# A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

## Metadata
- Author: [[Eugene H. Peterson]]
- Full Title: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- Two convictions undergirded my pastoral work. The first conviction was that everything in the gospel is livable and that my pastoral task was to get it lived. ([Location 1720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ALPJYR4&location=1720))
- The second conviction was that my primary pastoral work had to do with Scripture and prayer. I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer-helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer. ([Location 1725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ALPJYR4&location=1725))
- My pastoral work was to fuse them into a single act: scriptureprayer, or prayerscripture. It is this fusion of God speaking to us (Scripture) and our speaking to him (prayer) that the Holy Spirit uses to form the life of Christ in us. ([Location 1731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ALPJYR4&location=1731))
- The torrent of "spiritualities" that continues both within and without Christian communities, apparently without letup, has little liking for either "long" or "slow." ([Location 1740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ALPJYR4&location=1740))
- that 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. For as long as an enthusiasm for Christian "spirituality" accelerates without an equivalent commitment to its means, nothing much is going to come of it. There is virtual unanimity among our Christian ancestors that the means consists precisely in this fusion of Scripture and prayer. 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. ([Location 1742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ALPJYR4&location=1742))