Articles By: Richard Foster
In the early ’70s, Richard J. Foster began to pastor a small congregation, Woodlake Avenue Church, in Canoga Park, California. One of his Sunday school teachers was a professor at a nearby university. His name was Dallas Willard. Together they began to equip a ragtag bunch of would-be saints—many coming from the counter-culture—and experiment with various disciplines of the spiritual life.
Read More Post a comment (0)Dear Readers of Conversations,
In two recent Renovaré publications I shared some of my hopes and dreams for the modern spiritual formation movement. At times I was quite candid—you might even say blunt. But always I was writing from my heart about a vision for the future that I believe God will bring to pass as we embrace more and more the mystery of Christ within.
Read More Post a comment (0)Realities reside in our universe that go far beyond what we can see and touch and smell. There are immense spiritual realities. God, of course. And angels, God’s messengers. The Bible is actually a book full of angels. Please, I do not mean fluffy white beings with flowing robes and feathered wings. Nor do I mean the childlike nudes of Raphael or, even worse, the chubby cherubs of today’s clip art. No, in the Bible when an angel appears on the scene, the angel first must calm the utter panic in humans. When the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, we are told that Zechariah “was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him” (Luke 1:12). Also, the angel population evidently is enormous, for we are told in Revelation that surrounding God’s throne are angels who number “myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands” (Revelation 5:11).
Read More Post a comment (0)“You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable
seed, through the living and enduring word of God.”
1 Peter 1: 23, NRSV
“Anyone wishing to save humanity today must first of all save the word.”
Jacque Ellul
At the beginning of time the debar Yahweh, the Word of the Lord, brought the universe crashing into existence. God said, “Let there be light,” and the Big Bang occurred. This ever-living, ever-speaking, ever-creating Word of God is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thought and intents of the heart.” As Dallas Willard has put it, God is “our communicating Cosmos.”
