John Ortberg Quotes
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I know that those of us who go into church work are to regard ourselves as servants, are to offer our lives as a gift.
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In community, we discover who we really are and how much transformation we still require. This is why I am irrevocably committed to small groups. Through them, we can accomplish our God-entrusted work to transform human beings.
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The hurried can become unhurried. But it will not happen by trying alone, nor will it happen instantly. You will have to enter a life of training.
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The New Testament doesn't present Jesus as a single man to cover up his humanity. It presents him as a single man because... he was a single man.
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'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.
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The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable.
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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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There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God's counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator.
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Ghettos and barrios and abusive homes and trauma wards may produce scarred souls; they can cripple more human spirits than they strengthen.
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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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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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Better to be a loving person without knowing how you got there, than an expert no one can stand to be around.
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Politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into 'us' vs. 'them.'
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I'm not sure ministry can ever have the urgency it requires if it is not aware of evil, both externally and internally.
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A bad sermon is like a car wreck - everyone slows down to see what happened.
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Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists 'out there.'
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Authentic spiritual authority is what puts you in touch with reality.
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As a preacher, my charge is to proclaim the message of the Scriptures. To help the people in my congregation become a people of the book. I love getting to do this.
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I need an inspiration that is grounded in reality while thoroughly transcendent.
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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.
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There are no clear boundary lines between what is physiological, what is psychological, and what is spiritual. Those are language domains that make sense and have integrity but overlap significantly.
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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.
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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.
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The church is in the hope business. We, of all people, ought to be known most for our hope because our hope is founded on something deeper than human ability or wishful thinking.