Three Things John Mark Comer Wants You to Reconsider

Based on a conversation on the Good Faith Podcast with John Mark Comer and Curtis Chang

John Mark Comer is not an alarmist. He’s not going to tell you to throw your phone in the ocean or move to a monastery. But he will tell you, with his characteristic directness and warmth, that the life most of us are living is making us into people we don’t actually want to be. And also this: there’s a better way — one that’s older, quieter, and harder than anything the self-help industry is trying to sell.

Comer, the author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and Practicing the Way and founder of the spiritual formation organization of the same name, joined host Curtis Chang recently on the Good Faith Podcast for a conversation about hitting reset. Three things he said are worth your serious attention.

What you call distraction, he calls hunger.

Most of us know we’re overstimulated. What we haven’t reckoned with is why. Comer draws on St. Augustine’s insight that human beings are primarily desiring creatures. We’re not brains that occasionally have feelings. We’re lovers, shaped by what we reach for a thousand times a day. The problem isn’t that we want too much. It’s that we’ve trained ourselves to fill up on things that don’t satisfy, and in doing so, we’ve quietly starved the deeper appetites — for things like love, for meaning, for God — that were there all along. This restlessness isn’t the enemy but it is a signal. The question to ask ourselves, then, is what it’s pointing toward.

The reset you need probably involves subtraction, not addition.

This is where Comer parts ways with most of the advice you’ll find circulating on social media. His argument? The type of person likely to be wrestling seriously with their spiritual life is probably not suffering from a lack of information or even a lack of good intentions. They’re suffering from exhaustion, overstimulation, and a calendar that leaves no room for God to get a word in. Adding more — a new devotional, a new prayer app, a new routine — into that environment is like trying to have a conversation at a concert. What’s needed first is quiet, doing less, clearing space, and making room for ancient spiritual disciplines like Sabbath, silence, solitude, and simplicity.

Sabbath is more radical than you think, and more available than you fear.

Comer describes Sabbath not as a wellness day or a religious obligation but as a structured act of resistance: one full day of stop, rest, delight, and worship. It’s a day to stop all work, and not just the kind you get paid for, but the dishes, the errands, and everything that comprises your particular mental load. It’s a day to rest your whole self, make room for joy, and let that joy, over the course of a day, turn naturally into gratitude and worship. He’s also clear that Sabbath was never designed to be a solo practice. It belongs in community, through shared meals, shared stillness, and a small group of people collectively deciding that the pace of modern life does not get to have the last word.

None of this is easy. Comer quotes a friend’s observation that slowing your life down in the modern world is roughly equivalent to taking a vow of poverty in the Middle Ages. It’s an extreme, countercultural choice that cuts against almost every incentive around you. But the alternative, he suggests, is to keep snacking on things that don’t satisfy while the hunger underneath grows quieter and quieter, until you can’t hear it at all.

Intrigued? Here are three questions to help you think deeply and reflect wisely on our recent conversation with John Mark Comer:

1. When you notice the pull toward your phone, your inbox, or Netflix, what do you think is underneath it? What are you actually hungry for? Consider setting a timer — even if it’s just for three minutes – and see if you can tune into the deeper desire at work.
2. If subtraction, not addition, is the reset you need, what’s one thing you could stop doing that would create real space in your life?
3. Sabbath is a communal practice. Who might you invite into it? What might it look like, specifically, for you to pause, invite, and rest?

Listen to the episode here.