Spiritual Classics: Selected Readings on the Twelve Spiritual Disciplines

by Richard J. Foster, Emilie Griffin, Renovare

Overview

The Brightest Lights of the Christian Tradition

St. Augustine, Thomas Merton, Fredrick Buechner, Evelyn Underhill, A.W. Tozer, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas More, Martin Luther King, Jr., Amy Carmichael, Simone Weil, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hildegard of Bingen, John Milton, Dorothy Day, Leo Tolstoy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and more. . .

From nearly two thousand years of Christian writing comes Spiritual Classcs,fifty–two selections complete with a profile of each author, guided meditations for group and individual use, and reflections containing questions and exercises. Editors Richard Foster and Emilie Griffith offer their expertise by selecting inspirational writings and including their own commentary and recommendations for further guided reading and exploration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060628727
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/13/2007
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	443,208
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Richard J. Foster is the author of several bestselling books, including Celebration of Discipline, Streams of Living Water, Life with God, and Prayer, which was Christianity Today's Book of the Year and the winner of the Gold Medallion Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. He is the founder of Renovaré, an organization and a movement committed to the renewal of the church of Jesus Christ in all its multifaceted expressions, and the editor of The Life with God Bible.

Emilie Griffin is the author of five books about religious experience, including Clinging: The Experience of Prayer and Homeward Voyage: Reflections on Life-Changes.

Renovaré (from the Latin meaning "to renew") is an intrachurch movement committed to the renewal of the church of Jesus Christ in all its multifaceted manifestations. Founded by bestselling author and well-known speaker Richard J. Foster, Renovaré is Christian in commitment, international in scope, and ecumenical in breadth. Visit the Renovaré website at www.renovare.us.

Read an Excerpt

A GODLY MEDITATION

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at nought,
To set my mind fast upon thee.
And not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company,
Little and little utterly to cast off the world,
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly phantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help,
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know mine own vilety [vileness] and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins passed [past],
For the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here,
To be joyful of tribulations,
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life.
To bear the cross with Christ,
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand,
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell,
To pray for pardon before the judge come.
To have continually in mind the passion that
Christ suffered for me,
For his benefits uncessantly to give him thanks.
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness,
Recreations not necessary to cut off,
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all, to set the loss at right nought,
for the winning of Christ.
To think my most enemies my best friends,
For the brethren of Josephcould never have done him so much good with their
These minds are more to be desired of every man, than all the treasure
of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid
together all upon one heap.