Busy or Busybody?

As mothers, wives, daughters, friends, and workers, we women often have plates that are not only full, but overflowing. While the Bible warns against idleness, it also warns against becoming a busybody.  God gives us 24 hours each day to invest in that which is of the highest worth, but so often we waste it wearing ourselves out, frantically running from one thing to another.  How do we know when busy becomes too busy.  How, as Christian women and wholly devoted servants to Christ, do we discern what to pick up and what to leave undone?  What to enroll our kids in and what to say no to?  When is the right time to decline opportunities to serve outside our homes?  I believe that all these questions can be answered by asking ourselves three more:

1.  Has God asked or given me permission to do this?

2.  Does this thing/event master me, or am I mastered by God alone?

3. Does it entangle me or distract me from Christ or bring me closer to Him?

Let's take a look at the infamous story of Mary and Martha, and the language that is used to describe their actions:

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 only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

“distracted”: same root word (peri)

“about”:  IS the root word

In other words, Mary was concerned with everything going on around Jesus, rather than with Jesus himself.

If a thing is of the Lord:

1. He will have asked you to do it, or given you permission to do it. He will be with you in it and will have divine purposes, which will be seen in the fruit it bears. 

If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Galatians 5:25 (NLT)

"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5

“Whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, you must do all for the glory of God.”  1 Corinthians 10:31

2.  It will not master you (dictate your thoughts, words, actions), He will.

"’Everything is permissible for me’"--but not everything is beneficial. "’Everything is permissible for me’"--but I will not be mastered by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:12

“a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him”. 2 Peter 2:19

3.  It will neither entangle nor distract you from Christ, but bring you closer to Him.

“… let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-2  (emphasis mine)

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." Psalms 46:10