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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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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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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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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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Simplicity is freedom.
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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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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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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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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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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Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important
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 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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Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.
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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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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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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Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.
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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The lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic it has completely lost touch with reality.
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