Top 160 Richard J. Foster Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The mind will always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates.”

— Richard J. Foster

102. “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 freedom... Let us forever center on Christ and view the Spiritual Disciplines as a way of drawing us closer to His heart.”

— Richard J. Foster

103. “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

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

— Richard J. Foster

105. “Dallas Willard writes, “If you want to experience the flow of love as never before, the next time you are in a competitive situation, pray that the others around you will be more outstanding, more praised, and more used of God than yourself. If Christians were universally to do this for each other, the earth would soon be filled with the knowledge of God’s glory.”4.”

— Richard J. Foster

106. “Simplicity enables us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible realities of our global village.”

— Richard J. Foster

107. “Lord, take as your right, and receive as my gift, all my freedom, my memory, my understanding and my will. Whatever I am and whatever I possess, you have given it to me; I restore it all to you again, to be at your disposal, according to your will. Give me only a love for you, and the gift of your grace; then I am rich enough, and ask for nothing more. – St. Ignatius of Loyola.”

— Richard J. Foster

108. “Learn that trust precedes faith. Faith is a little like putting your car into gear, and right now you cannot exercise faith, you cannot move forward. Do not berate yourself for this. But when you are unable to put your spiritual life into drive, do not put it into reverse; put it into neutral. Trust is how you put your spiritual life in neutral. Trust is confidence in the character of God.”

— Richard J. Foster

109. “Celebration heartily done makes our deprivations and sorrows seem small, and we find in it great strength to do the will of our God because his goodness becomes so real to us.” – Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines8.”

— Richard J. Foster

110. “In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds.”

— Richard J. Foster

111. “God, what is man’s best gift to mankind? To be beautiful of soul and then let people see into your soul.”

— Richard J. Foster

112. “You will never have time for prayer; you must make time.”

— Richard J. Foster

113. “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 has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin.”

— Richard J. Foster

114. “In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience.”

— Richard J. Foster

115. “We should all without shame enrol in the school of contemplative prayer.”

— Richard J. Foster

116. “Thomas Merton writes that if we have meditated on the events of the Passion but have not meditated on Dachau and Auschwitz, our perception of God at work in present times is incomplete.”

— Richard J. Foster

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

— Richard J. Foster

118. “But when we pray, genuinely pray, the real condition of our heart is revealed. This is as it should be. This is when God truly begins to work with us. The adventure is just beginning.”

— Richard J. Foster

119. “There simply are no biblical laws that command regular fasting. Our freedom in the gospel, however, does not mean license; it means opportunity.”

— Richard J. Foster

120. “Law will take over because law always carries with it a sense of security and manipulative power.”

— Richard J. Foster

121. “The truly Christian imagination never lets Jesus Christ out of her sight.”

— Richard J. Foster

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

— Richard J. Foster

123. “Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things.”

— Richard J. Foster

124. “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

125. “True service is a lifestyle. It acts from the ingrained patterns of living. It springs spontaneously to meet human need.”

— Richard J. Foster

126. “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

127. “Little children, love one another.”

— Richard J. Foster

128. “Prayer is a little like that. With simplicity of heart we allow ourselves to be gathered up into the arms of the Father and let him sing his love song over us.”

— Richard J. Foster

129. “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

130. “Prayer is – loving conversation with the One who has invited us into His embrace.”

— Richard J. Foster

131. “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 forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain... This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines – they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.”

— Richard J. Foster

132. “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” – C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms6.”

— Richard J. Foster

133. “To use good things to our own ends is always a false religion.”

— Richard J. Foster

134. “Restriction often enhances clarity.”

— Richard J. Foster

135. “The Bible is the loving heart of God made visible and plain. And receiving this message of exquisite love is the great privilege of all who long for life with God.”

— Richard J. Foster

136. “Through prayer and study, worship and service, we regularly digest God’s word into the core of our being, where it feeds and transforms us. Continue.”

— Richard J. Foster

137. “There is a need today for what I call prophetic simplicity. We need voices of dissent that point to another way, creative models that take exception to the givens of society.”

— Richard J. Foster

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

— Richard J. Foster

139. “Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort. -P. 11.”

— Richard J. Foster

140. “It is important to recognize this fact and be easy with yourself. This time will pass – sooner than you think. Rather than trying to pray in some fanciful isolation that you will never find, discover God in your times with your baby. God will become real to you through your baby.”

— Richard J. Foster

141. “Our lifestyle is not our private affair. We dare not allow each person to do what is right in his or her own eyes. The Gospel demands more of us: it is obligatory upon us to help one another hammer out the shape of Christian simplicity in the midst of modern affluence.”

— Richard J. Foster

142. “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

143. “It is precisely in the “slop-bucket job” – the work that we abhor – where we will find God the most. We do not need to have good feelings or a warm glow in order to do work for the glory of God. All good work is pleasing to the Father. Even the jobs that seem meaningless and mindless to us are highly valued in the order of the kingdom of God. God values the ordinary.”

— Richard J. Foster

144. “Do we see a college education, for example, as a ticket to privilege or as a training for service to the needy? What do we teach our teenagers in this matter? Do we urge them to enter college because it will better equip them to serve? Or do we try to bribe them with promises of future status and salary increases? No wonder they graduate more deeply concerned about their standard of living than about suffering humanity. As.”

— Richard J. Foster

145. “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

146. “God’s blessing is not for personal aggrandizement, but to benefit and bless all the peoples of the earth. To understand the distinction makes all the difference in the world. The theology of wealth says, ‘I give so that I can get.’ Christian simplicity says, ‘I get so that I can give.’ The difference is profound.”

— Richard J. Foster

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

— Richard J. Foster

148. “It is one thing to act like a servant; it is quite another to be a servant.”

— Richard J. Foster

149. “Four times a year withdraw for three to four hours for the purpose of reorienting your life goals.”

— Richard J. Foster

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

— Richard J. Foster