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The first act of love is always the giving of attention.

Dallas Willard

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Dallas Willard
Age: 77 †
Born: 1935
Born: September 4
Died: 2013
Died: May 8
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Translator
Buffalo
Missouri
Dallas Albert Willard
First
Giving
Always
Love
Attention
Firsts

More quotes by Dallas Willard

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Relations between parents and children and siblings and mates. This is not external. We can't separate them.
Dallas Willard
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If you don't have a teacher you can't have a disciple.
Dallas Willard
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The core of the person is what he or she loves, and that is bound up with what they worship - that insight recalibrates the radar for cultural analysis. The rituals and practices that form our loves spill out well beyond the sanctuary. Many secular liturgies are trying to get us to love some other kingdom and some other gods.
Dallas Willard
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Sometimes we get caught up in trying to glorify God by praising what He can do and we lose sight of the practical point of what He actually does do.
Dallas Willard
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Unless you have already put God first, for example, what you will have to do to be financially secure, impress other people, or fulfill your desires will invariably lead you against God's wishes. That is why the first of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no gods who take priority over me,” is the first of the Ten Commandments.
Dallas Willard
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Theology is just what you really think about God, and if you're going to do that, you'd better use your mind and not just let it be a receptacle - a catch-all for whatever beliefs happen to be passing by.
Dallas Willard
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It's very difficult to be right about something without hurting someone with it.
Dallas Willard
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We're not here to prove we're right we're here to help people.
Dallas Willard
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The soul's order is re-established in God through the law.
Dallas Willard
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The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.
Dallas Willard
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To allow lust (or strong desires) to govern our life is to exalt our will over God's.
Dallas Willard
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Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound up with the central Augustinian claim that we are what we love.
Dallas Willard
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The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon.
Dallas Willard
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There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that suggests you can decide just to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus' expense and have nothing more to do with him.
Dallas Willard
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When [Satan] undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with an idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being.
Dallas Willard
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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
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Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like education. Everyone gets an education it's just a matter of which one you get.
Dallas Willard
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Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.
Dallas Willard
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When we think of taking Christ into the workplace or keeping Christ in the home, we are making our faith into a set of special acts. The specialness of such acts just underscores the point - that being a Christian, being Christ's isn't thought of as a normal part of life.
Dallas Willard
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Projects of personal transformation rarely succeed by accident, drift, or imposition.
Dallas Willard