Richard Foster Quotes

Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him.

To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God's responses.

As you talk to Heavenly Father and pour out your heart to Him, you will draw closer to Him. Then pause, stop, and listen to the feelings of your heart. Seek to understand the promptings of the Spirit. As you pray sincerely, you will come to feel Heavenly Father's great love for you.

I think that the power of the Silent Minute lies in its inherent lack of external direction: what participants actually do during that minute - prayer, contemplation, focus - is up to them.

In my opinion, it is a mistake to expect in prayer a response from God. Often, God's response is outside prayer. And often, we do not link up an outside response with the effort we put into prayer.

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer.

Prayer is nothing but the breathing that out before the Lord, that was first breathed into us by the Spirit of the Lord.

Communicating our questions, hopes, and fears in prayer makes them-even to ourselves-more open and clear.

Prayer is the breath of life to our soul; holiness is impossible without it

Prayer is more than words. It's listening, seeing and feeling.

It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den.

Prayer is a grace through which we pour ourselves out before God and through which He calls us into His presence.

We cannot really know God if we do not pray.

prayer is whenever we consciously try to get in contact with the numinous, the ineffable, the marvelous.

You pray best when the mirror of your soul is empty of every image except the Image of the Invisible Father.

Remember the words of Christ: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." These words are literally true, not figures or fiction. They were the outflow of the heart's blood of one of the greatest sons of God who have ever come to this world of ours; words which came as the fruit of realisation, from a man who had felt and realised God himself; who had spoken with God, lived with God, a hundred times more intensely than you or I see this building.

The prayer of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God as something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way.

Prayer and sacrifice can touch souls better than words.

Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life.

Prayer is our essential lifeline to God's throne and heart.

Prayer draws us near to our own souls.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

What people notice about [when they are on] LSD is either what's right or wrong with themselves or how freaky the world is.

The Lord speaks to us through the Scriptures and in our prayer. Let us learn to keep silence before him, as we meditate upon the Gospel.