Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Motivates You? | New Testament | Luke 10

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

What desires drive your life? This questions reveals a lot about your faith. Are you willing to partner with God for his glory above your own? In today's episode, Jensenlooks at Luke 10 to discuss how to do just that. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Luke 10

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. There was a rant from a guy on Twitter that I read the other day about the ridiculousness of how any time his family was going to have company over, this man's mother would require him to go and clean his room. His attempts to point out that his mother's friends would never step foot in his room did nothing to keep his mom from insisting on a clean bedroom.

Now, maybe your mom was the same way. Apparently, this resonated with a lot of people. The internet is flooded with comedic recreations of moms preparing for visitors and the frenzy they get into when someone is coming to their home. Now, I love my home, and I particularly love to make my home a beautiful and welcoming place. Now, with a toddler, it doesn't always look perfect. But I make sure that anytime someone is coming over, I do my best to restore it back to the vision. I have for my home. I clean it up and I do my best to host well. And so I want to defend the moms here. It's not a bad thing to want to make your home nice and inviting and beautiful for guests. But I get the point of the rants and the funny videos too. When the cleaning and preparing sends us into a joyless frenzy,

it keeps everyone from being able to enjoy the moment, to look forward to the guests even coming. I'm often guilty of even letting it steal the joy while people are in my home. I work hard to keep things clean and provide for them, but my anxiety about making sure everything appears perfect keeps me from really engaging with and enjoying the very people I'm doing everything for. Maybe you've been one of these hosts or you've been hosted by someone like this. It becomes clear very quickly that the person is less interested in you and more interested in what you will think of them and their hospitality when you leave. I want people

to leave my home thinking it looked nice, that the food was good, that they had a good time so that I can be seen as a good host. Now, I think that this modern problem of mine gets at the heart of what really happened to Mary and Martha in Luke 10. You're probably familiar with the story. 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. To be honest, I've had these verses thrown in my face a time or two. If I'm more like one of the sisters, it's Martha for sure. The problem is that at times when these verses are used to rebuke my busy body tendencies, people will use them to condemn the parts of me that want to make sure that things are prepared and done with excellence, and instead encourage me to be more like those who just want to engage with the people around. them and show them Jesus' love. Here's the thing.

Jesus created me to want to pursue excellence, to have a mind that wants to prepare, that enjoys making things beautiful for other people to enjoy, that loves when an event runs smoothly and goes well. And he created other people who want to love and serve people spending their time pouring into relationships. Now both these things are good and worthy, And I do not believe that in this passage, Jesus is pitting these two women with seemingly different giftings and personalities against each other as we have been led to believe.

You see, when Jesus rebukes Martha, he rebukes her for being anxious and troubled about many things. You see, the scripture tells us for Martha, her desire to prepare things for Jesus was becoming a distraction. She was anxious and troubled to the point of allowing her disdainting. stress to harden her heart against her sister. You see, in Martha's culture, hosting, presenting a beautiful home, being a good host, throwing a good dinner, would have been a point of pride for a woman like her. And she allows that distraction, the distraction of wanting to present a perfect home, to cause resentment and anxiety in her heart. And it is that that Jesus rebukes. Mary, under the same cultural expectations has chosen at this time to learn from Jesus while she has the chance.

Jesus sees that her heart and motives in this moment are pure, and she has chosen to honor Jesus by submitting to him and learning from him rather than to fulfill her cultural duties. Martha has fallen into the same trap I do so often. I let something good, like hosting, sharing my home with people, become twisted so that. But rather than wanting people to feel loved or valued when they walk into my home, I want them to see me and the hard work I bring to the table. Jesus rebukes not the gifts of Martha, not her personality or her desire for hospitality, but the motivations and desires from which it arises. You see in John 12, we see another evening where Mary and Martha have Jesus in their home.

And in this example, Martha is again serving, while Mary anointe, points Jesus with oil. And there is no rebuke of Martha's service or Mary's actions. We see that Martha's preparation for this Sabbath feast and her service was necessary and good and done to serve the Lord and also used by God to create the opportunity to anoint Jesus. God created all humans in his image and all humans with their differences in gifting and callings are to use their lives to build his kingdom and to bring glory to him. Each and every one of us must choose to work for the good portion that will not be taken away from us.

In every area of our lives, we can either be motivated by our own interests, our own agendas, our own desires, or we can choose the good portion. We can choose to be motivated by a desire to serve Jesus, to honor him, to bring glory to his name and not our own. Whether we're hosting people in our homes, planning an event, writing an essay, preparing a presentation, doing our taxes, or changing diapers, we're all in danger of using our gifts and our time for our own purposes and agendas. We all have a choice. Will we choose the good portion like Mary? Will we give our gifts, our time to honor Jesus in all that we do? Will we be motivated by a desire to bring Him glory? Or will we get caught up in our own anxiety to prove ourselves,

to fulfill our own agendas, allowing our motivations to cloud what really matters? You follow a God who created you for a purpose, and who calls you to partner with Him in spreading His kingdom to the ends of the earth. And I promise you that you and I cannot do that if we are distracted by our own desire to prove ourselves worthy and bring glory and honor to our own names. We will spend our lives building a kingdom that may look pretty from the outside, but has no lasting, no eternal value. We will have chosen the bad portion that rots and decays and has no place in the kingdom that God is building. Choose the better portion. Use your gifts, your time, your efforts to build God's kingdom.

Sometimes that will look like sitting at Jesus' feet, learning from him, praying to him, worshiping him. But sometimes it will look like preparing a Passover feast for him, serving him with delight, using your skills for God's glory and His purposes, not your own. It is my prayer today that we would all have the wisdom to recognize and the humility to admit when we are working for our own kingdom rather than King Jesus's kingdom. May we slowly begin to lay our motivations, our desires, our agendas at the feet of Jesus, and pick up the good portion he has created us to live for.

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