Quotes from Dallas Willard

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.

Grace is opposed to earning, but not to effort.

The gospel of the kingdom is that no one is beyond beatitude, because the rule of God from the heavens is available to all. Everyone can reach it, and it can reach everyone. We respond appropriately to the Beatitudes of Jesus by living as if this were so, as it concerns others and as it concerns ourselves.

The familiar words of Jesus are "Without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). But these must be balanced by the insight that, in general, if we do nothing it will certainly be without him.

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.

Practice routinely purposeful kindnesses and intelligent acts of beauty.

More than any other single thing, in any case, the practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ accounts for the weakened effect of Christianity in the world today, with its increasing tendency to emphasize political and social action as the primary way to serve God. It also accounts for the practical irrelevance of Christian faith to individual character development and overall personal sanity and well-being.

The advantage of believing in the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for knowing the right answer. The advantage of believing in the Trinity is that we then live as if the Trinity is real, as if the cosmos around us is actually beyond all else a community of unspeakably magnificent personal beings of boundless love, knowledge and power.

Play is the creation of value that is not necessary.

To "grow in grace" means to utilize more and more grace to live by, until everything we do is assisted by grace. Then, whatever we do in word or deed will all be done in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17). The greatest saints are not those who need less grace, but those who consume the most grace, who indeed are most in need of grace—those who are saturated by grace in every dimension of their being. Grace to them is like breath.

Love is not God, but God is love. It is who he is, his very identity.

But Jesus' own gospel of the kingdom was not that the kingdom was about to come, or had recently come, into existence. If we attend to what he actually said, it becomes clear that his gospel concerned only the new accessibility of the kingdom to humanity through himself.

You are a never-ceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe.

It is much more important to cultivate the    quiet, inward space of a constant listening than to always be approaching God for specific direction.

But spirituality in many Christian circles has simply become another dimension of Christian consumerism. We have generated a body of people who consume Christian services and think that that is Christian faith. Consumption of Christian services replaces obedience to Christ. And spirituality is one more thing to consume. I go to many, many conferences and talk about these things, and so often I see these people who are just consuming more Christian services.

God's care for humanity was so great that he sent his unique Son among us, so that those who count on him might not lead a futile and failing existence, but have the undying life of God Himself. JOHN 3:16

we fail to be disciples only because we do not decide to be. We do not intend to be disciples. It is the power of the decision and the intention over our life that is missing. We should apprentice ourselves to Jesus in a solemn moment, and we should let those around us know that we have done so.

Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what God wants for us-and to service to him and to others because of him-is what the will transformed into Christliheness looks like.

Your thoughts cannot be empty. As the old saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. If you are not entertaining God's truth, you will be entertaining Satan's lies.

I fear that many people seek to hear God solely as a device for obtaining their own safety, comfort and sense of being righteous. For those who busy themselves to know the will of God, however, it is still true that "those who want to save their life will lose it" (Mt 16:25).

Disciples are those who have been so ravished with Christ that others want to be like them.

We have the ability and responsibility to keep God present in our minds, and those who do so will make steady progress toward him, for he will respond by making himself known to us.

And if you are already flying upside down and don't know it, your cleverness will do you little good.

Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting." This