110+ Richard J. Foster Quotes On Education, Prayer And Worship

Richard J. Foster is an American author, speaker, and theologian. He is the author of the best-selling book Celebration of Discipline, which explores the spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith. He is also the founder of the Renovaré spiritual formation ministry, which seeks to help people grow in their relationship with God. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Richard J. Foster on education, leadership, prayer.

Top 10 Richard J. Foster Quotes

1. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.
2. When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight.
3. Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be light-hearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride.
4. Worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience.
5. Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
6. 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.
7. Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.
8. Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.
9. In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture so a child of God cannot offer a bad prayer.
10. 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.

Richard J. Foster Short Quotes

• Grace saves us from life without God-even more it empowers us for life with God.
• Prayer is simply saying "thank you, bless you, praise you."
• You will never have time for prayer; you must make time.
• It is in the everyday and the commonplace that we learn patience, acceptance, and contentment.
• Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
• Freedom in the Gospel does not mean license. It means opportunity.
• reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.
• Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important
• Goals are discovered, not made.
• Stop trying to impress people with your clothes and impress them with your life.

Richard J. Foster Quotes About Prayer

Each activity of daily life in which we stretch ourselves on behalf of others is a prayer in action. — Richard J. Foster

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

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

Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul. — Richard J. Foster

Prayer is more than thoughts and feelings expressed in words. It is the opening of mind and heart - our whole being to God our Abba Father. It is Divine Union. — Richard J. Foster

Prayer is - listening for the still small voice of God. Listening with the "ear of our hearts." — Richard J. Foster

Prayer is seeing His greatness to the extent we can receive it. — Richard J. Foster

..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

And so I urge you: carry on an ongoing conversation with God about the daily stuff of life, a little like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. For now, do not worry about "proper" praying, just talk to God. — Richard J. Foster

We should all without shame enrol in the school of contemplative prayer. — Richard J. Foster

Richard J. Foster Quotes About Worship

Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit. — Richard J. Foster

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

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

As worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life. — Richard J. Foster

In worship an increased power steals its way into the heart sanctuary, an increased compassion grows in the soul. To worship is to change. — Richard J. Foster

If worship does not change us it has not been worship. — Richard J. Foster

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

If the Lord is to be Lord, worship must have priority in our lives. The divine priority is worship first, service second. — Richard J. Foster

Richard J. Foster Quotes About Spiritual

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

In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience. — Richard J. Foster

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

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

Spiritual direction involves a process through which one person helps another person understand what God is doing and saying. — Richard J. Foster

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

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

In spiritual direction there is absolutely no domination or control. — Richard J. Foster

Spiritual direction is an interpersonal relationship in which we learn how to grow, live, and love in the spiritual life. — Richard J. Foster

Supremely, spiritual directors/mentors/pastors are persons who have a sense of being established in God. Otherwise they are too dangerous to be allowed into the soul space of others. — Richard J. Foster

Richard J. Foster Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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. — Richard J. Foster

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

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

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

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

Absolute freedom is absolute nonsense! We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, and fixed habit. — Richard J. Foster

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

Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit, simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justificat ion — Richard J. Foster

Our God is not made of stone. His heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. A cup of cold water is enough to put tears in the eyes of God. God celebrates our feeble expressions of gratitude. — Richard J. Foster

God's heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. — Richard J. Foster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air. — Richard J. Foster

Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. 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

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

Giving with glad and generous hearts has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon greed. — Richard J. Foster

Prayer is - a means of uniting us unto Himself. — Richard J. Foster

Overpopulation is the problem of the third and fourth World; over-consumption is the problem of the West. The average American child this year will consume as much of the world's resources as twenty children born in India. Deliberate and calculated waste is the central aspect of the American economy. We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air. — Richard J. Foster

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

The message from all quarters is the same: our undisciplined consumption must end. If we continue to gobble up our resources without any regard to stewardship and to spew out our deadly wastes over land, sea, and air, we may well be drawing down the final curtain upon ourselves. — Richard J. Foster

Simplicity enables us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible realities of our global village. — Richard J. Foster

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

We have real difficulty here because everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul. Personal formation into the likeness of Christ is arduous and lifelong. — Richard J. Foster

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. — Richard J. Foster

One remarkable feature of the devotional masters is the incredible sense of uniform witness in the midst of such diverse personalities... and the necessity of Christian simplicity is one of their most consistent themes. — Richard J. Foster

In the chapter on study we considered the importance of observing ourselves to see how often our speech is a frantic attempt to explain and justify our actions. Having seen this in ourselves, let's experiment with doing deeds without any words of explanation whatever. We note our sense of fear that people will misunderstand why we have done what we have done. We seek to allow God to be our justifier. — Richard J. Foster

Prayer frees us to be controlled by God. To pray is to change. There is no greater liberating force in the Christian life than prayer. To enter the gaze of the Holy is never to be the same. To bathe in the Light in quiet wonder and glad surrender is to be slowly, permanently transformed. There is a richer inward orientation, a deep hunger for communion. We feel as if we are being taken over by a new control Center, and so we are. — Richard J. Foster

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

The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find Him at all. — Richard J. Foster

To most observers, innovation is a solitary process that requires creativity and genius, perhaps even greatness. It can't, in their view, be managed or predicted, just hoped for and, perhaps, facilitated. But for me innovation was and still is more than that. It was a battle in the marketplace between innovators or attackers trying to make money by changing the order of things, and defenders protecting their cash flow. — Richard J. Foster

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

Jesus reminds us that prayer is a little like children coming to their parents. Our children come to us with the craziest requests at times! Often we are grieved by the meanness and selfishness in their requests, but we would be all the more grieved if they never came to us even with their meanness and selfishness. We are simply glad that they do come--mixed motives and all. — Richard J. Foster

Without the cross the Discipline of Confession would be merely therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves an objective [a better word would have been "metaphysical"] change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit. — Richard J. Foster

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

Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love. — Richard J. Foster

It is Stoicism that demands a closed universe, not the Bible. — Richard J. Foster

Prayer involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God's thoughts after Him: to desire the things He desires, to love the things He loves, to will the things He wills. — Richard J. Foster

Simplicity is the only thing that sufficiently reorients our lives so that possessions can be genuinely enjoyed without destroying us. — Richard J. Foster

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. — Richard J. Foster

The Bible is teh means through which we are introduced to Jesus and invited to follow Him in the life of humility and service. Secured by the knowledge that in Christ, our origin... and destination is God, we will yield the fruit of service to God. This is the "so what" of our Bible reading. Does it shape our spirits in love and humility? Does it lead us more fully into life with God? (Life with God, p. 34-35) — Richard J. Foster

There is an old proverb to the effect that 'all those who open their mouths, close their eyes!' The purpose of silence and solitude is to be able to see and hear. Control rather than no noise is the key to silence. James saw clearly that the person who could control his tounge is perfect (James 3:1-12). Under the Discipline of silence and solitude we learn when to speak and when to refrain from speaking. — Richard J. Foster

Simplicity is freedom. — Richard J. Foster

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

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

The lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic; it has completely lost touch with reality. — Richard J. Foster

Simplicity, then, is getting in touch with the divine center — Richard J. Foster

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. — Richard J. Foster

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

Prayer is - loving conversation with the One who has invited us into His embrace. — Richard J. Foster

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. — Richard J. Foster

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

Four times a year withdraw for three to four hours for the purpose of reorienting your life goals — Richard J. Foster

If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this leads us to prayer. — Richard J. Foster

If we are silent when we should speak, we are not living the Discipline of silence. If we speak when we should be silent, we again miss the mark. — Richard J. Foster

But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God's love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. The fear and pride that clings to us like barnacles cling to others also. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed. — Richard J. Foster

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. — Richard J. Foster

Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't. — Richard J. Foster

Children do not find it difficult or complicated to talk to their parents, nor do they feel embarrassed to bring the simplest need to their attention. Neither should we hesitate to bring the simplest requests confidently to the Father. — Richard J. Foster

Life Lessons by Richard J. Foster

1. Richard J. Foster encourages us to practice spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, and meditation in order to foster a deeper connection to God.
2. He also emphasizes the importance of living with intentionality, taking time to reflect on our lives and prioritize what is truly important.
3. Lastly, he encourages us to be more mindful of our actions and to make decisions that are rooted in our faith in God.