The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – The Wake-Up Call I Didn’t Know I Needed
Earlier this month I made a friend at church through a small group I recently joined. He’s one of the volunteer leaders, and we hit it off on night one. Not long after, we grabbed time to talk and I shared my (pretty unique) path of finding faith later in life… like within the last 8-9 months.
Long story short, getting sober during 75 Hard in 2025 kicked off a chain reaction. Questions about faith turned into reading the Bible, which turned into joining a church, which turned into me becoming a full-blown believer at 38.
So why am I sharing this? Because while we were talking, I told him how much I was enjoying reading the Bible. So much so that I’ve replaced my old rigid morning routine with a quiet house, a cup of coffee, and the Bible. Before I look at my phone. Before I go on a run. Before anything.
I could tell he connected with what I was sharing and said, “I have a book you have to read.” In fact, he ended up gifting it to me on Audible (which was awesome, because I was able to listen in the car and knock in out in a couple of weeks).
The book?! The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer
This book is easily top-5 all time for me. Comer tells the story of his own life as a successful, overworked pastor. Internally he was fried and not becoming the person he actually wanted to be. Then he gets some advice that basically leads to a lifestyle change and eventually writing this book… Hurry is the enemy of living a spiritual life, and you have to ruthlessly eliminate it.
What I love is that he doesn’t just say “slow down” like it’s some simple idea. He says if you look at the life of Jesus throughout the Bible, and you want to learn from and adopt the lessons of Jesus, then you have to build practices into your life that prioritize what matters most: living in the moment, being kind, and spending quality time with people, to name a few. Some of the practices he preaches throughout his book are: silence and solitude, simplicity, slowing down and Sabbath.
So why is this Top 5 for me personally? Because the lessons I took from this book had an almost immediate positive impact on my life.
The first thing it made me do was ask – Why am I in a hurry all the time?
And that’s when it hit me… hurry is as much self-induced as anything. In so many silly & unnecessary ways. Speeding through traffic. Responding to texts like it’s a sport. Trying to keep up with 100 school/sports emails and group chats simultaneously. Rushing through one task at work just to get to the next, and then the next. And it doesn’t stop at work or school, it follows me home. Project after project. Chore after chore. Always “on.”
And here’s the part that’s almost embarrassing to admit – While thinking about this I realized I’ve never been “done” Ever.
So why did it take me so long to see that? Why was this book such a big wake-up call? I honestly don’t know. But for me, it worked. And I added these two simple practices immediately:
1) I’ve removed the “hurried” mindset from my life.
This one has been HUGE for me. Think about it like identifying when you’re feeling physical stress in your body: tightly gripping the steering wheel, tense shoulders, clenching your muscles, etc. Whenever you eventually realize you’re being physically tense, you can immediately take a deep breath, relax and release the tension. It’s almost exactly like that, but mental instead of physical.
In my brain (and I’m sure yours if you’re still reading this), hurry was a constant. Once you identify it, you can release it – but you have to start by recognizing it for what it is: unnecessary, self-induced hurry.
Since implementing this, I actually think I’m more productive and way less likely to burn out. I’m approaching everything more calmly and intentionally: work tasks, parenting, marriage, day-to-day life. I realize now that nearly all of my hurry was self-inflicted.
2) Sabbath – A weekly day of rest & reset.
As I mentioned, my walk with faith is pretty new, and I’m loving learning and actually applying this stuff. I’m also really fortunate that my wife is just as fired up as I am right now – and the kids too.
So while we’re all aligned, what better time to build in a forced slow-down as a family? Sabbath can look different from one family to the next. For us, it’s simple – Disconnect from tech. Get outside. Enjoy God’s creation. Be grateful. Read, rest, worship. No work. No projects. No chores. A complete day to rest and “reset” before a new week begins.
Work hard for 6 days. Rest hard for 1. This is a routine I can get behind. Quality time is fleeting, and this is my family’s chance to recapture some peaceful time together in a world that rarely slows down.
If I had to sum this all up, it’s this: I didn’t realize how much “hurry” was impacting my life until I finally slowed down long enough to see it. I’m grateful this book showed up right when it did, because it helped me understand what I was feeling and gave me a roadmap for what to do about it. I definitely don’t think I have it all figured out, but I can honestly say I feel more present, more grounded, and more aligned with the kind of husband, dad, and man I want to be. So if you’re anything like me and you feel constantly behind, constantly on, constantly rushing to the next thing… this might be the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed either.
Here’s the exact book (I listened on Audible and flew through it): https://amzn.to/4cR1dpl
If you grab it through this link, it supports what I’m building here. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
