Self-Worth & Achievement

Transcript

Well, good morning. Happy Sunday again. My name is Brian. I’m one of the pastors here at uh Community Covenant Church. And you know, a few weeks ago, I introduced myself to somebody and told them that I was a pastor. And they said, “That must be a really hard job.” I somewhat jokingly said, “Well, you know, when you consider that you’ve got God on your side and you’re doing the Lord’s work, it’s kind of easy.”

Okay, truth be told, being a pastor sometimes is actually very difficult. I’ll be honest with you, pastoral burnout is a real thing. Uh Barna has done some research on this. Uh even in 2026, a quarter of pastors have considered quitting their job in the last year. And so that’s a real thing. I want to tell you I love my job. So that’s good. Uh but sometimes it is stressful and sometimes the pressure to meet everybody’s expectations is is high and I feel that in my body and I want to build a healthy growing church.

So, I share all this with you not to necessarily garner your sympathy, but to let you know that I am just like you. I want to do well in life. I want to succeed. It’s the start of fall and so many of you are off to school and part of school is doing well. You want to get good grades. You want to perform well. We’re always being evaluated. We want to be good parents. We want to succeed at work and school. We want to be a good friend. We want to live up to the expectations that people have for us. And that kind of pressure can lead to anxiety and worry because we deeply care about the things that we’re getting that we’re doing and that people expect of us. So when those expectations aren’t met, sometimes we begin to wonder, am I enough? Am I good enough? Am I disappointing people? Am I falling short?

And in today’s passage, we’re going to meet a woman who knows exactly what that feels like. We’re going to be in Luke 10, verses 38-42, if you want to open up your Bibles and join us there. We’re going to use the NIV version. Uh today, but whatever version you use is totally fine with me. This is part of our relax series. We’re going to be talking about some of the most common things that we worry about as humans. Expectations, health, and our future. Three things that are common worries for us today. And today, as you might expect because of my introduction, we are going to talk about expectations and our desire for achievement and self-worth.

Our whole theme for this series comes from Matthew 11:28 where Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” We want to help you relax. All the things are starting up. All of the things, all the pressures that you have to perform are starting to ramp up this fall. We want to help you relax. So, we’ve even changed our service order a little bit. You may have noticed if you’re a regular here, we didn’t do our normal call to worship. We did that so that we could add an extra song. So, we had another song in there today. After every message in this series, we’re going to end with some level of a time of silent reflection just to create some of that space for us to relax because I hear so many of you friends and other people saying, “I’m just so busy.” So, we’re going to try to counter that here at church on Sundays. We’re going to create some space to just sit at Jesus’ feet.

All right. So, beginning in verse uh 38 of uh chapter 10, good. It’s up on the screen. As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened up her home to him.

So, let’s get ourselves situated in the text. What’s happening around this? What’s happening before this? This story comes immediately following a parable called the Good Samaritan where Jesus ends up saying, “Go and do likewise.” The challenge is to be like the Samaritan who sees a need and responds to it. He does something about it even though it costs him something.

Let’s see where the story takes us from there. Verse 39 says, “She, Martha, 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 she had to make.” In other words, I think Martha wanted to spend some time with Jesus. But she recognized that there’s a lot of things that you need to do if you’re going to welcome somebody as important as Jesus. So it says she came to him, 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.”

Uh we’ve been studying the parable, another parable story in the scripture about the great banquet at our volunteer kickoff meetings this fall. And I think every group that we’ve met with has identified that if you’re going to throw a great banquet, a great party, you got to do some work to prepare your home. You got to clean the house. You got to have some great food. You know, you got to have some ideas, maybe some music, something for people to do to connect with each other. Somebody has to make the food. Somebody has to clean the house. Somebody has to make sure that everything is ready. And Martha is doing exactly that here. She’s doing all the work to welcome an important guest like Jesus. And I think we still do this today. We go to great lengths to get our houses ready to invite somebody in.

Meanwhile, Mary, Martha’s sister, is sitting at the feet of Jesus. I think Martha has this desire to be a good host. Nothing wrong with that. She wants to be responsible. She wants to have things go according to her plan. But that plan is getting threatened. And that’s frustrating because Mary could help out. She could do something about it. So Martha calls out to Jesus. Actually she calls him Lord. She says Lord which is a recognition of his authority. So, Jesus, Lord, you can do something about this. And then the way she phrases the question that comes next, it assumes that the obvious answer is yes. Yes, you’re right, Martha. This is clearly right. I should tell Mary to do something about this.

But in a surprising twist, that’s not what Jesus does here. Verse 41, “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.”

Jesus’ answer is surprising here because it doesn’t fit Martha’s expectations and quite frankly it doesn’t meet anybody who’s reading this and their expectations because between Martha and Mary somebody should have been doing something to get ready to welcome this important guest. So culturally, Martha’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to. And Mary is most likely aware of those expectations, decides to sit at the feet of Jesus. Martha is meanwhile hoping that Jesus will use his authority to validate her priorities. Jesus, I’ve got my plan. I’ve got my priorities. And I need you to say, “That’s exactly right. Your sister should join you.” Instead, oh, and I should pause here and note Jesus does not rebuke her for serving. Serving is good. So, this is not a rebuke for serving, but instead he points out that she is worried and she is upset.

Worried and upset. And the question is, what do worry and being upset have to do with wanting to be validated? What do those two things have in common? Well, Martha’s probably wondering, “Am I being a good host? Am I missing something important that I’m supposed to be doing? Why isn’t Mary doing her part? She knows we’re supposed to like welcome this person.” And finally, why isn’t Jesus affirming me? Like, this is the right thing to do.

I think the reality is that we can all be like Martha. We can get in that place where we want to do a good job. We want to be a good parent. We want to be a good employee. We want to be a good student. We want to be a good community member. We might even want to do really well at church. And then something happens. Doesn’t really matter what it is, but whatever it is is causing our expectations to go unmet. It’s not going how we had thought it would or how we hoped it would. And when that happens, we look for validation. We look for somebody else to say, “Oh, you’re doing okay. You’re doing well.” And oftentimes we try to regain control at that point.

The problem is when our worth depends on our ability to make things right, we take responsibility for things that were never ours to control. And then worry sets in, which is what happens when we start believing that everything depends on us, on me. If I don’t, then this is not going to happen. I think a lot of us are like Martha. We acknowledge that Jesus is Lord but then we proceed to tell him how God should do his job and how he should fix the problems in our lives. But if Jesus is Lord, if Jesus has the authority in our lives, that’s what Lord means, then Jesus gets to define what’s important for us.

I don’t want to suggest that what Martha is doing is totally wrong because I do believe that you can tell God that you’re worried. That’s totally fine. I also believe that you can tell God what you want. You can say, “God, I just, this is what I’d really like to see happen.” You can even ask God to change things in your life, to change the situation, but then you let go and you let God, because ultimately Jesus is Lord, not me, not you, Jesus. Jesus gets to define what is important in our lives.

So, in the passage, we have Mary, who’s most likely aware of all of the cultural expectations, but she chooses to sit at the feet of Jesus. And Jesus affirms her choice. He says her choice is honorable, or in the NIV, better, and that it would not be taken from her. Mary’s worth isn’t dependent upon whether or not she gets the meal ready, whether Martha approves of her, or whether she meets the cultural expectations of the day.

And I think here’s the contrast that Luke wants us to see. Martha is trying to give something to Jesus. Mary is receiving something from Jesus. Jesus isn’t merely telling Martha to let go. He’s giving her himself. He’s offering her himself. And he’s saying, Martha, you’re so consumed with what you need to do for me that you’re missing what I want to give to you.

Now, I want to be careful here because sitting at the feet of Jesus doesn’t remove our responsibility to do good or to do what’s right, to seek good in the world. That’s exactly why Luke, the author of this book, puts this story right after the parable of the Good Samaritan. These two passages work together. There’s a tension that we manage as Christians. We’re called to do good in the world. And we’re called to sit at Jesus’ feet. This isn’t about dividing us into Mary’s and Martha’s where some of you are a little more tempered, you know, bent towards the activity, doing the thing. Some of you are more bent towards the prayer life and sitting at Jesus’ feet, because the world needs both. We need people who actively do good in the world. All of us need to be about doing good in the world. We also all need to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from him.

So this is what happens when the good things we’re responsible for become the things that we believe determine our worth. There are things that we can do and things only God can do. I can prepare a meal. I can’t control what everyone thinks of me. I can work hard, but I can’t control the outcome of what happens with that. I can be faithful, but I can’t manufacture success. I can pursue my potential, but I can’t determine my ultimate worth. That’s where God comes in. And I have to trust God. And if you’re wrestling with whether or not you believe in God today, that’s okay. We have space for that here. I would invite you to wrestle with the weight of tying our worth to something that we can’t control. That’s worth wrestling with, because the world often tells us our value is tied to what we do or what we produce. But as Christians, we believe that our value is something that we receive inherently from Jesus.

Which brings us to our theme verse in Matthew 11:28. Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Martha is exhausted because she’s carrying the burden of making everything right. And Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11 isn’t simply “work less.” It’s “come to me. I’ve got something for you.” A lot of us are carrying responsibility that was never ours to carry in the first place. And Jesus doesn’t ask us to earn our place. He gives us himself. Rest is making room to receive from Jesus instead of constantly trying to accomplish something for Jesus.

So, I’m going to invite the worship team up here because during the series, I mentioned we’re going to create some time and some space for you to receive from Jesus. And if you need it, we’re going to have prayer ministers off to the side over there that can pray with you and for you, because these are things that sometimes we need some help with and they would love to pray with you. And during the time of kind of post-sermon, I want you to spend some time reflecting. And I’ve got some questions that are going to be up on the screen there that you can reflect on during that time. And Andrew is going to play some music. Uh and when he feels like it’s time, he’ll move us on uh to the rest of our worship service. And at that time, then if you have kids in Sunday school or nursery, you can go get them. But if you have kids in Sunday school or nursery, I want you to stick around for a little bit and have some of that space to rest and to hear whatever Jesus has to give you. Because sometimes we’re running around in this world, we’re so busy, we don’t create that time and space to listen to Jesus. So, we want to give you some of that time here at church.

But I also want to end by being honest with you. I wish that I was immune to all this. I wish that I didn’t feel like every, you know, the weight of everything sat on my shoulders, but sometimes I do. I feel that ultimate responsibility when my kids don’t meet my expectations. I start to ponder, am I a good parent? But then I remind myself something that my earthly father told me. You can’t take too much credit for the success of your children. Nor can you take too much credit for the failures of your children.

Similarly, when something at our church doesn’t meet my expectations, my hopes, my dreams, I might start to wonder, am I a good pastor? Should I leave this? Doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I ponder this. I remember that I do have responsibility. I am called to lead this church, but I don’t have ultimate responsibility. That’s God’s work. God’s inviting me to participate in what he’s already doing, but he’s not asking me to make it happen. That’s God’s work.

So, whatever you’re carrying today, remember to do what’s yours. We have some responsibility. But then trust God for what isn’t yours to carry. And remember, you don’t have to prove your worth. God created you and that’s enough. You were created amazingly. And God said at the beginning when he finished creating everything, including the humans, he said it was very good. You are good.

So you can sit at the feet of Jesus today and you can relax because God’s got this.