Quote

Love is not a word that describes my feelings it is not a technique by which I fulfill my needs it is not an ideal, abstract and pure, on which I meditate or discourse. It is acting in correspondence with or in response to God in relation to persons.

Eugene H. Peterson

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Eugene H. Peterson
Age: 85 †
Born: 1932
Born: November 6
Died: 2018
Died: October 22
Author
Bible Translator
Theologian
Translator
University Teacher
Stanwood
Washington
Feelings
Abstract
Persons
Technique
Needs
Ideals
Correspondence
Love
Relation
Describes
Response
Meditate
Pure
Fulfill
Word
Discourse
Acting
Ideal

More quotes by Eugene H. Peterson

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In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There's too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliterations. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to absorb it all.
Eugene H. Peterson
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The role of the pastor is to embody the gospel. And of course to get it embodied, which you can only do with individuals, not in the abstract.
Eugene H. Peterson
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The hard work of sowing seed in what looks like perfectly empty earth has a time of harvest. All suffering, pain, emptiness, disappointment is seed: sow it in God and He will, finally, bring a crop of joy from it.
Eugene H. Peterson
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The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless.
Eugene H. Peterson
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You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.
Eugene H. Peterson
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I get asked, 'What do you miss most about being a pastor?' I think it's the intimacy, the incredible gift of intimacy. You go through death with somebody, with their families, and there's an intimacy that comes through that that is just incomparable.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
Eugene H. Peterson
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The silence that makes it possible to hear God speak also makes it possible for us to hear the world's words for what they really are - tinny and unconvincing lies.
Eugene H. Peterson
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I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything.
Eugene H. Peterson
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The religious leader is the most untrustworthy of leaders in no other station do we have so many opportunities for pride, covetousness and lust, and with so many excellent disguises to keep such ignobility from being found out and called to account.
Eugene H. Peterson
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The Spirit works through community. Somebody will have a stupid, screwy idea. That's okay. The point of having creeds and confessions and traditions is to keep us in touch with the obvious errors.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Pastors are highly susceptible to the sin of sloth.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.
Eugene H. Peterson
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If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you're not doing anything.
Eugene H. Peterson
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The life of faith isn't meant for tourists. It's meant for pilgrims.
Eugene H. Peterson
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When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else.
Eugene H. Peterson
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It is easier to find guides, someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Jesus almost never talked in terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difficult metaphors. He was always pulling people into some kind of participation.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God it whets our appetite.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.
Eugene H. Peterson