Top 100 Richard J. Foster Quotes
#1. For our sins, He suffered beneath the burden of that unanswered prayer."1 Here
Richard J. Foster
#3. Fasting reminds us that we are sustained by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). Food does not sustain us; God sustains us.
Richard J. Foster
#4. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.
Richard J. Foster
#5. God wants us to be present where we are. He invites us to see and to hear what is around us and, through it all, to discern the footprints of the Holy. Actually,
Richard J. Foster
#6. Grace saves us from life without God-even more it empowers us for life with God.
Richard J. Foster
#7. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Resentments cannot be held with the same tenacity when we enter his gracious light.
Richard J. Foster
#8. all authentic prayer is a scraping of the heart whereby the dregs of the soul are offered up to God.
Richard J. Foster
#9. many things tempt our hearts to put them first and God second. We must root out the desire to worship these things and focus on the true God. The
Richard J. Foster
#11. Frequently we hold on so tightly to the good that we do know that we cannot receive the greater good that we do not know.
Richard J. Foster
#12. Owning things is an obsession in our culture. If we own it, we feel we can control it; and if we control it, we feel it will give us more pleasure. The idea is an illusion.
Richard J. Foster
#13. There is no place where God is not, wherever I go, there God is. Now and always he upholds me with his power and keeps me safe in his love. - Anonymous
Richard J. Foster
#14. The truth is that there are no "masters" in the spiritual life. Mature and wise teachers, yes. But fundamentally we are all beginners receiving and giving on our knees before God and with open hands before one another. In this business no one "lords it over" another. Pay
Richard J. Foster
#15. Four times a year withdraw for three to four hours for the purpose of reorienting your life goals
Richard J. Foster
#16. We do not have to have the correct answers to listen well. In fact, often the correct answers are a hindrance to listening well, for we become more anxious to give the correct answer than to hear.
Richard J. Foster
#17. Meditative prayer does not do violence to our rational faculties. Neither does it confine us solely to the rational. We descend with the mind into the heart.
Richard J. Foster
#18. Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or auto mechanics. That puts us in the "on-top" position, where we are competent and in control. But when praying, we come "underneath," where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent.
Richard J. Foster
#19. The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find Him at all.
Richard J. Foster
#20. Just as worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship.
Richard J. Foster
#21. Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
Richard J. Foster
#22. Inward solitude has outward manifestations. There is the freedom to be alone, not in order to be away from people but in order to hear the divine Whisper better.
Richard J. Foster
#25. Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people. Leo Tolstoy observes, "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."6
Richard J. Foster
#26. Conversion does not make us perfect, but it does catapult us into a total experience of discipleship that affects - and infects - every sphere of our living.
Richard J. Foster
#27. The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent version throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.
Richard J. Foster
#28. The Bible is the loving heart of God made visible and plain. And receiving this message of exquisite love is the great privilege of all who long for life with God.
Richard J. Foster
#29. God's ownership of everything also changes the kind of question we ask in giving. Rather than, "How much of my money should I give to God?" we learn to ask, "How much of God's money should I keep for myself?" The difference between these two questions is of monumental proportions.
Richard J. Foster
#30. To pray is to change. This is a great grace. How good of God to provide a path whereby our lives can be taken over by love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.
Richard J. Foster
#31. We would do well to come to the Bible with these words ringing in our ears: 'You have heard it said ... but I say to you ...
Richard J. Foster
#32. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it.
Richard J. Foster
#33. It is important when we have a need to go to God in prayer. I know, whenever I have prayed earnestly, that I have been heard and have obtained more than I prayed for. God sometimes delays, but He always comes." - Martin Luther, "What a Great Gift We Have in Prayer"9
Richard J. Foster
#34. God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.
Richard J. Foster
#35. The Bible is not a tool for sharpening our religious competence, but a living and active sword for cleaving our double-minded thoughts and motives, exposing and transforming the contents of our hearts.
Richard J. Foster
#36. Submission reaches the end of its tether when it becomes destructive.
Richard J. Foster
#37. Today, O Lord, I yield myself to you. May your will be my delight today. May your way have perfect sway in me. May your love be the pattern of my living. - Richard J. Foster, Prayers from the Heart12
Richard J. Foster
#38. True service is a lifestyle. It acts from the ingrained patterns of living. It springs spontaneously to meet human need.
Richard J. Foster
#39. The message from all quarters is the same: our undisciplined consumption must end. If we continue to gobble up our resources without any regard to stewardship and to spew out our deadly wastes over land, sea, and air, we may well be drawing down the final curtain upon ourselves.
Richard J. Foster
#40. Law will take over because law always carries with it a sense of security and manipulative power.
Richard J. Foster
#41. There is a need today for what I call prophetic simplicity. We need voices of dissent that point to another way, creative models that take exception to the givens of society.
Richard J. Foster
#42. Catherine Marshall writes, "Resignation is barren of faith in the love of God ... . Resignation lies down quietly in the dust of a universe from which God seems to have fled, and the door of Hope swings shut."2
Richard J. Foster
#43. Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot.
Richard J. Foster
#44. If the Lord is to be Lord, worship must have priority in our lives. The divine priority is worship first, service second.
Richard J. Foster
#45. rejoice and make a fool of yourself for God the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love." - Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words
Richard J. Foster
#46. Nothing must come before the kingdom of God, including the desire for a simple life-style.
Richard J. Foster
#47. Absolute freedom is absolute nonsense! We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, and fixed habit.
Richard J. Foster
#49. You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war (James 4:1, 2).
Richard J. Foster
#50. May God give you - and me- the courage, the wisdom, the strength always to hold the kingdom of God as the number one priority of our lives. To do so is to live in simplicity.
Richard J. Foster
#52. And so I urge you: carry on an ongoing conversation with God about the daily stuff of life, a little like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. For now, do not worry about "proper" praying, just talk to God.
Richard J. Foster
#55. And so the test of whether or not we have really gotten the point of the Bible would then be the quality of love that we show.
Richard J. Foster
#56. The imagination, like all our faculties, has participated in the fall.
Richard J. Foster
#57. Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it. - JOHN WESLEY
Richard J. Foster
#59. Simplicity enables us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible realities of our global village.
Richard J. Foster
#60. Our lifestyle is not our private affair. We dare not allow each person to do what is right in his or her own eyes. The Gospel demands more of us: it is obligatory upon us to help one another hammer out the shape of Christian simplicity in the midst of modern affluence.
Richard J. Foster
#61. He true test of spirituality [is] in the freedom to live among people compassionately ... Prayer frees us to be controlled by God.
Richard J. Foster
#62. Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.
Richard J. Foster
#63. Discipline is to present us before grace, it does not produce grace to make sense.
Richard J. Foster
#64. Second Timothy is clear that we have a distinct, demanding body of doctrine that needs to be taught, a message that requires reiteration every Sunday if we, as the Church, are to be who we are called to be.
Richard J. Foster
#65. The truly Christian imagination never lets Jesus Christ out of her sight.
Richard J. Foster
#66. If we feed our souls regularly on God's word, several times each day, we should become robust spiritually just as we feed on ordinary food several times each day, and become robust physically. Nothing is more important than hearing and obeying the word of God." - David
Richard J. Foster
#67. One remarkable feature of the devotional masters is the incredible sense of uniform witness in the midst of such diverse personalities ... and the necessity of Christian simplicity is one of their most consistent themes.
Richard J. Foster
#68. Prayer involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God's thoughts after Him: to desire the things He desires, to love the things He loves, to will the things He wills.
Richard J. Foster
#69. Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort. -P. 11
Richard J. Foster
#70. The mind will always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates.
Richard J. Foster
#71. Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures - I wish no more than this, O Lord."6
Richard J. Foster
#72. We must understand the connection between inner solitude and inner silence; they are inseparable. All the masters of the interior life speak of the two in the same breath.
Richard J. Foster
#73. You see, we need instruction on how to possess money without being possessed by money. We need help to learn how to own things without treasuring them. We need the discipline that will allow us to live simply while managing great wealth and power.
Richard J. Foster
#74. We who have turned our lives over to Christ need to know how very much he longs to eat with us, to commune with us. He desires a perpetual Eucharistic feast in the inner sanctuary of the heart.
Richard J. Foster
#75. If we watch the interactions between human beings, we will receive a graduate-level education.
Richard J. Foster
#76. Prayer is more than thoughts and feelings expressed in words. It is the opening of mind and heart - our whole being to God our Abba Father. It is Divine Union.
Richard J. Foster
#78. If we are a people rich in social relationships, we are rich indeed. Whenever we develop significant friendships with those who are not like us culturally, we become broader, wiser persons.
Richard J. Foster
#79. The fruit of the Spirit is the outward evidence of the inward reality of a heart "abiding" in Christ.
Richard J. Foster
#80. Willpower will never succeed in dealing with the deeply ingrained habits of sin. Emmet
Richard J. Foster
#81. Meditation sends us into our ordinary world with greater perspective and balance.
Richard J. Foster
#82. Prayer is seeing His greatness to the extent we can receive it.
Richard J. Foster
#83. As worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life.
Richard J. Foster
#84. In a world of limited resources, our wealth is at the expense of the poor. To put it simply, if we have it, others cannot.
Richard J. Foster
#85. People need the truth. It does them no good to remain ignorant. They need the freedom that comes through the grace of simplicity. And if we are to bring the whole counsel of God, we must give attention to these issues that enslave people so savagely.
Richard J. Foster
#86. Your prayer must be turned inwards, not towards a God of Heaven nor towards a God far off, but towards God who is closer to you than you are aware.
Richard J. Foster
#87. Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul.
Richard J. Foster
#88. In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience.
Richard J. Foster
#89. Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.
Richard J. Foster
#90. In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture so a child of God cannot offer a bad prayer.
Richard J. Foster
#91. Our God is not made of stone. His heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. A cup of cold water is enough to put tears in the eyes of God. God celebrates our feeble expressions of gratitude.
Richard J. Foster
#92. What is urgently needed is a bold new move from a consumer economy to a conserver economy in all of the developed countries, and particularly in the United States.
Richard J. Foster
#93. Prayer is a little like that. With simplicity of heart we allow ourselves to be gathered up into the arms of the Father and let him sing his love song over us.
Richard J. Foster
#94. Each activity of daily life in which we stretch ourselves on behalf of others is a prayer in action.
Richard J. Foster
#95. We read every verse of Scripture lovingly and attentively, because every verse is a potential summons from God.
Richard J. Foster
#96. Freedom in the Gospel does not mean license. It means opportunity.
Richard J. Foster
#97. Through prayer and study, worship and service, we regularly digest God's word into the core of our being, where it feeds and transforms us. Continue
Richard J. Foster
#98. Giving with glad and generous hearts has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon greed.
Richard J. Foster
#99. The great writings interact with one another. They cannot be read in isolation..
Richard J. Foster
#100. Reading the Bible for spiritual transformation is not a one-sided endeavor: it is a dialogue of human spirit and Holy Spirit.
Richard J. Foster
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