A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (The IVP Signature Collection)

by Eugene H. Peterson

by changing our behavior we can change our feelings.

One person says, “I don’t feel like worshiping; therefore I am not going to church. I will wait till I feel like it and then I will go.” Another says, “I don’t feel like worshiping; therefore I will go to church and put myself in the way of worship.” In the process she finds herself blessed and begins, in turn, to bless.

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. Eric Routley thinks that, colloquially, to bless means to “speak well of.”9 The Lord has spoken well of you; now you speak well of him.

The Bible is not so much God telling us some thing—some idea, some fact, some rule—as God speaking life into us. Are we listening? Are we answering? Bible reading is prayed reading.

The Author of the book is writing us into his book, we aren’t writing him into ours. We find ourselves in the book as followers of Jesus. Jesus calls us to follow him and we obey—or we do not.