Steve Coombs

“People who think that they are spiritually superior because they make a practice of a discipline such as fasting or silence or frugality are entirely missing the point. The need for extensive practice of a given discipline is an indication of our weakness, not our strength. We can even lay it down as a rule of thumb that if it is easy for us to engage in a certain discipline, we probably don’t need to practice it. The disciplines we need to practice are precisely the ones we are not “good at” and hence do not enjoy.”
― Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

“Ideals of Asceticism, quite correctly summarizes the essence of religious asceticism as the voluntary practice of activities “for the deliverance and protection of the soul from defilement, for the increase of its powers by the discharge of its proper functions in accordance with its own conception of the moral and spiritual order, and for the consequent achievement and enjoyment of its full status.”16 Teachers who condemn asceticism correctly practiced in the contemporary context will almost certainly do more harm than good, unless they have some other method for their students that effectively lays hold on life in the Kingdom of God.”
― Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

“The internet and smartphones are fantastic for connections, communication, and knowledge. But connections are not friends, communication is not intimacy, and knowledge is not wisdom.”
― Justin Whitmel Earley, Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship

“If we are made for friendship, then we will be missing something fundamental in our marriages and parenting if we try to do those without friends.”
― Justin Whitmel Earley, Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship