Quotes by Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) — Philosoph & geistlicher Schriftsteller · evangelikal · US

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) war ein US-amerikanischer Philosoph, der über vier Jahrzehnte an der University of Southern California lehrte, sowie baptistischer Pastor und christlicher Autor. Er gilt als maßgeblicher Vordenker der Bewegung für geistliche Formung, die den Glauben als praktische Nachfolge Jesu und Charaktertransformation im gegenwärtigen Reich Gottes versteht. Heutigen Bibellesern bietet er einen intellektuell geschulten Zugang zu geistlichen Disziplinen, stieß damit jedoch in konservativ-reformierten Kreisen wegen des Vorwurfs mystischer Tendenzen auch auf Kritik.

Era: Today

Recurring topics: Discipleship, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Faith & Trust, Grace & Redemption, Meaning & Identity, Growth & Character, Peace & Rest, Wisdom & Understanding

Quotes by Dallas Willard

Grace is opposed to earning, not to effort.

Dallas Willard

The person we are becoming is more important to God than the work we do.

Dallas Willard

I think that, when I die, it might be some time until I know it.

Dallas Willard

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.

Dallas Willard

The obviously well kept secret of the “ordinary” is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows.

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

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

I'm practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.

Dallas Willard

Those we teach and lead will forget almost everything we say, but they will always remember the kind of person we were.

Dallas Willard

Grace means God is now acting in my life.

Dallas Willard

God is not trying to keep people out of heaven; he is trying to get them in.

Dallas Willard

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.

Dallas Willard

Great faith, like great strength in general, is revealed by the ease of its workings. Most of what we think we see as the struggle OF faith is really the struggle to act as IF we had faith when in fact we do not.

Dallas Willard

The command is "Do no work." Just make space. Attend to what is around you. Learn that you don't have to DO to BE. accept the grace of doing nothing. Stay with it until you stop jerking and squirming.

Dallas Willard

It was an important day in my life when at last I understood that if he needed forty days in the wilderness at one point, I very likely could use three or four.

Dallas Willard

The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.

Dallas Willard

We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.

Dallas Willard

An obsession merely with doing all God commands may be the very thing that rules out being the kind of person that he calls us to be.

Dallas Willard

Hell is not an 'oops!' or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.

Dallas Willard

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

Dallas Willard

Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity.

Dallas Willard

He comes where we are, and he brings us the life we hunger for. An early report reads, “Life was in him, life that made sense of human existence” (John 1:4). To be the light of life, and to deliver God’s life to women and men where they are and as they are, is the secret of the enduring relevance of Jesus. Suddenly they are flying right-side up, in a world that makes sense.

Dallas Willard

You may be very sure that if your sincere intent is to glorify God and bless others in your efforts, and you are not motivated by unloving attitudes, you will see the hand of God move with you as you expectantly do your work. Your part is simply to expect it, watch for it, give thanks as you see it, and, on the basis of your experience, encourage others to do the same.

Dallas Willard

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.

Dallas Willard

Our mistake is to think that following Jesus consists in loving our enemies, going the “second mile,” turning the other cheek, suffering patiently and hopefully—while living the rest of our lives just as everyone around us does.

Dallas Willard

Our destiny is to join a tremendously creative team effort, under unimaginably splendid leadership, on an inconceivably vast plane of activity, with ever more comprehensive cycles of productivity and enjoyment.

Dallas Willard

Blessed are the spiritual zeros—the spiritually bankrupt, deprived and deficient, the spiritual beggars, those without a wisp of ‘religion’—when the kingdom of the heavens comes upon them.

Dallas Willard

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.

Dallas Willard

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.

Dallas Willard

In relation to spiritual disciplines, the most helpful distinction is the difference between trying to do something and training to do something.

Dallas Willard

Why is it that we look upon our salvation as a moment that began our religious life instead of the daily life we receive from God?

Dallas Willard

Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.

Dallas Willard

Anything done in anger can be done better without it.

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

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

Well practiced, solitude and silence become conditions of the soul which we can take everywhere.

Dallas Willard

Spiritual formation in Christlikeness does not require money, buildings, special talents or the cooperation of the surrounding world.

Dallas Willard

My objective is to go through my day with God.

Dallas Willard

Practice routinely purposeful kindnesses and intelligent acts of beauty.

Dallas Willard

Sabbath is a way of life (Heb 4:3; 9-11). It is simply "casting all your anxiety on Him," to find that in actual fact " He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7). It is USING the keys to the Kingdom to receive the resources for abundant living and ministering.

Dallas Willard

139 quotes in total — browse the collection.

Sources: dwillard.org, cicministry.org, facebook.com, substack.com

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