DISCIPLESHIP

'A major part of this important work is coming to understand what the people we are dealing with really do believe, and not pretending - often with them - that they believe what they don't believe at all. In a setting where a social premium has been placed upon believing certain things for the sake the sake of group solidarity, we must face the fact that human beings can honestly profess to believe what they do not believe. They may do this for so long that even they no longer know that they do not believe what they profess. But their actions will, of course, be in terms of what they actually believe.' 

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.337. 

PREACHING

'One of the greatest weaknesses in our teaching and leadership today is that we spend so much time trying to get people to do things good people are supposed to do, without changing what they really believe.' 

Dalllas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.336. 

DISCIPLESHIP

'Non-discipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses of the amazing general similarity between Christians and no-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to lives their lives in the Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of professing Christians into those for whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.' 

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.330. 

DISCIPLESHIP

'...I am learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live my life is he was me. I am not necessarily learning to do everything he did, but I am learning how to do everything I do in the manner that he did all that he did.' 

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.310. 

BEAUTY

'Some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen are elderly people whose souls shine so brightly that their bodies are hardly visible...' 

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.233. 

CHURCH

'There is very little time and occasion for openness in most of our gatherings because we fear it. We think it may lead to confrontation, anger and divisiveness. We are not open because we fear what others will think of us and do to us. If we honestly compared the amount of time in church spent thinking about what others think or might think with the amount of time spent thinking about what God is thinking, we might probably be shocked. Those of us in congregational leadership need to think more deeply about this.'

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.223. 

GOD'S LOVE

'How deep is the love of God? Without Jesus Christ, talk about the "depth of God's love" would simply be an abstraction. Without Jesus Christ, God could send you sixty volumes, with every page saying, "I love you deeply, I love you deeply, I love you deeply," but it would still be an abstract concept, not a life-changing reality. To genuinely understand the depths of God's love you must know the depths to which Jesus Christ went in order to love you. How deep did he go? "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"' 

Timothy Keller, Prayer, p.174. 

SONSHIP

'Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that one day he saw a father and son walking down the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed him and told the boy he loved him - and then after a minute he put the boy back down. Was the little boy more a son in the father's arms than he was down on the street? Objectively, and legally, there was no difference, but subjectively and experientially, there was all the difference in the world. In his father's arms, the boy was experiencing his sonship. 

When the Holy Spirit comes down on you in fullness, you can sense your Father's arms beneath you. It is an assurance of who you are. The Spirit enables you to say to yourself: "If someone as all-powerful as that loves me like this, delights in me, has gone to infinite lengths to save me, says that he will never let me go, and is going to glorify me and make me perfect and take everything bad out of my life - if all of that is true - why am I worried about anything?"'

Timothy Keller, Prayer, p.172. 

TRUE FAITH

'For the Word of God is not received by faith as it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart.' 

John Calvin in Timothy Keller, Prayer, p.165.