The Busy Faith

I wonder, do those two words go together? Busy - Faith. In most evangelical churches they are synonymous. You know what I am talking about. Your faith is gauged by how busy you are "for" Jesus. If you don't run full blast for Jesus you are not very faithful. So what we doing is stacking the cards. If we are privileged to have a person say, "I can't do enough for Jesus, we pause for a minute and praise God because we never thought this moment would come and then we hand them "the book." The book that has everything every thing that needs to be done around the church or community. We place one card on top of the other hoping they don't crash down, knowing at some point they will. My question is this: When it comes to the person that is excited about Jesus and slips up and says they want to do more for Him; do we nurture that or do we take advantage of it? Unfortantly, in most cases of which I am guilty, we take advantage of it. We may not say it out loud but we speak it loud and clear. "If you want to be faithful you must be busy." Therefore, busy = faithful. Some of you are nodding your heads. Some of you are actively trying to balance the cards. Some of you have had the cards crash already and you are dealing with guilt and resentment because you believe you have to be busy in order to be faithful, yet you don't have the energy to do anything about it. But is that right? Is my faithfulness determined by how busy I am? The answer is NO! Biblically speaking we have mistaken running with endurance with being busy. "You don't have an opportunity to burn out, because you should be running with endurance!" Wrong! Wrong! Hebrews 12:1 encourages us to "lay aside EVERY weight" that prevents us from running the race to completion. What if one or some of those weights were being busy. What if my faithfulness was not determined by how busy I am? What if we have it all wrong? What if Jesus means what He says when He tells us that His yoke is easy and His burden is light? I want to suggest that He does. I want to suggest that my faithfulness has nothing to do with how busy I am and it has everything to do with how faithful I am. I want to suggest that the success of our churches has nothing to do with how busy we are and it has everything to do with how faithful we are. What if we face the 20/80 ratio in churches for a reason. 20% of the people doing 80% of the work. Could it be that the 80% see what the 20% have to do and are scared away by that burden? Personally, I believe there is truth to that. We beat the eighty percent up while continuing to load the twenty percent up. I believe that we have to look at this truth or watch the cards crash. If you are a pastor or a leader of people and you say that you love them, you are responsible to nurture their excitement not take advantage of it. If your cards have crashed, it is not a sign of your faithlessness, it is a sign that you are human with human limits. If you are trying to balance the cards, let them fall. Then move through the pile and find the base card you started with and enjoy serving Jesus again. Jesus uses the words, light and easy. Even though our journey with Jesus may cost us everything we have, it will be enjoyable if we are not "busy."