A Quote by Richard J. Foster

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

Quote Topics

Conditions Disciplines Done Earth Farmer Forces Get Grain Ground Grow Growing Helpless Natural Nothing Only Over Place Plants Provide Right Seed Something Sowing Spirit Spiritual Spiritual Disciplines Take Themselves Then Up Us Waters Way

Quote Author

Richard J. Foster
Author
Born: May 3, 1942

The power of God tenderizes and changes us, not spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines only position us to receive.

Mike Bickle

Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.

Truman Capote

It takes 16 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef. It takes 1 lb of grain to make 1 lb of bread. So, how many more plants are you eating if you eat a pound of beef? Secondly, I've harvested cabbages and pulled up carrots out of the ground and I've been in slaughter-houses and seen the animals have their brains bashed out with sledgehammers and their throats cut - the experiences are not comparable.

John Robbins

The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There are more stars known to exist right now than the total number of all the grains of sand on every beach in the entire world. With those kinds of odds, it would seem downright naive for someone to go to a beach in, say, some out-of-the-way inlet in Baffin Bay, stoop to pick up only one tiny grain of sand, and declare that that grain alone was the only place where life could exist.

Hugh Downs

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

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

My father, who was a cabinetmaker, told me, 'Wood has a grain and if you go into the grain, you have beauty. If you go against it, you have splinters - it breaks.' And I took that as my view of life. You have to follow the grain - to be sensitive to the direction of life.

Christian Louboutin

...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?

Robin McKinley

Drop a grain of California gold into the ground, and there it will lie unchanged until the end of time; . . . drop a grain of our blessed gold [wheat] into the ground and lo! a mystery.

Edward Everett

Grain isn't structured like a screen door that you're looking through, but pixels are. Film-based grain is just all over the place, one frame totally different from the next. So your edges are coolly sharp and have a different feeling, an organic feeling rather than this mechanic feeling you get with digital.

Greg MacGillivray

It's too bad prayer comes bundled in a package of 'spiritual disciplines.' Really, we should see prayer as a spiritual privilege. We don't do it as a callisthenic exercise to gain points with God; we do it, because it is good for us in every way.

Philip Yancey

Part of the heart of anarchy is, dare to go against the grain of the conventional ways of thinking about our realities. Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that's been a place of hope.