“To walk with Jesus is to walk with a slow, unhurried pace. Hurry is the death of prayer and only impedes and spoils our work. It never advances it.” —- John Mark Comer

Hurry is the death of a healthy spiritual life. Hurry forces us to skip important spiritual aspects of life. All the while hurry tricks us into believing that being hurried is good and having too much to do makes us more interesting and valuable. The problem is that when we are in a hurry we are too busy to live fruitful lives because we are focused on our own wants and needs and not God’s.

Wasn’t Jesus busy? Yes he was. Take a look at his life in the gospels and you will see that he has a lot going on. Jesus was busy, but he wasn’t too busy. He was never so busy that he had to hurry. He always had time to connect with his father through prayer. He had margin and he was able to take the extra time for people that needed it. This allowed him to be both personal and transformational.

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” —Mark 5:25-34

Growth Challenge - Slow Down Today

-How did Jesus’s ability to slow down allow him to be present with the person who needed it the most? How would this story be different if Jesus was in a hurry?
-Think of any time Jesus takes time to talk to someone- is he in a hurry to get on with his own life or does he have space to be with that person? (think Zachaeus, woman at the well, the woman accused of adultery)
-Look for some ways to slow down today. What would it take for you to build more margin into your life?
-If someone needs your time- give it to them.