Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

by Richard J. Foster Narrated by Richard Rohan

Overview

In the twenty years since its publication, Celebration of Discipline has helped over a million seekers discover a richer spiritual life infused with joy, peace, and a deeper understanding of God. For this special twentieth anniversary edition, Richard J. Foster has added an introduction, in which he shares the story of how this beloved and enduring spiritual guidebook came to be. // Hailed by many as the best modern book on Christian spirituality, Celebration of Discipline explores the "classic Disciplines," or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith. Along the way, Foster shows that it is only by and through these practices that the true path to spiritual growth can be found.

Editorial Reviews

author of A Tree Full of Angels Macrina Wiederkehr

Richard Foster has given us a rare gift.”

author of Girl Meets God Lauren Winner

Foster has taught me more about prayer and living faithfully than just about any other living author.”

Madeleine L’Engle

If everybody in the country could read—and heed—this book, what a difference it would make to the planet.”

Relevant Magazine

This seminal work on the practice of spiritual disciplines is never outdated.”

AudioFile

A well-written exploration of the central spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith…elaborated with conversational clarity and down-to-earth biblical references. Delightfully read, the words and tone will please C. S. Lewis fans or anyone looking for a practical and non-dogmatic spiritual foundation.”

author of A New Kind of Christian Brian D. McLaren

Foster has challenged us to see Christian faith…as a life of spiritual transformation.”

Ronald J. Sider

The best modern book on Christian spirituality..... No other book apart from the Bible has been so helpful to me in the nurturing of my inward journey of prayer and spiritual growth.

Macrina Wiederkehr

Richard Foster has given us a rare gift... The celebration of each discipline in this book hands us a tool that can be useful in helping us to integrate our inner and outer lives.

Lauren Winner

Foster has taught me more about prayer and living faithfully than just about any other living author.

Brian D. McLaren

Foster has challenged us to see Christian faith … as a life of spiritual transformation.

Madeleine L'Engle

If everybody in the country could read—and heed—this book, what a difference it would make to the planet.

FEB/MAR 08 - AudioFile

Listeners will be heartened by the gentle wisdom embodied in this classic spiritual guide. With an intellectual clarity rivaling that of C.S. Lewis, the author explains that the tasks of spiritual discipline can be inward (meditation, prayer, fasting, study), outward (simplicity, solitude, submission, service), or community-focused (confession, worship, guidance, celebration). This welcome advice points to what each of us can do to foster inner growth and moral decisiveness. Richard Rohan’s pleasant enunciation and ability to connect with the material are put to good use narrating this much needed lesson. His sensibilities and relaxed pace calm the mind into becoming open to the possibilities of incorporating structure into one’s spiritual life. T.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172275531
Publisher:	EChristian, Inc.
Publication date:	02/28/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	769,442

Read an Excerpt

Celebration Of Discipline

It is a wonder to me how God uses squiggles on paper to do his work in the hearts and minds of people. How are these squiggles transformed into letters and words and sentences and, finally, meaning? Oh, we may congratulate ourselves on knowing a little about the function of neurotransmitters in the brain or about how endorphin proteins affect learning and memory retention, but if we are honest, we know that thinking itself is a mystery. Doxology is the only appropriate response.

At this writing, it has been two decades since this particular I set of squiggles, Celebration of Discipline, was first published. After the first decade, the publisher, no doubt puzzled by its longevity and popularity, wanted to celebrate this milestone, and asked me to revise the original text-which I was glad to do. And now, after a second decade, the puzzle continues. Somehow (who can ever explain how?) people continue to find help in their daily walk with God through the pages of this book. To celebrate this twentieth anniversary, the publisher has asked me to write an introduction, and, again, I am glad to comply. And perhaps in fulfilling their request it is appropriate to tell how the book you hold in your hands came into being.

Spiritual Bankruptcy

Fresh out of seminary, I was ready to conquer the world. Myfirst appointment was a small church in a thriving region of Southern California. "Here," I mused, "is my chance to show the denominational leadership, nay, the whole world, what I can do." Believe me, visions of far more than sugar plums were dancing in my head. I was sobered a bit when the former pastor, upon learning of myappointment, put his arm on my shoulder and said, "Well, Foster, it's your turn to be in the desert!" But the "sobering" lasted only a moment. "This church will become a,shining light set on a hill. The people will literally flood in." This I thought, and this I believed.

After three months or so I had given that tiny congregation everything I knew, and then some, and it had done them no good. I had nothing left to give. I was spiritually bankrupt and I knew it. So much for a "shining light on a hill."

My problem was more than having something to say from Sunday to Sunday. My problem was that what I did say had no power to help people. I had no substance, no depth. The people were starving for a word from God, and I had nothing to give them. Nothing.

Three Converging Influences

In the wisdom of God, however, three influences were converging in that little church that would change the direction of my ministry, indeed, of my whole life. Together they would provide the depth and the substance I needed personally and the depth and the substance that, in time, would lead to the, penning of Celebration. But that is running ahead of my story.

The first thing to happen was precipitated by an influx of genuinely needy people into our small congregation. They simply flowed in like streams after a thunderstorm. Oh, how they hungered for spiritual substance and, oh, how willing they were to do almost anything to find it. These were the castoffs of today's fast-track culture-"the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on"-and so their neediness was quite obvious. Just as obvious was my inability to give them substantive pastoral care.

This lack of any real spiritual density led me, almost instinctively, to the Devotional Masters of the Christian faith-Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich and so many others. Somehow I sensed that these ancient writers lived and breathed the spiritual substance these new friends in our little fellowship were seeking so desperately.

To be sure, I had encountered many of these writers in academic settings. But that was a detached, cerebral kind of reading. Now I read with different eyes, for daily I was working with heartbreaking, soul-crushing, gut-wrenching human need. These "saints," as we sometimes call them, knew God in a way that I clearly did not. They experienced Jesus as the defining reality of their lives. They possessed a flaming vision of God that blinded them to all competing loyalties. They experienced life built on the Rock.

It hardly mattered who I read in those days-Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God, Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, John Woolman's Journal, A. W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy--they knew God in ways far beyond anything I had ever experienced. Or even wanted to experience! But as I continued to soak in the stories of these women and men who were aflame with the fire of divine love, I began desiring this kind of life for myself. And desiring led to seeking and seeking led to finding. And what I found settled me, deepened me, thickened me.

The second influence came from an individual in that tiny congregation, Dr. Dallas Willard. A philosopher by profession, Dallas was well versed in the classics, and, at the same time, had an uncanny perception into the contemporary scene. He taught our fledgling little group: studies in Romans and Acts and the Sermon on the Mount and the Spiritual Disciplines and more. But regardless of the specific topic, he constantly drew us into the big picture. It was life-based teaching that always respected the classical sources and always sought to give them contemporary expression. Those teachings gave me the Weltanschauung, the worldview, upon which I could synthesize all my academic and biblical training.

Celebration Of Discipline. Copyright © by Richard J. Foster. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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