Reading Dallas Willard again. I like reading seasoned teachers, who no longer have anything to prove. As the American poet William Stafford wrote: “my mother told me, you don’t have anything to prove to God”. There is something nice about older teachers who aren’t in competition with the world or other leaders. It usually comes later in life, but I can always note the tone when i hear it!  A close friend of mine met him before he died and described how humble Dallas was and thankful, and a listening teacher—those qualities, always makes we want to sit under a teacher!
“All of the spiritualities that are now clamoring for attention, from explicit Satanism to what we hear on Oprah, are concerned with the two issues of identity and empowerment. Who am I? How can I have the power to live? Those are the questions everyone has to deal with. If we don’t come to terms with these, we lapse into some form of human decadence and failure. Renovation of the Heart is simply an attempt to say, “Here’s the Christian picture. It’s all true. It works. It’s accessible to everybody. And there’s nothing that compares with it on earth.”
Dallas Willard
What we are? And how we live well? Who am I, what is my purpose and what empowers me to live out that purpose! Spirit, soul and physical body. How they work in tandem with God:
The spirit is meant to direct the whole person. I received a teaching years back on  the chain of spiritual command (as heaven has a hierarchy, and Jesus is actually the Name above all others, and The King!)—the short version of this chain of command was something like this: Father, Jesus, Spirit, Bible in the Spirit, our own spirit’s responding, our co-ruling our souls with Jesus, our outwardly blessings others and our world. That’s the basic hierarchy, and the Kingdom does work in a hierarchy. Even in ourselves, our spirit or will must be in charge. King David tells his soul to be still, and know God. We have to do the same daily!
The spiritual mechanics of a thorough incarnation of the life of Christ in His People, is what Willard is writing about in Renovations of the Heart. How we get Jesus into our “embodied will and heart”. How we really live out from the Life of Jesus.
Just read a great interview with Dallas Willard about his last book. I love overhearing in interview form, just what people have really learned and embodied in their spiritualities and lives. Something about the format, allows people to be frank about how far they have gotten in understanding and living life well. It’s a window into the possible in terms of spiritual growth. We need those who are out in front of us, who are still growing spiritually right up until the end of this life. Perhaps, we keep growing less interruptedly in the next!
What I took away from his interview: If we want to change society it must begin with our inner life being transformed and incarnated by Jesus Christ. We need to actively participate in this process. To the degree we have allowed the formation of His Life in us, collaborated in His forming of our own identity (Merton would call that partnering in making our own identity with Christ) we will be useful to others, including society. He also has a holistic model of transformation or sanctification which includes the whole person—mind, emotions, the physical body etc. He distinguishes between the soul and spirit, and teaches that the spirit is the real Ruler in the inner life, and must ally with The Holy Spirit to be guided properly, and then guide the whole self. This stuff is basic, but needed in His People and in the world.
At the end of his life, Dallas Willard really emphasized the formation  of the life of Christ in people, and the practicals of how that happens, and some of the ramifications of His fuller incarnation in His People-the true Church. Getting Christ into every area of my own life has always felt to me to be the goal of “Christ”ian life.  A deeper formation or incarnation into what he called the embodied will. I like that someone was trying to name a deeper version of the Life of Christ entering into people, and that he noted practical practices to help facilitate it. Good teacher, and a kind man whose last words were thanks!
When I was in seminary, I had a vision of a deeper incarnation of Christ being made available starting at the Reformation (re-formation of His Life in His People), and that He wanted to increase this level of incarnation of His Actual Life in His People in our day. I saw a deeper baptism into His Name for us who are willing. That He had a deep desire to go deeper into us in every area of our lives, and this would bring a profound transformation in His Body and then out into society. That people would start being more concerned with knowing Him, than doing things for Him. That the church’s core focus would become being discipled in order to be real authentic disciples of the nations.
This vision made it very clear to me, that my main task in life was to partner with Him in allowing His actual Life to form in me firstly, and then to partner with Him in bringing His Life to others. I can only offer to you what aspects of His Life, He has already formed in me! And if I wanted to make a real impact with my life, i needed to focus on His forming in my inner life first! This made it clear my inner life was more important than my outer life, and that it was the place to start. Outer expression flows from inner Reality. To the degree we are formed in Christ or His Life actually lives in us, we are able to bless outwardly.
It is nice to find teachers finally focused primarily on the Life of Christ actually forming in people, not just number or initial salvation, but true lasting formation of the character and Life of Jesus in His People. So that the character of the church will match her calling. All my mentors basically taught the same thing, before there was a developed language of “spiritual formation”. Your friendship with Jesus should effect and infect every area of your life. Then you may be given or useful to others and your part of society or sphere of influence. If we don’t start there, we end up with mere religion, but not essential Christianity.
Of course, there will be controversy around this renewal as there are in all revivals in the life of His Church. God has always wanted to know us, and we have always needed to know and love Him, and be transformed and made new by our friendship with Him-nothing has really changed about the human predicament. But we are being built up as His Temple, His House, His Holy Portion, His Own inheritance (who are we to refuse His Life in us after all He is and has and is doing!) and He is able to finish what He began in us. He who called, is also able to cause us to stand! And become in Him who we truly are. Our faith requires us to believe in Jesus ability to form His Own Life in His People. And then outwardly through His People into the world. We as participants in the Divine Nature, as Peter put it, need the faith to actually be becoming the sons and daughters of God in a practical way down here, while living on earth.
Renewal movements and revivals (God quickening a word to His People) in church history always, begin with true revelations from Heaven, yet start in immaturity and grow into maturity. You see this with the Messianic movement the Welsh Revival, the great awakenings, Azusa, or whatever movements you happened to be seeded by—the “missional” movement etc; but if you go to the original seed, you find the Truth that God was trying to restore to His Body, before the distortions made by humans! You want to focus on what God was actually saying and wanting to download into His Body before we distorted it. When looking at church history, we should be slow to throw out The Baby with the bathwater!
In this area of spiritual formation, which God has been trying to re-emphashize to the true church in our time, you can start to hear a more mature version of this spiritual formation movement through the writings and teaching and, more importantly, the life of Dallas Willard. A tree or teacher is known by his fruit! I’m always thankful for those who walked the walk, then talked the talk! This who actually manifest and walk out what they teach! It makes a way in the forest of The Father for us all to go more easily, and grow into His True dimensions we are meant to be becoming. The sons and daughters of God, we are! Let us learn to live well in Him, in every area of our beings. Let us enjoy His deeper formation of His Life in us, in our days! It will bless the world when we do!
Who am I? And how can I have the power to live that out! Identity and purpose are still the core issues of being human. Who I am, and why does that matter, and then how do I live. Willard gets to the core stuff of being people. If I come to think that the way to find myself and walk out my purpose is to come into deepening intimacy with Jesus, how do I do that in every area of my life? That’s discipleship. If we don’t know how He is discipling us, how can we disciple the nations? Discipleship is holistic. It includes our thoughts, feels and senses in dialogue with a Living and Forming God!
Who are you? What are you meant to do in life? And how do you receive the power to do that—to walk out the path prepared beforehand to be your way? Identity, purpose and empowerment to live it! Jesus claims to and answers all these in His Own Being! Jesus claims to not just save, but then to whisper who you are to you, and empower your standing into who you are in Him. He who justified is also sanctifying or forming His Life in us; and is able to do so, as we partner and collaborate with Him, in an absolutely yielded being.
Prayer for a deeper formation in us all! May He form Himself ever more fully in each us who want to go into that collaboration of transformation into our forever selves! May we know Him in our thoughts, feelings, imagination and physical bodies in an ever increasing and tangible practical way! We know you desire to know and commune into and with the deepest aspects of who are. And we believer that this communion will transform us into what You have intended, and that this will bless the world. Then, perhaps, we will be of use to others and our world, and creation itself. We are free to prophecy from our future selves in Him back into our current stage of development! Let’s!
Willard is right, that Christ offers the best solutions to the basic and universal issues of being human and living well. If this way is true, it will offer the truth about how Reality really is, and how to live in proper relation to it! And in his last book, he offers some very practical methods of meeting Christ in that process of becoming what we truly are. I appreciate teachers like that. Always great to sit under old trees!