Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy with God in the Busyness of Life

We only trust people we know,' says Martha Tennison...'If you're struggling to trust God, it may be because you don't really know God.

All over the world, people go to unimaginable lengths to find God--which is sad when you consider the unimaginable lengths God has already gone to find us

The fact is, until we stop doubting God's goodness, we can't experience God's love.

though we all applaud the thought of transformation, most of us don’t appreciate the process that gets us there. To be transformed means we have to change, and change too often hurts.

When we’re distracted and discouraged, tired and overwhelmed, there is no better place to go than to our Father. He alone has what we need. Don’t snivel under a broom tree. Don’t hide in a broom closet. Go to the Lord and let him sweep away your discouragement.

We are as intimate with God as we choose to be.”7 The only limitations of God’s presence in our lives are the limits we ourselves set—the excuses we set up to avoid being filled to the measure with God.

We all want a testimony, but we’d rather skip the test that gives us one.

Do not be anxious about anything,” Paul wrote in Philippians 4:6–7, “but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Someone has said that Jesus went from place of prayer to place of prayer and did miracles in between.

And Jesus’ words to Martha are the words he wants to speak to your heart and mine: “You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” The “one thing” is not found in doing more. It’s found by sitting at his feet.

missed that point for a long time. I had spent so much of my life concentrating on the “fruit” of my own personal holiness, that I missed out on the connection, the sweet intimacy of being attached to the Vine. And as a result, what I tried to do was as ludicrous as an apple tree branch trying to produce apples by its own effort. “Be good, be good. Do good, do good,” the broken branch chants as it lies on the orchard grass. “That apple should be popping out anytime,” says the helpless, lifeless stick.

Take my struggles and use them for your glory. But whatever you do, please don’t leave me the same.

we do need to learn how to say no, but only so we are able to say yes to God when he wants to give us an assignment.

being teachable, in essence, involves three things: being willing to listen acting on what we hear responding to discipline

Love Adds a Little Chocolate, Linda Andersen writes: Duty can pack an adequate sack lunch, but love may decide to enclose a little love note inside…. Obligation sends the children to bed on time, but love tucks the covers in around their necks and passes out kisses and hugs (even to teenagers!)…. Duty gets offended quickly if it isn’t appreciated, but love learns to laugh a lot and to work for the sheer joy of doing it. Obligation can pour a glass of milk, but quite often, love adds a little chocolate.

Faith is about how you live your life in the meantime, how you make decisions when you don’t know for sure what’s next. What you do with yourself between the last time you heard from God and the next time you hear from God is the ongoing challenge of a life of faith.

Its been said that worry is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. LUKE 10:41–42

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7, KJV).

The fact is, until we stop doubting God’s goodness, we can’t experience God’s love.

But when God speaks a promise to our hearts

when we’re willing to serve like Jesus did—while we’re on the way—divine appointments like that start popping up everywhere. And if we’ll take the time to stop and listen, we may find our destination, even when we thought we were lost.

Conscious repentance leads to unconscious holiness. That phrase, gleaned from the writings of Oswald Chambers,

for determining God’s will through prayer and the Word: “I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to a given matter…. “Having done this, I do not leave the result to feeling or simple impression. If so, I make myself liable to great delusions. “I seek the Will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God…. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them. “Next I take into account providential circumstances. These often plainly indicate God’s Will in connection with His Word and Spirit. “I ask God in prayer to reveal His Will to me aright. “Thus, (1) through prayer to God, (2) the study of the Word, and (3) reflection, I come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge, and if my mind is thus at peace, and continues so after two or three more petitions, I proceed accordingly.

PRAYER + the WORD + TIME = INTIMACY with GOD

But in order for that to happen we must be connected to him. It’s not enough simply to be associated. To be acquainted. We have to be spiritually grafted on—to draw our life from him, to be so closely attached that we would wither and die if we were cut off.

The branch has no power of its own. But once it gets connected, once that sap gets flowing and those leaves start growing, that insignificant little twig will find itself loaded with fruit. And it didn’t have to do anything—except abide.