Quotes from Richard J. Foster

The Spiritual Disciplines are the means of God's grace for bringing about genuine personality formation characterized through and through by love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23).

God has given us the capacity for developing moral character, the ability to become glorious beings that can live in communion with the Triune Reality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for eternity.

An intelligent, humble, careful, intensive, straight forward reading of the Bible will direct us into Life in the Kingdom of God.

Reading the Bible for spiritual transformation is not a one-sided endeavor: it is a dialogue of human spirit and Holy Spirit.

Dallas Willard writes, "Today I continue to believe that people are meant to live in an ongoing conversation with God, speaking and being spoken to. . . . Given who we are by basic nature, we live—really live—only through God's regular speaking in our souls and thus 'by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"1

It is a hallow feeling to be in the company of someone with whom we long to have a satisfying personal exchange, only to watch hope dissolve as the time together is drained by superficial chatter or surface distractions.

To believe that God can sanctify and utilize the imagination is simply to take seriously the Christian idea of incarnation. God so accommodates, so enfleshes himself into our world that he uses the images we know and understand to teach us about the unseen world of which we know so little and which we find so difficult to understand.

A Christian's speech should bless, not berate or abuse. The tongue betrays the world that is in one's heart; it is a microcosm of the inner self.

The Bible is not a tool for sharpening our religious competence, but a living and active sword for cleaving our double-minded thoughts and motives, exposing and transforming the contents of our hearts.

Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people. Leo Tolstoy observes, "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."6

remember these practices earn us nothing in the economy of God. Nothing. Their only purpose is to place us before God. That is all.

We would do well to come to the Bible with these words ringing in our ears: 'You have heard it said . . . but I say to you . . .

Remember the heart of the Father; he is like a shepherd who will risk anything to find that one lost sheep. We do not have to make God willing to forgive. In fact, it is God who is working to make us willing to seek his forgiveness.

God invites us into a variety of Spiritual Disciplines, and we step into them as best we can. These actions place us before God as a living sacrifice. God, in turn, uses our actions to build within us deeply ingrained habit patterns of "righteous and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit

the Spiritual Disciplines are the means God uses for producing in us the needed transformation of heart and mind and soul.

One more thing: this way of living is not confined to people in religious orders or those who have special skills in spiritual matters. No, this life is also for ordinary people. People who work in the high-pressure jobs of information technology and finance. People who are constantly dealing with the stresses of raising children and balancing the family budget. People who teach school and work in hospitals and provide social services and so much more. In short, people just like you and me.

True godliness does not turn us away from hurting, bleeding humanity. Rather it enables us to live fully alive in the midst of human need and enlivens our abilities to bring a healing presence to the bruised and broken around us.

As we see in Ezra's life, committed study of Scripture can bring about much more than merely head knowledge. It can bring God himself into all the recesses of our being, for "the word of God is living and active" (Heb 4:12). Take

Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification. One

Joy is the keynote of all the Disciplines. The purpose of the Disciplines is liberation from the stifling slavery to selfinterest and fear.

One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier. We don't need to straighten others out.

As Thomas Merton says, "We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!"2 Psalm

Bonhoeffer writes, "Real silence, real stillness, really holding one's tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness."6

How, then, do we step into the richness and power of this life?