A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

by Eugene H. Peterson

What we require is obedience—the strength to stand and the willingness to leap, and the sense to know when to do which. Which is exactly what we get when an accurate memory of God’s ways is combined with a lively hope in his promises.

There are Christians, of course, who never put their names down on a membership list; there are Christians who refuse to respond to the call to worship each Sunday; there are Christians who say, “I love God but I hate the church.” But they are members all the same, whether they like it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not. For God never makes private, secret salvation deals with people. His relationships with us are personal, true; intimate, yes; but private, no. We are a family in Christ. When we become Christians, we are among brothers and sisters in faith. No Christian is an only child.

God never works with individuals in isolation, but always with people in community.

Oil, throughout Scripture, is a sign of God’s presence, a symbol of the Spirit of God. Oil glistens, picks up the warmth of sunlight, softens the skin, perfumes the person.

Living together means seeing the oil flow over the head, down the face, through the beard, onto the shoulders of the other—and when I see that I know that my brother, my sister, is my priest. When we see the other as God’s anointed, our relationships are profoundly affected.

This heavy dew, which was characteristic of each new dawn on the high slopes of Hermon, is extended by the imagination to the hills of Zion—a copious dew, fresh and nurturing in the drier, barren Judean country. The alpine dew communicates a sense of morning freshness, a feeling of fertility, a clean anticipation of growth.

One of the best, maybe the best, book written in the twentieth century on the meaning of living together as a family of faith is Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The book begins with the words of the psalm: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to live together in unity!” (NKJV). The text was with Bonhoeffer all his life. His first publication, a doctoral dissertation at age twenty-one, was titled “The Communion of the Saints.” His book The Cost of Discipleship has been a handbook to a vast company of Christians on pilgrimage.

Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favorites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. HERMAN MELVILLE

In Psalm 120, the first of the Songs of Ascents, we saw the theme of repentance developed. The word in Hebrew is tēshubah, a turning away from the world and a turning toward God—

The way of discipleship that begins in an act of repentance (tēshubah) concludes in a life of praise (bērakah). It doesn’t take long to find the key word and controlling thought in the psalm: bless God, bless God, God bless you.

God gets down on his knees among us, gets on our level and shares himself with us. He does not reside afar off and send us diplomatic messages; he kneels among us.

A book on God has for its title The God Who Stands, Stoops and Stays. That summarizes the posture of blessing: God stands—he is foundational and dependable; God stoops—he kneels to our level and meets us where we are; God stays—he sticks with us through hard times and good, sharing his life with us in grace and peace.

You can lift up your hands regardless of how you feel; it is a simple motor movement. You may not be able to command your heart, but you can command your arms. Lift your arms in blessing; just maybe your heart will get the message and be lifted up also in praise.

Humphrey Bogart once defined a professional as a person who “did a better job when he didn’t feel like it.” That goes for a Christian too. Feelings don’t run the show. There is a reality deeper than our feelings. Live by that.

In Scripture we find Jesus concluding his parable of the lost sheep with the words “Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue” (Lk 15:7). Not relief, not surprise, not self-satisfied smugness. And certainly not the “deadness inside me.” But joy.

I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer—helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer.

The fusion is accomplished by reading these Scriptures slowly, imaginatively, prayerfully and obediently.