Renovated: God, Dallas Willard, and the Church That Transforms

by E. James Wilder

Source of life. Jesus says that our first birth was to a human mother and our second birth brings new life. We are to attach to this new life as children whom Peter later calls “babies.”[8]

No substitutions. God wants to be recognized. God expects our attachment to be unique to God. We should not mistake anyone else for our God. Like a loved mother or father, no one else will substitute.[9]

Mine and special. God sees us as special and calls us His. The ancient term for showing someone they are special is to extend “grace” to them.[10] When we are given special favor without earning it, we receive grace as a free gift but not without reciprocity. Grace is always given with the expectation of grateful attachment by the recipient.

Life with God is built on joy. Jesus says that He has taught disciples so that His joy would be in them and their joy would be the biggest joy possible.[11] Isn’t the with-God life joyful exactly because God is with us and that gives us joy?

God repeatedly offers us peace and rest. There are too many offers of joy, peace,

The wicked strive, but the right...

joy from G...

Dallas has already made all the points we need to hear about thinking with

God.

God (and our own experience) predicts that stable Christlike character is the sign of those

who deeply love God.

Do we act more like the people we were created to be the deeper our attachment love with God grows?

Healthy attachments improve character. Proverbs equates hesed with loyalty, saying, “Many a man proclaims his own loyalty, but who can find a trustworthy

[hesed] man?”[18] If we render hesed as lovingly attached, we have the meaning of loyalty intended by the passage.

Does the Greek word agape mean attachment? We have seen that the Hebrew word hesed (attachment) fits the ways God relates to human persons. The New Testament was written in Greek, and Greek words were needed for Hebrew concepts. If God’s love is attachment love, then agape (Greek) is our word for attachment love. Hebrew uses the word aheb (אָהֵב) most often for love. The New Testament translates aheb as agapaō (verb form of agape) when quoting “love your neighbor as yourself.”[20]

Charlotte, who were presenters at Heart and Soul, have many videos documenting case studies where healing attachments

improved people’s connection to God.[24] Better attachments with God healed all kinds of issues, from phobias to dissociative disorders.

Attachment to God resolved many kinds of disorders and distortions of relationships. With each healing, the fast track in people’s brains ran more smoothly so they connected with God more consistently. False beliefs about God “spontane...

that Karl and I explored together. We found that when we helped people start from a secure-attachment state with either God or people, traumas resolved about six times faster. Helping

Instead of slow-track persuasion about

beliefs, why not help people experience a mutual mind with God and discover God’s hesed nature for themselves?

Hesed is the strongest force the human brain knows—more important than our own life and existence. Should we consider this force as we consider spiritual formation and developing the character of Christ? If this is the force Jesus uses, then we should. The attachment love of Christ will compel us. We will be transformed by who we love. Our character will be changed through loving attachments. We will see others as God sees them in real time. This is the intention toward love—even love of enemies—that Dallas established as a mark of spiritual maturity.

If apoptosis takes place at puberty, then we should expect that God will employ group identity for people over age twelve.

We should be told to practice Christlike character with each

other as adults. Because we are learning character rather than receiving imparted character, we expect admonition...

Neurologically, we would expect God to develop character by encouraging spiritual practices that involve both (a) God guiding our thoughts and (b) practicing character with people. Spiritual-formation methods that are “brain friendly” include activities that help us share the mind of God and activities that share God’s mind with other people.

We particularly need a visible people when we are too upset to do mutual mind with God. When we are really upset, it is harder to notice that God is with us. We begin to feel that whoever upset us is an enemy. We need people around us who understand that “we are people who love our enemies” to help us when we cannot do so alone.

The Greek word koinónia (κοινωνία) speaks of shared relational resources we could call partnership.

The primary field for discipleship evangelism is the American church. It’s in the church that you find the people who hunger for the kind of maturity that we’re talking about—not just for themselves but for their loved ones and their community. Many of them see that it’s the only hope of the world, even if it’s just to get people to stop killing one another.

One such study found clear evidence that people who involve themselves in church work and stayed with the routine church advice did not grow. We need to consider this: What are the ways that we advise people to engage themselves with the church, and with the Christian cause, or the gospel of Christ? What do we tell people? Read your Bible and pray every day. Go to church. Stop sinning.

These are good statements. Now we ask: Does this do the job? Does this accomplish what we would like to see in Christians? We have to be very practical and empirical and honest in our appraisal.

Now the spiritual disciplines are practices that we use to deal with the habits, if you wish, of wrongdoing that are imbedded in our lives when we come to know Christ. For example, it takes discipline to overcome the presence of anger and contempt in human life. Basically, discipline is a voluntary activity in your power that makes possible for you something you cannot achieve by direct effort.

Churches need to be centers where people are practicing these things that will enable them to take on the character of Christ and become lights in a darkened world.[3]

Now, you might ask, “Why would God set up human life in such a way that disciplines are necessary for transformation?” And the answer is, I believe, that He has made it possible for us to determine, to some significant degree, what kind of person we will become. Consider speaking French or playing the piano. We determine to a very significant degree whether we will be the kind of person who speaks French or plays the piano, based on our decision to engage in disciplines that make doing so possible. Similarly, we determine, to a very significant degree, whether we will be the kind of person who loves their neighbor, or who loves their enemy, or who blesses those who curse them. It’s all the same story. What kind of person do you want to become? What activities put you on track to become that kind of person?

them. Grace is not opposed to action; it’s opposed to earning. That’s an attitude, not an action. Disciplines are actions not that earn us reward but that make possible the life we want.

Solitude and silence establish in us a conscious awareness of the sufficiency of God alone. That’s the principle of Sabbath.

Scripture memory well without a lot of the other disciplines. As a practice, it requires time, for example. You have to devote time to it. Other disciplines also help make Scripture memory possible in different ways. In order for Scripture memorization to happen, you’ll probably need to be leading a certain kind of life first. If you do, however, then the effects will be that your life will run progressively according to what is said in the Scripture.

Disciplines are ways of learning our dependence upon God. And so one of the things that we’re aiming at is humility—humbleness of mind.

They are means of grace, intended for our well-being and spiritual and emotional maturity. This exercise of configuration is a matter of wisdom, not a program for righteousness.

One of the most formative thinkers in recent Christian history, Dallas left a clear message that spiritual maturity includes all the lesser areas of maturity that we call emotional and relational maturity. Disciples cannot claim spiritual maturity without emotional maturity.

You can’t count on having emotional maturity without spiritual maturity. If you are spiritually mature, you will be emotionally mature. So if you’re concerned about emotional maturity, then you’ll work on spiritual maturity.[1]

attachment is the most powerful impetus in the human brain.

As I left Dallas’s house the last time, his parting thought was “If life with Jesus begins at salvation and attachment is how we think with and become like another, then salvation must create a new attachment with Jesus.”

A newborn will be transformed by attachment love long before the baby can believe or understand.

Loving attachment and mutual mind are only two of them.

Loving attachment is a direct and energized activity.

Because emotional maturity is the lesser category, we can be emotionally mature without being spiritually mature. Dallas told us in his first lecture, “It is not at all uncommon that a church is caught up in tiptoeing around leaders who are babies emotionally.”

Attachment love for God is a righteous, powerful motive for our transformation.

The three elements that the Life Model adds are: Multiple causes produce similar symptoms of immaturity but require different solutions. Correcting iniquities (deformities) meets deeper identity needs. Attachment creates stronger options for transformation.

Our spiritual life is also subject to our getting locked into details and missing what is important. How often do we lose God’s perspective? The Pharisees were taking houses from widows[3] but tithing their mint and dill. Jesus said to them, “You . . . have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”[4] When we use the fast track, we can keep perspective; when we use the slow track, we only measure a tithe of our cumin. Disciples do not simply determine priorities for themselves. Disciples are guided by God’s Spirit.