As I focus on areas of my life that lead to selfish sin, another one is BUSYNESS! Busyness is the enemy of our growth with God. How often do you hear people make comments like: ‘I’m so busy’ or ‘It’s been a crazy week’ or ‘I just don’t know how I am going to get everything done.’ Being honest, especially as we’ve been remodeling our new home (in less than 6-weeks), I find myself saying things like this all the time. My business, ministry and other commitments are demanding, but that does not mean I need to go around advertising my busyness and inflicting it on others. We as Christians can be worse than anyone at sharing our busyness. Maybe it’s because we have the ‘normal’ stuff of work and family but with an added layer of busyness called ‘church’. But it’s a disaster when church becomes just another thing on the ‘to do’ list. What message does this convey to our communities? “Come to church – we’ll give you more stuff to stress about!” Instead, I think we should listen to the advice given in Isaiah (below) and ‘spend ourselves’ for what we believe, but NOT in a hectic, chaotic way.
Isaiah 58:10 (NIV)
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
So, What… for This Week?
I want to be released from the curse of busyness. The fullness of life that Christian faith gives us is more to do with deeper levels of significance in our lives than simply a larger range of activities. So, learn to appreciate the benefits of taking some extra time to slow down to take time to reflect. If Jesus needed to withdraw from the crowds and pray in solitary places then so do we.