I'm listening to an audio of a seminar by Dallas Willard. Here are a few quotations:
If you want to succeed in discipleship, it has to be the most important thing in your life. And you have to understand that what you are going to get is worth so much more than what it's going to cost you that you will absolutely not let anything get in your way.
You are a disciple of Jesus if you are with him learning to be like him.
As a disciple I am learning from him how to lead my life as he would lead my life if he were I.
The meaning of the cross is the end of your life. It's no longer important for you to have your way.
If you abandon the pursuit of your [own] way then you are in a position to really begin to live.
What happens to people is that they go dead. They are not living in the drama that God intended to live in. Drama is absolutely crucial to our lives.
Idolatry always takes the form of using God for my purposes. And that can happen among professing Christians, and often does.
God intends to exalt you, but not on your terms. On his terms. And that's much better, I can assure you.
Salvation is being caught up in the life that Jesus is now living on earth.
The gospel is "trust Jesus Christ and walk into the kingdom of heaven here and now." Heaven will take care of itself, if you take care of heaven now. And you do this by trusting Jesus, not something he said or something he did.
Most of our teaching has been that you can't do the commandments of Jesus. And you can't if all you do is try. But if you also train as his disciple, there's not a single one of them that you can't do.
The only cure for lust is love. If you love people, you won't lust them.
I need more influences like Dallas Willard in my life. The church needs more serious disciples like Dallas Willard. The world needs to experience the kingdom through Christians who are like Dallas Willard.
May I be one of those people.
Pastor Rod
"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"
3 comments:
I think that we need an influence that can differentiate between discipleship and church culture, between following Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit and following denominational protocols in the strength of the flesh.
You said, "The church needs more serious disciples like Dallas Willard."
I just completed two years of core studies at one of the few remaining "Bible" colleges in the U.S. and in each of my classes I have asked my prof's if they were embarrassed with the state of the church today. It is quite obvious that the church needs more serious disciples like Dallas Willard, and I pray that I can lead a charge to create one that does.
Welcome to the blog.
May God bless you as you seek his purpose in your life. One thing I've found is that it is important not to slide into a judgmental attitude when it seems that I'm more serious about being a true disciple than many others around me. The most powerful statement I can make is my own example.
Rod
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