Top 250 Dallas Willard Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “Still today the Old Testament book of Psalms gives great power for faith and life. This is simply because it preserves a conceptually rich language about God and our relationships to him. If you bury yourself in Psalms, you emerge knowing God and understanding life.”

— Dallas Willard

154. “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

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

159. “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

160. “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

161. “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

162. “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

163. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

165. “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

166. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

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

— Dallas Willard

169. “Union in action with the triune God is Christian spirituality. That is where the life is drawing its substance from God.”

— Dallas Willard

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

— Dallas Willard

171. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

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

— Dallas Willard

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

— Dallas Willard

175. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

177. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

179. “Spiritual disciplines are training exercises to give us power to live in the kingdom.”

— Dallas Willard

180. “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

181. “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

182. “Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting.” This.”

— Dallas Willard

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

— Dallas Willard

184. “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

185. “My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance.”

— Dallas Willard

186. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

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

— Dallas Willard

189. “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

190. “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

191. “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

192. “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

193. “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

194. “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

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

— Dallas Willard

196. “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

197. “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

198. “Christians certainly aren’t perfect. There will always be need for improvement. But there is a lot of room between being perfect and being “just forgiven” as that is nowadays understood. You could be much more than forgiven and still not be perfect.”

— Dallas Willard

199. “The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart and spirit.”

— Dallas Willard

200. “And if you are already flying upside down and don’t know it, your cleverness will do you little good.”

— Dallas Willard