428 Quotes by Dallas Willard

Why is it that we look upon our salvation as a moment that began our religious life instead of the daily life we receive from God?

Often I have asked at USC and other places in public, “Has anyone shown that reality is secular? Could you show me the person and where this was done? If it has not been done, isn’t it a little on the questionable side to announce we are a secular university?

Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity.

Denial – usually in some form of rationalization – is the primary device that humans use to deal with their own wrongness. It was the first thing out of the mouths of Adam and Eve after they sinned, and it continues up to the latest edition of the newspaper. The prophetic witness from God must throw itself against the massive weight of group and individual denial, often institutionalized and subtly built into our customary ways of speaking and interacting.

What we can accomplish as good as it may be does not compare to what God can accomplish.

There is an obvious Great Disparity between, on the one hand, the hope for life expressed in Jesus – found real in the Bible and in many shining examples from among his followers – and, on the other hand, the actual day-to-day behavior, inner life, and social presence of most of those who now profess adherence to him.

Incarnation” does not concern just the events of his conception and birth. It was the taking on of “flesh” in all its human meaning. He could live in your circumstances now. He could be you and still live in the kingdom of God. You can be his apprentice no matter who and where you are. It is as his personal friends, living interactively with him, that we know the truth and have the freedom – the power over evil – that comes with such knowledge.

Father, we remember now that we are right here with you and that you are in our midst and that you love us and that you long for us to be healed and whole and that we do not do any of this on our own and that this universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be and that you are closer than the air we breathe. And so we ask that you would be at work now and help us and give us energy and openness and strength, and we pray this together in Jesus’ name. Amen. John Ortberg.

Why is it,” comedian Lily Tomlin asks, “that when we speak to God we are said to be praying but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?” Such a response from ourselves or others to someone’s claim to have heard from God is especially likely today because of the lack of specific teaching and pastoral guidance on such matters.