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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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Richard J. Foster
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More quotes by Richard J. Foster

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When the poor farmer of India is unable to buy a gallon of gasoline to run his simple water pump because the world's demand has priced him out of the market, who is to blame?
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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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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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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Let's discipline ourselves so that our words are few and full.
Richard J. Foster
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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.
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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To pray is to change. This is a great grace. How good of God to provide a path whereby our lives can be taken over by love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.
Richard J. Foster
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Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.
Richard J. Foster
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God's heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small.
Richard J. Foster
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Simplicity is freedom.
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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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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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.
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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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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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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In the context of Quaker worship, it is perfectly appropriate for any person in the congregation to speak a timely word from the Lord.
Richard J. Foster
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Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
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