John Ortberg Quotes
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Prudence is not the same thing as caution. Caution is a helpful strategy when you're crossing a minefield; it's a disaster when you're in a gold rush.
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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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Universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard all began as Jesus-inspired efforts to love God with all ones' mind.
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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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At the heart of Christian faith is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.
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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.
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Jesus' life as a foot-washing servant would eventually lead to the adoption of humility as a widely admired virtue.
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Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny, failed movement appeared clearly at an end.
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I have always heard that you need to give yourself a long time to unplug when you do a sabbatical. I unplugged so fast I was a little concerned that I was losing brain capacity.
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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.
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When I teach the formal curriculum, I have the chance to think about it ahead of time. I can rehearse it. I can illustrate it with self-deprecating humor and humble-sounding personal disclosure. I can try to make it comes out just right.
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Sometimes, an inability to believe in Satan reflects a larger inability to believe in a spiritual plane at all.
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Women are the first witnesses to the resurrection and pillars of the early church.
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Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.
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Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences.
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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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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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Death is the prerequisite to resurrection, the new life God intends.
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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.
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The single dynamic that helps people be most aware of God and most experiencing the fruit of the Spirit is gratitude.
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Tithing is considerably less popular than words like generosity or sharing.
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What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.
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A simple way to address hidden curriculum issues is to spend time talking with staff and key leaders about their spiritual lives.
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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.