August 24, 2025 • 57 mins
WEEK 3: DO NOT DISTURB // THE DISTRACTION OF DEMANDS: CARRY WHAT COUNTS // PASTOR AMBERLY BELL
Life can feel like we're being pulled in 10 different directions. In a demand-driven world, our attention has become divided. In Week 3 of the Do Not Disturb Series, Pastor Amberly clearly shows us how the many different demands of life have become distractions. With all that we are carrying, we must carry what counts! In order to do that we must put our phone down, practice focus and protect our priority. If you have felt distracted by life, this is the message for you!
Scripture References:
Luke 10:38-42 NIV
Matthew 22:36-39 NIV
Matthew 11:28-30 NIV
Life can feel like we're being pulled in 10 different directions. In a demand-driven world, our attention has become divided. In Week 3 of the Do Not Disturb Series, Pastor Amberly clearly shows us how the many different demands of life have become distractions. With all that we are carrying, we must carry what counts! In order to do that we must put our phone down, practice focus and protect our priority. If you have felt distracted by life, this is the message for you!
Scripture References:
Luke 10:38-42 NIV
Matthew 22:36-39 NIV
Matthew 11:28-30 NIV
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Transformation Church Podcast, where we represent God to
the lost and found for transformation in Christ. We're so
glad you're here and wherever you're listening from, we believe
God will transform your life.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Do today's message, you guys know, we're in a series
called do Not Disturb, and last week y'all got to
hear from your very own.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Youth pastor, Pastor Tie and he has his own cheering
squad sitting directly in this direction if anybody was wondering
where the youth sit. But he did a phenomenal job
of setting us up and just kind of talking through
focusing and what the different distractions are and what it
is that we have to lock in and focus in on.
(00:45):
And so this has been an incredible series. Pastor brestarted
us and today I am so excited to be able
to share just with you what I feel like God
has shared with me. And when we were kind of
prepping the work for this sermon series, we were taught
fucking just We've had lots of meetings about this sermon
series and I remember Pastor Bree she was like, Okay,
so this is what we're gonna do, and this is
(01:06):
what we're gonna talk about and we were all kind
of going back and forth with our ideas, and she said,
just think about what distracts you. Amberly like, what is
it that really distracts you? And I just sat there
for a moment and I was like, I'm distracted by
my distractions. And she was like okay, And so I
was like, do I call the sermon distracted by distractions?
(01:27):
And so I really like went back to the Lord
and I was like, I meant that in my heart
of hearts, I'm meant I'm distracted by my distractions. But
I really had to figure out what is it that
I feel like really distracts me and gets me out
of alignment of the will of God in my life?
And what is it that takes my focus off of God?
And so I'm excited to be able to share with
(01:48):
you what I believe that is something that's kind of
happening to a lot of us in this season of life.
We live in a very fast paced culture, a very
busy world, lots of things going on at any given time,
of things coming at us. We live in one of
the greatest times of society where information overload is we
can look up and chat GBT and google anything within
(02:10):
seconds and have an answer to our question within point
zero zero two seconds. And so my question for all
of us this morning is does anyone in the room
feel like they are pulled in ten different directions? Am
I talking to anybody in the room feeling like you
have been pulled in ten different directions? With all of
the responsibilities, all of the expectations, all of the requirements.
(02:34):
And what I've realized is that we live in a
very demand driven culture, one demand after another coming from
every angle. It's just a demand after a demand after
a demand. And I've realized that we are a culture
and a people that are constantly distracted by our demands.
So I'm going to title the message today the Distraction
(02:56):
of Demands, because I believe that God wants us to
understand how crucial it is that we lock in and focus,
but what it is, and how the demands of this
life cause us to be distracted and keep us off
of the course, away from what it is that God
is calling us to do. So I want to just
if I can. We are a hot church which is humble,
(03:19):
open and transparent, and so I want to I can
I just be vulnerable with you guys. This morning, am
I in a safe space to be vulnerable. I want
to kind of walk you through what I have been
battling as some of the demands that I feel like
are pulling on me and pulling for my attention constantly.
And my hope in my prayer is that maybe you'll
(03:39):
see yourself in some of these examples, or maybe you
will realize, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize that
was something that was vying for my attention, and I
thought it was harmless, and it's actually turned out to
be something more dangerous than I realized. And so I
want to start this morning by just kind of talking
you through some of the demands that I feel like
(03:59):
pull me in those ten different directions that I was
talking about. The first one that I want to talk
about is relationships. I feel like there's a constant demand
to have our relationships all together. And as you can see,
this is my incredibly fine husband, Will. He's so fine,
Thanks babe, And I got this. You're good. Yeah, I
(04:22):
got this on my own. And I love my husband
and I love being married to my husband. But he's
kind of needy and he's constantly wanting things for me
that I may or may not want to give him.
Do the married folks know what I'm talking about? Okay?
Can I talk to the right people in the room.
(04:43):
And what I've learned is at the ripe ole age
of forty four, there are certain things in my body
that are working against me that make me not want
to desire maybe the things that I I freshly wanted
in my twenties. Can any woman in the room relate
(05:04):
right now? And so there's constant demands for my husband
of making sure that his needs are met, making sure
that our marriage is priority, making sure that I am
locked in knowing what it is that he needs, praying
for him, helping him, being his helpmate. And on top
of that, I've got friends ships that I'm trying to maintain,
(05:25):
and I've got friends that want to get together for
dinner days, and I've got friends that want to call
and run an idea by me and I just need
you for two minutes that turns into thirty two minutes,
and if you could just help me figure out this
one thing that I need to figure out. And so
it's constant demands from relationships. It's even just even some
(05:45):
of my coworkers are pulling on me, not from not
even necessarily from a work standpoint, but just they're just
they're relationships that I desire and I want to have,
but the demand to always be everything that they need
to be at all times become so exhausting. And I
love my husband and I love my friends, and yet
(06:06):
it feels like I'm carrying around this demand that feels
a little bit more than I can handle on my own.
So we've got my relationships that I'm thinking through, and
then it's like, oh, on top of that, because I
am forty four, I have to keep my health in check. Right.
So your pastor aka my pastor, about three years ago
(06:27):
he decided to get physically fit. Y'all. Remember when Pastor
Mike was fat and then he got skinny, y'all? Remember
when Will Heckaback was fat and he got skinny. I
love you. He really is one of my close friends.
H It was this awkward moment where we were in
meetings and Pastor Mike was eating meal prep, and all
(06:49):
of a sudden, my raising canes started looking really suspicious
next to his meal prep or my Chick fil A
or my Taco Blaine. I mean whatever it is that
I wanted to eat. He would be sitting next to
me in a meeting just eating chicken and rice and broccoli,
and I was like, that's crazy. And I remember he
(07:11):
began a movement. You guys, remember when he got healthy.
It kind of came to the point where we didn't
have a choice as a staff. We were either gonna
be the unhealthy ones or we was gonna get healthy.
And I decided I wasn't gonna do I wasn't gonna
let him continue to eat meal prep and me continue
to chomp down on my pepperoni pizza that I take
the pepperonis off of because I like the way the
pepperoni flavors the bread, but I don't actually want the
(07:32):
pepperoni on my pizza. Okay, So now I've got to
get my health in check. But then, all of a sudden,
as you begin to age and grow up gracefully and beautifully,
your hormones all of a sudden decide to wreak havoc
on your body and nothing is what it used to be.
And so now you're going to doctor appointment after doctor
(07:54):
appointments trying to figure out what's going on with your hormones.
So I'm just trying to eat right. My husband doesn't
eat chicken. I mean, he doesn't eat chicken. He only
eats beef. But I only eat chicken. I don't eat beef.
So then I have to meal prep only chicken for
me and only beef for him. And then Mia, bless
her little heart. Wouldn't you know that one week she
likes strawberries and the next week she does it. So
(08:15):
I've gotten a costco bought all the strawberries only to
find out what she don't like strawberries no more. So
it's a constant battle. Can I drink four hundred ounces
of water today? Can I eat two thousand grams of
protein today? Can I take? Does anybody understand what that
demand feels like on you when you're trying to be
(08:35):
healthy and keep your body in alignment, and you know
you're the temple of the Holy Ghost and he dwells
inside of you. But the pressure to keep all of
that in alignment is a lot, right, So then we've
got those blessings of children, right. And I love my daughter,
y'all know, I love me some, Mia bell I love
(08:57):
me some Mia Belle. But what I tell you this
kid comes with demands all of her own. First, she
got soccer practice. Okay, let me get you to soccer
practice three times a week. Oh. And then also you
want me to take you to that private lesson for
that coach to teach you the extra skills.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Oh, volleyball. Oh, we're gonna go to volleyball twice a week. Okay.
But then you also want to start serving better, so
I'm gonna put you in private lessons to start serving better. Okay. Cool.
Oh and now they're teaching calculus in eighth grade. Great,
let me figure out through Chad Gubt how to do
that again. Oh, and you still want to eat your lunch? Ah,
thank you Jesus. Okay. As you can see, the demands
(09:39):
are piling up. Not only that, but now she's a
pre tea or not a preteen, she's a teenage girl,
my bad, and she has teenage girls problems. And now
I'm trying to counsel her through all of the teenage
girl drama that's going on at school and remind her
to say kind things but then also punch them in
the throat if they need to be punched. You know,
I'm just it's just it's balance, you know, it's like
(10:05):
lay your hands on them and pray for them and
then go ahead and just take them out if you
need to. But so your children are pulling at you
depending on the age and stays that your kids are in,
and they've got demands. At are point, do you see
the demands piling up? Well, then you got to have
a job because you got to pay your bills, right,
So then you've got your career. And I decided let
(10:25):
me bring my real boss, my real life boss, up
to the stage. She said, don't talk crazy about me.
And I don't know if y'all have ever read an
email from Pastor Bree Davis, but per her emails, she
(10:47):
has some things she needs us to know as some
expectations that she wants us to follow through on. On
top of that, I also have a part time job
outside of my full time job, and I would like
to do the work that God has called me to
do outside of this country and go to the work
and do the work in Africa. So there's also a
nonprofit that I'm trying to keep up with. So all
(11:07):
of it is fighting for my attention, one demand after another.
Then it's my spiritual life, which I want to serve God.
I want to hear God's voice. I know I need
to be praying. I know I need to be fasting.
I know I need to be mentoring. I know I
need to be mentored. I know I need to go
(11:27):
to therapy because yeah, there's that, and uh there's I
gotta have a sabbath because that's you know, it's important
to rest, and how do you rest when you're carrying
all of this? And then it's like, I know I
need to fast, I know I need to pray. I
know I need to lock into what God is doing,
(11:49):
and so I've got to show up to church. And
then I also want to be a part of a
serve team because you guys put a really cool graphic
up that made it look like I wanted to serve
and I want to be in community. I don't want
to live life, so I'm gonna get into a tribe.
And it's again just one demand after another. But then
what about when life starts lifing? Because then there's still
(12:11):
bills to pay, there's still car problems. You know, the
light goes on in your engine and you've got to oh, okay,
and then thank you so much and then it's you know,
the dishwasher breaks and you have to have a new dishwasher.
And then it's you've got to make sure that the
yard gets mode and wet and weed eat it, because
(12:32):
if you live in a subdivision with an HOA, you
will be getting a nasty letter from the president of
the HOA. And so there's all these things that are
fighting for your attention, pulling at you and dividing you
in different directions. And then let's not forget finances, because
you do have to pay your bills. You do have
to give to Caesar what is due to Caesar. The
(12:54):
taxman does in fact want his money every April. Oh okay,
and so I need to keep those in order. And
remember I'm not getting any younger. So they say I
need to start saving for retirement and have seven to
one k's and thirteen two twenties to send my kids
(13:14):
adequately to college, and whoa, this is a lot. And
then culture is coming at me telling me I have
to be a certain way, look a certain way, do
a certain thing, live a certain way, post a certain way,
don't post that, post this, do this, don't do that,
(13:34):
And it's just honestly too much. And then last, but
not least, is the emotional demands. How do you keep
your mental health stable? How do you not fall into
anxiety or depression or worry or grief or worry about Oh,
it's honestly just too much. And if I could submit
(13:59):
to you, this is what life is like for all
of us. Someone or something is handing us one bag
after another, bag after another bag, and it's causing us
to be continually and perpetually distracted. And distractions aren't necessarily
(14:21):
always a bad thing. It's only bad when they pulled
away our attention, our focus, and our devotion to God.
And we weren't the only ones that have been distracted.
If you will, will you turn with me in your
Bibles to Luke chapter ten. I want to read to
you about a woman who is distracted. Luke Chapter ten,
(14:46):
verses thirty eight through forty two is what we're going
to read. And it says this. 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
(15:10):
distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.
She came to him and asked, Lord, do you not
care that my sister has left me to do the
work all by myself. Tell her to help me Martha. Martha,
the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things,
(15:32):
but few things are needed or indeed, only one. Mary
has chosen what is better and it will not be
taken from her. So the truth is, we're all carrying
too many bags. Like Martha, were distracted, We're anxious, were
overwhelmed by everything and everyone that's asking from us or
(15:54):
taking something from us. I want to think about this
for a minute. So, men in the room, you are
there's the constant distraction and demand on you to be
the provider of your home, to be able to be
the one to fix anything that goes wrong, to fix
the problems, whether it be the dishwasher or the kids
that are acting crazy. You're the one that's called on
to fix everything. Ladies, we're the ones that are asked
(16:17):
to kind of hold everything together, if you will. And
then we've got married people who are trying to meet
the needs of their spouse that they may have and
on top of that, trying to build their own personal
identity and keep themselves together. And then at the same
time they're arguing about who's responsible for trash on Tuesday
night for the Wednesday night pickup singles. You're out here
(16:39):
trying to do everything on your own. When something breaks,
it's up to you or Chad GBT or Google to
figure out how to fix it. Kids, you're worried about
your homework and your sports, and your classes and your
friends and your teachers. And teenagers you're worried about what
you're going to do and be for the rest of
your life. And our culture asks you at the age
(17:03):
of eighteen to have everything figured out and know exactly
what it is that you want to do for the
rest of your life until you retire at sixty five.
And then for my young adults, you've got bills to
pay and everyone's asking you when are you settling down,
When are you gonna get married? Then you get married,
(17:25):
When are you gonna have a kid? Then you have
a kid. When are you gonna have another kid? Then
you have another kid. When are you gonna have another kid?
Or when are you gonna stop having kids? It's this
constant pool and then for my retired season Saints, you
thought your life was free and you were done. But
now you're raising the grandkids you never planned to raise.
And now you're worrying about the new demands that are
(17:46):
on your body because your body is aging and changing
and there's physical limitations that you didn't experience in the
previous season of life. So there is the distraction of
demands takes a toll on it. So this morning, I
want to talk about the three problems with demands. There
are three problems with demands. Number one, demands divide our attention.
(18:12):
If you look up the Greek word of the word distraction,
it literally means to be pulled apart in different directions.
When you are pulled in ten different directions, it is
impossible to give one hundred percent of yourself in any
one direction. And I think sometimes when we read the Bible,
we read it as if it's written in modern day culture.
(18:32):
And so when we read the story of Mary and Martha,
it's easy to think that Martha was just busy picking
up the kitchen, cleaning the kitchen, getting the lemonade and
the glass jar, you know those glass jars, and have
a little spickett thing on them support the glass elimonade.
But we really have to go back into Bible context
and look at what a first Jewish century history look
(18:54):
like to understand what it was that Martha was actually doing.
If you think about this from a Bible perspective, Martha
there was no pre made checuterie board. Martha had to
go gather the grains and the figs and the greenery
that we put on our secuterary board to make the
said schecutery board. When she prepared chicken, it she didn't
(19:14):
just go to Costco and get chicken out of the
freezer and bring it home. The chicken had to be
chased down and caught, slaughtered, killed, feathers plucked out of it,
and prepared. In order to even be able to have
the chicken, she had to prepare the grain. It had
to be the flour that was made for the bread.
The grain had to be pressed, and so there was
(19:35):
all of these preparations. So you can see Martha's frustrations
when Mary was doing nothing and Martha was doing everything
to get ready to feed Jesus, and she's frustrated when
she comes to Jesus and she says, why is she
not helping tell her to help me. The demands of
her preparations kept her from being focused on what was
(19:56):
really important. It divided her attention from the one who
is in the room. If you think about it, when
our attention is divided, our devotion becomes diluted. If you
think about your own time with God when you set
you know, when you set that alarm and you're like,
I'm gonna get up extra early, and I'm going to
spend some time in the world, and I'm gonna really
(20:18):
pray today, and I'm really going to read the scripture.
And don't you know, the minute that you open up
your Bible, there's a The first thing out is either
a ding on your phone or it's one of the
kids calling for you from another room. Every time we
set our hearts to focus on the things of God,
there will always be demands that will be pulling at us,
that will be fighting for our attention. And if we
(20:40):
let our attention be divided like that, our devotion will
become diluted. The second problem with demands is that they
disturb our spirit. Jesus said, Martha, you are worried and
upset about many things, And again that Greek word worry
just means this sh she was divided in her mind,
(21:01):
And the Book of Jane says that a double minded
man is unstable in all of his ways. So when
we are worried and anxious and overcome with those things,
we are unstable. We're not able to make clear decisions.
It's the inner restlessness that comes from trying to keep
everyone happy and meeting every expectation, checking off every single box,
(21:24):
or even the way that we look on the outside
is staying busy keeps us falling apart. The overload of
demands produces inner unrest. I think about just the time
demands that we have on our life. The clock is
always ticking. There's meetings, deadlines, practices, appointments. There's never enough time.
(21:44):
But the problem with that is when everything feels urgent,
nothing feels peaceful. For moms and dads, there's the demanding
of parenting your kids and staying up late and having
the conversations with them the early morning's offs at school.
Parenting is a blessing, but it's also such a taxing
(22:04):
toll on you sometimes though. The hardest demands that we face, though,
are the ones that we self inflict. We lay down
at night. We're exhausted. We've had a full day, and
everything our mind won't shut off because everything's replaying the
to do list, the things we need to check off,
the things we didn't accomplish, the things that have to
(22:24):
move on to tomorrow. We're present with people even during
the day, but not actually there. They're talking to us,
and we're not even actually hearing what they're saying because
we're so distracted. And then I don't know about you,
but sometimes I find myself at night scrolling through my phone,
just trying to decompress from the day, and I've got
this bright light shining in my face, and I'm trying
(22:46):
to go to sleep at night, wondering why I can't
fall asleep at night when I've just had the sun
of God shining in my face. We're distracted, and our
spirits become so disturbed that we become so so irritable
and so unkind to people. And it happens oftentimes to
the people that we love the most. And I was
(23:10):
traveling a couple of years ago. I remember I was
traveling with a certain lady and we were getting ready
to catch a flight, and she had about four bags.
She had a fanny pack, she had a pillow, she
had a blanket, and she had her stuffed animal. And
I remember thinking to myself, there is no way that
Southwest Airlines is going to let her onto the airplane
(23:33):
with all of those bags. So I politely went up
to her and I was like, ma'am, I just you know,
just so you're aware, Southwest does have like a two
bag policy, and there's ten that I'm counting, so you'll
want to, you know, just do a little condensing. And
she's like, well, I can't condense these bags. My pillow's
not gonna fit in my suitcase. My blanket's not gonna
fit in my suitcase. And so she said, I'm just
(23:54):
gonna wing it. And I was like, I'm gonna tell
you right now, Southwest doesn't play around, and they will
hold up the whole line for you and make you
look like a plum fool if you don't have your
bags solid, consolidated. Right she said, oh, it'll be fine.
So sure enough, we get to line up and she's
standing about four people in front of me, and she's
got eighteen bags wrapped around her. And the gay agent
(24:16):
stopped the entire line and got on the you know,
the little walky thing, and said, I need everyone to
consolidate all of their personal belongings into two bags. Those
crossbody bags, those things wrapped around, those blankets, those pillows,
those all now have to be wrapped up and put
into your suitcase. And he was literally talking to her,
but made an announcement to the entire airport of people
(24:36):
that were standing there waiting to board the flight. So
she panics, like anyone would do in that moment, and
she tried to stuff what she had extra with her
into the bags that she brought with her, but there
was zero room in those bags. So then she started saying, hey,
she was passing down her pillow that had drool on
it from the night before to the four people behind
(24:57):
her and her blanky down at someone who did have two,
say suitcases, was having to take on a second suitcase.
And I realized in that moment, people were having to
carry a burden they didn't show up to carry because
she didn't prepare well. And I just wonder how many
of us, because we do not have our spirits in check,
(25:20):
because we are so distracted by the demands that life
has put on us, that we are showing up to
the people that we love the most, our spouses, our family,
our friends, and we're expecting them to take the leftover
baggage that we didn't prepare how to handle properly. And
then we have the nerves. When I tell you she
was mad at that gay agent, I mean, she was
(25:42):
anger ree with that gay agent. And I thought to myself,
that poor woman was just man was just doing his job,
but she was so frustrated. And I just think to myself,
when our spirits get so disturbed like that, we become
people that we don't want to become. We say things
that we don't want to say, we do things that
we don't want to do, and it's because we've been
(26:04):
distracted by our demands and our spirits are disturbed. The
truth is, the overload doesn't just exhaust your body, it
wears down your soul. The third thing is is that
demands distract us from what matters most. Martha wasn't necessarily
(26:27):
doing something wrong. She was serving Jesus, the King of
kings and the Lord of lords. But in doing that,
she missed the opportunity to simply just be with Jesus.
That's the danger of demands. Though they don't always show
up as bad things. Many times they're good things that
just slowly crowd out the very best thing. You see,
(26:49):
Martha wanted to feed Jesus. That was her whole desire,
was to make sure that Jesus was fed. But Mary
chose to be fed by Jesus. Martha wanted to Jesus,
and all Mary wanted to do was hear from Jesus.
Martha wanted to serve Jesus, and all Mary wanted to
do was to be with the one who saved her soul.
(27:14):
These demands distract us from what matters most. You and
I can spend hours scrolling on our phone, through social media,
through apps, through websites, and then we'll have the audacity
to say that we don't have time to read our
Bible or time to pray. The reality is we have
all been given the same twenty four hours in a day,
(27:35):
and we get to choose what we do with those
twenty four hours. We'll show up early for work, we'll
show up early to the gym, we'll show up early
to the practice. But then when we tell you that
church starts at ten am Central Standard time, we're nowhere
to be found. What we have to see what it
(27:56):
is that we're prioritizing. Demands don't just cae keep us busy,
they keep us distracted. Jesus said that Mary has chosen
what is better and it will not be taken from her.
Mary's focus was on one thing, the presence of Jesus.
He gave her something that no distraction could ever steal away.
(28:20):
So you may be saying right now, so okay, I
understand that Amberly, I'm distracted by my demands. I clearly
see I have a lot of demands in my life
and I'm fully distracted by them. What do I do?
What's the solution to this? And I want to encourage
you this morning. I want to give you some very
practical solutions on when you feel like the demands are
distracting you from the thing that matters the most, your
(28:41):
relationship with Jesus. What do you do? And I want
to take you to what the Bible says is the
greatest commandment in scripture. If you look at Matthew twenty two,
verses thirty six through thirty nine, it says, this teacher,
which is the greatest commandment in the law. The Pharisees are
asking Jesus this, so Jesus replied to them, love the
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Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your mind. This is the
first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it,
love your neighbor as yourself. So the greatest commandment the
Bible makes it pretty simple. It's to love God, to
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love his people, and to love yourself. Well. If you
are wondering, am I a maturing believer? Am I a
believer who is growing up in Jesus? Ask yourself, how
well do you love? How well do you love God?
How well do you love the people that are not lovable,
the people that are rude, the people that cut you
off on the highway? How well do you love those people?
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And then, last, but certainly not least, how well do
you love yourself? You are a temple of the Holy Spirit.
So how are you taking care of the one and
only body that God is given you. What is it
that you're doing to show your self love? Because you
can't love others if you don't love yourself. Well, but
here's the thing we keep adding on these ethereal bags.
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If you will saying that I have to be married
by the time I turn thirty, I have to have
a house. By the time I turn thirty two, I
have to have X amount in my savings account, or
I'm not worthy enough, I'm not valuable enough. My house,
my apartment has to look Instagram ready so that I
can post it on Instagram at any given time. And
we put these unnecessary demands on ourself. But Mary has
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chosen what is better. Mary sat down her demands and
chose the one thing that she could actually carry, and
that was her devotion to Jesus. So I think about
when you go to an airport. So, for those of
you that may not know, I have spent the last
twenty five years traveling back and forth to Africa. I can't.
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Somebody ask the other day how many times you've been
added Africa, and I think I'm on thirty eight. I
think I've kind of lost count. So thirty eight times
I've been to Africa. So I've been in a lot
of airports. I've been on a lot of airplanes. I've
seen a lot of suitcases. I've seen a lot of
crazy things happen at an airport. One of my favorite
things to do is to watch Oh it's not really
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favorite it's kind of sad. But whenever people check in
their suitcases, it's like they've packed their whole house in
a suitcase and you're only a lot at fifty pounds,
and the kitchen sink is seventy two, so it can't
go with you on the trip, right, So people will
be it's just a panic situation. In an airport, people
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are unzipping, throwing out shoes and dresses and an iron
and it's like, what was you gonna do with that
in Africa in the first place. Like I'm telling you
right now, the last thing you're gonna be worried about
is if your clothes or are ironed or not. And
so people are getting rid of the things that they
can't because they have to consolidate down to what is
manageable and to what can be carried. And when I
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think about the greatest commandment in scripture being to love God,
love people, and love yourself, that's manageable, that's meaningful, that's
life giving. But when you take on all of this,
this is not manageable, this is not meaningful, and it's
certainly not life giving. So what do we have to do.
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We have to decide what we're gonna carry, and we
have to carry what counts. So I think I'm gonna
subtitle this message it's the distractions of demands, but carry
what counts, because if you think about it, whenever somebody
is at the airport and they're having to consolidate all
of their items down, this is essentially what we're gonna do.
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The thing about that's important to understand about demands is
demands are seasonal. Not every demand that you have experienced
in your life right now is necessary. Season There are
some things that are absolutely going to be required of you.
You're gonna have to work in order to pay your bills,
in order to feed your family. Those are I mean,
those are pretty non negotiables. But trying to plan the
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most epic first child's birthday party with all of the
matching decors and having Elsa there to sing let it
Go is not necessary. Having everything look like a Pinterest
mood board is not necessary. You have unnecessarily added things
to your life that Jesus never asked you to. Is
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planning that epic first birthday party gonna make you a
super cool parent? Sure? Are these kids gonna remember it? No?
Absolutely not? And all it's gonna do is stress you
plumb out and cost you a lot of money. And
so these are seasonal. Not everything needs to be with you.
There are certain things that you can take out in,
certain things that you can leave with you. And then
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the beautiful thing about Jesus is he allows us every
day becase because his mercies are new every single morning.
He allows us to come back to him every day
and submit does this need to go with me? Or
does this need to stay? I feel very overwhelmed by this.
Does this go or does this stay? And if we
spend time listening to the one who should really be
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writing the agenda and the plan for the day, then
we'll know what needs to go with us and what
needs to stay. But it's a constant submission to Jesus.
And I think oftentimes what we do, I know I'm
guilty of it is I'm like, I got I got this,
I can do all of the I absolutely got. Then
what happens is someone actually needs me. I'm in Target
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on Aisle seven, buying cluster lashes that don't have to
be glued in, just stuck in. Just learned about those,
by the way, and I see a woman who looks
completely distraught and the spirit of God is tugging on
my spirit so heavy. Aberly, you have what she needs.
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How in the world do I stop doing what I'm
doing and make any space or any margin for that woman.
When I'm like, uh, ma'am, can I pray for you?
Just stretch out your hand, let me pray for you.
It makes it virtually impossible to allow God to use
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you when your hands are this full. So what I
submit to you is we're gonna carry what counts. So
we're gonna pick up the things. We're gonna ask God.
We're gonna take this to the Lord. Lord what goes
with me in this season and what doesn't. Mia definitely
needs to eat, so I'm gonna make sure her lunch
goes with me. And I'm gonna consolidate this down to
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something that's manageable, something that's meaningful, something that's life giving,
so that as I go about my day, I can
be exactly who I need to be for the people
that God has put around me. I can fully love
and worship God. I can fully be attentive to the
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people that are around me that need His love, and
I can fully love myself will and when I think
about the scripture. I want to read to you the
scripture out of Matthew. It's Matthew eleven twenty eight through thirty.
It says, come to me, all you who are weary
and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my
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yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest
for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light. There's a reality. The Bible does say
that there is a burden. It does not say that
the burden is absent, but it promises that the burden
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will be light. So my question to you is, if
the burden feels heavy, what needs to be taken out?
What is it that you need to say no to?
What is it that needs to be removed? What is
it that needs to be reevaluated? Because there's going to
be a burden. It's not absent, it's not gone, it's
not removed. But Jesus says his burden is light. If
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I needed to lift this up and put this in
an overhead compartment, it's light enough to do so it's manageable.
So we need to assess what it is that we're doing.
So how do you carry what counts? First one, put
your phone down? Put your phone down? How do you
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carry what counts? You put the thing that is standing
between the king of kings wanting to speak to his
daughter or his son. Do you understand that Heaven is
speaking to you, but your phone is so much louder.
There are secrets and mysteries and things that he wants
to reveal to you and show you, And you are
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fighting for clarity in the midst of chaos. You are
asking for discernment, and the distractions that you are experiencing
on that phone are completely nulling and avoiding any discernment
that you could possibly have. It is a great thing.
I'm not saying technology is bad, and I'm not saying
you shouldn't have your phones, But I don't understand how
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in our culture our phone has become such an idol
that it would take place of the one who hung
on the cross and bore the sins of the world,
and that that phone could be more important or have
more to say than the one who died to save
our souls. We have to prioritize the presence of God
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when you start your day centered and grounded in the
presence of God. It changes the flow and the function
of the rest of the day. You can't expect direction
from God while entertaining every notification from the world or
from your phone. You see, here's the thing. Silence in
our culture feels like emptiness. If your house is quiet
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and there's nothing happening, it feels empty to you, like
you're maybe wasting time. You're not busy, you're not producing,
you're not doing what you need to do. But in
the Kingdom of God, silence isn't emptiness. It's access. When
you choose to put your phone on, do not disturb.
It's not about shutting people out. It's about being intentional
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with who and what you let in. The same is
true in our spiritual life. Silence isn't isolation, it's intentionality.
It's saying, right now, I am focusing on the one
thing that matters the mo and here's the beauty of this.
God rarely shouts over the noise. He speaks in a whisper,
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but it's whispers that only those that are still can hear.
The second thing is practice focus. You guys know, the
word of the year this year is focused. We're getting
focused in every area of our life, and my encouragement
to all of us is that we have to beget
to a place where we stop multitasking everything that we
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do and do one thing and do it with all
of our hearts. I think about just in a normal day,
if there's a Zoom call or a Zoom meeting, and
it's like, while people are on zoom or in a meeting,
they're scrolling through social media, they're checking their emails, they're
checking their text messages, they're adding something to their Amazon
cart to have it delivered between four am and eight
(40:51):
am tomorrow morning. They're multitasking, and they think that multitasking
is making them more productive. But the problem is, multitasking
doesn't make us more productive. It makes us more distracted,
more drained, and more divided. Even with our families, when
we're sitting around watching a movie together, there's multiple screens,
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people are watching different things. We're all in the same
room together, we're all watching the same thing, and yet
we're all completely divided and not really even spending time together.
We brag about multitasking as if it's a superpower. As
Pastor Bree says, we wear busyness as a badge of honor.
But busyness doesn't equal fruitfulness. It's just a fancy word
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for being really distracted all the time. The third thing
is is you have to protect the priority. So guard
that one bag. Whatever that one bag is, your time
with Jesus, your family, whatever that is. You are to
guard that as if it was a non negotiable. Life
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will always be willing to add more more bags to you,
So you have to guard the one that's important to you.
You have to block off time for it, for your life,
for your health, for your spiritual wealth. Even Pastor Mike
I don't know if you guys follow him on social media,
but just a few days ago he posted something so
powerful about how we have to get our finances in order,
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and if you don't have money, you should be talking
with somebody who has money to teach you how to
use money so that when you get money, you know
what to do with money. You have to block off
time for that. And so work is always going to
have deadlines, friends will always have expectations for you, and
culture is going to continue to pressure you. So when
you protect the priority, when you're protecting the one thing
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that's the most valuable and most important to you, what
does that mean that you're doing It means you're saying
no to the things that need to be said no to,
and you're saying yes to the things that need to
be said yes to. Let your yes be yes, and
let your no be no. And for some of us,
very practically, that means we need to start time blocking.
Maybe for some of you that's that's a cuss word.
(43:00):
Maybe for some of you, you don't know what that means.
But if it for me, if it's not in my calendar,
it doesn't happen. And so I have reached the stage
of life, like I told you at the beginning, where
I schedule intimate fellowship with my husband because I know
that that's important to our marriage and to the health
of our marriage, and so it has become a priority.
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So it goes in my calendar. Working out my gym
appointment that I have every morning, it goes in my
calendar so that it cannot be missed. My quiet time
with God. It is in there every single day. Now
does it happen at the same time every day, Not necessarily,
but it's part of my daily routine. It's a part
of my daily practices. And so if you're not structured
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in time blocking, I would encourage you that's how you
remove some of the distractions is creating a more structured
environment for yourself. It doesn't mean you have to always
live in that structured space, but it may be the
exact ground, it may be the exact foundation that you
need to be successful. So you have to you have
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to set the right priorities. I think about again, going
back to just traveling and being in and out of airports.
Whenever I see people condensing down their suitcases and remember
the iron is not going to Africa with us, or
the seventeen boxes of wreos. There literally was one woman
one time who packed seventeen boxes of oreos and I
was like, Oh, she's really sad. There's not going to
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be American chocolate and when we get to Africa. But
as I see people pulling things out of their bags,
I realized everyone's doing essentially the same thing. They're keeping
in their bag what's most important to them, and they're
pulling out the things that they could they could probably
do without for the next two or three weeks. They
don't necessarily need those items. And that's all I'm saying
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to you this morning is there's a lot of things
that you could keep, there's a lot of things that
you could take. There's a lot of expectations that you
could meet, and a lot of demands that you could fulfill.
But does it all does it all need to go
with you? Is it all meaningful? Does it all all
produce life? Does it give you that joy and zeal
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and passion and fervor for life that God desires you
to live? In the Book of John, says that the
enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus comes
to give life and life in abundance. And so this morning,
if you're experiencing a non abundant life, if you're worried
and overwhelmed and anxious, I want to submit to you
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that it's possible that the demands that are in your
life are not actually demands, but they're decisions, and we
all have a choice. You can choose to cancel Netflix.
I know that's a shocking statement to make, but you
don't have to have Netflix. That is, if that is
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distracting you from spending time with God, or causing you
to stumble in ways you didn't even know you were
going to stell, then I would submit to you. You
don't have to have it. You don't have to be
all things to all people at all times. You don't
have to show up to every birthday party that you're
asked to go to. You don't have to go to
every baby shower. You don't have to go to every event.
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Every text message that you get doesn't need a response.
Every DM that hits your inbox doesn't need a response.
It doesn't make you a bad person. It means you're focusing.
As I was preparing this message, I just realized that
some of the demands that I feel like that are
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demands in my own life are really just decisions that
I've made. And the beautiful thing about God is he
gives us the chance and the opportunity and the choice
to assess. He's so kind and he's so gentle, and
he won't make us do anything that we don't want
to do, but he'll wait tenderly and lovingly for us.
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Because at the end of the day, when I think
about Martha and Mary, Jesus was there no matter what.
He wasn't going anywhere. He was waiting for Martha to
come and stir her little heart up and tell him
how bad her sister was, but he wasn't going anywhere.
And the thing that I love the most about Jesus
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is he handles both personalities at the same time. He
handles Mary sitting there resting in his presence, and he
handles or anxious, frantic Martha at the same time, and
he doesn't yell at her. He says, Martha, Martha, why
are you so worried? Why are you so anxious? I
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know sometimes in the homes that we've grown up in,
that's not maybe the type of parenting style that we
even heard. And as I was just thinking about some
of the demands that we have in our life, like
what is it that makes us feel like we have
to do so much? And if you really think about
your own life, it comes down to, probably more than
likely how you were raised. You either saw parents who
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were workaholics and working there, you know, working till late
hours of the night to provide everything for you, or
you saw parents who weren't and you knew you didn't
want to be like that. So now you've turned this opposite,
You've gone the opposite way. And I remember as a kid,
I cannot count on one hand how many times I
heard the word the sentence I'm proud of you. It
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just wasn't a sentence said in my home. And I'm
convinced it's not because my mom wasn't proud of me.
I think it's because she never had it said to her,
so she didn't know how to say it to me.
And so those words I'm proud of you never ever
echoed in my childhood, and I'll never forget as an adult,
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I got my degree, got into the workforce, and I
may be heard like good job, old buddy, old palell
a couple of times, but I never really heard that
I'm really proud of you. So when I entered into
my real estate career full time, I'll never forget. The
first year that I was in real estate, I sold
over ten million dollars with a real estate, which in
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Oklahoma is a really big deal because we sell like
houses for little money compared to like Florida and California
and TC Nation. I just had to give you some perspective.
And I remember my broker called me and he was like, man, Amberly,
I'm really proud of you. And you know what that
did to me Instead of it making me feel all
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ugly googly on the inside and warm and fuzzy. I
was like, Oh, that was the affirmation I've been looking
for my whole life. I will always produce at this level.
I will always work to the bone. I will always work,
and I will always sell, and I will never stop,
and I will never give up. And you will not
find me sitting down. And anyone who sits down is lazy.
And if they're not working forty plus hours a week,
(50:00):
sixty plus hours week, thing, you're lazy and you're not
using the gift that God has given you. And this
ugly thing grew in my heart because I'd finally received
the affirmation that I needed and it came from what
I produced. And so I realized, in submitting even this
sermon to God that the demands that I've placed on
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myself are coming from a little six year old Amberley
who just wanted someone to say, Man, I'm proud of you.
And so this wasn't a part of my message, but
I want to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. And
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there are people in this room that never heard I'm
proud of you either. You say, you can absolutely relate
to that. In fact, you heard phrases maybe more like
you're worthless, You will never measure to anything. And I
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just am here to tell you you are worthy, You
are valuable. You are seen by a God who loves
you endlessly, and you don't have to produce, You don't
have to perform, you don't have to do backflips. You
get to just simply be with him. And he loves
you just because of Goog. You are because you are
(51:26):
his child. And so this morning, my invitation to you
is simple. I'm gonna have everyone stand in the room.
What I have found is that the loudest demands in
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our life rarely matched the deepest needs of our soul.
So I'm gonna ask you, is it what bag is
that you need to set down? What bags is it
that you need to leave behind so you can really
focus on the thing that matters most. I have no
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doubt in my mind that in a room this size,
and with people watching from all over the world, that
there are people that are just tired. You're weary, you're overwhelmed,
you're anxious. Your life looks like all of those bags.
And today he says, come come to me, all you
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who are weary and heavy burden, and I will give
you rest. And so this morning. That's my simple invitation
to you. The worship team's gonna come, they're gonna play,
they're going to sing, and we've got the altar team
that's going to be down front. They're going to make
their way down now even and we've got people who
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want to partner in prayer with you. It really is
your choice, it really is your decision. And so, Father God,
we just come to you right now with hands lifted,
with hearts surrendered, saying, Holy Spirit, would you just reveal
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the parts of our heart and the reparts of our
life that don't need to be there? God, Maybe the
demands that we've been distracted by, maybe the excessive baggage
that we've been carrying, maybe the things that just feel
so heavy, so anxiety ridden, so worrisome, and God, would
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you give us the strength and the power to surrender
that to you this morning. God, God, your word is
so clear that your yoke is easy and your burden
is light. So Holy Spirit, we pray that you would
do a work that only you can do for some
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of you that are in the room today. The very
real reality is that the Jesus that we've talked about,
that even that Mary and Martha, were trying to host
and hear from, and feed and be fed from. You
don't have a relationship with that Jesus. And so we
want to give you that opportunity this morning to make
Jesus the lord of your life. If you've never asked
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Jesus to come into your life and to be the lord,
I want to explain what that briefly means. I think
about it. When you're renting a property, there's a landlord,
and that landlord essentially gets to make all of the
decisions concerning the property, and you run everything through that landlord.
You don't paint a wall unless you talk to the landlord.
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You don't move a wall unless you talk to the landlord.
And the same is true. And we make Jesus the
lord of our lives. We run everything through him. We
ask him for wisdom and direction and discernment and understanding
and knowledge. And so if you have been in this
where you've been trying to do this on your own,
and you've never fully surrendered to Jesus, we want to
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give you the opportunity this morning to make Jesus the
lord of your life. This morning, you're surrounded in a
church full of amazing people who love you and who
are going to walk this out with you. And so
if that's you this morning, I'm just going to ask
everyone in this room to pray this prayer after me,
and I want us to just say, Dear God, I
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admit that I've made mistakes. I admit that I need
a savior. I asked that you would change my heart.
I asked that you would change my motives. I believe
you lived, I believe you died, and I believe you
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rose again just for me. Will you change me, renew me,
and transform me. I am yours in Jesus' name. A
men and amen listen. If you have made that decision
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this morning, you have made the absolute greatest decision that
you could ever make in your life. I want you
to do me a favor. If you've made that decision,
will you just raise your hand. We just want to
get you some information. I see people up in the
back corner. Can we celebrate the people? I see you
over there, I see that hand over there. We thank
God for you and for your life. And if you
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have made that decision, maybe you didn't feel comfortable raising
your hand, do us a favor and text the word
saved to A two A two A two. We just
want to connect you with some resources and help you
walk this out. We do not want you to do
this alone. The altar is going to stay open, the
worship team is going to continue to pray or to
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sing for us, and we just want to invite you
to come. This space is open for you and he's
longing to meet you. So until next week, go out
and live a transformed life
Welcome to Transformation Church Podcast, where we represent God to
the lost and found for transformation in Christ. We're so
glad you're here and wherever you're listening from, we believe
God will transform your life.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Do today's message, you guys know, we're in a series
called do Not Disturb, and last week y'all got to
hear from your very own.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Youth pastor, Pastor Tie and he has his own cheering
squad sitting directly in this direction if anybody was wondering
where the youth sit. But he did a phenomenal job
of setting us up and just kind of talking through
focusing and what the different distractions are and what it
is that we have to lock in and focus in on.
(00:45):
And so this has been an incredible series. Pastor brestarted
us and today I am so excited to be able
to share just with you what I feel like God
has shared with me. And when we were kind of
prepping the work for this sermon series, we were taught
fucking just We've had lots of meetings about this sermon
series and I remember Pastor Bree she was like, Okay,
so this is what we're gonna do, and this is
(01:06):
what we're gonna talk about and we were all kind
of going back and forth with our ideas, and she said,
just think about what distracts you. Amberly like, what is
it that really distracts you? And I just sat there
for a moment and I was like, I'm distracted by
my distractions. And she was like okay, And so I
was like, do I call the sermon distracted by distractions?
(01:27):
And so I really like went back to the Lord
and I was like, I meant that in my heart
of hearts, I'm meant I'm distracted by my distractions. But
I really had to figure out what is it that
I feel like really distracts me and gets me out
of alignment of the will of God in my life?
And what is it that takes my focus off of God?
And so I'm excited to be able to share with
(01:48):
you what I believe that is something that's kind of
happening to a lot of us in this season of life.
We live in a very fast paced culture, a very
busy world, lots of things going on at any given time,
of things coming at us. We live in one of
the greatest times of society where information overload is we
can look up and chat GBT and google anything within
(02:10):
seconds and have an answer to our question within point
zero zero two seconds. And so my question for all
of us this morning is does anyone in the room
feel like they are pulled in ten different directions? Am
I talking to anybody in the room feeling like you
have been pulled in ten different directions? With all of
the responsibilities, all of the expectations, all of the requirements.
(02:34):
And what I've realized is that we live in a
very demand driven culture, one demand after another coming from
every angle. It's just a demand after a demand after
a demand. And I've realized that we are a culture
and a people that are constantly distracted by our demands.
So I'm going to title the message today the Distraction
(02:56):
of Demands, because I believe that God wants us to
understand how crucial it is that we lock in and focus,
but what it is, and how the demands of this
life cause us to be distracted and keep us off
of the course, away from what it is that God
is calling us to do. So I want to just
if I can. We are a hot church which is humble,
(03:19):
open and transparent, and so I want to I can
I just be vulnerable with you guys. This morning, am
I in a safe space to be vulnerable. I want
to kind of walk you through what I have been
battling as some of the demands that I feel like
are pulling on me and pulling for my attention constantly.
And my hope in my prayer is that maybe you'll
(03:39):
see yourself in some of these examples, or maybe you
will realize, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize that
was something that was vying for my attention, and I
thought it was harmless, and it's actually turned out to
be something more dangerous than I realized. And so I
want to start this morning by just kind of talking
you through some of the demands that I feel like
(03:59):
pull me in those ten different directions that I was
talking about. The first one that I want to talk
about is relationships. I feel like there's a constant demand
to have our relationships all together. And as you can see,
this is my incredibly fine husband, Will. He's so fine,
Thanks babe, And I got this. You're good. Yeah, I
(04:22):
got this on my own. And I love my husband
and I love being married to my husband. But he's
kind of needy and he's constantly wanting things for me
that I may or may not want to give him.
Do the married folks know what I'm talking about? Okay?
Can I talk to the right people in the room.
(04:43):
And what I've learned is at the ripe ole age
of forty four, there are certain things in my body
that are working against me that make me not want
to desire maybe the things that I I freshly wanted
in my twenties. Can any woman in the room relate
(05:04):
right now? And so there's constant demands for my husband
of making sure that his needs are met, making sure
that our marriage is priority, making sure that I am
locked in knowing what it is that he needs, praying
for him, helping him, being his helpmate. And on top
of that, I've got friends ships that I'm trying to maintain,
(05:25):
and I've got friends that want to get together for
dinner days, and I've got friends that want to call
and run an idea by me and I just need
you for two minutes that turns into thirty two minutes,
and if you could just help me figure out this
one thing that I need to figure out. And so
it's constant demands from relationships. It's even just even some
(05:45):
of my coworkers are pulling on me, not from not
even necessarily from a work standpoint, but just they're just
they're relationships that I desire and I want to have,
but the demand to always be everything that they need
to be at all times become so exhausting. And I
love my husband and I love my friends, and yet
(06:06):
it feels like I'm carrying around this demand that feels
a little bit more than I can handle on my own.
So we've got my relationships that I'm thinking through, and
then it's like, oh, on top of that, because I
am forty four, I have to keep my health in check. Right.
So your pastor aka my pastor, about three years ago
(06:27):
he decided to get physically fit. Y'all. Remember when Pastor
Mike was fat and then he got skinny, y'all? Remember
when Will Heckaback was fat and he got skinny. I
love you. He really is one of my close friends.
H It was this awkward moment where we were in
meetings and Pastor Mike was eating meal prep, and all
(06:49):
of a sudden, my raising canes started looking really suspicious
next to his meal prep or my Chick fil A
or my Taco Blaine. I mean whatever it is that
I wanted to eat. He would be sitting next to
me in a meeting just eating chicken and rice and broccoli,
and I was like, that's crazy. And I remember he
(07:11):
began a movement. You guys, remember when he got healthy.
It kind of came to the point where we didn't
have a choice as a staff. We were either gonna
be the unhealthy ones or we was gonna get healthy.
And I decided I wasn't gonna do I wasn't gonna
let him continue to eat meal prep and me continue
to chomp down on my pepperoni pizza that I take
the pepperonis off of because I like the way the
pepperoni flavors the bread, but I don't actually want the
(07:32):
pepperoni on my pizza. Okay, So now I've got to
get my health in check. But then, all of a sudden,
as you begin to age and grow up gracefully and beautifully,
your hormones all of a sudden decide to wreak havoc
on your body and nothing is what it used to be.
And so now you're going to doctor appointment after doctor
(07:54):
appointments trying to figure out what's going on with your hormones.
So I'm just trying to eat right. My husband doesn't
eat chicken. I mean, he doesn't eat chicken. He only
eats beef. But I only eat chicken. I don't eat beef.
So then I have to meal prep only chicken for
me and only beef for him. And then Mia, bless
her little heart. Wouldn't you know that one week she
likes strawberries and the next week she does it. So
(08:15):
I've gotten a costco bought all the strawberries only to
find out what she don't like strawberries no more. So
it's a constant battle. Can I drink four hundred ounces
of water today? Can I eat two thousand grams of
protein today? Can I take? Does anybody understand what that
demand feels like on you when you're trying to be
(08:35):
healthy and keep your body in alignment, and you know
you're the temple of the Holy Ghost and he dwells
inside of you. But the pressure to keep all of
that in alignment is a lot, right, So then we've
got those blessings of children, right. And I love my daughter,
y'all know, I love me some, Mia bell I love
(08:57):
me some Mia Belle. But what I tell you this
kid comes with demands all of her own. First, she
got soccer practice. Okay, let me get you to soccer
practice three times a week. Oh. And then also you
want me to take you to that private lesson for
that coach to teach you the extra skills.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Oh, volleyball. Oh, we're gonna go to volleyball twice a week. Okay.
But then you also want to start serving better, so
I'm gonna put you in private lessons to start serving better. Okay. Cool.
Oh and now they're teaching calculus in eighth grade. Great,
let me figure out through Chad Gubt how to do
that again. Oh, and you still want to eat your lunch? Ah,
thank you Jesus. Okay. As you can see, the demands
(09:39):
are piling up. Not only that, but now she's a
pre tea or not a preteen, she's a teenage girl,
my bad, and she has teenage girls problems. And now
I'm trying to counsel her through all of the teenage
girl drama that's going on at school and remind her
to say kind things but then also punch them in
the throat if they need to be punched. You know,
I'm just it's just it's balance, you know, it's like
(10:05):
lay your hands on them and pray for them and
then go ahead and just take them out if you
need to. But so your children are pulling at you
depending on the age and stays that your kids are in,
and they've got demands. At are point, do you see
the demands piling up? Well, then you got to have
a job because you got to pay your bills, right,
So then you've got your career. And I decided let
(10:25):
me bring my real boss, my real life boss, up
to the stage. She said, don't talk crazy about me.
And I don't know if y'all have ever read an
email from Pastor Bree Davis, but per her emails, she
(10:47):
has some things she needs us to know as some
expectations that she wants us to follow through on. On
top of that, I also have a part time job
outside of my full time job, and I would like
to do the work that God has called me to
do outside of this country and go to the work
and do the work in Africa. So there's also a
nonprofit that I'm trying to keep up with. So all
(11:07):
of it is fighting for my attention, one demand after another.
Then it's my spiritual life, which I want to serve God.
I want to hear God's voice. I know I need
to be praying. I know I need to be fasting.
I know I need to be mentoring. I know I
need to be mentored. I know I need to go
(11:27):
to therapy because yeah, there's that, and uh there's I
gotta have a sabbath because that's you know, it's important
to rest, and how do you rest when you're carrying
all of this? And then it's like, I know I
need to fast, I know I need to pray. I
know I need to lock into what God is doing,
(11:49):
and so I've got to show up to church. And
then I also want to be a part of a
serve team because you guys put a really cool graphic
up that made it look like I wanted to serve
and I want to be in community. I don't want
to live life, so I'm gonna get into a tribe.
And it's again just one demand after another. But then
what about when life starts lifing? Because then there's still
(12:11):
bills to pay, there's still car problems. You know, the
light goes on in your engine and you've got to oh, okay,
and then thank you so much and then it's you know,
the dishwasher breaks and you have to have a new dishwasher.
And then it's you've got to make sure that the
yard gets mode and wet and weed eat it, because
(12:32):
if you live in a subdivision with an HOA, you
will be getting a nasty letter from the president of
the HOA. And so there's all these things that are
fighting for your attention, pulling at you and dividing you
in different directions. And then let's not forget finances, because
you do have to pay your bills. You do have
to give to Caesar what is due to Caesar. The
(12:54):
taxman does in fact want his money every April. Oh okay,
and so I need to keep those in order. And
remember I'm not getting any younger. So they say I
need to start saving for retirement and have seven to
one k's and thirteen two twenties to send my kids
(13:14):
adequately to college, and whoa, this is a lot. And
then culture is coming at me telling me I have
to be a certain way, look a certain way, do
a certain thing, live a certain way, post a certain way,
don't post that, post this, do this, don't do that,
(13:34):
And it's just honestly too much. And then last, but
not least, is the emotional demands. How do you keep
your mental health stable? How do you not fall into
anxiety or depression or worry or grief or worry about Oh,
it's honestly just too much. And if I could submit
(13:59):
to you, this is what life is like for all
of us. Someone or something is handing us one bag
after another, bag after another bag, and it's causing us
to be continually and perpetually distracted. And distractions aren't necessarily
(14:21):
always a bad thing. It's only bad when they pulled
away our attention, our focus, and our devotion to God.
And we weren't the only ones that have been distracted.
If you will, will you turn with me in your
Bibles to Luke chapter ten. I want to read to
you about a woman who is distracted. Luke Chapter ten,
(14:46):
verses thirty eight through forty two is what we're going
to read. And it says this. 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
(15:10):
distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.
She came to him and asked, Lord, do you not
care that my sister has left me to do the
work all by myself. Tell her to help me Martha. Martha,
the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things,
(15:32):
but few things are needed or indeed, only one. Mary
has chosen what is better and it will not be
taken from her. So the truth is, we're all carrying
too many bags. Like Martha, were distracted, We're anxious, were
overwhelmed by everything and everyone that's asking from us or
(15:54):
taking something from us. I want to think about this
for a minute. So, men in the room, you are
there's the constant distraction and demand on you to be
the provider of your home, to be able to be
the one to fix anything that goes wrong, to fix
the problems, whether it be the dishwasher or the kids
that are acting crazy. You're the one that's called on
to fix everything. Ladies, we're the ones that are asked
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to kind of hold everything together, if you will. And
then we've got married people who are trying to meet
the needs of their spouse that they may have and
on top of that, trying to build their own personal
identity and keep themselves together. And then at the same
time they're arguing about who's responsible for trash on Tuesday
night for the Wednesday night pickup singles. You're out here
(16:39):
trying to do everything on your own. When something breaks,
it's up to you or Chad GBT or Google to
figure out how to fix it. Kids, you're worried about
your homework and your sports, and your classes and your
friends and your teachers. And teenagers you're worried about what
you're going to do and be for the rest of
your life. And our culture asks you at the age
(17:03):
of eighteen to have everything figured out and know exactly
what it is that you want to do for the
rest of your life until you retire at sixty five.
And then for my young adults, you've got bills to
pay and everyone's asking you when are you settling down,
When are you gonna get married? Then you get married,
(17:25):
When are you gonna have a kid? Then you have
a kid. When are you gonna have another kid? Then
you have another kid. When are you gonna have another kid?
Or when are you gonna stop having kids? It's this
constant pool and then for my retired season Saints, you
thought your life was free and you were done. But
now you're raising the grandkids you never planned to raise.
And now you're worrying about the new demands that are
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on your body because your body is aging and changing
and there's physical limitations that you didn't experience in the
previous season of life. So there is the distraction of
demands takes a toll on it. So this morning, I
want to talk about the three problems with demands. There
are three problems with demands. Number one, demands divide our attention.
(18:12):
If you look up the Greek word of the word distraction,
it literally means to be pulled apart in different directions.
When you are pulled in ten different directions, it is
impossible to give one hundred percent of yourself in any
one direction. And I think sometimes when we read the Bible,
we read it as if it's written in modern day culture.
(18:32):
And so when we read the story of Mary and Martha,
it's easy to think that Martha was just busy picking
up the kitchen, cleaning the kitchen, getting the lemonade and
the glass jar, you know those glass jars, and have
a little spickett thing on them support the glass elimonade.
But we really have to go back into Bible context
and look at what a first Jewish century history look
(18:54):
like to understand what it was that Martha was actually doing.
If you think about this from a Bible perspective, Martha
there was no pre made checuterie board. Martha had to
go gather the grains and the figs and the greenery
that we put on our secuterary board to make the
said schecutery board. When she prepared chicken, it she didn't
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just go to Costco and get chicken out of the
freezer and bring it home. The chicken had to be
chased down and caught, slaughtered, killed, feathers plucked out of it,
and prepared. In order to even be able to have
the chicken, she had to prepare the grain. It had
to be the flour that was made for the bread.
The grain had to be pressed, and so there was
(19:35):
all of these preparations. So you can see Martha's frustrations
when Mary was doing nothing and Martha was doing everything
to get ready to feed Jesus, and she's frustrated when
she comes to Jesus and she says, why is she
not helping tell her to help me. The demands of
her preparations kept her from being focused on what was
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really important. It divided her attention from the one who
is in the room. If you think about it, when
our attention is divided, our devotion becomes diluted. If you
think about your own time with God when you set
you know, when you set that alarm and you're like,
I'm gonna get up extra early, and I'm going to
spend some time in the world, and I'm gonna really
(20:18):
pray today, and I'm really going to read the scripture.
And don't you know, the minute that you open up
your Bible, there's a The first thing out is either
a ding on your phone or it's one of the
kids calling for you from another room. Every time we
set our hearts to focus on the things of God,
there will always be demands that will be pulling at us,
that will be fighting for our attention. And if we
(20:40):
let our attention be divided like that, our devotion will
become diluted. The second problem with demands is that they
disturb our spirit. Jesus said, Martha, you are worried and
upset about many things, And again that Greek word worry
just means this sh she was divided in her mind,
(21:01):
And the Book of Jane says that a double minded
man is unstable in all of his ways. So when
we are worried and anxious and overcome with those things,
we are unstable. We're not able to make clear decisions.
It's the inner restlessness that comes from trying to keep
everyone happy and meeting every expectation, checking off every single box,
(21:24):
or even the way that we look on the outside
is staying busy keeps us falling apart. The overload of
demands produces inner unrest. I think about just the time
demands that we have on our life. The clock is
always ticking. There's meetings, deadlines, practices, appointments. There's never enough time.
(21:44):
But the problem with that is when everything feels urgent,
nothing feels peaceful. For moms and dads, there's the demanding
of parenting your kids and staying up late and having
the conversations with them the early morning's offs at school.
Parenting is a blessing, but it's also such a taxing
(22:04):
toll on you sometimes though. The hardest demands that we face, though,
are the ones that we self inflict. We lay down
at night. We're exhausted. We've had a full day, and
everything our mind won't shut off because everything's replaying the
to do list, the things we need to check off,
the things we didn't accomplish, the things that have to
(22:24):
move on to tomorrow. We're present with people even during
the day, but not actually there. They're talking to us,
and we're not even actually hearing what they're saying because
we're so distracted. And then I don't know about you,
but sometimes I find myself at night scrolling through my phone,
just trying to decompress from the day, and I've got
this bright light shining in my face, and I'm trying
(22:46):
to go to sleep at night, wondering why I can't
fall asleep at night when I've just had the sun
of God shining in my face. We're distracted, and our
spirits become so disturbed that we become so so irritable
and so unkind to people. And it happens oftentimes to
the people that we love the most. And I was
(23:10):
traveling a couple of years ago. I remember I was
traveling with a certain lady and we were getting ready
to catch a flight, and she had about four bags.
She had a fanny pack, she had a pillow, she
had a blanket, and she had her stuffed animal. And
I remember thinking to myself, there is no way that
Southwest Airlines is going to let her onto the airplane
(23:33):
with all of those bags. So I politely went up
to her and I was like, ma'am, I just you know,
just so you're aware, Southwest does have like a two
bag policy, and there's ten that I'm counting, so you'll
want to, you know, just do a little condensing. And
she's like, well, I can't condense these bags. My pillow's
not gonna fit in my suitcase. My blanket's not gonna
fit in my suitcase. And so she said, I'm just
(23:54):
gonna wing it. And I was like, I'm gonna tell
you right now, Southwest doesn't play around, and they will
hold up the whole line for you and make you
look like a plum fool if you don't have your
bags solid, consolidated. Right she said, oh, it'll be fine.
So sure enough, we get to line up and she's
standing about four people in front of me, and she's
got eighteen bags wrapped around her. And the gay agent
(24:16):
stopped the entire line and got on the you know,
the little walky thing, and said, I need everyone to
consolidate all of their personal belongings into two bags. Those
crossbody bags, those things wrapped around, those blankets, those pillows,
those all now have to be wrapped up and put
into your suitcase. And he was literally talking to her,
but made an announcement to the entire airport of people
(24:36):
that were standing there waiting to board the flight. So
she panics, like anyone would do in that moment, and
she tried to stuff what she had extra with her
into the bags that she brought with her, but there
was zero room in those bags. So then she started saying, hey,
she was passing down her pillow that had drool on
it from the night before to the four people behind
(24:57):
her and her blanky down at someone who did have two,
say suitcases, was having to take on a second suitcase.
And I realized in that moment, people were having to
carry a burden they didn't show up to carry because
she didn't prepare well. And I just wonder how many
of us, because we do not have our spirits in check,
(25:20):
because we are so distracted by the demands that life
has put on us, that we are showing up to
the people that we love the most, our spouses, our family,
our friends, and we're expecting them to take the leftover
baggage that we didn't prepare how to handle properly. And
then we have the nerves. When I tell you she
was mad at that gay agent, I mean, she was
(25:42):
anger ree with that gay agent. And I thought to myself,
that poor woman was just man was just doing his job,
but she was so frustrated. And I just think to myself,
when our spirits get so disturbed like that, we become
people that we don't want to become. We say things
that we don't want to say, we do things that
we don't want to do, and it's because we've been
(26:04):
distracted by our demands and our spirits are disturbed. The
truth is, the overload doesn't just exhaust your body, it
wears down your soul. The third thing is is that
demands distract us from what matters most. Martha wasn't necessarily
(26:27):
doing something wrong. She was serving Jesus, the King of
kings and the Lord of lords. But in doing that,
she missed the opportunity to simply just be with Jesus.
That's the danger of demands. Though they don't always show
up as bad things. Many times they're good things that
just slowly crowd out the very best thing. You see,
(26:49):
Martha wanted to feed Jesus. That was her whole desire,
was to make sure that Jesus was fed. But Mary
chose to be fed by Jesus. Martha wanted to Jesus,
and all Mary wanted to do was hear from Jesus.
Martha wanted to serve Jesus, and all Mary wanted to
do was to be with the one who saved her soul.
(27:14):
These demands distract us from what matters most. You and
I can spend hours scrolling on our phone, through social media,
through apps, through websites, and then we'll have the audacity
to say that we don't have time to read our
Bible or time to pray. The reality is we have
all been given the same twenty four hours in a day,
(27:35):
and we get to choose what we do with those
twenty four hours. We'll show up early for work, we'll
show up early to the gym, we'll show up early
to the practice. But then when we tell you that
church starts at ten am Central Standard time, we're nowhere
to be found. What we have to see what it
(27:56):
is that we're prioritizing. Demands don't just cae keep us busy,
they keep us distracted. Jesus said that Mary has chosen
what is better and it will not be taken from her.
Mary's focus was on one thing, the presence of Jesus.
He gave her something that no distraction could ever steal away.
(28:20):
So you may be saying right now, so okay, I
understand that Amberly, I'm distracted by my demands. I clearly
see I have a lot of demands in my life
and I'm fully distracted by them. What do I do?
What's the solution to this? And I want to encourage
you this morning. I want to give you some very
practical solutions on when you feel like the demands are
distracting you from the thing that matters the most, your
(28:41):
relationship with Jesus. What do you do? And I want
to take you to what the Bible says is the
greatest commandment in scripture. If you look at Matthew twenty two,
verses thirty six through thirty nine, it says, this teacher,
which is the greatest commandment in the law. The Pharisees are
asking Jesus this, so Jesus replied to them, love the
(29:05):
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your mind. This is the
first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it,
love your neighbor as yourself. So the greatest commandment the
Bible makes it pretty simple. It's to love God, to
(29:26):
love his people, and to love yourself. Well. If you
are wondering, am I a maturing believer? Am I a
believer who is growing up in Jesus? Ask yourself, how
well do you love? How well do you love God?
How well do you love the people that are not lovable,
the people that are rude, the people that cut you
off on the highway? How well do you love those people?
(29:49):
And then, last, but certainly not least, how well do
you love yourself? You are a temple of the Holy Spirit.
So how are you taking care of the one and
only body that God is given you. What is it
that you're doing to show your self love? Because you
can't love others if you don't love yourself. Well, but
here's the thing we keep adding on these ethereal bags.
(30:12):
If you will saying that I have to be married
by the time I turn thirty, I have to have
a house. By the time I turn thirty two, I
have to have X amount in my savings account, or
I'm not worthy enough, I'm not valuable enough. My house,
my apartment has to look Instagram ready so that I
can post it on Instagram at any given time. And
we put these unnecessary demands on ourself. But Mary has
(30:37):
chosen what is better. Mary sat down her demands and
chose the one thing that she could actually carry, and
that was her devotion to Jesus. So I think about
when you go to an airport. So, for those of
you that may not know, I have spent the last
twenty five years traveling back and forth to Africa. I can't.
(30:58):
Somebody ask the other day how many times you've been
added Africa, and I think I'm on thirty eight. I
think I've kind of lost count. So thirty eight times
I've been to Africa. So I've been in a lot
of airports. I've been on a lot of airplanes. I've
seen a lot of suitcases. I've seen a lot of
crazy things happen at an airport. One of my favorite
things to do is to watch Oh it's not really
(31:19):
favorite it's kind of sad. But whenever people check in
their suitcases, it's like they've packed their whole house in
a suitcase and you're only a lot at fifty pounds,
and the kitchen sink is seventy two, so it can't
go with you on the trip, right, So people will
be it's just a panic situation. In an airport, people
(31:39):
are unzipping, throwing out shoes and dresses and an iron
and it's like, what was you gonna do with that
in Africa in the first place. Like I'm telling you
right now, the last thing you're gonna be worried about
is if your clothes or are ironed or not. And
so people are getting rid of the things that they
can't because they have to consolidate down to what is
manageable and to what can be carried. And when I
(32:01):
think about the greatest commandment in scripture being to love God,
love people, and love yourself, that's manageable, that's meaningful, that's
life giving. But when you take on all of this,
this is not manageable, this is not meaningful, and it's
certainly not life giving. So what do we have to do.
(32:22):
We have to decide what we're gonna carry, and we
have to carry what counts. So I think I'm gonna
subtitle this message it's the distractions of demands, but carry
what counts, because if you think about it, whenever somebody
is at the airport and they're having to consolidate all
of their items down, this is essentially what we're gonna do.
(32:49):
The thing about that's important to understand about demands is
demands are seasonal. Not every demand that you have experienced
in your life right now is necessary. Season There are
some things that are absolutely going to be required of you.
You're gonna have to work in order to pay your bills,
in order to feed your family. Those are I mean,
those are pretty non negotiables. But trying to plan the
(33:12):
most epic first child's birthday party with all of the
matching decors and having Elsa there to sing let it
Go is not necessary. Having everything look like a Pinterest
mood board is not necessary. You have unnecessarily added things
to your life that Jesus never asked you to. Is
(33:35):
planning that epic first birthday party gonna make you a
super cool parent? Sure? Are these kids gonna remember it? No?
Absolutely not? And all it's gonna do is stress you
plumb out and cost you a lot of money. And
so these are seasonal. Not everything needs to be with you.
There are certain things that you can take out in,
certain things that you can leave with you. And then
(33:57):
the beautiful thing about Jesus is he allows us every
day becase because his mercies are new every single morning.
He allows us to come back to him every day
and submit does this need to go with me? Or
does this need to stay? I feel very overwhelmed by this.
Does this go or does this stay? And if we
spend time listening to the one who should really be
(34:18):
writing the agenda and the plan for the day, then
we'll know what needs to go with us and what
needs to stay. But it's a constant submission to Jesus.
And I think oftentimes what we do, I know I'm
guilty of it is I'm like, I got I got this,
I can do all of the I absolutely got. Then
what happens is someone actually needs me. I'm in Target
(34:42):
on Aisle seven, buying cluster lashes that don't have to
be glued in, just stuck in. Just learned about those,
by the way, and I see a woman who looks
completely distraught and the spirit of God is tugging on
my spirit so heavy. Aberly, you have what she needs.
(35:03):
How in the world do I stop doing what I'm
doing and make any space or any margin for that woman.
When I'm like, uh, ma'am, can I pray for you?
Just stretch out your hand, let me pray for you.
It makes it virtually impossible to allow God to use
(35:27):
you when your hands are this full. So what I
submit to you is we're gonna carry what counts. So
we're gonna pick up the things. We're gonna ask God.
We're gonna take this to the Lord. Lord what goes
with me in this season and what doesn't. Mia definitely
needs to eat, so I'm gonna make sure her lunch
goes with me. And I'm gonna consolidate this down to
(35:50):
something that's manageable, something that's meaningful, something that's life giving,
so that as I go about my day, I can
be exactly who I need to be for the people
that God has put around me. I can fully love
and worship God. I can fully be attentive to the
(36:13):
people that are around me that need His love, and
I can fully love myself will and when I think
about the scripture. I want to read to you the
scripture out of Matthew. It's Matthew eleven twenty eight through thirty.
It says, come to me, all you who are weary
and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my
(36:35):
yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest
for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light. There's a reality. The Bible does say
that there is a burden. It does not say that
the burden is absent, but it promises that the burden
(36:58):
will be light. So my question to you is, if
the burden feels heavy, what needs to be taken out?
What is it that you need to say no to?
What is it that needs to be removed? What is
it that needs to be reevaluated? Because there's going to
be a burden. It's not absent, it's not gone, it's
not removed. But Jesus says his burden is light. If
(37:22):
I needed to lift this up and put this in
an overhead compartment, it's light enough to do so it's manageable.
So we need to assess what it is that we're doing.
So how do you carry what counts? First one, put
your phone down? Put your phone down? How do you
(37:52):
carry what counts? You put the thing that is standing
between the king of kings wanting to speak to his
daughter or his son. Do you understand that Heaven is
speaking to you, but your phone is so much louder.
There are secrets and mysteries and things that he wants
to reveal to you and show you, And you are
(38:15):
fighting for clarity in the midst of chaos. You are
asking for discernment, and the distractions that you are experiencing
on that phone are completely nulling and avoiding any discernment
that you could possibly have. It is a great thing.
I'm not saying technology is bad, and I'm not saying
you shouldn't have your phones, But I don't understand how
(38:37):
in our culture our phone has become such an idol
that it would take place of the one who hung
on the cross and bore the sins of the world,
and that that phone could be more important or have
more to say than the one who died to save
our souls. We have to prioritize the presence of God
(39:00):
when you start your day centered and grounded in the
presence of God. It changes the flow and the function
of the rest of the day. You can't expect direction
from God while entertaining every notification from the world or
from your phone. You see, here's the thing. Silence in
our culture feels like emptiness. If your house is quiet
(39:23):
and there's nothing happening, it feels empty to you, like
you're maybe wasting time. You're not busy, you're not producing,
you're not doing what you need to do. But in
the Kingdom of God, silence isn't emptiness. It's access. When
you choose to put your phone on, do not disturb.
It's not about shutting people out. It's about being intentional
(39:46):
with who and what you let in. The same is
true in our spiritual life. Silence isn't isolation, it's intentionality.
It's saying, right now, I am focusing on the one
thing that matters the mo and here's the beauty of this.
God rarely shouts over the noise. He speaks in a whisper,
(40:09):
but it's whispers that only those that are still can hear.
The second thing is practice focus. You guys know, the
word of the year this year is focused. We're getting
focused in every area of our life, and my encouragement
to all of us is that we have to beget
to a place where we stop multitasking everything that we
(40:30):
do and do one thing and do it with all
of our hearts. I think about just in a normal day,
if there's a Zoom call or a Zoom meeting, and
it's like, while people are on zoom or in a meeting,
they're scrolling through social media, they're checking their emails, they're
checking their text messages, they're adding something to their Amazon
cart to have it delivered between four am and eight
(40:51):
am tomorrow morning. They're multitasking, and they think that multitasking
is making them more productive. But the problem is, multitasking
doesn't make us more productive. It makes us more distracted,
more drained, and more divided. Even with our families, when
we're sitting around watching a movie together, there's multiple screens,
(41:12):
people are watching different things. We're all in the same
room together, we're all watching the same thing, and yet
we're all completely divided and not really even spending time together.
We brag about multitasking as if it's a superpower. As
Pastor Bree says, we wear busyness as a badge of honor.
But busyness doesn't equal fruitfulness. It's just a fancy word
(41:36):
for being really distracted all the time. The third thing
is is you have to protect the priority. So guard
that one bag. Whatever that one bag is, your time
with Jesus, your family, whatever that is. You are to
guard that as if it was a non negotiable. Life
(41:58):
will always be willing to add more more bags to you,
So you have to guard the one that's important to you.
You have to block off time for it, for your life,
for your health, for your spiritual wealth. Even Pastor Mike
I don't know if you guys follow him on social media,
but just a few days ago he posted something so
powerful about how we have to get our finances in order,
(42:18):
and if you don't have money, you should be talking
with somebody who has money to teach you how to
use money so that when you get money, you know
what to do with money. You have to block off
time for that. And so work is always going to
have deadlines, friends will always have expectations for you, and
culture is going to continue to pressure you. So when
you protect the priority, when you're protecting the one thing
(42:39):
that's the most valuable and most important to you, what
does that mean that you're doing It means you're saying
no to the things that need to be said no to,
and you're saying yes to the things that need to
be said yes to. Let your yes be yes, and
let your no be no. And for some of us,
very practically, that means we need to start time blocking.
Maybe for some of you that's that's a cuss word.
(43:00):
Maybe for some of you, you don't know what that means.
But if it for me, if it's not in my calendar,
it doesn't happen. And so I have reached the stage
of life, like I told you at the beginning, where
I schedule intimate fellowship with my husband because I know
that that's important to our marriage and to the health
of our marriage, and so it has become a priority.
(43:21):
So it goes in my calendar. Working out my gym
appointment that I have every morning, it goes in my
calendar so that it cannot be missed. My quiet time
with God. It is in there every single day. Now
does it happen at the same time every day, Not necessarily,
but it's part of my daily routine. It's a part
of my daily practices. And so if you're not structured
(43:41):
in time blocking, I would encourage you that's how you
remove some of the distractions is creating a more structured
environment for yourself. It doesn't mean you have to always
live in that structured space, but it may be the
exact ground, it may be the exact foundation that you
need to be successful. So you have to you have
(44:01):
to set the right priorities. I think about again, going
back to just traveling and being in and out of airports.
Whenever I see people condensing down their suitcases and remember
the iron is not going to Africa with us, or
the seventeen boxes of wreos. There literally was one woman
one time who packed seventeen boxes of oreos and I
was like, Oh, she's really sad. There's not going to
(44:23):
be American chocolate and when we get to Africa. But
as I see people pulling things out of their bags,
I realized everyone's doing essentially the same thing. They're keeping
in their bag what's most important to them, and they're
pulling out the things that they could they could probably
do without for the next two or three weeks. They
don't necessarily need those items. And that's all I'm saying
(44:43):
to you this morning is there's a lot of things
that you could keep, there's a lot of things that
you could take. There's a lot of expectations that you
could meet, and a lot of demands that you could fulfill.
But does it all does it all need to go
with you? Is it all meaningful? Does it all all
produce life? Does it give you that joy and zeal
(45:04):
and passion and fervor for life that God desires you
to live? In the Book of John, says that the
enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus comes
to give life and life in abundance. And so this morning,
if you're experiencing a non abundant life, if you're worried
and overwhelmed and anxious, I want to submit to you
(45:27):
that it's possible that the demands that are in your
life are not actually demands, but they're decisions, and we
all have a choice. You can choose to cancel Netflix.
I know that's a shocking statement to make, but you
don't have to have Netflix. That is, if that is
(45:53):
distracting you from spending time with God, or causing you
to stumble in ways you didn't even know you were
going to stell, then I would submit to you. You
don't have to have it. You don't have to be
all things to all people at all times. You don't
have to show up to every birthday party that you're
asked to go to. You don't have to go to
every baby shower. You don't have to go to every event.
(46:15):
Every text message that you get doesn't need a response.
Every DM that hits your inbox doesn't need a response.
It doesn't make you a bad person. It means you're focusing.
As I was preparing this message, I just realized that
some of the demands that I feel like that are
(46:37):
demands in my own life are really just decisions that
I've made. And the beautiful thing about God is he
gives us the chance and the opportunity and the choice
to assess. He's so kind and he's so gentle, and
he won't make us do anything that we don't want
to do, but he'll wait tenderly and lovingly for us.
(47:03):
Because at the end of the day, when I think
about Martha and Mary, Jesus was there no matter what.
He wasn't going anywhere. He was waiting for Martha to
come and stir her little heart up and tell him
how bad her sister was, but he wasn't going anywhere.
And the thing that I love the most about Jesus
(47:24):
is he handles both personalities at the same time. He
handles Mary sitting there resting in his presence, and he
handles or anxious, frantic Martha at the same time, and
he doesn't yell at her. He says, Martha, Martha, why
are you so worried? Why are you so anxious? I
(47:48):
know sometimes in the homes that we've grown up in,
that's not maybe the type of parenting style that we
even heard. And as I was just thinking about some
of the demands that we have in our life, like
what is it that makes us feel like we have
to do so much? And if you really think about
your own life, it comes down to, probably more than
likely how you were raised. You either saw parents who
(48:11):
were workaholics and working there, you know, working till late
hours of the night to provide everything for you, or
you saw parents who weren't and you knew you didn't
want to be like that. So now you've turned this opposite,
You've gone the opposite way. And I remember as a kid,
I cannot count on one hand how many times I
heard the word the sentence I'm proud of you. It
(48:36):
just wasn't a sentence said in my home. And I'm
convinced it's not because my mom wasn't proud of me.
I think it's because she never had it said to her,
so she didn't know how to say it to me.
And so those words I'm proud of you never ever
echoed in my childhood, and I'll never forget as an adult,
(48:57):
I got my degree, got into the workforce, and I
may be heard like good job, old buddy, old palell
a couple of times, but I never really heard that
I'm really proud of you. So when I entered into
my real estate career full time, I'll never forget. The
first year that I was in real estate, I sold
over ten million dollars with a real estate, which in
(49:18):
Oklahoma is a really big deal because we sell like
houses for little money compared to like Florida and California
and TC Nation. I just had to give you some perspective.
And I remember my broker called me and he was like, man, Amberly,
I'm really proud of you. And you know what that
did to me Instead of it making me feel all
(49:39):
ugly googly on the inside and warm and fuzzy. I
was like, Oh, that was the affirmation I've been looking
for my whole life. I will always produce at this level.
I will always work to the bone. I will always work,
and I will always sell, and I will never stop,
and I will never give up. And you will not
find me sitting down. And anyone who sits down is lazy.
And if they're not working forty plus hours a week,
(50:00):
sixty plus hours week, thing, you're lazy and you're not
using the gift that God has given you. And this
ugly thing grew in my heart because I'd finally received
the affirmation that I needed and it came from what
I produced. And so I realized, in submitting even this
sermon to God that the demands that I've placed on
(50:20):
myself are coming from a little six year old Amberley
who just wanted someone to say, Man, I'm proud of you.
And so this wasn't a part of my message, but
I want to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. And
(50:43):
there are people in this room that never heard I'm
proud of you either. You say, you can absolutely relate
to that. In fact, you heard phrases maybe more like
you're worthless, You will never measure to anything. And I
(51:04):
just am here to tell you you are worthy, You
are valuable. You are seen by a God who loves
you endlessly, and you don't have to produce, You don't
have to perform, you don't have to do backflips. You
get to just simply be with him. And he loves
you just because of Goog. You are because you are
(51:26):
his child. And so this morning, my invitation to you
is simple. I'm gonna have everyone stand in the room.
What I have found is that the loudest demands in
(51:50):
our life rarely matched the deepest needs of our soul.
So I'm gonna ask you, is it what bag is
that you need to set down? What bags is it
that you need to leave behind so you can really
focus on the thing that matters most. I have no
(52:11):
doubt in my mind that in a room this size,
and with people watching from all over the world, that
there are people that are just tired. You're weary, you're overwhelmed,
you're anxious. Your life looks like all of those bags.
And today he says, come come to me, all you
(52:33):
who are weary and heavy burden, and I will give
you rest. And so this morning. That's my simple invitation
to you. The worship team's gonna come, they're gonna play,
they're going to sing, and we've got the altar team
that's going to be down front. They're going to make
their way down now even and we've got people who
(52:57):
want to partner in prayer with you. It really is
your choice, it really is your decision. And so, Father God,
we just come to you right now with hands lifted,
with hearts surrendered, saying, Holy Spirit, would you just reveal
(53:18):
the parts of our heart and the reparts of our
life that don't need to be there? God, Maybe the
demands that we've been distracted by, maybe the excessive baggage
that we've been carrying, maybe the things that just feel
so heavy, so anxiety ridden, so worrisome, and God, would
(53:39):
you give us the strength and the power to surrender
that to you this morning. God, God, your word is
so clear that your yoke is easy and your burden
is light. So Holy Spirit, we pray that you would
do a work that only you can do for some
(54:00):
of you that are in the room today. The very
real reality is that the Jesus that we've talked about,
that even that Mary and Martha, were trying to host
and hear from, and feed and be fed from. You
don't have a relationship with that Jesus. And so we
want to give you that opportunity this morning to make
Jesus the lord of your life. If you've never asked
(54:23):
Jesus to come into your life and to be the lord,
I want to explain what that briefly means. I think
about it. When you're renting a property, there's a landlord,
and that landlord essentially gets to make all of the
decisions concerning the property, and you run everything through that landlord.
You don't paint a wall unless you talk to the landlord.
(54:44):
You don't move a wall unless you talk to the landlord.
And the same is true. And we make Jesus the
lord of our lives. We run everything through him. We
ask him for wisdom and direction and discernment and understanding
and knowledge. And so if you have been in this
where you've been trying to do this on your own,
and you've never fully surrendered to Jesus, we want to
(55:06):
give you the opportunity this morning to make Jesus the
lord of your life. This morning, you're surrounded in a
church full of amazing people who love you and who
are going to walk this out with you. And so
if that's you this morning, I'm just going to ask
everyone in this room to pray this prayer after me,
and I want us to just say, Dear God, I
(55:27):
admit that I've made mistakes. I admit that I need
a savior. I asked that you would change my heart.
I asked that you would change my motives. I believe
you lived, I believe you died, and I believe you
(55:51):
rose again just for me. Will you change me, renew me,
and transform me. I am yours in Jesus' name. A
men and amen listen. If you have made that decision
(56:15):
this morning, you have made the absolute greatest decision that
you could ever make in your life. I want you
to do me a favor. If you've made that decision,
will you just raise your hand. We just want to
get you some information. I see people up in the
back corner. Can we celebrate the people? I see you
over there, I see that hand over there. We thank
God for you and for your life. And if you
(56:37):
have made that decision, maybe you didn't feel comfortable raising
your hand, do us a favor and text the word
saved to A two A two A two. We just
want to connect you with some resources and help you
walk this out. We do not want you to do
this alone. The altar is going to stay open, the
worship team is going to continue to pray or to
(56:57):
sing for us, and we just want to invite you
to come. This space is open for you and he's
longing to meet you. So until next week, go out
and live a transformed life
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