THE ENEMY OF OUR SOUL
By: Jack Guyler
John Mark Comer in his bestseller, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, says the great enemy of our soul is hurry.
Think about it, we like to drive fast even when we don’t need to. Who likes slow Wi-Fi? Who, when checking out of a store, finds the longest and slowest line? Who likes to go into a restaurant and wait a long time to be seated? Nobody! We find ourselves hurrying through life even we don’t need to because it has become such a way of life for most of us in contemporary life.
To help us live in a hurry we have drive-up banking, drive-thru restaurants and fast-food places.
The truth is, we don’t even like the word SLOW. It has bad vibes – it sounds weak. To be slow has the connotation of not being up to the task. Not very smart nor sharp.
But do we stop to even ask, “What if faster isn’t always better?” What if doing more and doing it faster isn’t always what God wants for us?
Think of it this way: when you are trying to get your kids and family out the door on time or to do something and they aren’t quite cooperating, how do you relate to them? How do you feel? Probably LOVE isn’t a word that describes your temperament, your words or your actions. It’s more like anger, tension, irritation, insulting or a regretful comment.
“Hurry and love are oil and water: they simply don’t mix” - John Mark Comer
Once someone asked Dallas Willard what they needed to do to be the person they wanted to be? How would you answer that? Here is what Dallas said:
“Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
Hurry is a problem – in fact, it has been called a sickness. Because it damages our body, our mind and our soul.
It can damage our bodies with high levels of stress, heart disease, high blood pressure, grinding our teeth, insomnia among other things.
It can damage our minds as it can steal our peace of mind and cause us to live with chronic anxiety. It can leave us with the sense we aren’t good enough, worthless and depressed. It kills creativity, clear thinking and good decision making.
Hurry can damage our souls and keep us from time with God as well as from doing things that really matter that give meaning to our lives. It keeps us from living lives of reflection that can result in living in selfishness, unforgiveness and bitterness. Over time it will create a lack of gratitude and appreciation in our lives that will not only harm us but those around us.
Hurry can damage our relationships. When we live in a state of chronic hurry, we will be less loving and compassionate, more reactive and can ruin relationships and marriages by blowing up, being constantly impatient, and not giving needed time to those we love. Love takes time - lots of time. It can’t be hurried.
This is why the term was coined, “HURRY SICKNESS.” The man who coined this term was Dr. Meyer Friedman, who was a cardiologist. He noticed most of his at-risk patients displayed a harrying “sense of time urgency.” He described it this way:
“A continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time.” [1]
As you can see, hurry is far more deadly than we might think. For most of us as Americans, hurry is a badge of honor. When we ask others how they are doing, the most common response is, “I’m really busy.”
I’m hoping as you read this you will see the need to slow down and seek some rest. When I say “rest”, I mean to find meaning, peace and trust. This is hard to do when you don’t even realize how much you are hurrying through life. And even when you do, it will be hard to change because it is so ingrained in you. It’s just ingrained in me and almost everyone else.
And you might even be saying, I’m retired, I don’t hurry.” Really? I can’t tell you how many retired people I know who are living at lightning speed. So many tell me, “I have so much to do, I don’t know how I use to have time to work.” Kids, teens, adults, working adults, parents, and retired people – no one is exempt from the hurrying life-style and the damaging effects of it.
JMC gives ten symptoms of hurry sickness in our culture in his book (I have them below). Check it out and see if any of these hit home with you.
“Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.” [2]
What can hurry really do to us?
It can cause us to wake-up on our deathbed remembering all of the things we hurried to accomplish but sadly remember missing the most important things in our life
It can remind us of the business we started but the marriage we ended
It can remind you that you got your kids to their dream college but never taught them to follow Jesus
We can hurry to obtain higher education or more degrees, but learned the hard way that intelligence is not wisdom
As we hurry through life, we might remember that we made a lot of money, but never grew rich in the things that mattered most
These are just some of the regrets that hurry can leave as a wake in our lives.
Is there an answer to our hurry sickness? Is there a way back to knowing God? Yes, there is and Jesus tells us about it here in Matthew 11:28-30
“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.”
We think of a yoke as a heavy burden, but in Jesus’ day, a yoke was used to help two animals work together to pull something in getting a job done. It made it much easier than making one animal carry the whole load. Jesus understood that this life is hard. There are many loads we are required to carry. Jesus invitation to us is that He will help us shoulder or carry the loads and burdens that we are carrying.
You see, Jesus will help us carry and lift what we need to. It is not escaping our responsibilities. Rather it is understanding our limits and being released from burdens that we are not meant to carry.
What we are really talking about here is a Rule of Life or Way of Life. Rules are important – for our protection. Such as boundaries around our property, speed limits on our roads, and budgets to keep our spending from driving us into debt.
Jesus lived the most important life ever! Yet He lived with margin – He did very important things like teach, heal, deliver and raise people from the dead. He also got away by myself to get up early to pray and prepare for His day. He took time to talk and listen with others. He took time to sit and share a meal with people as well as taking time to laugh and have fun.
Here are a few suggestions that might help you practice slowing down the pace of your life from time to time:
Find something to do slowly like sharing a meal with a good friend, planning ahead to spend some time with family, taking a walk or making some time for your favorite hobby.
Be intentional with your phone, news and social media. Ask yourself, how much time am I really spending on these? And are they really helping me to slow down and enjoy my life?
1 – Type A Behavior and Your Heart, Meyer Friedman & Ray H Rosenman 1974
2 – The Life You Have Always Wanted, John Ortberg 2002
