Monday Rewind 7.19

If you were not at the 9:30 service on Sunday then you missed an excellent sermon by Pastor Jim. (and no this is not just me trying to get some bonus points because it is only my second week on the job) Pastor Jim preached on the familiar passed of Mary and Martha from Luke 10:38-42. If you don’t have a Bible close by here is the passage,

“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "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."

We can all find ourselves in Martha’s shoes okay maybe not because we are busy cleaning the house and cooking an elaborate dinner; but because we distracted by facebook, sports, work, friends, television, co-workers, this list could go on forever because we all have distractions in our lives. When we look at this passage Martha was not doing a bad thing she was cleaning her home and cooking dinner for Jesus! A majority of the time the distractions in our lives have nothing to do with Jesus Christ, but that does not mean that they never are. As Jesus points out to Martha, we need to take a step back and make sure that we have our priorities in order and the first item on all of our lists has to be Jesus Christ.

As Pastor Jim pointed out Martha kind of gets labeled with a bad image here and we forget that Martha has incredible faith. Later on in the Gospels it is Martha’s faith that helps bring her brother Lazarus back to life. In John 11:27 Martha says to Jesus, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

There is a lot that we can learn from Martha and I pray that this week you will spend sometime looking at the priorities in your life. It is just as important for us to have our priorities in order during the good time when “Jesus is coming over for dinner” so that when we are faced with difficult situations like Martha was with the death of her brother, we will be able to have the same faith a Martha and be able to lean on Jesus Christ for our strength.

Please feel free to let me know what distractions you have in your faith journey so I can be praying for specific situations this week.