Are Your Actions Enough for God?

Luke 10:38-42—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.”

Mary was rewarded for choosing substance over form, relationship over work.  In this story, we learn a great lesson about what our Lord God really values, and how that is so different than what humans often value.  As humans, we tend to measure each other’s worth by acts, but that is not God’s way.  God values personal relationship far more than acts because, let’s face it, God doesn’t need us to do anything for him.  This scene gives us a lot of insight into what God expects from us.  Martha was running around doing all the work of entertaining guests while Mary was spending time with the guest. Not only was Martha physically separated from her guest, but she was also frustrated that her sister had left her to do all the work.  She was not filled with joy at hosting Jesus—she was annoyed at having been left to do all the physical work.  Jesus’ response to her must have felt harsh and unappreciative.  After all, she was doing all this work for Him.  I think the point He

was trying to make though, is that her attentions were focused on the wrong thing and she was missing out on the true treasure—having Jesus there in the flesh.  Like Martha, we can get annoyed when we feel abandoned to do all the grunt work, and we also build expectations about the work we and others should be doing.  But Jesus tells us our central focus should be on relationship.  Our challenge each day is to prevent human expectations from dictating our behavior and interfering with our relationship with God.

Today as you pray and meditate on His Word, thank God for creating you to be in relationship with Him.  Praise Him for loving you. Pray that God would send His Holy Spirit to abide in you and remove all obstacles to personal relationship with Him.