Faith & Identity

When faith feels like a performance you can’t keep up with

By Annessa Leigh, RN

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Sometimes faith starts to feel less like a relationship and more like a performance, with God watching from the front row while you keep forgetting your lines. You missed your quiet time again, you snapped at someone you love, and you prayed in the car on the way to work and wondered if that even counts. It leaves you with a particular kind of tired that has nothing to do with sleep.

If that’s where you are, I want to tell you about two sisters who had a famous disagreement in front of Jesus, because one of them was living exactly like that.

The sisters in Bethany

Luke was a doctor who traveled with the early church and wrote one of the four accounts of Jesus’ life. He’s the detail person of the group, the one who interviewed eyewitnesses and wrote everything down in order. (As a nurse, I appreciate a man who documents.) In his book, he tells us about a visit Jesus made to the home of two sisters, Martha and Mary.

These weren’t strangers. Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus lived in a little town called Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, and they were some of Jesus’ closest friends. When He was in the area, their house was where He stayed.

Martha was the one who opened the door, and she was a doer. If she lived today, she’d be the woman who brings a homemade casserole to every funeral and has the church kitchen organized by color. Mary was the one who sat down on the floor to listen to Jesus while dinner was still very much not done. Here’s how Luke tells it:

“As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, ‘Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.’”

— Luke 10:38–40, NLT

I’ll be honest, I’ve always had a soft spot for Martha. Thirteen hungry men just walked into her house, and somebody had to feed them. Her sister was no help, and she said what a lot of us would have been thinking while banging pots a little louder than necessary.

What Jesus said to her

Here’s His answer:

“But the Lord said to her, ‘My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.’”

— Luke 10:41–42, NLT

Notice that He starts with “My dear Martha.” He isn’t scolding her or telling her she’s a bad friend for caring about dinner. He’s gently pointing out that she’s so busy serving Him that she’s missing Him, and He’s sitting right there in her living room.

That’s what performance faith does. It keeps us so focused on doing everything right for God that we stop actually being with Him. Martha wasn’t wrong to cook. She was wrong about what Jesus needed from her, and she’d started measuring her worth by how well the evening was going.

Why we keep performing

I think a lot of us slip into Martha mode because it gives us something we can see. God is unseen, and it’s hard to know where you stand with someone you can’t look in the eye. A checklist feels safer. If I read my chapter, went to church, and didn’t lose my temper today, I have proof I’m doing okay. The trouble is that the same list turns on you the minute you miss something, and then you’re back to feeling like you’ve let Him down.

Paul knew this pull better than anybody. Before he became a follower of Jesus, he was a top-tier religious achiever, the kind of man who kept every rule and made sure everyone knew it. He even hunted down Christians because he thought he was defending God. After Jesus turned his life around, he spent the rest of it writing letters to new churches, and he was very clear about where our standing with God comes from:

“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”

— Ephesians 2:8–9, NLT

A gift isn’t something you earn by being good enough. You don’t keep a gift by performing well, either. It’s yours because someone who loves you decided to give it.

What grace actually does

When grace is just a nice word, it ends up feeling like encouragement, a little pep talk before you go back to trying harder. But grace is more like the ground under your house. It’s the thing that holds you up when your performance is a mess, and it doesn’t move on the days you have nothing left to give.

Jesus put it this way to a crowd of people who were worn out from trying to live up to religious expectations:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

— Matthew 11:28–30, NLT

A yoke was the wooden harness farmers put across the shoulders of two oxen so they could pull a load together. Jesus is saying, “Get in the harness with me. I’ll carry the heavy side.” That’s a very different picture from a God standing on the sidelines with a clipboard.

Choosing the better part today

You don’t have to stop doing things for God. Martha’s love for people was a gift, and so is yours. The shift is in why you’re doing them and where you’re looking while you do.

Try this the next time you feel behind: before you add one more thing to prove you’re faithful, sit down for a minute like Mary did. Tell Him honestly how tired you are. You don’t need the right words or a full hour, just a few honest minutes with Someone who already loves you and isn’t keeping score. Make it a cup of tea if that helps you slow down.

Annessa