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It’s safe to say that our society deals with more distractions than any previous society in history.
Most of us persistently feel pulled in different directions.
I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “God loves you and everyone has a wonderful plan for your life.”
I certainly feel that—, and it seems like the older I get, the more people that have expectations on what I should be doing for them.
The smartphone is the single-most distracting invention ever created.
Tony Reinke recently wrote a book called “Twelve Ways Your Phone is Changing You.”
In his book, he says that the average person checks their phone 81,500 times each year, which equates to once every 4.3 minutes.
Distraction does not produce a happy, well-balanced, or productive life.
There was a form of torture in the Middle Ages where they tied a man’s limbs to four horses and let them loose.
The French called this distraction.
What a great picture of what is happening to our lives!
How many of you feel as though you are being pulled apart?
Counselors, Christian and non-Christian, tell us that distraction is a significant contributor to relational dysfunction.
Distraction makes intimacy impossible.
For someone to feel intimate with you—be that a spouse, a child, or a good friend—they have to believe
1.
That you consider them a priority in your life;
2.
You have plenty of unrushed time available for them;
3.
You are giving them your undivided attention.
Distractibility keeps our most essential relationships shallow, including our relationship with God.
Furthermore, studies now show distraction makes us ineffective.
I recently read a book by Greg McKeown called Essentialism in which he explains that the new word for “distraction” is multitasking.
We think it means we are on top of things and efficient, but all it means is that we are distracted and not doing anything well.
The word “multitasking” was 1st invented in 1965 by IBM to describe how a computer could do multiple things at once.
But the problem is that the human mind isn’t wired up exactly like a computer.
Consciousness is pretty much designed to be in one place at one time, and switching back and forth takes time and energy.
The average person sitting at their desk will check their email every 5 minutes in the midst of whatever else they are doing.
The problem is that it takes an average of 64 seconds to resume the previous task after you finish—which means that we waste 1 out of every 6 minutes.
McKeown says: “So, when I hear people say they are ‘multi-tasking,’ all I hear is, “My attention is scattered, I feel stressed out, and I don’t do anything well.”
Bottom line: If we are going to live productive spiritual lives, we have to learn to deal with distraction.
Today’s text provides us with practical insight into how to deal with distraction.
Today’s passage is the only place in Scripture where the word distraction can be found.
Jesus is warning Martha about being distracted from him by anything else—because knowing him is the most important thing.
There are some essential principles about distraction that can be applied to other parts of our lives as well.
First, let me give a vital clarification: Distraction is not the same as a divine interruption.
Jesus seemed to be entirely indistractible on the one hand but imminently interruptible on the other!
In Matthew 12, Jesus wouldn’t allow his family to keep him from doing God will.
In John 4, we see that not even hunger could keep him from pursuing God’s will.
When his disciples returned from eating, they said,
What a picture of indistractible!
He was indistractible, but he was very interruptible.
For example, in John 5, Jesus freely allows his Sabbath to be interrupted by a man who needs healing.
Jewish people thought of the Sabbath as the one day you should not be distracted by anything work-related.
Jesus explains his openness to being distracted by saying:
In other words, Jesus recognized that his Father was always at work and that he needed to be ready to respond.
Jesus was perpetually prepared to respond to divine opportunities, and he taught us to live the same way.
If being distractible is one fault, this is the opposite fault.
We must guard ourselves against becoming closed off to what God is doing around us.
Today’s story doesn’t teach us to live a life of the uninterrupted quiet time.
The text is simple; there is a time for service, and there is a time for communion with Jesus.
Quite often, the best moments in our lives come in the form of unexpected interruptions.
A healthy Christian life is one in which you learn to avoid unhealthy distractions so you can be open to divine interruptions.
Here’s how I’d summarize a victorious Christian life: Learning to live free of devilish distractions so we can give full attention to divine interruptions.
Let’s get back to our story of Mary and Martha
Distraction is often the good keeping you from the essential.
What Martha was doing was not bad.
She was serving and taking care of people.
Using her spiritual gifts.
Jesus’s gentle rebuke of her was that she had let the many “good” work keep her from the one essential work.
Imagine talking to Martha the next day, “So how was your time with Jesus yesterday?
What was it like?”
Well, I don’t remember much I was in the backroom cooking and cleaning.”
If you’d asked Mary, she’d say, “Oh, let me tell you.
Jesus said this, and then that.
She took advantage of a nonrepeatable.
Distraction seeks to get you to trade something that you only get one shot at for a bunch of things that, in the scheme of things, aren’t that important.
Life is short.
John Maxwell says, “It’s hard to overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”
don’t let the unimportant things to keep you from the things you can’t ever get back.
• So, whatever situation God has you in, be all there!
Missionary Jim Elliott summarized it: “Wherever you are, be all there.
Live to the hilt every moment you believe given by God.”
Make every moment an offering to God.
‘When you’re with the people of God, be all there.’
Everybody should come to a weekend worship service, or small group, with something to offer and expecting to hear from God.
When you are with a group of friends, be all there!
When you are with a group or in a meeting, be all there!
Tony Reinke: If I come into an appointment and I take my phone out and put it on the table, I am saying that I am engaged for the moment, but ready to disengage if something more interesting comes along.
And if my phone is in my hand, and I am responding to texts and scrolling social media, I project open dismissiveness, because dividing attention is a typical expression of disdain.
In times of rest and solitude, be all there as well!
Tony Reinke points out the irony of the phone is that it keeps us isolated from people when we’re with them, and distracted by people when we should be isolated from them.
God has a purpose in solitude and silence, and many of us never get it because stuff is always on, and we’re continuously checking.
Before I move on to #3, let me say something here to those of you who are not believers.
Distraction with the good is one of Satan’s primary tools to keep us from considering the eternal.
In Jesus’s parable of the seeds, it was a distraction that kept the seed of God’s word from taking root.
The sower sowed the seed, and the devil came along and just planted seeds of distraction.
C.S. Lewis pointed out it’s not usually evil or unbelieving thoughts, just ones that keep you from considering what is important!
“I’m hungry.
I’ve got a report due tomorrow.”
And the impact of the Word fades from your memory.
You never rejected the word of God; you just got distracted from it.
Distraction enslaves an insecure heart
Martha’s busyness appears to be driven by a need—a need she probably didn’t even recognize about herself.
In
Jesus called her worried and upset about many things.
The word “worried” is similar to distraction: it means to be torn into pieces in many directions.
Upset means to be tossed along—like a capsized boat with no anchor.
Jesus diagnoses Martha as having an unhappy, unsettled, unanchored soul.
She probably was the kind of person who needed to be needed— you ever meet someone like that?
The type of person who only feels significant when everyone is depending on them?
Here’s the question for Martha: Why should she need to feel needed by others to feel significant?
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