Renovation of the Heart Quotes

“We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“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, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“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”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“A great part of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ with Bonus Content

“The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations. It penetrates to the deepest layers of their soul.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“...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

“The hidden dimension of each human life is not visible to others, nor is it fully graspable even by ourselves. We usually know very little about the things that move in our own soul, the deepest level of our life, or what is driving it. Our “within” is astonishingly complex and subtle—even devious. It takes on a life of its own. Only God knows our depths, who we are, and what we would do.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“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, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“But taking love itself—God’s kind of love—into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“We must flatly say that one of the greatest contemporary barriers to meaningful spiritual formation in Christlikeness is overconfidence in the spiritual efficacy of “regular church services,” of whatever kind they may be. Though they are vital, they are not enough. It is that simple. Individuals and local congregations of disciples must discover and effectively implement whatever is required to bring about the inner transformations of those who have really become apprentices of Jesus and who really do gather in immersion in the Trinitarian presence. In doing so they will have put in place the principles and absolutes of the New Testament churches, and they will certainly see the corresponding fruits and effects. Jesus did not give us a plan for spiritual formation that will fail, and he has the resources to see to it that it does not.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Christian spiritual formation rests on this indispensable foundation of death to self and cannot proceed except insofar as that foundation is being firmly laid and sustained.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ with Bonus Content

“In a situation such as today, by contrast, where people constantly have-or think they have-to decide what to do, they will almost invariably be governed by feelings. Often they cannot distinguish between their feelings and their will, and in their confusion they also quite commonly take feelings to be reasons. And they will in general lack any significant degree of self-control. This will turn their life into a mere drift through the days and years, which addictive behavior promises to allow them to endure.
Self-control is the steady capacity to direct yourself to accomplish what you have chosen or decided to do and be, even though you "don't feel like it." Self-control means that you, with steady hand, do what you don't want to do (or what you want not to) when that is needed and do not do what you want to do (what you "feel like" doing) when that is needed.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“To “grow in grace” means to utilize more and more grace to live by, until everything we do is assisted by grace. Then, whatever we do in word or deed will all be done in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17). The greatest saints are not those who need less grace, but those who consume the most grace, who indeed are most in need of grace—those who are saturated by grace in every dimension of their being. Grace to them is like breath.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Old ways of doing things cease to be effective, though they may have been very powerful in the past. There arises a very real danger that we will set ourselves in opposition to what God truly is doing now and aims to do in the future.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“I realize that I will either allow my view of evil to determine my view of God and will cut him down accordingly, or I will allow my view of God to determine my view of the evil and will elevate him accordingly, accepting that nothing is beyond his power for good.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what God wants for us-and to service to him and to others because of him-is what the will transformed into Christliheness looks like.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“The so-called “right to privacy” of which so much is made in contemporary life is in very large measure merely a way of avoiding scrutiny in our wrongdoing.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of given facts or assumptions. It extends the information we have and enables us to see the “larger picture”—to see it clearly and to see it wholly. And it undermines false or misleading ideas and images as well. It reveals their falseness to those who wish to know.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“There are no formulas—no definitive how-tos—for growth in the inner character of Jesus. Such growth is a way of relentless seeking. But there are many things we can do to place ourselves at the disposal of God, and “if with all our hearts we truly seek him, we shall surely find him”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Genuine transformation of the whole person into the goodness and power seen in Jesus and his “Abba” Father—the only transformation adequate to the human self—remains the necessary goal of human life. But it lies beyond the reach of programs of inner transformation that draw merely on the human spirit—even when the human spirit is itself treated as ultimately divine.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Feelings are, with a few exceptions, good servants. But they are disastrous masters.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ

“Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“This impotence of “systems” is a main reason why Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today, which always strongly convey some elements of a human system. They were, instead, to establish beachheads of his person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity. They were to bring the presence of the kingdom and its King into every corner of human life simply by fully living in the kingdom with him.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ with Bonus Content

“the situations in which we find ourselves are never as important as our responses to them, which come from our “spiritual” side.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ with Bonus Content

“And with respect to feelings that are inherently injurious and wrong, their strategy is not one of resisting them in the moment of choice but of living in such a way that they do not have such feelings at all, or at least do not have them in a degree that makes it hard to decide against them when appropriate.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith. They do not realize that in so doing they are not honoring God, but simply yielding to the deeply anti-intellectualist currents of Western egalitarianism, rooted, in turn, in the romantic idealization of impulse and blind feeling found in David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and their nineteenth- and twentieth-century followers.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Genuine transformation of the whole person into the goodness and power seen in Jesus and his “Abba” Father—the only transformation adequate to the human self—remains the necessary goal of human life.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“The same mis-location of the body explains many other intractable problems now facing much of our world: the sexualization of practically everything, abortion, eating disorders, and racial and other discriminations. All of these are rooted in taking the body-our own or that of others-to be the person and thereby depriving ourselves of the spiritual perspective on the person, which alone can enable us to cherish the body and its central role in our life.
Body hatred also comes from disappointment about our future with it, even from outright fear of the body-of what it is going to do to us. Not accepting God as God puts us in his place, I have noted, and leaves us with nothing to trust and worship but our body and its natural powers. The frenzy over physical attractiveness that we see all around us today and the despair over its loss-eventually, in aging and death, for everyone-are the main characteristics of the contemporary climate of life.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ