Quotes from Dallas Willard

If I'm a pastor, the trinitarian fellowship is my first team. My ultimate loyalty is to that fellowship. My primary identity is as a part of that fellowship. My understanding of how I am doing in life comes out of that trinitarian fellowship. No other team is allowed to determine my identity or evaluate my performance beyond that one.

The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes—a time for men and women to be heroic in faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.

Full participation in the life of God's Kingdom and in the vivid companionship of Christ comes to us only through appropriate exercise in the disciplines for life in the spirit. Those

This is certainly true for those in professional ministry. In humility, every Christian leader is subject to the people to whom he or she ministers. This is, after all, what ministry is, professional or not—being subject to the needs of other people. That involves listening to them, being attentive to them. But if we become dependent on their opinions, we have ruined any chance of truly helping them, because now our primary concern is to gain their approval.

However, it is not the immediacy of such experiences that tells us that it is the Spirit of God in Christ by whom we are being formed. Rather, the proof, if not the comfort, lies in the person we become and the deeds that flow from us. The tree is known by its fruit.

and worry are worthless—indeed, vain—emotions. If you are frightened or afraid, there is no use feeling guilty about it. What you need to do is fix your mind upon God and ask him to fill your mind with himself. And as your mind is transformed, your whole personality will be transformed, including your body and your feelings. The transformation of the self away from a life of fear and insufficiency takes place as we fix our minds upon God as he truly is.

no known religions are the same; they teach and practice radically different things. You only have to look at them to see that. To say they are all the "same" is to disrespect them. It is a way of claiming that none really matter, that their distinctives are of no human significance.

They presume on their justification in being whatever they are—unlike a thought, which by nature is open to challenge and invites the question "Why?

The second thing is closely related to it: spokespersons for Christ are those who have knowledge that no one else has. That's why they are the most important people in society. That is because they bring knowledge of what time and eternity are about. They bring knowledge on which people can base their lives. They bring knowledge that can be communicated to others on the basis of experience and reason and Scripture and grace and work and everything else you want to put in the bag.

But responsibility and initiative are the heart of our relationship with God. We are not robots, and he does not work with robots.

If a law had been given capable of bringing people to life," Paul said, "then righteousness would have come from that law" (Gal. 3:21). But law, for all its magnificence, cannot do that. Graceful relationship sustained with the masterful Christ certainly can.

There may be times when you have to renew your commitment to release what you want, how you look, and especially what you are doing for the Lord. Much of our effort to do things for the Lord is really the resurgence of our desire to dominate and make things happen in our own strength.

Those who let God be God get off the conveyer belt of emotion and desire when it first starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin.

One good way to check our motives when doing something for the Lord is to see how sweet and patient we can remain when it does not go the way we want it to.

Do you think the businessman who found the pearl was sweating over its cost? An obviously ridiculous question! What about the one who found the treasure in the field—perhaps crude oil or gold? No. Of course not. The only thing these people were sweating about was whether they would "get the deal." Now that is the soul of the disciple.

Belief cannot reliably govern life and action except in its proper connection with knowledge and with the truth and evidence knowledge involves.

This is where so many distressing stories come from about people in the ministry. Anyone who is attempting to help others in the way of Christ needs to have the life they are describing. They must have peace, purity, patience, and the other fruit produced by following Jesus. They must have a willingness to see others praised, while they are overlooked. They must die to the idea that what they want has any importance at all.

Spiritual formation in Christ is the process leading to that ideal end, and its result is love of God with all of the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself.

When we give up the smaller, everyday things we are training for times when greater sacrifice is required.

So my first point is simply: life in Christ has to do with obedience to his teaching.

In feelings we really know that something is "there," and solidly so. But what it is and why it is remains obscure—though hauntingly present.

We can receive the things we do not want—or give up the things we do want—if we have decided, by the grace of God, that we can trust God to take care of us.

Our aim here is not to prove that Jesus is superior to other spiritual masters and traditions. But he really is different, and we should acknowledge it.

Thomas à Kempis: Of what use is it to discourse learnedly on the Trinity, if you lack humility and therefore displease the Trinity? Lofty words do not make a man just or holy; but a good life makes him dear to God. I would far rather feel contrition than be able to define it. If you knew the whole Bible by heart, and all the teachings of the philosophers, how would this help you without the grace and love of God?[6]