20 Eugene Peterson Quotes on Prayer

1. A changed world begins with us … and a changed us begins when we pray.
2. In order to be effective, prayer has to be the first thing we do, not the last.
3. No need for hurry if you’re confident in who you are in God.
4. Pastors must pay attention to God and then lead others to pay attention to God.
5. Prayer and poetry are the closest of kin. In poetry we say it; in prayer we become what we say.
6. Prayer gets us in on what God is doing.
7. Prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the first word.
8. Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
9. Prayer is the way we work our way out of the comfortable but cramped world of self and into the spacious world of God.
10. Prayer: ‘a subversive activity [that] involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime.
11. Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests.
12. Talk in prayer is essential but it is also partial. Silence is essential.
13. The cure of souls is Scripture directed and prayer shaped.
14. The goal of reading the Word is to listen for the voice of the God who speaks.
15. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.
16. The reason why our prayers so often fall flat or come out “stale” is because they have been “uprooted from the soil of the word of God.
17. The task is not to get God to do something I think needs done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can participate in it.
18. Waiting in prayer is a disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
19. The first step toward God is a step away from the lies of the world.
20. How can I lead people into the quiet place beside still waters if I am in constant motion?

For more wisdom from Eugene Peterson, check out some of these books:

• Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best
• Praying with the Psalms: A Year of Daily Prayers and Reflections on the Words of David
• A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society
• The Message Canvas Bible: Coloring and Journaling the Story of God