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The needed change within us is God's work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God: it is a grace that is given.

Richard J. Foster

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Richard J. Foster
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More quotes by 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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Let's discipline ourselves so that our words are few and full.
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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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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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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Simplicity is the only thing that sufficiently reorients our lives so that possessions can be genuinely enjoyed without destroying us.
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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Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.
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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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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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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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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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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God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.
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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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
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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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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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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