It's All Too Much: What Martha Teaches You About Busyness Becoming an Idol

Why does it feel like you're working so hard for God while He's working so little in your life? What Martha and Mary in Luke 10 reveal about busyness.

Have you ever looked at your life — your calendar, the pile of tasks waiting on you — and felt the weight of it press down on your chest until you could barely breathe? You look at everything you're carrying and you land on one sentence: it's all too much.

I know that feeling from the inside.

The night the pipe burst

A few years ago we made the decision that God was calling us to plant a church. I went almost a year without a steady job. My wife worked tirelessly. I picked up whatever work I could find, whenever I could find it.

One night in February, I was outside, frantically searching for job leads on my phone, when I heard a noise. A pipe had burst in the crawlspace. I ran over, shut off the main water valve, and went back inside.

Then I sat down on the couch and wept. Not the composed, quiet kind of tears. The ugly cry. My wife came in and tried to console me, and all I could get out was, "I can't do this anymore. I can't keep going like this. It's all too much."

Here's why I'm telling you that. That feeling isn't isolated to me. It's human. You've probably sat on your own version of that couch.

Why working hard for God doesn't always feel like God is working

Somewhere in the pursuit of good things — even necessary things — we start relying on our own strength instead of His. And I want to be clear: none of the things filling up your calendar are bad. That's actually the trap. We start with good, pure intentions, and somewhere along the way we end up worshiping idols we never meant to build.

Scripture shows us something important here: when we fill our lives with everything else, we neglect the one thing that can actually give us peace, rest, and purpose. And prioritizing Jesus doesn't make your to-do list disappear. It means you can find supernatural peace right in the middle of the pressure, even while the list is still sitting there.

There are two traps hiding inside "it's all too much." Let's look at both.

Trap One: The Distraction of "Doing Good"

Jesus is a guest in Martha and Mary's home in Luke 10. Mary sits at His feet, listening. Martha is in the kitchen, buried in preparations.

Verse 40 says Martha "was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made." The Greek word for distracted there is perispao. It literally means to be pulled or dragged in different directions. That's exactly what busyness does to you — your mind gets violently dragged five directions at once, and none of them are wrong on their own.

Martha wasn't doing anything wicked. She was doing a good thing. That's the problem. Our good intentions pave the way to a lesser life, and if you stay in that lesser life long enough, your desires quietly reshape themselves around it. Worship is built on desire. If your desire gets captivated by busyness — even good, necessary busyness — your worship is now aimed somewhere other than Jesus without you ever choosing that on purpose.

The devil doesn't need to make you bad. He just needs to get you busy.

Trap Two: The Resentment of Self-Reliance

Watch what happens to Martha's heart once she's been pulled in five directions long enough. She marches up to Jesus and says, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

Notice who she's talking to. When self-reliance runs the show, busyness always breeds resentment — and that resentment doesn't stay pointed at the people around you. Eventually it turns toward God. "Lord, don't you care?" That's exactly where we go too. God, why aren't You working? Why don't You care?

Frantic self-reliance quietly turns a servant's heart into a victim's heart. And here's the thing — God never created you to be self-sufficient. He created you to be surrendered.

You can only have one main thing

Back to that couch. Eventually I got up. The pipe was still burst. We still had to call a plumber. We still had to figure out how to pay for it. None of the actual problems went away that night.

But from that moment, the Holy Spirit started dealing with my heart. In the pressure of everything I was pursuing, those things had quietly climbed the ladder until they became idols. I had put all my hope, all my security, all my dreams into the basket of my own hustle. I was devastated because it felt like I was working so hard and God was working so little.

The truth was simpler than that, and harder to hear: I was trying to do it all in my own strength.

Whatever you're chasing right now — even if it's good, even if it's necessary — it will never give you what you're actually after if it becomes your main thing. Jesus has to be the main thing.

For your own reflection

• What good, necessary things in your life have quietly become the things you're actually trusting for security and peace?
• Where has your busyness started to reshape your desires, and pull your worship somewhere other than Jesus?
• Have you caught yourself, like Martha, turning your resentment toward God — asking Him why He doesn't care?
• What would it look like this week to sit at His feet before you walk back into the kitchen?

Your problems probably won't disappear this week either. But you don't need them to disappear. You need one main thing.