Step One: Read the Bible

"Read the Bible". This is an obvious statement to make, especially if you want revelation from the Word of God – it makes total and utter sense. Well, you’d think so wouldn’t you? There is, however, something about reading your Bible that actually hinders Christians. It is quite an odd phenomenon. A believer who has been a Christian for any more than 12 months has something in them which will stop them reading their Bible, even though they still want revelation knowledge. The Scriptural name for this phenomenon is distraction. Let me tell you something, you cannot put your Bible under your pillow at night and it transmit knowledge to you! It won’t work!

You cannot survive as a Christian with just a Sunday morning sermon from your pastor, no matter how good a preacher they may be.

You cannot survive on a daily reading from "Good morning with Jesus" or whatever your equivalent is.

You cannot survive on your one Scripture from your promise box.

If all you are doing is this, you will never really get any significant revelation from the Bible other than you will go to heaven when you die, and even that fact, you’ll find quite hard to believe!
Don’t try and find time in your busy day to read your Bible! I have tried that. Sometimes still do – and take my word for it, it never works! Instead, build your schedule around the Word of God.

A lot of revelation that you get from the Word of God will come when you can put Scriptures into context with the rest of the Bible. You have to be familiar with these Scriptures to do that! I strongly suggest that you daily familiarise yourself with the majestic Word of God.

Distractions (they are not always what you think!)

Do you recall the incident with Mary and Martha? It is where Martha got all indignant about the fact that Mary just sat there and listened to the teaching of Jesus.

Luke 10:38-42
38 Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.
39 And she has a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.
40 But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she also approached Him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me."
41 And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.
42 But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her."

Before we go on with this – did you did what I found myself doing once? I was reading through a teaching book, I don’t really remember what it was about now, but it had a similar layout to the this study. I was reading through the text and, as I did above, the author wrote out in bold text some verses of Scripture. I do remember that I was enjoying the book and enjoying what the author had to say, so much so, that when the Scripture was written out, I kind of speed read it. I read over it very quickly because I wanted to get back to looking at what the author was saying.

As soon as I realised, I repented! When Scriptures are written out like that, slow down, and really read it. Go over it a couple of times. If you need to – go and get your Bible and read the surrounding verses to put it in context.

So if you did do that, I suggest you go over this passage again.

Notice verse 39. According to the way that is written, both Mary and Martha were sat at Jesus’ feet listening to Him (Mary ALSO sat at Jesus’ feet…). For many years I thought that Mary was the only one sat there and that Martha was in the kitchen doing whatever she was doing. But I was wrong for all those years – and I didn’t find that out until I checked it out for myself!

Martha was also sat at the feet of Jesus. She also was listening to Him. She was listening to the same sermon that Mary was listening to. But at some point during this, Martha got distracted. That is what the first part of verse 40 tells me – Martha got distracted from the words of Jesus.

Now most of the sermons I hear that make reference to this incident seem to beat Martha up! How dare she not sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to His words with Mary! How unrighteous can one person be?

Well, let’s not join the queue of people that are going to be ready to lynch Martha as soon as they walk through the heavenly gates. What was she distracted by? According to verse 40 – it was with much serving. That’s not all that bad is it? Let me ask you another question – who was the benefit of this much serving for? Jesus! Martha was wanting to serve Jesus. She wanted to be a good hostess because she welcomed Him into her home.

That’s not that bad – surely? It is quite reasonable to assume that in Martha’s mind, she was doing a good thing – she was ministering unto the Lord. I can sympathise with Martha because I have been in exactly the same boat – and I am sure that you have too.

In fact, the whole body of Christ is excellent at being a Martha where the Word of God is concerned. We all get so busy doing the work of God and church things that we get distracted from the Word of God.

It is true to say that we may get distracted by other, more obvious things, such as the TV, music etc. But often times there are legitimate concerns of ours that we are involved in – home groups, prayer cells, Sunday Morning, soup kitchen, Alpha, Kids church, the youth etc… There are so many things going on in churches these days that  the "To Do" list needs a full time administrator to co-ordinate everything. And we, as good church members devote ourselves to them, and let me emphasise now – there is nothing wrong with that – nothing at all. In fact, it is positively Bible to be a good church member.

The problem arises when we as Christians get so caught up in these things that we are at these events every moment of our spare time, so when we get home at night, we are just to plain tired to do anything let alone spend time in your Bible studying. The things is – we then justify these things in our minds by saying to ourselves when we realised that we have neglected to spend time in our Bible, "It’s OK, I was out there doing the work of God". I have been there. I have got so busy in the work of God, that, before I knew it, a whole week goes by and I haven’t even picked my Bible up once.

We have all done it. We have all got distracted many times from the Word of God, because we just plain and simply wanted to minister to the Lord by serving Him! We have consequently experienced what Martha went through in this passage. We don’t necessarily do anything, because of the heart of God’s children is always to please Him. We have all been at some point a Martha, so I want you to notice that Jesus didn’t condemn Martha when she complained to Him.

But notice what He did say, because there are some clues here that I want to pick up on. He said to her, "You are worried and troubled about many things". To be honest with you, being worried and troubled is sin. These are two events that, if they start occurring in your own life, are often times a pointer to the fact that you have become distracted. Worry eventually becomes the mark of someone who has become distracted from the Word of God. It is sad to see too. I see these people and think to myself, "Good Lord, if there ever was someone who was an outstanding church member it is this person, but he worries about many things – why? Joe over there doesn’t get involved anywhere near as much and yet he never seems plagued by fear!" Of course, now we know the answer why.

"One thing is needed" Jesus said. One thing. Not two. Not three. One. Just one thing is needful. Jesus makes this astounding comment to us today. You ask any preacher, what are the things which I need to do? He’ll pull out a list as long as his arm. The same with the pastor – although this will be a different list. Nope! Jesus tells us one thing is needed – and then He tells us right what that one thing is – "…and Mary has chosen that good part."

What was Mary doing?

If she moved away – we don’t know it. The text leaves us with the impression that she stayed at the feet of Jesus, being ministered to by the Lord. You see, Martha was wanting to minister to Jesus. Mary was wanting Jesus to minister to her! Do you see the difference?

Now don’t run off into some weird extreme and start preaching that "Matt said never to do anymore work for God, otherwise it is a distraction!" If you do say such things then you are a liar, because I never said that. I said Christians are notorious for being distracted from the Word by doing the work of God. I don’t see Jesus just being ministered too by His heavenly Father – He went out into the fields as it were, and worked long, hard hours.

I am just telling you not to let that work distract you. Some people may ask, "so what is the right balance?" I would say that is different for different people, but I do know this, if you are rightly discerning the Word of truth, and not being distracted from it, you will know what the correct balance is. If you sit their and guess, I would suggested that you are still unbalanced toward being distracted. One thing that I do know about people that aren’t Martha like anymore – they do know when to study and when to work, and they know before God that they have got it right.

As I said, whatever is distracting may be a reasonable reason, but don’t forget – one thing is needful – the rest follows along behind it.

Look at the other Martha trait listed here in the Bible – she complained. If you are finding yourself complaining more and more as well as worrying – perhaps you are being distracted.

The key word in this passage is chosen. Mary has chosen that good part. You see, the beauty of this example, is we can be like Mary and chose not to be distracted. It is your choice what you do – not anyone else’s. You can’t blame any other person, your wife, your pastor, you cell group leader or anybody because you have chosen to do that! It came as a great revelation to me to know that my church could function without me being there, running around like a headless chicken! I chose to start becoming more like Mary.

Don’t ever get so busy doing the work of the Lord that you forget the Lord of the work!

I thought about this Scripture a lot before writing this study, and one such time, I was in the bath – going over what had happened in my mind. I was wondering how it affected me and my life and I was getting a lot of revelation from this. Then all of a sudden, something happened. And what happened, I was no more expecting to happen than I was a cow falling out of the sky. That no good, dirty, lying rotten rat called Satan just spoke right into my consciousness so clearly. He said to me, "I am going to kill you!"

I had heard Satan say this to me a few times before. In fact this was the third time he said it in such a very clear and direct way. Up until this happened, I normally would start confessing the Word and declaring it to him saying something along the lines of, "No your not, you can’t! Life and death is in the power of my tongue – not yours and I am not going to join my words to be in line with yours. I just want you to know that the 91st Psalm tells me that I am under the shadow of the Almighty, and in His wings I take refuge. He has given angels charge over me…" I’d carry on like that until I wanted to finish – sometimes it would be just a few seconds, and other times, it would be a few hours whilst I preached to that useless piece of trash. And there is nothing wrong with doing that – nothing at all! It is the way Jesus defeated Satan when temptation came – He preached to Satan the promises of God.

Well, whilst I sat there in the bath, I heard Satan clearly say, I am going to kill you. At first I was a little surprised, I thought, where did that come from? So I thought to myself that I would have a little preaching session and run that devil off. Before I did, I heard the Spirit of God say, "Confuse the enemy" and then that is when it happened – the Spirit of God took a hold of me (I was already fairly "tuned in" you see, because I had been meditating on the Word of God).

I said out loud, "Go ahead! Kill me if you can!" That confused him, because like I said, I would normally start preaching now on the protection racket that God has got going. But this time, I actually gave him permission and that confused him – and I knew it. I could almost hear him reply, "What? What did you say?"

"I said, ‘Go ahead – kill me, you have my permission’! But let me remind you of something before you do – I am not going to heaven quietly! I am gonna be worse when I get there than I am now! I am not going to sit around on some cloud somewhere playing some stupid harp! You will recall in the book of Hebrews it talks about "the great cloud of witnesses" surrounding us? Well – I’ll go and join them and I will encourage the believers on earth 100 times more than I do whilst I am down here! Not only that, when I finish there, I’ll go and join Jesus and "make intercession" for the Body of Christ. I’ll stand at the right hand of the Father and join Him and be 1000 times more effective in my prayers.

"You thought that when you killed Jesus that would be the end of it – but it was just the beginning and things got worse and worse for you since you killed him, because the Holy Spirit came to earth in His place. It will be the same for me – kill me and it will get a whole lot worse for you, believe me.

"Not only that, I’ll be like Smith Wigglesworth who was rejected by multitudes of people at the time, but when he died – all his books get published. He has inspired more people since he died than he ever did whilst on earth! They’ll write books about me too – books that will also inspire people!

"Do you want to know what else? There’ll be absolutely nothing that you can do about it because when I am in heaven – you can’t touch me, you can’t hinder me – you can’t do anything – so I’ll be 1000′s of times more effective when I am dead! So go on – kill me if you dare!"

I tell you – the devil left my bathroom with his tail between his legs wondering what on earth to do with himself! I had fun glory to God! I don’t know about the theological accuracy of what I said – but I believe it!

I came out of that bathroom shouting! The Lord though wasn’t done – He wanted to keep on ministering to me, so I got back before Him and He said to me, "Really, the best chance the devil has of making you ineffective is whilst you’re on earth. He can’t really attack you with condemnation or guilt anymore [I have spent many years learning to stand against such things], he can’t really attack you with insecurity or even fear. No – the greatest weapon Satan has to get at you personally is apathy! Do you know how a believer gets apathetic? Satan distracts them. If you get distracted from Me ministering to you, you will eventually end up apathetic."

I know as soon as apathy hits – I would be no good for the Kingdom of God – so I guard against distractions from Him ministering to me, and most of that ministry comes from me getting revelation out of the Word of God. For me, the warning is very clear – distractions are a main tool of my enemy, and they will seek to rob, steal, kill and destroy me if I let them. As we discussed above, Mary chose not to get distracted. I have chosen to do the same thing. Sure I don’t always get it right, but my desire, and consequently my actions should always be to guard against distractions – even those that have the disguise of Christian work! If Satan can’t get me out of the ministry – he’ll get me so busy in it that I become ineffective.