Listening today I heard someone say, “Busyness is a bid to gain artificial significance.”

We falsely think because we are busy, busy, busy we are important or significant.

But 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.

“…he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High” (Daniel 7:25 KJV)

Busy is not badge of honor, and God’s pace is not frantic. His fullness comes from a place where we have ceased from our own efforts and we are drawing our energy from the well of faith in our inner man.

When was the last time you stopped and asked the Lord what needs to be shaved from your schedule to make more time for Him?

I can find myself sometimes with a knot of anxiety in my stomach, feeling overwhelmed by the many things I think I need to tend to. It’s like the garden of my mind has overgrown with a thousand weeds overnight and my peace is being choked by the idea that all of the items on the self-made to-do list are equally important.

Of course, in the big picture, few (and dare I say none) of the needs that press for attention are really life-threatening.

Sometimes we have to back off from our own sense of self-importance and recognize that God is the One fighting our battles for us. We are His servants, extending and representing His Kingdom, not building our own empire.

May His grace guide you in peace as you conduct yourself here on earth, and may your focus remain true to your values, not being derailed by the world’s ideas of what’s really valuable.

One of my favorite prayers in the Bible is found in Philippians:

“So that you may surely learn to sense what is vital, and approve and prize what is excellent and of real value [recognizing 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 nor causing others to stumble].” (Philippians 1:10 AMP)

If your heart is troubled and you are weighed down with many inconsequential things (in the big scheme) it may be that you have lost sight of what is really vital, and have inadvertently put your eyes on a prize that can’t deliver what you are seeking.

The things of real value are not something you can buy or trade.

In the words of Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn, AKA The Minimalists, Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works .

Never get so caught in the sticky web of busyness that you forget WHY you are working.