Frankly, I am amazed that this teaching is heard so rarely. Somehow Christians have got it onto their head that grace means we have no partnership with God or any divine synergy. This should be non-controversial and obvious - grace means we get what we don't deserve - not that we are helpless puppets.

Dr. Willard does not take into account that a person that genuinely repents and trust in Christ are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and are a new creature in Christ, a person with new desires and attitudes, a person that loves God and hates sin. If a so called convert does not have their affections changed when they are regenerated, then that person should be asking if they are really converted. If you dislike praying, reading Bible, going to church it is because you were never converted to begin with.

If you just keep doing what Willard says to do, you will just think you need to put more in more effort, whereas what you really need is a new heart from God.

I am a Calvinist, but most of all I have graciously been given a new heart from God, and now I love God and hate sin, and God is real to me now.

I think these "converts" never had the love of God put in their hearts, because when God saves a person they are radically changed from the inside out.

This Keith Green song will explain...

http://youtu.be/x0nUizWjaFM

Sorry Linda, but you are off. I almost wrote in response to what you said yesterday, but now I really disagree. I think, if we spoke about it, you Linda would agree with the notion that I dislike praying and at many times in my life I have disliked church, including now. But I don't question that I am converted, or that the Spirit dwells within; merely that my reformed christianity is wearing thin. In my opinion your view of God's Kingdom is too one-dimensional (so to speak). Dallas is hitting the nail on the head. Thanks for this Ur.

Keith Greene has another song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyxoqHBkwqY

For some odd reason I'm unable to view the video...I suspect my firewall...I'll have to check it out.

Linda...you're comments in the other vid segment of D.W. and this one boggles my head in wonder...are you the same Linda who advocates for Eastern Orthodoxy?

Christians are changed when they are indwellt with the Holy Spirit. It doesn't happen overnight, but if you have the Holy Spirit, you'd want to read the Bible and learn more about the God you worship, and you'd want to pray to thank Him for your blessings. Colossians chapter 3 is a good chapter to read about the new people that we are, that have been raised up with Christ.

One does get the impression that those posting here who dislike reading the Bible and praying are in no way inclined to change. At least in these clips Dallas says nothing objectionable, per se, but he doesn't seem to say anything 'concrete' either when repeatedly asked to do so by John Ortberg. It must have been a frustrating interview for John.

Wow. I thought this was an amazing and helpful clip.

I love Jesus, but I've struggled with reading my Bible before.

I want to love my neighbor and my enemy. But often I've been like one of the folks Willard talks about in the vid--figuring that since I'm indwelt by the Holy Spirit right thoughts, actions, and attitudes will just happen, and I can be passive.

God has given us tools to help us grow to be more Christ-like. A lot of Christians (like myself) are oblivious or at least forgetful about these tools. Things like confessing our sins and temptations to one another. Praying for one another.

Amazing clip!

Mark, I am not saying that real Christians do not struggle with prayer and Bible reading, but Willard never mentions that people could have a problem with disciple because they might be false converts. He just assumes they really are genuine converts that need guidance concerning discipline. The Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ speak about many that are false converts, have you not read the parable of the four soils?, and how many professing Him to be Lord will hear dreadful words from Jesus on Final Judgment Day - like "Depart from Me, I never knew you, you workers of lawlessness."

Sheer, I think you are confusing Linda with me. Probably about the only thing Linda and I have in common apart from the fact that our Christian names have five letters is that we are women who believe the gospel events St. Paul outlines as the gospel he preaches (in the 1 Corinthians 15 passage someone cited under Pt 1 of this video interview) actually happened and that they changed everything for sinful and lost humankind. (Actually, I'm sure we have a lot more in common than that, even in our theology!)

Being Eastern Orthodox, of course I speak "Dallas Willard" very well. I know exactly what he's on about (in context), and he's right on. Looks like Linda has Reformed "witch hunt" sights on her doctrine gun, so she just doesn't get it . . . and won't until she really wants to. Got to convince her it's safe to lower that gun and take a wider survey of the whole biblical territory. (Going back to the early Church Fathers as expositors and not just cherry-picking them second-hand through the Reformers might help.) "One dimensional" sounds about right. It's an important dimension, but it's not the whole story (and that's really good news, too!).

Linda, would you take another look at the context of why Jesus has to say to some, "depart from me . . . you workers of lawlessness" both in the verse you quote and the similar one in Matthew 25:41? I suspect yours is from where Jesus is specifically referring to those who call Him "Lord, Lord" but do not DO what He says--you can correct me if I'm wrong. Then look in the CONTEXT of the similar one I mention from Matthew 25:31-46, where Jesus is teaching about the basis of the Final Judgment of the nations (i.e., all people, not just believers--I believe some interpreters say not believers, period, but I could be wrong). Funny, He doesn't mention "faith alone" here, let alone doctrine of any kind! How could Jesus overlook that in an area so critical for His disciples to understand as the basis of Final Judgment?! Surely those who ministered to Him unknowingly were just doing it to earn some "god's" approval and for some other reason than God's "glory," since they haven't been taught the truth about Christ (otherwise they would be aware of His teaching here, know they were ministering to Him in their fellow men, and not dumbfounded by His pronouncement), and thus, since these are not "believers," those must have been "dead" works, no? Ready to lower your doctrine gun, yet?

So Karen (with Linda in your sights), if your context of the Matthew scriptures is correct, then the 20th century United States is the most righteous of all nations that has ever existed in that we have tried - as a government - to solve all physical needs of everyone who has come here and to right all social ills (depending on how one defines them). Would it not stand to reason then that as an individual, my own personal works are pretty much immaterial to God and I just need to keep voting for people who say they 'care about the poor'?

Karen, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself commamded his followers to beware of false teaching (doctrine), have you not read in Matthew 16;11-12 where Jesus said:

"How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread? But be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

The Pharisees added to the word of God, whereas the Sadducees subtracted from the Word of God, we need to on guard against both types. The modern day Pharisees would be the Roman Catholics, and the modern day Sadducees would be the liberal Prostestant.

Sorry, Karen, my bad...getting old, losing my mind, and probably just tired of it all.

Elegance, vote for whom you please...because it won't matter a wit what you're thinking is, or what your motivations are...the world does what it does regardless of our intentions or desires.

And that is the way it will be till Y'shua returns...geez, the worst of it all is that were right smack dab in the middle of a colossal, slow-moving train-wreck that seems to move forward frame by frame.

Vote Republican, vote Democrat, vote Independent, vote Palin, Todd, John, Corey, Robert, Sandra, Cindy whomever you're heart desires...it won't make one difference. The wheels are in motion, the actors are in position...all it is now is just the length of time for the wreckage of this farce to come to a screeching halt...yeah, that is what it seems I'm waiting for.

@Sheer, no problem. Seriously, I know the feeling.

@Elegance, (I am imagining the sound of a dive-bombing plane going over my head—similar to the way the real point of the Mathew 25 passage just escaped you.) That’s okay. I guess you'll just have to read the Desert and early Church Fathers for yourself. Suffice it to say, this is not about the "social justice" vs. "doctrinal orthodoxy" dichotomy raging in modern Evangelical Christian circles these days. It is about what a genuinely apostolic reading of the Bible really teaches and how faithful Christians have understood all that, and put it together as a coherent whole, and applied it down through the ages—looking to hold those doctrines and applications of those doctrines of Scripture that have been believed, as St. Vincent of Lerins famously said, “always, everywhere and by all.”

In trying to make the point with Linda that I did, what I hoped some would notice is that we tend to wrap up the tensions and paradoxes of Scripture way too neatly in our doctrinal boxes (nicely putting blinders on to the parts that don’t fit). Consequently, we miss out on the mystery of faith in the living and true God Who has revealed Himself to us in Christ that the Holy Spirit is trying to get us to come to terms with, so that we must cling to Him and seek His empowering grace moment by moment, rather than to our nice neat little exegetical theories, in order to be truly saved (i.e., transformed day by day into His image). The gift of the Eastern Orthodox tradition that I have discovered is that it will not allow us to reduce our faith in God to nice, neat little doctrinal theories, but forces us to wrestle with the teachings of Christ and His Apostles in all their fullness and with all their tensions gloriously intact.

@Linda, exactly, which is why I am suggesting you reexamine the exegesis of the early Church Fathers (and the saying of the Desert Fathers) and a lot of the Scriptures in light of the same. Have you perhaps read Jarislov Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine? If not, it is a unique five-volume scholarly classic that is well worth the effort to read to get a true sense of the historical roots of our faith (and its various traditions) from the perspective of it’s doctrinal development in its historical context. In the interest of full disclosure, in case you weren’t familiar with his work, Jarislov Pelikan was a Christian in the Lutheran tradition who for years taught ecclesiastical history at Yale, and who was very familiar not just with his own Christian tradition, but the other Protestant traditions, Roman Catholicism (especially Medieval) and, what is unusual for many western scholars, the Eastern Church as well. Later in his career, he kept coming closer and closer to embracing Eastern Orthodoxy as the fullness of the faith--as he put it, sort of like “circling the airport looking for a place to land.” He eventually did become Orthodox a few years before he passed away.

It’s not an easy process to question the narratives of our own particular Christian traditions sometimes and try to dig deeper with God’s help to see another perspective that might, in fact, help our understanding so that we can more fully relate our Christian experience to the narratives and teachings of Scripture, but it is incredibly rewarding.

From an Eastern Orthodox perspective, the Roman Catholic Church added to the Apostolic deposit of faith and the various Protestant denominations and sects have all subtracted from it in greater and lesser degrees depending on the particular Protestant tradition. The claim is that only the Orthodox have held to that which has been believed from the beginning without altering it (some would say to a fault). Now, if only many of us Orthodox could only obey it half as well as so many of our brethren in other traditions obey and live out that portion of orthodoxy to which they still hold! Alas, sin is an equal opportunity ensnarer, no matter which tradition you are in, and we Orthodox on the human level have no corner on holiness!

"Later in his career, he kept coming closer and closer to embracing Eastern Orthodoxy as the fullness of the faith..."

I find this part quite interesting because for me as I dug deeper and deeper into Christianity, and scriptures I soon found myself drawing closer and closer...to Judaism...pre-Babylon...which, wasn't Judaistic at all, but still...I find myself oddly drawn to that form of faith.

And as I have gotten older, and older I am...strangely attracted to Judaism. Not the legalisms, but the freshness, the newness of how Jew's look at the scriptures...not as some interesting and arcane scribblings, but as history/life/past-n-present all wrapped up in a moment of the now. There is a timelessness which I have come to appreciate in their viewpoint of life.

I am not Jewish at all, but yet...studying their history, and my/our faith in one G-d...I...I still remember when I came to faith in Y'shua...I didn't see Y'shua as the messiah, as a man, or even as savior...no, all that came later.
No, the first thing I saw was G-d...and since that first meeting G-d has kept his word to me even though I have tripped, stumbled, fallen, fell, crawled, scuttled, flopped, and face-planted my way to the now. He's has kept his word...now I wait to see if he'll allow me my one request i made so long ago...it's a long shot, but I'm waiting to see it happen. I won't be too bent out of shape if it doesn't, but for me...it would the culmination of my spiritual life for me.

Hmm...yeah, thats it...I wandered a bit.

Sheer, probably some good reasons for all that. You might be interested in these then:

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?49546-unOrthodox-Priest-From-Orthodox-Jew-to-Greek-Orthodox-Priest

http://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2010/04/25/surprised-by-christ-by-fr-james-bernstein/#axzz1Mpchk4m4