The difference between Marys and Marthas

A question that I heard at church the other day was, "where is a place in your heart that you are experiencing tension?" Because the conviction of the Holy Spirit creates some tension in our spirit.

Today, I asked myself this question and this was my answer: I realize that the tension I am feeling is whether or not I am going to be more of a Mary or a Martha (Luke 10:38-42), especially as it pertains to our approach to ministry. The Martha spirit (in ministry) is marked by:

• wanting to feel in control
• tackling the to do list before sitting at Jesus' feet (or sitting at Jesus' feet only to get something from Him, like direction on what to do at bible study in my case)
• wanting to have a neat and tidy plan, to have clear cut goals and programs and curriculums
• "serving" the Lord by doing so many things for Him, but not sitting at his feet first and more, or not asking Him if He even wants you to be doing all of those things.
• trying to get the Mary's to get off their butts and help us already! We have to DO something.
• not genuinely to the core wanting to depend recklessly on the Holy Spirit. That is hard and scary and outside of the comfort zone.

FROM SOLITUDE TO COMMUNITY TO MINISTRY

By Henri Nouwen

The word discipleship and the word discipline are the same word -- that has always fascinated me. Once you have made the choice to say, "Yes, I want to follow Jesus," the question is, "What disciplines will help me remain faithful to that choice?" If we want to be disciples of Jesus, we have to live a disciplined life.

By discipline, I do not mean control. If I know the discipline of psychology or of economics, I have a certain control over a body of knowledge. If I discipline my children, I want to have a little control over them.

But in the spiritual life, the word discipline means "the effort to create some space in which God can act." Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on.

I think three disciplines are important for us to remain faithful, so we not only become disciples, but also remain disciples. These disciplines are contained in one passage from Scripture with which we're familiar, but one that we may be surprised to find speaks about discipline.

True Power and the Way of the Cross

Below are some awesome quotes by Graham Tomlin taken out of a lecture he gave on the way of the cross and true power in God's Kingdom. Very encouraging and convicting!

Martin Luther suggests to us that the cross is actually the key to understanding the way God works.

God achieves his purposes through suffering, pain, and anxiety. Yet of course, these are not the things in which you expect to find God, and as a result most people do not recognize this is God's work, because they expect God only to be revealed in glory and grandeur and splendor. The way God works confounds human expectations. And so, faith is needed to see past the appearance of things to their true reality.

A person (all of us) has to be brought to a point where he realizes that his actions, goodness, religiosity, actually count for nothing before God, and he, in a sense, has to be made powerless before God. The sinner can only approach God with empty hands, not full hands. Not hands that are full of “virtues” and things that we can offer God and say, “look, you really ought to be pleased with me because of these things I have.” No, they have to be empty. God needs to strip us away from the things that we think are important, virtuous, worthy, etc. Like in the Psalms when God brings them to a point of crying out to God because they have nothing left. The psalmist begins to see that maybe this experience of despair that I'm feeling about myself is actually not a barrier to my acceptance before God, but it's actually the very qualification for it! The very thing I need is this profound sense that I have nothing to offer. As long as I think I have something to offer, there's not a lot that God can do for me.

I hope

I hope

I hope that I truly listen to others and in this way, “consider others as better than myself.” (Philippians 2:3)

I hope that I truly view myself and others as a small but important and absolutely indispensable part of the body. I hope that I don’t expect others or myself to be all things to all people, or that I don’t get frustrated by differences bc this would be like being frustrated that my whole body isn’t an eye.

I hope I am as committed or more committed to helping others become who they were made to be as I am to reaching my full potential in life. I hope that I can truly say that I desire for others to outshine and be more used of God than myself.

I hope that I really want to know the truth about God, myself, and this world rather than things that I just like to believe or that make me feel good

I hope that I don’t just honor God with my lips while my heart is far from Him or do my acts of righteousness before men just to be seen. I hope that my heart really changes because my eternal treasures and rewards are going to be based on the things done from a pure heart of love for God and love for others.

Building with gold, silver, and precious stones

1 Corinthians 3:11-15:

"For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames."

What does Scripture say it means to build upon the foundation of Jesus with gold, silver, and precious stones, rather than wood, hay, and straw? Ie. what does it look like to live an eternally significant life that lines up with God's values so that on the Day of judgement when everything is shown for what it really is in God's eyes, it will stand the test and last? No small question, ha:)