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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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The lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic it has completely lost touch with reality.
Richard J. Foster
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The inner attitude of the heart is far more crucial than the mechanics for coming into the reality of the spiritual life.
Richard J. Foster
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Our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in muchness and manyness, he will rest satisfied.
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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Today the heart of God is an open wound of love. He aches over our distance and preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to Him. He grieves that we have forgotten Him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence.
Richard J. Foster
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Countless people pray far more than they know. Often they have such a stained-glass image of prayer that they fail to recognize what they are experiencing as prayer and so condemn themselves for not praying.
Richard J. Foster
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If we are silent when we should speak, we are not living the Discipline of silence. If we speak when we should be silent, we again miss the mark.
Richard J. Foster
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Simplicity is freedom.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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Simplicity enables us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible realities of our global village.
Richard J. Foster
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Goals are discovered, not made.
Richard J. Foster
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Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
Richard J. Foster
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Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important
Richard J. Foster
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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.
Richard J. Foster
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Each activity of daily life in which we stretch ourselves on behalf of others is a prayer in action.
Richard J. Foster
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Adoration is the spontaneous yearning of the heart to worship, honor, magnify, and bless God. We ask nothing but to cherish him. We seek nothing but his exaltation. We focus on nothing but his goodness.
Richard J. Foster
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Go another step. Try to live one entire day without words at all. Do it not as a law, but as an experiment. Note your feelings of helplessness and excessive dependence upon words to communicate. Try to find new ways to relate to tohers that are not dependent upon words. Enjoy, savor the day. Learn from it.
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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If the Lord is to be Lord, worship must have priority in our lives. The divine priority is worship first, service second.
Richard J. Foster