Top 250 Dallas Willard Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the first chapter of his wonderful book Life Together, has a discussion of how Christians never meet one-on-one; they always meet under the presence of Christ. That’s the way we escape the dreadful habit that human beings have of sizing one another up. Does that identify anything that you are familiar with? It’s one of the most dreadful things in human life, and only the love of Christ and the presence of the kingdom can bring us beyond it.”

— Dallas Willard

152. “Sin always splits the self to some degree, yes. You know that you have harmed yourself and others, but you probably are not going to come to terms with that because you’re carrying on a charade of righteousness, even if you don’t believe it. So confession is very deep in the process of discovering the soul.”

— Dallas Willard

153. “There is an obvious Great Disparity between, on the one hand, the hope for life expressed in Jesus – found real in the Bible and in many shining examples from among his followers – and, on the other hand, the actual day-to-day behavior, inner life, and social presence of most of those who now profess adherence to him.”

— Dallas Willard

154. “For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship.”

— Dallas Willard

155. “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

156. “Practice routinely purposeful kindnesses and intelligent acts of beauty.”

— Dallas Willard

157. “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

158. “Father, we remember now that we are right here with you and that you are in our midst and that you love us and that you long for us to be healed and whole and that we do not do any of this on our own and that this universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be and that you are closer than the air we breathe. And so we ask that you would be at work now and help us and give us energy and openness and strength, and we pray this together in Jesus’ name. Amen. John Ortberg.”

— Dallas Willard

159. “I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, I merited this.”

— Dallas Willard

160. “Generally speaking we are in God’s will whenever we are leading the kind of life he wants for us. And that leaves a lot of room for initiative on our part, which is essential: our individual initiatives are central to his will for us.”

— Dallas Willard

161. “Why is it,” comedian Lily Tomlin asks, “that when we speak to God we are said to be praying but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?” Such a response from ourselves or others to someone’s claim to have heard from God is especially likely today because of the lack of specific teaching and pastoral guidance on such matters.”

— Dallas Willard

162. “The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes- a time for men and women to be heroic in their faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.”

— Dallas Willard

163. “Many people think of Jesus as our Savior, as the one who will get us into heaven. So the question often is “Have I accepted Jesus as my Savior?” But we never ask the question “Have I accepted Jesus as my teacher?”

— Dallas Willard

164. “G. K. Chesterton famously quipped, “There is only one unanswerable argument against Christianity: Christians.”

— Dallas Willard

165. “Of course, we do the righteous deed because of our redemption, not for our redemption.”

— Dallas Willard

166. “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

167. “Absurdity reigns, and confusion makes it look good.”

— Dallas Willard

168. “Those who have attained considerable spiritual stature are frequently noted for their “childlikeness.” What this really means is that they do not use their face and body to hide their spiritual reality. In their body they are genuinely present to those around them. That is a great spiritual attainment or gift.”

— Dallas Willard

169. “To know Christ in the modern world is to know him in your world now. To know him in your world now is to live interactively with him right where you are in your daily activities. This is the spiritual life in Christ.”

— Dallas Willard

170. “The American Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood, some years ago, quoted Kirsopp Lake’s definition: “Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but life in scorn of consequences.” Then he adds: “Faith, as the plain man knows, is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations.”

— Dallas Willard

171. “He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God and then by dwelling there with his Father through the distinctively divine Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of humanity on earth.”

— Dallas Willard

172. “Christ was not crucified so that we wouldn’t have to be. He was crucified so we could be crucified with him.”

— Dallas Willard

173. “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

174. “The humility that cringes in order that reproof may be escaped or favor obtained is as unchristian as it is profoundly immoral.”

— Dallas Willard

175. “To manipulate, drive or manage people is not the same thing as to lead them.”

— Dallas Willard

176. “Our task in ourselves and in others is to transform right answers into automatic responses to real-life situations.”

— Dallas Willard

177. “Every single thing that Jesus taught us to do was something he had put into daily practice in circumstances just like ours.”

— Dallas Willard

178. “We have generated a body of people who consume Christian services and think that that is Christian faith. Consumption of Christian services replaces obedience to Christ. And spirituality is one more thing to consume.”

— Dallas Willard

179. “What a child does when not told what to do is the final indicator of what and who that child is.”

— Dallas Willard

180. “We are required to “bet our life” that the visible world, while real, is not reality itself.”

— Dallas Willard

181. “A disciple is someone who is learning by going through the process of change. All the things that we moan about and talk on and on about, such as pornography, divorce and drugs, are things that can be dealt with effectively only by bringing change into the mind and the spirit, into the will, into the body and into the fellowship of the person. Then people come out saying, “Who needs that stuff? I’ve got something much better than that.”

— Dallas Willard

182. “Much of our effort to do things for the Lord is really the resurgence of our desire to dominate and make things happen in our own strength.”

— Dallas Willard

183. “The best physical, chemical, and other scientific knowledge will not tell us what to do and who to be.”

— Dallas Willard

184. “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

185. “Whatever your situation, there is nothing more important on earth than to dwell in the knowledge of Christ and to bring that knowledge to others.”

— Dallas Willard

186. “Witnessing is not thought of as bringing knowledge, but as attempts to convince people to do things. When you divorce faith from knowledge, you wind up in the position of trying to get people to do things, not of providing them with a basis on which they can then decide how to live and how to lead their lives together. Witnessing has turned into a kind of process of bothering people, and very few people witness because of that.”

— Dallas Willard

187. “Business is a primary arrangement on God’s part for people to love one another and serve one another.”

— Dallas Willard

188. “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

189. “The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.”

— Dallas Willard

190. “Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power.”

— Dallas Willard

191. “Crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil.”

— Dallas Willard

192. “God’s presence is everywhere around us. God is able to penetrate intertwine himself within the fibers of the human self in such a way that those who are enveloped in His loving companionship will never be alone. page 59.”

— Dallas Willard

193. “Kingdom praying and its efficacy is entirely a matter of the innermost heart’s being totally open and honest before God. It is a matter of what we are saying with our whole being, moving with resolute intent and clarity of mind into the flow of God’s action.”

— Dallas Willard

194. “We have the ability and responsibility to keep God present in our minds, and those who do so will make steady progress toward him, for he will respond by making himself known to us.”

— Dallas Willard

195. “To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved.”

— Dallas Willard

196. “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

197. “Nothing less than life in the steps of Christ is adequate to the human soul or the needs of our world. Any other offer fails to do justice to the drama of human redemption, deprives the hearer of life’s greatest opportunity, and abandons this present life to the evil powers of the age.”

— Dallas Willard

198. “Denial – usually in some form of rationalization – is the primary device that humans use to deal with their own wrongness. It was the first thing out of the mouths of Adam and Eve after they sinned, and it continues up to the latest edition of the newspaper. The prophetic witness from God must throw itself against the massive weight of group and individual denial, often institutionalized and subtly built into our customary ways of speaking and interacting.”

— Dallas Willard

199. “The kingdom of God is the true ecology of the human soul.”

— Dallas Willard

200. “What is the point of standing up for rights in a world where few stand up for their responsibilities? Your rights will do you little good unless others are responsible.”

— Dallas Willard