Most of us aren’t living glamorous Christian lives. We’re learning how to trust God, cherish Christ, and walk in holiness in the midst of jobs and family time and housework. But it’s in these everyday moments that obedience really takes shape. Glenna Marshall helps us to understand and live this out in her book Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World (Crossway, 2020). I posted a full review earlier this year, but I also want to give you a handful of my favourite quotes to give you a little taste of the book:

What is everyday faithfulness? — “It’s getting up every single day and believing that God is your treasure, that the gospel of Jesus is worth your every breath, and that he is enough. Faithfulness is doing this again tomorrow and the next day and ten years from now.”

“The plodding may last for a lifetime, but the glory will last forever.”

“Though beautiful when traced in decades of retrospect, faithfulness is unremarkable in real-time practice.”

“We must train our hearts to default to Scripture now so that when life is unbearably hard, we’ll turn to our Lord out of a long-practiced habit. Perseverance now feeds our faithfulness later and sustains us for future trials.”

“Your faithfulness to Christ will cost you something. Oh, but the benefits are eternal and beyond comparison! Drawing near to God through his word and through prayer will transcend and transform your busy day like nothing else.”

“Within the community of the family of God, we should not only seek to hold up the arms of others in their suffering; we should also be transparent about our weaknesses and let them hold our arms up for us.”

“Sometimes I find that feeling spiritually sluggish has a direct correlation to the amount of time I spend on Netflix or social media. There’s no space in my head for thinking about the Lord when most of my media consumption turns my face away from him.”

“My old self, the one that raged against God, the one that happily opposed God in hostility with a darkened heart, the one that only wanted to serve herself— that old me is dead and buried. So I can deny her the indulgences she demands. When she lights a match in anger, I don’t have to warm myself at her fire. When she stands at the pantry or the fridge seeking comfort after a tough day, I don’t have to swallow her poor substitutions for peace. When she remembers an unkind comment someone made, I don’t have to share it with a friend. When she despairs of overcoming any of those temptations, I can remember that Jesus has given me victory over sin.”

“Repentance acknowledges that we have disobeyed God and loved him less than our desires. Repentance concedes our idolatry, names it, and seeks to flee far from it. Repentance seeks forgiveness from God and asks him for strength to believe we really have it. Repentance remembers the gospel and the freedom Christ won for us at the cross. Repentance turns our face toward Jesus instead of the vile temptations of sin and self. Repentance is how we continue in everyday faithfulness, free from condemnation and judgment.”

“We stand firm in everyday faithfulness by fixing our gaze on our future with Christ. Our real home is coming, friend. We are sojourners passing through maybe eighty years of earthbound existence. Until we reach the land of our permanent residency, we remember that it’s Jesus we’re persevering for and to and by and through. And he is worth every moment of our steadfastness.”

Other posts in my 10 Quotes series: 10 Favourite Quotes from ‘The Problem Of Pain’ by C.S. Lewis