Mary or Martha? by Danielle Buck

Hey there everyone! I'm Danielle. Nice to meet you. *shakes hands* I'm an English Education major and I'm graduating in May. I grew up in southern California and now I live in northern Nevada. I love the color green, hippos (but not green ones), all things Disney, and a tall extra hot 2 pump soy vanilla latte from Starbucks. Now you know. =)

Since OSL seems to like recommending books, I suppose I’ll jump on the “read this book” bandwagon. Over the past few weeks (when I can find time in addition to all of my required reading for classes), I’ve been going through Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver. It uses the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42 and talks about how, in a world of busyness and trying to accomplish everything, the thing that is most necessary is to sit at the feet of the Lord and have fellowship with Him.

^{Just as a point of reference, here’s the story...}

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 few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

As a student leader, and especially as an RA, it is so easy to be Martha. There are students on our hall who need our help. There are events to plan, curfew checks to do, accountabilities to participate in, and a myriad of other things that pull our attention. A few weeks into the semester, we are running around the “kitchen” trying to get everything done. We get spread thin, and then burnout is well on it’s way. We turn into Martha in the kitchen, complaining to Jesus that we aren’t getting the help we deserve.

Now, service to the Lord isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, service should be an overflow of our relationship with the Lord. The problem comes when we lose sight of WHY we are serving and get caught up in being “busy for the Lord”. Joanna Weaver says that “Satan enjoys using our hectic schedules, stressed bodies, and emotional upsets in his efforts to put up barriers to our intimacy with God.” This is exactly what happened to Martha, and what has the potential to happen to us. We get so wrapped up in doing the work of the Lord, that we don’t even hear the Lord asking us to spend time at His feet.

One of the things that my RD always tells us is “The most important thing I will do today is spend time with the Lord.” As easy as it is to forget this, it is exactly what the Lord calls us to do, and precisely what Mary realized when Jesus showed up at her house. She knew there was work to be done, but she also knew that the thing that was most important was to take time out of her day to spend intimate time with the Lord.

May we serve the Lord with the strength and determination of Martha, but never forget to take time to sit at the feet of the Lord like Mary. <3

Cliché Christianity by Chris Deitsch

Me: Standing up on my soapbox

One of the most challenging verse in the Bible is in Daniel chapter 6 when it saw that Daniel went to his upper room and prayed to the Lord three times a day as was his custom. What did Daniel and his companions do the many times their lives were on the line? Daniel 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 we continually find them running to the Lord in prayer in there times of need. Paul is through in jail in the book of Acts and he and Silas start singing and praying. Jesus would sneak away from the disciples, even if it meant getting up early after a long night of ministry, to spend massive amounts of time with the Lord in prayer. Daniel read the prophet Jeremiah and it lead to a time of repentance in his heart.

You might say, where are you going with this? While standing on your soapbox, you are not making much sense.

I cannot tell you the number of students over the last few years who were in dry places with the Lord spoke with me or someone else about wanting to turn back to the Lord. In that conversation they make a statement. “I don’t want to cliché answers though!”

What are the cliché answers they are referring to? Read your Bible more and spend more time in prayer. They are tired of receiving the prescription for their complacency or sinful living being prayer and the Bible. They are looking for some quick fix; some new fresh method to rekindle the flame in their spiritual walk. They are looking for something more. Attend a conference, talks to this person, just come forward, or something else that they have never heard of that will transform everything. Don’t give them the cliché old traditional answer. We live in the new age of technology; Isn’t there a podcast I can listen to that will change everything?

And while there are some time a speaker or a lesson really says something that will change the perspective we have on our life and our relationship with Christ, there really is no substitute to simply spending large parts of our day reading. It is the substance that causes those in the hall of faith to earn that recognition and it is the action that sums up over a third of the record time of Jesus in the New Testament. 

In John 15, Jesus said that I am the vine and you are the branches. He challenges believers to abide in him and he already abides in us. He says if we do that we will bear much fruit. But then he makes a real tough statement that many of us do not really believe. He says, “apart from me you can do nothing.”

So if reading your Bible more and spending more time in prayer is cliché Christianity, then I guess I am cliché. But that’s ok because I am in the company of such a great cloud of witnesses!

Me: Getting down off my soapbox

Chris Deitsch is an Associate Director at the Office of Student Leadership, and the pastor of Prayer Leaders. He is originally from Kentucky and enjoys hunting and spending time with his wife. 

There is no middle way

by: Andrew Butler

I heard a sermon this weekend in which the pastor referenced an argument originally made by C. S. Lewis, and I was so affected that I feel obligated to reproduce it for the benefit of others.

“There was a man born among these Jews who claimed to be, or to be the son of, or to be ‘one with’, the Something which is at once the awful hunter of nature and the giver of the moral law. The claim is so shocking—a paradox, and even a horror, which we may easily be lulled into taking too lightly—that only two views of this man are possible. Either he was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was, and is, precisely what He said. There is no middle way. If the records make the first hypothesis unacceptable, you must submit to the second. And if you do that, all else that is claimed by Christians becomes credible—that this Man, having been killed, was yet alive, and that His death, in some manner incomprehensible to human thought, has effected a real change in our relations to the ‘awful’ and ‘righteous’ Lord, and a change in our favour.”

Furthermore…

“If any message from the core of reality ever were to reach us, we should expect to find in it just that unexpectedness, that willful, dramatic anfractuosity which we find in the Christian faith. It has the master touch—the rough, male taste of reality, not made by us, or, indeed, for us, but hitting us in the face.”

Let us not take this truth too lightly. He is exactly what He said He is. “There is no middle way.” Our relations to the awful and righteous Lord have been changed in our favor. Let us rejoice in that fact. It is my prayer, hope and desire (Paul’s as well: Ephesians 1:15-23) that we will allow the simple nature of the gospel to renew us, refresh us, and reinvigorate us always and forever. 

 I am from Kansas. I love reading, writing, and thinking. I plan on going to law school. Jesus is my satisfaction, validation, affirmation, and chief supply of affection.