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The essential thing in heaven and earth is... that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; that thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (The IVP Signature Collection)
Citation (APA): Peterson, E. H. (2019). A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (The IVP Signature Collection) [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
1 Discipleship: “What Makes You Think You Can Race Against Horses?”
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This world is no friend to grace.
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each generation has the world to deal with in a new form. World is an atmosphere, a mood.
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We know that the spiritual atmosphere in which we live erodes faith, dissipates hope and corrupts love, but it is hard to put our finger on what is wrong.
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It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest.
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There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.
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the aspect of world that makes the work of leading Christians in the way of faith most difficult is what Gore Vidal has analyzed as “today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.”
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there should be long obedience in the same direction;
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the long run, something which has made life worth living.”
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It is this “long obedience in the same direction” which the mood of the world does so much to discourage.
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Everyone who travels the road of faith requires assistance from time to time.
2 Repentance: “I’m Doomed to Live in Meshech”
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Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do. MENCIUS
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A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.
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the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith.
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A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for the world of grace.
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transition from a dreamy nostalgia for a better life to a rugged pilgrimage of discipleship in faith,
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The first step toward God is a step away from the lies of the world.
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The usual biblical word describing the no we say to the world’s lies and the yes we say to God’s truth is repentance.
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Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision.
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Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.
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Repentance, the first word in Christian immigration, sets us on the way to traveling in the light. It is a rejection that is also an acceptance, a leaving that develops into an arriving, a no to the world that is a yes to God.
3 Providence: “GOD Guards You from Every Evil”
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But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however slight that deviation may be. It is not our judgement of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God’s faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
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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.
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All the water in all the oceans cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside. Nor can all the trouble in the world harm us unless it gets within us.
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That is the only serious mistake we can make. It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents: the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature.
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Psalm 121 says that the same faith that works in the big things works in the little things.
4 Worship: “Let’s Go to the House of GOD”
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Feelings are great liars.
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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.
5 Service: “Like Servants . . . We’re Watching & Waiting”
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The Christian is a person who recognizes that our real problem is not in achieving freedom but in learning service under a better master.
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to present our everyday, ordinary life.
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“place it before God as an offering,”
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“reasonable service.” Service, that is, that makes sense.
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“service,” the work one does on behalf of the community.
6 Help: “Oh, Blessed Be GOD! He Didn’t Go Off & Leave Us”
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The proper work for the Christian is witness, not apology,
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Christian discipleship is hazardous work.
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Every day I put faith on the line.
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Every day I put hope on the line. I don’t know one thing about the future.
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Every day I put love on the line.
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daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.
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Christians are not fussy moralists who cluck their tongues over a world going to hell; Christians are people who praise the God who is on our side.
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Christians are not fatigued outcasts who carry righteousness as a burden in a world where the wicked flourish; Christians are people who sing “Oh, blessed be GOD! . . . He didn’t abandon us defenseless.”
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In the details of the conflict, in the minuteness of a personal history, the majestic greatness of God becomes revealed.
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Faith develops out of the most difficult aspects of our existence, not the easiest.
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We speak our words of praise in a world that is hellish; we sing our songs of victory in a world where things get messy; we live our joy among people who neither understand nor encourage us.
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We are not scavenging in the dark alleys of the world, poking in its garbage cans for a bare subsistence. 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.
7 Security: “GOD Encircles His People”
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“God is a safe place to hide,
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My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel.
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Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors.
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Danger and oppression are never too much for faith.
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Certainly you may quit if you wish. You may say no to God. It’s a free faith. You may choose the crooked way.
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Defection requires a deliberate, sustained and determined act of rejection.
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We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.
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Traveling in the way of faith and climbing the ascent to Christ may be difficult, but it is not worrisome. The weather may be adverse, but it is never fatal.
8 Joy: “We Laughed, We Sang”
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Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence.
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The enormous entertainment industry in America is a sign of the depletion of joy in our culture.
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One of the most interesting and remarkable things Christians learn is that laughter does not exclude weeping. Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness of the redeemed.
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The joy comes because God knows how to wipe away tears, and, in his resurrection work, create the smile of new life.
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The joy that develops in the Christian way of discipleship is an overflow of spirits that comes from feeling good not about yourself but about God. We find that his ways are dependable, his promises sure.
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bordered on one side by a memory of God’s acts and the other by hope in God’s promises,
9 Work: “If GOD Doesn’t Build the House”
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One of the tasks of Christian discipleship is to relearn “the works you did at first” (Rev 2:5 RSV) and absolutely refuse to “work like the devil.”
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Psalm 127 insists on a perspective in which our effort is at the periphery and God’s work is at the center.
11 Perseverance: “They Never Could Keep Me Down”
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The person of faith outlasts all the oppressors. Faith lasts.
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The way of the world is peppered with brief enthusiasms,
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It is regarding the things we care about that we are capable of expressing anger.
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The psalms are not sung by perfect pilgrims.
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Perseverance does not mean “perfection.”
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Christians can look back over a long life crisscrossed with cruelties, unannounced tragedies, unexpected setbacks, sufferings, disappointments, depressions—look back across all that and see it as a road of blessing, and make a song out of what we see.
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God sticks to his relationship.
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The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us.
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Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God’s faithfulness.
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Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own;
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This is what the writer of the New Testament letter to the Hebrew Christians did. He sang a litany of people who lived by faith, that is, people who centered their lives on the righteous God who stuck by them through thick and thin so that they were able to persevere. They lived with uncommon steadiness of purpose and with a most admirable integrity. None of them lived without sin. They all made their share of mistakes and engaged in episodes of disobedience and rebellion. But God stuck with them so consistently and surely that they learned how to stick with God.
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Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. (Heb 12:1-2)
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Some of those early Christians this writer was addressing had been complaining, apparently, that life was too rough for them. They couldn’t hold out any longer (complaints that are, from time to time, heard in every congregation).
12 Hope: “I Pray to GOD . . . and Wait for What He’ll Say & Do”
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A Christian is a person who decides to face and live through suffering.
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ministry is a very confronting service. It does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts.4
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George MacDonald put it with epigrammatic force: “The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”5
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this, of course, is why we are able to face, acknowledge, accept and live through suffering: we know that it can never be ultimate, it can never constitute the bottom line. God is at the foundation and God is at the boundaries.
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Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions.
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hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. It is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it.
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“those who work well in the depths more easily understand the heights,
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our place in the depths is not out of bounds from God.
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We are persuaded that God’s way with us is redemption and that the redemption, not the suffering, is ultimate.
13 Humility: “I’ve Kept My Feet on the Ground”
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Christian faith needs continuous maintenance.
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We are in special and constant need of expert correction.
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Psalm 131 nurtures: a quality of calm confidence and quiet strength that knows the difference between unruly arrogance and faithful aspiration, knows how to discriminate between infantile dependency and childlike trust, and chooses to aspire and to trust—and to sing,
14 Obedience: “How He Promised GOD”
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Christians tramp well-worn paths: obedience has a history.
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With a biblical memory we have two thousand years of experience from which to make the off-the-cuff responses that are required each day in the life of faith.
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we need other experiences, the community of experience of brothers and sisters in the church, the centuries of experience provided by our biblical ancestors.
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Biblical history is a good memory for what doesn’t work. It is also a good memory for what does work—
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We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal.
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In such ways Psalm 132 cultivates the memory and nurtures the hope that lead to mature obedience.
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develops a strong sense of continuity with the past and a surging sense of exploration into the future.
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What we require is obedience—the strength to stand and the willingness to leap, and the sense to know when to do which. Which is exactly what we get when an accurate memory of God’s ways is combined with a lively hope in his promises.
15 Community: “Like Costly Anointing Oil Flowing Down Head & Beard”
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Our membership in the church is a corollary of our faith in Christ.
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We can no more be a Christian and have nothing to do with the church than we can be a person and not be in a family.
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community is essential.
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And what Christ has done is anoint us with his Spirit. We are set apart for service to one another. We mediate to one another the mysteries of God.
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A community of faith flourishes when we view each other with this expectancy, wondering what God will do today in this one, in that one.
16 Blessing: “Lift Your Praising Hands”
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Feelings don’t run the show.
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There is a reality deeper than our feelings. Live by that.
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grace always demands the answer of gratitude).
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Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.” 12
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Best of all, we don’t have to wait until we get to the end of the road before we enjoy what is at the end of the road. So, “Come, bless GOD . . . . GOD bless you!”
A Long Obedience: An Epilogue
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men and women who believingly follow Jesus (what we commonly call “the Christian life” or “Christian spirituality”) are best guided and energized by a fusion of Scripture and prayer.
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fusion of Scripture and prayer.
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It is not a terribly difficult way of reading and writing, but it does require diligent attentiveness. The fusion is accomplished by reading these Scriptures slowly, imaginatively, prayerfully and obediently.
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We do it by reading our Scriptures slowly, imaginatively, prayerfully and obediently. Each adverb is important.
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Slowly.
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If we move into the Scriptures too fast or move through them too fast, we’ll miss most of what is here.
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Imaginatively.
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Imagination is the capacity we have of crossing boundaries of space and time, with all our senses intact, and entering into other God-revealed conversations and actions, finding ourselves at home in Bible country.
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Prayerfully.
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the Bible
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it is one of the primary ways that God uses to speak to us. “God’s Word” we call it, which is to say, God’s voice—God speaking to us, inviting, promising, blessing, confronting, commanding, healing.
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Obediently.
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The Author of the book is writing us into his book, we aren’t writing him into ours.
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