Inspirational Quotes by Richard J. Foster

“It is one of the defects of an age with no true sense of its past to suppose that what is now is what has always been, and that anything else is either novel or wrong or both.”

“Prayer is never just asking, nor is it merely a matter of asking for what I want. God is not a cosmic butler or fix-it man, and the aim of the universe is not to fulfill my desires and needs. On the other hand, I am to pray for what concerns me, and many people have found prayer impossible because they thought they should only pray for wonderful but remote needs they actually had little or no interest in or even knowledge of. Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about “good things” that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God’s love.”

“When we see Jesus as he is, we must turn away or else shamelessly adore him.”

“So prayer is a total activity, incorporating many elements essential to a personal relationship between two persons—persons different from and related to one another as the Father is to his children on earth. But still the heart of prayer is the request.”

“What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him—trusting only his role as guilt remover. To trust the real person Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that he is right about and adequate to everything.”

“One of the greatest weaknesses in our teaching and leadership today is that we spend so much time trying to get people to do things good people are supposed to do, without changing what they really believe.”

“Most but not all uncertainties in the minds of disciples—and this is only somewhat less so for people in general—are the result of unclarities and failures to understand. These shut down confidence and love, and we must never rest until they are cleanly dispersed from the mind.”

“What has to be done, instead of trying to drive people to do what we think they are supposed to, is to be honest about what we and others really believe. Then, by inquiry, teaching, example, prayer, and reliance upon the spirit of God, we can work to change the beliefs that are contrary to the way of Jesus. We can open the way for others, Christians or not, to heartily choose apprenticeship in the kingdom of God.”

“What has to be done, instead of trying to drive people to do what we think they are supposed to, is to be honest about what we and others really believe. Then, by inquiry, teaching, example, prayer, and reliance upon the spirit of God, we can work to change the beliefs that are contrary to the way of Jesus. We can open the way for others, Christians or not, to heartily choose apprenticeship in the kingdom of God. A major part of this important work is coming to understand what the people we are dealing with really do believe, and not pretending—often with them—that they believe what they don’t believe at all. In a setting where a social premium has been placed upon believing certain things for the sake of group solidarity, we must face the fact that human beings can honestly profess to believe what they do not believe. They”

“Jesus, by contrast, brings us into a world without fear. In his world, astonishingly, there is nothing evil we must do in order to thrive.”

“In the context of our particular family or group or congregation, to present the kingdom of the heavens will mean that we must teach about the nature of belief (which is the same as faith) and how it relates to the rest of our personality. And then we must study our friends and associates to see what they really do believe and help them to be honest about it. We understand that our beliefs are the rails upon which our life runs, and so we have to address their actual beliefs and their doubts, not spend our time discussing many fine things that have little or no relevance to their genuine state of mind.12 Then we must be very fair and thorough in examining those beliefs and considering to what extent they are or are not justified. There must not be the least effort to be unfair in this examination or to pooh-pooh genuine problems, for that will weaken and infect everything we try to develop thereafter. One cannot build discipleship to Jesus by dodging serious issues or not doing justice to honest doubts about him and his teachings.”

“So those who hear me and do what I say are like those intelligent people who build their homes on solid rock, where rain and floods and winds cannot shake them. MATT. 7:24–25 Train them to do everything I have told you. MATT. 28:20 The Course of Studies in the Master Class These words from Jesus show that it must be possible to hear and do what he said. It also must be possible to train his apprentices in such a way that they routinely do everything he said was best.”

“God is great enough that he can conduct his affairs in this way. His nature, identity, and overarching purposes are no doubt unchanging. But his intentions with regard to many particular matters that concern individual human beings are not. This does not diminish him. Far from it. He would be a lesser God if he could not change his intentions when he thinks it is appropriate. And if he chooses to deal with humanity in such a way that he will occasionally think it appropriate, that is just fine.”

“Heroism, generally, is totally out of place in the spiritual life, until we grow to the point at which it would never be thought of as heroism anyway.”

“What God gets out of our lives—and, indeed, what we get out of our lives—is simply the person we become. It”

“Prayer is, above all, a means of forming character. It combines freedom and power with service and love. What”

“Reign is no doubt wording that is a little too grand for the contemporary mind, though what it refers to is what everyone actually pursues in life. We have been trained to think of “reigning” as exclusionary of others. But in the heart of the divine conspiracy, it just means to be free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good. In the life of prayer we are training for, we reign in harmonious union with the infinite power of God.”

“God and the individual communicate within the framework of God’s purposes for us, as explained earlier, and that because of the interchange God does what he had not previously intended, or refrains from something he previously had intended to do, is nothing against God’s dignity if it is an arrangement he himself has chosen. It is not inherently “greater” to be inflexible. That is an unfortunate human idea of greatness, derived from behavior patterns all too common in a fallen world. It turns God into a cosmic stuffed shirt. This unfortunate idea is reinforced from “the highest intellectual sources” by classical ideas of “perfection,” which stressed the necessity of absolute inalterability in God. But in a domain of persons, such as The Kingdom Among Us, it is far greater to be flexible and yet able to achieve the good goals one has set. And that is an essential part of the Divine Personality shown in the Bible and incarnated in the person of Jesus and presented in his message. So far from fitting the classical pattern of God as “the Unmoved Mover,” the God shown in the historical record is “the Most Moved Mover.” This”

“It is always a personal negotiation, as”

“Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so. To believe that two plus two equals four is to behave accordingly when trying to find out how many dollars or apples are in the house. The advantage of believing it is not that we can pass tests in arithmetic; it is that we can deal much more successfully with reality. Just try dealing with it as if two plus two equaled six.”