John Ortberg Quotes
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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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The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation.
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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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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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God has decided, for his own good reasons, that people are not transformed outside of community.
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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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I am struck by how quickly I am prone to judgmentalism.
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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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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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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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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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In the context of worship, amusement is a waste of time and a waste of life, and therefore a form of sin.
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Authority can be faked. That's why impersonating a police officer is a crime. Sometimes the outward appearances of authority can be deceiving.
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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.
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Congregations shaped by the Scriptures generally have preachers who are shaped by the Scriptures.
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In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison.
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I have given up the idea that there is an opposition-free church out there. But I have gained something else - an appreciation for the gift of opposition. When it comes, I learn something about my motives. When it comes, I get to test my courage.
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When people feel they're getting to speak into what's being preached, there is high built-in motivation to participate.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.