Why Do We Resist Spiritual Disciplines?

If you did not get a journal, they're now available in the cafe for five

bucks, so you can grab one after the service if you want, and if you.

We're not here for the first part of this series, and I would encourage

you to listen to the podcast as well.

So you might be wondering, or perhaps you might need a reminder of

what do we mean by a rule of life?

And so we've just got this definition here and it says, A

shared commitment to order our live.

Around being with Jesus, so that over time we become like Jesus, living

in the reality of God's kingdom.

Rather than being deformed by the patterns of the surrounding culture through

shared rhythms and practices, we resist formation by the cultural pressures

of performance, self-sufficiency, consumerism, individualism, as well.

And are instead shaped together into mature followers of Jesus.

And so today we're gonna take a look at these cultural pressures and

what makes us vulnerable to them.

Because what makes us vulnerable to these cultural pressures is also the

very thing that causes us to resist.

Spiritual practices like prayer and fasting and Sabbath, and serving and

giving and witnessing and confessing and forgiving and worshiping and all of

these things because it's true, isn't it?

There is a resistance around practicing these things.

We don't just flow into them and don't struggle to participate in them.

Why is prayer so darn difficult?

Why do we experience so much resistance to these ways and means of being with.

Jesus.

And so that's what we're gonna take a look at this morning.

And so our scripture passage for today is from Luke 10 38 to 42, a very familiar

passage, and it says this, 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.

Just pause there.

The audacious of Martha in this moment, it's quite striking, like

she's coming to Jesus and she's accusing Jesus of not caring.

Then she's commanding Jesus to help her and to get her

sister to behave to conform.

It's like that's some chutzpah there, Martha, and then Martha.

Martha.

The Lord answers.

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.

And so this story in Luke 10 is deeply familiar to many of us.

But that being said, don't tune out.

If you go, yes, I'm a Martha, and about to hear another message on

why I shouldn't be like Martha, but I should be more like Mary.

You know?

Don't do that.

Okay.

All right.

That's not what this is about.

This is not about condemning you for your Martha Propensities.

All right.

So still lean in, tune in, even though there is a lot of familiarity

with this passage for many of us.

And so this passage follows immediately after the Parable of the Good Samaritan

in the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levi, the people of God.

They miss it.

They pass by.

They fail to recognize the moment before them.

Now we arrive at the home of Mary and Martha and in different

way, Martha is missing it.

She is missing it as well, and Jesus arrives at her house

with his disciples and there's probably more likely more than 12.

We're probably talking 20, 25, 30 odd disciples here, and this could easily

have been quite the crowd that is coming in to Martha's home and hospitality

in this culture, not optional.

It's very sacred.

Martha is doing what is expected of her.

She's extending honor.

She's serving diligently, but in the midst of tending to all the practical

needs, she misses tending to her guest.

Mary does not miss it.

So my friends this morning, don't miss Jesus today.

Don't miss him this morning.

Don't miss the King of Kings who is in our midst by His spirit with us

this morning as we just sang about in that final song that he is here again.

He's here to meet with us.

But the choice is ours as to whether we will meet with him or not.

And so Mary chooses what Jesus calls the better part, the good portion,

the one thing needed, and different translations phrase it slightly

differently, but the meaning is clear.

Mary chooses the one needful thing, she chooses presence.

Meanwhile, Martha is busy and she watches someone else enjoying the presence of

this extraordinary guest while she works.

And slowly her joy drains.

Frustration rises and we can almost hear the internal dialogue going on

in Martha, which I'm sure many of us are also familiar with as well.

Well, it must be nice to sit with Jesus.

Someone's gotta get things done around here.

These people aren't gonna feed themselves.

I think there's some serious birth order stuff going on in this story as well.

In case you notice like Martha is giving us some serious older daughter.

Vibes.

Yeah.

And Mary has given us some serious youngest child vibes.

Oh, I'm just sick.

Somebody else will get to it.

So she, so Martha appeals to Jesus in her oldest daughter breakdown.

Don't you care that she has left me to do all the work by myself?

Tell her to help me.

Oh, what an accusation to level at the son of God.

Jesus replies with tenderness and truth.

God bless Jesus and his unoffended ness.

Right.

Martha?

Martha.

Now you know, whenever Jesus says your name twice, love and

correction are about to meet.

You are worried and upset about many things, and so the Greek language here in

these words, worried, upset, distracted, as it says earlier on in the passage,

what these words actually mean is about being pulled apart, dragged in different

directions, internally fragmented Matthew.

You're divided, the internally distracted, pulled apart, not present.

You're being pulled away from the very one that you are trying to serve.

And it's not difficult for us to see ourselves in Martha.

Hey, because we live in an age of fragmentation.

We are pulled apart.

We are dragged away constantly by noise, by hurry, by screens,

by expectations, by productivity, we're so often we try to serve.

God while being entirely inattentive to him.

We come to Christ.

We receive forgiveness and hope and meaning, and free freedom from shame.

And then we spend our lives distracted from the very presence that saved us.

Richard Foster once wrote that in contemporary society our

adversary, the devil majors in three things, noise, hurry, and crowds.

And if he can keep us engaged in muchness and manness, he will rest satisfied.

And so this series, our Rule of Life, it's, it's not about adding

Christian activity to your calendar.

It's about helping us learn to live attentive to the

presence of God in our midst.

Greg Boyer said that being present to God's presence in the

present moment, it's a single most important task of the Christian.

Being present to God's presence in the present moment is the single

most important task of the Christian.

No spiritual discipline is more foundational than learning to attend

to the God who is all ready with us.

And yet, if this is true, why do we resist?

Why is it hard to pray to fast?

Why is Sabbath difficult to stop and to rest?

Why does silence feel threatening?

Why do we avoid stillness like the plague?

Why do we struggle to give money and time and resources freely and generously?

Why was it so hard for Martha to sit at the feet of Jesus in her?

Own home.

The answer is not laziness, it's not indifference.

It is something deeper.

And most of us carry what we might call the spirit of Martha.

A fragmented, pulled apart, dragged away, and yet beneath the distraction,

there is another cry within us.

And I believe this is true for all of us here.

In Psalm 27, the Psalmist writes one thing I ask from the Lord this only

do I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of

my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and seek him in his temple.

There is a Martha impulse in us for sure, but there is also a Psalm 27 longing in us

is they're not church our hearts that say.

Seek his face.

And so today is about helping to set us up for what is to come throughout this

series, to put us in the best posture to engage with these practices that we're

gonna examine over the coming weeks.

But today we're gonna examine, examine our resistance, our places

of fragmentation and distraction.

We're gonna examine why we so often struggle to be present to

Jesus who is present with us.

And so what is Martha's?

Problem.

What was causing Martha to resist Simply being with Jesus.

Yes, she was distracted, dragged around, pulled in many directions.

Fragmented in her inner world, not just external busyness.

So Martha's distraction, it's not just activity, it's an

anxiety born of comparison, resentment, and internal turmoil.

We tell this from how she responds to Jesus and what she

asks of him in that moment.

And Jesus saying, you're worried and upset about many things when Martha brings her

complaint and her accusation to Jesus about the seeming laziness of her sister.

Worried, troubled, upset.

She's noisy in her internal world.

Disturbed, thrown into confusion.

And so the sense here is emotional noise, not just external busyness.

There is something internally going on in Martha, and so with this in mind, we

turn to our first value and its practices.

If you're not familiar with where we're going with this series, this is how

we are outlining these core practices that we're gonna be teaching into.

So if we just go over this first slide here, and so this point here

is why do we resist being reliant?

So we resist self-sufficiency by abiding in Christ through the practices of

prayer and fasting Sabbath and scripture.

And so the next slide here.

What are we resisting through these particular practices?

Self-reliance.

So this is the belief that I am ultimately responsible for sustaining

my life, securing my future, managing my worth, solving my problems.

It is functional independence from God.

It says I must hold everything together.

I must produce the outcome.

I cannot afford to stop.

I wonder for how many of you, this sounds kind of familiar.

And so let's go a bit deeper.

What's driving Martha to distraction?

Yep.

I could hear, I could talk about distraction here as being our biggest

problem that causes us to resist practicing the ways that enable us to

be present to Jesus in terms of our undisciplined approach to things like

screens, devices, scrolling, social media.

And this is a factor.

And a lot of our distraction comes from bad habits around these things.

How we're trained in our modern day culture like Pavlov's dogs through

dopamine to constantly return to these things to get our hit.

But today.

I wanna really look under the hood, so to speak.

What makes us vulnerable to this in the first place?

Why do we pursue these things?

What is appealing to us about them?

What is driving Martha to distraction?

What if all her doing her anxiety driven busyness isn't a bad habit,

but rather a shame driven fig leaf designed to cover a lack of worth?

So let's go back to a story in Genesis three, where everything goes wrong, where

this all begins, where the fragmentation that Martha is experiencing, the

fragmentation that we experience in our internal world where it all began.

Where humanity fractures and fragments, and so even Adam eat the fruit.

Their eyes of them are open, they realize they're naked, so they sow

fig leaves together to, they make, they make coverings for themselves.

Then they hear the sound of the Lord as he's walking in the garden

of the cool of the day, and they hide from God amongst the trees and

God calls to them, where are you?

And Adam answers, I heard you in the garden.

I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

Shame enters the story in this moment.

It enters the story of humanity in this moment.

Kurt Thompson in his book, on the Soul of Shame.

Which I can highly recommend says that shame is disintegrating.

It turns us away from others.

We avert our gaze.

Avoid being seen, we isolate.

It turns different parts of our mind against each other.

Sensations, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors get split.

And can't work together.

As a unified whole fragmented in relationship, shame drives us to

hide and cover and manage impressions instead of moving toward repair

and evil actively uses shame to disintegrate our human relationships.

See here as Martha turns on her sister in resentment, do you

notice that in the story Martha is actually turning on her sister?

She is resenting her own sister.

And so shame says you're broken.

There is something wrong with you.

You are a mistake.

So cover up and don't be seen.

Shame says, I only have worth if I'm doing what is expected of me.

I only have worth if I'm fixing things, if I'm holding things together.

I only have worth if I'm busy and isn't so much of our hurry and

our busyness in our lives today.

Just a way of kind of virtue signaling, saying, look at me.

I am important.

Look at me.

I'm busy.

I have worth, I matter.

And self-reliance is often just shame.

In a strong costume, it looks like competence, it feels like control, but

underneath it is a fear of being seen.

So the next slide, why do we resist being real?

The second of our values and the associated practices,

whether we resist performance.

By living honestly before God and one another through the practices of

confession and forgiveness and worship.

And so just the next slide.

What are we resisting here?

We're resisting performance.

The attempt to secure identity, belonging, approval through what we achieve,

through what we project or control.

It says, I am what I do.

I'm as good as my last success.

I must appear strong.

I cannot be exposed.

If performance is a strategy to protect ourselves from the shame of unworthiness.

The belief that if I am truly seen, I will be rejected.

Then confession, forgiveness and worship are threatening because they dismantle

the very mechanisms that keep the mask in place and we resist what threatens us.

A performance says I must impress to be secure.

The gospel says you are secure now you are free to be honest, confession,

forgiveness and worship are not spiritual exercises for strong people.

They are invitations for tired performers to step off the stage.

I was reflecting on this morning as I was going over my notes and going.

Just the pressure I so often feel to perform as a church leader, to bring

something to meet all your expectations or what I believe your expectations are

for you to be pleased with me because of how I perform in this role, and I,

it's just my internal fractured world.

Looking to be soothed through your approval by performing,

by meeting expectations.

Now, that's my reality.

That's my context.

But you all have your own context where you will feel the pressure to

perform, to be enough to meet people's expectations so that you have that

sense of assurance that I'm okay.

I have worth, this is what shame drives us too.

And it is a horrible way of living, and I've shame.

Pretty sure this is why Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary

by being driven by your shame to perform, to try and do everything

so right, to earn your own worth.

Take my gospel, my yoke upon you.

There you will find rest for your souls.

All right, thirdly, why do we resist being relational?

So what was this value?

And the practices.

We went over this the other week.

We resist individualism and consumerism by sharing, by the sharing of our whole

lives through the practices of hospitality and witness service and generosity.

And then through these, what are we resisting?

Let's break it down a bit more.

Firstly, individualism.

The belief that autonomy is ultimate and that my life is fundamentally my own.

My gosh, we come crashing up against this so often within the church community.

I don't need others.

My spirituality is private commitment.

Restricts freedom.

Community is optional.

This is all just self-protection mechanisms at the end of the day, and

then consumerism the habit of approaching people, church and even God as products

to evaluate based on personal benefit.

See, even the way Martha was postured towards Jesus was

a posture of consumerism.

I have this person of authority in my house, so now how do I get him?

To organize the room, my sister, to a way that I feel safe to

a way that I think is right.

So I'm gonna use Jesus for my own ends.

Ooh, yeah, that stings and we can all fall prey to that.

So how does shame fuel individualism?

If shame whispers, if I'm fully known, I will not be fully loved.

Then the safest strategy is containment.

Keep people at arms length share, selectively manage

vulnerability control access.

Individualism becomes protective architecture.

It says, I don't need you.

I'll manage my own growth.

Thank you very much.

My faith is personal and private, but often that strength mass, fear

of exposure, of rejection, of being a burden, relational practices of

hospitality, witness and serving, dismantle that protective stance,

how to shame fuel consumerism.

Shame fuels consumerism because consumerism offers relief from

identity in security, false relief.

At its core, shame says Something is wrong with me.

I'm not enough.

I don't measure up, and consumerism responds, acquire

this and you'll be enough.

It's not pre primarily about stuff, it's about self construction.

It trains us to always be thinking, what's in this for me?

What can I. Get out of this.

Oh, that bleeds into the church so much and it cripples the church.

When consumerism enters the church, when the average person comes to

church with that posture, what am I gonna get out of this today?

It's an antichrist posture and it will push away the very love

knowing, longing that your soul so desperately needs and desires.

It's an awful, awful posture that we so easily fall prey to because we

are allowing shame to drive us and tell us a story about who we are.

Jesus has got a better story, so what is Jesus inviting us into?

So let's gather all this together.

Self-reliance, resist dependence, performance, resist.

Resist.

Honesty, individualism, individualism, resist shared life.

Consumerism resists sacrifice.

So why do we adopt these postures?

Because we believe they will give us what we need to cover.

Our shame of not being enough.

To go back to the Mary Martha story, Martha was distracted.

She's internally fragmented.

We all are because that is what sin and shame do to the human soul.

And this is why we need Jesus to make us whole, but it's only the

Mary posture that enables this.

A Martha posture will never bring us to a place of allowing Jesus to order our

disintegrated selves into something whole.

Mary has chosen what is better.

She chose the good portion, the one needful thing to make tending to

the presence of Jesus, her priority.

I learned something interesting this week.

Church, just on a tiny tangent.

I haven't had really had a proper tangent yet, this message, so I feel

like I'm due on, um, you know, the word priority for like most of this

word's existence for hundreds of years.

It just existed in the singular, you had a priority.

That was it.

There was no such thing.

It was only in the last maybe a hundred, 150 years or so that

it got pluralized to priorities.

Right.

Which I think is very telling.

So we think we can have multiple priorities.

Right.

Well, Jesus, yet the word originally just meant the one thing that you

live for your priority in life.

It was only ever singular, and I think this is what Jesus is saying here

have one priority in life, and it's not that the rest doesn't matter.

It's not that you neglect what all else is important, but this is the

one needful thing in your world to attend to the presence of God.

Seek first is kingdom and everything else will be added to you as well.

That's just another way of saying have Jesus and attending to his

presence as your one needful thing.

So this story does not negate the call to action 'cause we see that in the

Good Samaritan story that proceeded this one, it reminds us that true

action must first flow from intimacy.

The life of the disciple is one of rhythmic balance of word and deed,

sitting and serving stillness and action.

So don't let shame stop you from coming to Jesus.

Let it instead drive you to his feet.

Martha asked Jesus a very challenging question.

Lord, don't you care?

You see her?

Don't you see me?

Yes.

Martha, I do.

I see you now.

Will you see me And choose me.

So in the end, the story of Mary and Martha stands as a mirror, and it

stands as an invitation to us all.

It exposes how easily our lives drift into self-reliance, performance,

individualism, consumerism, and how often those postures are just shame

in disguise, trying to secure worse safety identity apart from God.

And like Martha, we become distracted, dragged in many directions, trying

to hold everything together.

All while Jesus sits in the next room available, present and largely

unattended to by our hearts.

But this story also shows us another way.

Mary's not praised because she is less responsible or less spiritual, but

because she chose in that moment the one necessary thing to sit at Jesus' feet and

to receive, to allow him to serve her.

Oh, I think there's something in that, and I wonder how many of us miss this.

We think our, the priority of our life is to serve Jesus, to be busy

doing all this stuff for Jesus.

You know, that moment at the last Supper when Jesus washes the

disciple's feet, and Peter's like, no, no, no, Lord, let me do that.

And what does Jesus saying?

I've gotta do this for you, Peter.

If you don't let me do this for you, you can't have any part of me if

we don't let Jesus first serve us.

And I know the religious spirit in us just rises up against that.

No, that's not right.

To let the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords serve us.

First, Jesus came to serve, not to be served.

He said that himself.

We've Mary adopted that posture.

She let.

Jesus says her so counterintuitive, so counterculture, radical posture, right?

But that's the posture that we all have to come to.

Mary chooses presence over productivity, intimacy over

image, listening, over proving.

And Jesus says, of that choice, it will not be taken from her.

So our rule of life is really about learning to make Mary's choice over

and over again in very practical ways.

Just this final slide here.

To resist self-reliance and be healed from the shame that causes it by

becoming reliant through prayer, fasting, resting, and soaking in scripture.

As people who admit, I am not the source, I am dependent to resist performance and

be healed from the shame that causes it by becoming real, confessing, forgiving,

and worshiping as people who say, I am not what I achieve, I am already loved.

You know what kills shame is vulnerability.

I sound like Brene Brown.

Well, she had a Brene Brown flashback than anybody else because her teaching

on shame is, is, is really good.

And these are vulnerable postures that we resist because of shame, but they're

the very postures and practices that will heal our shame and make us whole to resist

individualism and consumerism by and be healed from the shame that causes them.

By becoming relational, practicing hospitality, witness service, and

generosity as people who declare my life is not my own, it is a gift to be shared.

What a radical thought.

What a radical, liberating thought.

Underneath all of these practices is not a demand for you to be stronger,

but an invitation to be truer, to bring your distracted, ashamed, self protected

heart to the one who can make it whole.

So the question for us is not simply, will I do more spiritual things this year?

The question is, where will I allow my fragmentation to take me?

Will it drive me deeper into busyness, image management, self-protection,

like Martha, or will it drive me to the feet of Jesus, like Mary?

So a rule of life is just a way of answering that question on purpose.

It is saying, I will no longer let shame, hurry and distraction dictate my life.

I will arrange my days so that I can be with Jesus and become like Jesus.

I will choose again and again.

The one thing that is necessary and the promise of Jesus still stands

as you give him your attention, your devotion, your scattered self.

It will not be taken away from you.

Do you notice that those final words of Jesus in that story, his defense of Mary

and her choice, his commitment to protect Mary's choice even against her own sister?

There's a rebuke in that to Martha.

Martha, I don't care how good your argument is on the surface,

this will not be taken from Mary.

She has chosen the good portion, and I have this inkling that the Lord's

posture towards us is the same.

As it is to marry.

When we choose the good portion, the Lord Jesus is there to

protect that for us as well.

So may your resistance to self-reliance, performance,

individualism, and consumerism.

Not just be trying harder, but a deep humble turning of your whole

life towards the presence of Christ.

May you hear in all your practices and all your days, the quiet affirmation over you.

You have chosen what is better.

So family, friends this morning, what will you choose today,

tomorrow, what will you choose?

And so as we bring this service to a close, how about you close your

eyes, bow your heads for a moment,

and I just want you to take a moment of stillness, take a deep

breath, try and quiet some of that inner fragmentation and.

And just imagine Mary's encounter with Jesus in this story.

Imagine yourself in that posture,

sitting at his feet, attending to his presence,

listening to that Psalm 27, impulse in your heart to seek his face.

And what is the Lord saying to you through his spirit in this moment as you sit.

What do you see in his face?

What is his posture towards you?

What story do his eyes tell you about how he's giving his attention to you?

There is a verse

in Ephesians chapter five,

and yet it's about husbands, but more specifically it's about Jesus

says, husbands love your wife just as Christ love the church, and gave

him himself for her to make her holy.

Cleansing her by the washing with water through the word to present her to himself

as a radiant bride without stain or.

Wrinkle or any kind of blemish, but holy and blameless, this is

what the Lord wants to do for you.

This is what he did for Mary in that moment as she sat before his

feet listening to his teaching.

His word and his Jesus' desire was just as much to do that for Martha as well.

If only she would sit still long enough.

If I knew she would attend to his presence for just a moment

and allow herself to be met

with the shepherd of her soul

to be led beside still waters, to have her soul restored by the Good Shepherd.

And in this place, the Lord is here this morning to do the same for

each fragmented soul who is here for each one, who's covering themselves

in fig leaves of performance.

Trying to be enough on our own, but we're not enough.

We're not

pretty freeing thing to admit though.

But the one who is loves us and says, come and be with me.

Let me restore your soul.

Do you hear his invitation this morning?

Church to come to be with?

To be present with the one who is present to you.

What will you choose?

What will you choose?

Thank you Lord.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, Lord.