John Ortberg Quotes
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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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One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.
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God has decided, for his own good reasons, that people are not transformed outside of community.
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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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As much as we complain about it, though, there's part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don't have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness.
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Real spiritual authority has to do with the truth of the actual words being spoken, and the spirit of the person behind the words. Really, authority is about truth: honest-living truth.
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Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them.
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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.
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The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation.
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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.
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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.
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At the heart of Christian faith is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.
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Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It's the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects.
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I am struck by how quickly I am prone to judgmentalism.
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From ancient times, the core idea of the soul is the soul is the capacity to integrate different functions into a single being or into a single person. The soul is what holds us all together: what connects our will and our minds and our bodies and connects us to God.
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I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up.
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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.
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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.
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Women are the first witnesses to the resurrection and pillars of the early church.
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When preaching is done right, it can change lives. When it's done badly, my failure goes beyond the merely human.
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For most of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.
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The question isn't if someone will sign up for spiritual formation; it's just who and what our spirits will be formed by.
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No one wants pain. Not even long-time, mature Christians who want to grow. We will always find ways to avoid pain. Pain itself is a bad thing.
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To have my mind racing and my heart beating fast over glorious possibilities is very close to the summit of life experience for me.