Worth Celebrating: A Biography of Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline

by Miriam Dixon

As Richard Foster reflected on what he was seeing and hearing from readers, he drew the same conclusion. People were mistaking the means for the end. They were centering on the Disciplines themselves as though they were the most important thing. Richard found himself repeatedly stressing, “When we look at the Bible, we don’t find a great amount of discussion about the spiritual Disciplines. Oh, it’s there, and it’s important—but the one thing that is overwhelmingly important in the Bible is hearing and obeying God. The Disciplines are only a way of helping us to do that; they are a way we set ourselves before God. It is God who accomplishes the work of transformation in the human heart.”7 Renovaré

Always insist that the focus be your relationship with God, the with-God life that we’re after, and not on how to master one practice or another. One practice might help this individual; another practice is what will help that individual. We learn the heart of the person, and spiritual Disciplines appropriate for the individual will flow out of this life together. We don’t try to nail any of this down too tight. In my opinion, it is futile to try to measure this or that. We can know that a person is growing spiritually when they are more loving. That’s how we know.