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

by John Mark Comer

“There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

Corrie ten Boom once said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy. There’s truth in that. Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect—they cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.

love, joy, and peace are at the heart of all Jesus is trying to grow in the soil of your life. And all three are incompatible with hurry.

For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.

our attention span is dropping with each passing year. In 2000, before the digital revolution, it was twelve seconds, so it’s not exactly like we had a lot of wiggle room. But since then it’s dropped to eight seconds. To put things in perspective, a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds.20 Yes. That’s right. We’re losing, to goldfish.

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.

the Greek word that we translate “salvation” is soteria; it’s the same word we translate “healing.” When you’re reading the New Testament and you read that somebody was “healed” by Jesus and then you read somebody else was “saved” by Jesus, you’re reading the same Greek word. Salvation is healing. Even the etymology of our English word salvation comes from the Latin salve. As in, an ointment you put on a burn or a wound.

There’s a saying in business literature that I love: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Usually this is applied to widgets and the bottom line, but I love it for life as a whole.

Jesus realizes that the most restful gift he can give the tired is a new way to carry life, a fresh way to bear responsibilities…. Realism sees that life is a succession of burdens; we cannot get away from them; thus instead of offering escape, Jesus offers equipment. Jesus means that obedience to his Sermon on the Mount [his yoke] will develop in us a balance and a “way” of carrying life that will give more rest than the way we have been living.

That’s why Jesus doesn’t offer us an escape. He offers us something far better: “equipment.” He offers his apprentices a whole new way to bear the weight of our humanity: with ease. At his side. Like two oxen in a field, tied shoulder to shoulder. With Jesus doing all the heavy lifting. At his pace. Slow, unhurried, present to the moment, full of love and joy and peace. An easy life isn’t an option; an easy yoke is.

we achieve inner peace when our schedule is aligned with our values.

Following Jesus has to make it onto your schedule and into your practices or it will simply never happen. Apprenticeship to Jesus will remain an idea, not a reality in your life.

Jesus isn’t anti-command, not by a long shot. But for Jesus, leadership isn’t about coercion and control; it’s about example and invitation.

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.

Maybe that’s why God eventually has to command the Sabbath. Does that strike you as odd? It’s like commanding ice cream or live music or beach days. You would think we’d all be chomping at the bit to practice the Sabbath. But apparently there’s something about the human condition that makes us want to hurry our way through life as fast as we possibly can, to rebel against the limitations of time itself. Due to our immaturity, dysfunction, and addiction, God has to command his people to do something deeply life giving—rest.

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.

“Simplicity is an inward reality that can be seen in an outward lifestyle”38 of “choosing to leverage time, money, talents and possessions toward what matters most.”39

Remember, the world is constantly asking, “How do I get more?” But the apprentice of Jesus is regularly found asking, “How can I live with less?”

What I’m saying is, let prayer set your emotional equilibrium and Scripture set your view of the world. Begin your day in the spirit of God’s presence and the truth of his Scriptures. My friends at Red Church in Melbourne, Australia, have this saying: “Win the day.” They mean, at the beginning of each day, put your phone on the other side of your house and don’t look at it until after you’ve spent time in devotion to God.

As the poet William Stafford put it, “What can anyone give you greater than now?”5

You’re not just fighting for a good life but for a good soul.