When Busyness Threatens Intimacy with God

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"The Villian with 1,000 Faces"

"Soaking in God's Word"

"The Lord's Prayer, Day 33"

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Dannah Gresh: This morning I rolled out of bed and reached for a book by A.W. Tozer. Right there on the page was a call to quiet—and instantly, I felt guilty. Quiet? Stillness? There’s hardly any of that in my life right now.

Then I picked up another book, this one by Shaunti Feldhahn. Again, the same gentle whisper from the Lord: “Be still with Me.” And do you know what happened next? I never even made it to my Bible. The burden was heavy on my heart—you’re too busy, you’re missing time with Me. But busyness called, and I let it win.

Have you ever been there? If so, today’s episode is for you, my friend.

I’m Dannah Gresh, and you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This month at Revive Our Hearts, we’ve been talking about the personal devotional life. We’re seeking intimacy with God by spending time in the quiet place with Him. This personal devotional life is marked by rhythms of rest in the Lord’s presence. But there’s a problem, and friend, it’s a big one. We’re living in a culture marked by busyness, not rest. And our Enemy, the Devil, he knows it. He loves it. And he capitalizes on it. How will you respond to his schemes?

Kevin DeYoung has noticed this pattern in his life, too. He’s an author, speaker, and pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. Basically, he’s crazy busy. So much so that he wrote a book by that title. Not too long ago, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sat down with him to talk about the book and the busyness epidemic that’s keeping so many Christians from resting in the Lord. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: You go through seven or eight different diagnoses in this book. We won't go through all of them, but one that I think that a lot of us relate to is this thing of (you call it) "the terror of total obligation." Essentially, we're trying to do things that may be on our to-do list, or others' to-do list for us, but that aren't necessarily on God's to-do list for our lives.

Kevin DeYoung: Yes. I have just always struggled with this. For better or worse, I think I have a strong sense of obligation. I was that kid in school who, if the teacher would ask a question, would think, Somebody better say something. If the teacher offered extra credit, I would think, I better do that just to be safe.

Nancy: Are you first-born?

Kevin: Second, but some first-born tendencies. A lot of people ask if I am the first-born.

Nancy: I am, so I recognize the tendencies.

Kevin: I think I struggled with this, in particularly when I was in seminary. I saw, "There's a group of people who are doing missions, and there's a group of people who are doing youth ministry." Wherever people are listening to this program, I'm sure they compare themselves to others.

Nancy: We women do this a lot. We see women who are homeschooling kids, women who are leading a small group study, women who are taking meals to all the needy people in the church. You kind of add it all up in your head, and you say, "I'm a failure because I can't do all of that stuff," or "I'm killing myself trying."

Kevin: And you think, If I was really spiritual . . . Because it's good to take the meals out, and that's good to volunteer there, etc. And we live with this low-level, or sometimes not so low-level, feeling of guilt, that God wants me to do all these things. Then you add to that, "There are people who are starving. There are people in the world without the gospel. People need clean water." And it's just on and on and on.

Nancy: And we're so exposed to all those needs now. We read your blog and others' blogs and we're hearing more. On the news we're seeing more. I'm watching this thing on what's happening in Syria, and what's happening in this crisis, and in this part of the world. It can just feel like I can't wrap my mind around how to care about all these things, how to pray about all these things, how to engage in all these issues that people think we ought to be engaged in.

Kevin: These are new issues in some ways because we haven't always been able to touch everywhere and we haven't always known about everything. One of the things that's been helpful (I think we can see in Scripture) is what philosophers call moral proximity. It just means there are concentric circles.

So in the Bible, if a husband doesn't provide for his family, he's worse than an unbeliever; a mom has to care for her kids with a special kind of love. And you expand that, maybe, to your church and extended family, and then maybe to people next door to you.

There's this moral proximity whereby there are stronger and weaker demands upon our time, upon our efforts. Now that's not to excuse us from caring about things all over the world, but it is to say to us that there's a different kind of obligation if you walk by a pool and see a child drowning in it, versus you hear about something over on the other side of the world.

You have a stronger obligation to your own children than to your friend's children. Until we realize that God gifts the church . . . He hasn't gifted you or me to meet all these needs, but He gifts the church. So if you think, I need to be a hand and a foot and an eye and a nose, that's actually not humble. That's actually proud. That's saying, "God can meet every need with me." No, He can't. He didn't mean to.

He gave you some gifts to do your part, and it's the whole body of Christ that needs to be the meals and everything else. You have a role; you have a part, and that's what you need to do, and not feel guilty for all the rest.

Nancy: And if each of us would be looking to the Lord, sensitive to the leading of His Spirit in our lives as to what He puts on our plate, in front of us, and then responsive to how He prompts our hearts, those needs would get met, and we wouldn't have to be the one feeling like we need to do it all.

Kevin: We would have the necessary space in our hearts so that when our neighbor has a crisis or our sister across the country has problems in her marriage or our oldest kids are having a difficult time in school . . . when these things come up, we wouldn't be so anxious and so frazzled that we would say, "I've already overcommitted to five different committees and three different ministries. I'm not going to have time for any of your problems." No, that's not actually doing the ministry.

This isn't about just taking a vacation. This is thinking how can we best serve others. That means saying "no" to a lot of good things so that we can say "yes" to what's most important.

Dannah: That’s Pastor Kevin DeYoung reminding you that faithfulness doesn’t always look like being busy. Sometimes it looks like stewarding space in your life so you can say, “Yes, Lord” when He asks you to cook a meal for someone on a random Tuesday. Or when He asks you to listen to your next door neighbor as she shares what’s burdening her heart. Or when He’s asking you simply to rest in His presence. 

That last one can be especially hard for some of us, can’t it? It’s true for me as a grandma and woman in ministry. It’s true for the mom with toddlers running around, and it’s true for our next guest, too. Well actually, she’s not much of a guest. 

Monica Vaught is the Director of Human Resources at Revive Our Hearts, so we love her and know her well. And let me tell you, she’s an invaluable member of our team—a hard worker, passionate about ministry, and eager to serve people well. But she’d be the first to tell you, those who work in ministry day in and day out still need times of quiet rest with the Lord. It’s a lesson that really hit home for her a few years back. Let’s listen as she shares her story.

Monica Vaught: A couple years ago I found myself in a season, having served in ministry for a long time, where I was really depleted and distracted and feeling really far from the Lord, which is a dangerous place to be. I had an opportunity to sit down with a sister, an older woman, and share some of those concerns on my heart and some of those burdens I had been carrying.

She very gently and very lovingly said, “I think you need to get some time away. You need to get some rest.”

Dannah: Now, what would you say if a friend advised you to step away from your responsibilities and rest? If you’re like Monica, you’d probably say, “How? I’m so busy!”

Thankfully, Monica decided to schedule some time off to focus on her relationship with the Lord. She wanted to draw away from the busyness and just be with Him.

Monica: That sounds great to a lot of people, but honestly, that’s really hard for me. I needed to put down my phone; I needed to shut off email; I needed to get out of social media. I needed to just be with the Lord, and that’s just hard. Honestly, it took me probably three or four—probably five days into this season of quiet and alone with the Lord before I really felt my heart and spirit start to get unhurried.

I went into those days and I was asking the Lord two things. One, I wanted Him to purify my heart, mind, and emotions. And, I wanted a deep sense of joy. That was something I had prayed about for several years. You know those people who just have a deep joy inside of them. I didn’t feel like I had that, so I had been asking the Lord for that.

Dannah: Monica used her time off to read what she calls “mega-doses” of Scripture. She would read her Bible for hours on end. But she didn’t randomly open it, hunting and pecking for something to bring her comfort. Instead, she stayed on her regular Bible reading plan, trusting God to direct her to what she most needed.

As her heart began to unplug from her to-do list and screens, she began to feel more connected to the Lord. That is when God used something quite common to get her attention.

Monica: One morning as I woke up, I was heading to sit with the Lord. I got my Bible out, and I had left those dishes in the sink. There they were; they were dirty. I stopped by the sink, and I was going to wash those dishes. As I started washing, the food was dried on, and it was crusty, and it was hard. I had to get the water and soap, and I had to scrub. I had to take my fingernail and scratch the edge of that plate. But you want that plate to be clean and smooth and so clean and pure.

So, I washed the dishes and I put them aside and went to sit down with the Lord. Suddenly, I realized, Monica, if you had put water on those dishes last night and let them soak overnight, that hard, crusty food would have just wiped right off. It would have just fallen right off.

Dannah: Monica was still thinking about those dishes when she opened her Bible the next morning. She’d just arrived at Psalm 32.

Monica: I had been reading out of another translation, the New Living Translation. It was a different translation, and I think that is good on occasion because it gives you a different perspective and lens.

So, I opened up to Psalm 32, and the first two verses out of Psalm 32 read:

Joy is for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is out of sight. Yes, joy is for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty.

Well, the Lord had my attention, no doubt, because I had been praying for joy in this season. So, we sat down and started going to work in Psalm 32. The presence of the Lord was so incredible. I felt like He was saying to me, “Your heart is ready. You’ve been soaking for four or five days in the water of the Word. We’re going to sit down and walk through Psalm 32, and it’s going to be gentle, and it’s going to be sweet, and it’s going to be between you and I.”

He could scrub, and He could pick, and He could scratch, but that water of the Word on my heart—my heart was ready to receive what He wanted to show me out of Psalm 32 that morning. The washing of the water of the Word . . .

He began to unfold that passage. The word “guilt” jumped off the page in the first couple of verses that I was reading.

Dannah: Now, years earlier, Monica had been through a season where she was not walking closely with the Lord. God did some incredible things to draw her to Himself, and she learned of His grace and forgiveness. But she was just beginning to see that her recent battle with mental and emotional exhaustion was an invitation to a more complete experience of God’s forgiveness and grace as she studied Psalm 32. Just like water on dirty dishes, God’s Word was helping soften some things that had hardened in her heart.

Monica: I moved into verse 5 that morning, and it says:

Finally, I confessed all my sins to You and I stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.’ And You forgave me! All my guilt is gone.

The Lord started to unfold that verse. Another version says, “You forgave my iniquity.” We use those words, “iniquity” and “sin” interchangeably sometimes. There’s a little bit of difference between sin and iniquity. I started to study that out a little bit.

I found that iniquity is not just the act of the sin, but it is the willfulness with which we go into sin. It’s almost finding delight in that sin. And that produces guilt in our life because we know we shouldn’t be doing it. In its simplistic format, I know I shouldn’t take the cookies from the cookie jar. But the iniquity of that would be, in a very simplistic way, is: I’m enjoying knowing that I shouldn’t take a cookie, but I’m going to take it, and I’m not going to get caught, and I’m going to love eating it. That’s the iniquity of the sin, not just the act that I took the cookie. That’s really simplistic, but that’s what the Lord was unfolding.

There was something in the guilt from this past season that I hadn’t really worked through with the Lord, so we started to unfold that. We started to work through that. He just showed me that He had forgiven those sins of the past, but what I was living in, I hadn’t gotten rid of all the guilt of that. I hadn’t let Him forgive the iniquity of that sin in that season.

He just unfolded that in some beautiful ways. It was tender. It was sweet. It was soft. It wasn’t harsh and difficult to go through. I wanted to enter into that season. I think it was because my heart was ready to receive. I’d been washed in the water of the Word.

Having come through that and realizing that He forgave that sin so long ago. But the greater freedom I found that morning was He forgave the iniquity of that sin. That produced an amazing amount of freedom in my heart.

Dannah: As Monica allowed God to use the truth of Psalm 32 to wash her heart, her emotions began to shift. 

Monica: I continued to read through that psalm and work with the Lord on it. Then I got to Psalm 32:11. This is the way that chapter ends.

So rejoice in the Lord and be glad, all you who obey Him! Shout for joy, all you whose hearts are pure!

Dannah: Do you remember the two things Monica had been asking God to do in her life? One, she wanted Him to purify her heart, mind, and emotions; and two, she was asking Him for a deep sense of joy! 

Monica: He purified my heart that morning through His Word and it was gentle. It was sweet. He forgave the iniquity of that sin that I had been carrying for a long time. The guilt was gone, and there was this sense of freedom and joy. He began to restore that deep sense of joy that comes from that intimacy with Him. He did it tenderly. He did it gently. He did it carefully.

I started singing that morning the old hymn: “Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.”

Dannah: Monica experienced joy as the water of God’s Word washed away sin and shame. She says she wishes she had soaked her heart—and those sins and iniquities—in the water of God’s Word much earlier!

Monica: It would have been so much easier. 

Dannah: Her encouragement to you if you’re feeling depleted, discouraged or depressed?

Monica: I know it seems impossible to get some time in your schedule just to be with the Lord, to be in His presence. You don’t have to do anything. Just open His Word, just let it begin to wash that heart of yours. Just don’t stop reading the Word. Stay in the Word, and let it do what only it can do. If you do leave dishes in the sink at night, you might want to be sure to put some water on them because it will be a lot easier the next morning for you.

Dannah: I love that analogy from Monica Vaught. We need to soak our hearts in God’s Word. But you know what? The Enemy doesn’t want you to do that. He doesn’t want you to find rest in the quiet place with Jesus. Instead, he wants to keep you distracted, frazzled, overwhelmed by the noise of social media, the news, or whatever else might capture your attention. 

But Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is here to remind you that the Enemy won’t win. In Christ, you already have final victory over every temptation. And you have grace for today. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: Let me close with this word of encouragement. We have God’s promise that one day we will be completely, eternally delivered from the very presence of evil and the Evil One. Does that excite anybody here? Do you want that day to come quickly?

In 2 Timothy chapter 4:18, as Paul was getting ready to be martyred for his faith, he said, “The Lord will rescue me.” He’s getting ready to be probably beheaded. He said, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

“The Lord’s going to rescue you? You’re about to get killed!”

“The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed.” Beyond the cross, there’s a resurrection. Beyond this life with its hurt and its pain and its temptation and its vulnerabilities and its failures, there is eternity, free from the very presence of evil and the Evil One.

In the last chapter in the book of Romans, chapter 16, verse 20, the apostle Paul says, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”

You say, “When will that be?” Soon. In the meantime, you’ve got the second half of that verse.

“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” In the meantime, while Satan’s still out there, you’ve got God’s grace to deal with it from here till heaven.

So do you believe that God can deliver you when you’re tempted? Do you believe that He can enable you to say “no” to sin? Or do you still believe in your heart, are you holding onto that deception that you have to continue in sinful patterns and bondages?

Ladies, the truth will set you free. That’s where you need to counsel your heart according to the truth. Thank You, Lord, that when I am tempted I do not have to sin. By Your grace I can say “no” to sin.

Do you believe God can grant you victory over the wiles, the schemes, and the attacks of Satan? Do you believe God can keep you from falling? Are you looking to Christ to deliver you from sin? Or are you somehow striving, struggling to win the battle in your own efforts? You can’t. Your striving will be losing.

Jesus Christ is our great Deliverer. He is our hope. He is our "knight in shining armor." So when we pray, “Lord, deliver us from the evil one,” we’re saying, “Oh, Christ, I look to You. I lean on You. I trust You to be my great Deliverer.”

Dannah: Amen. What a great way to wrap up. And what a wonderful thing to pray when we’re tempted to replace time in the Word with lesser things, with distractions. “Lord, deliver me from the evil one.” You know, I think we can also pray “Lord, deliver me from myself.” We can be our own worst distractors, can’t we?

Song: “Let My Heart Be Quiet”

Oh, let my heart be quiet,
Command my thoughts, be still,
And capture my attention to Your will

Of all the thousand voices that clamor in my ear,
Let it be Your voice; the voice that I can hear.

Oh, let my heart be quiet,
Let all distractions cease,
May grow within my heart with perfect peace.

When matters of this earthly life have filled my heart with noise,
Then Lord, I need to listen to Your voice.¹

Dannah: If you’re consumed by busyness, if the world, the flesh, or the devil are keeping you from sweet fellowship with the Lord, I hope today’s program nudges you gently toward Him. I hope it gives you permission to say “no” to some of the good things in your life so you can say “yes” to better things. So you can say “yes” to Jesus.

Nancy’s book, A Place of Quiet Rest, is a wonderful tool to help you prioritize time in His presence. It’s filled with gentle truths for the busy woman. Nancy shares from her heart how a daily devotional time can forever change your life. Request your copy when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com to give.

Today we talked about how busyness can keep us from time in the Word, but next weekend, we’re talking about why we should go to the Word at all. What’s there waiting for us when we show up to the quiet place? Turns out, there’s grace. Lots of it. If you could use a dose of grace right now, I hope you’ll come back for that. 

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹“Let My Heart Be Quiet,” Forever Be Sure, Even There © 2015 Forever Be Sure Music Publications.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.