Dallas Willard quotes

Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound up with the central Augustinian claim that we are what we love. (Dallas Willard)
The core of the person is what he or she loves, and that is bound up with what they worship - that insight recalibrates the radar for cultural analysis. The rituals and practices that form our loves spill out well beyond the sanctuary. Many secular liturgies are trying to get us to love some other kingdom and some other gods.
Dallas Willard
When I left home after graduating high school, I left as a migrant agricultural worker with a Modern Library edition of Plato in my duffel bag. It sounds kind of crazy, but I loved it. I loved the stuff. Before I knew there was a subject called philosophy, I loved it.
Dallas Willard
The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons, with Himself included in that community as its prime sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.
Dallas Willard
We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.
Dallas Willard
Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.
Dallas Willard
Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.
Dallas Willard
We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.
Dallas Willard
God may not guide us in an obvious way because he wants us to make decisions based on faith and character.
Dallas Willard
The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.
Dallas Willard
What you present as the gospel will determine what you present as discipleship. If you present as the gospel what is essentially a theory of the atonement, and you say, If you accept this theory of the atonement, your sins are forgiven, and when you die you will be received into heaven, there is no basis for discipleship. (Dallas Willard)
What a child does when not told what to do is the final indicator of what and who that child is.
Dallas Willard
A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying "Why?
Dallas Willard
Sometimes we get caught up in trying to glorify God by praising what He can do and we lose sight of the practical point of what He actually does do.
Dallas Willard
What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.
Dallas Willard
Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.
Dallas Willard
If you have a group of people come together around a vision for real discipleship, people who are committed to grow, committed to change, committed to learn, then a spiritual assessment tool can work.
Dallas Willard
In many cases, our need to wonder about or be told what God wants in a certain situation is nothing short of a clear indication of how little we are engaged in His work.
Dallas Willard
We Christians should be aware that there's something at stake in cultural participation that we wouldn't have been concerned about if all we did was worry about the messages in culture.
Dallas Willard
Many churches are measuring the wrong things. We measure things like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts. Those things can be counted, but not as easily as offerings.
Dallas Willard
Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning. Effort is action. Earning is attitude. You have never seen people more active than those who have been set on fire by the grace of God. (Dallas Willard)
I'm practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.
Dallas Willard
The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.
Dallas Willard
'Discipleship' as a term has lost its content, and this is one reason why it has been moved aside. I've tried to redeem the idea of discipleship, and I think it can be done; you have to get it out of the contemporary mode.
Dallas Willard
So many people would like to have guidance from God because obviously, if you have a word from God, it's the best possible thing. But they don't relate that to life as a whole. Often they want guidance as a way of opting out of the responsibility of making decisions.
Dallas Willard