Top 100 John Ortberg Quotes
#1. Our beliefs are not just estimates of probabilities. They are also the instruments that guide our actions.
John Ortberg
#2. Gratitude is what we radiate when we experience grace, and the soul was made to run on grace the way a 747 runs on rocket fuel.
John Ortberg
#3. I distrust those people who knew so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan D. Anthony
John Ortberg
#4. sin always causes the disintegration of the soul.
John Ortberg
#5. Growth is the ability to handle larger and more interesting problems.
John Ortberg
#6. God has entrusted us with his most precious treasure - people. He asks us to shepherd and mold them into strong disciples, with brave faith and good character.
John Ortberg
#7. In a contagious world,we learn to keep our distance. If we get too close to those who are suffering, we might get infected by their pain. It may not be convenient or comfortable. But only when you get close enough to catch their hurt will they be close enough to catch your love.
John Ortberg
#8. In solitude we remember we are not what anybody thinks of us - we are sheep tended to by the Shepherd.
-John Ortberg
John Ortberg
#9. I don't know why some prayers get yeses and some prayers get nos. I know the anguish of a no when you want a yes more than you want anything in the world. But I don't know why. I only know that in the Cross God's no to his only Son was turned into God's yes to every human being who ever lived.
John Ortberg
#10. Preaching a series allows you to go into greater depth in the text, and spending several weeks on one theme allows the teaching to be absorbed more thoroughly.
John Ortberg
#11. Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.
John Ortberg
#12. For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us
John Ortberg
#13. Some leaders are not intimidated by opposition; they actually thrive on it. It wakes them up. It energizes them. It calls them to battle. It causes them to mobilize their thoughts and energy.
John Ortberg
#14. Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.
John Ortberg
#15. In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.
John Ortberg
#16. As a preacher who is fully human, and clearly not divine, I can't speak as Jesus did. But I do seek to speak truth that carries weight and authority. All of us who preach the gospel aspire to speak under the authority of Jesus.
John Ortberg
#17. God is the most rejected person in the history of the universe. If
John Ortberg
#18. Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me.
John Ortberg
#19. Prudence is what makes someone a great commodities trader - the capacity to face reality squarely in the eye without allowing emotion or ego to get in the way. It's what is needed by every quarterback or battlefield general.
John Ortberg
#20. Eugene Peterson once wrote that before we can love our enemies, we have to pray our hatred. In these psalms - which are more frequent than the psalms of orientation - Israel vented and boiled over at God, apparently believing he was secure enough to be able to take it.
John Ortberg
#21. When Jesus came in the form of a servant, he was not disguising who God is. He was revealing who God is.
John Ortberg
#22. The temptation battle is the most important battle you will ever fight.
John Ortberg
#23. The irony is that 'looking down on everybody else' is a violation of the law of love, which, according to Jesus, is the absolute essence of righteousness.
John Ortberg
#24. Sheldon Vanauken wrote that the strongest argument for Christianity is Christians, when they are drawing life from God. The strongest argument against Christianity? Also Christians, when they become exclusive, self-righteous, and complacent.
John Ortberg
#25. Our soul begins to grow in God when we acknowledge our basic neediness.
John Ortberg
#26. You have a "turn" every time you have an opportunity to choose. But most of us only see a tiny fraction of the choices we have.
John Ortberg
#27. We are not the passive victim of others' opinions. Their opinions are powerless until we validate them.
John Ortberg
#28. Grace is the offer of God's ceaseless presence and irrational love that cannot be stopped.
John Ortberg
#29. Being right is actually a very hard burden to be able to carry gracefully and humbly. That's why nobody likes to sit next to the kid in class who's right all the time. One of the hardest things in the world is to be right and not hurt other people with it.
John Ortberg
#30. A disciplined person is one who can do the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit.
John Ortberg
#31. All work was designed by God to be priestly work.
John Ortberg
#32. Genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality.
John Ortberg
#33. One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.
John Ortberg
#35. Jesus viewed his own destiny - to be glorified in and through death - as an expression of a kind of cosmic principle: the pathway to life runs through death.
John Ortberg
#36. We complicate our faith and lives in many ways, but at the core, our purpose is simple: We are called to love.
John Ortberg
#37. Going through open doors means I will have to be able to trust God with my future when the path I'm called to take does not look like the obvious one.
John Ortberg
#38. gratification of mind and body will actually dismantle your soul.
John Ortberg
#39. When you discover your strengths, you are learning an indispensible part of what it means to be made in the image of God.
John Ortberg
#40. God wishes to be seen, wishes to be sought, wishes to be expected, and wishes to be trusted.
John Ortberg
#41. I'm not sure ministry can ever have the urgency it requires if it is not aware of evil, both externally and internally.
John Ortberg
#42. Jesus used the word easy only once. But it wasn't about our circumstances. The same Jesus who said, "I am the door" (John 10:7, KJV) also said, "My yoke is easy" (Matthew 11:30).
John Ortberg
#43. Humility is the freedom to stop trying to be what we're not, or pretending to be what we're not, and accepting our 'appropriate smallness.
John Ortberg
#44. Sin is very important to the soul because sin is what disintegrates the soul; it's what attacks the soul. Sin kind of is to the soul what cancer is to the body.
John Ortberg
#45. So soul-satisfaction is not about acquiring the right things but about acquiring the right soul. It is not something you buy, but something you receive freely from God.
John Ortberg
#46. If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.
John Ortberg
#47. Vance Havner wrote about the soul's need for rest: "If you don't come apart for a while, you will come apart in a while.
John Ortberg
#48. To be fully known and fully loved is the most healing gift one human being can give another.
John Ortberg
#49. A very simple way to guard your soul is to ask yourself, Will this situation block my soul's connection to God?
John Ortberg
#50. I put all my hope in a third day God.
But I live in a second-day world.
John Ortberg
#51. Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world.
John Ortberg
#52. It may be a very bad thing that I needed God to die for me, but it is a wonderful thing that God thinks I am worth dying for.
John Ortberg
#53. Life goes on. The world spins out another day. The mystery of human life and hope goes on. And here and there, the luminous light that shone out from a carpenter in Nazareth glimmers and flickers in the darkness. And we hope again for what life might become. The soul waits.
John Ortberg
#54. The Spirit wants to make you threatening to all the forces of injustice and apathy and complacency that keep our world from flourishing.
John Ortberg
#55. Love me, love my rag dolls," God says. It's a package deal.
John Ortberg
#56. Over and over in the Bible, it is fear that threatens to keep people from trusting and obeying God.
John Ortberg
#57. I wrote 'Soul Keeping' because we are taught more about how to care for our cars than how to steward our souls. But you cannot have an impactful life with an impoverished soul.
John Ortberg
#58. Similarly, a boss who interrupts an employee a lot is called an extrovert, whereas an employee who interrupts a boss too often is called an ex-employee. Even
John Ortberg
#59. 'Who Is This Man?' is about the impact of Jesus on human history. Most people - including most Christians - simply have no idea of the extent to which we live in a Jesus-impacted world.
John Ortberg
#60. A healthy soul is whole and integrated. It is connected to God. A person with a healthy soul is at peace with God, with himself, and with other people.
John Ortberg
#61. Jesus would make available to the world the great teaching of Israel: ethical monotheism. There is one God, and he is the source and judge of all that is good. This
John Ortberg
#62. The test of love is that it gives even when there is no expectation of a return.
John Ortberg
#63. Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, the death of every victim of every war.
John Ortberg
#64. If we do not become changed from the inside-out - if we don't morph - we will be tempted to find external methods to satisfy our need to feel that we're different from those outside the faith. If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or conformed.
John Ortberg
#65. The record of his life and teaching, the Gospels, have impacted the world so much that they have been translated into 2,527 languages. The second-most-translated book, Don Quixote, has been translated into about 60 languages. The
John Ortberg
#67. Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.
John Ortberg
#68. Somebody said a long time ago that if the Devil can't make you sin, he will make you busy, because either way your soul will shrivel.
John Ortberg
#69. Tithing is a bad ceiling but an excellent floor.
John Ortberg
#70. The truth is, the soul's infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God's infinite capacity to give.
John Ortberg
#71. God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.
John Ortberg
#72. We call an obsession with having someone's approval 'co-dependency;' the Bible's word for it is idolatry. A country can be an idol. A family can be an idol.
John Ortberg
#73. Wise people build their lives around what is eternal and squeeze in what is temporary. Not the other way around.
John Ortberg
#74. Repenting is a gift God gives us for our own sake, not his.
John Ortberg
#75. as Aristotle said, "The soul never thinks without a picture.
John Ortberg
#76. When someone is in crisis, don't start by teaching, leveraging, or explaining. Just be with.
John Ortberg
#77. Acceptance is an act of the heart. To accept someone is to affirm to them that you think it's a very good thing they are alive.
John Ortberg
#78. 'Amusement' is appealing because we don't have to think; it spares us the fear and anxiety that might otherwise prey on our thoughts.
John Ortberg
#79. When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.
John Ortberg
#80. Sometimes, an inability to believe in Satan reflects a larger inability to believe in a spiritual plane at all.
John Ortberg
#81. Somebody said that if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.
John Ortberg
#82. Jesus is why women have traveled continents, spent decades learning a strange language so they could translate the Gospel, planting churches, caring for the sick, educating the illiterate, and marching for the oppressed.
John Ortberg
#83. Sin is protean. It is a cancer that keeps mutating, and just when you think you have killed off one form, it turns out a deadlier strain yet is threatening your heart.
John Ortberg
#84. A deep soul lives in conscious awareness of eternity, not simply today.
John Ortberg
#85. My main job is to live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in my everyday experience of life with God. Everything else is job number two.
John Ortberg
#86. Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.
John Ortberg
#87. Your Mission starts where you are,
Not where you think you should be.
Sometimes we're tempted to think that our current position/job/situation is a barrier to our mission, but, in fact, it is where it starts.
John Ortberg
#88. Authority can be faked. That's why impersonating a police officer is a crime. Sometimes the outward appearances of authority can be deceiving.
John Ortberg
#89. Who you become while you're waiting is as important as what you're waiting for.
John Ortberg
#90. I need an inspiration that is grounded in reality while thoroughly transcendent.
John Ortberg
#91. A boss who interrupts an employee a lot is called an extrovert, whereas an employee who interrupts a boss too often is called an ex-employee.
John Ortberg
#92. You can only love and be loved to the extent that you know and are known by somebody.
John Ortberg
#93. God did not create us out of need. He created us out of his love.C. S. Lewis wrote,God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.
John Ortberg
#94. Going in faith does not necessarily mean going with serenity or without doubts. Faith can be difficult.
John Ortberg
#95. For much of our lives, we live in the shallows. Then something happens - a crisis, a birth, a death - and we get this glimpse of tremendous depth. My soul becomes shallow when my interests and thoughts go no further than myself. A person should be deep because life itself is deep.
John Ortberg
#96. Over time, grit is what separates fruitful lives from aimlessness.
John Ortberg
#97. When you give your soul rest, you open it to the peace Jesus intends for you.
John Ortberg
#98. The most important criterion is this: hire someone whose character and humility and attitude you would like to have reproduced in your church and in yourself.
John Ortberg
#99. God has decided, for his own good reasons, that people are not transformed outside of community.
John Ortberg
#100. The soul is hidden in God's creating hand: 'In his hand is the soul of every living thing' " (Job 12:10).
John Ortberg
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