Richard J. Foster Quotes

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

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.

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.

Worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience.

Stop trying to impress people with your clothes and impress them with your life.

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

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

Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things.

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.

Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.

In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture so a child of God cannot offer a bad prayer.

If worship does not change us it has not been worship.

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.

Let's discipline ourselves so that our words are few and full.

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

Absolute freedom is absolute nonsense! We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, and fixed habit.

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.

In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience.

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.

Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important

Goals are discovered, not made.

Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.

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

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

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.

If the Lord is to be Lord, worship must have priority in our lives. The divine priority is worship first, service second.

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.

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

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.

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

The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent version throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.

Prayer is more than thoughts and feelings expressed in words. It is the opening of mind and heart - our whole being to God our Abba Father. It is Divine Union.

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.

Simplicity is freedom.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

In intellectual honesty, we should be willing to study and explore the spiritual life with all the rigor and determination we would give to any field of research.

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.

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.

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

Prayer is - listening for the still small voice of God. Listening with the "ear of our hearts."

We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.

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

Freedom in the Gospel does not mean license. It means opportunity.