The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World
byJohn Mark Comer, John Ortberg
Book Edition Details
Summary
Lost in the frantic whirl of modern life, pastor John Mark Comer found himself grappling with an unsettling truth: outward success masked an inner chaos. Seeking wisdom, he was handed an unexpected key to serenity—"Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." In this compelling narrative, Comer unveils the insidious grip of busyness on our spiritual and emotional health, sharing his transformative journey towards a calmer existence. With clarity and insight, he offers four simple, life-altering practices designed to reclaim joy and deepen your connection to what truly matters. Step away from the relentless rush and discover the profound peace that lies in the stillness.
Introduction
Picture this: It's 10 PM on a Sunday night, and you're slumped against the window of an Uber, too exhausted to even sit up straight. You've just finished your sixth speaking engagement of the day, your mind is racing despite your body's complete depletion, and you can't shake the feeling that somewhere along the way, you've lost yourself in the pursuit of success. This isn't just the story of one burned-out pastor—it's the story of our entire generation. We live in a world where "busy" has become a badge of honor, where our worth seems measured by our productivity, and where the average person touches their phone over 2,600 times a day. We've created a culture of constant motion, endless connectivity, and relentless pursuit of more—more achievements, more experiences, more stuff. Yet for all our rushing around, we're more anxious, more depressed, and more spiritually empty than ever before. What if the secret to a fulfilling life isn't found in doing more, but in doing less? What if the answer to our collective exhaustion isn't better time management, but a complete reimagining of how we approach life itself? This exploration into the ancient practice of unhurried living offers a different path—one that leads not to emptiness, but to the deep soul rest we've been desperately seeking.
From Megachurch Burnout to Spiritual Awakening
The trajectory seemed perfect from the outside. A young, ambitious pastor had built a thriving megachurch, growing by over a thousand people each year for seven consecutive years. Sunday mornings meant six back-to-back services, a marathon of teaching that left him spiritually depleted but professionally celebrated. Success, by every metric that mattered in modern church culture, was his. But success came with a price that wasn't listed in any leadership manual. Late nights became the norm, spent mindlessly consuming obscure martial arts films just to feel something other than the hollow numbness that had settled over his soul. The man who preached about abundant life was living on empty, running on adrenaline and ambition rather than the peace he proclaimed from the pulpit. The breaking point came not with dramatic fanfare, but with a quiet, terrifying realization. Looking ahead to his future self at forty, fifty, and sixty, he saw a man who had gained everything the world called success while losing the very thing he had originally set out to protect—his soul. The fast track to ministry stardom had become a highway to spiritual poverty. This moment of brutal self-assessment led to one of the most counterintuitive decisions of his career: he chose to step back, step down, and step into the unknown. Trading the megachurch for a smaller community, the suburbs for the city, and the relentless pace of growth for the gentle rhythm of depth, he discovered that sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is admit that the life everyone else envies is slowly killing you.
The Hidden Enemy: How Speed Destroys Our Souls
Dallas Willard, the renowned philosopher and spiritual teacher, once gave profoundly simple advice to a struggling pastor: "You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." When pressed for additional guidance, Willard's response was even more startling: "There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day." This diagnosis cuts to the heart of our modern predicament. We've created a world where being busy has become synonymous with being important, where speed is confused with progress, and where constant motion masquerades as purposeful living. Our devices ping us into perpetual distraction, our schedules overflow with commitments we never consciously chose, and our minds race from one urgent task to another without ever settling into the present moment. The consequences extend far beyond mere fatigue. Hurry kills the very things we claim to value most: love requires patience, but hurry has no time for it; joy emerges from presence, but hurry rushes past every moment; peace grows in stillness, but hurry creates only agitation. We find ourselves in the tragic position of pursuing a meaningful life at a pace that makes meaning impossible. Consider the simple act of driving. When did getting from point A to point B become a source of stress rather than an opportunity for quiet reflection? When did waiting in line become unbearable rather than a chance to simply be? We've trained ourselves to experience any pause, any moment of non-productivity, as a problem to be solved rather than a gift to be received. The spiritual implications are profound. If attention is the doorway to the heart, and if what we give our attention to shapes who we become, then our fractured, hurried attention is literally reshaping our souls. We're becoming people who cannot sit still, cannot listen deeply, and cannot rest in the presence of the Divine—not because we don't want to, but because we've lost the capacity through disuse.
Jesus's Easy Yoke: Ancient Practices for Modern Peace
In a culture obsessed with optimization and efficiency, Jesus offers an invitation that sounds almost too good to be true: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." This isn't merely beautiful poetry—it's a practical promise with profound implications. Jesus lived in a world without smartphones, yet his approach to life demonstrates principles that are urgently needed in our hyperconnected age. Throughout the Gospels, we see a man who was never in a hurry, never rushed, never anxious about cramming more into his schedule. Even in life-or-death situations, he moved with a calm presence that astonished those around him. The secret wasn't that Jesus had more time—he faced the same twenty-four-hour days we do. The difference was in his understanding of what truly mattered and his commitment to practices that kept him connected to that truth. He regularly withdrew to quiet places for solitude and prayer. He observed the Sabbath as a weekly rhythm of rest and worship. He lived with remarkable simplicity, free from the burden of excess possessions. He moved through the world at a pace that allowed for deep relationships and meaningful encounters. These weren't arbitrary lifestyle choices but intentional practices designed to create space for what he called "abiding"—living in conscious connection with God's presence and love. Just as a trellis provides structure for a vine to grow and bear fruit, these practices provide the framework within which the soul can flourish. The profound truth Jesus revealed is that we don't find rest by eliminating all effort, but by aligning our efforts with the grain of the universe rather than fighting against it. His yoke is easy not because it requires nothing of us, but because it harnesses our energy toward life rather than death, toward connection rather than isolation, toward peace rather than anxiety.
Four Pathways to an Unhurried Life
The journey from hurried to unhurried isn't accomplished through willpower alone, but through the patient cultivation of practices that gradually reshape both our external rhythms and our internal landscape. Four ancient disciplines, tested by centuries of spiritual seekers, offer a roadmap for modern souls seeking rest. Silence and solitude create the space for our souls to catch up with our bodies. In a world of constant noise and stimulation, learning to be alone with God and ourselves becomes a radical act of resistance. Regular times of quiet—whether in morning prayer, evening reflection, or periodic retreats—allow us to remember who we are beneath all our roles and responsibilities. The Sabbath rhythm of one day in seven devoted entirely to rest and worship serves as both gift and rebellion. It's a gift because it reminds us that our worth isn't determined by our productivity, and a rebellion because it refuses the culture's demand for constant availability and consumption. This weekly pause allows us to receive our lives as grace rather than achievement. Simplicity in our relationship to material possessions frees us from the endless cycle of wanting that drives so much of our hurry. When we learn to distinguish between needs and wants, when we choose fewer but better things, when we find contentment in what we already have, we discover that less truly can be more. The space created by simplicity becomes room for what matters most. Finally, the intentional practice of slowing—driving the speed limit, walking more slowly, single-tasking instead of multitasking—trains our bodies to move through the world with intention rather than anxiety. These small acts of resistance against the culture of speed gradually reshape our nervous systems and create new pathways for peace. Each practice supports the others, creating a web of habits that catch us when we fall back into old patterns of hurry and gently guide us toward the easy yoke of unhurried living.
Summary
The journey from a life of hurry to a life of rest reveals a profound truth: the problem isn't that we don't have enough time, but that we've forgotten how to inhabit the time we have. Through one person's painful awakening from the treadmill of success to the deeper satisfaction of soul care, we discover that the ancient practices of silence, Sabbath, simplicity, and slowing offer more than personal comfort—they provide a way of being human that honors both our limitations and our deep need for connection with the Divine. The path forward isn't about perfection but about practice. It's about choosing, moment by moment and day by day, to step off the conveyor belt of cultural expectations and into the spacious place of God's love. When we learn to ruthlessly eliminate hurry, we don't lose productivity—we gain our souls. We don't fall behind—we finally arrive at the life we've been seeking all along. In a world that will only grow faster and more frantic, choosing the way of unhurried love becomes not just a personal discipline but a gift to everyone whose lives we touch. The easy yoke awaits all who are weary and heavy-laden, offering not escape from life but a better way to live it.
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By John Mark Comer
