The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry How to Stay Emotionally

Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern

World

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 The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the
modern world
John Mark Comer
For Dallas Willard—thank you.
Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
How to use this eBook
Foreword by John Ortberg
Prologue: Autobiography of an epidemic

Part one: The problem

Hurry: the great enemy of spiritual life

A brief history of speed
Something is deeply wrong

Part two: The solution

Hint: the solution isn’t more time

The secret of the easy yoke
What we’re really talking about is a rule of life

Intermission: Wait, what are the spiritual disciplines again?

Part three: Four practices for unhurrying your life

Silence and solitude

Sabbath
Simplicity
Slowing

Epilogue: A quiet life

Thanks
Exercises
Notes
A little about me
Praise for The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
Copyright
 How to Use this eBook

Look out for linked text (which is in blue) throughout the ebook that you
can select to help you navigate between notes and main text.
Foreword

The smartest and best man I have known jotted down some thoughts about
hurry; I think they were posted in his kitchen when he died. “Hurry,” he
wrote, “involves excessive haste or a state of urgency. It is associated with
words such as hurl, hurdle, hurly-burly (meaning “uproar”), and
hurricane.” He defined it as a “state of frantic effort one falls into in
response to inadequacy, fear, and guilt.” The simple essence of hurry is too
much to do! The good of being delivered from hurry is not simply pleasure
but the ability to do calmly and effectively—with strength and joy—that
which really matters. “We should take it as our aim,” he wrote, “to live our
lives entirely without hurry. We should form a clear intention to live without
hurry. One day at a time. Trying today.”

We should form a mental picture of our place in the world before God. This
places us in a different context. Psalm 23 does not say “The Lord is my
shepherd, therefore I gotta run faster.” Shepherds rarely run. Good ones,
anyway. He said to begin to eliminate things you “have” to do. He said it
was important to not be afraid of “doing nothing.” He said to plan on such
times. He said it would be important to deal with the panic of not being
busy. To allow yourself to be in the panic, feeling it roll over you, and not
going for the fix.

John Mark Comer has written a prophetic word for our day. He is engaging
and honest and learned and fun and humble. He guides us to a great
crossroads. To choose to live an unhurried life in our day is somewhat like
taking a vow of poverty in earlier centuries; it is scary. It is an act of faith.
But there are deeper riches on the other side. To be in the presence of a
person where hurry has (like Elvis) “left the building” is to be inspired
about the possibility of another kind of Life.
I was struck by the gifts of wisdom studded throughout this book: “All my
worst moments … are when I’m in a hurry.” “Love, joy, and peace … are
incompatible with hurry.” “The average iPhone user touches his or her
phone 2,617 times a day.” (By way of contrast, the psalmist said, “I have
set the LyORD always before me” [Psalm 16v8, ESV]. What would my life be
like if God touched my mind as frequently as I touch my phone?) Freedom
perhaps never comes without great cost. And John Mark is someone who
has made choices that involved a price, to pursue the life that is beyond
price. He knows both the struggle and the choice, and so can speak to those
of us who hunger and thirst.

Twenty centuries ago another wise man said, “[Make] the best use of the
time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5v16, ESV). I used to think that
meant the days are full of sensuality and fleshly temptation. And of course,
they are. But I think it mostly means that the life we were intended to live
must be lived in time. And we are so used to spiritually mediocre days—
days lived in irritation and fear and self-preoccupation and frenzy—that we
throw our lives away in a hurry.

So, in these pages lies the Great Invitation. Take a deep breath. Put your cell
phone away. Let your heart slow down. Let God take care of the world.

—John Ortberg
Prologue: Autobiography of an epidemic

It’s a Sunday night, 10 p.m. Head up against the glass of an Uber, too tired
to even sit up straight. I taught six times today—yes, six. The church I
pastor just added another gathering. That’s what you do, right? Make room
for people? I made it until about talk number four; I don’t remember
anything after that. I’m well beyond tired—emotionally, mentally, even
spiritually.

When we first went to six, I called up this megachurch pastor in California

who’d been doing six for a while.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

“Easy,” he said. “It’s just like running a marathon once a week.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Click.

Wait … isn’t a marathon really hard?

I take up long-distance running.

He has an affair and drops out of church.

That does not bode well for my future.

Home now, late dinner. Can’t sleep; that dead-tired-but-wired feeling. Crack
open a beer. On the couch, watching an obscure kung fu movie nobody’s
ever heard of. Chinese, with subtitles. Keanu Reeves is the bad guy.1 Love
Keanu. I sigh; lately, I’m ending most nights this way, on the couch, long
after the family has gone to bed. Never been remotely into kung fu before;
it makes me nervous. Is this the harbinger of mental illness on the horizon?

“It all started when he got obsessed with indie martial arts movies …”

But the thing is, I feel like a ghost. Half alive, half dead. More numb than
anything else; flat, one dimensional. Emotionally I live with an
undercurrent of a nonstop anxiety that rarely goes away, and a tinge of
sadness, but mostly I just feel blaaah spiritually … empty. It’s like my soul
is hollow.

My life is so fast. And I like fast. I’m type A. Driven. A get-crap-done kind
of guy. But we’re well past that now. I work six days a week, early to late,
and it’s still not enough time to get it all done. Worse, I feel hurried. Like
I’m tearing through each day, so busy with life that I’m missing out on the
moment. And what is life but a series of moments?

Anybody? I can’t be the only one …

Monday morning. Up early. In a hurry to get to the office. Always in a

hurry. Another day of meetings. I freaking hate meetings. I’m introverted
and creative, and like most millennials I get bored way too easily. Me in a
lot of meetings is a terrible idea for all involved. But our church grew really
fast, and that’s part of the trouble. I hesitate to say this because, trust me, if
anything, it’s embarrassing: we grew by over a thousand people a year for
seven years straight. I thought this was what I wanted. I mean, a fast-
growing church is every pastor’s dream. But some lessons are best learned
the hard way: turns out, I don’t actually want to be the CEO/executive
director of a nonprofit/HR expert/strategy guru/leader of leaders of leaders,
etc.

I got into this thing to teach the way of Jesus.

Is this the way of Jesus?

Speaking of Jesus, I have this terrifying thought lurking at the back of my

mind. This nagging question of conscience that won’t go away.
Who am I becoming?

I just hit thirty (level three!), so I have a little time under my belt. Enough
to chart a trajectory to plot the character arc of my life a few decades down
the road.

I stop.

Breathe.

Envision myself at forty. Fifty. Sixty.

It’s not pretty.

I see a man who is “successful,” but by all the wrong metrics: church size,
book sales, speaking invites, social stats, etc., and the new American dream
—your own Wikipedia page. In spite of all my talk about Jesus, I see a man
who is emotionally unhealthy and spiritually shallow. I’m still in my
marriage, but it’s duty, not delight. My kids want nothing to do with the
church; she was the mistress of choice for Dad, an illicit lover I ran to, to
hide from the pain of my wound. I’m basically who I am today but older
and worse: stressed out, on edge, quick to snap at the people I love most,
unhappy, preaching a way of life that sounds better than it actually is.

Oh, and always in a hurry.

Why am I in such a rush to become somebody I don’t even like?

It hits me like a freight train: in America you can be a success as a pastor

and a failure as an apprentice of Jesus; you can gain a church and lose your
soul.

I don’t want this to be my life …

Fast-forward three months: flying home from London. Spent the week
learning from my charismatic Anglican friends about life in the Spirit; it’s
like a whole other dimension to reality that I’ve been missing out on. But
with each mile east, I’m flying back to a life I dread.

The night before we left, this guy Ken prayed for me in his posh English
accent; he had a word for me about coming to a fork in the road. One road
was paved and led to a city with lights. Another was a dirt road into a forest;
it led into the dark, into the unknown. I’m to take the unpaved road.

I have absolutely no idea what it means. But it means something, I know. As

he said it, I felt my soul tremor under God. But what is God saying to me?

Catching up on email; planes are good for that. I’m behind, as usual. Bad
news again; a number of staff are upset with me. I’m starting to question the
whole megachurch thing. Not so much the size of a church but the way of
doing church.2 Is this really it? A bunch of people coming to listen to a talk
and then going back to their overbusy lives? But my questions come off
angry and arrogant. I’m so emotionally unhealthy, I’m just leaking chemical
waste over our poor staff.

What’s that leadership axiom?

“As go the leaders, so goes the church.”3

Dang, I sure hope our church doesn’t end up like me.

Sitting in aisle seat 21C, musing over how to answer another tense email, a
virgin thought comes to the surface of my mind. Maybe it’s the thin
atmosphere of thirty thousand feet, but I don’t think so. This thought has
been trying to break out for months, if not years, but I’ve not let it. It’s too
dangerous. Too much of a threat to the status quo. But the time has come
for it to be uncaged, let loose in the wild.

Here it is: What if I changed my life?

Another three months and a thousand hard conversations later, dragging

every pastor and mentor and friend and family member into the vortex of
the most important decision I’ve ever made, I’m sitting in an elder meeting.
Dinner is over. It’s just me and our core leaders. This is the moment. From
here on, my autobiography will fall into the “before” or “after” category.

I say it: “I resign.”

Well, not resign per se. I’m not quitting. We’re a multisite church. (As if
one church isn’t more than enough for a guy like me to lead.) Our largest
church is in the suburbs; I’ve spent the last ten years of my life there, but
my heart’s always been in the city. All the way back to high school, I
remember driving my ’77 Volkswagen Bus up and down Twenty-Third
Street and dreaming of church planting downtown.4 Our church in the city is
smaller. Much smaller. On way harder ground; urban Portland is a secular
wunderland—all the cards are against you down here. But that’s where I
feel the gravity of the Spirit weighing on me to touch down.

So not resign, more like demote myself. I want to lead one church at a time.
Novel concept, right? My dream is to slow down, simplify my life around
abiding. Walk to work. I want to reset the metrics for success, I say. I want
to focus more on who I am becoming in apprenticeship to Jesus. Can I do
that?

They say yes.

(Most likely they are thinking, Finally.)

People will talk; they always do: He couldn’t hack it (true). Wasn’t smart
enough (not true). Wasn’t tough enough (okay, mostly true). Or here’s one I
will get for months: He’s turning his back on God’s call on his life. Wasting
his gift in obscurity. Farewell.

Let them talk; I have new metrics now.

I end my ten-year run at the church. My family and I take a sabbatical. It’s a
sheer act of grace. I spend the first half comatose, but slowly I wake back
up to my soul. I come back to a much smaller church. We move into the
city; I walk to work. I start therapy. One word: wow. Turns out, I need a lot
of it. I focus on emotional health. Work fewer hours. Date my wife. Play
Star Wars Legos with my kids. (It’s for them, really.) Practice Sabbath.
Detox from Netflix. Start reading fiction for the first time since high school.
Walk the dog before bed. You know, live.

Sounds great, right? Utopian even? Hardly. I feel more like a drug addict
coming off meth. Who am I without the mega? A queue of people who want
to meet with me? A late-night email flurry? A life of speed isn’t easy to
walk away from. But in time, I detox. Feel my soul open up. There are no
fireworks in the sky. Change is slow, gradual, and intermittent; three steps
forward, a step or two back. Some days I nail it; others, I slip back into
hurry. But for the first time in years, I’m moving toward maturity, one inch
at a time. Becoming more like Jesus. And more like my best self.

Even better: I feel God again.

I feel my own soul.

I’m on the unpaved road with no clue where it leads, but that’s okay. I
honestly value who I’m becoming over where I end up. And for the first
time in years, I’m smiling at the horizon.

My Uber ride home to binge-watch Keanu Reeves was five years and as
many lifetimes ago. So much has changed since then. This little book was
born out of my short and mostly uneventful autobiography, my journey
from a life of hurry to a life of, well, something else.

In a way, I’m the worst person to write about hurry. I’m the guy angling at
the stoplight for the lane with two cars instead of three; the guy bragging
about being the “first to the office, last to go home”; the fast-walking, fast-
talking, chronic-multitasking speed addict (to clarify, not that kind of speed
addict). Or at least I was. Not anymore. I found an off-ramp from that life.
So maybe I’m the best person to write a book on hurry? You decide.

I don’t know your story. The odds are, you aren’t a former megachurch
pastor who burned out and had a mid-life crisis at age thirty-three. It’s more
likely that you’re a college student at USD or a twentysomething urbanite