THE JOY OF OVERCOMING HURRY-SICKNESS

"Hurry sickness". It's a condition that Nick Cuthbert writes about in his book, "How to survive (and thrive) in ministry". In our culture, busyness equates to success. We love to give the impression, even subconsciously to ourselves, that we have importance and significance because of our busyness.
John Piper says that the words "busy" and "pastor" put together should shock us as much as putting "banker" and "fraud" together, or "spouse" and "adultery".
Cuthbert adopted the habit of driving in the slow lane on the motorway, and deliberately standing in the slowest queu in the supermarket. Sound crazy? Try it. When you undertand why you're doing it, it is a wonderfully liberating thing! In fact you begin to feel a compassion for the people flying past you as you realise they are probably chasing after the illusive holy grail of significance and importance.
The wonder is that when we abandon hurry-sickness in favour of the identity, significance and security that we have in God our Father, we enter into that rest which He promised us. Your and my being reconciled to God through Jesus is totally by His initiative, totally His doing, is even maintained solely by Him - so we have nothing to boast of and nothing to prove. Kick hurry-sickness into touch.