The Divine Conspiracy
Richard Foster said,
“The Divine Conspiracy is the book I have been searching for all my life. Like Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, it is a masterpiece and a wonder.”
I couldn’t agree more.
If Wild at Heart is the manual for the heart of a man, The Divine Conspiracy is the manual for that man’s heart for the decade of becoming good soil.
It’s not for the faint of heart. And sure, not the kind of book you flip open for a few pages when you are taking a dump. It reads like a manual. A manual for the person who is thirsty and serious about becoming a student of God and His Kingdom.
While Dallas goes into great depths of Scripture, history, and theology, his message and his life are quite simple:
“Who are you becoming?”
“The most important thing about a person is not what he does, it is who he becomes.”
The rewards far exceed the work. And the commitment to read, re-read, pray through, go back and forth from the book to the Scriptures, again and again, will utterly transform your life today and your life for eternity.
A few notable quotes to entice you into letting this great work be a part of your apprenticeship in the Narrow Road:
“We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.”
“The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought, His Zoe [life], into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.” (Dallas quoting C.S. Lewis)
“When we examine the broad spectrum of Christian proclamation and practice, we see that the only thing made essential on the right wing theology is forgiveness of the individual’s sins. On the left it is removal of social or structural evils. The current gospel then becomes a ‘gospel of sin management.’ Transformation of life and character is no part of the redemptive message. Moment-to-moment human reality in its depths is not the arena of faith and eternal living.”
“I am learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live my life if he were I.”
“Kingdom praying and its efficacy is entirely a matter of the innermost heart’s being totally open and honest before God. It is the matter of what we are saying with our whole being, moving with resolute intent and clarity of mind into the flow of God’s action. In apprenticeship to Jesus, this is one of the most important things we learn how to do. He teaches us how to be in prayer what we are in life and how to be in life what we are in prayer.”
“We are made to ‘have dominion’ within an appropriate domain of reality. This is the core of the likeness or the image of God in us and is the basis of the destiny for which we were formed. We are, all of us, never-ceasing spiritual beings with a unique eternal calling to count for good in God’s great universe.”
There is more… much more. You’ll have to go with God into its depths and goodness to find out.
Here’s the description from Amazon:
The Divine Conspiracy has revolutionized how we think about the true meaning of discipleship. In this classic, one of the most brilliant Christian thinkers of our times and author of the acclaimed The Spirit of Disciplines, Dallas Willard, skillfully weaves together biblical teaching, popular culture, science, scholarship, and spiritual practice, revealing what it means to “apprentice” ourselves to Jesus. Using Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount as his foundation, Willard masterfully explores life-changing ways to experience and be guided by God on a daily basis, resulting in a more authentic and dynamic faith.
