Distinguishing Good and Bad Distractions, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. It is hard to overestimate the unimportance of practically everything in your life. Many of us are asking, how can I do more? You ought to be asking, am I doing the right things?

So change your question, not how do I do more, but am I doing the things I'm supposed to be doing? Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. Does anyone out there suffer from FOMO? That stands for the fear of missing out.

I know I sometimes do, or maybe always do, but the reality is that sometimes in order to be focused on what's most important, we have to say no to something else we might want to do. Pastor J.D. shows us today that distraction and the feeling of being overwhelmed and hurried often comes with being out of fellowship with Jesus and his priorities. Today we conclude our short teaching series titled Rest and Distraction, and make sure you listen all the way to the end where Pastor J.D.

gives us a really helpful list of practical things that we can implement today. Here's J.D. Greer with the message Distinguishing Good and Bad Distractions. Distraction with the good, listen, is one of our enemy's primary tools in keeping you from considering the eternal.

Jesus' parable, the seeds. It was good things that the enemy used to take away the seed that the sower had just put in the heart. It doesn't mean that when I'm up here preaching all of a sudden you get distracted by images of porn and thoughts of violence.

It means that all of a sudden you'll start getting a to-do list in your mind, or somebody you need to talk to, or where you're going to go to lunch, or some report that you got to do. It's a good thing that just snatches away the word from your heart. Well, when you think about what's happened now, we've kind of designed a tool that gives Satan, gives our enemy, just unlimited access to take out the word of God anytime he wants to.

Because now I've got a lot of water people saying about me, and how do they feel about this, and how many likes am I getting on this right here? I'm not saying this thing is evil in and of itself. I'm just saying that it can be used for great evil when it comes to distraction, because distraction sends more people to hell than doubt and disobedience ever had. And that's the best tool for distraction that our enemy has ever had in all the years that there have been humans. I'll give you one other thing here.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that it's not usually bad or unbelieving thoughts that keep you from considering what's important, right? Excuse me, it's not usually bad thoughts, it's usually good thoughts. And so be on alert to distraction. One last thing for many of us, distraction is how we keep ourselves from thinking sometimes about deep things.

Blaise Laskal, 300 years ago, pointed out the irony. He said, we complain about the complexity of our lives, but we actually want our lives to be complex. Because if they are not complex, then we got to end up paying attention to this gaping hole that is in our hearts. And that's why we hate solitude, because solitude just reveals how unhappy we are.

So we try to avoid it at all costs. And so we love complexity and we love distraction because it keeps us from thinking about eternal things. By the way, if Blaise Laskal is not your speed, maybe this will communicate better.

This is Andy talking about when he went on his job as a cop on Parks and Rec. I got so bored, started thinking about existence. Do I matter?

Do any of us? Is there a master plan in the works? A grand design?

Just dumb stuff like that. That's what happened in this time of solitude. There are times that God intends for you to not be distracted in those moments and take advantage of those. Leads me to number three, distraction enslaves an insecure heart. Third thing we see from this story is that distraction enslaves an insecure heart. Martha's busyness appears to be driven by a need.

A need that she probably didn't even recognize about herself. In verse 41, Jesus called her worried and upset about many things. That word worried is very similar to the word distraction. It doesn't mean she's just concerned about, you know, the dishes not getting done. The word worried means she's being torn apart. It's a word with a lot of emotional freight in it. She is worried and upset.

Upset means tossed along like a capsized boat with no anchor. She's just drifting. She's in a storm.

She feels lost. Jesus diagnoses, listen to this, Martha as having an unhappy, unsettled, and unanchored soul. Martha was probably the kind of person who needed to be needed. You ever meet somebody like that? Are you married to somebody like that? Are you somebody like that? Are you the kind of person who only feels significant when everybody's depending on them and so it's only when they're crazy busy and everybody's telling them they need stuff that's when they feel significant? To go back to what we learned last week, it's the kind of person who has 10 lonely seconds, 10 lonely seconds to justify her whole existence and if she's not needed and indispensable to everybody in the family, then she just feels worthless. That's Martha.

But see, here's the question Jesus is saying to Martha. Martha, why would you need to feel needed by others to feel significant? I'm right here. My love is right here. I love you. I want to spend time with you.

I've got a plan for you. Shouldn't that make you feel special? Martha is looking for something in service that she ought to be finding in Jesus. Furthermore, she probably felt like the weight of serving was all on her.

She probably felt like the burden of making it all come together was going to sit on her shoulders and she was like, well, Lord, if I don't do this, who's going to do it? But don't you remember our image from last week that we closed with and following Jesus, the image of the yoke? And we pointed out that the yoke Jesus offered us to carry had two spots in it. One was for you, one was for Jesus, and he's much stronger, which means that when you falter, he carries it. He's the one that's responsible to make everything ultimately come together.

He's saying, Martha, you can just be focused on what I want for the moment and not worry about making everything come together. I mean, Jesus is like, Martha, don't worry about the food. Don't you remember what I did with the whole feeding to the 5,000 thing? I can handle the food.

I got this. Don't worry about the dishes. I can handle the dishes.

Personally, I wonder if Martha had just trusted Jesus and sat at his feet like Jesus wanted, if we might not have another miracle recorded right here in Luke chapter 10. We just had the feeding of the 5,000. This time, it might've been the miraculous deliverance of the dirty dishes. When Jesus, you would do what Jesus wants, he'll multiply the soap and it'll take care of itself.

I don't know. Right? But the point is you trust him and he takes care of it. You see, when it was all said and done, her distraction like ours, listen, comes from failing to believe the promises of God. A pastor friend of mine says that we tend to stay over busy because we silently tell ourselves, if I don't do as much as possible, I will never may be able to make it in life. If I don't do as much as I possibly can, I'm going to fall behind. If I don't do as much as I possibly can, I'm going to be poor.

If I don't do as much as I possibly can, then my kids are going to go off the rails. If I don't do as much as I possibly can, I won't be accepted. If I don't do as much as I possibly can, I'm going to disappoint somebody. If I don't do as much as I can, I probably won't measure up.

Those are all just failures to believe the gospel. I don't have to measure up. I don't have to please everybody because I've got the approval of Christ. He has made me significant. God has given me significance in my position with him. I don't have to worry about falling behind because God is the one who is guarding the city and building the house.

I don't have to bear that stress on me. Distraction and busyness is usually an indication that I don't really believe those things because I'm trying to make myself significant, and I'm trying to carry the weight. Martha's disbelief actually leads to a really awkward encounter. She rebukes Jesus and says, Jesus, you don't really care, and she starts telling him what to do. Y'all, top three signs that your spiritual life has gone off the rails. One of them is chewing out Jesus. You see, what this shows us is that distraction and the feeling of being overwhelmed and hurried often comes from being terribly out of fellowship with Jesus. Jesus had come there to spend time with him, and instead of experiencing him as the privilege, Jesus has now become the problem.

Here's one closely related to that one. Number four, distraction entices an empty heart. So we had number three, distraction enslaves an insecure heart. Distraction entices an empty heart.

Because Jesus was not in the right place in Martha's heart, Martha's soul is a picture of craving, craving significance that comes from serving, from being needed. You see, when our soul is out of fellowship with Jesus, we're always craving more, which is why our radar is always on and open for and seeking for distraction that comes in the form of the next enticement. Medical scientists say that the reason many of us are so attached to our phones is that when we look at social media, a chemical in our body is released called dopamine. Dopamine is the same substance that causes us to get addicted to drugs or alcohol or porn or many other things. It creates this pleasure loop that entices you for more.

In fact, dopamine pushes, they show, are actually heightened when the hits are smaller. Thus, they say 140 character messages like Twitter seem almost designed to create a dopamine addiction loop. And as with other addictions, we feel like we need increasingly more and more of them to stay on the same feeling of high, which is why studies show that 33% of people check their phone in the middle of the night. You're like the alcoholic that can't make it through a night of sleep.

You got to get up at 3 a.m. and have a hit of Jack Daniels. You got to get up and have that hit because your body is craving it. It's why when you don't know what to do, you just pick it up because your body is craving that dopamine release. And so you just start looking at your phone. John Piper wrote a great little article that asked why we are so drawn to technology first thing in the morning. Why is it that most of us, when we wake up, we just reach for the phone?

Why is it that at any law in the day, that's where your mind and your heart goes? He identifies six things. I won't spend a whole lot of time on them. Three kinds of candy and three kinds of avoidance. Novelty candy. I got to know what's new. I got to know what's out there. We have FOMO. You know what FOMO is? You should have teenage daughters.

You would know that stuff. FOMO, fear of missing out. You got fear of missing out. And if I don't have my phone, I might be missing out on something my friends know about.

In fact, there is a condition that psychologists have identified. I don't know if this is like real legit stuff or this is just pop psychology, but a phobia, they call it nomophobia of not being near your phone. You just get anxious when you're not near your phone. You got nomophobia. Without Jesus in the right place in your heart, your fear of FOMO, your FOMO is going to turn into nomophobia. Without Jesus, your FOMO will lead to nomophobia.

But with Jesus, you'll have nomo FOMO. That's original with me, okay? Number two. Ego candy. Ego candy. We want to know what people are saying about us.

So you look at that. You're like, what are they, are they liking this? Are they commenting on this?

What do they think I look like? Entertainment candy. What's new going on in the world? What's fascinating? What's strange? The next year, you're bored of avoidance. You know, I don't really kind of know what to do. So I got to avoid boredom.

So I picked that up. That's the best strategy for responsibility avoidance. We want to put off the responsibilities God has given us as fathers or mothers or bosses or employees or students or whatever. Hardship avoidance. You don't want to put off dealing with relationship conflicts, the pain, suffering, disabilities in our bodies.

And so we turn to social media as ways to get away from these get away from these things. Piper says, listen, these things are all indications of an unhealthy soul. So don't curb the behavior, right? Focus on the heart. The reason we're such a distractible people is because Jesus is not in the right place.

So yes, you can develop discipline in your habits with your phone and all that kind of stuff. But ultimately what you need is Jesus in the right place in your heart. We'll rejoin this teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to tell you about a daily email devotional from Pastor JD that's delivered straight to your inbox. I know the busyness of life can quickly choke out any joy that we feel in our walk with God. So why not cut those weeds away each morning with a word from the Lord? The devotionals even follow along with our current teaching here on the program. So you can stay plugged into the teaching regardless of your schedule. Sounds like a great way to practice the rest that we've been talking about here on the program.

So sign up for this free resource right now at jdgrier.com slash resources. Now let's return for the final practical steps meant to help us in determining our priorities. You and I are supposed to have such a satisfaction in knowing and doing the will of God that you're just not so susceptible to other cravings. Again, John four, Jesus could turn off his hunger for food when it comes to being focused in on the will of God. Martha should have been so full of intimacy with Jesus and doing his will that she didn't feel the need to go prove herself because she felt the warmth of his love.

She should have been so sensitive to what he wanted in the moment that she wasn't distracted by other things that he wasn't doing right then. The answer to Martha's problem and the answer to your problem in mind is to get close enough to Jesus that we sense the warmth of his love and to know what he wants. Consider Mary, who's the opposite here for a minute. Mary is described as sitting at Jesus's feet.

That means two things. Number one, she's focused. She's listening. Number two, getting down at somebody's feet in the Bible is a sign of submission to authority.

She is focused and submissive. The answer to feeling distracted is to get focused and submissive to Jesus. I don't mean you just come and sit through an occasional sermon and that you read some Christian books. I mean there's got to be a time every single day where you get focused on him and you listen to him, which is why I'm going to tell you at the end the best way for you to apply this sermon is to set aside at least 15 minutes every day in the morning that you spend time with Jesus and you focus on him. That's not going to cure everything, but it's going to go a long way because what happens to me in that 15 minutes I spend in the morning is I get my soul connected to God and all of a sudden some of the idols that control me start being released and I get focused on him. I get close enough to him that I can begin to sense his spirit what he wants and then I get up and I'm like this is the day that God has made for me. Ephesians 2 10. He is good works that he has laid out for me to go and do and I'm going to be open to his spirit leading with them and I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, not Justin Bieber.

I'm a believer, not a believer, and I don't really have to focus on what's going on in his life because God's got things he's doing in mine. So take 15 minutes every day and just focus on that. By the way, that's what Martin Luther used to say. Martin Luther, the reforming theologian, he said that on his busiest days he had to get up even earlier to spend more time with God. He said I got up at least three hours before on my busiest day so I could walk with God for three hours before that busyness came upon me so that it wouldn't destroy me. By the way, just so we're all clear here, I don't do that, okay?

By the way, I tried that early on in my ministry and it just didn't work for me. I get up like three hours early to try to do my quiet time. I do it for about 10 minutes and then I'd be so at rest in Jesus I'd fall back asleep and the next thing that happens I notice my kids are waking me up and I just say, amen, amen, and I would go throughout my day. So don't hear me.

I'm not being sanctimonious. I do my quiet time for three hours, but the point is the point is people who really walk with God understand that the busier that you get the more your soul needs to be connected and at the feet of Jesus. So on your busy days you go more into Jesus not less because without that connection the busyness will rot and destroy your soul, okay? Number, what are we on?

Last one, number five. Distraction rules an unprioritized heart. Distraction rules an unprioritized heart. The necessary component to being focused on what you need to be focused on, right, is learning to say no to other good things. Martha needed the ability to say no to legitimately good things, doing the dishes, getting the snack tray ready, so she could say yes to the best thing, right? This is one of the most important principles.

It's so simple. One of the most important principles, most valuable principles I ever learned was that when I said yes to something, I was automatically saying no to something else because I'm a man of limit. I get 86,400 seconds every week, and I don't care how much of a superman you feel like. That's all you get, and I can only do so much with those 86,400 seconds, and when I devote a certain number of seconds to this, I have automatically said no to using them somewhere else, and so for early in my ministry, it was my problem with speaking in gay. I get invited to speak someplace. I thought, well, somebody's got to do it, and they want me, and they like me as a speaker, so I better go. That made me feel important. I felt needed, and I felt like I was doing God's work, so boom, I feel awesome, right?

The problem was I started to have kids and realized that for every yes I said to one of their speaking engagements, I would say no to them, but I'm type A, and I'm people pleasing, and I don't have the ability to say no, so I had to start visualizing myself looking at my children and my wife and saying, nope, you can't have that time, and when I would visualize the no I was giving to them and the yes I was giving over here, that gave me the ability to start saying no because I needed to be able to say yes to the things that really matter. One of my mentors, Danny Aiken, president over at Southeastern Seminary, Danny Aiken used to say, he said, J.D., there's a lot of places that you're important. You serving over here doing this, you speaking here, you're important, but there is one place that you're irreplaceable.

They can always get a different speaker. They can always get somebody to do this job over here, but Veronica and Charis and Allie and Raya and Adam, they got one husband and one daddy, and you are irreplaceable, so do not trade the irreplaceable for the importance, okay? At his behest years ago, I made a list of kind of my biggest priority, my biggest roles, most important roles that I play. My relationship with God was the first one. In fact, I thought of them like concentric circles. My relationship with God was the first one, then my relationship with my wife, then I put my relationship with my kids, then I have my other leadership responsibilities, and I knew that my, and I put this in air quotes, success, my success was determined in that order by how well I was doing those things, so I wanted to make sure that those things got the best and most important parts of my week, and not all the little teeny tiny stuff.

So I'm like, I'm going to make these the kind of big elements. So first, walk with God. I'm not helping anybody if I'm not walking with God, and so the greatest gift I can give my wife, my kids, the greatest gift I can give to you is walking with God. So that's going to always get first place in my life.

Nothing's ever going to compete with my quiet time. Secondly, if I have an unhealthy marriage, I'm not helping my kids. So I'm going to have a healthy marriage, and that's going to bless our church.

I'm going to focus a lot of time and a lot of money, a lot of money on that marriage. And then third thing is I'm going to spend time with family because y'all, if I got to choose between having a huge successful church and a family that's just healthy and loves Jesus, I'll take the family every single time. And then even with my church roles, I started to think like there are some things that I make a greater contribution in than others.

The greatest contribution I feel like I make to this church is standing up here every week and opening the Word of God and preaching it. So I'm going to make sure that I'm always prepared for that. I can spend all week long just doing little stuff. All the little stuff always needs to be done. But I'm like, if I show up on a weekend and I'm unprepared and I'm not feeding these people the Word of God, then I'm not really serving them. So I got to learn to say no to some good things so I can say yes to the best thing, right? And then I put in all this other stuff, speaking engagements and serving this and that. And I'm like, you know, there are some times I just need to be with our church. And this over here might be more glamorous and more exciting, but I need to be sitting with so-and-so when they're walking through the valley of pain. And I've got to be committed to be there because that's the best thing God has for me and not all this stuff over here.

My list is not the same as yours, but my encouragement to you is to figure out what that list is, get it clarified, and then pursue it with all of your might. It is hard to overestimate the unimportance of practically everything in your life. Many of us are asking, how can I do more? You ought to be asking, am I doing the right things?

So change your question, not how do I do more, but am I doing the things I'm supposed to be doing? What I want you to see this weekend is that all of these problems that you have horizontally with busyness and distraction ultimately go back to a vertical disruption. You got to get Jesus in the right place.

And when you get him in the right place, you're going to find that a lot of these problems horizontally just begin to disappear. Can I close this with just a few really practical, really super practical things that you were like, why is this in the sermon? I was just thinking, how do I help everybody? Take at least 15 minutes a day to be with Jesus.

I already said that one. And you're like, well, I've never done that. Just do it for a week. Try it for seven days. And you come back and tell me if it doesn't make one of the biggest differences in your peace of mind going through life, just that 15 minutes, give God that 15 minutes and just watch what happens. Okay. All right.

So that's my first one. Just try it for seven days and then come back and tell me I'm a liar. Throughout the day, keep your phone in your pocket and just check it at certain intervals. That's been a habit that I've developed that I've just, it's just been life-giving. I'm just not always necessarily connected to it, but I got to be responsible. So I check in with it from time to time, but just, I control it. I don't let it control me. Here at three, unfollow the people that you envy. That's really good advice. You probably don't recognize that, but you're envious of somebody, just unfollow them and just take that burden out of your life. If she's prettier than you, just unfollow her. If he's a better preacher than you, unfollow him. It's just going to help you out. And just Uncle JD, just take care of you.

All right. Number four, review your priorities often. Review your priorities often. Go through and figure out what roles you got to fulfill. Do that in community, by the way. If you're married, do that with your spouse. Figure out what roles they are, what order they should go in. If you're in a good work relationship, do it with your boss.

If you're in a small group, do it with that group of friends. But most of all, most of all, reprioritize time with Jesus because that's the key to everything else. Amen. A great conclusion to a practical and convicting teaching series. You're listening to Summit Life with JD Greer. Our current resource is a set of conversation cards and a book called Devotions for the Distracted Family, 15 Days on Relationships, Faith and Rest.

And JD, I know you have a specific aim in mind. So what do you hope listeners will take away from this particular study? We grow best in our faith in community.

Whatever that community is, your family, your small group, friends who are like family, of course, your local church. Our goal is to keep you and those you're closest with talking and communicating in that group about important things like faith, relationships and even rest. And because we live in a distracted world, a lot of us never engage in some of these meaningful conversations, not because we don't want to be in them, but because we never find opportunity. And so we've created a book for anybody who feels distracted or disconnected at times. We've given you a tool in these conversation cards that will help kickstart conversations, ask meaningful questions that will take your conversations places they may not otherwise go.

I think you'll find these really, really helpful. And when you combine them with this book of devotions, you might be surprised at how you and those you're closest with are talking about how your faith brings you rest and brings you fulfillment and joy. I would love to give you a copy of both of these things. If you'll go to jdgrier.com, there's a place where you can become a gospel partner with us. And we would love to be able to give these resources and also make some other benefits available to you as you participate in the ministry that God has given us here. We can get you a copy of both of these new resources today as they come with our thanks when you donate to support this program.

Summit Live is kept on the radio and online by listeners like you. So when you're hearing our program, you've got another listener to thank for that message. Give today and remember to ask for your copy of the devotions for the distracted family and the set of conversation cards. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can donate and request the pair online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Bittovitch inviting you to join us again tomorrow as we begin a new teaching series on love, something desperately needed in the world today. See you Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.