Stop The Scroll // Read

75 feet. That’s the distance the average person scrolls on their phone every single day. The biggest chunk of the 75-foot scroll? Distractions. Scrolling through Instagram, checking Facebook, seeing what’s trending on Twitter or TikTok...we kill time with every swipe. And the longer we scroll, the more disconnected we get—from reality, relationships, and God’s purpose for our lives. Let’s stop the scroll, put distractions in their place, and fight for our attention.

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Why don't you turn to your neighbor and ask them, where are you? Where are you? Putting in the chat. Say, where are you? Now? The way you probably responded, if you responded to that question is I'm here. Right? I mean, I'm here. But the funny thing about that question and the funny thing about saying, I'm here is this: you can be here, but you're not here. You can be here, but be there. Right? You can be here, but be completely absent at this moment. So I want to ask you, where are you? I just did a wedding ceremony yesterday down in Mount Vernon. And during the ceremony, I'm standing up there. And you know, while vows are being said, I'm able to kind of look around and stuff like that, and I can scout around the room. And I can see, some people were there. But they weren't there. Right? Some people had a little too much fun with the pre-ceremony drinks, right? And they were there, but they weren't there. Then other people were like, yeah, no, I'm physically sitting here. But my mind is wondering what kind of food we're going to eat at the reception. And if I'm going to need to grab a burger on the way home or, you know, people were there, but they weren't there. Because that's the funny thing about attention. We can be physically somewhere, but be mentally absent. And generally speaking, the reason we can physically be in one place, but mentally be everywhere else is because of one word: distractions. Distractions. Distractions can mess us up. Distractions can teleport us from where we're currently at to another place, into another reality. Distractions can jack up our lives in all sorts of ways. And that's what we're going to be looking at as we dive into Scripture. 

Today, what we're going to be focusing on is a short little section of verses only about four or five verses from Luke chapter 10. I want to read this to you. This is what happened, an account during Jesus's ministry. This is what Scripture tells us. "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," I want to call a timeout real quick on this, I'm going to let you know this has nothing to do with my sermon for today. It's just something that I want to call attention to real quick. So Martha had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said, in our current context, we look at this and we go, big whoop, right? So what she's listened to what Jesus said. But if we were to take ourselves and transport ourselves back to the first century, ancient Palestine, this is mind-blowing. This is shocking what is happening. Women don't sit at the feet of a rabbi and listen to them teach. Women belong back in the kitchen. Women belong in hospitality, women belong in making all the preparations for the men. So what is Mary doing here? And this just shows us how radical how revolutionary and how mind-blowing Jesus's ministry was. Because whenever someone sits at their feet, what this literally means we look at this and we think, oh, it means that she was sitting at his feet. It's more of a colloquialism. And what it means is that you are learning, whenever we see the Apostle Paul, in Acts, chapter 22, the Apostle Paul says that he sat at the feet of Gamliel, one of the high priests of the Sanhedrin. And what Paul means is, I didn't literally sit at his feet. No, I studied under him. I learned from him so that I could share what I learned with other people. 

And so we see Mary here, listening to Jesus learning his teaching so that she can share and go forward. So whenever you ask, my Cornerstone is good with women in ministry. There you go. This is just one of a multitude of reasons why we are all about not just equipping women, but propelling women into different areas of leadership. So so that's a real quick like I said, we'll cut back into the sermon, but I just had to say that couldn't read through that without touching on that real quick. 

So Mary is sitting at the Lord's feet listening to what he said, verse 40, but Martha was distracted, say it with me. Distracted she was distracted. The word that is used here in the Greek It literally means she was encumbered, that she was being pulled in multiple directions by different obligations that she felt she had. Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. “She came to him, she came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, Don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me.’" Like, can you imagine this moment? Like this had to be so incredibly awkward. I'm a person who hates awkward situations, I would have been avoiding eye contact and acting like there was something I needed to do, because I'm like, Oh, this is getting weird, because obviously, she's saying this, and Mary's right there. And Jesus is right there. I imagine the room fell silent. And this is what Jesus says in response. “‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘Martha, 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 don't know about you, I want that to be the descriptor of me that Jacob has chosen what is better, and it's not going to be taken away from him. That he knows what truly matters. And he is not so preoccupied and has his mind in a million places with all the distractions of the world, that he's not worried and upset about what's going on, no, he's chosen one thing and that one thing will not be taken away from him. I want that for me. I want that for you. Because if that is not true of us, what was true of Martha will be true of us. We will miss out on the opportunities in life if we are so encumbered by distractions. The good news is God wants to show us a way out. He wants to show us a way out from this life that is so pulled and so torn in a million directions by so many distractions. So are you ready? Are you ready? If you're ready, put it in the chat. Say I'm ready. Let's get to it today. 

Again, the question Where are you? A popped up in my mind the other day whenever I was driving to the wedding that I was performing down in Mount Vernon. If there's a scenic route, I'm taking it. Right? Every single time. I'm taking it unless it adds like an hour to the drive. I'm gonna take the scenic route and so I could have gone to Mount Vernon taking, you know, 76 to 71 but I saw, hey, there's a little backroad I'm gonna take that, and it was beautiful. I haven't gone that way before and, you know, went by Mohican and everything. It's gorgeous, just absolutely gorgeous. And the majority of the drive down is just two lanes like one lane this way, one lane that way, right. Tons of hills, tons of twists and turns. So nice. And you could fly like it wasn't a highway, but you can just scoot down that road, it's 55 every car was easily doing 65 if not 70, right, just flying down this road. And so because you're going so fast because it's a back road, you notice other cars as they're coming up along you. So I'm driving, and I see a black SUV start coming up the hill, like towards me from the other direction. And I'm noticing he's drifting, like not into my lane, but he's like drifting kind of off the road. And you can see even though he's away he's off, you can see the reflection of the phone from his phone. And so I'm seeing this almost in slow-mo like this dude has got to look up or he's gonna go off the road and I kid you not. He does go off the road. He hits, you know, the asphalt, the pavement. And then there's gravel right on the side of the road about this much gravel before it gets into the dirt and the grass. He goes over in the gravel and you see the big cloud of dust got behind his truck. I can hear the tires squealing, he slams over-corrects and comes into my lane. 

Luckily he's still a ways out, comes over in my lane whips back over into his lane again, tires, just leaving marks on the road sounded like a chase scene from Chips, right? Just like skrrrt all over the place. Gets back into his row and he corrects himself. And he's good now. Like he doesn't hit me or anything like that. But I see him go by. And I'm thinking to myself as he goes by like I don't know where he's going. But I know wherever he's going, he's buying a new pair of underwear wherever he is going. Because they ain't clean no more not after that. Like that dude saw his life flash before his eyes. Because it wasn't just like he kind of got off road. Dude, was this close to flipping his car or running off the road into the trees like it was it was that bad.

And so I think about that with what we're talking about today because of like, he was there. Right? He was there on the road. But he wasn't there. Like, like he was he was here. He was here. But he was here. He was on that phone. He wasn't really present. He was distracted. He was that distracted and that distraction nearly cost him his life or at least major money fixing His car. So it makes me think, where are you? Where am I? Where is our mind as we're driving down the road of life? Where is our attention? Because you see how distractions work, is they are harmless. distractions are completely and utterly harmless until they're not. They are. I mean, it's just, on his phone, just on my phone real quick, probably changing the song, or probably you know just checking a text real quick, it was completely harmless until I almost flipped my car. Completely harmless. 

It's just a distraction, getting on Instagram for a little bit. It's harmless until I realized, oh crap, I'm five minutes late for the meeting. And I haven't even left my house yet. But up until then, it was harmless. Harmless until you realize oh, that project was already due and I let all these distractions pile up and push me out. And I have to beg my professor. It's harmless. Distractions are harmless. Until you miss Jesus as Martha did. They're harmless until you're running around like a chicken with your head caught off making all these preparations handling all these distractions and you miss Jesus. Distractions are harmless until they're not. 

So today's topic if you're a note-taker, and if if you're not a note-taker, man, you need to start becoming one because it just helps, there's something about the human brain something about how it works that we just retain things better. And the better we retain the more we can put it into practice. So if you are taking notes today, the sermon title for today is "Stop the Scroll." Stop the Scroll. If you have a phone, go ahead and get it out real quick. I want to see the more little lit-up faces. I see. There we go. I'm seeing the phones, okay, now I want you to do something for me open up Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whichever one of those apps you use the most. And then just scroll for me real quick, right? It's kind of fun because I get to see everybody's scrolling technique. Some people use the one hand with the thumb other people the index finger looks like we got a lot of thumb users, right. Okay, now that you've scrolled, and I'm taking a step out on a limb here because I'm encouraging you to get on your phones. Right now you guys could completely and utterly check out of the serves at this point. But those scrolls, you guys want to know how many of those you average a day? Research says about 250. Two hundred and fifty scrolls per day, which if we do the math and the average size of a phone screen, that means that we all on average, of course, some more, some less, but on average, we scroll 75 feet a day. 75-foot scroll just right, it's a wonder our thumbs aren't just like the most powerful like muscle in our body. Just scrolling all day long, 75 feet, that equals out to more than five miles a year, on average, just scrolling through life. Just scrolling through. And if we're honest with ourselves, of course, some of that is looking at cute pictures of our grandkids. Of course, some of that is, you know, going through work email, of course, some of that is sending back messages, I will grant all of that. But can you grant me? And can we be honest with ourselves that the vast majority of that 75-foot scroll is just a distraction? It's just a distraction. It's the, I'm waiting in line, I'm at the DMV, and I just I'm killing time. Like I'm just killing time I'm just distracting myself in the meantime. It's you know, it's something we do whenever we know there's work for us to do, but we're just putting it off. And so we're like, okay, just five more minutes. Let me just see if anyone posts anything. Let me see if there's anything else I can do. Or like me earlier, maybe you find yourself in an awkward situation. And you're like I just I'm gonna pull this phone out and just distract myself. So I don't have to be present for that. Like I can just do this thing over here. And I can distract myself from what's going on. 

Now phones, they catch a lot of flack for being like the notorious distraction. Like the phones, they just completely pull us away from where we should be and what we're doing. But phones don't. They get all the blame, but they're not the only ones to blame, right? There are tons of distractions out there. There's, you know, Netflix, there's remote work, there's productivity, all of these things can distract us. Let me hit on these again real quick. 

So Netflix, have you guys seen that they added a feature, "Play Something?" Have you guys seen that? I kid you not. They literally have a button that just says play something because people will go on there and distract themselves by just scrolling through the titles. By just scrolling through titles for 30-45 minutes, and never watch anything. Just keep looking around, I've been guilty of it, right? You just look and you look and it's a distraction, and it feels good at the moment because it's just mind-numbing, right? So they have this feature play something that essentially is just a shuffle button. It just shuffles and just plays something so you can stop distracting yourself and actually watch a program. 

Remote work, do we have any people who have been working remotely due to the pandemic? Right, we got some people, people online, let's see your hands in the chat. We have some people in our congregation whose offices just closed, not for the pandemic, but like forever, and they're just working from home from now on. And man, that's a distraction. As someone who has had to work from home from time to time, and especially early on in the pandemic, my goodness, talk about distractions, because you're at home working, but there's laundry that needs to be done, you went over that, there are dishes that need to be done, and well, maybe if I run outside real quick, I can mow the back half a lawn, come back and work a little bit and go back down to the front half of the lawn. There are distractions all over the place that pull you away from work. 

And then this one, if I can be vulnerable for a moment, this is my biggest distraction, that I have productivity. What I mean by that is I'm a huge "To-Do List" person. I will put the most stupid, "why is this on here," to-do list things on my to-do list. Because if I finish them, I cross it off. And I feel fantastic. Right? I feel so good about myself, I'll put "brushed my teeth" on a to-do list, I'll check that thing off and feel like I am taking care of work. I'm getting stuff done. And all I've done is brush my teeth. But meanwhile, all the things that I should be doing, all the big things that would actually improve my life, improve the life of my family, improve my walk with Jesus. Those are the things that I'm like, well, those are, those are bigger to-do list items. I'll save those for later. And those just get kicked to the next day and the next day and the next day. Meanwhile, I'm productive. Meanwhile, I'm taking care of all these small, little things. And what they really are, is they're just a distraction. They're just distracting me from where I should be. Distractions, man.

They're so invasive, too. They're so invasive that we have been trying to find ways to combat them. We've been trying to find ways to fight back with these things. I know, Apple, I've got like a ton of Apple products. And pretty much all of them, I think has like a screen time report, where it lets you know how much time you've spent in each app, how much time you've spent on your phone. And it's essentially shaming you. Right? Like it's just, it's shaming you letting you know, hey, this is how much time you spent on social media. This is how much time you spent watching videos on YouTube. This is how much time you spent listening to a podcast and in your message app and your email app. And the whole point of screen time, this report is to let you know, hey, you might be getting distracted. You've been wanting to focus primarily on work. But here's your screen-time report. And you can see that you've been spending a lot of time on social media instead. So that's one of the ways we tried to devise things to fight it. 

A sensory deprivation tank, if you've ever listened to Joe Rogan, his podcast talking about these, he swears by them. A sensory deprivation tank is what it is, is it's a tank that you can get in they fill it up with water and Epsom salt so that you float in it without even trying, you float. So it deprives your sense of touch, right? You just feel like you're floating in nothing almost. They close it. It's completely air. It's like airtight. It's like no light gets in no sound, it completely deprives you of your senses. And it's becoming a big thing for musicians for writers for artists, people to get in there and block out all distraction. Like they have no distractions. It sounds terrifying to me. I would not be about that. But they're becoming a thing to try to fight distractions. 

Now, this may sound more like something you do. What about post-it notes? Does anybody use post-it notes? You put them up, right, put them up on your mirror, put them up somewhere in your car, put them up at your computer, and you'll write little things to help you stay on track. Right? Remember to do this: be kind today. Remember to do this, remember to not do that. And the whole point you have them is to fight distractions because they're so invasive. And let me tell you, they're not anything new. We always think that we're so novel and that everything's so new and ever since the phones came we're all distracted. Man, people have been distracted forever. Just forever. 

I want to show you a picture of something, this is straight-up nightmare fuel is what this is. But this thing right here is an actual invention from 1925. So if you feel like well distractions and phones, it's all, it's a common thing that's happening now. No, no 1925 they were trying to find ways to fight against distractions. And so what this thing is called is the Isolator, I kid you not. It's a helmet that you would wear. This is actually published in a Science Magazine, they made these things like these were real things. This is your oxygen tank. They added one after the prototype didn't have one and people were getting asphyxiated and passing out wearing these things, they added this oxygen tank. And then this: the eye sockets. They would be completely blacked out except for that little white line. And that little white line, that's the only place that you could see out of. They blocked this out so that you couldn't see any distractions, all you could focus on was one line of paper at a time. This was primarily used for writers to be able to focus and get over writer's block. Yikes. That is crazy. It's crazy. 

But we will go to fight distractions because they are so invasive. And all of us every single person fights them. Now you may be thinking, why all this work, though? Why create The Isolator? Why screentime, I get the distractions are a real thing. I get that I have them. But are they really that bad? like are they really that dangerous? Are they really that bad that we've got to have an entire sermon dedicated today to talk about them? Is it really that deadly and that important for us to fight distractions? 

I would wager yes. Yes, distractions are that deadly. They are that serious. And that's why we need to stop the scroll. Because what distractions are is distractions are disconnections. That is essentially what a distraction is. A distraction is anything that disconnects you from where you should be, what you should be focusing on. That driver? He was distracted, he was disconnected. He should have been present in the moment focusing on the road ahead of him and instead, he was distracted. He was disconnected. He was on his phone. He was in messenger. He was on Instagram, he wasn't where he should have been. He was distracted, he was disconnected. 

Now I want this to be abundantly clear what we're talking about today, we're not talking about harmless distractions. We're not talking I'm a big Candy Crush guy. I love Candy Crush because it's mindless, I don't have to think about it. And occasionally, whenever I'm feeling stressed out, it's fun to play it for about 10 minutes, 10-15 minutes, it just, you know decompresses me, I'm able to just completely shut off. I'm not talking about little things like that. We know the distractions that cause us to miss out on things. I'm not talking Candy Crush, I'm not talking about the little breaks you take here and there. I'm talking about the distractions, the things that you know are pulling you away from where you should be in life. And it's deadly. And it's dangerous because those distractions are threatening to disconnect you from where God has in mind for you to be. The driver on the phone is Martha. We just read about Martha with her preparations again, this is what Scripture says, verse 40, of Luke 10. "But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made." But Martha was disconnected. Instead of being where she should have been, at the feet of Jesus, she's back in the kitchen making preparations, busy work keeping herself busy. She was disconnected. She was not where she should have been. Distractions simply put are disconnections from where God wants us to be in life, disconnected from Jesus. So instead of being here, we're there. Instead of being here, we're there. We're somewhere else instead of being where we should be. We're in our phone, we're lost in our phone. We're constantly taking trips to distract us from the craziness that our life is, we're staying busy to distract us from having to deal with real issues in our life. We just get ourselves so scheduled up with things on the calendar and our kids' stuff on the calendar that we never have a moment of like quiet to actually deal with the things going on in our life. We constantly distract ourselves and we get disconnected from dealing with the issues that we should be dealing with. 

So again, I want to ask you and please understand, I'm asking myself this today too, where are you? Where are you? Are you where God has in mind for you? Or are you either subconsciously or consciously giving in to distractions so you don't have to deal with them? Where are you? And the danger is is that the longer we scroll, the 75 feet becomes 150 feet, and that becomes 200 feet. The longer we scroll, the more disconnected we get. And I can tell you heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story of people who come into my office, come into Pastor Brenda's office, and they have been disconnected and distracted for decades. They come back to Jesus, and they're going, I was mindlessly scrolling through years of my life. And now I look back and I'm like, I don't even remember. I don't even remember making these choices. I don't even remember doing half of these things. It's because they've been distracted. They've been disconnected from where they're supposed to be. And they're not happy. They are not happy. They're the driver who almost runs off the road and looks back and says how did I get here? Simple distractions. Distractions get us disconnected from reality, disconnected from our relationships that matter, disconnected from God's purpose for our lives, gets us disconnected from the one thing, Jesus, that truly matters and focusing on many other things. 

I think about me and this is my pre-vacation to-do list as you can see, I'm already on vacation in my mind like, I leave for vacation later this week. It's taking every ounce for me to be physically present here right? And mentally present here. My pre-vacation to-do list, so if you're getting ready to leave on vacation and you would think like item one is pack. it's Like it's pretty vital in the leaving for vacation thing right? Like packing, like having clothes having things for down there. But I've been adding things to my to-do list. Like oh, I need to get fertilizer down before we leave. I should also, I should clean out our new filter for our house furnace. Oh, and I need to weed too. So I'm adding all these things just like one by one I'll pull my phone out now and again like I want to do this too. I kid you not, we leave Friday and my to-do list is insane right now. I have added so many things. And the craziest thing about it and you're gonna think I'm nuts. The craziest thing about it is I prioritize like, okay, this is what needs to be done first, this needs to be done second. Guess where packing is on my list. It's like next to last. It's like the next to last thing on my pre-vacation to-do list. Packing to leave. Like that's an afterthought. Like, oh, yeah, packing, I forgot about that. I have added everything else. 

 I'm like Martha. I am so encumbered. So distracted. So preoccupied with all these little distractions that don't really need to be done before I leave, that I have put packing to leave at the bottom of my to-do list. That's what distractions will do, they will take the one thing that actually matters, and dislodge it from the throne of your life, and put a bunch of worthless meaningless crap in its place. And you will start following that. You'll start worshiping that and before you know it, you are years down the road wondering why your life isn't better, wondering why the things that you say matter, and a family and a good life and a legacy, why none of those are coming to fruition in your life. And you're going home wonder why? Look at what's sitting on the throne of your life. Is it Jesus? Or is it mindless distractions? You've got to stop the scroll, we have got to ask ourselves, where am I? Am I here? Or am I everywhere else? Like where am I? Where is my attention in life? 

And if you notice all the things that I was talking about that I need to do before vacation, even the things that don't really matter did you notice none of those were like bad things? Like those are things I need to do. I do need to put a new filter in the furnace,  I do need to weed the rock beds and I do need to put fertilizer down. Those are all good things. But I don't need to do them now. They're not of the most top priority. Like they're good things. And man, that is exactly what the enemy wants you to do. He knows you're not stupid people. Like you're not stupid people. No one is willingly distracting themselves with something that they know is going to ruin their life. That guy driving? He wasn't thinking to himself as he was on his phone like this is awesome, I'm about to, you know, be within an inch of my life and it's going to be so cool and it's going to be exhilarating. It's going to be like a rollercoaster ride. I can't wait. He was not thinking that right? He wasn't thinking that at all. 

The enemy gives us distractions that don't look deadly on their face. They can look good, they can look valuable they can even look worthwhile. And this is why man, some of you this is all you need to hear today. Your enemy does not need to destroy you if he can distract you. He doesn't. And there are plenty of us and I have been here, again, this is not condemning. I have been here, there are plenty of us who the devil, we blame him for things, man, the enemy's out to get me today, wow, he's out to get me. And if we're being honest, the devil's thinking, I don't even have to worry about you. You think I'm trying to destroy you? I don't have to. I don't have to waste an ounce of my time on you. Because you are so distracted, you're destroying yourself. I don't even have to worry about you. You're handling it from here, sweetheart. I can step back. And you can go right ahead because you are worried about everything but what actually matters. The enemy doesn't need to destroy us if he can just distract us, just keep us busy. Just keep us occupied. As long as he can keep Martha in the kitchen, she's not at Jesus's feet. And that's all he cares about. No, go ahead. that's worthwhile, Martha that's valuable. You're doing good work. 

And if I'm being honest, I've related to Martha a lot. Whenever I've read this scripture before, I'm like, man tell Mary to get her lazy butt up and come help like then maybe Martha wouldn't be in the kitchen still making preparations, Like she can do something too. So I've been there like I relate with her. But man, that's what the devil does. He gives us these good-looking things, these worthwhile things, and says good. Go after that. Go after that. And we miss the great thing. We missed the great thing, the devil gives us good distractions to keep us from great situations. He does it all the time. Here's a good distraction to keep you away from that great situation. Here, you go prepare food and be hospitable. That's a good thing. As long as it's keeping you away from Jesus, you just keep doing that good thing. 

And if we can be real for a second, and I'm wanting you to know this is me too like, church online. All these churches from different states and how we're able to hear these pastors and stuff. I love it, man. I'm pastored by these guys, Pastor Steven Furtick, and Pastor Craig Groeschel, Pastor Andy Stanley, these are incredible, amazing people, and I love them, I follow them, and I'm filled up by them. But there are quite a few of us whose podcasts, their worship service, is the extent of our spiritual development through the week. That's it. And then we tap out. The podcast is over, worship service is done. And we don't apply anything we've taken. We're not actually in the community working these things out with people. We're not actually a part of the body of Christ and loving on people who are different than us. We don't actually live any of it out. And whenever I look at that, I'm like, man, that's a good distraction. That is a very good distraction, I'm sure. And a lot of ways our enemy applauds that kind of distraction. Yes, I've got more podcasts for you. Just keep filling up your head with all this knowledge. Never get involved in a community of believers, never have to love on people who look and think and act differently than you, never do any of that. Just keep stuffing your head with knowledge, because that's a good distraction. Anything that keeps you away from acting like Jesus. Keep it up, keep it up. The enemy will give us good distractions to keep us away from great situations. Because a distraction is a disconnection. As long as we are disconnected from Jesus, that's all he cares about. That's all he cares about. As long as we are disconnected from following Jesus and His will for our life, that's all he cares about. 

He doesn't need to destroy us if he can distract us if he can just keep us scrolling. He doesn't need to get you to cheat on your wife. He just needs you to get distracted and neglect her. That's all he needs to do. He doesn't need to get you to apostatize and renounce your faith. He just needs you to act like your faith is something to put on a to-do list that you can kind of forget about. You can kind of get distracted. Oh, I didn't read scripture today. Oh, I forgot to do that. I'll get it tomorrow. That's all he needs to do. Just give you good distractions to keep you off course. He doesn't need to get you to blow up your purpose with a moral failure. He just needs to get you so distracted that you settle for less. And he's got to right where he wants you. He's got you right where he wants you. 

So you, you're probably thinking, okay, yes, distractions are bad. I get it, I get it. If I want to fight distraction, I just focus right? Like cause that's the opposite. The opposite of distraction would be focusing, and that's what I seem to do. But that's not the case. Focusing is not going to help because focusing is finite. Focusing is finite, focusing is temporary. Some of y'all are having a hard time focusing on this sermon, and I'm only 30 minutes in, right? I ain't judging you, I had a hard time focusing on writing the sermon, I get it. If you can see how many times I exited out of my pages app to open up Twitter to open up Instagram to open up Facebook. I mean if I was distracted writing it, I don't blame you for getting sick of hearing it, right? Distractions are not temporary, distractions are not finite, they come and they come and they come and they come, we will have distractions with us every single day. So we cannot fight something ongoing, like a distraction with something temporary, like focus, we need something better, we need a better approach. 

And the opposite of distraction is not focus anyways, it's traction. That is the literal opposite of distraction is traction. Traction, what traction means traction means connection. That's what traction is, whenever we talk about traction with your tires, what that means is it's the force between your tire and the pavement. It's that connection, the resistance that makes that connection there. And that's why whenever it's snowy out, you don't get good traction, your cars all over the place. Because there's not a solid connection whenever there's a puddle and you hydroplane over it's because there's not a solid connection between your tire and the road. 

The opposite of distraction is traction, its connection. That's what we need. And get this, there's another meaning behind the word traction. 

And not only do we use it, when we talk about connection, we also use it in medical terminology. If you heard it before someone is in traction, you may have not known what it means this is what it means to say someone is in traction. Traction is whenever they slowly and gently pull on a fractured or dislocated body part and set it back into place. See what we're talking about? We do not fight distraction by just trying harder and just focusing harder. Man, I just need to focus harder, I need to just make sure every single day I read my Bible for an hour, and I focus and I only listen to worship music, I just focus. And if that will not work, no one can do it. You can't. What we need is traction. We need this low, gentle pull back to where we should be. We need something slow and steady and consistent and sustainable pulling us back to connection, pulling us back to where we need to be. And whenever we look at scripture that we've been focusing on today, guess what we see? Jesus slowly and gently pulling Martha back to connection. Listen to it again. "As Jesus's 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 she said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came and asked, 'Lord, Don't you care that my sister has left me to the work by myself? Tell her to help me.'" And then look at this slow, gentle pull from Jesus. "'Martha, Martha,'" can you hear him saying it? "'You are worried and upset about many things.'" You are so distracted, you're trying to connect all these dots. But Martha I'm telling you there is only one dot, there's only one connection that matters. "'Mary has chosen what is better. And it will not be taken away from her.'" Jesus is pulling. He's got her attraction. He's pulling Martha back to where she belongs. Then, Martha, you are so concerned about all the things going on. All the things that you think have to be done. But I'm telling you, there's only one thing that really matters. Let me pull you back to it. Let me help you get reconnected to where you're supposed to be. 

And if that is you today, and I would wager that's you somewhere in your life. That's you somewhere in your life, you are fighting distractions. And if that's you and you are fighting distractions, I'm gonna let you know it's not by focusing. You worship your way out of a distraction. You just worship your way out of distractions. Distractions are disconnections from where you should be. And you only get out of it by worshipping your way through it. That's exactly what Jesus was calling Martha back in, that worship full relationship with him. 

So again, I want to ask you one last time today, where are you? Where are you? Where are you at in your life right now? What distractions have been vying for your attention? Or what distractions have you willingly given up your attention to? You've just said here, you can take it, keep me distracted. Keep me numb from actually focusing on my relationship with Jesus, my relationship with other people, keep me distracted, so I don't have to face these things. Where are you today? Wherever you're at, and whatever distractions you are fighting, I want to let you know you can worship your way out of it. It's the only way you get out of it is by worshiping your way through it. Because when you worship Jesus, it's not just music. It's not just music. Man, it's listening to him, it's talking to him. It's journaling. It's just sitting in silence for a little bit. You can worship in so many different ways. And when you do that, what you're saying is, okay, I've had these distractions on the throne of my life for too long. I'm dislodging them and putting Jesus back where he belongs. That's what it means to worship your way out of a distraction. Because distractions at the moment, don't they feel like they're the most important thing, the things on your to-do list, the things that come up, we can put them on the throne of our lives, we can be so distracted by all these little circumstances and situations that life throws our way. But when we put Jesus back in the middle and worship our way out of it, we realize the only thing that matters is him. And that if we focus on him, and if we get that relationship, right, everything else has a way of working itself out. Everything else has a way of working itself out. 

It doesn't mean that life's perfect, it doesn't mean that everything's up into the right from now until you go home with Jesus. But it means that everything gets back to where it should be, and you are actually living out the will and the purpose that God made you for. Don't you want that? Don't you want that? I want that for me, I want a life that can't be destroyed, can't be thrown off course, by any distraction that comes my way. I want a life that can see it through because I'm focused on the right thing. The one thing, Jesus.

Father, God, that is the cry of our hearts today. That is the cry of our hearts, that we would take all these distractions, all these circumstances, all these situations in our life, that are crying out for us to make them, Lord, for us, to make them the king of our life, that we would take those things, and that we would put them to death today and that in their place, we would see you back where you belong on the throne of our heart. That all of our attention, all of our focus, all of our energy would be on you and God we know anytime that it starts to drift. We know that way back. Worship. We just worship you. We realize there is nothing and there is no one beside you that You alone are holy and worthy of our attention. And then as we put our attention on you, the things of earth will grow strangely dim. Because you are all that matters. You are all that matters. We love you. Father, we thank you for the truth of that. And we worship you this morning. Amen.