Quotes from Dallas Willard

Heaven is a deeply significant word. From Abraham (Genesis 24:7) onward, it signified to the people of Israel the direct availability of God to his children, as well as his supremacy over all that affects us.

The best physical, chemical, and other scientific knowledge will not tell us what to do and who to be.

THE PERSON AND GOSPEL of Jesus Christ—building on simple "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so"—is the only complete answer to the false and destructive images and ideas that control the life of those away from God. The process of spiritual formation in Christ is one of progressively replacing those destructive images and ideas with the images and ideas that filled the mind of Jesus himself.

Absurdity reigns, and confusion makes it look good.

in the progress of God's redemptive work, communication advances into communion, and communion into union. When the progression is complete we can truly say, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20) and "For to me, living is Christ" (Phil 1:21).

This present world is a perfectly safe place for us to be." That certainly is what Jesus, and the Bible as a whole, has to say to us. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever" (Ps 23).

an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe," as

How to combine faith with obedience is surely the essential task of the church as it enters the twenty-first century.

Genuine transformation of the whole person into the goodness and power seen in Jesus and his "Abba" Father—the only transformation adequate to the human self—remains the necessary goal of human life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the first chapter of his wonderful book Life Together, has a discussion of how Christians never meet one-on-one; they always meet under the presence of Christ. That's the way we escape the dreadful habit that human beings have of sizing one another up. Does that identify anything that you are familiar with? It's one of the most dreadful things in human life, and only the love of Christ and the presence of the kingdom can bring us beyond it.

With this magnificent God positioned among us, Jesus brings the assurance that our universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be. The

if we are not prepared to use our power of choice to turn our minds to God, then we do not have contact with God.

Union in action with the triune God is Christian spirituality. That is where the life is drawing its substance from God.

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?

The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.

Those who have attained considerable spiritual stature are frequently noted for their "childlikeness." What this really means is that they do not use their face and body to hide their spiritual reality. In their body they are genuinely present to those around them. That is a great spiritual attainment or gift.

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.

if you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.9

Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have—the greatest need of collective humanity—is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.

There are three main ways in which God comes before the mind, where we can lose ourselves in love of him. These are, of course, also ways in which we may present God to others, as well as ways by which we individually may seek to fill our minds with him. Through them, the lovely God wins the love of the disciple. He comes to us (1) through his creation, (2) through his public acts on the scene of human history, and (3) through individual experiences of him by ourselves and others.8

The sad truth is that people can be just as arrogant from belief, commitment, various associations, or simple egotism as from claimed knowledge.

Human desire is infinite by its nature; it cannot be satisfied. You must take your stand against it because you cannot satisfy it.

The disciplines are practices that change the inner self and its relationship to the "helper" (paraclete), so that we can actually do what we would and avoid what we would not. They of course have no point apart from the serious intent to obey Christ's teaching and follow his example.

Our task in ourselves and in others is to transform right answers into automatic responses to real-life situations.