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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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Richard J. Foster
People
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Countless
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More quotes by Richard J. Foster

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The Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do. We must never lose sight of this fact. It is one thing to talk piously about 'the solitude of the heart,' but if that does not somehow work its way into our experience, then we have missed the point of the Disciplines. We are dealing with actions, not merely states of mind.
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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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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It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. This should not be. Of all people, we should be the most free, alive, interesting.
Richard J. Foster
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The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture.
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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Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different
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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Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
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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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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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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You see, we need instruction on how to possess money without being possessed by money. We need help to learn how to own things without treasuring them. We need the discipline that will allow us to live simply while managing great wealth and power.
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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Just as worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship.
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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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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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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Simplicity, then, is getting in touch with the divine center
Richard J. Foster
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In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of the Spirit-led, Spirit-intoxicaed, Spirit-empowered peole. All of creation watches expectantly for the springing up of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know in this likfe the life and power of the Kindgom of God. It happened before, it can happen again.
Richard J. Foster