Dallas Albert Willard was a U.S. philosopher and professor, whose works were primarily based on the spiritual formation of Christianity and phenomenology. Willard went to William Jewell College and acquired a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Tennessee Temple College, before studying Philosophy from Baylor University. He earned a doctorate in philosophy from Baylor University as well. Willard taught philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of South California and the University of Colorado. He had also translated the works of the noted scholar of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl into English. Other than his considerable works on philosophy, Willard also wrote extensively on Christian ways of life and two of his best known works include ‘The Divine Conspiracy’ and ‘Renovation of the Heart’, both of which were awarded Christianity Today’s book of the year award. His thoughts and observations on various subjects became popular over a period of time. We have collected these excerpted his quotes from his writings and works. Here are some of the best known sayings and quotes by 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.
Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.
Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.
Dallas Willard
I'm practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.
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?
What a child does when not told what to do is the final indicator of what and who that child is.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Actions are not impostions on who we are, but are expressions of who we are. They come out of our heart and the inner realities it supervises and interacts with
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
The truly powerful ideas are precisely the ones that never have to justify themselves.
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.
Anything done in anger can be done better without it!
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.
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
Last words of his mother to his father: "Keep eternity before the children.
Dallas Willard
The “interior castle” of the human soul, as Teresa of Avila called it, has many rooms, and they are slowly occupied by God, allowing us time and room to grow.
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.
Our most serious failure today is the inability to provide effective practical guidance as to how to live the life of Jesus. And I believe that is due to this very real loss of biblical realism for our lives
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.
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
Disciples are those who have been so ravished with Christ that others want to be like them.
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
Our most serious failure today is the inability to provide effective practical guidance as to how to live the lifwe of Jesus. And I believe that is due to this very real loss of biblical realism for our lives.
Practice routinely purposeful kindnesses and intelligent acts of beauty.
Dallas Willard
The single most obvious trait of those who profess Christ but do not grow into Christ-likeness is their refusal to take the reasonable and time-tested measures for spiritual growth.
Dallas Willard
THOSE WHO REALLY do know Christ in the modern world do so by seeking and entering the kingdom of God.
. The world hardly needs more of these. )
