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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

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

Discipline Helping Needs
Simplicity, then, is getting in touch with the divine center
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Divine Simplicity
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

Hazards Interesting People
The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent version throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Discipline Dream Spiritual
Prayer is simply saying “thank you, bless you, praise you.”
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Bless Praise Prayer
Pride 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.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Ego Names Pride
We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Air Earth Toxic Waste
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

Attitude Christian Spiritual
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.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Evil Humanity Jesus
When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Excellent Life Problem Things
..the true test of spirituality [is] in the freedom to live among people compassionately….Prayer frees us to be controlled by God.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

People Prayer Test
Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit, simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justificat ion
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Discipline Ions Self
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

Lord Speak Worship
reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Addiction Anything Rejects
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

People Reality Sick
The person who does not seek the kingdom first does not seek it at all, regardless of how worthy the idolatry that he or she has substituted for it.
RICHARD J. FOSTER

Doe Firsts Kingdoms

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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