How Jesus Coped With a Crazy Busy Life

Kevin DeYoung must have been looking in my diary when he described life in the twenty-first century:

You’ve got car repairs. Then your heater goes out. The kids need to see a doctor. You haven’t done your taxes yet. Your check book isn’t balanced. You’re behind on your thank you notes. You promised your mother you’d come over and fix the faucet. You’re behind on wedding planning. Your boards are coming up. You have more applications to send out. Your dissertation is due. Your refrigerator is empty. Your lawn needs mowing. Your curtains don’t look right. Your washing machine keeps rattling. This is life for most of us.

In his book, Crazy Busy, DeYoung observes the irony that we who have so many labor-saving devices and the conveniences of great wealth should be so out-of-control BUSY. He identifies two characteristics of today’s Western world that are unique in history: our seemingly endless opportunities and the unparalleled complexities of life today. He writes,

We have more opportunity than ever before. The ability to cheaply go anywhere is a recent development. The ability to get information from anywhere is, too. Even the ability to easily stay up past sundown is relatively new. The result, then, is simple but true: because we can do so much, we do do so much…And alongside this explosion of opportunity in the modern world is a mind-boggling complexity.

Think of the difference between the wall mounted kitchen telephones of 40 years ago and the iPhone 11 Pro. The technological advances of the last fifty years are enormously beneficial to our life and culture in countless ways. But with the benefit, they have helped make most of our lives CRAZY BUSY. And there are some real dangers of being CRAZY BUSY. Here are three.

1. Busyness can mask the erosion of our soul. Busyness, itself, robs the soul of joy. One study found that commuters experience greater levels of stress than fighter pilots and riot police. When our lives are frantic and frenzied, we are more prone to surrender to the enemies of our soul, anxiety, resentment, impatience, irritability, discontent.

Perhaps even more dangerous is that busyness keeps us so distracted that we don’t realize the toll it is taking on our inner, spiritual life. Gordon MacDonald, in his book, Ordering Your Private World, observes:

Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinity of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies.  And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all their seductions and demands. They scream for our attention and action The result is that our private world is often cheated, neglected because it does not shout quite so loudly.  It can be effectively ignored for large periods of time before it gives way to a sinkhole-like cave-in. 

2. The second danger of being CRAZY BUSY is that less important matters take center-stage and shove the most important matters to the periphery. A generation and a half ago, Charles Hummel wrote an article, which became a popular booklet, entitled, Tyranny of the Urgent. Here are those profoundly relevant words for 2019 (with just an update on the technology).

An experienced factory manager once said to me, "Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important." He didn't realize how hard his advice hit. It has often returned to haunt and rebuke me by raising the critical problem of priorities.

We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important. The problem is that many important tasks need not be done today, or even this week. Extra hours of prayer and Bible study, a visit to an elderly friend, reading an important book: these activities can usually wait a while longer. But often urgent, though less important, tasks call for immediate response--endless demands pressure every waking hour.

A person's home is no longer a castle, a private place away from urgent tasks. The telephone breaches its walls with incessant demands. (Modern translation: No matter where we are, our phone pings with the latest email, text, or social media notification.) THE APPEAL OF THESE DEMANDS SEEMS IRRESISTIBLE, AND THEY DEVOUR OUR ENERGY. But in the light of eternity their momentary prominence fades. With a sense of loss, we recall the important tasks that have been shunted aside. We realize that we've become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.

3.  The third danger of the CRAZY BUSY life is investing your life in what doesn’t really matter. Socrates famous statement, “The unexamined life is not worth living” is true.  Someone has said, “If we are going to hear, ‘Well done good and faithful servant’ from The Master, we need to well do.” If we want to hear the Lord’s commendation for accomplishing the mission he gave us, we need to stay focused on that mission. The problem is that the pressures of life take us everywhere BUT to the Master’s feet to talk to him about our mission. Comparing our private world, where we talk with our God, to going to the bridge of a ship to talk to the ship’s captain, MacDonald writes:

Why is it that for so many, the answer to personal tension and pressure lies not in going to the bridge of life but rather in attempting to run faster, protest more vigorously, accumulate more, collect more data, and gain more expertise.  We are of an age in which it seems instinctive to give attention to every cubic inch of life other than our inner world—the only place from which we can gain the strength to brave, or even beat any turbulence.

On the night before he died, Jesus made an astonishing claim. He said to his Father, "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do,”  i.e. by completing the mission you gave me to do. We wonder how Jesus could have talked about a completed work. His three-year ministry seemed all too short. For every prostitute whose hearts he touched, hundreds remained untouched. For every blind man enabled to see, hundreds had were still blind. Yet on that last night, with many urgent human needs unmet and useful tasks undone, The Lord said he had completed the work God had given him. How did he do that? How did he stay focused on his mission?  Let’s look. Mark 1:32-39.

That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

That is a CRAZY BUSY LIFE. And talk about OPPORTUNITIES, Jesus had the power to heal everyone everywhere and remove so much pain, not to mention the power to change hearts by the preaching of His Word. So, what does Jesus do?  He takes time to get alone with his Commander-in-chief, the Father, to talk about his mission. We read,

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may PREACH there also, for that is why I came out.” And he went throughout all Galilee, PREACHING in their synagogues and casting out demons.

We are not told what Jesus talked to the Father about, but it had to be about his mission. The whole town wanted healing. Overnight the word about Jesus’ miraculous healing power would have gotten out to the surrounding countryside. No doubt many precious human beings with broken bodies, had traveled in the wee morning hours to Capernaum to be healed. Yet, Jesus’ decision about his mission is to leave Capernaum and the opportunities to HEAL and go to other towns primarily to PREACH. 

I believe Jesus was meditating on his mission statement: The mission of the Messiah is revealed in Isaiah 61, which Jesus had quoted in the synagogue at Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (vs1-2a).

This passage foresees the ministry of the Messiah. It pictures his DEED ministry, binding up the broken hearted (perhaps by healing horrible diseases), and bringing liberty to the captives (which could well be foreseeing Jesus’ exorcism of demons). It also pictures his ministry of the WORD, “proclaiming good news, proclaiming liberty to those held captive by sin, proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.” I believe Jesus was talking with his CO, The Father, about how to balance his WORD and DEED ministries.

Following Jesus’ Example

If we are to avoid the dangers of the CRAZY BUSY life, we must follow Jesus’ example and LIVE OUT OF OUR CALLING, instead of LIVING OUT OF DRIVENNESS. Os Guiness points out that when we live out of our calling, it adds devotion, dynamism, and direction to our lives. 

Answering the call of our Creator is “the ultimate why” for living, the highest  source of purpose in human existence…Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to His summons and service.  (The Call)

There are just two requirements to live OUT OF OUR CALLING—i.e. to stay focused, as Jesus did, on our mission.

1. The first is having a mission statement, or game plan—a clear picture of what our mission is and how we are going to accomplish it. Jesus’ game plan started with the biblical texts that describe the mission of the messiah. By getting away with the Father, he forged the rest of his plan to accomplish it.

The familiar warning, If you fail to plan, plan to fail is as true of completing Christ’s mission for us as it is of any other part of life. Few men I know would try to run a business without a business plan. Even if it is not written down, they still have in mind the steps they will take to succeed. Few men, however, have a LIFE plan. But, which is more important, your business or your life? When God has ordained a world in which success in every other area of live requires a plan, why would we think accomplishing Christ’s mission for us would be different?

This podcast and blog provides for you a three-fold definition of our mission, We are Called TO Christ, (to a love relationship with him), Called to BE LIKE Christ (to godly heart attitudes) and Called to Exercise Dominion FOR Christ in every sphere of our lives, (in all the roles we fill as men.) It is a short, and we believe biblical, mission statement, a starting point so that you can concentrate on HOW you will accomplish Christ’s mission for you.

2. The second requirement for living out of our calling as Jesus did is a regular time built into our schedule to get away with our Commander-in-chief to talk about our mission. The only thing dumber than Bill Belichick forming no game plan for the Superbowl would be forming a game plan and never looking at it during the game.  To win, he needs to do both.

I believe the Mark 1 passage above can be a model for starting our day with the Lord—a regular quiet time. Reading Scripture daily, with prayerful anticipation of  the upcoming day is essential. But Jesus is modeling more than that. All through his life and ministry, he left his disciples and escaped into the wilderness to be with his CO.

I have found that a very effective way to follow Jesus example is to try to put into my weekly schedule one hour (out of the 168 given to me by God) to meet with my Commander-in-chief to talk about my mission. For me and other men who have started to do this, it has been life-changing. Perhaps heading to bed at 9:00 Sunday evening instead of ten, or taking an hour for a walk on a Sunday afternoon could work for you.

No matter how you implement it into your life, I believe this restful reflection upon the work we accomplish the other 6 days is exactly what God intended in giving us one day a week to rest. Since the fourth commandment is a creation ordinance, wise believers know it has relevance for today. In my view, we tend to get hung up on what we can’t do, instead of seeing this principle (like all of God’s commands) as a path to life. In Isaiah 58, God tells his people, If  you keep the Lord’s day, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob (vs 13-14.) Riding in triumph on the heights of the land and feasting are metaphors in that culture for winning. Could God be saying through Isaiah that weekly resting and reflecting with Him on the mission he assigned us, is the key to weekly recovering our joy in Him and to winning the race He has marked out for us?