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 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.

It’s been proven by study after study: there is zero correlation between hurry and productivity. In fact, once you work a certain number of hours in a week, your productivity plummets.

Hebrew word Shabbat means “to stop.” But it can also be translated “to delight.

But notice what else God did: he “blessed the seventh day and made it holy.” Two things worth noting here. First, the Sabbath is “blessed.” In the Genesis story, three things are blessed by God. To start with, God blessed the animal kingdom with an invocation: “Be fruitful and multiply.”17 Then he blessed humanity the same way: “Be fruitful and multiply.”18 And then God blessed the Sabbath.

Slaves don’t get a Sabbath. They don’t even get a day off. They work all day, every day, until they die. Slaves are subhuman. A line item on a spreadsheet. Bought and sold like a commodity, a means to whatever end the rich and powerful see fit. All that matters is the bottom line.

For a lot of people, things aren’t just things; they are identities.

In fact, some studies indicate that as a nation’s wealth goes up, its happiness goes down.

Americans and Europeans have ever more of everything except happiness.

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

We worry about what we worship. If you worship money, it will eat you alive.

Minimalism isn’t about living with nothing; it’s about living with less.

“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

As Dallas Willard so astutely pointed out, the cost of discipleship is high, but the cost of non-discipleship is even higher.

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.

“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.

Garbage in, garbage out.” Every … single … thing that we let into our minds will have an effect on our souls.

Nicholas Herman, the Parisian monk better known as Brother Lawrence, called this way of life “the practice of the presence of God”2 because it takes practice to live from attention and awareness. Especially in the modern world.

These four practices—silence and solitude, Sabbath, simplicity, and slowing—have helped me tremendously to move toward abiding as my baseline. But to say it yet again, all four of them are a means to an end.