Inspirational Quotes by Richard J. Foster

“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.”

“great deal of what goes into “training them [us] to do everything I said” consists simply in bringing people to believe with their whole being the information they already have as a result of their initial confidence in Jesus—even if that initial confidence was only the confidence of desperation.2”

“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”

“For this purpose we will benefit most from the great passages of scripture that clearly show us our Father in relation to his creation and his earthly family. These are passages such as Genesis 1 or 15; Exodus 19; 1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 16 and 19; Nehemiah 9; many of the psalms (34, 37, 91, and 103, for example); Isaiah 30, 44, and 56–66; Luke 11; Romans 8; Philippians 4.”

“Indeed, for anyone who has a genuine knowledge of God, praise is the only appropriate attitude in which to live. It is the only sane attitude.”

“As creators and consumers they fill the field of pop culture today, which is an economic enterprise and only by accident occasionally has something to do with art. Art objects are now commonly referred to as “product” by those who handle them and only make news when they are sold for absurdly large sums or are stolen.”

“Now just think of what the quality of life and character must be in a person who would routinely interrupt sacred rituals to pursue reconciliation with a fellow human being. What kind of thought life, what feeling tones and moods, what habits of body and mind, what kinds of deliberations and choices would you find in such a person? When you answer these questions, you will have a vision of the true “rightness beyond” that is at home in God’s kingdom of power and love. Of”

“Recall, now, that the kingdom of God is the range of his effective will: that is, it is the domain where what he prefers is actually what happens. And”

“We forgive someone of a wrong they have done us when we decide that we will not make them suffer for it in any way. This”

“Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person’s account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically.”

“The narrow gate is not, as so often assumed, doctrinal correctness. The narrow gate is obedience—and the confidence in Jesus necessary to it. We”

“He teaches us how to be in prayer what we are in life and how to be in life what we are in prayer.”

“Individual Christians still hear Jesus say, “Whoever hears these words of mine and does them is like those intelligent people who build their houses upon rock,” standing firm against every pressure of life (Matt. 7:24–25). How life-giving it would be if their understanding of the gospel allowed them simply to reply, “I will do them! I will find out how. I will devote my life to it! This is the best life strategy I ever heard of!” and then go off to their fellowship and its teachers, and into their daily life, to learn how to live in his kingdom as Jesus indicated was best.”

“And as for God, the highest biblical revelation of God’s metaphysical nature is Exod. 3:14. There, in response to Moses’ question about his nature or who he is, God replies, “I am that I am”—a Being that exists totally from its own resources. The Father has life “in himself,” we are later told by Jesus, and has given the same kind of life to the Son (John 5:26). Nothing other than God has this character of totally self-sufficient being, or self-determination.”

“Discipline is to present us before grace, it does not produce grace to make sense.”

“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.”

“Freedom comes not from the absence of restraint but from the presence of discipline.”

“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.”