Dallas Willard Quotes

It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin.

The true saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on takeoff.

You will not become a saint through other people's sins.

To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.

I never had an intellectual struggle with the Bible, with the gospel, with the claims of Christ.

Men are not born saints with special gifts and privileges. They fight against the world, the flesh and the devil, and as they conquer, the spirit of Jesus begins to shine through with more clarity.

Patience is a virtue; virtue is a grace.

Satan will be ready to help forward such thoughts as a fit medium to lift thee up , and slacken thy care in duty for the future. Such discoveries do indeed bear witness to the truth of thy grace, but not to the degree and measure of it. The weak child may be, yea, is, oftener in the lap than the strong.

Walk more closely with God. Get nearer to Christ. Seek to exchange hope for assurance. Seek to feel the witness of the Spirit more closely and distinctly every year. Lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily threatens you. Press towards the mark more earnestly. Fight a better fight, and war a better warfare every year you live. Pray more. Read more. Subdue self more. Love the brethren more. Oh that you may endeavor to grow in grace every year, that the end of your Christian course may be better than the beginning!

Sainthood's piety is made, refined, perfected, by prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.

...you have to stop loving and pursuing Christ in order to sin.

The saints shall persevere in holiness, because God perseveres in grace.

The pursuit of holiness must be anchored in the grace of God; otherwise it is doomed to failure

Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection.

Fire and water may as well agree in the same vessel, as grace and sin in the same heart.

Every mountain that every Christian ever faces, the Lord levels with sufficient grace.

The sad thing is that many of us come to Christ because we are sinners, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to pretend that we are not!

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances.

It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment.

I used to think I could shape the circumstances around me, but now I know Jesus uses circumstances to shape me.

The only reason you are not yet a saint is because you do not wholly want to be one.

The hardest part of being a Christian is surrendering and that is where the real struggle happens. Once we have overcome our own desire to be elevated, our own desire to be recognized, our own desire to be independent and all those things that we value very much because we are Americans and we are part of this American culture. Once we have overcome that struggle then God can use us as a part of His body to accomplish what the body of Christ was left here to accomplish.

I do not know when I am more perfectly happy than when I am weeping for sin at the foot of the cross.

People are always more encouraged when we share how God's grace helped us in weakness than when we brag about our strengths.