Richard J. Foster is a Christian theologian and author in the Quaker tradition. His writings speak to a broad Christian audience. He has been a professor at Friends University and pastor of Evangelical Friends churches. Foster resides in Denver, Colorado.Foster is best known for his 1978 book Celebration of Discipline (ISBN 0-06-062839-1), which examines the inward disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditation, and study in the Christian life, the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, and the corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. It has sold over one million copies. It was named by Christianity Today as one of the top ten books of the twentieth century.
We are working with God to determine the future! Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly. We are to change the world by prayers
In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of a Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered people. All of creation watches expectantly for the springing up of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know in this life the life and power of the kingdom of God. It has happened before. It can happen again…
“So how do we pray in Jesus’ name, that is, in conformity to his nature? Jesus himself says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). This “abide in me” is the all-inclusive condition for effective intercession. It is the key for prayer in the name of Jesus. We learn to become like the branch, which receives its life from the vine: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). Nothing is more important to a life of prayer than learning how to become a branch.”
Nothing is more crucial to our lives or more central to the heart of God than the transformation of the human personality. Paul, that great advocate of human transformation, once spoke of being “in travail until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). And in another letter he says, “Those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29)
“Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”
Tags: Prayer, Renovare, Richard Foster, spiritual formation
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