People talk about being busy like it’s an honorable and noble achievement. One would think there was an organization called Busy Doers of America where hundreds of millions of people every day were rushing to pay their membership dues, pick up their Busy Doer uniform, and fall into formation before the Busy Doer leader. And the prize to be won? The coveted and time-honored Busy Doer badge. This sought-after and craved emblem is only given to the best of the best Busy Doers. 

To earn this badge a Busy Doer must be willing to submit to the strict standards of:

  • over-working 
  • over-committing themselves and their children to activities creating an imbalance
  • rarely or never resting –feeling guilty when resting ensuring that the rest isn’t restful
  • committing to multi-tasking from morning to night  
  • constructing an unreasonable and impossible “to-do” list
  • submitting to random inappropriate guilt tests
  • agreeing to answer all questions regarding their circumstances using the word “busy”
  • tying their self-worth to their busy-ness and their ability to cram as much into every single day as inhumanly possible

A Busy Doer can be confident they are on the path to the revered Busy Badge if they are frequently exhausted, over-whelmed, faking fine, irritable, anxious, depressed, physically ill, emotionally numb, mentally worn out, and lonely. 

But every Busy Doer knows that it will be worth it when the sky parts, the angels sing, and heavens light shines on them as their Busy Doer leader hands them their very own Busy Badge. Just thinking of this moment keeps every prospective Busy Doer Busy Badge wanna-be going.  

And when that glorious day arrives and the Busy Doer recipients think they’ve reached the top of the Busy Doer status, every Busy Doer is informed of the secret, next level in Busy Badges – the Master Busy Badge. This badge comes with the gold-star guarantee of validation, confidence, worthiness, and approval – with the microscopic fine print that says the guarantee isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. 

Are you a card-carrying Busy Doer of America member or do you know someone who is? 

Our culture has found a way to define, brand, and market this word into something that we should strive for every single day of our lives. If a person isn’t busy, they are viewed as “missing out”, “less than” or maybe even “lazy”. 

The carefully crafted and covert, subliminal messaging regarding the status of busy has been masterfully executed in such a way that many don’t even realize that they are bowing down to the false idol of busy. (It’s genius when you think about.) As Christ-followers, we want to stay away from idols, and we shudder at the thought of bowing down to anything or anyone except Jesus. But I am afraid that we are deluding ourselves. At some point in our lives, we have all bowed down to Busy. 

Think about these questions…

Have you been too busy to…?

  • help or support a friend?
  • connect (outside of a text message or social media) with friends or family?
  • help at your church?
  • spend quality time with your kids?
  • look at your child when they are talking to you?
  • do a Bible study?
  • meet with God regularly? 
  • pray for others or yourself?
  • rest?

Friends, we can be just as busy in our minds as we can be in our actions and behaviors. 

Have you been busy …?

  • being angry with someone that you had no time to consider forgiveness? 
  • worrying about a person or situation to pray about it?
  • beating yourself up about everything you are not to recognize everything you are? 

Now, I’m not talking about people who are working long hours at work out of necessity or requirement. Nor am I am talking about short seasons of life where we find ourselves busy. What I am talking about is living our lives in such as a way that busy is the goal and down deep there is a feeling of validation and pride that comes from a schedule that is over-filled.

I am talking about Deliberate Busy.

The act of consciously or subconsciously trying to fill a hole within yourself to meet the needs of significance, connection, value, or worthiness. When we forget Whose we are and the ache in our hearts to be valued gets to be too much, sometimes we will search for our value in being praised for the things we do causing us to pile on more and more doing. 

We get busy with…

Politics, the news, and culture keep us busy with fear, hatred, and divisiveness. 

Worrying about things outside of our control keeps us busy. 

Fixing other people and their problems keeps us busy.

People-pleasing, perfectionism, and trying to control everything in our lives keeps us busy. 

Comparison and trying to keep up with those we admire keeps us busy. 

Judging others and gossiping keeps us busy. 

We get busy with the things of this world and lose sight that God is on the throne and always on the job. 

What He does want is cheerful givers…

Our motives for helping or doing can get out of alignment and instead of giving for the sake of giving, we begin giving for the sake of receiving. Busy promises to fill a void but ends up making the void bigger. 

When I am mindlessly working on my Busy Badge, I am not the best version of myself. My creativity takes a nosedive. Compassion and empathy take a backseat allowing grumpy to set the course. I get worn out and overwhelmed which often leads to feeling stuck – in this state of mind, I can’t accomplish my Busy Doers to-do list which only makes me grumpier. Days, weeks, and months on this dysfunctional cycle leave me depleted, exhausted, and miserable. 

If busy is the gold standard, why are we so tired, empty, unfulfilled, and secretly unhappy? 

Here’s my conclusion on busy:

We’ve been duped – Busy isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a lie we’ve believed that our need for significance, worthiness, love, and connection can be met through our doing. 

Busy is a carefully constructed strategy created by the Enemy to destroy us in these three ways:

  1. Disconnection – when we are busy, we don’t have time for meaningful connection, and we settle for cheap substitutes like social media. Busy disconnects us from God and those we love until one day we wake up and our souls are dry and those we love have grown up or moved on. 
  • Distraction – when we are busy, we become distracted by things that won’t matter next week, next month, or next year. The purpose that God hid away in each of us collects dust because we are busy chasing things that promise to fill our empty spaces but end up leaving even more empty. 
  • Dismantling – when we are busy, the Enemy takes us apart. Satan’s tag line is this: Stealing, killing, and destroying those that God loves since the beginning of time. The enemy steals our joy, Christ-identity, and peace. He kills our passion and drive to be disciples. And he destroys our relationships, our self-worth, and our ability to see God. Worry, stress, pressure, exhaustion, sickness, and depression begin to dismantle us bit-by-bit from the inside out – until one day we can no longer fake fine. 

Busy is a part of Satan’s arsenal of weapons and it is imperative that we understand this weapon and recognize when we are fighting this battle. If we don’t understand how Satan and his band of demons play, we won’t know when we are being played. <Read that again because it is so important to your Christian walk and spiritual growth. 

Spiritual warfare is rarely bold, easily recognizable, or coming at you in such a way that you see it from a mile away. The enemy comes at us with things that often seem nonthreatening and promise good things but, in the end, hurt us. There is often an element of truth to the lie and goodness to the destruction. Satan is strategic, methodical, and incredibly patient. 

Our sly and sneaky destruction happens slowly – with you and I making one seemly non-threatening decision at a time – until one day we find ourselves mentally and emotionally worn out and numb – often looking around and wondering how we got there. 

As it pertains to busy, we’ve been believing the LIE that says:

You need to earn validation, approval, worthiness, and connection. But here’s the truth: We don’t need to get busy earning a Busy Badge to gain validation, approval, worthiness, and connection. We already have those things. As a son or daughter of God, we’ve had them since before we entered this world. 

We are running, striving, and working for something that already belongs to us. Can you see Satan’s cunning methodology here? He has convinced us to work ourselves to the point of exhaustion for something we already have! 

You and I were given – given, as in, gifted – with the Son/Daughter of God badge. We are joint heirs of Jesus (Romans 8:17), planned for before the foundations of the earth (Ephesians 1:4), and purchased by the blood of Jesus (Ephesians 1:14). No doing required. 

God loves us so much that our being is all that He requires of us. Busy says we need to earn our worthiness – but God declared us worthy before our souls ever hit the planet and we had the chance to do or earn anything. 

Give some thought to these questions…

What are you “busy” with? 

What has “busy” gotten you? 

When you get to the end of your life, will your “busy” be time well-spent? 

We’ll continue the discussion about Deliberate Busy in the next post. I’ll show you how to fight back against this type of spiritual warfare and how to live the abundant life (John 10:10) that Jesus came to give us.  

Until Next Time,

Unravel is available now available on Kindle or Paperback!