What must we get right? pt. 4

The following post is a series written in response to a video interview from the Catalyst Conference of Dallas Willard. You can watch that video here.

The Saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on takeoff.

Our final post of this series from the interview of Dallas Willard focuses on his emphasis on the nature of grace. The path that John Ortberg takes in the interview following Willard’s comments about the central message of the church and how to get into heaven before you die is to look at what the Kingdom of God actually looks like in our world today. Willard describes the Kingdom as “God in action” and goes on to say that this turns out to be the exact same thing as grace.

In other words, there is this movement of God in our world today that is the grace of God “in action” in the world.

And then he shares the phrase that I put at the top of this post.

Dallas is essentially arguing that it is grace that enables us to begin to live according to the principles and ideals of this new Kingdom that God is bringing into our world. We cannot do that by our selves. It is a work of God.

So the work of grace extends beyond simply forgiving us [getting into heaven after you die]. It is also the work of enabling us to take up a new way of life [getting into heaven before you die].

It leaves me with the question today… What am I depending on grace to enable me to do this day to live in the kingdom of God?

As a bonus today… here is the video of the second half of Dallas’ interview.

Catalyst West 2010: Dallas Willard Part 2 from Catalyst on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. What must we get right? pt. 2
2. What must we get right? pt. 3
3. What must we get right? pt. 1
4. Why are the disciplines important?
5. Note to self

Tags: post-wide

Category: Leadership, Teaching