There’s a massive difference between busyness and business. In fact, one of the strategies of the devil is to so fill our cup with cares and furious pursuits we expend all our energy chasing the wind.

Business or Busyness? Which one will you choose?

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I’m sharing this today because, quite honestly, I was up late last night. We’ve had a busy week. A few things have kind of come in as swerve balls in our plans. And I was just feeling a bit overwhelmed, to be honest. And and it made me think of the the whole balance of business or busyness, like, which one will I choose? And the two are very different things. I was actually listening to a sermon from the weekend by Bill Johnson and he said that business is a bid to gain artificial significance sometimes.

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And we’ve all heard this, that, you know, it’s very easy. People wear business like a badge of honour and we falsely think because we are busy, busy, busy, that somehow that makes us important or significant. But there’s a real difference between business and business. In fact, one of the strategies of the devil is to so fill our cup with cars and furious pursuits in all sorts of directions, that we expend all of our energy chasing the wind and fail to apply ourselves to the things that really matter.

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Daniel 7:25 in the King James version, speaking of the Devil and his schemes, says he shall speak great words against the most high. And this is so telling these the words that follow and he shall wear out the saints of the most high. He shall wear out the saints of the most high and being worn out, being tired, being overburdened, being overextended, being full of anxiety and swamped with cares really is not the kind of lifestyle that God wants us to lead.

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I don’t I don’t believe in a God’s pace is not frantic and his fullness will not come from the place where all of our cups full to overflowing and our rooms are packed with staff and our bank accounts are bulging and our social media accounts are buzzing and our followers are flocking. You know, you really your significance we can draw significance from these things. But it is a it’s artificial. It’s not real. You know, it’s not something that you’re going to be able to take to the bank in heaven, you know, and we just take so much diligence and we have to be so on guard nowadays that we don’t fall for this pace that the world wants us to take up, you know, and and run with the world’s horses instead of resting in our faith and resting and living from our inner man.

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See, it’s not going to come from all of our own efforts. The significance, the fullness, the joy, the peace, the prosperity that we see goes far beyond all of these metrics, all of these measures, the prosperity that we’re seeking is first a prosperity of soul. And that is going to be drawn not from our own efforts and energy, but from that well of faith that we dig in our inner man. And I was certainly challenged to ask myself again and that this is a question that I kind of round the mountain to on many occasions is when was the last time you stopped and asked the Lord what needs to be shaved from your schedule so you can make more time for him?

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You know, time invested in seeking God timing, invested in loving and digging into his word, time invested in becoming more aware of eternal things than we are of temporal things is never wasted, really. We do want to make deposits not just in an earthly bank, but we want to make deposits in heaven. We want to store up riches in heaven, not just on the earth and much of the world’s anxiety. Much of the world’s business is chasing after kind of filling the bonds instead of filling our heart and soul with something that will outlast this life, you know?

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And, you know, I can find myself sometimes with a knot of anxiety in my stomach, feeling overwhelmed with the many things that I feel I need to tend to. And it’s like. Like what? Like I look outside my window here. I actually look outside and I can see the garden. And we’ve had a really strange summer here, like loads of rain and then like bright sun. And it just causes the plants to just kind of burst up and grow like a quite honestly, it causes the weeds particularly to do that.

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And sometimes we can feel as though our mind is like that overgrown garden. And, you know, we go go to bed one night, we wake up the following morning, and suddenly the garden is full of all of these tangled thoughts and tangled weeds and like false pursuits and desire for other things and that false sense of significance and identity that comes from all of the busyness that we can engage with. And, you know, and now this lie that all of the things on our generally self generated To-Do list are all equally important and all need to be done right now.

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But of course, in the big picture, very few, and I dare say often none of the needs that press for our attention, our attention, our very life threatening there in the big picture. I’m not I don’t want to discount the significance of taking responsibility for things as we must and we should. But really, if we ask ourselves how important in reality, in the big picture, in the grand scheme is these things that I feel are like biting at my heels for me to run and do, how many of them are really that important?

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And sometimes we have to back off from that sense of self importance and recognise that God is the one fighting our battles, battles for us. I mean, sometimes we need to be like Moses, where Moses was like, what should I do? What should I do, what should I do? And God said, just stand there and watch what I do on your behalf. You know, we are his servants extending and representing his kingdom, not building our own empire.

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And so my prayer today is that he will guide us, his grace will guide us in peace, and as we conduct ourselves here on Earth, and that our focus would remain true to our values, our kingdom, eternal values, and not be derailed by the world’s ideas of what’s what’s valuable and what’s not valuable. One of my favourite prayers found in the Bible is for Lee is in the Book of Philippians and it says so that you may surely learn to sense what is vital and approve and prise what is excellent and of real value, recognising the highest and the best and distinguishing the moral differences and that you may be untainted and pure and unerring and blameless so that with hearts sincere and certain and unsullied, you may approach the day of Christ not stumbling or causing others to stumble.

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Philippians 1:10 in the amplified. Just this, this line here so that you may surely learn to sense what is vital and approve and price what is excellent and have real value. And you know, I find if your, if my or your heart is troubled, if we’re weighed down with many ultimately inconsequential things in the big scheme, it may be that we’ve lost sight of what is really vital and we may have inadvertently put our eyes on a prise that really can’t deliver.

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What we’re seeking, the things of real value are not something that you can buy or trade, in the words of Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields, Milbon a.k.a. the Minimalists. I love those guys. They’ve got a new book coming out and it’s called Love. People use things because the opposite never works. So let’s never get caught in that sticky web of busyness and forget why we are working. Why are we working? Why are we doing the things that we do?

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Generally, it’s for the people that we love. And because we want to extend and bring glory and praise and honour to the name of the one who saved our soul. So let’s stay on track. Let’s keep our focus where it needs to be and not allow the cult of busyness to sweep us in to its crazy pace. Slow down, roll the wheels back, come into your father’s presence and let him fill you again with a sense of his grace at work in your life, in your family, in your finances, in your business, because he is more than able.

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Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today. If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.Com. Have a great day.