Hurry Introduction: Gen 1:1

This series has the potential to do more for your spiritual life than any other. Not because it is directly related to the truths spoken by Jesus but because it will focus on helping us follow the lifestyle of Jesus.

Topic: We are going to focus our attention over the summer months of May and June, maybe a little in July on removing “hurry” from our lives.

Background: Chronic hurry, pathologically busy, hurry sickness —

1.A behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness.

2. A Malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time, and so tends to perform ever task faster and to get flustered when encountering any kind of delay.

3. 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.

When people ask you how you are doing, how many of us reply, “Good, just busy!”

William Irvine in A Guide to the Good Life, “There is a danger that you will mislive — That despite all your activity, dispite all the pleasant diversions you might have enjoyed while aline, you will end up living a bad life. There is a danger that when yo are on your deathbed, you will look back and realize that you wasted your one chance at living. Instead of spending your life pursuing something genuinenly valuable, you will have squandered it because you allowed yourself to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer.”

The Too Busy Test

1. Irritability

You get mad, frustrated, or just annoyed way too easily, Little, normal things irk you. People have to tiptoe around your ongoing low-grade negativity, if not anger.

2. Hypersensitivity

All it takes is a minor comment to hurt your feelings, a grumpy email to set you off, or a little turn of events to trhrow you into an emotional funk and ruin your day.

3. Restlessness

When you actually do try to slow down and rest, you can’t relax. You hate rest. You can’t focus. You go to bed but toss and turn with anxiety.

4. Workaholism

You just don’t know when to stop. Your drugs of choice are accomplishment and accumulation. You fall prey to “sunset fatigue,” where by day’s end you have nothing left to give to your spouse, children, or loved ones. They get the grouchy, overtired, leftovers.

5. Emotional Numbness

You don’t have the capacity to feel another’s pain or your pain for that matter. Empathy is a rare feeling for you. You just don’t have time for it.

6. Out-of-order Priorities

You’re always getting sucked into the tyranny of the urgent, not the important. Your life is reactive, not proactive. You’re busier than ever before yet still feel like you don’t have time for the important things.

7. Lack of Care for your Body

You don’t have time for the basics: 8 hours of sleep, daily exercise, healthy food, margin. You gain weight. Get sick multiple times a year. Regularly wake up tired and thus live off caffeine, sugar, and processed carbs.

8. Escapist Behaviors

You distract yourself with overeating, over-drinking, binge-watching Netflix, browsing social media, surfing amazon, playing video games or any other narcotics to escape reality.

9. Slippage of Spiritual Disciplines

When you get overbusy, the things that are truly life giving for your soul are the first to go rather than your first go to. (Scripture, prayer, worship, meal with friends, etc.) When we get overbusy, we get overtired, and when we get overtired, we don’t have the energy or discipline to do what we need most for our souls.

10. Isolation

You feel disconnected from God, others, and your own soul. You’re so stressed and distracted that your mind can’t settle down long enough to enjoy the Father’s company. Same with your friends: when you’re with them, you’re also with your phone or a million miles away in your mind, running down a to-do-list.

Application: Hurry kills your life!

Hurry damages relationships, love, peace, joy, gratitude, wisdom, marriage, family, creativity, etc.

John Ortberg, “Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.

Think of Jesus’ life:

He did not hurry to Lazerus as he was dying.

He did not hurry to a man’s child who was dying, but delayed to speak to a woman with a blood issue.

Jesus over and over said, “My time has not yet come.”

Matthew 16:26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

Why Are We In A Hurry?

You a creature and NOT Creator

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

God has no Limits.

God is spirit omnipresent.

God is truth and omniscient.

God is eternal and omnipotent.

We, Human Creatures have multiple limits

We have bodies that limit us.

We have minds that are limited.

We need to eat, drink, and sleep that limit us.

Kapic, “We were created good, limited human beings. These limits include time, space, power, knowledge, energy, and perspective.”

Application: Being a Creature with limits is not sin.

Kapic, “We can wrongly attribute all our problems to sin, when often they are a matter of running up against the limits inherent in being a finite creature instead of being God.”

Kapic, “Whether through tragedy or simply as the result of aging, we all are repeatedly reminded that we are fragile and dependent creatures.”

Kapic, “Even when we run into our limits, we often hang on to the delusion that if we just worked harder, squeeze tighter, become more efficient, we can eventually regain control. We seek self-improvement through greater organization and time management.”

You and I must acknowledge that we are simply creatures and not a limitless Creator.

Sin the Rebellion against these limits.

Genesis 3:4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The Temptation was for Adam and Eve to rebel against their limited creatureness. They wanted to be like God.

Kapic, “The impulse to reject our creaturely limits is as old as sin itself.

Kapic, “Adam and Eve imagined they should know more, be more. Satan’s great deception was implying that our God-given limits are a fault to be overcome rather than a beneficial gift to be honored.”

Von Rad, “Taking a bite of the fruit was only the outward sign of the terrible lie the serpent got them to believe.”

Von Rad, “From Gen. 3 on, a movement began in which man pictures himself as growing more and more powerful, more and more powerful.”

Our refusal to acknowledge our limits shows up in unrealistic expectations about how much we can accomplish in a day. It shows up in our failure to value rest and slow-growing relationships. We place inappropriate expectations on our children. We allow dehumanizing workplace practices. We burnout from overcommitment. Or the other extreme, we never volunteer for anything because of fear of never getting out.

Application: Comfort to Hurrier!

Are you exhausted? Do you experience a consistent background feeling of guilt about how little you accomplish each day? Are you weighed down by a sense of how much there is to do and how little progress you are making?

Over the next Wednesday nights, we will be looking closely at our limits and discovering how to live like Jesus.

Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.