busy for god

The Danger of Confusing Ministry With Intimacy 

Doing has really never been a struggle for me. I have a knack for filling my time with to-dos and maintaining long lists of more things to do. Which explains why I’m a mom of two young boys, while working full time and holding a volunteer position coordinating a kids’ ministry for a church plant. 

Ministry was ingrained in me at an early age — we were the family who was at church every time the doors were open. While my mom was there for choir, we had intentional kids’ ministry leaders including us in all the prep for services (hence my passion for kids’ ministry!). From there, I attended ministry school followed by countless leadership roles within various churches. Serving became so second nature that it took a long while for me to recognize that my performance for God was my only connection with God. 

Serving became so second nature that it took a long while for me to recognize that my performance for God was my only connection with God. 

Serving is an incredibly important component of our walk with God, but it simply cannot outlast our need to be intimately connected with Him. I recall a specific season in ministry when the overwhelm of constant performance left me needing an extended break to really reflect on why I was doing what I was doing. It was the absence of my connection with God that led me down a path of burnout. The performance did not sustain my health, and it most certainly was not doing all that I had thought it was. 

I believe wholeheartedly that God ministers to us as we operate in our spiritual gifts and walk in obedience. I learn more about the heart of God standing before children and teaching His word than I do in almost any other setting. But the disciplines of sitting before God, reading His word not for myself but to learn about Him, and walking in community with others in faith are all practices that cannot fall by the wayside. And learning the art of dwelling in His presence has brought me to new levels of intimacy with God. 

It seems all too easy to get caught up in performance, to assume my love for God must be deep and real if I’m serving Him to this degree. 

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” — Luke 10:41–42 (NIV)

So how do we combat it? For me, it has meant guarding something small and unimpressive: time with God that produces nothing anyone will ever see. No lesson to prep, no volunteers to text, no service to run. Just me, Him, and His word. It can feel like the least productive part of my week but it’s the only part that holds the rest of me together. Martha’s work still had to get done, someone had to feed that house. But Mary chose the thing that could not be taken from her, and that choice is available to me every single day to choose over my long list.

This has unfortunately been a lesson on repeat for me. Different seasons of life bring new challenges to overcome in staying committed. I had to make that decision for myself, that I was committed to God and to this faith. Leading the way also means showing the way, and my heart’s deepest desire is to show my babies how to love God and this faith, and right behind them, all the beautiful babies I’m blessed to see each and every Sunday.