Three books I’m reading that are helping me to slow down:
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World by John Mark Comer.
Amazon Summary:
“Who am I becoming?”
That was the question nagging pastor and author John Mark Comer. Outwardly, he appeared successful. But inwardly, things weren’t pretty. So he turned to a trusted mentor for guidance and heard these words:
“Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.”
It wasn’t the response he expected, but it was—and continues to be—the answer he needs. Too often we treat the symptoms of toxicity in our modern world instead of trying to pinpoint the cause. A growing number of voices are pointing at hurry, or busyness, as a root of much evil.
Within the pages of this book, you’ll find a fascinating roadmap to staying emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world.
Why I Loved It: This book cuts straight through the excuses for living a hurried life and caused me to ask a much bigger questions that was not connected to what as was doing as much as who I was becoming. John Mark Comer offers practical tips for slowing down including iPhone hacks such as utilizing Downtime as well as reading poetry because it takes us longer to process. This is a great read for those who suffer with the habit of hurry!
The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath by Mark Buchanan
Amazon Summary:
Widely-acclaimed author Mark Buchanan states that what we’ve really lost is “the rest of God-the rest God bestows and, with it, that part of Himself we can know only through stillness.” Stillness as a virtue is a foreign concept in our society, but there is wisdom in God’s own rhythm of work and rest. Jesus practiced Sabbath among those who had turned it into a dismal thing, a day for murmuring and finger-wagging, and He reminded them of the day’s true purpose: liberation-to heal, to feed, to rescue, to celebrate, to lavish and relish life abundant.
With this book, Buchanan reminds us of this and gives practical advice for restoring the sabbath in our lives.
Why I Loved It: This book was my first encounter with the practice of Sabbath as both a spiritual discipline and a necessity. Buchanan lays the ground work for the biblical command to rest and then offers the different elements of Sabbath that restore the soul. He dismisses the notion that Sabbath is about a set time, but instead a resetting of the heart towards God.
Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem by Kevin DeYoung
Amazon Summary:
I’M TOO BUSY!” We’ve all heard it. We’ve all said it. All too often, busyness gets the best of us.
Just one look at our jam-packed schedules tells us how hard it can be to strike a well-reasoned balance between doing nothing and doing it all.
That’s why award-winning author and pastor Kevin DeYoung addresses the busyness problem head on in his newest book, Crazy Busy — and not with the typical arsenal of time management tips, but rather with the biblical tools we need to get to the source of the issue and pull the problem out by the roots.
Highly practical and super short, Crazy Busy will help you put an end to “busyness as usual.”
Why I Loved It: This book is one of my favorites because DeYoung nails the real problem with our busy lives, “The disordered of daily life is a product of disorder in the inmost places of the heart. Things are not the way they ought to be because we are not the way we are supposed to be.” In this short book, he doesn’t pull any punches but goes straight for the heart…in an effort to get us to slow down and do what really matters.
