27 Quotes from The Eternal Current
This past week I had the privilege of reading The Eternal Current by Aaron Niequist. I think I might have highlighted something on every page. What Aaron wrote resonated deeply within me. As I think about my spiritual journey, I see it broken down into three distinct movements. The first movement was ministry for God. The second movement was ministry from God (the gospel-centered movement). Now, I find myself entering a new season - ministry with God (I'm borrowing this language from Skye Jethani and his book With).
Life with God has breathed new vitality into my faith and life with Jesus. I've been reintroduced to spiritual practices that go beyond reading my Bible and prayer (both great disciplines) and I feel more spiritually alive than I have in years. Niequist gives great language and imagery to the journey that I'm on. While I don't know that it will ever exhibit itself in the same way at the church I lead, what they did at the Practice is similar in trajectory to where I pray we go.
As I read The Eternal Current, below are 27 quotes that stood out to me. I hope you are encouraged by them. Like I said, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of the book and dig into it. I trust it will help you gain a greater vision for living in the way of Jesus.
“Grace alone makes the River flow, but we must wade into the water. Grace alone makes the vine grow, but we need to build the trellis. Grace alone makes the wind blow, but spiritual practices help us humbly open the window day-by-day, moment by moment. The invitation is participation.” (4)
“It (church at Mars Hill) was a greenhouse for artistic experimentation, theological exploration, and discovering what the kingdom of God could look like in an actual time and place." (pg. 14)
“Christ does not invite us to simply spiritualize how we’re already living. Baptizing the American Dream does not make us Christians.” (21)
“Our why of swimming with the Eternal Current is to align with the kingdom of God. Our how is through spiritual practices. Our what is a community of practice.” (25)
“Rather than approaching our church as a classroom (to fill our minds with information) or a concert hall (to move our hearts with emotion), we long to create a spiritual gymnasium, which can form our whole selves.” (27)
“A Sunday service is not the main event but rather a training ground to help all of us become people who can live the way Jesus would if he were in our place.” (28)
“Jesus Christ invites us to partner with God in this subversively redemptive vision and build a world that makes more space for it to flourish.” (41)
“The invitation on Sunday morning is the same invitation on Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon: to become present to the God who is already fully present to us.” (47)
The modern church is good at teaching, talking, and helping people learn important truths. But we rarely give them the tools or training to live out those truths. Preaching is a good first step but a terrible entire plan. Church as a classroom is not enough. And beyond teaching, we often excel at offering worship music and inspiring art that moves people’s hearts. But inspiration without spiritual formation doesn’t bring lasting change. Church as a concert hall is not enough.” (58)
“Choose a couple of formational pillars of your liturgy that stay consistent for a whole season, and also create space in between for experimenting with new forms of worship.” (63)
“But a quiet time wasn’t enough. At a certain point, I began bumping into its limitations. A quiet time could help me engage certain aspects of the spiritual journey, but it fell short in others. It was great for gaining concrete ideas about God and life but not very good at engaging the deep mysteries of God and life. My quiet time offered a brilliant place to read scripture, apply it to my experience, and express my heart to God. But it didn’t always form my heart beyond my natural perspective and proclivities.” (71-72)
“The goal of the gathering was not merely to believe in God’s love but to experience it.” (85)
“At one point, he (Ian Morgan Cron) provocatively declared, ‘Remember, friends, you never take communion.’ In a surprised and uncomfortable silence, he smiled and whispered, ‘It can only be received. Taking is what happened in the Garden of Eden. But opening our hands to receive will put the world back together.’” (89)
“Overemphasizing what happens at church also tends to assign too much importance to professional church workers. They have a role to play, to be sure, but their primary job is to launch everyone else into the remaining 166 hours of the week.” (94)
“I was so afraid of slipping into 'works-based righteousness’ and so convinced that my righteousness was dirty rags anyway (see Isaiah 64:6) that I felt handcuffed from participating in my own spiritual life. Thankfully, Jesus did not share this one-dimensional understanding of faith versus works.” (97)
“The spiritual concept of ‘include and transcend’ offers more of a whole way forward. Through this concept, we discover that the answer of both/and rather than either/or. Our past experiences are both critically important and criminally not enough, and a healthy future must be built on our past as well as beyond our past.” (110)
“Humility is a matter of life and death on the spiritual journey.” (121)
“Friends, this might be the most succinct way to describe a practice-based life: it is a kingdom vision (swimming with Christ for the sake of the world) that propels us into a wise plan (spiritual practices that form a rule of life) that can be sustained only in community. (128)
“The goal of any group (or church or life) is to be transformed into Christlikeness for the sake of the world.” (134)
“A healthy spirituality will integrate every aspect of faith into a holistic, interdependent organism rather than splitting the spiritual life into separate, autonomous pieces. Discipleship is not an optional add-on to evangelism. Mission is not an optional add-on to discipleship. The spiritual life is not a Ford Motor Company assembly line. Instead, the Eternal Current is a beautiful messy journey experienced through interconnected people, practices, and lenses.” (152)
“We engage the spiritual life through three interrelated postures: beliefs, action, and reflection/prayer.” (152)
“Very few Christians would disagree that we should pray for our enemies. But few of us consistently do it.” (159)
“Those of us who try to swim with Christ need to ask, 'Do our liturgies (songs, prayers, and practices) help us see God’s work in the other, especially those on the outside or underside of power, or do they deepen the us-vs-them narrative that reinforces the idea that we are right and ’they’ are wrong?’” (165)
“We need liturgies of comfort and discomfort.” (166)
“We can’t pretend to love our neighbor while we ignore the systematic realities that hurt them.” (170)
“Let us never leave our kids with a legacy to protect - like a huge weight around their necks. Instead, let’s be a springboard that launches them into becoming the exact people God created them to be. May that be our legacy.” (176)
“Formative practices, liturgies, and spiritual disciplines have been handed down through the generations, and it’s a gift to learn from this collective wisdom. The goal is not to turn back the clock and repeat an earlier Christian era; the goal is to be carried forward by God’s eternally present River.” (178)