Speak Lord, Your Servant is Listening

Women's Advent Brunch
December, 2010

Speak Lord,
Your Servant Is Listening

Read the story of Martha and Mary. Luke 10: 38-42
For many of us in the midst of our busy lives, we hear this story as a rebuke from the Lord and can even wonder, Lord what are you asking of me??? I am so busy and so much of it I can’t cut out. I can’t say, sorry kiddo, change your own diaper, or tell your 11 years old, drive yourself to practice, OR go pick money off of trees to pay your bills.
As I have been reflecting on this passage over the past weeks, the Lord has been speaking to me not a word of chastisement ,but one of intimacy. The relationship between Martha and Jesus is very deep. Let’s take some time to look within the lines of this passage and see what the Lord might be speaking to us this morning.

Let’s start with looking at what we know about Martha. We know that she has a sister named Mary and a brother named Lazurus. We know that they live in Bethany. We know that Jesus is at their house. We know that she welcomed Jesus into her home, into her life with JOY. We also know that she is stressed with the service that she has to do. But we don’t know the other circumstances of her life.

The scriptures don’t mention her husband or children, how old she is, her state of health. We don’t know if maybe she is:
- sick with a chronic illness
- or doesn’t have a husband and desires one
- or her husband might be sick
- or she has too many children under her feet as she is trying to serve
- or she maybe she is longing for a child
- maybe she is grieving the loss of a child, or a friend, or her husband, or her parents

We don’t know her broader circumstances, just that it upset her that she was left alone to serve.

As we look at the next part of the story we start to see the depth of relationship she has with Jesus.
She says to Jesus,” DON”T YOU CARE??? That my sister has left me alone to serve? TELL HER then to help me.”
First of all, this is Jesus in her home, the famous prophet. AND she was a woman. This would be like having the Pope in our home and speaking this way to him. If I had an important guest in my home that I didn’t know well, I wouldn’t dream of speaking to him in that way. But Martha knew Jesus. She knew him well enough to speak very frankly with him.

Let’s look at these 2 lines again.


She starts with DON”T YOU CARE????
- don’t you care that I am lonely
- don’t you care that I’m afraid?
- Don’t you care that I am so so sad???
- Don’t you care that my child is far from you??
- Don’t you care that my husband is emotionally distant??
- Don’t you care that I long for a child??
- Don’t you care that I long for a husband??
- Don’t you care that I am so tired?
- Don’t you care that I am so sick that I can’t fulfill my responsibilities?
- Don’t you care that I’m misunderstood?
- Don’t you care…
Then after Martha asks Jesus, Don’t you care, she then tells him what to do…
- “Tell her then to come help me.”
- Tell him to fall in love with me
- Tell him to see my needs
- Lord just give me a baby
- Lord just please stop giving me babies
- Lord just provide a job for my husband
- Lord just make my child chose you
- Lord just make me healthy
- Lord just make my children healthy

And how does Jesus respond to Martha???
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and concerned about many things.”

On the surface she is upset about not having help in the kitchen, but Jesus responds to her deeper anxieties. Jesus KNOWS her. He KNOWS her deepest anxieties, he KNOWS her hidden circumstances, He KNOWS her longings. He KNOWS her concerns. HE KNOWS HER.

This, my sisters, is the key to this passage. HE KNOWS MARTHA’S MANY ANXIETIES AND CONCERNS. She doesn’t even have to say a word about them. He isn’t scolding Martha. He is LOVING her. He is saying I KNOW YOU. I KNOW.

Jesus knows that we are anxious and concerned about many things. He knows. He knows us deeply.

“Mary has chosen the better part. It won’t be taken from her.”

It would be foolish of us to think that Mary doesn’t have any anxieties and concerns. She is a human being and every human being has anxieties and concerns. But MARY is choosing to come to the feet of Jesus and sit with him. To listen to HIM.


Have you ever tried sitting and listening to the Lord when your mind and heart are whirling with anxiety??? It can feel impossible.

So, in the midst of our many anxieties and concerns, how do we move from questioning Jesus’ love and demanding from Him to sitting at his feet and listening to him in peace?? How do we move past our many anxieties and concerns?

The Lord has been speaking the word “DE-CLUTTER” to me.
- The same way that we need to de-clutter our homes regularly, we need to de-clutter our hearts and minds.
- I hate clutter in my home, yet I also don’t like throwing stuff away. I like to hold on to my stuff, the same way I have a hard time letting go of my anxieties and concerns.
In Philippians 3:18-19 “For many… live as enemies of the cross of Christ…Their minds are OCCUPIED with earthly things.”

Their minds are OCCUPIED with earthly things.

What are our minds occupied with?
We need to stop and examine the things that are cluttering our minds. We need to look at it honestly and see if we should keep it in or get rid of it.
- some of our anxieties stem from what I call “comparisonitis”
o We think we should be someone else or be doing something else because that is what sister X is doing.
- some of our anxieties are that I have too high of expectations on myself and my time
- I want to clean my living room, bathroom, mop and sort all the kids clothes this morning while watching 4 young children…
-Ok- what expectations can I drop???
-some of our anxieties are deep and out of our control. These the Lord invites us to ENTRUST to HIM.
When we ENTRUST something to someone, we take something that is very valuable to us and we place it in the hands of someone who will take care of it. We don’t ENTRUST something valuable to someone who is not going to take care of it.

Jesus wants us to ENTRUST our deep anxieties, concerns, longings, to HIM. Then we can free our minds to think of things that are above, and not be occupied with earthly things.

I had this experience this week. It was a busy day. I didn’t get any prayer time that morning. I flew around doing so many things and the list that I had to do was getting longer by the minute. I had 2 hours after the kids went to bed to get all these things done before bed, but I also needed to take time with the Lord. Then it hit… anxiety… I homeschool my kids and I my mind became occupied with all the things that I am not doing, and that my kids can’t do yet, then, I started to panick about my parenting and I thought oh- I should read that new parenting book I got, but wait, I also have that issue in my marriage that I’m trying to work through, I have that book about marriage, I should read that, but wait a minute, but I need to sew Jimmy’s Christmas present, oh yeah and I haven’t even ordered our Christmas cards, and wait a minute, when was the last time I exercised, I need to exercise right now, but, my kids, my kids are going to, I don’t know, NOT SUCCEED if I don’t figure out their education, but parenting comes before education, but wait, marriage comes before parenting… and around and around and around I went. I decided to do sit ups while planning for homeschool and read a parenting book at the same time…
My heart was racing, my mind was obviously OCCUPIED with earthly things. Throughout this whole time, I hear the still, small voice of the Lord… ENTRUST… ENTRUST to me your anxieties. ENTRUST.
I look up from my book while doing sit ups on my living room floor and I see a statue we have of St. Joseph holding baby Jesus. Jesus is looking right at me. Right at me. ENTRUST.

So I roll over before our prayer table, and prostrate myself and go through the list of anxieties, one by one and ENTRUST them into the hands of love. It took a while. I ended in peace.

I didn’t get anything on my list done. But my heart was at peace and I could see more clearly what was important and what was not important. Most importantly I made room in my mind for Christ.

As we move through this Advent, we can’t physically sit at the Lord’s feet all day because we have responsibilities. BUT we can take some time to declutter our minds, to MAKE ROOM for our Savior to come.

In the midst of our daily responsibilities we can stop when we start down the anxiety road and we can ENTRUST to the Lord our many anxieties and concerns. We can interiorly be still and KNOW that He is God. We can be still and know that HE KNOWS us intimately. HE KNOWS our needs, our fears, our longings, our hopes, our many anxieties and concerns. And he invites us to chose the better part. To de-clutter so that we can sit at his feet and say “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
Amen.