In part 4 of our Hearing God series, we unpack that hearing God is not accidental, it’s intentional.
Too Busy for God? How to Start Making Time for God When Life Won’t Stop
Making Time for God When Everything Feels Urgent
Making time for God doesn’t require a quieter life — it requires a deliberate choice inside the loud one you already have. The tension most people feel isn’t a lack of faith; it’s a calendar that fills up before God gets a slot. That gap between intention and attention is exactly where this conversation begins.
Here’s what’s honest: most people who feel distant from God aren’t indifferent. They’re buried. They’re managing jobs and relationships and aging parents and the particular Miami pressure of a city that never really slows down. Busyness isn’t the opposite of devotion — but it can quietly become a substitute for it, and that’s where things start to unravel.
The story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10 has been read so many times it can feel like furniture. But look at it again with fresh eyes, and it stops being a story about two sisters and starts being a mirror. Jesus is literally in the house. And one person is with him, and one person is managing everything around him. Both of them love him. Only one is present with him.
Why Distraction Doesn’t Mean You’ve Stopped Caring About God
The first thing worth saying — and meaning — is that distraction is not the same as disinterest. In Luke 10:40, when Martha is described as “distracted by all of the preparations,” the text doesn’t say she stopped loving Jesus. She was serving him. She was working for him. The problem wasn’t her heart. It was her attention.
That’s a meaningful distinction. The things pulling most people away from time with God are not bad things. They’re children, careers, relationships, responsibilities — things they prayed for. Things that are genuinely good. But when life fills up entirely with managing the gifts God has given, there’s no space left to receive anything from God himself. The blessings don’t disappear. They just stop feeling like blessings. They start to feel like weight.
There’s a slow, almost invisible shift that happens when this goes on long enough. The very things someone once thanked God for start looking like sources of pressure instead of gifts. A career that was an answered prayer becomes an obligation that’s grinding them down. A relationship they wanted becomes a source of conflict. Children who were prayed into existence become exhausting. It’s not ingratitude — it’s what happens when the giver gets crowded out by the gift.
Activity for God must not replace attentiveness to God. Those are different things, and it’s easy to confuse them, especially in a culture that rewards productivity at every turn. One honest step today: notice, without judgment, whether the busyness in your week has been crowding out the quiet. Just notice it.
What Worry Does to Your Ability to Hear God Speak
Busyness and worry are close relatives, and in Luke 10, Martha demonstrates exactly how one becomes the other. She starts with good work and ends with a complaint directed at Jesus himself: “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all of this work by myself?” That’s a real question. It’s also a question that could only come from someone who has stopped hearing the answer.
The slide from busyness into worry follows a predictable track. When there’s no space to receive perspective from God, the human mind starts generating its own — and it tends toward the worst-case version. A Penn State study on worry found that 91.4% of the things people worry about never come to pass, and that many of the situations that did occur turned out better than anticipated. That number is almost impossible to hold onto in the middle of a hard week. But it matters.
What makes this especially heavy is the content of the worry. It’s rarely abstract. It sounds like: God, I asked for this promotion — I just didn’t ask for this pressure. Or: I prayed for this relationship. I didn’t know it would bring this much conflict. Or the quietest one: God, I don’t have time for this process. I need you to move faster. Those aren’t faithless questions. They’re the questions of someone who has run out of margin and hasn’t had a chance to let God speak into the depletion. First Peter 5:7 holds the counterweight: cast all your anxiety on God, because he cares for you. Martha’s frustration — “Lord, don’t you care?” — was the opposite of what Scripture actually promises. But that’s what worry does. It tells stories that aren’t true, and it tells them loudly.
One honest step: the next time you feel the spiral starting, name it. Say out loud, or on paper, what you’re actually afraid of. Then ask whether there’s space — even ten minutes — to bring it to God before you bring it to your next meeting.
What Does It Actually Mean to Choose the Better Thing?
Jesus’s response to Martha is not a rebuke. It’s a clarification. “You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed — or indeed only one.” He doesn’t tell her the food wasn’t important. He tells her that Mary has chosen the better option, and that it won’t be taken from her. The distinction is worth sitting with. Martha didn’t choose wrong. Mary chose better.
Mary chose to be present. She sat at Jesus’s feet — not passively, but attentively. She created a space where something could actually happen between her and God. And Jesus says: that’s the one thing that won’t be taken away. The dishes will still be there. The responsibilities will still be there. The pressure will not evaporate. But the presence — the relationship, the perspective, the quiet assurance that God is good and that his gifts are still gifts — that is the one thing that time with God protects.
This is what it means to seek first the kingdom of God, as Jesus describes it elsewhere. Not abandoning the responsibilities. Not disappearing into solitude. But keeping the main thing the main thing — and trusting that when God gets the first space in the day, the rest of the details have a way of organizing themselves. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But with enough perspective to carry them well. Hearing God is not accidental. It’s intentional. And it starts with one decision to create space, even in a week that hasn’t left any.
One honest step: pick one slot in your week — morning, lunchtime, a walk — and name it as the space you’re protecting. Don’t start big. Start honest.
What Getting Quiet With God Looks Like vs. What We Settle For
| What We Settle For | What Presence With God Offers |
| Managing gifts without receiving perspective | Seeing gifts as gifts again |
| Worry filling the silence | God’s word reordering the noise |
| Asking God why he doesn’t care | Remembering that he already said he does |
| Busyness that becomes burden | Activity sustained by attentiveness |
| Exhaustion without direction | Guidance that makes the load lighter |
South Miami — from the neighborhoods of Kendall and Westchester out through Cutler Bay and Palmetto Bay — carries a particular kind of pressure. It’s the pressure of a beautiful city that asks a lot from its people: long commutes, demanding jobs, complex families, a pace that doesn’t have an obvious off switch. If you’re somewhere in that orbit and you’ve been meaning to slow down and haven’t found the moment, you’re not alone — and you’re not behind. Miami Vineyard exists for exactly that kind of person. Not for the one who has it figured out, but for the one who is quietly wondering if there’s a way to carry all of this without feeling so alone in it. If you’ve been curious, you’re welcome to show up and find out what it actually feels like inside those doors.
One Thing That Won’t Be Taken From You
Mary’s choice — sitting at Jesus’s feet when there was so much else demanding her attention — isn’t remembered because it was comfortable. It’s remembered because Jesus said it was permanent. The responsibilities returned. The dishes remained. But the presence she chose, the time she gave, the peace she received — none of that was undone when she stood back up.
Making time for God in a full life is not a discipline reserved for people with margin to spare. It’s the thing that creates margin. It’s the perspective that keeps blessings from becoming burdens. It’s the quiet that tells the truth when worry is telling a different story.
If you are ready to find that kind of perspective and presence, Miami Vineyard holds services Saturday evenings and three times on Sunday — plan your visit here. If you are not ready for that yet, the full Hearing God series is waiting for you anytime you want to listen and find it here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I start making time for God when my schedule is already overwhelming?
A: Start smaller than feels meaningful. Even ten focused minutes — before the phone, before the news, before the obligations begin — creates a space where something can shift. The goal isn’t duration. It’s intention. Consistency with a small practice builds more over time than sporadic longer ones.
Q: Why do my blessings feel like burdens even though I’m grateful for them?
A: When life fills up entirely with managing what God has given — without space to receive from God himself — even good things start to feel heavy. The relationship changes when the giver gets crowded out by the gift. Creating regular time with God recalibrates how you see the rest of your life.
Q: How do I hear God more clearly when I’m distracted and busy?
A: Hearing God clearly is less about finding a perfectly quiet life and more about creating intentional space inside the loud one. Scripture, prayer, community, and silence are all avenues — but none of them happen accidentally. The first step is deciding that hearing God is worth protecting time for, and then protecting it.
Q: What does it mean to seek first the kingdom of God in a practical sense?
A: It means keeping God first in the order of your day, not just the order of your priorities on paper. Seeking first the kingdom of God, as Jesus describes in Matthew 6, is a daily practice of orientation — giving God the first space, the first attention, and trusting that the rest of the day reorganizes around that.
Q: Is it normal to feel too busy for God even when I believe in him?
A: Yes — and the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10 makes exactly that point. Martha loved Jesus. She was serving him. She was just distracted from him. Distraction is not the same as disinterest, and recognizing that is the first honest step toward changing it.
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