What can we learn from Mary & Martha (Part 1)
If your car only started once out of every two or three tries, would you consider it to be a good car? If the postman only came to your house a couple times a week, would you consider him to be reliable? If the electricity only worked occasionally when you flipped the light switch; would you call the electric company to complain? We tend to set a high standard of expectation in the things we want, what if we applied the same standards to church as we do other areas of our lives? Faith Service Worship Vision There may be times when you find it difficult to reconcile God’s truth to your own opinion or worldview, God’s truth is eternal, it does not change, our understanding of the truth does change as we allow God to work in our hearts and minds. These sessions are not about opinion, they are about learning truth, the truth contained in the Bible, together we are going to focus on how we apply God’s truth, black & white in a grey world. To set godly priorities, grow in Christian character and live according to God’s standards so that we are a living witness to others.
The basis of our belief: Session 11
Ashingdon Elim Bible Study 29 June 2010
If you only go to church once or twice a month would you expect to be called a faithful Christian? We expect loyalty and reliability from things and other people - isn’t it reasonable then that God just might expect that same level of reliability and loyalty from us when it comes to worshiping His Son? What brought you to 20:20 this evening? Was it your desire to fill your heart with more of knowledge of God? Was it an eagerness to gain a deeper understanding of the Bible? Or was it a sense of obligation? Was it habit? Is going to church something you do, or something you need? One Sunday morning, a mother yelled upstairs to her son who just wouldn’t get out of bed. She said, ‘This is your last chance! You get up so you can get ready to go to church!’ The son yelled back down, ‘I don’t want to go to church today!’ The mother said he had to because he was the Pastor! There are times when all of us might have to just stay home for one reason or another, but there should also be one underlying reason that keeps us coming back, and that one reason should be our desire to worship our Saviour; having a feeling of closeness with Him that is so personal we could no longer stay away from church than we could keep from eating. The passage I want us to consider in this study is LUKE 10:38-42. Lets put these verses into context - Jesus had just given the parable of the Good Samaritan to show how we are supposed to love our neighbour, and now he is using this situation with the two sisters to show how we are supposed to love our God. 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. 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.’ (Luke 10:38-42) 1