Quotes from Dallas Willard

If we have faith in Christ, we must believe that he knew how to live.

People perish for lack of knowledge, because only knowledge permits assured access to reality; and reality does not adjust itself to accommodate our false beliefs, errors, or hesitations in action. Life demands a steady hand for good, and only knowledge supplies this. This is as true in the spiritual life as elsewhere.

Fact 2: What is true about you as a person is also true about your work.

it is good that you are alive: your life is good, it is good that you are who you are, and it is good that you do the work you do.

our humanity will not by itself prevent us from knowing and interacting with God just as they did.

faith is reliance (trust/confidence) revealed in attitude and action.

He does so by deceit.

Similarly, unless we suffer from a remarkably restricted range of acquaintances, we all know that there are people who please God and have his blessing without being poor, hungry, grief-stricken, or persecuted. They

faith has two main parts: one is vision and one is desire, or will. Vision is seeing reality as it is, or in the case of the future, as it could be for us. Desire is wanting reality to be as it is, or as we hope it could be.

God's own "kingdom," or "rule," is the range of his effective will, where what he wants done is done.

Frank Laubach wrote of how, in his personal experiment of moment-by-moment submission to the will of God, the fine texture of his work and life experience was transformed. In January of 1930 he began to cultivate the habit of turning his mind to Christ for one second out of every minute.

Jesus referred to him as "a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44 NRSV). Indeed, his whole kingdom is based on lies; he works by deceiving.

God so loved the world that he gave his son to that world, that those who put their confidence in him would not lead a miserable, failing existence, but have eternal life, which is the kind of life God has.

Job's journey of faith moved from ritual to relationship. He began with what we may call the faith of propriety, moved through the faith of desperation, and finally arrived at the faith of sufficiency—the faith that says, regardless of what happens, "It doesn't matter. I have God, and that is all I need.

God's own "kingdom," or "rule," is the range of his effective will, where what he wants done is done. The person of God himself and the action of his will are the organizing principles of his kingdom, but everything that obeys those principles, whether by nature or by choice, is within his kingdom.

This "world" is marked by three spiritual dynamics that John identifies as "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16).

We do have an invitation to be a part of it, but if we refuse we only hurt ourselves.

Indeed, all human troubles come from thinking of God wrongly, which then means, thinking about ourselves wrongly. God

desire—wanting something that appears to be good for some purpose or pleasure.

Does Jesus only enable me to "make the cut" when I die? Or to know what to protest, or how to vote or agitate and organize? It is good to know that when I die all will be well, but is there any good news for life? If I had to choose, I would rather have a car that runs than good insurance on one that doesn't. Can I not have both?

The faith of desperation—trusting faith—digs in, holds on, clings tight, and says, "I don't care what's going to happen, I am holding on to God!

the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life.

The life without lack is known by those who have learned how to trust God in the moment of their need.

Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute selfconsciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is, indeed, a desperate response to frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.