The Message Devotional Bible Quotes

“The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Death is the reward of an undisciplined life; your foolish decisions trap you in a dead end.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“The good life begins in the fear of GOD— Do that and you’ll know the blessing of GOD. His Hallelujah lasts forever!”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“22-25So let’s do it—full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Who come to mind when you think of friends who help you “face the worst” (Ecclesiastes 4:12)? Thank God for those friends.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“1There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth: The Realities of Life That God Puts Together 2-8A right time for birth and another for death, A right time to plant and another to reap, A right time to kill and another to heal, A right time to destroy and another to construct, A right time to cry and another to laugh, A right time to lament and another to cheer, A right time to make love and another to abstain, A right time to embrace and another to part, A right time to search and another to count your losses, A right time to hold on and another to let go, A right time to rip out and another to mend, A right time to shut up and another to speak up, A right time to love and another to hate, A right time to wage war and another to make peace.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“When Jesus arrived, he saw this huge crowd. At the sight of them, his heart broke—like sheep with no shepherd they were. He went right to work teaching them. 35”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“The man went back and began to preach in the Ten Towns area about what Jesus had done for him. He was the talk of the town.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Thunder in the desert! Prepare for God’s arrival! Make the road smooth and straight!”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“We read in order to live our true selves, not just get information that we can use to raise our standard of living. Bible reading is a means of listening to and obeying God, not gathering religious data by which we can be our own gods.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“God doesn’t force any of this on us: God’s Word is personal address, inviting, commanding, challenging, rebuking, judging, comforting, directing—but not forcing. Not coercing. We are given space and freedom to answer, to enter the conversation. For, more than anything else, the Bible invites our participation in the work and language of God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“doesn’t force any of this on us: God’s Word is personal address, inviting, commanding, challenging, rebuking, judging, comforting, directing—but not forcing. Not coercing. We are given space and freedom to answer, to enter the conversation. For, more than anything else, the Bible invites our participation in the work and language of God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“For most of us it takes years and years and years to exchange our dream world for this real world of grace and mercy, sacrifice and love, freedom and joy—the God-saved world.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“God works patiently and deeply, but often in hidden ways, in the mess of our humanity and history.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“First, God. God is the subject of life. God is foundational for living. If we don’t have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right, get life right, get our lives right. Not God at the margins; not God as an option; not God on the weekends. God at center and circumference; God first and last; God, God, God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“the reality that was inside of Jesus got outside of him so the disciples could see it.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“21This is exactly the message of GOD that Jeremiah had preached: the desolate land put to an extended sabbath rest, a seventy-year Sabbath rest making up for all the unkept Sabbaths.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“That’s the fullness of God’s salvation. It’s not only deliverance from something but also deliverance to something. He not only delivers us from sin, but he also delivers us into a land of salvation that’s flowing with milk and honey.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Anyone signing up for the kingdom of God has to go through plenty of hard times.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“The Law Delivers Us to Christ (3:23-27) The law was our tutor—our paidagōgos—until Christ came. The meaning of this word is reflected in the Greek culture of Paul’s day. Families who were well enough off to have slaves chose one of them, usually an old and trusted slave, to be in charge of their children from the ages of six to sixteen. This tutor went with the children to school to see that no harm or mischief came to them. The tutor wasn’t a schoolmaster. He had nothing to do with the actual teaching of the children. It was only his duty to take them safely to school and deliver them to the teacher. That, said Paul, is how the law works: It delivers us to the place of faith—to Christ. And, having delivered us, its job is done.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“The Gospel Begins with Acceptance (2:19-21) Rule keeping is good behavior or religious behavior that’s performed because someone else is looking, or because God is looking. It’s living life by performance, by show, by achievement. And, of course, it imprisons us, because someone is always looking. When someone is looking, we never experience the joy of doing something just for the pleasure it brings to someone or for the sense of rightness it has in our own lives. We must always be calculating what someone else will think of what we do, whether it will fit into what others expect, how God might reward us, what penalties we’ll avoid. There’s no free space in such a life to be oneself, to develop personal relationships, to accept others and be accepted just as we are, to speak our minds, to do what’s in our hearts, to adore, to believe, to love. The gospel reverses that process: It begins with acceptance; then, with the rush of freedom into the soul that acceptance brings, the spiritual, moral, responsible life develops.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again; you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“I wish he’d show you how wisdom looks from the inside, for true wisdom is mostly ‘inside.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“My time is short—what’s left of my life races off too fast for me to even glimpse the good. My life is going fast, like a ship under full sail, like an eagle plummeting to its prey.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Even though innocent, anything I say incriminates me; blameless as I am, my defense just makes me sound worse.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Somehow, though he moves right in front of me, I don’t see him; quietly but surely he’s active, and I miss it.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“He tells the sun, ‘Don’t shine,’ and it doesn’t; he pulls the blinds on the stars.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“Blossoming flowers look beautiful before they’re cut or picked, but without soil or water they wither more quickly than grass.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson

“For we’re newcomers at this, with a lot to learn, and not too long to learn it.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible: Featuring Notes and Reflections from Eugene H. Peterson