Towards A Closer Walk With God By Trevor HudsonSample

Compulsive Busyness

One of the biggest obstacles to listening to God is our constant busyness. We fill our days with so much to do, people to see, tasks to accomplish, deadlines to meet and appointments to keep that we have little time to pay attention to what God may be saying to us.

Even though being busy stresses us out, we find it hard not to be busy. We could even say that some of us have become addicted to busyness. Certainly, it has become a status symbol in our culture: to be busy is to be seen as an important person. 

In the midst of our busy lives, Jesus invites us to follow Him into the desert (see Mark 6:31–32 and Matthew 15:29). If we don’t take this invitation seriously, we run the risk of missing out on what God wants to say to us. That is why carving out time in our busy daily schedules for meeting with God in our “desert space” is so critical. It is our protest against our compulsive busyness. It gives God more room to work in our hearts, to free us from unhelpful attachments and to change the way we live. We grow closer to God in our walk with Him.

In your quiet time, look over your usual way of going through the day. What are the main things that make it hard for you to turn up for your daily appointment with God? Talk to Him about these things and listen to what He may be saying to you. Are there any ways in which you can reshape your life to curb unnecessary busyness?