Joyce Meyer’daily sermon for today: The Benefits of Hurrying

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Topic: The Benefits of Hurrying

As I ponder what the benefits of hurrying are, I honestly cannot think of any. But I can quickly think of several disadvantages.

Continual hurrying is bad for our health. It
places stress on us, and we all know what that does. Hurrying harms our relationships. We either never take time to develop any, or if we do have friends, we don’t take time to truly listen to them or meet their needs. We often ignore our family in the pursuit of accomplishing all the things we have to do. We are too busy to listen to the kids when they try to tell us something, too busy to visit our elderly parents who are lonely, and too busy to put time into our marriage that willsurely fall apart someday if we don’t.

I have already mentioned one of the
huge disadvantages of hurrying, and that is that we don’t enjoy anything we are doing. Life goes by in a blur, and at the end of
it we will regret that we didn’t do less and enjoy it more.
In fact, I daresay that many of the things we regarded as a waste of our time will be the very things that we treasure most in years to come. How many mothers do you know with grown children who would give anything to be able to sit with their little child and be regaled with every single thing that happened that day? How many wives would love nothing more than to watch endless reruns of old Star Trek episodes with their husband—if only he were there.

How many of us will regret the times that we didn’t call our mom just to say hi or
drop by for a brief visit?
Every time we do one of those things, we are adding to our bank account. That account is not comprised of dollars to
spend in later years. It is comprised of memories that we can enjoy over and over in the future.
Being in a hurry causes us to miss the truly important things in life. It makes us grouchy, impatient with people and
things, and quick to display anger, and our excuse is always that we are busy and in a hurry, as if that pardons our wrong
behavior. Impatience is merely internal hurry. We have to continually think and plan to try to get everything done we think
we need to do.

We are rushing in our soul, and when anyone or anything isn’t moving as fast as we are, we display an impatient attitude.
For example, if I am in a hurry and Dave wants to tell me about the ball game from the night before, something I am not
all that interested in anyway, I will almost always get impatient with him. Or if I am in a hurry and something mechanical isn’t
working the way it should, I feel very irritated and impatient and often find myself yelling at a hunk of metal. Have you ever become angry with your computer or cell phone and called it stupid? I have.

I urge you to slow down and break the hurry habit before you do damage to yourself, the people around you,
and the good plan that God has for you.
So many people hurry today that we may not even realize it is abnormal, but it is. It was never God’s intention for us to
rush through anything and have our soul in knots due to the stress of hurrying.

Hurry is a peace-stealer, and one of the
most precious gifts Jesus has left us is His peace. Without it, life is not worth living as far as I am concerned.Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give
and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be
agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.] John 14:27

The message in this verse of Scripture is clear. Jesus has left us His peace, but we must be responsible to arrange our
lives in such a way that we can enjoy it. It is a gift Jesus has given freely, but we can totally miss the benefits of it unless
we value it greatly. What could you change in your life that would immediately give you more peace?
If we know what to do and don’t do it, then there is nothing that can be done to help us. We often pray for peace, but are we doing our part? God doesn’t do everything for us, but He will show us what to do and then give us the ability to do it if we are willing. Once we know what to do, it is best to not procrastinate but to take action and get it done. Soon but not now often becomes never. When you know what you
need to do, get moving and do it. Putting things off leaves them  hanging around to nag us, but completing them gives us a
feeling of tidy satisfaction. When there is a hill to climb, don’t think that waiting will make it any smaller. If we don’t put things off, we won’t be pressured by having to hurry to do them at the last minute.
If there are no benefits to hurrying, then why do it? Oh, sure, sometimes we have to move a little faster to get to an appointment on time because we had something happen we didn’t plan for, but that is entirely different from living in a
hurry all the time. And even those times when we need to hurry to get somewhere on time probably could have been
avoided had we planned better.