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Leaders, in fact, all people, seem to be racing faster and faster in their personal and professional lives, trying to keep up with an out of control pace of life, chasing, chasing, chasing. No one seems to have time to think. And as I said in Part 1, a leader who is not thinking is a leader who is just reacting. That is a recipe for disaster.

From a biblical perspective, all this rushing about does something more fundamental than squeeze out time for thinking: it squeezes out time for trust. Trust takes time. Trust takes relationship. Hurry and speed cut out the time needed for relationships of trust. This is apparent in all our strained relationships which have just been reduced to functions, roles, and job descriptions — boxes on a chart, even in our families.

But for those of us whose lives are supposedly rooted in “faith”, all this “no time” insanity is squeezing out the most significant relationship, our relationship of trust with God, the Father.

Jesus: Never in a Hurry

Contrast the way we live with the way Jesus lived in relationship to his Father. No life ever lived had such significance. In the intensely compressed three years of his public ministry leading to his execution, his words and his actions impacted scores of people — friends and foes alike. It launched a revolution that eventually overcame the Roman Empire and still influences the world. And as the thousand days of his “campaign” unfolded, he was never in a hurry. He was always exactly where he was supposed to be — whether speaking to a crowd or healing an outcast. He always knew exactly what to say to an individual. He knew whether to stay or leave in spite of clamoring crowds. No PDA’s. No “handlers.” No electronic calendars and meeting minders.

Some say that he could do this because he was God, but that misses the point of what the Scriptures and Jesus says about his example. He did not walk on earth to be God, but to be human — to live fully as a human who existed in a relationship of absolute trust with his Father. He was showing us how to live.

He tells us that he was doing what he saw his Father doing, speaking the words that his Father told him to speak, making decisions and ordering the steps of his life according to his Father’s will.

Examples from Jesus’ Life

1. Mark, in his account of the life of Christ, describes an intensely busy day that lasts well into the evening. Teaching, traveling, healing of people filled the time. In fact, a whole town came out to see him. If you were campaigning for office, that kind of response may have you rethinking your plans to go elsewhere, but Mark records this observation:

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
Mark 1:35, New International Version

Exhausted? I’d think so. What decisions had to be made? To stay? To move on? Jesus went to his Father for strength and direction.

The result? When his companions found him, he told them that they were moving on in spite of the protests of his companions that the whole town was looking for him.

Jesus’ leadership development and succession plan was not just a matter of rational analysis but of trust, seeking his Father’s guidance.

2. On another occasion, Luke writes:

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.
Luke 6:12, New International Version

Again, intense days had preceded this observation by Luke. But what was he doing during this time of praying? When morning came, he called out the 12 who would be his designated apostles. Jesus’ leadership development and succession plan was not just a matter of rational analysis but of trust, seeking his Father’s guidance. When was the last time that you as a leader spent a night in prayer before making a crucial leadership selection decision?

3. This pattern of Jesus going off to a lonely place to pray to his Father, no matter how demanding the schedule or how tired he must have been, was so common that Luke writes:

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Luke 5:16, New International Version

These companions who observed and wrote about his life pointed to the strategic timeliness of his life, but they make no mention of any planning process, time management process, decision-making matrix, or event planning expertise. They simply observed that the key to all this was that he “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”


As busy as he was, as pressed as he was, as pulled as he was by the forces of popular clamor, his life was never ordered by any of it. His life was only ordered by the relationship of trust to his Father. And he made sure, no matter how tough, to take the time to pray, to be with his Father, to trust.

Listen, important CEO’s, busy leaders, overworked managers, ambitious professionals. What one sentence observation would your companions and potential biographers write about how you used your time?

Would it be that you often withdrew to lonely places to pray?

And if not that, then what? And what would that say about the state of your relationship of “trust” in your Father?

More and more I’m coming to believe that this is the key to personal and professional effectiveness. What do you think?