Jon Foreman Quotations | Page 2

Hope is not a substitute for pain. Hope is in spite of pain.

My dying planet needs to see what the body of Christ looks like.

I do have an obligation, however, a debt that cannot be settled by my lyrical decisions. My life will be judged by my obedience, not my ability to confine my lyrics to this box or that.

Sometimes, the best songs are the ones you write without any pen and paper or audio recording device or guitar in your hands. Because there's nothing between you and the melody; it's just a great lyric.

There’s a time to be silent - to build up a reason to sing again.

Anything worth doing in this world is incredibly difficult to do.

Nothing stays together without a fight.

If it doesn't break your heart it isn't love

I often use music as a handle for very emotionally explosive substances: love, sex, God, fear, doubt, politics, the economics of the soul - these are daunting thoughts in the back of my mind that I rarely visit without the safety gloves of song.

Calling has this weight that somehow we think that your calling is fixed. That your calling is this line that you’ve finally found and now you're on that track and that’s what you’re gonna do forever and maybe that's the case. But I feel like calling has much more to to do with the moment that you’re in.

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love another.

For me, even if I'm not a fan of the band in general or maybe it's not the style of music I want to put on for my daughter and me when we're waking up in the morning, there's always something that I can learn from it. And I think those are the things that are surprising.

I use to think that the friction was a bad thing. Everything is to ease pain in our society; pain is very much the enemy. And I don't think that's true. Tension is a good thing. To be pulled tight: that's the only way you can make a proper noise on the guitar or violin.

I think of myself as more of a lover rather than a fighter, but sometimes you have to fight for what you love.

That's what life is, a continual state of journey. You are a river passing downstream.

What do we really want to say to the world? Three main themes. The inability to find completion in our modern society, the inability to find completion within ourselves, and the new way to be human in what Christ offers us - His love and His perfect plan of redemption for us.

I’m really only responsible to make sure that one person is clapping at the end of my life. Because I feel like as a performer, a lot of times you live for everyone else’s applause. That’s a dangerous thing within the church or outside the church.

The tendency in today's culture is to want to be a 'star', but I want to be a servant.

I have horrible acting ability. I can only be one thing and that's it. So for better, for worse, that's all I've got to offer is me. I've got nothing else.

I'm always thinking about songs, I'm thinking of life maybe a little bit more lyrically than a computer programmer or someone like that.

The kingdom of heaven is comprised of the broken, the fatherless, the poor, the starving. Nothing that could create good ratings for NBC.

C.S. Lewis says that fiction is able to sneak past the watchful dragons of religion. It becomes more powerful to speak in poetry. The song goes straight to the heart while the numbers and the math of it will never be able to reach that.

The beauty of what I read in the gospel is the intimacy of what we're called to, that there's no middle man.

Sometimes the things that hurt are worth the pain.

I think that's a challenge as believers - how do you demonstrate the gospel? How do you do that? I mean it's easy to talk about it and say 'Oh this is what we are supposed to be doing' and this is the relevance. But how do you do that with your hands instead of your mouth? How do you do it every day, instead of just onstage, how is it enacted? And I feel like that is one of the ways that we can show what we believe, by how we treat people around the world.

Music is what I do; Christ is why I do it.

Don't be discouraged, but know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance brings character, and character brings hope, and this is a hope which will not disappoint us.

If you truly love someone, you're going to be pure because true love comes from God, and God tells us to remain pure. That's good enough for me.

I want to be a compassionate soul, finding worth and beauty in the worlds around me and within me, attempting to sing a transcendent tune with my temporal position in this life.

The shadow proves the sunshine.

I look around and I know there's a lot in the world that I want to see changed - and I want to be a part of something bigger than myself. I want to see things change, in myself as much as in the world around me.

All music is worship. It just depends on what you’re worshipping.

The biggest thing that I've learned is to run the marathon, not the sprint. By that I mean, don't let the little problems that you face in the hour in daily life cast a shadow over the larger joys that you have, over the course of the years.

Maybe truth is not something that I can possess. Maybe truth is something which possesses me.

When our world falls apart and we have no more faces to wear - that’s when it’s beautiful, and that’s when we change.

IF YOU APPROACH THE WORLD WITH THE APRON OF A SERVANT,THEN YOU ARE ALLOWED TO GO PLACES THAT YOU CAN'T GO IF YOU APPROACH IT WITH THE CROWN OF A KING

Eventually everything fails me, but when I look at the sunset or the sky, I'm reminded what it's like to be alive.

Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.

For me, when I think about Christ, I think about this iconoclastic man who lived and died for the broken. And the paramount underdog, which is basically turning the world on it’s head. Blessed are the poor and blessed are the hungry, blessed are the broken, all these things that feel very backwards in our fame, power, beauty, riches hungry world. That’s who Christ is to me.

Being a creator of a song I get to take all these broken fragments of failure and chaos and weave together something beautiful and meaningful. Decay. Death. Pain. Fall. And if God is a songwriter then these fallen leaves of mine can be redeemed

It was a beautiful letdown, the day I knew, that all the riches this world had to offer me, will never do.

Darkness cannot cast out darkness. You need a light for that. Fear cannot cast out fear. You're gonna need hope for that death warrants more death. But I believe life wants more life and I'm convinced that the greatest weapon we've got is LOVE! And maybe, in a world full of fighters, in a world imploding with hate, maybe to be a lover, you gotta be a fighter. Maybe that's the biggest fight, the only fight worth fighting, the fight you're gonna be in for the rest of your life.

Your story matters, who you are matters, tonight matters, none of it is an accident. You were born for the blue skies.

I yearn to live and love and burn, and yet so much of my time is spent faking and forgetting, faking and forgetting I carry out my disbelief with uninspired hands, my eyes shut, my emotions dulled, my spirit numb. In times like these I am in desperate need of truth to come to me like a blinding light, like a splinter in my soul, reminding me of the brevity of my time here on earth.

I don’t think we can solve the outside problems until we solve the ones within.

If we spend our time obsessing with the future or regretting the past, then we will never live. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow and yesterday cannot be changed.

From the shore, the ocean is forever. It's a beautiful, dangerous place. Music is tied to the sea, born from the struggle, looking for hope. Because hope belongs in the dark places.

Happiness is like peeing in your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.

My challenge is, do not run away from the hard questions. Truly ask yourself what's worth living for in this life.

I'm learning how much I have to learn, how little I know, how fragile my understanding is. I'm learning to be thankful and patient; today is all that we will ever have in this life. If we spend our time obsessing with the future or regretting the past then we will never live. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow and yesterday cannot be changed. The wise man seeks God in the now and brings both his regrets and fears before Him. The freedom that we are offered is truly amazing: to live, today, free from even our own fallen desires. This is where I want to be.

The trick was actually rehearsing and arranging and even recording parts of it on the road. It's a challenge because it's hard to remember where you put your wallet let alone your parts to a song.