Best quotes by Jon Foreman

I look for places where there's no one out on the water. I'd rather surf a wave to myself than fight a crowd.

I feel like that's something the church has done really badly is actually confessing. We are sinners. We are broken, shattered people that do things selfishly, out of arrogance, pride, lust, greed. And all have fallen short. That doesn't mean some we're definitely a part of that inclusive all.

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.

There are tears that shine like a smile, sobbing like a sunrise for the truth.

Our world spins upside down and sometimes we have to lose our grip on the things we value in this life in order to grab on to true life.

Life tears at us and scars us as children so we adopt facades and masks to hide this part of us, to keep this sacred part of ourselves from the pain.

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.

Just as drowning cannot be equated with swimming, mere existence is not the same as abundant life. We have been offered a new way to live – a new way to be human.

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

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

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.

Think deeply about life, it's worth it!

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

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.

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

Entropy is one of the laws of thermodynamics. It's a physical law that says everything in nature is moving from order to disorder. In our lives this same principle is at work. As time moves on, things break down as we make mistakes. This is the 'letdown' every person experiences because of sin. For Christians this concept doesn't end there because we realize God's 'beautiful' mercy and grace restores the order in our lives.

I think sunrises are rarer for me, but sunset is my favourite time of day.

I’ve never used music to sell my faith and I’ve never used faith to sell my music. I think they are both intrinsic parts of who I am. We’ve always tried to define our music outside of genres…what is a genre? A genre’s a cage or a box and for us our music is best with fangs and some claws running free in the wild.

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 am often tempted to think of success in terms that are defined by others: records sold, popularity gained, album reviews, etc. These are impossible demands, however, and they can never be satisfied. Letting finite others define our worth is a horrible way to live. Only the Infinite Other [God] has the authority to do this.

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

Hope is not something you can just place in your back pocket or put your fingers around – it’s the belief in a world that has yet to exist.

Life is a battlefield. I don't have enough time on the planet to play games.

If you can have a couple of tight friends that you can tell things to, that you can say, 'Hey, this is what I'm struggling with,' and then pray and talk about it, then that's an incredible thing.

Information has become king, whereas wisdom should be king and there is a big difference between the two.

Sometimes it can be really hard in our fast paced society to slow ourselves down enough to begin to listen to God's voice. The dilemma exists in my position as well. To be a follower of Christ is to emulate Him. When He went off alone into the desert to pray, He was teaching a valuable lesson.

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

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

In my opinion, the best way of showing someone the best way to live life is by living it.

Nothing stays together without a fight.

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.

When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. But when life hands you hurricanes, you go surfing.

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 sometimes we can use spirituality as a vehicle to go closer to the things that frighten us and sometimes we can use it as a shield. I'm guilty of it too. I think spiritual words can do one or the other. Because when I hear people say, in a religion setting, 'Glory,' 'Praise the Lord,' 'Hallelujah,' but it doesn't mean anything, those are actually words that distance us from God, ironically enough.

Sometimes the things that hurt are worth the pain.

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.

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.

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.

The shadow proves the sunshine.

Inside all of us, we know the truth of life that there's something more than the next new cell phone or gadget or relationship and that our heart beats in time with the sunset.

Live rather than talk. Talk is cheap and the tabloids scream about it every day.

If comparison is the thief of joy, then our culture is being robbed blind.

Every day of your life, you change the world. Absolutely, yes, we're out to change the world. I mean, you change it whether you like it or not. You wake up and you talk to the grocer. You either kick your dog or you pet him. There's a million decisions you have every day where you change the world.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I think that we’re a culture that runs away from death, for good reason. Nobody really wants to think about the fact that we’re going to be lifeless food for worms in a coffin someday. But at the same time, I feel like knowing that you’re going to die can be an incredibly rewarding, powerful knowledge. It inspires us to live in ways that we wouldn’t if we were ignorant. I feel like that has inspired me to care about every breath. For me it’s not a morbid curiosity, it’s just wanting to make sure that every moment I have here on the Earth while I am breathing is accounted for.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The easiest thing to do is throw a rock. It's a lot harder to create a stained glass window. I used to get upset at the people who threw rocks but now I'd rather spend my time building the stained glass windows.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.