Quote

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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Eugene H. Peterson
Age: 85 †
Born: 1932
Born: November 6
Died: 2018
Died: October 22
Author
Bible Translator
Theologian
Translator
University Teacher
Stanwood
Washington
Emptiness
Suffering
Disappointment
Pain
Perfectly
Earth
Seeds
Sowing
Looks
Crop
Hard
Finally
Crops
Work
Empty
Harvest
Time
Joy
Seed
Like
Bring

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
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That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.
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If we get our information from the biblical material there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.
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The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor.
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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.
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There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church.
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Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.
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Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner.
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When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else.
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God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
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No life of faith can be lived privately. There must be overflow into the lives of others.
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I cannot fail to call the congregation to worship God, to listen to his Word, to offer themselves to God.
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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.
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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.
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The life of faith isn't meant for tourists. It's meant for pilgrims.
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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.
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