Quotes by 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.
One of the hardest things in the world is to be right and not hurt other people with it.
A disciple is a person who has decided that the most important thing in their life is to learn how to do what Jesus said to do.
The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon.
Jesus, Willard says, “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.
You can live opposite of what you profess, but you cannot live opposite of what you believe.
Prayer is talking with God about what we are doing together.
The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It's the person you become.
Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.
God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are, and if we faithlessly discard situation after situation, moment after moment, as not being "right," we will simply have no place to receive his kingdom into our life.
You cannot trust Jesus in areas in which you don't think him competent.
Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ.
A disciple is a learner, a student, an apprentice – a practitioner… Disciples of Jesus are people who do not just profess certain views as their own but apply their growing understanding of life in the Kingdom of the Heavens to every aspect of their life on earth.
The most important thing in your life is not what you do; it's who you become. That's what you will take into eternity.
Feelings are good servants, but they are disastrous masters.
We're not here to prove we're right; we're here to help people.
Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?
Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.
The more we pray, the more we think to pray, and as we see the results of prayer-the responses of our Father to our requests-our confidence in God's power spills over into other areas of our life.
When [Satan] undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with an idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being.
Consumer Christianity is now normative. The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it.
The first act of love is always the giving of attention.
The people to whom we minister and speak will not recall 99 percent of what we say to them, but they will never forget the kind of persons we are.