Natalie

“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, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading

“What mature believer does not delight in seeing new converts talk with Christ? As we get older, we sometimes hurry past the ardor we knew as younger Christians. Hurried Christians beget hurried disciples. Hurried disciples become a hurried church—a hassled fellowship of disciples who serve the clock and call it God. But this subnormal Christianity has become so normal we don’t see anything abnormal about it. In fact, we’ve come to believe that the most sincere Christians are supposed to be shallow neurotics. Yet the church holds only one possibility of relevance: Time itself must be surrendered to the pursuit of the depths of God.”
― Calvin Miller, The Disciplined Life

“Tripping is embarrassing, but I have learned that where we stumble is the place we dig for gold—where we trip is where the treasure lies.”
― Calvin Miller, Letters to a Young Pastor

“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. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying.
And 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. That is not hoping in God but bullying God. "I pray to GOD-my life a prayer-and wait for what he'll say and do. My life's on the line before God, my Lord, waiting and watching till morning, waiting and watching till morning.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society