Charlie Loften: Hello, and welcome to The Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Lofton, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you are joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point.
You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or our streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us.
Charlie Loften: Hey, good morning. If you are new, I'm Charlie, I'm the lead pastor here and really glad you are here worshiping with us today and everybody who's watching online, really glad all of you are here. And if you are new and haven't had a chance to meet you, be standing there in the back and we'd just love to meet you. We have a gift that we can give you, We'd just love to know how we can help you, how you found us, and just but just again, just love to get to know you. So that'll be right after the service there in the back.
One other quick thing, yesterday we held a little fundraiser basketball tournament yesterday that I feel like was incredibly successful, a lot of fun. And I think we probably raised in excess of $1,000 for our community care team, which was really, really cool. And I would like to thank and she's not going like this. Emma McIntosh, she was here right now, point at her. No, no point at her.
A lot of hard work went into that, and just thank you so much Emma and everybody else who was involved in helping plan that. And if you were here last week, you'll know that I was not. My wife and I were out of town, and what happened was, it was a crazy day, Easter Sunday. We had three services. I preached in all three.
Immediately after I preached, I went back to my office, changed clothes, my wife and I got in our car. We drove to the airport, and we had an anniversary trip where we went to Rome for a little bit and to Athens for a little bit. And I could show you pictures and bore you with all sorts of historical stuff that we saw, but it too would much time. Anyway, we're celebrating our anniversary. Maybe a time I can figure out it thematically fits in and we can watch clips from Gladiator and the Colosseum would be great.
It was our thirty second anniversary. We had a great time, and I joked about this a few weeks ago that for a math guy like me, two to the fifth power, 32, that's a much more significant number to celebrate than thirty, twenty five, something like that. So we went. Heidi was on board. She's not math, but she thought that was fun.
So we had a great time, and we are, by and large, we will, unless we absolutely have to, we will not rent cars on vacation, especially overseas. Some people are like, oh yeah, we went to London, we rent a car, we went to Rome, I cannot even imagine. Like we will take Ubers or whatever if we have to, but we are also just walkers. We will go five miles, six miles, eight miles, we'll just whatever, just kind of like to whatever you need to do in a day to kind of get where you're going. And in the world of smartphones, is significantly easier now, right?
You just put it in, say you're walking, it gives you directions. When we ran into this challenge that we would have, and I think, and I'm not trying to start a controversy here, but maybe I am, a difference really between Apple Maps and Google Maps as far as their effectiveness, right? Now they both knew where you were going and would put the right way, but you know, you're supposed to like, you go down this road to the right, and you're like, and you're standing there at the crossroads of a whole lot of roads, right? Which one is it talking about? And I'm sure you know this, If you look down there, not only will it tell you where you are, but you can see that there's kind of like this little arrow thing that will tell you also which way you're pointing.
Is it saying to go down this road? Which road? Oh, it's this one. And then you can go. Apple Maps was great at that.
It seemed like Google Maps was not. And it was just like, it did not know which way you were currently facing. And so there were many times when if we were using Google Maps that you would think, Okay, I'm supposed to go down this road, and we would start walking down it. And it's like, I don't think this is right. I'm following the map, and then you look at it, and it's like, nope, it does not know which way that we're facing.
And so you can do everything right. You can know where you're going. You can even know the right way to get there, but if you get a little disoriented, if you get a little bit off, next thing you know, you're going the completely wrong direction, they can cause a lot of problems. Now Mark did a great job last week, kind of kicking off this series, talking about off ramps, where you can kind of you think you know who you want to be. You think you know what you want your life to look like, and you're headed a certain direction, but if you just get a little bit off, then you can find yourself a year from now, five years from now, way off the destination.
And the older that I get, the more I've been a pastor, the more conversations like this that I've had, and it's never a good conversation, I don't enjoy it, and I can say with pretty high levels of confidence that no one I've ever had this conversation has liked it. I don't even know I could say that it has ever made it better, and I'm a pragmatic guy, so maybe I need to stop having it. It's not working. I don't like it. They don't like it.
It's not working. Maybe I should stop. But somebody will come to me with some new idea, something they're going to start doing. I think this is actually, I want to start, I'm gonna start doing this, or some new belief. I really think I really think we've got the Bible wrong about this.
I don't think this is true. I think this is true. Oh, the Bible definitely says this. Don't even know if it matters what the Bible says. I think we've gotten to a point now where we can set aside what the Bible says, because this is clearly better and more fulfilling.
This is where life is, and then like some sort of belief, some sort of action, some sort of distraction. And they'll come to me and they'll tell me, and then I'll say some version of this. This issue that you're talking about right now by itself is harmless. It's not great. It's it's wrong.
If you started doing this instead of this, maybe it wouldn't be that big of a deal. And at this point in your life, it doesn't seem like that big a deal. But let me tell you this, the way that you're thinking, the way that you're talking about this, if you keep following this kind of way of thinking about scripture, about God, about life. It's not that big a deal now. There's gonna come a point in time in your life where you are so far gone that you're gonna become somebody that right now you wouldn't recognize, and you're gonna be somewhere that right now you can't imagine ever going.
And so be careful. But now I've ruined it because if I ever have to say it to you, you're gonna know what's coming. You're not gonna like it either. And I'm telling you, I've I've seen people wreck their faith Three years, not going to church anywhere, not really connected with God at all, you know, reposting stuff from atheist blogs. I've also seen people lose their families, which what started out as one moment of enlightenment from their perspective.
And so this series really, I I hope it'll mean a lot to you. I hope I hope I hope hope God will put some things on your heart. I hope I hope you're here I hope you're here at just the right weeks, where where where God can help you, because my heart is my heart is is that we would all just continue on the right path headed toward, what did Mark say, the righteous path, the ancient path that leads us to life and not get distracted by these off ramps. And so what we're gonna be talking about today is one of the more practical ones, rather than kind of theological or philosophical ones, a little more practical ones, we're talking about busyness. About sometimes I believe that our what we spend our time doing and how much we spend time doing it really gets us off the course.
It gets us off the ramp. We get so busy doing one thing, we lose sight of the most important thing. Now for me as a pastor, there's this passage that gets used all the time when you're talking about this. It's a story from the Gospels, and anytime there's a story that is used all the time by pastors everywhere and has been for years, I try to avoid it. I don't know what happened.
I'm in charge, like I can decide what I do, but here we are nonetheless with the most stereotypical story that a pastor like me would say, that would use in this situation, and if you're new to Christianity or new to the church, may you not know what I'm talking about, but if you've been around more than a hot minute, you have heard many pastors give this sermon, so welcome to the seventeenth time. You get to hear the story of Mary and Martha in Luke chapter 10, in Luke chapter 10 starting verse 38, these are two friends of Jesus. It seems to be maybe in this narrative, this is kind of when they're just really kind of getting to know each other, but they become Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus become some of Jesus' best friends. And so He is there at their house, and they have this, what is recorded for us, a very, you know, this is kind of a brief snippet from their interaction together at Mary and Martha's house, Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 38. 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 few things are needed, or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. So just imagine, right, You've got the Son of God, Jesus, in your house, and so He's there. And if you just imagine, there's two types of people in the room, right? There's two types of people in the room right now, right?
If you can imagine that Jesus is coming to your house, He's there, there's two kinds of people. One of you would be like, I can't believe Jesus, I'm just gonna sit here, stand here, get as close to my kids, to hear whatever it is that He has to say. And also in this room, there are people who would be like, Jesus is in my house, and you would notice everything that is out of order. And you notice everything that needs to be tidied and cleaned and arranged, and they go, We're gonna have to eat, and so you're gonna have to do all this prep for all these things to make sure the house and the situation is ready to have Jesus in your house. It's probably divided relatively equally, and probably each of you found each other, right?
If you're married, you probably found of each other, right? I actually saw this thing the other day. I sent it to my wife. She didn't respond. Maybe she didn't think it was funny that for every person who can't sit down until the chores are done, there is someone who can't do the chores until they've had an opportunity to sit down.
And I'm not saying that this passage says who's better, but and so what do we have? Like, hey, she's doing all this work. John's work. All this work. All this work.
And he's like, Jesus, are you not going to you're not you're not gonna tell her you're not gonna tell her what I'm doing here. And their culture, hospitality was I I hesitate to say the most important value. But at at I think at lowest, it was two. Like, the most important cultural value, to be a hospitable people. You want people in your home, and you want them to feel loved and cared for.
And so in her culture, what Martha was doing was clearly the most important thing that you could do, especially for such an honored guest as Jesus. And so she's doing all the work necessary to make sure that he knows that he is welcomed, loved, and cared for and that this is a hospitable place. So she has chosen to do the thing that she understands to be the most important, and Mary is just sitting and listening to him. And what Jesus does here is he reorients her. I understand that you think that the most important thing that you can do is this.
And and you're but but you're so bit you're so busy with so many things, but really, there's only a couple things that are the most important. Really, just the one, and it is what Mary is doing. And I'm not gonna take that. I'm not gonna take that from her. This is the one most important thing.
And so what we're going do, I'll see how it goes. Usually in my slides, kind of my main points, of put declarative statements. We're going do questions today, if it goes well, we'll keep doing it over the next few weeks, because really these kind of issues that we're battling are really more about you kind of having an evaluative moment with yourself or with your family about kind of how we feel like we're doing. Rather So than making statements, we'll kind of do some questions, questions for you to consider as you are processing whether or not this idea of busyness is a problem for you. And the first question I would ask is this, is do you agree about the one thing?
Now, yeah, I could have just as easily in this question, but do you agree with Jesus about the one thing? But that really just kinda mean, I mean, that's like, you're not gonna know Jesus. What does he know? Right? I mean, it's and so you take that out of it.
I mean, I he did say it. I'm not saying he didn't say it. He did say it. It was Jesus. I'm quoting Jesus.
Right? He said it. Do you do you agree that the most important thing that Mary could have done in that moment is to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to him? Now we do not have the ability to literally sit at Jesus' feet, the physical presence of Jesus, and to hear him talk. Let's kind of extrapolate a little bit kind of what that would mean for us, but let's just for our purposes.
It's our spiritual health, it's our spiritual life, It is our it is our vital, emotional, spiritual, relational connection with Jesus Christ, with the God of the universe. The the the life that we need to thrive spiritually in the way that we get that through our relational and personal connection with God. That is the most important thing. More important than all of the other things that maybe our culture, their culture has picked hospitality, our culture has picked some different things. Family, family, family is the most important.
If I were to say right now, and guys, and family is the most important, like who? I agree. I disagree with that. Family, of course it's important. Working hard, important.
Happiness, important. All these things are good things. Just like hospitality, prepping a meal was very important. But what Jesus is saying, there is one that kind of trumps all of them. It's not the only place where he says this.
When asked what the most important command in scripture is, he says it's to love God with everything that you are. There are plenty of commands in there about family, about loving family well. In fact, says number two, people right just behind. Things in there about working hard. There's lots of scriptures encouraging all of these things, but Jesus says the most important thing, the most vital thing for your life is your spiritual life, your relational connection with Jesus.
That is what is most important. Do you agree with that? Now, I just want to pause here, because I want to make sure that we're all on the same page. As I said, I spent some time praying this week, actually, that we talked about this, that no one would feel particularly called out, but we would all feel called up. And now, especially as I'm sitting here thinking, it's just so many of us here maybe come from a place of kind of what the phrase gets used, church hurt.
Like there's been a lot of pressure and hurt that has come from past experiences with other Christian leaders or in other churches, and I don't want you to hear that this is ultimately turning into some sort of guilt shame moment, and that ultimately the big picture here is, guys, you should be coming to church more. Right? That's not what we're doing. I'm not trying to guilt anybody into coming into church more, but we do need to evaluate. Are the things we're doing, are those the most important things?
And do we agree with God that the most important thing for our short and long term health, to really have life is our connection with Jesus. So first question, do we agree? Do we agree about what the one thing is? And the second one is, what is it that you are giving your time and focus to? What is it?
Maybe in principle maybe in principle, you can say yes to number one. My life doesn't necessarily reflect it, but maybe in principle, I do. But the reality of it is if you look at my life, you're gonna see something maybe different. And the guy that mentored me in college, he had this phrase that he would use all the time as he was talking to us about priorities. What he would say was, I can tell what you real okay, as even it's about to come out of my mouth, I realize you're gonna realize how old I am.
It is highly dated, but I'll just say it the way he said it anyway. The way I can tell what you value is show me your checkbook and your calendar, and I know you don't have a checkbook. I don't have a checkbook. He would still say it, that you would still say checkbook. But anyways, your online banking profile, like where you spend your money and where you spend your time, that will show what you value.
And if one were to examine that, and who, and let tell you who the one is, I don't want to be the one. Please, I'm not trying to get in, I have neither the skill set or the desire to evaluate your calendar, but you should, right? And do I look at my calendar the way that I spend my time? Does it does it reflect the priorities that I want for it? I want it to.
And again, as a reminder, what Martha was spending her time doing was a good thing. She was being hospitable to a guest, and not just a guest, but the Son of God Jesus. And in fact, at some point during their time together, I am sure they ate the food that she prepped. I mean, they had to eat. I cannot imagine that once it came to mealtime that Jesus was like, Martha, I told you.
Only one thing is needed, and so none of us are going to eat. I'm sure they ate. I'm sure they had food. And so it was important what she did, but she gave it so much attention and so much time, so much anxiety that it kept her from the one thing. Now there's this illustration, it's kind of a little two by two grid, and if you know me, I'm going love anything that has an x and a y axis, or a two by two grid of any kind, and so I want to show this to you that kind of is a helpful tool, most often kind of gets used for like goal setting, like in a business context.
I thought maybe I should change some of the wording there to make it seem more spiritual, but we'll just kind of leave it as it is. The idea behind it is, there's really kind of a lot of different ways to evaluate kind of how you're spending your time. Is what am I doing? Is it important? And is it urgent?
And so in the two by two, you've got a list of things that are urgent and the things that are important, urgent, non urgent, important, non important, right? So at the bottom right for you, you've got the things that are not urgent or not important. We'll call this the zoning out. Doom scrolling social media, playing games on your phone, things like that, things that just don't really have, you know, they're not, it's not important. Know, oh, I have to do this.
No, man, if I don't get logged into this game, really don't okay, whatever. It's really not that it's not that important, and it's not urgent. It's just something that we do that kind of distracts us to pass time. And a lot of us, man, some of us are struggling with the priorities in our life and really giving God its proper attention because we're spending too much time numbing ourselves. Bottom left there, we've got things that aren't important but are urgent.
Constant, like we just kind of live our lives just kind of constantly being interrupted. I mean, somebody else telling you, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got do this, you you got to do this, and it feels like I'm not getting to the things that are important to me, most people are always just kind of coming at me. Then in the top left, it's things that are important and feel urgent. Like this has to be done. It's not the most important thing, but it's the thing that is kind of hitting right now.
I have to do this now. And then in that top right, right, it's the thing that by my values I've decided are the most important. It may not ever or rarely reach the place of it is the most urgent thing in my life right now, but I know that it is the most important one. So what are some of these things? And again, I battled this a little bit today because like in the first service, one of my best friends was here, and I knew that she was struggling in one of these categories, and I knew I was going to mention it.
Know, this service, I got other friends that are here that I know that are battling some of this, and I don't want anybody, again, don't want anybody feel like they're being personally called out. But there are definitely some things that I just see, and I just I just observe people, and I and I see them just kind of spinning, like like like just their their engines are constantly going. One of them really is it's about career. It's about work. It's like I just have to always be working.
I have to be working. I have to grow. I have to develop. I have to do more. And again, creating, running, building a business?
Great. It's great. Expanding? Great. Working hard?
Also great. But has it taken too much emotional mental energy for me where it's like, I've I've lost sight of what's best. Another one, again, all due respect, this was easier in the first service because it is a slightly older crowd. I see some people, like, it just seems like their whole lives are centered around kids' activities. My kids' activities determine everything about my life.
And again, we all of our kids were involved in activities, and we took them to things. You know? And I'm not getting I'm not trying to be too old here. Well, back in my day, we didn't have games on Sunday. We didn't even have practices on Wednesday.
Right? I mean, okay. Great. Thanks, grandpa. I understand that we live in a different world now.
And again, I'm not trying to get you to come to church, and I'm not telling your kids to quit activities. I don't know. What I do know is that I see people, I see families that are just going so hard. And and it breaks my heart sometimes when I'm talking to some of you, and you're talking about how it it's it's training. We're so busy all the time.
I've got this. My wife's got this. My kids got this, and we've got all these activities that we've gotten into. And it is just it's it's it at some point, it crossed the line, and it stopped giving life, and it started taking it. And, again, I love my kids.
I love your kids. I love kids. Kids are great, and we should absolutely prioritize them. Being a parent means kind of giving yourself up for them, but then we also have to ask is the pace at which we are living life, putting everything together, the way that we work, our activities, my parents' activities, the kids' activities, our work, everything. Are we living at a pace that is sustainable for who we want to be in the long term?
I want to support my kid in this thing that they do, but is it giving it this much attention? Is it helping? I want my business to grow. I want to advance in my career, but is the amount of attention and time that I'm giving it, is it ultimately in the long term going to be healthy for me? And again, if if I thought this was true about you specifically, I have already talked to you about it.
I don't know. Again, I don't want your calendar. I'm able to evaluate it, because I am the guy most likely to be sitting on the couch. Not in some really cool Martha way, but really more in a bottom right doom scrolling kind of way. I'm not one of these high charged, busy sorts of people.
Somebody needs to give me a different speech, but I'm giving you this one to help you really just kind of ask this question. Right? Do I feel like my life and its pace are really lending itself and pushing itself towards what we would say are our primary values, and what Jesus has said is its most important. And the last question is this, What would have to happen what would have to happen for you to get realigned? What changes what changes would need to happen?
Some what what change what would I need to start doing? What would I need to start doing? Do I need to start carving out some time in the morning or in the evening or sometime during the day to just kind of really connect with God in in in in his word? Let him speak to me through his word, To talk to him in prayer, to to to allow our hearts to connect. Do I do I need to do that?
Again, is it is it time to join some sort of small group? Or we're just kind of carving out some time in our schedule where we're gonna make sure that we make this a priority where we're I'm spending time with people who are helping me to become better. Again, I I said it wasn't about this, but I guess it can be. Right? Am I do I do I need to make this do I need to carve this time out?
Because it I can't find the time these other days, but I I can try to carve this time out to worship and to hear God's word together. I I can't I can do that. But really more I think maybe for some for a lot of us, what's more important is not what I need to start doing, but what are the things that I need to stop doing? Well, there are things I can just kinda throttle back a little bit on. What are some things that I could just I can take a break?
I don't I don't I don't have to be this consumed with this so that I can have not only the physical time, but the emotional, spiritual space in my life to stay connected to Jesus. You know, be you know, prepping this. I mean, anytime I'm giving a sermon like this, I'm always thinking about myself, and it may surprise you for me to say that I think for me, the number one distraction for me as far as my being someone who sits at the feet of Jesus like Mary is my job. And you may think, bro, that's not possible, okay? Because if your job is a distraction, I don't even want to talk about my job.
But the difference about my job is is that I can pretend that my job is spiritual all the time. I'm reading Bible all the time. I'm studying the Bible all the time. I'm prepping messages all the time. I'm talking to people about God a lot.
I'm attending, compared to most of you, at least twice as many worship services per week as you are. There's a difference between standing in the back, going over the message in your head, and worshiping. There's a difference between studying a passage in order to teach on it than to allow God to nourish me. And there's a difference between praying that Sunday goes well and my heart connecting with God's. And so the thing in and of itself, your job, time with your kids, family getaways, all these different sorts of things that you're doing, they're all great things.
But really only you know, have things just gotten a little out of hand? Maybe this is a conversation you just kind of need to have with yourself. Maybe this is a conversation that we can have together as a family. How how do how do we feel? Do we feel like we are thriving under this circumstance?
Are there some changes we should make that would continue us to thrive? Because even at a minimum, having the conversation, even if you come up with only positive answers, at least you've had it. You got the map out. You made sure we're all clear on the destination. We've got the right path, and the arrow is pointing the right way.
We don't want to wait until it is too late to take stock in whether or not the pace of our life and what we're filling our life with is ultimately long term healthy for me and my family. So I think there are some great conversations to have with these questions. And bigger question, where do we want to go? That's really what this is going to where do you want to go? Who do you want to be?
When you imagine yourself five years from now, ten years from now? What is the kind of man and woman that I want to be? And
Charlie Loften: is
Charlie Loften: the pace and type of life that I'm living right now, is it getting me there? Let me pray. God, I thank you so much. God, I thank you for that. All of us are here, and God, I know that just the people that you wanted to be here and needed to be here were here.
And again, I pray that we will not carry with us any any shame. But, God, this should be an opportunity for us all just to just to evaluate. Am I headed where I think I'm headed? Is what I'm doing heading me to where I want to go? And the God that would have the courage to have these conversations, and the courage to make the changes that we need to make.
Because I, God, I pray for every one of us here that six months from now, a year from now, five years from now, that God, we will be thriving in our relationship with you. And we are so thankful for your son who makes this life possible, and it's in his name we pray. Amen.
Charlie Loften: Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast, and you can learn more about us at thegrovechurch.org. If you go to thegrovechurch.org/connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been listening. And if you want to dig deeper on some of these topics that we cover in our sermon podcast or just another issues of dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out
Charlie Loften: our cultivate podcast, which is
Charlie Loften: on the same feed. However, you found this particular podcast. So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.