Quotes from Richard J. Foster

Lord, your way is perfect: Help us always to trust in your goodness, so that, walking with you and following you in all simplicity, we may possess quiet and contented minds, and may cast all our care on you, for you care for us. Grant this, Lord, for your dear Son's sake, Jesus Christ. Amen. —Christina Rossetti

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.

The Covenant of Place gives us the gift of focus.

we are not just saved by grace; we live by grace. And we pray by grace and fast by grace and study by grace and serve by grace and worship by grace.

The opposite of grace is works, but not effort.

As Martin Luther writes: The sinful worship of Mammon does not consist in eating and drinking and wearing clothes . . . for the needs of this life and of the body make food and clothing a requirement. But the sin consists in being concerned about it and making it the reliance and confidence of your heart . . .1

In Celebration of Discipline Richard Foster makes a distinction between self-righteous service and true service. Self-righteous service flows out of human effort and goals; true service flows out of God and love.6

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.

Solitude is both a "vacation with God" and a "furnace of transformation." "The

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. "We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.

Simplicity is freedom. Duplicity is bondage. Simplicity brings joy and balance. Duplicity brings anxiety and fear.

Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul. When our reply to God is most direct of all, it is called adoration.

In time, however, we find that solitude gives us power not to win the rat race but to ignore the rat race altogether.

Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. —From the breastplate of St. Patrick

Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it. —JOHN WESLEY

Teach me patience, Lord, and continue to stretch my understanding of who you are and how you work in the world. Continue to cultivate within me the humility to know that your way is best. Amen. For

Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people. Leo Tolstoy observes, "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."6 Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort.

Remember that God's intention is that we each come to a fuller knowledge of him as we deepen our personal fellowship with one another." —Richard J. Foster and others, eds., The Life with God Bible 4

Faith often means taking a voluntary step from the known into the unknown in response to God's leading.

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God. —WILLIAM TEMPLE

Remember, God is working, always working, to form us and conform us and transform us into the image of Christ.

There are two sides to the Prayer of Adoration: thanksgiving and praise. The usual distinction between these two experiences is this: in thanksgiving we give glory to God for what he has done for us; in praise we give glory to God for who he is in himself.

But all authentic prayer is a scraping of the heart whereby the dregs of the soul are offered up to God. Nehemiah's

We may be able to begin tennis instruction or piano lessons by dint of will, but we will not keep at them for long without joy. In fact, the only reason we can begin is because we know that joy is the end result. That is what sustains all novices; they know there is a sense of pleasure, enjoyment, joy in mastery.