Lisa Wright > Lisa's Quotes

“But spirituality in many Christian circles has simply become another dimension of Christian consumerism. 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. I go to many, many conferences and talk about these things, and so often I see these people who are just consuming more Christian services.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“The single most obvious trait of those who profess Christ but do not grow into Christ-likeness is their refusal to take the reasonable and time-tested measures for spiritual growth.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“A. W. Tozer expressed his “feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout evangelical Christian circles—the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need him as Savior and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to him as Lord as long as we want to!”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind on God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. "When I awake, I am still with thee" (Psalm 139:18). The thoughts are as travelers in the mind. David's thoughts kept heaven-road. "I am still with Thee." God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory?... A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. He never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“May I just give you this word? Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“The fruit of the Spirit, in contrast, gives a sure sign of transformed character. When our deepest attitudes and dispositions are those of Jesus, it is because we have learned to let the Spirit foster his life in us.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“The Disciplines of Christ-likeness The third side of our triangle is made up of spiritual disciplines. These are special activities, many engaged in by Jesus himself, such as solitude and study, service and secrecy, fasting and worship.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.”
― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God

“...Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today... They were, instead, to establish beachheads of his person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Last words of his mother to his father: "Keep eternity before the children.”
― Dallas Willard

“Much of our problem is not, as is often said, that we have failed to get what is in our head down in our heart. Much of what hinders us is that we have had a lot of mistaken theology in our head and it has gotten down into our heart. And it is controlling our inner dynamics so that the head and heart cannot, even with the aid of the Word and the Spirit, pull one another straight.”
― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

“Lord, you will have to be our teacher, because the dignity has been drained out of us in so many ways. We have been treated like dirt, and that has stuck on us. We’ve put ourselves against standards of our own making, because we thought it would give us worth. Please touch each person with how unique they are in your eyes and how their dignity in your eyes is so great that you will not even override them; you will woo them and pursue them and help them to accept that you are seeking them and you will allow yourself to be found by them if they simply cry out for help. I pray that great freedom will come across them because of their awareness of where they stand in your kingdom. That will make Jesus very happy, and the angels in heaven will jump up and down. And so we say, Let it be so, and that’s what we mean by amen. Amen. Dallas Willard”
― Dallas Willard, Living in Christ's Presence: Final Words on Heaven and the Kingdom of God

“The adult members of churches today rarely raise serious religious questions for fear of revealing their doubts or being thought of as strange. There is an implicit conspiracy of silence on religious matters in the churches. This conspiracy covers up the fact that the churches do not change lives or influence conduct to any appreciable degree.”
― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

“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

“The Abba Evagrius (who died in 399) taught:   There are eight principal thoughts, from which all other thoughts stem. The first thought is of gluttony; the second, of fornication; the third, of love of money; the fourth, of discontent; the fifth, of anger; the sixth, of despondency; the seventh, of vainglory; the eighth, of pride. Whether these thoughts disturb the soul or not does not depend on us; but whether they linger in us or not and set passions in motion or not—does depend on us.”
― Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

“Dear Father always near us, may your name be treasured and loved, may your rule be completed in us— may your will be done here on earth in just the way it is done in heaven. Give us today the things we need today, and forgive us our sins and impositions on you as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us. Please don’t put us through trials, but deliver us from everything bad. Because you are the one in charge, and you have all the power, and the glory too is all yours—forever— which is just the way we want it!”
― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

“Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship