Richard J. Foster famous quotes

The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Intelligent #Numbers #People

Let's discipline ourselves so that our words are few and full.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Discipline #Our Words

We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.' ...It is time to awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Reality #Sick #People

If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Simple #Thinking #Joy

Stop trying to impress people with your clothes and impress them with your life.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Clothes #People #Trying

The needed change within us is God's work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God: it is a grace that is given.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Jobs #Grace #Demand

Worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Worship #Holy #Obedience

Each activity of daily life in which we stretch ourselves on behalf of others is a prayer in action.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #Action #Daily Life

If worship does not change us it has not been worship.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Christian #Christian Inspirational #Doe

Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #Prayer #Father

Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Father #Heart #Worship

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

#Doe #Worship #Obedience

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

#Kindness #Taken #Self

When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Believe #Passion #Transformation

Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. Its central reality is found 'in spirit and truth.' It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Father #Heart #Reality

Children do not find it difficult or complicated to talk to their parents, nor do they feel embarrassed to bring the simplest need to their attention. Neither should we hesitate to bring the simplest requests confidently to the Father.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Children #Father #Parent

Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be light-hearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Pride #Self #Light

Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honour and recognition. It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered. If we stoutly refuse to give in to this lust of the flesh, we crucify it. Every time we crucify the flesh, we crucify our pride and arrogance.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Mean #Pride #Giving

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

#Needs #Modern Life #Becoming

When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Problem #Excellent #Determine

Prayer frees us to be controlled by God. To pray is to change. There is no greater liberating force in the Christian life than prayer. To enter the gaze of the Holy is never to be the same. To bathe in the Light in quiet wonder and glad surrender is to be slowly, permanently transformed. There is a richer inward orientation, a deep hunger for communion. We feel as if we are being taken over by a new control Center, and so we are.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Christian #Prayer #Taken

..the true test of spirituality [is] in the freedom to live among people compassionately....Prayer frees us to be controlled by God.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #People #Tests

Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Falling In Love #Prayer #Real

Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good. This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear and avarice.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Christian #Jesus #Heart

Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Jesus #Evil #Humanity

Goals are discovered, not made.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Motivational #Goal #Made

In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of the Spirit-led, Spirit-intoxicaed, Spirit-empowered peole. All of creation watches expectantly for the springing up of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know in this likfe the life and power of the Kindgom of God. It happened before, it can happen again.
-- Richard J. Foster

#People #Waiting #Heaven

Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Loneliness #Solitude #Emptiness

In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #Joy #Obedience

Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit, simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justificat ion
-- Richard J. Foster

#Self #Ions #Discipline

Jesus reminds us that prayer is a little like children coming to their parents. Our children come to us with the craziest requests at times! Often we are grieved by the meanness and selfishness in their requests, but we would be all the more grieved if they never came to us even with their meanness and selfishness. We are simply glad that they do come--mixed motives and all.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Jesus #Prayer #Children

Countless people pray far more than they know. Often they have such a "stained-glass" image of prayer that they fail to recognize what they are experiencing as prayer and so condemn themselves for not praying.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #Glasses #People

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

#Prayer #Real #Passion

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

#Priorities #Firsts #Worship

God's heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Religious #Heart #Matter

The inner attitude of the heart is far more crucial than the mechanics for coming into the reality of the spiritual life.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Christian #Spiritual #Attitude

Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or auto mechanics. But when praying, we come "underneath," where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #Way #Assuming

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

#Lying #Home #Discovery

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

#Heart #Desire #Needs

reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Addiction #Rejects

Simplicity enables us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible realities of our global village.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Integrity #Live Life #Reality

Freedom in the Gospel does not mean license. It means opportunity.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Mean #Opportunity #Doe

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

#Numbers #Giving #Priorities

Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Sick #Conformity

Pride is one of the socially acceptable sins in some corners of the evangelical culture. Its 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 J. Foster

#Pride #Names #Ego

Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important
-- Richard J. Foster

#Thinking #Important #Hardest

Spiritual direction is an interpersonal relationship in which we learn how to grow, live, and love in the spiritual life.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #And Love #Grows

I think of Pope Gregory the Great. He wanted the cloister. He wanted to pray and study, and yet he was thrust into this administrative job, and he submitted to that. And in that submission, he became a great leader. You could say that the only person who is safe to lead is the person who is free to submit.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Jobs #Thinking #Leader

In spiritual direction there is absolutely no domination or control.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #Domination

Spiritual direction involves a process through which one person helps another person understand what God is doing and saying.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #Helping #Process

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 J. Foster

#Spiritual #Space #Soul

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 J. Foster

#Worship #Speak #Lord

We have real difficulty here because everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul. Personal formation into the likeness of Christ is arduous and lifelong.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Real #Thinking #People

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

#Prayer #Children #Way

Simplicity, then, is getting in touch with the divine center
-- Richard J. Foster

#Simplicity #Divine

Overconsumption is a "cancer eating away at our spiritual vitals." It cuts the heart right out of our compassion. It distances us from the great masses of broken bleeding humanity. It converts us into materialists. We become less able to ask moral questions. For example, just because we have the economic muscle to buy up vast amounts of the world's oil, does that give us the right to do so? When the poor farmer of India is unable to buy a gallon of gasoline to run his simple water pump because the world's demand has priced him out of the market, who is to blame?
-- Richard J. Foster

#Running #Spiritual #Distance

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. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #Selfish #Tangled

If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this leads us to prayer.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #Giving #People

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

#Discipline #Needs #Helping

In worship an increased power steals its way into the heart sanctuary, an increased compassion grows in the soul. To worship is to change.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Heart #Compassion #Soul

Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different
-- Richard J. Foster

#Christian #Ideas #Two

Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #Soul #Siege

The person who does not seek the kingdom first does not seek it at all, regardless of how worthy the idolatry that he or she has substituted for it.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Firsts #Doe #Kingdoms

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

#Doe #Use #Technique

Adoration is the spontaneous yearning of the heart to worship, honor, magnify, and bless God. We ask nothing but to cherish him. We seek nothing but his exaltation. We focus on nothing but his goodness.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Heart #Focus #Honor

Overpopulation is the problem of the third and fourth World; over-consumption is the problem of the West. The average American child this year will consume as much of the world's resources as twenty children born in India. Deliberate and calculated waste is the central aspect of the American economy. We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Children #Air #Average

The Prayer of Examine produces within us the priceless grace of self-knowledge. I wish I could adequately explain to you how great a grace this truly is. Unfortunately, contemporary men and women simply do not value self-knowledge in the same way that all preceding generations have. For us technocratic knowledge reigns supreme. Even when we pursue self-knowledge, we all too often reduce it to a hedonistic search for personal peace and prosperity. How poor we are! Even the pagan philosophers were wiser than this generation. They knew that an unexamined life was not worth living.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Prayer #Men #Self

A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain...This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines - they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #Jesus #Water

Our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in "muchness" and "manyness," he will rest satisfied.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Crowds #Noise #Three

Grace saves us from life without God-even more it empowers us for life with God.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Empowering #Grace #Grace Of God

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

#Perfect #Spheres #Doe

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

#Order #People #Solitude

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

#Gratitude #Eye #Heart

There is an old proverb to the effect that 'all those who open their mouths, close their eyes!' The purpose of silence and solitude is to be able to see and hear. Control rather than no noise is the key to silence. James saw clearly that the person who could control his tounge is perfect (James 3:1-12). Under the Discipline of silence and solitude we learn when to speak and when to refrain from speaking.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Eye #Keys #Perfect

If we are silent when we should speak, we are not living the Discipline of silence. If we speak when we should be silent, we again miss the mark.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Discipline #Missing #Silence

One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Silence is intimately related to trust.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Silence #Bears #Silent

The Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do. We must never lose sight of this fact. It is one thing to talk piously about 'the solitude of the heart,' but if that does not somehow work its way into our experience, then we have missed the point of the Disciplines. We are dealing with actions, not merely states of mind.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #Heart #Sight

In the chapter on study we considered the importance of observing ourselves to see how often our speech is a frantic attempt to explain and justify our actions. Having seen this in ourselves, let's experiment with doing deeds without any words of explanation whatever. We note our sense of fear that people will misunderstand why we have done what we have done. We seek to allow God to be our justifier.
-- Richard J. Foster

#People #Done #Deeds

The fruit of solitude is increased sensitivity and compassion for others. There comes a new freedom to be with people. There is new attentiveness to their needs, new responsiveness to their hurts. Thomas Merton observes, 'It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them.... Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Hurt #Brother #Compassion

Four times a year withdraw for three to four hours for the purpose of reorienting your life goals
-- Richard J. Foster

#Years #Goal #Purpose

Simplicity is the only thing that sufficiently reorients our lives so that possessions can be genuinely enjoyed without destroying us.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Simplicity #Destroying #Possession

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

#Humility #Thinking #Virtue

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

#Letting Go #Heart #Giving

Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Christian #Taken #Reality

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

#Mouths #Fasting #Doe

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

#Spiritual #Mean #Discipline

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

#Christian #Light #Resentment

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

#Christian #Simple #Personality

But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God's love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. The fear and pride that clings to us like barnacles cling to others also. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Brother #Pride #People

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

#Prayer #Worry #Ongoing

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Spiritual #Age #Satisfaction

The Bible is teh means through which we are introduced to Jesus and invited to follow Him in the life of humility and service. Secured by the knowledge that in Christ, our origin... and destination is God, we will yield the fruit of service to God. This is the "so what" of our Bible reading. Does it shape our spirits in love and humility? Does it lead us more fully into life with God? (Life with God, p. 34-35)
-- Richard J. Foster

#Jesus #Reading #Mean

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

#Two #Silence #Solitude

Go another step. Try to live one entire day without words at all. Do it not as a law, but as an experiment. Note your feelings of helplessness and excessive dependence upon words to communicate. Try to find new ways to relate to tohers that are not dependent upon words. Enjoy, savor the day. Learn from it.
-- Richard J. Foster

#Law #Feelings #Trying