Anxiety

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Most of the time, in many Christian churches, Sunday morning is a time where we just kind of try to whip up the sentiment and get everybody motivated to give more and to be a little more active and a little more of this and a little more of that and to believe in their own believing is what happens often. And in a large swath of Christianity in the United States now, you just can't show any weaknesses or any doubts or any concerns or any questions. And anytime that you have any of those types of concerns or things and you bring them up, people will go like, oh, and they just take a step back. I don't know, because it might be contagious or something. I don't know. People almost feel like if you've got a doubt or if you've got anxiety or if you're dealing with sadness or grief, and people I think in this congregation even know, when someone enters a time of grief because of a loss of a loved one, so often, we struggle being with people in that. We don't know, well, I don't know what to say. You don't have to say anything. Just be with them. OK, just be with them. So we're going, in a sense, in this series where many churches don't go or have gone before. The story today from the New Testament ain't a big story in one sense. Maybe it's a familiar story for you. It's a story about Mary and Martha and Jesus coming over to their house. Hey, it's a story, though, that's filled with a lot of tension, by the way. And what you find out, though, here's the reality. It's not the big events in your life that actually form you and shape you. They don't happen often enough. They reveal what's been formed and shaping you by all the little events that have gone on in your life, all the ordinary things. It's actually not the unique, but the ordinary and everyday that makes a difference. It's not the spectacular, but the mundane. It's not the public, but it's those private things where God is doing his greatest work and forming you and shaping in you and creating in you, in a sense, a masterpiece over time. It's the time that Joseph was in prison and those dull years that grew into him the character of humility and wisdom. It's a time in the wilderness when Moses was cast out of Egypt and he was just tending sheep for years upon years. And through that, then finally, God ultimately brought him to be able to tend the people of God and shepherd the children of Israel. It's actually the time when Paul was stuck after his conversion in Damascus, and he was stuck for almost 10 years in Tarsus before Barnabas brought him along. Those are the times, those ordinary times of studying scripture, of reflecting on what God is doing, and on, in a sense, grinding us down into humility. That's where God does his greatest work. So we're going to read about a basic story, an ordinary day in some ways, where Jesus enters into a home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus and see two basic choices that happen with the two different women in this story. One where anxiety takes over and kind of runs the show in Martha, and the other where all the distractions of what could have happened are removed out of the way. And through Mary, she has a focus. So let's read that story. It's in Luke chapter 10, verses 38 to 42. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me. But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her. So from this ordinary story here, pretty short to the point, we're going to learn three different points. First of all, how Martha is a case study in anxiety. How Mary is a model of discipleship and how Jesus is a savior for all. But first, Martha being a case study in anxiety, and you might go like, wait a minute, I've heard this story many times. And when I've heard it, it's really, you know, have you heard this story before? And what's mostly the emphasis on usually? You can serve the Lord in these two different ways. You know, you've got the personality of Martha, kind of the leader of the type A, and you've got the type B kind of slacker named Mary. No, you've never heard that kind of talk. And then they get into, they jump off. They use, I think the text is often used, and I've probably done it too, as a springboard. That's how hermene, well, that's how people sometimes use the Bible. It's like, oh, this is a story now I get to talk about. And you just jump off of it and go in a different direction. And the direction that is often used in this tex...