Inspirational Quotes by Richard J. Foster
“To believe that God can reach us and bless us in the ordinary junctures of daily life is the stuff of prayer.”
“Our own spiritual formation will be strengthened if, in our busy, crowded, and noisy lives, we find regular times and places for quiet, for prayer, for listening to God. Time alone with God gives us renewed energy to live fully engaged with the world again. Do”
“Even today as an adult I can go back to that center via the marvelous capacity of memory and there experience thanksgiving and gratitude to the God who gives every good gift. I am not trying to escape nor retreat from the struggles and hardships of modern life; rather I am giving myself a point of reference from which to face those struggles and hardships. You too have such a center, I am sure. Go to it in your imagination as often as you can and from that place allow whispered prayers of thanksgiving to flow forth.”
“A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action by which we do what we can do in order to receive from God the ability (or power) to do what we cannot achieve by direct effort.”
“The Spiritual Disciplines in and of themselves have no merit whatsoever. They possess no righteousness, contain no rectitude. Their purpose—their only purpose—is to place us before God. After that they have come to the end of their usefulness. But it is enough.”
“over many centuries and through multiple human authors, God has so superintended the development of the Bible that it speaks to us about real life (zoë) and teaches us how to live “with God”
“When Jesus walked among humankind there was a certain simplicity to being his disciple. Primarily it meant to go with him, in an attitude of observation, study, obedience, and imitation. There were no correspondence courses. One knew what to do and what it would cost.”
“Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot do. And God graciously uses this process to produce in us the kind of person who automatically will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.”
“Freedom comes not from the absence of restraint but from the presence of discipline.”
“Discipline is to present us before grace, it does not produce grace to make sense.”
“How can one in a leadership position not be haunted by what the Lord said to his prophet Ezekiel: Everyone is talking about you all the time. They say, “Come and let’s hear what the word is from the Lord.” And they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them. For their mouths talk devotion but their hearts seek wicked gains. Why, you are just like one who sings about love with a beautiful voice and a well-played instrument. They hear what you are saying, but do not do it. (Ezek. 33:31–32)”
“This “concrete” or contextual method of teaching is obviously very different from how we attempt to teach and learn today, and the difference makes it difficult for us to grasp what precisely it is that Jesus is teaching. What he is saying cannot be understood unless we appreciate how he teaches, and we cannot appreciate how he teaches unless we take into account something of the world within which his teaching occurred. We must recognize, first of all, that the aim of the popular teacher in Jesus’ time was not to impart information, but to make a significant change in the lives of the hearers. Of”
“There is also a widespread impression that the laws of natural science make everything intelligible—or would, if we could only get the “right” laws. But the laws of science make nothing intelligible by themselves, and for clear reasons. There must be certain “initial conditions” before the laws of science can explain anything. In their “explaining,” those laws have to have something from which to start. And they obviously do not explain the existence or nature of those very conditions that must be in place before they can explain anything. Science, then, may explain many interesting and important things, but it does not explain existence. Nor does it explain why the laws of science are the laws of nature.5 And it does not explain science itself.6”
“Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger, and you find a person with a wounded ego.”
“The Beatitudes simply cannot be “good news” if they are understood as a set of “how-tos” for achieving blessedness. They would then only amount to a new legalism. They would not serve to throw open the kingdom—anything but. They would impose a new brand of Phariseeism, a new way of closing the door—as well as some very gratifying new possibilities for the human engineering of righteousness.”
“We sing from this passage, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright, shining as the sun….” But we should understand that brightness always represents power, energy, and that in the kingdom of our Father we will be active, unimaginably creative.”
“The material universe is both an essential display of the greatness and goodness of God and the arena of the eternal life of finite spirits, including the human.”
“And they shall live with His face in view, and that they belong to Him will show on their faces. Darkness will no longer be. They will have no need of lamps or sunlight because God the Lord will be radiant in their midst. And they will reign through the ages of ages. REV. 22:4–5”
“It is well known how hard it is to provide a benign order within human means. For the problem, once again, is in the human heart. Until it fully engages with the rule of God, the good that we feel must be cannot come. It will at a certain point be defeated by the very means implemented to produce it.”
“No good tree produces bad fruit, nor any bad tree good fruit…. The good person, from the good treasured up in his heart, produces what is good. LUKE 6:43–45”
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Richard J. Foster is a Christian theologian and author in the Quaker tradition. His writings speak to a broad Christian audience. He has been a professor at Friends University and pastor of Evangelical Friends churches. Foster resides in Denver, Colorado. He earned his undergraduate degree at George Fox University in Oregon and his Doctor of Pastoral Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Foster is best known for his 1978 book Celebration of Discipline, which examines the inward disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditation, and study in the Christian life, the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, and the corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. It has sold over one million copies. It was named by Christianity Today as one of the top ten books of the twentieth century.