At the Home of Martha and Mary 

Luke 10:38-42 NIV 

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he 
came to a village where a woman named Martha opened 
her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who 
sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. 40 
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!" 
41"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are 
worried and upset about many things, 42 but only one 
thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and 
it will not be taken away from her." 

The Martha syndrome: 

I ask you to stop what you are doing right now. Put 
down your book, your food, pause the conversation you 
are in: When is the last time you spent time alone 
with God? Alone with the Scriptures; in a place where 
no one can find you? When is the last time your heart 
desired to be away from everything but God? How long 
has it been since your soul slowed down? Days? Weeks? 

Believers are often Martha, busy with our work instead 
of with Christ. In Luke 10, Martha invites Christ into 
her house but then goes to the kitchen, busy with 
dinner. During our quiet times we invite Jesus to come 
into our lives and then we hurry off to other 
concerns. Instead of giving Christ our time and 
unbroken attention we “are worried and upset about 
many things. (Luke 10:41)” As believers we are 
distracted during prayer and reading, thinking about 
our day, our worries - instead of God. We forget that 
Christ is sitting in the living room of our soul. He 
is ready to talk, to love us, but we are too busy 
preparing for the next scheduled event in our day. 

Do you find yourself feeling rushed during your quiet 
times? Is Martha taking charge of your quiet times? Is 
Martha screaming at you because you have chosen to 
spend time with God? In your daily life, Martha takes 
the form of homework you haven’t begun. She tells you 
that you are too tired to spend time with Christ. She 
reminds you that you are hungry. Martha reminds you 
that your friends want to hang out. Martha is our 
busyness fleshed out, our busyness brought to life. 
Look at her attitude and see how similar it is to 
ours. 

Martha saw Christ as someone she had to entertain, not 
fall in love with. Martha did not realize that Christ 
had everything to offer to her. Many days we see our 
time with God as something we have to accomplish or 
get out of the way. We miss the passionate romance 
that rages during our times with God. We begin to 
forget who God is, the beauty of our salvation, the 
forsaking endured by his Son. We begin to exist 
instead of living in abundance.   

When I find myself struggling to love people, when I 
hear other people struggling with their own sin, I 
wonder if we are a body of believers who value 
spending more time with each other rather than with 
God. We lack this balance - the crucial balance 
between the crowd and our father in heaven. 

Why do I write this? 

I forget the Gospel everyday. I forget that I hated 
God and did not know him for 15 years of my life. I 
forget that Jesus Christ loves me; that he died for 
me; that he died for the glory of his father. 

I forget, days at a time that Christ sought solitude 
out. I forget that he rose in the morning to spend 
time away from his best friends, his sick masses, his 
daily concerns (Mark 1:35). God mattered to Jesus. His 
father was on his heart and mind when he got out of 
bed. If solitude is this important to the only human 
to be fully God, shouldn’t we place more importance on 
it?   

Scripture tells us to “have the same attitude of 
Christ”, yet I find that our attitude is the opposite 
of Christ’s most mornings at breakfast (Phil. 2:5). So 
many mornings we forget that Jesus is waking us up - 
not our alarm clocks. God is in love with us, wanting 
to give us life to the fullest but we ignore him as we 
get ready for our day. Our mind is more concerned with 
who will be at breakfast and what we are going to 
wear. How many days have you spent running from 
concern to concern instead of listening to the 
heartbeat of God? 

I wrote this because the Bible tells me “the only 
thing that counts is faith expressing itself through 
love (Gal 5:6).” I cannot remain silent, when I see 
those around me that I love not spending time with 
Christ. I believe that part of loving people is 
challenging them to pursue Christ. I read in 
Corinthians “If one part of the body suffers, every 
part suffers with it (1 Cor 12:26).” I look at the 
body of believers here in Rock Hill and I see lots of 
suffering. I believe that much of our hurt and feeling 
that life is dull is because we are not spending time 
alone with Christ. We refuse to face the God who loves 
us. We refuse to see how much we need him.   

Christ waits for you to acknowledge that he is God. He 
is outside the door of your heart, wanting to talk to 
you – to be intimate with you. I write this in the 
hope that you will see how we have rejected Christ’s 
embrace for the things of this world.  I ask that you 
put the world on hold and consider how you are living 
today. Right now, God is calling you to spend time 
with him. 

Why does any of this matter? 

I think this matter goes to the heart of Christianity, 
the heart of your relationship with God. I believe 
that he has given us one salvation and made us one 
body of believers united in Christ (Eph 4). To ignore 
the fact that we are neglecting time with God, tells 
God that we value this world more than we value him. 
God created you, allowed you to discover him - Why 
else are you sitting here right now other than to 
experience God and to discover who he is? Everyday is 
the same as our first day with Jesus Christ. We can 
not fully know God unless we unplug from this world 
and draw close to God. 

This is a call to spend time with Jesus Christ. As a 
brother in Christ, this call goes to me first. I fail 
at this as much as anyone. What hurts me is the lack 
of concern I see around campus – a lack of concern 
that we have for each other. People are not willing to 
challenge each other. When is the last time someone 
asked you what you were reading in the Bible? As a 
body of Christ followers we eat meal after meal with 
each other and yet we rarely speak of Christ or what 
he is doing in our lives. This matters to God. He 
wants us to tell the entire world who he is. If we are 
not willing to begin at our dorms, how are we going to 
reach the world? 

What does this attitude look like? 

We must realize that we are the bride of Christ. In 
Ephesians 5, Paul describes Christ and the church as 
married. Christ is united to his bride, you and me. If 
we believe that Christ is our savior; that he died for 
our sins and rose on the third day; that he is God – 
than we become his bride, lover, his redeemed people. 

We love God yet we fail him daily. Therefore we must 
remember that we are whores who know Jesus Christ. Let 
us remember that we once hated God but have been 
redeemed by his Son’s sacrifice. Our new attitude 
publicly celebrates our need for Jesus Christ. We must 
be willing to admit that we cheat on Christ, our 
husband, everyday. In order to be real to the world we 
must celebrate both our need and the God who is 
filling our need. 

Each day that you live, God is renewing you, he is 
transforming you into his glorious image (Phil 3:21). 
Christ calls us to marry him each day. He offers us a 
wedding ring that we have not earned. Let us go and 
greet him at the altar. I ask you to walk down the 
aisle with me today. Let us go to Christ and celebrate 
him today. 

If we slow down our lives and see the love of Christ, 
I believe that we will be able to stop pretending that 
everything is okay. When we realize that none of us 
have life figured out we will stop believing that the 
person next to us doesn’t need our love. 

In Galatians, Paul tells us to “do good to all people, 
especially to those who belong to the family of 
believers (Gal 6:10).” Remind Christians who Christ 
is. Tell the Gospel to those who have experienced it. 
Our God is a God who wants to be talked about when we 
are at dinner, walking to class, and sitting with 
non-believers (Duet 6:7). 

If we look at Luke 10 again, we will see that we need 
to be Martha’s sister, Mary. She chose what was better 
than the world’s business. She chose to sit at the 
feet of Christ. I dare you to ignore Martha as she 
screams at you from the kitchen. Let Christ answer for 
you. Let him tell the world to leave us alone. We are 
his bride and he is unabashedly in love with us. 
Christ wants to look into your eyes and tell you he 
loves you. Tell you that he is God - he is your 
husband. 

Finally, I encourage you as a believer, you - the 
bride of Christ - to not stone your brother and 
sister. Encourage them to seek God. Point them to the 
Scriptures. Christ called us to not only push away sin 
but to also replace it with his righteousness. Paul 
tells the Galatians to point out sin among the 
believers they live with (Gal 6:1-2). Scripture also 
tells us to take sin seriously, but it also tells us 
to challenge each other with humility – making sure we 
are not committing the same sins. Ultimately, this is 
where solitude becomes even more important. We must be 
spending time with God everyday so that we can 
challenge each other out of love – not envy or hatred. 

Most importantly, this attitude needs prayer. We need 
to be praying for each other, for our enemies. In 
solitude we can find real prayer; prayer that is not 
rushed or distracted. Pray that God would move in 
Spirit in our communities, churches, and our hearts.   

Where are we failing to challenge and encourage each 
other? 

We who are believers need to point each other back to 
the Bible. As believers we don’t talk about what we 
are pursuing in the Scriptures. We don’t ask people 
what they are reading, meditating over, praying over. 

I have to ask - Why? Why are we not daily celebrating 
God’s Word? We are so comfortable talking about our 
human relationships, movies, weather, and gossip, 
anything but what should be defining us. Where is our 
joy; our delight in the Scriptures? At the dinner 
table, in the halls, with our roommates we are too 
reluctant to celebrate what God is teaching us. 

Picture a marriage. One that is joyous. Would you not 
tell people about your struggles, your triumphs, and 
your experiences?  The joy that accompanies a marriage 
is not forced - it is not bounded by rules. There is 
no law our boundaries against reading the Bible. Our 
love for God's word should overflow into everyday 
life. If we really believe that the Scriptures are 
breathed by God, that they are sharper than any words 
we can speak, shouldn't we be lifting them up to each 
other. 

We don't have enough passion for God's truth. We have 
divorced ourselves from Christ’s stories, his words, 
and his love. We become divorced from God on a daily 
basis, we go hours, days forgetting that Christ loves 
us. Where else can we see who Christ is other than in 
the Bible? The media is not going to tell us who God 
is. We look to a charming and fleeting world to find 
our joy. If we are married to Christ, we are married 
to his words. As a body, I pray that we would invest 
more time into seeking Christ, seeking God in his Word 
to us. He is inside your Bible, wanting to speak to 
you. 




What will this cost? 

This redirecting of our lives is going to hurt. Fire 
hurts, but it also refines. The truth exposes us as 
the whores we are. It points to the false lovers that 
woo us, drain us, and then mock our lack of desire for 
Christ. We will have to sacrifice time to engage God 
with our minds. 

A real knowledge of God will force us to sacrifice our 
pride. We are Peter sinking, Martha busy, and the 
Jewish leaders who betrayed Christ. Because we are 
these people, we are scared to spend time alone with 
God. Nobody wants to see that they hate Christ. Deep 
down we have all sold out today; we don’t want to see 
our fresh need for Christ. We will not be able to face 
God until we face ourselves as fallen and in need of a 
risen savior - a savior who is strongest when we are 
weakest. 

This attitude will cost us our time. If we will 
sacrifice our lives so that we can see Christ and 
allow him to transform our attitudes, desires, heart, 
ideas about him; we will find who he is. We will find 
that he defines our salvation, worth, core, identity. 

Once we have let go of our pride we will be able to 
see who we really are. We can see this in Paul’s 
boasting. Yes Paul boasted of his weakness (2 Cor 
12:9)! Instead of celebrating our need for Christ we 
throw layers over our sin, over our weakness. Why is 
there such a gap in our attitude and Paul’s? Did Paul 
see Christ in a way that eludes us? Did he suffer 
enough? Die enough? So that Christ became alive to 
him. Did Paul forsake comforts that we cling onto with 
all the strength and excuses that we can muster? 

TVs, new cars, cell phone plans, expensive dates, 
sleeping in, short church services, rushed small 
group, tedious prayer, premarital touching, 
pornography, music that Christ would never listen to, 
jealousy, video games, addiction to people, worries, 
dullness, nice clothes, expensive cologne, and endless 
cups of expensive coffee. 

Not all of these things are bad, but are they 
dominating what our lives? Is this what the world sees 
when they look at the bride of Christ? Do they see 
Christians who are okay and imitating the way they 
live? Are we imitating God or the world? 

In solitude we will find Christ. He will love us, and 
this love will overflow into our daily lives. We are 
Christ’s bride. He owns us. Being a Christian means 
being completely owned by God. Our faith costs us our 
life; nothing less.   

Where to we go from here? 

I pray that you will tell people about Jesus, 
especially the thousands of believers you live with. 
Speak. Speak, God is for us. Speak! Dance! Shout! Make 
a fool of yourself. Scream out against the fake shells 
we all carry around. We are the free bride of a fierce 
lover. 

Run. Run to Christ. Ignore the world and its 
commercials, gimmicks, and never ending stuff. 

I ask that you would spend time alone with your God. 
Why else are you alive? Find out who your God is. Pray 
that all of us would see less of each other and more 
of are Father.    
I ask you to ask me how I am doing. Share life with 
me. Tell your friends about the ravishing love of God 
with me. Find Mary and join here there at the feet of 
our savior. 

Come back to your world Jesus. Burn my words away. 
Take your wife home. 


If you want to discuss any questions or ask me 
anything: 

Art Basler 
803.323.4424 
baslera1@winthrop.edu