Renewing the Christian Mind
Metadata
- Author: Dallas Willard, Gary Black Jr.
- Full Title: Renewing the Christian Mind
- Category: #books
Highlights
What is real? What is the good life? Who is a good person? And, How does one become a good person? (Location 468)
this search for increased understanding and awareness of God on the critical issues of our day must continue. In that way he could be understood as a “progressive,” because he believed that as followers of Christ we should always seek wisdom and virtue as we conform our hearts and minds to the likeness of Christ. Thus, we must never stop seeking, asking for, progressing toward, and finding the truth about the nature of our creation and Creator. (Location 471)
Thoughts determine the orientation of everything we do and evoke the feelings that frame our world and motivate our actions. Interestingly, you can’t evoke thoughts by feeling a certain way. However, we can evoke—and to some degree control—our feelings by directing our thoughts. (Location 550)
The realm of thought involves four main factors: ideas, images, information, and our ability to think. The two most powerful ones, of course, are ideas and images. (Location 558)
To change governing ideas, whether in the individual or the group, is one of the most difficult and painful things in human life. Genuine conversion is a wrenching experience. (Location 577)
the emergence of generic spirituality. (Location 582)
Images are always concrete or specific, as opposed to the abstractness of ideas, and are heavily laden with feeling. (Location 587)
we as followers need to keep the image of the cross vividly present in our minds. (Location 596)
This is the basic idea behind all temptation: God is presented as depriving us by his commands of what is good. As a result, we think we must take matters into our own hands and act contrary to what he has said. (Location 597)
to serve God well, we must think straight, as crooked thinking—intentional or not—always favors evil. By contrast, to take the “information” of scripture into a mind thinking straight, under the direction and empowerment of the Holy Spirit, is to place our feet solidly on the high road of spiritual formation under God. (Location 639)
train their thoughts ever upon God. In this way they enter not only a life of study, but also a life of worship. (Location 650)
worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining the spiritual formation of the whole person. (Location 652)