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. FOSTERPride is one of the socially acceptable sins in some corners of the evangelical culture. Its just straight-out ego gratification – how important I am; whether my name gets on the building or on the TV program or in the magazine article.
More Richard J. Foster Quotes
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Spiritual direction is an interpersonal relationship in which we learn how to grow, live, and love in the spiritual life.
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If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy.
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Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.
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Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God’s great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
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What is urgently needed is a bold new move from a consumer economy to a conserver economy in all of the developed countries, and particularly in the United States.
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Inward solitude has outward manifestations. There is the freedom to be alone, not in order to be away from people but in order to hear the divine Whisper better.
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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.
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We must understand the connection between inner solitude and inner silence; they are inseparable. All the masters of the interior life speak of the two in the same breath.
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Conversion does not make us perfect, but it does catapult us into a total experience of discipleship that affects – and infects – every sphere of our living.
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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.
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Prayer is simply saying “thank you, bless you, praise you.”
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The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent version throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.
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Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.
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Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit, simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justificat ion
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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