Busy (3)

We are called to diligently live a life that glorifies God.  We are called to keep His law diligently, to seek Him diligently, and to keep our hearts diligently.  In order to serve God diligently, we must guard against distraction, against busyness.  How do we do this? 

First, we must each define the roles in which God has placed us.  My primary roles are spouse (wife) and parent (mother).  Not only has God given me to my husband and entrusted us with children, I have made vows before Him with regard to these relationships.  I am also a sibling, child, grandchild, friend, and neighbor.  I write for this newspaper and occasionally for other things.  In addition to the roles that I have listed, you might be an employer, employee, or office bearer in the church, to name only a few.

We serve God first by fulfilling our primary roles to the best of our ability.  In Epheisans 5:16-17, the inspired apostle writes, “[Redeem] the time, because the days are evil.  Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”  He goes on to describe God’s requirements for wives, husbands, children, employees, and employers, calling them to live “as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6). 

 Secondly, we must prioritize within those roles.  For example, as a mother I’m called to feed, cloth, and care for my children (Prov. 31).  These responsibilities entail a myriad of activities: grocery shopping, cooking, baking, laundry, mending, clothes shopping, driving them to and from school and other activities, disciplining them, volunteering at their school, helping with school fundraisers – and the list could go on (and on and on).   But what is my first responsibility toward my children?  It is to impress upon them their calling to keep God’s law, to seek Him, and to keep their hearts…diligently.  “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up…”  (Deut 6:6-7).  If ever there are activities that would get in the way of my obedience of that command, I am no longer being diligent.  I am wandering around, forgetful of my goal, being busy. 

In many ways, I am at a point in life in which staying focused is fairly straightforward.  With six young children, I don’t have a lot of time to be distracted.  If I give way to distraction, that means someone with a hungry tummy will soon be tugging on my jeans or a tired baby will be wailing for attention.  It’s hard for me to leave the house with everyone in tow – that, too, helps to guard me from busyness. 

But even here, I can lose focus.  I can spend way too much time worrying about external things and way too little time concerned with the matters of the heart.  There was a time when I focused more on where our food came from and cleanliness of our home and less on the spiritual care of my children.  In His grace, God gave me more children to teach me to let go of those things that are really not that important, comparatively speaking.  After all, it is not that which goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but that which comes out of the mouth (Matt. 15:11).  Once I read the story of a health-conscious mother who was asked before she died what she would have done differently with regard to child-rearing.  “I would have baked bread less,” she responded, and “played with my children more.”

How can you more diligently serve God in your primary roles today?

Busy (Part 2)

In my last post, I maintained that our Lord does not call us to be busy: He calls us to be diligent.  I noted Solomon’s instruction to his son in Proverbs 6: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise.”  Ants, though tiny, are diligent workers.  They are persistent, focused, and not easily distracted from their goal.

In order for us to be diligent, we must first define our goal.  Q&A 1 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism succinctly and memorably summarizes the goal – or “chief end” – of man as found in the Holy Scriptures:  “What is the chief end of man?  Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

God alone is God and worthy of all praise.  He created you and me for His glory.  (Isaiah 43: 7 and 21).  Psalm 50:23 says, “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me: and to him that ordereth his conversation [his daily walk] aright will I show the salvation of God.”

When or how do we praise and glorify God?  God is glorified when we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Luke 10:27).  By nature we hate God: we would rather serve self and sin.  But those who are converted to God have the indwelling Holy Spirit.  “We love Him, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).  One who loves God:

·          has faith in Him, like Abraham, who “staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God” (Rom. 4:20).

·          is thankful to Him and shows that thankfulness by praying to Him: “Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: and call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” (Psalm 50:14-15).

·          obeys His Word.  “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice” (I Sam. 15:22).

These are fruits that one must bring forth if he is a believer.  They are the fruits to which Jesus refers in John 15:8:  “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.”

Those fruits are described in greater detail in 2 Peter 1:5-10.  Let’s consider that text again:

 “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.  For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure…”

 Consider also the remainder of verse 10 and verse 11: “For if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

It is in the way of diligently living a life that glorifies God that we experience His presence during this life and enter heaven when die, there to enjoy Him forever. 

Now, what does all that have to do with being busy?  I'll attempt to tackle that next time!

"Busy": The New "Good"?

          Well, it's been quiet on this ol' blog.  Late last October I agreed to write the daily devotionals that are published in the Beacon Lights magazine, and, frankly, that doesn't leave me much time for any other writing.  I do have a short series of articles that ran in the Enterprise some time ago that I thought I could share here for anybody who stills bothers to check for a new post now and then.  These columns are on being busy.  (I think I need to re-read them myself!  :-)

            It used to be that when someone would ask, “How are you?” or “How was your week?,” he could expect this response: “Good!”

 

That’s changed.  Now when someone asks, “How are you?,” there’s a more common response: “Busy.”  And that “busy” is often accompanied with a tone of voice or expression that leaves no room to doubt the busyness of the addressee.  We’re all so busy, busy, busy.

Yet even while we bemoan our busy state, we believe our busyness is somehow justified – maybe even pious.  We convince ourselves that we have to do everything that we are doing, while at the same time we can’t find a moment to consider another option even if there is one.

Interestingly, the four times that the word “busy” is used in the Bible (KJV), it’s used negatively, to describe people who are wandering about, refusing to work and being nosy.

In Proverbs 6 Solomon instructs his son to consider the ant.  Have you ever taken the time to watch ants?  They look so very busy as they scurry about, but if you actually crouch down and press your finger to the concrete directly in the path of a tiny ant, you realize that it is not bustling mindlessly about – it is on a serious mission.  Therefore, it will immediately bypass your obtrusive finger and press on in the direction that it was going before.

When my husband and I first married, we lived in a basement apartment.  One day we noticed a two-lane trail of ants – one lane emerging and the other returning from under the trim of our kitchen window.  Those ants marched like little black soldiers across the kitchen wall and up into the ceiling.  We went upstairs to discover their destination, and we found it: the sticky, crumb-loaded tray beneath our landlords’ toaster.  Those ants by-passed all tempting morsels in our kitchenette downstairs and trekked what must have been many ant miles in order to reach their destination.  They would not be thwarted from their difficult task.

Ants are not busy, they are diligent.

Likewise, we are called not to be busy, but to be diligent.  And there is a difference.

Consider:

Psalm 119:4: “Thou hast commanded us to keep Thy precepts diligently.”

Hebrews 11:6b:  “He [God] is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”

Proverbs 4:23: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

2 Peter 1:5-10: “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.  For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure…”