John Ortberg Quotes

There is a world of difference between being friendly to someone because they're useful to you and being someone's friend.

Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.

Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.

The entire life of Jesus isn't the story of somebody climbing up a ladder; it's a picture of someone coming down-a series of demotions. The problem with spending our lives climbing up the ladder is that we will go right past Jesus, for He's coming down.

To become truly free, you must surrender.

At the heart of Christian faith is the story of Jesus death and resurrection.

Many Christians expend so much energy and worry trying not to sin. The goal is not to try to sin less. In all your efforts to keep from sinning, what are you focusing on? Sin. God wants you to focus on him. To be with him. “Abide in me.” Just relax and learn to enjoy his presence. Every day is a collection of moments, 86,400 seconds in a day. How many of them can you live with God? Start where you are and grow from there. God wants to be with you every moment.

For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.

What matters is not the accomplishments you achieve; what matters is the person you become.

Every day you and I walk through God's shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.

Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

Real question is not who was this man (Jesus), but who is this man?

True love is willing to warn, reprove, confront or admonish when necessary.

The only cure from sin is by maintaining a vision of God.

Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.

Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

Scratch the surface of any cynic, and you will find a wounded idealist underneath. Because of previous pain or disappointment, cynics make their conclusions about life before the questions have even been asked. This means that beyond just seeing what is wrong with the world, cynics lack the courage to do something about it. The dynamic beneath cynicism is a fear of accepting responsibility.

Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from a messiah complex-except one.

God is a God of endless opportunities to do good; the God of the open door.

Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don't have.

Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny, failed movement appeared clearly at an end.

I am disappointed with myself. I am disappointed not so much with the particular things I have done as with the aspects of who I have become. I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be.

Going in faith does not necessarily mean going with serenity or without doubts. Faith can be difficult.

There is a immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something....Sp iritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.... Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange my life around activities that enable me to live in the fruit of the Spirit

I don't have a problem with delegation. I love to delegate. I am either lazy enough, or busy enough, or trusting enough, or congenial enough, that the notion leaving tasks in someone else's lap doesn't just sound wise to me, it sounds attractive.

Grace is the offer of God's ceaseless presence and irrational love that cannot be stopped.

Our beliefs are not just estimates of probabilities. They are also the instruments that guide our actions.

Jesus is mysterious not just because of what we don't know about him, but because of what we do know about him.

Passion for our work is not usually a subterranean volcano waiting to erupt...It is a muscle that gets strengthened a little each day as we show up - as we do what is expected of us, and then some.

It only makes sense to ask God for guidance in the context of a life committed to "seeking first the kingdom."

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

Habits eat good intentions for breakfast.

It's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy.

The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away. They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life. When people were first made, our deepest longing was to know and be known. And after the Fall, when we all got weird, it's still our deepest longing - but it's now also our deepest fear.

When I teach the formal curriculum, I have the chance to think about it ahead of time. I can rehearse it. I can illustrate it with self-deprecating humor and humble-sounding personal disclosure. I can try to make it comes out just right.

God is still in the business of coming down to earth: to this cubicle, this email, this room, this house, this job, this hospital room, this car, this bed, this vacation. Any place can become Bethel, the house of God. Cleveland, maybe. Or the chair you're sitting in as you read these words.

There is no way for a human being to come to God that does not involve surrender.

Having faith does not mean never having doubts or questions. It does mean remaining obedient.

Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.

Self-improveme nt is no more God's plan than self-salvation.

There is something you can't fix, can't heal, or can't escape, and all you can do it trust God. Finding ultimate refuge in God means you become so immersed in his presence, so convinced of his goodness, so devoted to his lordship that you find even the cave is a perfectly safe place to be because he is there with you.

How hard is it for God to get your attention? Do you regularly practice turning aside in your day? That is, taking a moment to listen to God- because God, through the Holy Spirit, really is speaking, because we know, every place is filled with the presence of God. There is not an inch of space, not a moment of time, that God does not inhabit.

Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us. Solitude requires relentless perseverance.

A bad sermon is like a car wreck - everyone slows down to see what happened.

Spiritual formation is for everyone. Just as there is an 'outer you' that is being formed and shaped all the time, like it or not, by accident or on purpose, so there is an 'inner you.' You have a spirit. And it's constantly being shaped and tugged at: by what you hear and watch and say and read and think and experience.

The church is in the hope business.

When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.

We who preach have one tool. We are people of the book.