God's Message for Each Day Quotes

“The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He is a potter working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally, he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for a kingdom. A LONG OBEDIENCE”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“I don’t know one thing about the future. I don’t know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don’t know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ’s love.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“There is an enormous gap between what we think we can do and what God calls us to do.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come. REVELATION 1:8, NRSV We believe that God is at the beginning of all things, and we believe that God is at the conclusion of all life—in St. John’s striking epigram: “the Alpha and the Omega” (Rev. 1:8). It is routine among us to assume that the beginning was good (“and God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good”). It is agreed among us that the conclusion will be good (“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth”). That would seem to guarantee that everything between the good beginning and the good ending will also be good. But it doesn’t turn out that way. . . . I am rejected by a parent, . . . injured by another’s carelessness. All of this in a life that at its creation was very good and at its conclusion will be completed according to God’s design.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“My job as a pastor is not to solve people’s problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“I believe that we are made in the image of God and that because God is a creator, we are creators.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“The gift of sonship confers the privilege of the child to address the father with intimacy.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“RELATIONSHIPS OF GRACE The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. 1 JOHN 4:21, THE MESSAGE”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“Prayer is never the first word; it is always it the second word. God has the first word.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“ENJOYING GOD I lift you high in praise, my God, O my King! PSALM 145:1, THE MESSAGE God is personal reality to be enjoyed”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“Nothing counts more
in the way we live
than what
we believe about God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“Psalm 2 answers our need by presenting Messiah. Messiah is God’s person in history, . . . his entry into the world where people go to school, go to work, go to war, go to Chicago. He enters—and he enters in person.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“In Christ we are set free to create. He sets us free to live—toward God, with people, in the world—as artists, not as copiers. He sets us free to use the stuff that God gives us to live something original.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“ROMANS 8:28, NKJV One of the most interesting and remarkable things Christians learn is that laughter does not exclude weeping. Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness of the redeemed. . . . Joy is what God gives, not what we work up. Laughter is the delight that things are working together for good to those who love God, . . . an overflow of spirits that comes from feeling good not about yourself but about God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“FEBRUARY”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“We believe that this human life is a great gift, that every part of it is designed by God and therefore means something, that every part of it is blessed by God and therefore to be enjoyed, that every part is accompanied by God and therefore workable.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“The function of religion is not to make people feel good but to make them good. Love? Yes, God loves us. But his love is passionate and seeks faithful, committed love in return. God does not want tame pets to fondle and feed; he wants mature, free people who will respond to him in authentic individuality.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“PAYING ATTENTION TO GOD We bless GOD, oh yes—we bless him now, we bless him always! PSALM 115:18, THE MESSAGE Prayer is the most thoroughly present act we have as humans, and the most energetic: it sockets the immediate past into the immediate future and makes a flexible, living joint of them. The Amen gathers what has just happened into the Maranatha of the about to happen and produces a Benediction. We pay attention to God and lead others to pay attention to God. It hardly matters that so many people would rather pay attention to their standards of living, or their self-image, or their zeal to make a mark in the world. The reality is God: worship or flee. THE CONTEMPLATIVE PASTOR”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God