Choosing Rest Over Rush: The Courage to Work with God’s Rhythm

Blog by Alan Fadling

I’ve said it many times, and I believe this to be true:

Good rest is hard work.

When we’re exhausted, true rest seems beyond us. And when we’re worn out, we don’t have a lot of discernment about what work matters most and what is urgent but unimportant.

What I’ve found in my own experience is that when I’m deeply weary, I often make bad choices about my work. I’m not very discerning about what I say yes to and what I say no to. When I’m exhausted, I can embrace an easy, distracting task so I don’t have to think about my deep weariness anymore. I add more meaningless work to my overwork as a way of numbing my awareness of just how tired I am.

Does it help? It really doesn’t. Being numb to my exhaustion does not refresh me. It just postpones the inevitable crash.

The years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic have been some of the most challenging in my forty years of ministry work. I wonder what your work experience has been like over these last few years. I’ve said elsewhere that Gem and I have had to double down on our intention to live and work at the pace of grace rather than letting ourselves succumb to the temptation to hurry and overwork. Financial pressures and radical changes in our work have tempted us to overdo.

There’s a sense in which my overwork says that my hurry can get more done than God’s unhurried way can. It’s like imagining that I can make an oak tree grow in weeks and months instead of the years and decades it takes to mature.

I still believe what I wrote about in An Unhurried Life when I said, “Overwork can end up like progress made on a treadmill. Furthermore, there can be an ironic laziness about such work. The sheer quantity may be impressive, but quantity does not require as much effort from us as work that results in creativity, vitality or joy. In that sense, overwork can be lazy work” (p. 47).

I want to do the hard work of discerning how to do my job in closer collaboration with the Spirit who guides and empowers me. Unfortunately, mindless busyness is usually easier than mindful, strategic work. It takes time to discern well how to do my job in a way Jesus might do it. It requires creativity and humility.

Something I have found helpful here is to ask myself:

How will this help others and bring grace into their lives?

Productive work helps people. What I do matters because somehow or other it blesses people.

Another good question that Gem and I have both been asking ourselves recently is this:

What kind of space for communion with God do we need to do all the work God’s entrusted to us well?

We’ve found we needed more uncluttered space and unhurried time than before. When my body and soul find the rest they need in God’s presence, I am far more creative, wise, visionary, and energized in my work. My best work really does grow out of a soul at rest in God.

When I talk about hurry with busy leaders, a common objection I hear is, “If I don’t keep up with the busyness that surrounds me, I’ll fall behind and miss out.”

Paul says something in his first letter to the Corinthians that has often been a source of encouragement and guidance for me in how to work hard without hurry. Look at how the grace of God impacted the quality of Paul’s work:

“By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” (1 Cor. 15:10)

Grace gives Paul his sense of purpose and meaning. Grace gives Paul his identity. But grace also has a profound effect on his work. He claims that he worked harder than any of the others who were called apostles. He says that it wasn’t so much him working harder, but grace at work in and through him to motivate, energize, and bless the work he did for God’s kingdom.

When I believe more deeply that I’m not so much achieving my work as I am being entrusted with it, I have more confidence and courage in my work. I receive what I need to work hard and work well in the experienced presence of God. And when I struggle, I offer up little prayers of request about feeling stuck or discouraged or confused.

Hard kingdom work is energized by the generous and empowering presence of God.

I’ve appreciated the wisdom of Henri Nouwen over the years, and he says this about the work we do:

“Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God’s active presence in their lives. Hence, the question that must guide [us] . . . is not how to keep people busy, but how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence.” (quoted in An Unhurried Life, p. 49)

My prayer is that you’ll discover a pace in your life and work that is more gracious, more rich in the unhurried and loving presence of our Father in heaven with you.

For Reflection:

• How do you currently distinguish between work that is urgent and work that is truly important in your life?
• What would it look like to trust in God’s unhurried way rather than your own efforts to get things done?
• What practical steps can you take to create more uncluttered space and unhurried time in your daily life to hear God’s voice more clearly?