONCLUSION – Making a WIT commitment can be an easy thing. Anyone can sign one of these forms. But keeping our WIT commitments hinges on our letting Christ into our lives to be our Lord and Master; listening to and applying His words regularly and consistently; & limiting the distractions in our lives.
