Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard
Dallas Albert Willardwas an American philosopher also known for his writings on Christian spiritual formation. Much of his work in philosophy was related to phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl, many of whose writings he translated into English for the first time. He was longtime Professor of Philosophy at The University of Southern California, teaching at the school from 1965 until his death in 2013 and serving as the department chair from 1982 to 1985...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth4 September 1935
CountryUnited States of America
Many people have found prayer impossible because they thought they should only pray for wonderful but remote needs they actually had little or no interest in or even knowledge of. Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about ‘good things’ that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God’s love.
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.
It's just stunning to watch churches struggle to get mission statements when there it is, the Great Commission, and they should simply do what it says.
Grace is not opposed to effort; it's opposed to earning.
The acid test for any theology is this: Is the God presented one that can be loved, heart, soul, mind, and strength? ... If it fails to set a lovable God--a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being--before ordinary people, we have gone wrong
The assumption of Jesus' program for his people on earth was that they would live their lives as his students and co-laborers.
Jesus is the human face on the kingdom of God. He makes it concretely accessible.
The Bible, of course, is not a theology book. It is certainly not a philosophy book. So we have to derive the meaning of terms from the context in use.
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.
To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives.
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
In the area of social righteousness we cannot be right on the inside and not do it. We cannot! Of course we have people who pretend that they can, but it simply isn't true.
What a child does when not told what to do is the final indicator of what and who that child is.
What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.