Advice for the Hurried Life [Part 4]

Hurry costs more than a full calendar. Hurry moves people right past the people Jesus would have stopped for. Jesus made room for the overlooked, the underestimated, and the people everybody else wanted to disregard. The hurried life can make work feel like one more place to avoid people, survive the dysfunction, and just get through the day.

Solomon brings the hard reality of Ecclesiastes into the room. Solomon had wealth, power, pleasure, knowledge, and anything he could want, yet he found that piling up stuff without God was useless. Ecclesiastes says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might,” because there is no second chance to redo a wasted day, a missed conversation, or a work week spent just going through the motions. Solomon’s honesty exposes how quickly life becomes vain when work is only about getting more before everything ends.

The question changes the perspective: what if a job is not just where somebody works, but one of the places God has sent them? God’s sovereignty cannot merely be something believed in theory. God may have placed a person in that office, on that base, in that classroom, at that business, or even in a season of unemployment for a reason. Problems, difficult leaders, lazy coworkers, and frustrating circumstances do not remove God from the assignment.

Colossians 3 calls servants to work with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord, not merely when somebody is watching. Christ becomes the real Boss. The workplace does not belong to human approval, flattering the boss, getting the raise, or proving somebody works harder than everyone else. Christ receives the work done with all the heart, and Christ gives the inheritance that makes the assignment worthwhile.

Christ also sets the example for how work should shape a person. Christ was humble, merciful, full of grace, truthful when necessary, and willing to build people up. A career is an assignment, not an identity. Work should make a life, not merely make a living. Faith cannot stay in a Sunday box while Monday through Saturday belongs to a different person. Monday may say more about faith than Sunday.

The hurried life needs margin. God calls His people to make room for a growing relationship with Jesus and enough room for people, including the person in the next cubicle, the break room, the store, or the difficult office down the hall. Every task becomes different when “it is the Lord Christ” being served.

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Key Takeaways

• 1. Hurry makes people easy to miss. Jesus did not treat interruptions as disposable obstacles. Hurry can train the heart to see people as delays, problems, or things to get around. Margin creates room to notice the person Christ may be calling someone to love right in the middle of an ordinary day. [34:37]
• 2. Work is an assignment, not identity. A job can become a place where value, security, and significance are demanded from something that cannot carry that weight. God places people in real circumstances with real opportunities, but the assignment never becomes the deepest definition of who they are. Christ remains the center, whether the work feels important or menial. [66:35]
• 3. Christ is the real Boss. Colossians shifts the reason for faithful work away from human approval. Integrity matters when the boss is absent because reverence for the Lord does not clock out. Work done for Christ frees a person from the exhausting need to flatter, compete, and be seen. [57:59]
• 4. Faith must fill every box. Compartmentalized faith leaves Sunday disconnected from the workplace, family pressures, and daily decisions. Jesus does not belong in one religious box alongside several other boxes. Christ belongs in the one great big life that holds everything else. [64:37]
• 5. Make room for Jesus and people. A full life can still be an empty one when there is no space to know Christ or see the people nearby. Margin is not laziness or neglect of responsibility. Margin is the room where a growing relationship with Jesus changes how a person responds to others.
  
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Youtube Chapters

• [00:00] - Welcome
• [32:17] - The Hurried Life and Work
• [33:51] - What Is Hurry Costing?
• [34:37] - People Jesus Would Stop For
• [37:48] - Solomon’s Search for Meaning
• [41:15] - Do It With All Your Might
• [46:42] - What If God Sent You Here?
• [51:36] - Colossians 3 and Workplace Faith
• [55:34] - Working With Sincerity of Heart
• [59:07] - Serving the Lord Christ
• [63:18] - Jesus in Every Box
• [66:35] - Career as Assignment, Not Identity
• [69:03] - Live Faith, Do Not Force It
• [72:39] - Making Room for Jesus and People

1. In Colossians 3:22–24, what words describe the attitude believers are to bring to their work, and what wrong motives are contrasted with that attitude? [57:53]
2. Ecclesiastes 9:10 connects work with the limited time of this life. What examples show that a day, a conversation, or a work week cannot simply be redone later? [45:28]
3. What kinds of people can a hurried person be tempted to avoid or overlook in a workplace? [35:58]
4. According to Colossians 3:23–24, who is ultimately being served through ordinary work, and what reward does Paul mention? [59:54]

1. Colossians says believers should work “not by way of eye-service.” What might eye-service look like in a modern workplace, classroom, home, or volunteer role when nobody in authority is watching? [56:12]
2. If Christ is the real Boss, how does that change the way a believer responds to an unfair manager, an unhelpful coworker, or a task that feels unimportant? [01:00:46]
3. Ecclesiastes exposes the emptiness of piling up wealth, success, and possessions without God. How can someone work hard without allowing achievement, money, or a career to become the source of identity? [01:06:30]
4. God may place believers in difficult circumstances for a reason or a season. How can believing that God has sent someone into a particular place change their purpose there without pretending that the situation is easy? [47:36]

1. Where has hurry recently caused you to treat people as interruptions—at work, at home, in a store, or in another daily setting? Who is one person you may need to slow down and notice this week? [34:37]
2. Think about your work, school, responsibilities at home, job search, or current season. What would change if you began each day by seeing it as an assignment from God rather than merely something to survive? [51:13]
3. When are you most tempted to work mainly for approval, recognition, a raise, or the chance to look better than someone else? What would it look like to do that same work “as for the Lord”? [01:01:00]
4. Is your faith kept in a Sunday box while your work, family, and private decisions are placed in separate boxes? What is one specific part of Monday through Saturday where you want Christ to shape your attitude or actions more clearly? [01:04:37]
5. What is your work currently making you into? Is it feeding impatience, gossip, pride, anxiety, or bitterness—or is it becoming a place where humility, mercy, grace, truth, and encouragement can grow? [01:10:43]
6. Is there a value, relationship, spiritual habit, or area of integrity that work pressure has begun to crowd out? What boundary or change could help you avoid sacrificing what matters most for something that will not last? [01:08:12]
7. What kind of margin would help you make room both for a growing relationship with Jesus and for the people around you? What is one realistic way you could create that room this week? [01:13:05]