Quotes by Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

“A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural ...”

“The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”

“The great writings interact with one another. They cannot be read in isolation..”

“We are not trying to manipulate God and tell Him what to do. Rather, we are asking Him to tell us what to do.”

“Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.”

“The mind will always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates.”

“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 sta...”

“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 ...”

“Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It ...”

“Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams agains...”

“Cause every task of your day to be a sacred ministry to the Lord. however mundane your duties, for you they are a sacrament.”

“Celebration comes when the common features of life are redeemed.”

“Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. We are content to have the message second-hand. One of Israel's fatal mistakes was their insistence on hav...”

“Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else h...”

“Study cannot happen until we are subject to the subject.”

“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, tha...”

“Freedom in the Gospel does not mean license. It means opportunity.”

“The purpose of the Disciplines is freedom. Our aim is the freedom, not the Discipline. The moment we make the Discipline our central focus we will turn it into law and lose the corresponding freedo...”

“If we watch the interactions between human beings, we will receive a graduate-level education.”

“Important insights ought never to be limited to the group from which may arise.”