Week 16 (18.01.09)

This week we were talking about stress with work, and we looked at the part of the Bible where Jesus visits Mary and Martha.

This passage (Luke 10:38-41) reads:

'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."'

So Jesus is saying that he would rather you took time out of your lives to be with him and listen to what he has to say than spent all your time rushing around getting stressed with work rather than getting to know God a little better. Our heavenly Father wants us to take rest in him and not to be worried about anything: he doesn't want us to try and impress him with how much we can get done; he'd much rather we fell in love with him and loved nothing more than to use every chance we get to be in his company (what we mean by that is praying or reading the Bible, spending time with other Christians and time worshipping God).

We also looked at a passage in Phillippians which was talking about the fact that we shouldn't worry about anything. Philippians 4:4-7 reads:

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, 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."

So even when there's lots going on around us to stress us out or make us worry about something, God still wants us to take joy in him; in knowing that he is God, that he loves us and is always faithful in protecting and caring for us. He also wants us to tell him all the things that we are concerned about, praising him as we do, and he promises that he will fill and protect our hearts with his peace: a peace that, without God we could never have in our circumstances.

Remember, the more we concentrate on Jesus and the less we think about our problems, the greater our joy will be! If you do have concerns of any kind, we would love to listen to them and pray about them with you - just send us an email and we'll arrange a time to meet you :)

Lois and Eleanor