Eternal Living Quotes

“Anything done in anger can be done better without it!”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“You are a never-ceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“G. K. Chesterton famously quipped, “There is only one unanswerable argument against Christianity: Christians.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“what one grasps of reality—through senses and thought—has as much to do with one’s subjective posture toward reality as it does with what is objectively there to be perceived and thought about. If we do not, by our own volition and humility, “hunger and thirst” after reality, or if we live without a love of the truth—no matter how much it challenges our prior commitments—then the truth will simply pass us by (see Mt 5:6 and 2 Thess 2:10). We will be left with our own dwindling resources, attempting to forge out an increasingly futile existence, living in denial of what we suspect might be true. You see it every day. One can avoid acknowledging reality, but one cannot avoid the consequences of refusing to acknowledge reality. Everything in Dallas Willard’s academic and personal life pointed toward (he would be the first to insist, far from perfectly) the active presence of God in the world. He thought that every single point of reality was shot through with unfathomable order and wonder, patiently waiting to be discovered.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“believe our only hope for leaders to increasingly work in the way of Jesus, for the glory of Jesus, in the power of Jesus and under the direction of Jesus will be as they have passed through stages that help them learn the soul work of surrender, abandonment, contentment and participation. There simply are no shortcuts.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“Beyond my immediate context of relationships, the central question my friends and I began asking was quite simple: How could the soul health and transformation available to us become normative in our experience as a church community? While such experience of soul transformation has certainly been normative in seasons throughout history and even today, it is largely absent, or at least rare and idiosyncratic, in many environments where I have served.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“The experience of missing a loved one is a small clue that we were made for eternity. Dallas would be the first to insist that the overarching point of his life was not his presence, but rather, like the intentionality of thoughts itself, the grand and beautiful realities he was pointing to. It’s all there, if we have eyes to see, ears to hear, minds to think and hearts to feel. The rest is the adventure of our lives.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“The possibility of knowledge is relevant to Dallas’s account of the spiritual life. The point of his books The Spirit of the Disciplines, The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart is that we must adopt specific practices in order to deepen our apprehension of God’s activity in the world. If we fail to sharpen our perception of the great spiritual truths as revealed in the life of Christ, God’s kingdom, in all its life-transforming richness and power, will simply pass us by. Again, you see it happen every day.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“I remember a time I went to him with a more personal problem: “Hey Dallas, my heart is breaking, I can’t fix it, I don’t understand it, and I’m sadder than I’ve ever been in my life.” There was a long pause. With Dallas there’s always a long pause. And then he said, “This will be a test of your joyful confidence in God.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“My people perish from lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6).”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation

“Seek not to speak, but that you might have something to say.”
― Dallas Willard, Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation