John Ortberg Quotes
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Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.
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There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text.
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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.
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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.
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Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It's mere diversion.
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Prudence is not hesitation, procrastination, or moderation. It is not driving in the middle of the road. It is not the way of ambivalence, indecision, or safety.
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You can only love and be loved to the extent that you know and are known by somebody.
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When the soul is understood and attended to, we can be liberated from hurry, preoccupation, unsatisfied desires, and chronic discontent.
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Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.
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People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible - they just don't actually read the Bible.
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Love of learning led to monasteries, which became the cradle of academic guilds.
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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.
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This much I have learned: human beings come with very different sets of wiring, different interests, different temperaments, different learning styles, different gifts, different temptations. These differences are tremendously important in the spiritual formation of human beings.
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My wife is one of the most extroverted people I know. She could out-talk Oprah and Joyce Meyer simultaneously.
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Opposition is an inevitable reality of pastoral life.
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Although the church has often been far too slow to follow his lead, Jesus' insistence that women, as well as men, bear the full image of God has had a way of sparking reform movements across the centuries.
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The soul is both the most fragile and most resilient thing about you; a healthy soul is what holds you together when your world falls apart. Since you will carry your soul into eternity, it's worth checking up on it at least as often as your teeth.
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Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin.
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Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me.
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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.
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The only true and lasting inspiration for life is genuine love for God, and submitted gratitude that I get to be a part of the redemptive quest.
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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.
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People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with their calling. They are preoccupied with the Caller.
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One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.