Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.
Dallas WillardRelations between parents and children and siblings and mates. This is not external. We can't separate them.
Dallas WillardThere is no avoiding the fact that we live at the mercy of our ideas This is never more true than with our ideas about God.
Dallas WillardImagine that you had discovered gold or oil on a certain property, and no one else knew about it. Can you see yourself being sad and feeling deprived for having to gather all your resources and sacrifice them in order to buy that property? Hardly. Now you know what it is like to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.
Dallas WillardThe organized churches must become schools of spiritual discipline where Christians are taught how to own without treasuring (Matt. 6:21); how to possess without, like the "rich young ruler," being possessed (Mark 10:22); how to live simply, even frugally, though controlling great wealth and power.
Dallas Willard