428 Quotes by Dallas Willard

The basic question ‘will I obey Christ ‘s teaching?’ is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus’ commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don’t know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.

Spiritual formation into Christlikeness – true change of character – comes from living in relationship to God.

Christ was not crucified so that we wouldn’t have to be. He was crucified so we could be crucified with him.

God inducts us into the eternal kind of life that flows through himself. He does this first by bringing that life to bear upon our needs, and then by diffusing it throughout our deeds – deeds done with expectation that he and his Father will act with and in our actions.

We have generated a body of people who consume Christian services and think that that is Christian faith. Consumption of Christian services replaces obedience to Christ. And spirituality is one more thing to consume.

The more we pray, the more we think to pray, and as we see the results of prayer-the responses of our Father to our requests-our confidence in God’s power spills over into other areas of our life.

I’m practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.

As Augustine say clearly, God being God offends human pride. If God is running the universe and has first claim on our lives, guess who isn’t running the universe and does not get to have things as they please.

We are required to “bet our life” that the visible world, while real, is not reality itself.