I am reading Streams of Living Water by Foster again. It seems that I find myself reading this book about once a year. Just lots of stuff to absorb. This passage hits me where it hurts. I think good books should do that.

The foundational structure for growth in grace involves training of the body, mind and spirit by means of disciplines of the spiritual life. These Disciplines are well recognized activities of prayer and meditation and study and fasting and solitude and service and worship and celebration and much more. All these activities are ways by which we quite literally present our bodies as "a living sacrifice" to God (Rom 12:1).

By undertaking Disciplines of the spiritual life that we can do, we receive form God the ability to do things that under our own steam we cannot do, such as loving our enemies. The Disciplines, you see, place us into the divine stream of things in such a way that God is able to build within us deeply ingrained habits of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control" (Gal. 5:22b-23a) (page 88)