Jon Foreman Quotes & Sayings

I try to surf everyday or at least go for a walk on the beach if the waves are flat. The more I travel, the more I appreciate where I live and the ocean. — Jon Foreman

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

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

You want songs to sound cohesive with the other songs on the record but when you first start writing you just want to write to tell the truth. — Jon Foreman

I usually write from my own experience, and that's definitely a true statement for me. I think having a song about desiring to live and wanting to get it right, which many of my songs do, often I have to clarify that I haven't figured it out yet. — Jon Foreman

Music is mere tuning a song with words; to some degree you have a beautiful endeavor of cosigning God's blank checks and you're actually co-creating. You're certainly not the creator with the capital C, but you're embarking on an endeavor, you're using the building blocks that have been given to you by the author of time and space. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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

Music has always been a location for me to run to, whether it's through someone else's song or my own. I can observe my own planet from this foreign land and things make sense within the telescopic lens of song. — Jon Foreman

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

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

Let me know that you hear me, let me know Your touch, let me know that You love me, and let that be enough — Jon Foreman

Music is admitted under the skin without permission. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

There are certain songs that I like to listen to at certain times of the day. For example, first thing in the morning I love listening to "Flamenco Sketches" off of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. — Jon Foreman

Surfing and music were incredible outlets for me when I was a kid. And there are some really tricky times when you're growing up and it's easy to make a wrong decision, even with a good family and community around you. Surfing and music kept me out of trouble. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

I'm not so sure that home is a place you can still get to by train. — Jon Foreman

Faith, hope, and love remain. But the greatest of these is love. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

It's really hard to fit a complex idea into a 3-minute pop song. And when you're dealing with issues that you're passionate about, usually they have various levels. And within a poem, you can get around the issue of space, and in a song the same way, by simply leaving holes and alluding to what you're talking about. — Jon Foreman

I began thinking about the idea of a 24 hour concert. What if you tied songs to certain hours of the day - creating a 24 hour world of lyric and melody. So that was the inspiration for this project. — Jon Foreman

Most of the time a spark of beauty or truth will start a fire of a song but fires rarely produce goodness on their own ... you need to control them and put them to work. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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

Nothing stays together without a fight. — Jon Foreman

I try to write songs just for the song itself. I don't try and think about where it's going to end up, that way you're writing for the good of the song. — Jon Foreman

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

When I'm happy, when I'm enjoying life, I'm home, I'm surfing, I'm spending time with my wife, my friends and I'm not thinking about the pain. And then the moment I encounter something that feels difficult, I feel like that's when, for me, I turn to writing and thinking and maybe a song comes from that. — Jon Foreman

I'm very reluctant to put my words into God's mouth. — Jon Foreman

I love the idea that you can create a world through song. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

I'm not really one to be on camera, I'd rather be writing songs. — Jon Foreman

I used to think that great art happened without argument, and maybe that's not the case. Maybe the things that are most important in this life, you have to fight for. — Jon Foreman

Well, the funny thing is, you are never the same person that you were the day before. — Jon Foreman

It's a good thing my parents named me Jon because that's what everyone calls me. — Jon Foreman

Pain is a common emotion in many of my songs mainly because I often don't know other ways to express it adequately. In my songs I wrestle with the things that I don't understand. — Jon Foreman

Music will always be judged by our subjective ears. — Jon Foreman

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

I love a good pop song. I have no problem with the concept of doing that sort of thing. For me, it's usually what I'm inspired by, what I'm thinking about. — Jon Foreman

We were meant to live for so much more, — Jon Foreman

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

I simply want the music to to find its way to open-minded people. — Jon Foreman

The biggest problem facing our world today is a lack of hope and a lack of meaning. [It's] basically just a postmodern world in which there is no right or wrong, no better or worse. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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

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

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

I don't think we can solve the outside problems
until we solve the ones within. — Jon Foreman

Celebrity is a currency with an exchange rate almost as strong as anonymity. — Jon Foreman

The life, when we're aware of beauty, is kind of a bittersweet thing, it's a transient reminder of eternal beauty, which someday we will be face to face with. — Jon Foreman

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

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. — Jon Foreman

Without honesty, art is dead. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

The unasked questions are the most dangerous to answer. — Jon Foreman

There's nothing that you can sell me that can make me happy. — Jon Foreman

If we truly believe in an all-powerful God, then there's going to be beauty and truth to be found in all sorts of different places. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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

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. — Jon Foreman

I think that to believe is to acknowledge that it's a choice in that present tense and that doubt is always an option. You're not dealing with a fact like one plus one equals two - I'm gonna choose to believe that. It's kind of one of those things where you are choosing to believe that someone loves you. That is always going to be your choice. So for me, I think that's what makes the faith that I have volatile and explosive and dangerous and troubling. That's what most of my songs are about. — Jon Foreman

I've never really had a desk job, but I've died one day at a time all over the place. — 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. — Jon Foreman

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 — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

I'm continually wrestling with the idea that there are certain things in this world that simply don't fit. The idea that I have this longing for beauty and truth, and yet I'm also attracted to things that are very dark the lies that exist within me and outside of me. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

Stars looking at our planet, watching entropy and pain and maybe startin' to wonder how the chaos in our lives could pass as sane. I've been thinkin' 'bout the meaning of resistance of a world beyond our own and suddenly the infinite and penitent began to look like home. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

Usually for me, the melodic structures come out in the water and the lyrical ideas could come from a book I'm reading. — Jon Foreman

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

I want to thrive not just survive — Jon Foreman

There's a time to be silent - to build up a reason to sing again. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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

What you do with your life is ascribing more to what you invest your time in. If you spend a lot of time on your phone, you're ascribing more worship to that. Anything can become, by that definition, some form of idol or deity or ultimate worth in your life. — Jon Foreman

Music is a handshake where I, as a songwriter, am only part of the equation. I love that, the fact that you can make the song your own. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

I think despair and cynicism are two different things. On the flip side of hope is despair. Belief and doubt are the same thing, in that to believe something you have to actively doubt the opposite. And from my perspective, that's the deep end. You're dealing with the unknown; you're dealing with mystery. — Jon Foreman

Jesus Christ's mercy and power indwells us and gives us the strength to make a positive difference. — Jon Foreman

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

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

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. — Jon Foreman

All music is worship. It just depends on what you're worshipping. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

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

I've experienced more sunrises with my bandmates and friends out on the road than with my wife, because we're always up at these strange times in the mornings trying to catch a plane. — Jon Foreman

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. — Jon Foreman

Your faith is what you do daily, you can't separate your heart from your body and keep them both alive, they're almost the same thing. — Jon Foreman

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

The truth will set you free, but it's only slightly less scary than hell and a whole lot harder to get there. — Jon Foreman