Top 100 Richard Foster Quotes
#1. Superficiality," said Richard Foster, "is the curse of our age." The desperate need of the soul is not for intelligence, nor talent, nor yet excitement; just depth.
John Ortberg
#2. Richard Foster's excellent book Celebration of Discipline
Ian Cowley
#3. True service is a lifestyle. It acts from the ingrained patterns of living. It springs spontaneously to meet human need.
Richard J. Foster
#5. Shekinah means the glory or the radiance of God dwelling in the midst of his people. It denotes the immediate Presence of God as opposed to a God who is abstract or aloof.
Richard J. Foster
#6. It is in the everyday and the commonplace that we learn patience, acceptance, and contentment.
Richard J. Foster
#7. We simply cannot consider the earth apart from Christ's footsteps imprinted upon it.
Richard J. Foster
#8. 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
#9. Submission reaches the end of its tether when it becomes destructive.
Richard J. Foster
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. In spiritual direction there is absolutely no domination or control.
Richard Foster
#15. A. W. Tozer says, "The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him."1
Richard J. Foster
#16. 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
#17. However brightly the light may shine, it can be seen only by those who are spiritually prepared to receive it. 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'" - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy 8
Richard J. Foster
#18. 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
#19. The quiet power of a life transformed by the grace of God is so explosive that it can redirect the course of human events
Richard Foster
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives - altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter.
Richard J. Foster
#23. Will not break a bruised reed, or quench a smoldering wick (Isa. 423; Matt. 12:20).
Richard J. Foster
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it. - JOHN WESLEY
Richard J. Foster
#28. 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
#29. We should all without shame enrol in the school of contemplative prayer.
Richard J. Foster
#30. The imagination, like all our faculties, has participated in the fall.
Richard J. Foster
#31. Remember that the key to the Discipline of study is not reading many books, but experiencing what we do read.
Richard J. Foster
#32. 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
#33. God's heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small.
Richard J. Foster
#36. 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
#37. God first acts in grace and mercy by delivering the people, and then the people respond in gratitude and thanksgiving by obeying the commandments. Put succinctly: the crossing of the Red Sea comes before the giving of the Ten Commandments. How
Richard J. Foster
#38. Corporate "confession of guilt." "The church," he declared, "confesses that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred and murder, and that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the
Richard J. Foster
#40. 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
#41. 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
#43. Absolute freedom is absolute nonsense! We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, and fixed habit.
Richard J. Foster
#44. Nothing must come before the kingdom of God, including the desire for a simple life-style.
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. 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
#47. Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot.
Richard J. Foster
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it.
Richard Foster
#51. Law will take over because law always carries with it a sense of security and manipulative power.
Richard J. Foster
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. In the context of Quaker worship, it is perfectly appropriate for any person in the congregation to speak a timely word from the Lord.
Richard Foster
#55. Precious Savior, why do I fear your scrutiny? Yours is an examen of love. Still, I am afraid ... afraid of what may surface. Even so, I invite you to search me to the depths so that I may know myself - and you - in fuller measure. - Amen.
Richard J. Foster
#56. It is only because of your love, only your love, that the poor will forgive you the bread you give them.
Richard J. Foster
#57. Cause every task of your day to be a sacred ministry to the Lord. however mundane your duties, for you they are a sacrament.
Richard J. Foster
#58. As we see in Ezra's life, committed study of Scripture can bring about much more than merely head knowledge. It can bring God himself into all the recesses of our being, for "the word of God is living and active" (Heb 4:12). Take
Richard J. Foster
#59. The Bible is the means through which we are introduced to Jesus and invited to follow Him in the life of humility and service.
Richard Foster
#60. The goal of work is not to gain wealth and possessions, but to serve the common good and bring glory to God.
Richard J. Foster
#61. all authentic prayer is a scraping of the heart whereby the dregs of the soul are offered up to God.
Richard J. Foster
#62. The top seed this weekend is Richard Krajicek,12 a 6'5" Dutchman who wears a tiny white billed hat in the sun and rushes the net like it owes him money and in general plays like a rabid crane.
David Foster Wallace
#63. 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
#64. Grace saves us from life without God-even more it empowers us for life with God.
Richard J. Foster
#65. Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.
Alan Dean Foster
#67. Begin now to obey Him in every way you can. Start right where you are, in the midst of all the tasks that press in upon you. Do not wait for some future time when you will have more time or be more perfect in knowledge.
Richard J. Foster
#68. Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't.
Richard J. Foster
#69. Supremely, spiritual directors/mentors/pastors are persons who have a sense of being 'established' in God. Otherwise they are too dangerous to be allowed into the soul space of others.
Richard Foster
#70. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.
Richard J. Foster
#71. I determined to learn to pray so that my experience conforms to the words of Jesus rather than try to make his words conform to my impoverished experience.
Richard Foster
#72. 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
#75. For our sins, He suffered beneath the burden of that unanswered prayer."1 Here
Richard J. Foster
#77. 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
#78. In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of a Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered people. All of creation watches expectantly for the springing up of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know in this life the power of the kingdom of God.
Richard Foster
#79. The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son.
Richard Foster
#80. Pride is one of the socially acceptable sins in some corners of the evangelical culture. It's just straight-out ego gratification - how important I am; whether my name gets on the building or on the TV program or in the magazine article.
Richard Foster
#81. 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
#82. Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
Richard J. Foster
#83. Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
Richard J. Foster
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. Remembering God's work in the past has a sustaining and renewing effect during times of spiritual drought. Memory and worship are thus keys to a long life of spiritual formation. Try
Richard J. Foster
#87. 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
#88. 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
#90. Four times a year withdraw for three to four hours for the purpose of reorienting your life goals
Richard J. Foster
#91. There is a sense of call to take leadership roles. You're serving people and submitting to God as best you can.
Richard Foster
#92. It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. This should not be. Of all people, we should be the most free, alive, interesting.
Richard J. Foster
#93. 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
#94. It is a hallow feeling to be in the company of someone with whom we long to have a satisfying personal exchange, only to watch hope dissolve as the time together is drained by superficial chatter or surface distractions.
Richard J. Foster
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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
#100. Obedience has a way of strengthening rather than depleting our resources. If we obey in one small corner, we will have power to obey elsewhere. Obedience begets obedience.
Richard J. Foster
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