Richard Foster Quotes

Faith does not proceed from ourselves, but is the fruit of spiritual regeneration.

If we give God service it must be because He gives us grace. We work for Him because He works in us.

I have so much confidence in the reality of Jesus that I feel no pressure to try to make people act or be a certain way. I'm banking everything on the fact that God actually changes people.

God wills in man only that which is good, in the kingdom of his grace; where the free will yields itself up into the grace, there God wills that which is good in the will, through the grace.

God in His wisdom has decided that He will reward no works but His own.

The work of healing is not my work, but by faith, healing is done. The work of deliverance, great and mighty deliverance, is not my work but is my faith in Him. It is not the works of righteousness which I have done, but according to His grace. I am a product of His grace.

None shall be saved by Christ but those only who work out their own salvation while God is working in them by His truth and His Holy Spirit. We cannot do without God; and God will not do without us.

The life of grace is not an effort on our part to achieve a goal we set ourselves. It is a continually renewed attempt simply to believe that someone else has done all the achieving that is needed and to live in relationship with that person, whether we achieve or not. If that doesn't seem like much to you, you're right: it isn't. And, as a matter of fact, the life of grace is even less than that. It's not even our life at all, but the life of that Someone Else rising like a tide in the ruins of our death.

Give me great sinners to make great saints! They are glorious raw material for Grace to work upon and when you do get them saved, they will shake the very gates of Hell!

The Lord Jesus, everything. In himself worse than nothing. By grace, in Christ, the son of the King.

Faith is a fruit, work, or gift of the Spirit of God, whereby a poor soul is enabled through the mighty operation of God, in a sense of its sins and wretched estate to lay hold on the righteousness, blood, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and coming again of the Son of God which was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem, for eternal life.

The opening of your hearts to receive the Lord Jesus Christ is not a work done by any power of your own, but the arm of the Lord is revealed therein.

My faith rests not in what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what he is doing for me.

Pardon comes not to the soul alone; or rather, Christ comes not to the soul with pardon only! It is that which He opens the door and enters by, but He comes with a Spirit of life and power.

The grace that does not change my life will not save my soul.

I think one of the most rewarding experiences in life is to see people come to Christ and make lifestyle changes. When that happens, you definitely see God behind it. This year we've seen eight students make first-time decisions for Christ and when I see that, it's a great feeling. I'm really thankful that God is changing somebody, or sometimes he's changing me.

We are all so sunk in sin, and so wedded to the world, that we would never turn to God and seek salvation, unless He first called us by His grace. Without a divine call, no one can be saved.

Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved.

There is no better news than that the God who makes the demand for perfection also meets the demand for perfection on our behalf.

No man can put on the robes of Christ’s righteousness till he has taken off his own.

Sanctification is not a work of nature, but a work of grace. It is a transformation of character effected not by moral influences, but supernaturally by the Holy Spirit.

We live in a broken world - and for the life of me I can't get it all right. But Jesus takes all our broken messes and He makes them, by His grace, into a mosaic of grace.

Jesus raised the standard high so we would realize we couldn’t possibly do it without a savior.

Grace alone brings about every good work in us.

God works with power, and can make the unwilling willing; if He undertakes the conversion of a soul, it will be converted. All the pious workings of our heart towards God are the fruit and consequence of the powerful working of His grace in us.