A Long Obedience in the Same Direction Quotes

“We live in what one writer has called the “age of sensation.”2 We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“As I entered a home to make a pastoral visit, the person I came to see was sitting at a window embroidering a piece of cloth held taut on an oval hoop. She said, “Pastor, while waiting for you to come I realized what’s wrong with me—I don’t have a frame. My feelings, my thoughts, my activities—everything is loose and sloppy. There is no border to my life. I never know where I am. I need a frame for my life like this one I have for my embroidery.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Rescue me from the person who tells me of life and omits Christ, who is wise in the ways of the world and ignores the movement of the Spirit. The lies are impeccably factual. They contain no errors. There are no distortions or falsified data. But they are lies all the same, because they claim to tell us who we are and omit everything about our origin in God and our destiny in God. They talk about the world without telling us that God made it. They tell us about our bodies without telling us that they are temples of the Holy Spirit. They instruct us in love without telling us about the God who loves us and gave himself for us.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“as discipleship continues, the sensible comforts gradually disappear. For God does not want us neurotically dependent on him but willingly trustful in him. And so he weans us. The period of infancy will not be sentimentally extended beyond what is necessary. The time of weaning is very often noisy and marked by misunderstandings: I no longer feel like I did when I was first a Christian. Does that mean I am no longer a Christian? Has God abandoned me? Have I done something terribly wrong? The answer is, neither. God hasn’t abandoned you and you haven’t done anything wrong. You are being weaned.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“proper work for the Christian is witness, not apology, and Psalm 124 is an excellent model.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“There is simply no place where these can be done as well as in worship. If we stay at home by ourselves and read the Bible, we are going to miss a lot, for our reading will be unconsciously conditioned by our culture, limited by our ignorance, distorted by unnoticed prejudices. In worship we are part of “the large congregation” where all the writers of Scripture address us, where hymn writers use music to express truths that touch us not only in our heads but in our hearts, where the preacher who has just lived through six days of doubt, hurt, faith and blessing with the worshipers speaks the truth of Scripture in the language of the congregation’s present experience. We want to hear what God says and what he says to us: worship is the place where our attention is centered on these personal and decisive words of God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is . . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“by contemporary Christians is fast, reductive, information-gathering and, above all, practical. We read for what we can get out of it, what we can put to use, what we think we can use—and right now.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The fusion is accomplished by reading these Scriptures slowly, imaginatively, prayerfully and obediently. This is the way the Bible has been read by most Christians for most of the Christian centuries, but it is not commonly read that way today. The reading style employed more often than not”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“It is this fusion of God speaking to us (Scripture) and our speaking to him (prayer) that the Holy Spirit uses to form the life of Christ in us.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“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.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“That’s when the phrase (from Nietzsche) “a long obedience in the same direction” embedded itself in my imagination and eventually became this book.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Charis always demands the answer eucharistia (that is, grace always demands the answer of gratitude). Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism is “What is the chief end of man?” What is the final purpose? What is the main thing about us? Where are we going, and what will we do when we get there? The answer is “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“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.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“But there is an older wisdom that puts it differently: by changing our behavior we can change our feelings.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Many think that the only way to change your behavior is to first change your feelings.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“but there is a broad similarity between the directions in the psalm and the contemporary movement known as “behavior modification”—which in a rough-and-ready way means that you can act yourself into a new way of being.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“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.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“There are two words which are translated “blessed” in our Bibles. One is ’ashre, which describes the having-it-all-together sense of well-being that comes when we are living in tune with creation and redemption. It is what Psalm 1 announces and what Psalm 128 describes. It is what we experience when God blesses us. The word in Hebrew “is used only of men, never of God, [and] in the NT there are only two instances in which it is used of God (makarios in 1 Tim 1:11; 6:15).”3 The other word is bĕrakah. It describes what God does to us and among us: he enters into covenant with us, he pours out his own life for us, he shares the goodness of his Spirit, the vitality of his creation, the joys of his redemption. He empties himself among us, and we get what he is. That is blessing. When the first word is tĕshubah, the last word is bĕrakah.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Psalm 134, the final Song of Ascents, provides the evidence. The way of discipleship that begins in an act of repentance (tĕshubah) concludes in a life of praise (bĕrakah).”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“We have discovered in these psalms beautiful lines, piercing insights, dazzling truths, stimulating words. We have found that the world in which these psalms are sung is a world of adventure and challenge, of ardor and meaning. We have realized that while there are certainly difficulties in the way of faith, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called dull.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“But having gotten what we had always wanted, we find we have not gotten what we wanted at all. We are less fulfilled than ever,”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“We work hard for something, get it and then find we don’t want it. We struggle for years to get to the top and find life there thoroughly boring.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Where relationships are warm and expectancies fresh, we are already beginning to enjoy the life together that will be completed in our life everlasting.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed expectation in what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. We refuse to label the others as one thing or another. We refuse to predict our brother’s behavior, our sister’s growth.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“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.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“For centuries this psalm was sung on the road as throngs of people made the ascent to Jerusalem for festival worship. Our imaginations readily reconstruct those scenes. How great to have everyone sharing a common purpose, traveling a common path, striving toward a common goal, that path and purpose and goal being God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“the fact that we are a family of faith does not mean we are one big happy family. The people we encounter as brothers and sisters in faith are not always nice people. They do not stop being sinners the moment they begin believing in Christ.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society