Sunday
afternoon I went to a prayer seminar.
Here is a
good question the speaker asked…..
Are you Mary or Martha?
Most of us have heard the
story of Mary and Martha. We know
that Martha was bad for cleaning up the house and cooking, while Mary was good
for sitting at Jesus’ feet.
At least
that was my understanding of the story.
But the
speaker said something interesting.
He said
that most churches live like Martha.
Pretty
weird analogy but I decided to go with it.
He
continued to say that Churches always do,
do,
do.
They are
putting on events,
running services,
having practices,
and maybe even feeding the homeless. So a Martha church seems like a great church.
But most
churches run the church. The church is run by the
people.
Do
you see the fault in that?
The speaker said that he has
asked several pastors, “If
God ended up leaving your church, how would you know?”
And many pastors responded, “Well I
guess we would pretty much be running things how we do now.”
So there it is. The church can run whether or not
God is in it. And there we are
as Martha.
We are running around “doing” all good things-cleaning the house,
cooking—meanwhile yelling at Mary because she is sitting around doing
nothing.
We see
Mary churches and frown at them.
Because maybe their church is small or does not have as many programs as
we do…so in our head we think that it is their fault because they don’t “do” enough.
But the
thing is Martha completely misses the point. It is God who runs the church, and if we truly want to be
the church then it requires us kneeling at
Jesus’ feet.
Surrendering the plans and
desires we might have, so that we can listen and hear his heart for His Church.
The speaker stated that the
average pastor prays 5 minutes a
day. For some reason that breaks my heart. Because if that is
what the Shepherd is doing, how much are the sheep spending time in prayer.
How much time are his sheep
spending at Jesus’ feet?
So I have begun to learn that maybe God does not want me to do so much, maybe He
just wants me to be here at His feet.
Something
is wrong when we can take God out of our church or lives and it looks exactly the
same.
“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.”
Luke 10:41-42
Make it your goal that we
will spend more time with God so that we do not miss out on a life with Him a
part of it.
