A Long Obedience in the Same Direction Quotes

“The entire miracle of procreation and reproduction requires our participation, but hardly in the form of what we call our work. We did not make these marvelous creatures that walk and talk and grow among us. We participated in an act of love that was provided for us in the structure of God’s creation.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The premise of the psalm for all work is that God works: “If GOD doesn’t build the house . . . If GOD doesn’t guard the city . . .” The condition if presupposes that God does work: he builds; he guards.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“St. Paul had to deal with some of these people in the church at Thessalonica. They were saying that since God had done everything in Christ there was nothing more for them to do.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“It announces the existence of a people who assemble to worship God and disperse to live to God’s glory, whose lives are bordered on one side by a memory of God’s acts and the other by hope in God’s promises, and who along with whatever else is happening are able to say, at the center, “We are one happy people.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“This joy is not dependent on our good luck in escaping hardship. It is not dependent on our good health and avoidance of pain. Christian joy is actual in the midst of pain, suffering, loneliness and misfortune.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“All suffering, all pain, all emptiness, all disappointment is seed: sow it in God and he will, finally, bring a crop of joy from it.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Joy is the verified, repeated experience of those involved in what God is doing. It is as real as a date in history, as solid as a stratum of rock in Palestine. Joy is nurtured by living in such a history, building on such a foundation.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“There were years of wilderness guerrilla warfare against the Philistines, a perilous existence with moody, manic King Saul, and all that painful groping and praying through the guilt of murder and adultery; then in his old age he was chased from his throne by his own son and forced to set up a government in exile. And, at the end, his song. It begins with gratitude:”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“One day they were making “bricks without straw” and the next they were running up the far slopes of the Red Sea, shouting the great song “I’m singing my heart out to GOD—what a victory! He pitched horse and rider into the sea! GOD is my strength.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Certainly you may quit if you wish. You may say no to God. It’s a free faith. You may choose the crooked way. He will not keep you against your will. But it is not the kind of thing you fall into by chance or slip into by ignorance. Defection requires a deliberate, sustained and determined act of rejection.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Such insinuated insecurities need to be confronted directly and plainly. It is not possible to drift unconsciously from faith to perdition.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“However true that is generally, and I think it is, there are exceptions. It would seem that if God will not force us to faith in the first place, he will not keep us against our will finally. Falling away is possible. We know of Judas. We know of Hymenaeus and Alexander, who “made shipwreck of their faith” (see 1 Tim 1:19-20). These are the ones described in the psalm as “the backsliders.”4 The way of discipleship gets difficult; they see an opening through the trees that promises a softer, easier path. Distracted and diverted, they slip off and never return.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Paul’s witness was “No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it” (1 Cor 10:13). “He knows when to say, It is enough.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“an outsider it must have looked much of the time as if the wicked fist dominated the Israelites’ lives. From the inside the witness of faith said that it did not:”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The emphasis of Psalm 125 is not on the precariousness of the Christian life but on its solidity. Living as a Christian is not walking a tightrope without a safety net high above a breathless crowd, many of whom would like nothing better than the morbid thrill of seeing you fall; it is sitting secure in a fortress.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Backslider was a basic word in the religious vocabulary I learned as I grew up. Exempla were on display throughout the town: people who had made a commitment of faith to our Lord, had been active in our little church but had lost their footing on the ascent to Christ and backslid.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Faith develops out of the most difficult aspects of our existence, not the easiest. The person of faith is not a person who has been born, luckily, with a good digestion and sunny disposition”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“We are traveling in the light, toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shapes our days.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“In a world where nearly everything can be weighed, explained, quantified, subjected to psychological analysis and scientific control, I persist in making the center of my life a God whom no eye hath seen, nor ear heard, whose will no one can probe.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“There is no literature in all the world that is more true to life and more honest than Psalms, for here we have warts-and-all religion. Every skeptical thought, every disappointing venture, every pain, every despair that we can face is lived through and integrated into a personal, saving relationship with God—a relationship that also has in it acts of praise, blessing, peace, security, trust and love.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The reason many of us do not ardently believe in the gospel is that we have never given it a rigorous testing, thrown our hard questions at it, faced it with our most prickly doubts.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Nobody has ever seen a dragon, but everybody (especially children) knows they exist. Dragons are projections of our fears, horrible constructions of all that might hurt us. A dragon is total evil. A peasant confronted by a magnificent dragon is completely outclassed. There is no escape: the dragon’s thick skin, fiery mouth, lashing serpentine tail, and insatiable greed and lust sign an immediate doom.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Biblical writers are neither geographers nor astronomers—they are theologians. They describe with profound accuracy the relation between God and persons like you and me, a relationship between the Creator and the creature; they coordinate our knowledge of the God who loves us with our experience of being loved;”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“We live in a pragmatic age and are reluctant to do anything if its practical usefulness cannot be demonstrated.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God—it whets our appetite. Our need for God is not taken care of by engaging in worship—it deepens. It overflows the hour and permeates the week.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“Psalm 120 is the psalm of repentance—the one that gets us out of an environment of deceit and hostility and sets us on our way to God. Psalm 121 is the psalm of trust—a demonstration of how faith resists patent-medicine remedies to trials and tribulations and determinedly trusts God to work out his will and “guard you from every evil” in the midst of difficulty”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“But we can’t believe that he condescends to watch the soap opera of our daily trials and tribulations; so we purchase our own remedies for that.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“The promise of the psalm—and both Hebrews and Christians have always read it this way—is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God’s purposes in us.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“No literature is more realistic and honest in facing the harsh facts of life than the Bible. At no time is there the faintest suggestion that the life of faith exempts us from difficulties.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society