Quotes from Dallas Willard

In people without rock-solid character, feeling is a deadly enemy of self-control and will always subvert it. The mongoose of a disciplined will under God and good is the only match for the cobra of feeling.

He calls us to him to impart himself to us. He does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.

Saint Thomas Aquinas remarks that "love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved." And: "Love follows knowledge."3 Love is an emotional response aroused in the will by visions of the good. Contrary to what is often said, love is never blind, though it may not see rightly. It cannot exist without some vision of the beloved.

Anthropologists observe that the world occupied by a human being comprises not only the surrounding land, water, sky, plant and animal life, human beings and works of human hands, but also a "symbolic reality," which is superimposed upon material reality.

We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness.

If we are to be transformed, the body must be transformed, and that is not accomplished by talking at it.

The mind or the minding of the spirit is life and peace precisely because it locates us in a world adequate to our nature as ceaselessly creative beings under God. The

The world is a perfectly good and safe place to be. —DALLAS WILLARD

They were to bring the presence of the kingdom and its King into every corner of human life simply by fully living in the kingdom with him.

Our desires are the roots of the self-life in all of us. And until we, in conjunction with the grace of God, have made an intentional decision not to allow our desires to be the center of our lives, we can never have the kind of faith that will lead us to the life of abundant sufficiency in God.

Too many are tempted to dismiss what Jesus says as just "pretty words." But those who think it is unrealistic or impossible are more short on imagination than long on logic. They should have a close look at the universe God has already brought into being before they decide he could not arrange for the future life of which the Bible speaks.

Death to self is submitting all your desires to God. This abandonment of the self to God is the way to experience abundance in God. It means that, in God's hands, we are content for him to take charge of outcomes

But there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that the biblical modes of God's communication with humans have been superseded or abolished by either the presence of the church or the close of the scriptural canon. This

The Kingdom Among Us is simply God himself and the spiritual realm of beings over which his will perfectly presides—"as it is in the heavens.

Too often our "love" for family members is domination in disguise.

Dogma is what you have to believe, whether you believe it or not. And law is what you must do, whether it is good for you or not. What

We can practice this through spiritual disciplines such as fasting, which can help us stay sweet and strong when we do not get what we want. If we can cheerily give up Twinkies, and peanuts, and steak, and things of that sort for a while, this will bring us to the place where we can say, "Lord, you're quite sufficient for me. If you want to take it away forever, that would be fine.

Satan can do nothing about God's unshakable kingdom directly, but only indirectly through human infirmity and rebellion.

greatest need of collective humanity—is renovation of our heart.

The powerful though vague and unsubstantiated presumption is that something has been found out that renders a spiritual understanding of reality in the manner of Jesus simply foolish to those who are "in the know." But when it comes time to say exactly what it is that has been found out, nothing of substance is forthcoming.

New Testament passages make plain that this kingdom is not something to be "accepted" now and enjoyed later, but something to be entered now (Matt. 5:20; 18:3; John 3:3, 5). It is something that already has flesh-and-blood citizens (John 18:36; Phil. 3:20) who have been transformed into it (Col. 1:13) and are fellow workers in it (Col. 4:11).

Both the secular and the religious setting in which we live today is almost irresistibly biased toward an interpretation of these passages that condones a life more like that of decent people around us than like the life of Paul and his Lord. We talk about leading a different kind of life, but we also have ready explanations for not being really different. And with those explanations we have talked our way out of the very practices that alone would enable us to be citizens of another world.

An understanding of ordinary logic is no longer a required part of university degree programs, as was almost universally the case sixty years ago. Now, as a result, our world is full of uneducated people with higher degrees. They

Magic and witchcraft, by contrast, are forms of superstition. They work from belief that some action, substance or circumstance not logically or naturally (or even supernaturally) related to a certain course of events does nonetheless influence the outcome of those events if "correctly" approached.