Pay Close Attention - Pastor Susie Gamez | Elk Grove

📖 For Sermon Notes and Guide, visit: https://midtownchurch.org/note/4-12-2026-midtown-church-elk-grove-campus/

Give through Midtown today: https://midtownchurch.org/give/

Thank you for your support online family!
         
          🌟 Quick Links:
         
    New to Midtown? Discover more here: https://midtownchurch.org/new/
Share your prayers with us: https://midtownchurch.org/care/
Plan a visit and join us in person: https://midtownchurch.org/

Visit our website at www.midtownchurch.org for more information about our church community and upcoming events.
 

More about Pastor Susie:
           
      Pastor Susie Gamez, Canadian by birth and Korean by heritage, is now Mexican by marriage and American by immigration. With a passion for reconciliation, racial justice, and the Gospel, Susie and her husband Marcos met at Fuller Theological Seminary while getting their M.A. in Intercultural Studies. They are now proud parents of four beautiful LatAsian kids. After serving as a youth pastor and church planter in South Central Los Angeles for 14 years, Susie now resides in Sacramento and serves as the Co-Lead Senior Pastor at Midtown Church.

Give through Midtown today: https://midtownchurch.org/give/
Thank you for your support online family!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

There are a lot of young younger folks in our church, and I wonder, um, are any of the parents recovering after spring break? So I know recently they take turns having spring break, but our kids had spring break just a few weeks ago, and so while we were on break, while they were on break, uh we took a quick trip back down to LA and uh we visited some friends. I will say, now that they're out of the room, and our kids know this, um our kids are spoiled though, because we have we have a friend, and you you all probably like, yeah, yeah, my kids are spoiled too, right? But we have a friend who works at Disney, and so when whenever we go down back down to LA, um we get a Disney hookup. And so this time around, the kids were like, We're tired of going to Disneyland. I was like, this sounds so spoiled. Um but it came with the suggestion that we try something new, that we go to Universal Studios instead. Problem is we don't have a Universal Studios hookup. But it was our youngest's uh eighth birthday, and he happens to love Super Mario Brothers, and they do have Super, what is it, Super Nintendo World, Mario World at Universal Studios, and so they convinced us to celebrate his birthday by going to Universal Studios. It also happened to be record-breaking temperatures in LA that particular week. You know, just a few weeks ago they had like a they it was record-breaking temperatures for the month of March. And so the day we went to Universal Studios, it was a hundred degrees. And Super Nintendo World doesn't have a lot of shade. But we still had fun, and we're not gonna complain because that was a blessing. So I don't want to sound like we're spoiled either. It was a blessing. Um it was a good time going back down to LA. We got to see some friends, and whenever we go, we like to do things that we miss now that we're not living there. So we'll go visit some friends. We always go to the beach, even if it's cold, but that particular week it was nice because it was hot. Um, but we also love to visit restaurants that we don't have here. Um now, our kids are still young, so maybe their palettes aren't so sophisticated. We're not like going to like fancy restaurants or anything, but they miss things like I heard y'all used to have this restaurant here too. I think there was one location, but it shut down during COVID. Do you guys know about a place called Cafe Rio? Okay, so Cafe Rio, they they've got they've got this one particular like uh sweet pork burrito that some of our kids love, and they they used to give free quesadillas to the kids. So we would be able to, a family of six would be able to eat for like the price of two burritos. Um so we always like to go down to Cafe Rio whenever we we go down there, we go to another place called King Taco. Anybody ever been down to LA and know about King Taco? There's plenty of locations. Okay, if you if you don't know about King Taco, next time you go to LA, you gotta hit up a King Taco, okay? Um and it's not just the tacos, it's their soapes. So if you soapz de asada is what you want to, you can thank me later, okay? Um the one thing that I lament though is that we didn't get a chance to go to a good sit-down Korean restaurant. Now, Koreatown in LA is the biggest, or the Korean population in LA is the biggest concentrated population of Koreans outside of Korea. And so the Koreatown in LA comes with some of the food in Koreatown in LA is better than food in Korea. Like even Koreans would say that. So this time we always try to you know grab a couple of different meals, but um we went to like a food court, so we didn't get the full experience because we were running out of time. Now, if you've ever been to uh uh like a traditional Korean restaurant, you might know what to expect. Um but years ago when I was in college, so just you know, actually just a few years ago when I was in college, um I remember uh a few friends of mine, they they were um they were Chinese, they weren't Korean, but they they said that they were going to uh a traditional Korean restaurant for the first time, and so they didn't know what to expect. So they tell me about their experience, and this is what happened. They um they got to the restaurant, they ordered what they thought was good off the menu, and um, and then they they waited and they said, well, pretty soon after, um the server came and put all of these dishes out in front of us. Now these are side dishes, okay? So a part of a traditional Korean meal is you'll always get a bowl of rice and you'll get a bunch of side dishes, usually some kind of vegetable, some something pickled or fermented, sometimes a little bit of seafood or meat. But but it's you know, if you go to a real traditional restaurant, you'll get like 20 side dishes. My friends didn't know this. So when they got the food, they got the rice and all the side dishes, they thought this was the main dish. And so they started eating up all the food and they got full off of the rice and all the side dishes. Because the other thing, and this is great, but when you run out of your side dishes, they refill them for you. So they just filled up on all the side dishes, and they didn't realize that the main dish was still to come. So although the food was good, they kind of missed out because they missed out on the they got full before the main dish came out. Um so you know, I'm talking a lot about food. I hope I'm not getting you hungry, but uh maybe hungry for the word, that would be good. Um but here's the point, the parallel that I'm trying to make. If you don't know what you should be waiting on, you might make the wrong thing the main thing. If you don't know what you should be waiting on, you might make the wrong thing the main thing. So many good spiritual principles that we can pull out of this. Um, and I know we prayed, but before we go into the scriptures, let's just pray once again. Lord, with this in mind, we don't want to miss out on the main thing. God help us to get focused on what you want us to see and hear and know more deeply about who you are as we search the scriptures today. So reveal to us, and we pray, Lord, that you would be the main thing. Let us not fill up on the wrong things, but let us make it about you. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right. If you want to turn to me, turn with me to Luke 10. Luke 10, starting in verse 38. We're gonna read Luke 10, 38, 8 through 42. If you don't have your Bibles, it's gonna come up on the screens, but you can pull it up on your phones too. And it says this. Actually, I'm not in the wrong. Okay. Uh this is Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha. So as Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me. 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. I know this is a very well-known story, and probably for a lot of reasons you can relate to this story. Um I'm not even gonna point out all the reasons why, actually, it'll come out, but I'm sure many of us have felt like Martha a time or two. Um, not because I think that everyone here is struggling with being too busy, or because everyone is as responsible and as hardworking as Martha, but I think that all of us can probably relate to Martha at least some of the time because if you're breathing and blinking, you know that you can get worried, distracted, frustrated, and annoyed sometimes. Right? So even if it's not for the same reasons, you can understand the feeling that she has. She was feeling worried, distracted, frustrated, and annoyed. And sometimes, oftentimes, it's the people that you love most, your family, your friends, the people you live with, that know how to press your buttons the most. You love them the most, but you also get annoyed by them the most sometimes. Now, though in this story we see a comparison of two different people, I think most of us have a little bit of both Mary and Martha in us. And that's not to say that one is bad and the other is good, because both women, as we'll see, had strengths and weaknesses. But what I hope that we'll pay close attention to is to how Jesus challenges our notions of what we can think are strengths and what we think are weaknesses, and how we think we should behave accordingly. Jesus came and he challenged a lot of social norms. And he challenges a lot of ways in which we think the ots and the shoulds are in our life. He came and he reprioritized a lot of things for us, and he does that here for Mary and Martha as well. So let's start with Martha. Um I'll give you a short snapshot bio of Martha. Uh, Martha and Mary show up in the Gospels on plenty of occasions, on multiple occasions. Um other very well-known moment is uh when their brother Lazarus had died, and Jesus came and did what? He raised him back to life. Now, Martha, she was a lot of things. She was a hospitable woman, and she was most likely a single woman. You might have missed that fact here, but uh Luke 10 says that Martha opened up her home to Jesus, not her husband's home, which in this cultural context it would have probably said the husband's name if it were his home, but it says that Martha opened up her home. And it was Martha's home, not her father's home. So it was her home. And she opened up her home to Jesus. Martha has a sister named Mary. Now we don't know how old they were, but it's likely that Martha was older than Mary. How many of you just assume that? Because you see sort of a caricature of them, like, oh, okay, yeah, she's probably the older sister. But there's other context clues that show us why Martha was probably older. In that culture, the older sibling's name would typically come before the younger sibling's name. Uh and it's safe to assume that Martha was single or perhaps even widowed, because if she lived with a man, typically the man's name would be attached to the ownership of the house. So Martha here, she's the older sister to Mary, and later we'll see that they also have a brother named Lazarus, who Jesus would raise from the dead. But in this passage, we're looking at Martha and Mary. And if it sounded weird to your ears to hear it in that order, how many of you have become used to hearing it as Mary and Martha? Right? Mary and Martha. But it's actually listed as Martha and Mary. Um maybe we get used to hearing it as Mary and Martha because in this particular text, Mary is the one who is highlighted. Jesus points out Mary has chosen what is better. But when you, in my subheading at least, it's listed. Actually, I think that when I read it, I said the home of Mary and Martha. I caught myself, but it actually said Martha and Mary. So her name is listed first, and again, that follows the cultural order. A minor change like reversing the order of their names can sound inconsequential, but it carries meaning. We've become used to referring them to them as Mary and Martha because Mary is pointed out as the one whose uh example is the one whose we want we want to follow here. Now, Martha, without even knowing that cultural context, the order of the names being listed and saying that it was Martha's home, how many of you assumed that Martha was older? Just because she seems like the more responsible one, right? Now, I don't know if you're an older sibling, you probably were like, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I can I can resonate with that because I'm the older, more responsible one. Um again, we gotta pay close attention to the way that things are listed because it gives us clues about what's really going on. Now, we don't know if Mary lived with her sister Martha. She probably did, but either way, this home was described as Martha's home. And because it was Martha's home, and because Martha was the older, more responsible sister, of course she took very seriously the responsible responsibility to be hospitable to Jesus. Now, this kind of goes without saying if you've got an important guest coming, you want to show hospitality, you want to get the house ready, you want to get things ready. But hospitality in this time and in this culture was of utmost importance. By contemporary American standards, Jewish hospitality was above and beyond. So it was not strange for Martha to be extremely concerned about ensuring that all the preparations had to be made. In fact, it would be strange for her not to be concerned. This was not just any ordinary person coming, but but in Jewish custom, you had to make sure that it felt like the red carpet was being rolled out for you, especially if you were someone as important as Jesus who was a guest at someone's home. To not show proper hospitality to a guest would be a show of great disrespect, especially when that guest was as important as someone like Jesus. So Martha wasn't doing anything wrong per se. She was just missing the point. She was missing the point that Jesus and his presence and being in his presence was the main thing that day. She was getting concerned with the side dishes. When Jesus came to the home of Martha and Mary, what he did was he flipped the script and he helped Mary and Martha reframe, reimagine, and reorient themselves to a new way of thinking and being and behaving. Essentially, Jesus' visit, what happens as a result during his visit, invites not just Mary and Martha to think and move in a whole new way, it invites us to be challenged as well. I wonder how many of us are living in a way that submits to society's ideas of what's good and what's successful and what's valuable versus really trying to listen to what God values, to what God wants you to prioritize. Some of us have fallen into the trap of thinking that being booked and busy equals success. If you're not booked and busy, you must be doing something wrong. But this right here is another example of Jesus saying, hey, what your idea of success, what your idea of greatness, what your idea of goodness is probably a little different from mine if you're following the patterns of the world more than you're following what I may be telling you. God never called us to be booked and busy. God didn't call us to be busy, he called us to be fruitful, yet so many of us mistake being busy for being fruitful. And you know what happens at the end of our lives? I'm I'm I'm in my I passed the threshold of the mid-40s. I'm 46 now, so I'm getting closer to 50, and I feel like something shifts there. Okay. I felt it starting to come at 40 when I noticed that I needed reading glasses for everything. But but now I'm really starting to feel it where I'm like, wow, life is short. I visited earlier last week, last Monday, I visited a friend who just got diagnosed with stage four cancer. Same age as me, just out of nowhere. He got this diagnosis, and now he's starting to think about how much time do I have left? He's he's lived a busy life, he's he's had a successful career. But what does that matter if he's he's forgotten to make the main thing the main thing? He's starting to think about eternity a little bit more at this age now. And he recognizes, and I know that this happens with every passing year. What is life really about? What's really important? What do I need to prioritize? Nobody at the end of their life says, I wish I spent more time at work. I wish I made more money. It was more, it becomes more a I wish I knew how to make the most important things the main thing. I wish I spent more time with the people that I loved. Here, Jesus is starting to hint at what's most important because time was short. We were never called to be busy, we were called to be fruitful. But where does fruitfulness come from? What does it mean to be fruitful by God's standards? Let's start with what uh what we're told is the fruit of the Spirit. So Galatians 5 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love. Is your life marked by love? Can people look at your life and say, ooh, that person is full of love, full of the fruit of love? Can a person look at your life and say, ooh, that person has joy? Even in the midst of circumstances that shouldn't really necessitate or produce joy, there's there's some kind of secret root, like what is this person's, where what are they attached to that they can have joy being produced in their life amidst these circumstances? What about peace? That peace that surpasses understanding. You know, Paul tells us, you know, in in the midst of things that could make you anxious or worried, he says, with thanksgiving in your heart instead, pray, right? Pray and petition the Lord. Bring the things before God, but with thanksgiving in your heart because you trust Him. And then the peace that surpasses understanding will what? Guard your heart. Guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. This is the fruit of abiding. This is the fruit of being in the presence of the one who is sovereign, right? And so when you can do these things out of your life, you'll see fruit. You'll have love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control when you know how to stay in his presence, even when everything around you feels like it's a windstorm or a we like to say other kinds of storms too, right? So the the we when it feels like you shouldn't have peace, you can have peace if you're abiding, if you stay close. I know that I in my flesh am not good at being loving, kind, peaceful, joyful. If it's left up to me, if I'm not abiding, if I don't have the power of the Holy Spirit, if I don't, if if I'm not abiding, I can't, I will, my patience is very thin, especially when life gets busy, or if there's something that wants to tempt me to stay in a place of worry and anxiety. See, the text says that Martha was distracted, and the word distracted as it's used here means to pull away from. Pull away from. Martha was distracted, she was pulled away from what was most important, and what was most important was being in the presence of Jesus. We're not called to be busy and distracted, we're called to be fruitful. So now the next question might be: how do you bear good fruit? Being attached to the vine is what we already talked about, right? If you uh change up the the phrase um uh who you are is more important than what you do, that do we know that phrase? Who you are is more important than what you do. If you can change up that that well-known saying, um, I I would add to it that what you do is an overflow of who you are, right? So, yes, who you are is more important than what you do, but what you do is an overflow of who you are, and who you are is shaped by knowing whose you are. That's where we start. You know who you are by knowing whose you are. And if you know that Jesus is your source, then you will remain attached to the vine. So you are shaped by knowing whose you are. In John 15, 5, which by the way, if you don't know at Midtown, we've made that our uh our our verse of the year. In John 15. Jesus says, I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will what? You will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Apart from me, you can do nothing good. You and I, we belong to Jesus, the vine. We're called to remain in him, stay close to him, stay in alignment to him, and he in us. And if we know whose we are, we will know who we are, and the overflow of that will be good fruit. Not because we're good, but because of he who lives in me. So, how can we stay attached to the vine if we're constantly distracted and being pulled away? Some of you have already heard me talk about this, and we all know this without hearing a TED talk from me. Um we know that our our phones can tend to be one of the most magnetic distractions that pull us away from being present to God. If being distracted means that we're pulled away, there is Some sort of crazy magnetic force that pulls us away that is called technology. Okay, I'm not even just gonna say our phones, because it can be our iPads, it can be TV screens, it can be noise. How many of you like me have a hard time not multitasking? When's the last time you just did the dishes and nothing else? Because I always gotta have noise on, whether it's music or I've got my headphones in, I'm listening to something, I've even got my iPad with me and I can be watching something. But like we we don't even take walks without noise anymore. There's always something that we gotta multitask to, and those things can actually pull us away. And I'm not saying it's not good to like go out on a walk and have worship music playing and whatnot, but sometimes we really have to lean into the discipline of just being fully present to God. Don't let anything else pull you away. I just wanna be with you. I just wanna be with you, I just wanna be with you. Are we listening to, because we're actually hungry for that, but we let other things become a more a stronger magnetic force that pulls us away and gets us distracted? If we say we want to hear from God, but we don't take time to be intentional about being in his presence or opening up his word so that we can hear, or when we pray, if we pray and we pray and we pray and we pray um and we don't leave time to listen, God might want to speak, but did you leave time for him to speak? We've been conditioned to be distracted. It's difficult to sit still and and not do one more thing in addition. That the psalmist um writes, you know, this is an invitation from God to be still and know that I am God. How hard is it for us to just be still? And you know, that word be still, that invitation isn't just like stop, don't do anything, just be still. But it actually is, it it can actually require an active surrender. So that invitation, be still, is to quit striving, is to surrender, to put your full trust and know that God is God. So it's more than just doing nothing, there's an act of surrender, there's an act of I'm gonna pull away from something else and be drawn into your presence, and I will know, behold, that you are God. But many of us have been conditioned to be distracted. Um Jesus in this short interaction gets to the point right away. He says that Mary has chosen what is better. So in this scenario, um, Mary is quote unquote the winner, if you'll want to put it that way. Um but but he's not trying to pit the two sisters against each other. This is not a Cain and Abel type of storyline where Cain was clearly overcome by evil and sinned gravely as a result of his anger and his jealousy. In fact, if we want to learn how to live in a way that honors God, remember Martha was the first one to model to us how to live. The passage starts by saying that Martha opened up her home to Jesus. She opened up her home to Jesus. She was intentional about inviting Jesus in. So she was on the right path. But prioritizing Jesus starts with choosing to be intentional to having the presence of God, opening up your home, maybe the home of your heart, the home of your life, the home of your schedule to God. This is what it means to practice the presence of God, to be intentional about it, to open yourself up and invite Jesus to be present with you. And it's not just in those moments where you're intentional about it, but as you work that muscle, it's really inviting Jesus to be a part of all of your life, right? We've talked about this at different times too. I think one part of American Christianity that has kind of done us a disservice is we separate this idea of Jesus, come and be the Lord and Savior of my life, Lord and Savior, as if those two things should be separate. When Jesus is your savior, yes, he has rescued and redeemed you. What he did on the cross gave you the gift of salvation, right? Available to anyone and everyone who will believe and trust. But there's also an invitation to follow. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus. He's not just savior, he's Lord over your life. I will follow you with all that I am, I will surrender. I won't just be still for a minute of my day. I will be still, I will surrender, I will actively trust you and know that you are God, you are Lord over my life. This is what it means to be a Christian, a follower, a disciple of Jesus. So prioritizing Jesus starts with you choosing to open up your home, your heart, your whole life to Jesus. Choose to be with God and choose peace over busyness, choose presence over busyness. But in order to do that, you have to remove distractions. Those things that can pull you away from God. And yes, it's easy to pick on technology. But I wonder if we start to take inventory, there are actually other things that can take us or pull us away from the presence of God. I know this becomes tricky, but but when I said this, I actually preached this message a few weeks back to like a um a young adult group. And and when I said this part, I've audibly heard people say, ooh, because it's like it's there are some relationships in your life that might be pulling you away from the presence of God. And I know that sometimes you know we have this like, no, no, but I need to be, I need to be a light in places where where Jesus, and yes, that's true, that's true. But but no in those places, are you called to that and are you on mission with God in those places? Or is your light being dimmed when you're in certain places, right? There are some places, there are some relationships, there are some assignments that you might be assigning yourself to rather than really hearing the instructions of God called you and assigned you to this relationship or to this purpose. And so listen, take time to listen and hear the assignment that God has for you in this season. Now, um, I want us to remember that Jesus was not condemning Martha for being distracted, worried, or upset. He's calling it out, he's naming it. But what he's doing is he's also calling her in. He's giving her an invitation. Come, sit with us, Martha. Stop worrying about what you're doing and come be with us, Martha. This wording, Mary sat at the Lord's feet, is is actually quite revolutionary. Because we we might not get it in a Western point of view today, but for Mary to be invited to come sit at Jesus' feet is um it is very countercultural. The the term to sit at someone's feet is used in reference to a teacher-student type relationship. It's used with Jesus as reference to his dis in reference to his disciples. They sat at his feet and learned from him. And this is very significant because Mary sitting at his feet and Jesus pointing out to Martha that this is the better thing that she chose to respond to, um, he's letting them know I'm inviting you to be my disciple. He's inviting them into a discipleship relationship. Mary and Martha, women called to sit at Jesus' feet as his disciples, was revolutionary. It was countercultural. Um He's basically telling Martha and Mary, I don't see you just as women who are assigned to cook and clean and show hospitality in the ways that social norms have told you. I'm inviting you into something deeper. I'm inviting you to come sit at my feet and learn from me. Be in my presence. Context is key, and cultural context is super important to understand what's happening here. See, Martha is trying to shame her sister into doing what she's expected to do. But instead, Mary has seated herself at the feet of Jesus so that she can learn from him. In today's context, it's like cool. She prioritized the guest by being present with him and being present to him. She's giving him her undivided attention. But remember, in Jewish tradition, this was usually not even an option for women. They were supposed to be sitting at the feet, they were not supposed to be sitting at the feet of the rabbi. They were supposed to be doing what Martha was doing, behind the scenes, out of the way. But Jesus was reframing, reorienting, reimagining a way of life for his followers when he said, follow me. And this included women. For us today, we hear it and we're like, what the heck? But in that time and place, Martha was the one that was saying, What the heck? Because she's looking at her sister saying, What is she doing? This is not acceptable. What is she doing? And so for Jesus to affirm what her sister was doing was definitely mind-blowing for her. I think we miss it in today's context when we read it through our lens. He was blowing some notions out of the water for her. Her objections to Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus while she was doing all the work were part, it was partly probably due to the fact that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus while she was doing all the work, but it was probably largely due to the fact that she could not believe the audacity of her sister sitting at the feet of Jesus as if he was going to teach her and treat her with equality. She was probably embarrassed. You know, it's kind of like when you've got that younger sibling or a child that's got no filter, they haven't learned certain norms yet. You know, like I've overheard young young kids, you know, walk up to an older woman and be like, How old are you? Right? Um, and you know, I know that shouldn't seem like an offense, but you know, I overheard a conversation with a kid recently who said to an older woman, Are you really old? And and these kind of things are just like, oh, what get my child, like let my child have some filters. And this is probably what Martha felt towards her sister. This is embarrassing. Mary, what are you doing? And maybe Martha expected Jesus to scold Mary and say, Your sister's right. I don't know what you're doing here sitting at my feet. Go on and do what's expected of you. And instead, he does the unexpected. He doesn't shoe Mary away, he invites Martha in. Here's what Jesus was inviting Martha to do. He was inviting her to take a closer look. Ooh, Martha, I think you're missing it right now. Pay close attention to what's happening here. Pay close attention to what matters most right now. Don't miss the main dish by getting full on the side dishes. Jesus is pointing Martha to Mary, not to compare her and make her feel less than. He's simply saying, Martha, in this moment, Mary has made room for what is better. Mary has made room for what is better. See, Mary was really good at paying close attention. In fact, I don't know if you've ever thought about it, but Mary was probably the only one who really understood that Jesus was actually going to die, that he was going to be led to the cross. Even though Jesus had talked about it and taught about it and forewarned the disciples about his death and resurrection, it seems that Mary was the only one who really understood it because she was the one who anointed his body before his burial. Knowing that death was coming upon him, she she anointed his body, knowing what was ahead. So she understood what was coming. She paid close attention. She took Jesus at his word. She paid close enough attention that she knew that she was actually invited to come sit at his feet. She believed him. And it was it was because she paid close attention. Women were the first ones to witness the resurrection. And I think that Mary was kind of trailblazing for other women to say, no, it's okay, he's different. He's actually inviting us to come and follow after him. It wasn't about social norms and expectations. She was less concerned about all of them and their expectations, and she was locked in on Jesus. She paid close attention, she sat at his feet, she made the main thing the main thing, and kept Jesus as the one who mattered most. We can learn a lot from Mary. He's uh known for having said, I have so much to do today that I must spend the first four hours in prayer. That's counterintuitive for many of us, isn't it? How many of us see prayer as something that takes our time instead of adding to it? Have you heard the saying, when we work, we work, but when we pray, God works? When we work, we work, but when we pray, God works. And I always love to come back to this woman too, maybe because I can relate, although she had 25 children. Um, no, she had 19 children. She was the youngest of 25 children, okay? I only have four kids, but it feels like I have 25 sometimes. So maybe I can relate to Susanna Wesley, who was the mother of uh the great John Wesley. But she herself, having been the youngest of 25 and having 19 children herself, she made it a habit to get into the presence of God however she could, which included wearing an apron and throwing it up over her head when she needed time with Jesus. So it said that the kids would know, ooh, don't bug mommy right now. She got the apron up over her head. She's spending time with Jesus. She's a woman who could have an excuse to say, I don't have time, I'm too busy, I got too much going on. But she made it a priority. And as a result of her faithfulness, as she lived out uh modeling what it looked like to keep the main thing the main thing, she she had a rich inheritance of children who went on to carry on the faith in big ways. And I'm gonna leave you with one last quote from a pastor named John Howard Wesley, who said, After a certain level of spiritual maturity, the enemy is not so concerned with tempting you with evil. Instead, he begins to distract you with good. You know you can be distracted by good things. If you get busy with the good like Martha was, it will distract you from the best. In that moment, she was doing a good thing by being hospitable, but it took her away from the best, which was Jesus. So I wonder for us too, if we need to take inventory. Maybe your life looks good on the outside, but continue to ask the Lord, Lord, I want you to actually be Lord over my life. There are too often times where we, here's what my schedule looks like today. Let me see where I can fit the Lord in. That's not what it means to give Lordship to Jesus. If He is Lord over your life, He is Lord over your life. And so we're about to go into a series on the Holy Spirit. And this is, we pray these kind of prayers, and I don't know if you if it really lands in your ears like this, but when we say Holy Spirit, come and have your way, we're actually saying, God, make me less resistant to however you want to move. I want to make you Lord. Holy Spirit, however you want to move, that might mean knock some things down. It might mean reconstruct, do some renovations in me, transform me. I want to know you more deeply. I want to be in your presence. Those, I know it can feel like a scary period because you don't know what's gonna happen, but do you trust that God is good? Do you trust that he is a good God who loves you, who is for you, and wants to give more of himself to you? If life feels dull, bitter, boring, any of these things, that's not the life that he says, apart from you can do no good thing. If you want to know what the goodness of God looks like in your life, and you want good things to overflow out of your life, we have to be intentional about making room for how God wants to move. And this is what when we go into this whole series on the Holy Spirit, we're gonna keep praying those prayers. Holy Spirit, come and have your way. We make room for you. Jesus gave that invitation to the disciples before he ascended to the Father. He said, wait. The Holy Spirit, the gift of the Spirit is gonna be poured out upon you. And so let's have that posture every day. Lord, fill me up. Fill me up. I don't want to do this life apart from you, so fill me up. Be Lord over my life. The worship team is gonna come back up, and um, they're just gonna reprise this last song, and Pastor Iron's gonna come back up as well. But let's let's pray. Let's pray that prayer with that posture. Holy Spirit, come and have your way. We wanna be people who really make you Lord over our lives. We wanna be like Mary, where we learn how to sit at your feet. We're hungry for your presence. We want more of you, Lord. And God, you give us that invitation to come taste and see that you are good, to be still and know that you are God. And God, we wanna be like that deer that hungers and thirsts after you, that pants after you, Lord. We feel like we can't live life apart from you, Lord. We are so dependent on you. So, Holy Spirit, come and fill us up. We want more of you. We just wanna be with you. Come and have your way in Jesus' name.