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Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or auto mechanics. But when praying, we come underneath, where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent.

Richard J. Foster

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Richard J. Foster
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More quotes by Richard J. Foster

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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.
Richard J. Foster
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Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
Richard J. Foster
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Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't.
Richard J. Foster
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Spiritual direction involves a process through which one person helps another person understand what God is doing and saying.
Richard J. Foster
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One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Silence is intimately related to trust.
Richard J. Foster
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The lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic it has completely lost touch with reality.
Richard J. Foster
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I think of Pope Gregory the Great. He wanted the cloister. He wanted to pray and study, and yet he was thrust into this administrative job, and he submitted to that. And in that submission, he became a great leader. You could say that the only person who is safe to lead is the person who is free to submit.
Richard J. Foster
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Prayer is - listening for the still small voice of God. Listening with the ear of our hearts.
Richard J. Foster
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In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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You will never have time for prayer you must make time.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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Let's discipline ourselves so that our words are few and full.
Richard J. Foster
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Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. Its central reality is found 'in spirit and truth.' It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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Over-consumption is a cancer eating away at our spiritual vitals. It distances us from the great masses of broken bleeding humanity. It converts us into materialists. We become less able to ask the moral questions.
Richard J. Foster
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He is inviting you - and me - to come home, to come home to where we belong, to come home to that for which we were created. His arms are stretched out wide to receive us. His heart is enlarged to take us in.
Richard J. Foster