The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World

by John Mark Comer

The noise of the modern world makes us deaf to the voice of God, drowning out the one input we most need.

But why in the wilderness? Why alone? And why after forty days of fasting? When he’s hungry? For years this story made no sense to me because I thought of the wilderness as the place of weakness. I read it this way: Isn’t that so like the devil? To come at us at the end of a long day or a long week? When we’re hangry and at our worst? But then I realized I had it backward.

The wilderness isn’t the place of weakness; it’s the place of strength. “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness” because it was there, and only there, that Jesus was at the height of his spiritual powers. It was only after a month and a half of prayer and fasting in the quiet place that he had the capacity to take on the devil himself and walk away unscathed. That’s why, over and over again, you see Jesus come back to the eremos.

Meaning, the quiet place wasn’t a onetime thing. It was an ongoing part of his life rhythm.

What you really need isn’t a beer or a night out at the movies. What you really need is time alone with me. But to do that, we need to get away from all the noise and people. So, They went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place [eremos].12

The first thing we lose is unhurried time to just sit with God in the quiet. To pray. Read a psalm. Take an internal inventory. Let our souls catch up to our bodies.

Jesus needed time in the quiet place.

It’s when you’re up early or out in nature or in your room, and it’s quiet. When your ears are humming with the din of silence.

“The friend of silence draws near to God.”17

Where does this strange urge come from to reach for NPR the moment we get in our cars? Or always have music on in the background? Or flip on the TV while we’re cooking dinner? Or listen to podcasts during our workouts? As easy as it is to blame the devil, could it be that we’re using external noise to drown out internal noise?

Solitude is how you open yourself up to God; isolation is painting a target on your back for the tempter.

Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life…. We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.21

In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we learn that ultimately in this world there is no finished symphony.

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Desire is infinite partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God, and made to run on God. We can be satisfied only by the one who is infinite, eternal, and able to supply all our needs; we are only at home in God. When we fall away from God, the desire for the infinite remains, but it is displaced upon things that will certainly lead to destruction.5

The word Sabbath comes to us from the Hebrew Shabbat. The word literally means “to stop.” The Sabbath is simply a day to stop: stop working, stop wanting, stop worrying, just stop.

To clarify, Sabbath isn’t less than a day; it’s a whole lot more. Hence, it was woven into the fabric of Jesus’ weekly routine.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

[The Sabbath] has largely been forgotten by the church, which has uncritically mimicked the rhythms of the industrial and success-obsessed West. The result? Our road-weary, exhausted churches have largely failed to integrate Sabbath into their lives as vital elements of Christian discipleship. It is not as though we do not love God—we love God deeply. We just do not know how to sit with God anymore.

We have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted, psychologically overworked, spiritually malnourished people in history.11

Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.13

I’ve had people laugh off the call to Sabbath with a terrible cliché: “Yeah, well, the devil never takes a day off.” Ummm, last time I checked, the devil loses. Plus, he’s the devil.

The Sabbath is an entire day set aside to follow God’s example, to stop and delight. To delight in the world… In our lives in it… And above all, in God himself.

And all this is rooted in God. He rested. He stopped. He set aside an entire day just to delight in his world.

God has to command his people to do something deeply life giving—rest.

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.22

I love the opening word, “Remember.” It’s easy to forget there is a day that’s blessed and holy. Easy to get sucked into the life of speed, to let the pace of your life ramp up to a notch shy of insanity. To forget: Creator (not me), creation (me). Remember that life as it comes to us is a gift. Remember to take time to delight in it as an act of grateful worship. Remember to be present to the moment and its joy. Humans are prone to amnesia, so God commands us to remember.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God.23

So the Sabbath isn’t just a day for rest; it’s also a day for worship. By worship I don’t necessarily mean singing at church (though that’s a great example); I mean whole-life orientation toward God.

the Sabbath isn’t the same thing as a day off.

When I Sabbath, I run each activity through this twin grid: Is this rest and worship? If the answer is “No,” or “Kind of, but not really,” or “Umm…,” then I simply hold off. There are six other days for that. What’s the rush? After all, I’m not in a hurry…

Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God.26

Can you imagine what would happen to our society if all commerce stopped once a week? If 24-7 stores went 24-6? Websites stopped receiving orders. Amazon warehouses closed for a day. Restaurants powered off the oven. Can you imagine what that would do for the poor in our cities? Creating space for them to rest and spend time with loved ones? Not to mention what it would do for the rest of us. If only we could go an entire day without buying anything.

I have enough. What I really need is time to enjoy what I already have, with God.

So much of our unhappiness comes from comparing our lives, our friendships, our loves, our commitments, our duties, our bodies and our sexuality to some idealized and non-Christian vision of things which falsely assures us that there is a heaven on earth. When that happens, and it does, our tensions begin to drive us mad, in this case to a cancerous restlessness.35

True restfulness, though, is a form of awareness, a way of being in life. It is living ordinary life with a sense of ease, gratitude, appreciation, peace and prayer. We are restful when ordinary life is enough.36

What if ordinary life is enough?

The Sabbath is like a governor on the speed of life.

All week long we work, we play, we cook, we clean, we shop, we exercise, we answer text messages, we inhabit the modern world, but finally we hit a limit. On the Sabbath, we slow down; more than that, we come to a full stop.

To wind down this chapter, let me just speak from the heart. I deeply enjoy the practice of Sabbath. For me it’s not a legalistic hangover from some fundamentalist shtick but a practice from the way of Jesus, a delivery system for life.

I’m free. I want to stay that way. And I want you to experience this day of unhurried love and joy and peace.

To begin, just set aside a day. Clear your schedule. TURN OFF YOUR PHONE. Say a prayer to invite the Holy Spirit to pastor you into his presence. And then? Rest and worship. In whatever way is life giving for your soul.

The worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.4

Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

What if the only material things we need to live rich and satisfying lives are food to eat, clothing on our backs, and a place to live? If you doubt your ability to live that simply and thrive, you’re not alone.

“In vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.”23

Every single thing you buy costs you not only money but also time.

And less time means more hurry.

Whether you’re into motorcycles, sneakers, or Japanese anime, most of us simply have too much stuff to enjoy life at a healthy, unhurried pace.

We forget, Jesus was the most intelligent teacher to ever live. His teachings aren’t just right in some arbitrary moral sense—they are good. That’s what morality is—the good and true way to live.