Top 250 Dallas Willard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.”

— Dallas Willard

Featured in: Christian Quotes, Spiritual Growth Quotes, Discipleship Quotes

2. “Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

— Dallas Willard

Featured in: Time Quotes

3. “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.”

— Dallas Willard

Featured in: Transformation Quotes, Identity Quotes, Discipleship Quotes

4. “We are unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.”

— Dallas Willard

Featured in: Faith Quotes

5. “Prayer is talking with God about what we are doing together.”

— Dallas Willard

6. “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.”

— Dallas Willard

Featured in: Faith Quotes, Discipleship Quotes

7. “The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It’s the person you become.”

— Dallas Willard

8. “God’s address is at the end of your rope.”

— Dallas Willard

9. “The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon.”

— Dallas Willard

10. “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.”

— Dallas Willard

11. “Spiritual formation for the Christian basically refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.”

— Dallas Willard

12. “Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.”

— Dallas Willard

13. “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

14. “One of the hardest things in the world is to be right and not hurt other people with it.”

— Dallas Willard

15. “There is no problem in human life that apprenticeship to Jesus cannot solve.”

— Dallas Willard

16. “Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?”

— Dallas Willard

17. “Grace is not opposed to effort; it’s opposed to earning.”

— Dallas Willard

18. “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

19. “The first act of love is always the giving of attention.”

— Dallas Willard

20. “Spiritual formation cannot, in the nature of the case, be a ‘private’ thing, because it is a matter of whole-life transformation. You need to seek out others in your community who are pursuing the renovation of the heart.”

— Dallas Willard

21. “The will is transformed by experience, not information.”

— Dallas Willard

22. “The greatest challenge the church faces today is to be authentic disciples of Jesus.”

— Dallas Willard

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

— Dallas Willard

24. “The true saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on takeoff.”

— Dallas Willard

25. “Spiritual formation in Christ moves us toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his.”

— Dallas Willard

26. “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

27. “God’s aim in human history is the creation of an inclusive community of loving persons, with himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.”

— Dallas Willard

28. “The Spiritual disciplines are wisdom and not righteousness.”

— Dallas Willard

29. “The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.”

— Dallas Willard

30. “I’m practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.”

— Dallas Willard

31. “If our gospel does not free the individual up for a unique life of spiritual adventure in living with God daily, we simply have not entered fully into the good news that Jesus brought.”

— Dallas Willard

32. “You can live opposite of what you profess, but you cannot live opposite of what you believe.”

— Dallas Willard

33. “Discipline, strictly speaking, is activity carried on to prepare us indirectly for some activity other than itself. We do not practice the piano to practice the piano well, but to play it well.”

— Dallas Willard

34. “Feelings are good servants, but they are disastrous masters.”

— Dallas Willard

35. “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.”

— Dallas Willard

36. “Jesus is the human face on the kingdom of God. He makes it concretely accessible.”

— Dallas Willard

37. “One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.”

— Dallas Willard

Featured in: Effort Quotes

38. “We are becoming who we will be-forever.”

— Dallas Willard

39. “Obedience to Christ is the easy way, take my yoke...”

— Dallas Willard

40. “You can no more trust Jesus and not intend to obey him than you could trust your doctor and your auto mechanic and not intend to follow their advice. If you don’t intend to follow their advice, you simply don’t trust them. Period.”

— Dallas Willard

41. “Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.”

— Dallas Willard

42. “The hardest thing about leadership is the intimacy it requires.”

— Dallas Willard

43. “Jesus is actually looking for people he can trust with his power.”

— Dallas Willard

44. “The prospering of God’s cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well.”

— Dallas Willard

45. “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

46. “Understanding is the basis of care. What you would take care of you must first understand, whether it be a petunia or a nation.”

— Dallas Willard

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

47. “If we allow everything access to our mind, we are simply asking to be kept in a state of mental turmoil or bondage. For nothing enters the mind without having an effect for good or evil.”

— Dallas Willard

48. “In Spiritual formation we are aiming at a character and life that is so shaped that the deeds of Christ routinely and easily come from what is inside.”

— Dallas Willard

49. “Projects of personal transformation rarely if ever succeed by accident, drift or imposition.”

— Dallas Willard

50. “Grace is opposed to earning, but not to effort.”

— Dallas Willard