John Ortberg quotes
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There is such a love, a love that creates value in what is loved. There is a love that turns rag dolls into priceless treasures. There is a love that fastens itself onto ragged little creatures, for reasons that no one could ever quite figure out, and makes them precious and valued beyond calculation. This is love beyond reason. This is the love of God.
-- John Ortberg -
Jesus is mysterious not just because of what we don't know about him, but because of what we do know about him.
-- John Ortberg -
Who you become while you're waiting is as important as what you're waiting for.
-- John Ortberg -
Peace doesn't come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in the boat.
-- John Ortberg -
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Every day you and I walk through God's shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.
-- John Ortberg -
We tend to be preoccupied by our problems when we have a heightened sense of vulnerability and a diminished sense of power. Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.
-- John Ortberg -
What repeatedly enters your mind and occupies your mind, eventually shapes your mind, and will ultimately express itself in what you do and who you become.
-- John Ortberg -
The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.
-- John Ortberg -
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For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.
-- John Ortberg -
Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.
-- John Ortberg -
When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.
-- John Ortberg -
Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.
-- John Ortberg -
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Too often we argue about Christianity instead of marveling at Jesus.
-- John Ortberg -
If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended - we could not make enough room inside the building.
-- John Ortberg -
Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.
-- John Ortberg -
Low self-esteem causes me to believe that I have so little worth that my response does not matter. With repentance, however, I understand that being worth so much to God is why my response is so important. Repentance is remedial work to mend our minds and hearts, which get bent by sin.
-- John Ortberg -
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The good news as Jesus preached it is not just about the minimal entrance requirements for getting into heaven when you die. It is about the glorious redemption of human life-your life.
-- John Ortberg -
Make your life about something bigger than your life.
-- John Ortberg -
If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.
-- John Ortberg -
To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God.
-- John Ortberg -
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I need to worship because without it I can forget that I have a Big God beside me and live in fear. I need to worship because without it I can forget his calling and begin to live in a spirit of self-preoccupation. I need to worship because without it I lose a sense of wonder and gratitude and plod through life with blinders on. I need worship because my natural tendency is toward self-reliance and stubborn independence.
-- John Ortberg -
Your Mission starts where you are,Not where you think you should be.Sometimes we're tempted to think that our current position/job/situation is a barrier to our mission, but, in fact, it is where it starts.
-- John Ortberg -
Death is the prerequisite to resurrection, the new life God intends.
-- John Ortberg -
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.
-- John Ortberg -
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Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.
-- John Ortberg -
If you can't do great things, Mother Teresa used to say, do little things with great love. If you can't do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you can't do them with a little love, do them anyway. Love grows when people serve.
-- John Ortberg -
Joylessness may be the sin most readily tolerated by the church.
-- John Ortberg -
We'd like to be humble...but what if no one notices?
-- John Ortberg -
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Genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality.
-- John Ortberg -
There is something you can't fix, can't heal, or can't escape, and all you can do it trust God. Finding ultimate refuge in God means you become so immersed in his presence, so convinced of his goodness, so devoted to his lordship that you find even the cave is a perfectly safe place to be because he is there with you.
-- John Ortberg -
We are tempted to live under the illusion that somewhere out there are people who are normal.
-- John Ortberg -
God sees with utter clarity who we are. He is undeceived as to our warts and wickedness. But when God looks at us that is not all He sees. He also sees who we are intended to be, who we will one day become.
-- John Ortberg -
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Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand.
-- John Ortberg -
Scratch the surface of any cynic, and you will find a wounded idealist underneath. Because of previous pain or disappointment, cynics make their conclusions about life before the questions have even been asked. This means that beyond just seeing what is wrong with the world, cynics lack the courage to do something about it. The dynamic beneath cynicism is a fear of accepting responsibility.
-- John Ortberg -
Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from a messiah complex-except one.
-- John Ortberg -
The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God. Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.
-- John Ortberg -
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For many 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.
-- John Ortberg -
Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.
-- John Ortberg -
The church is in the hope business.
-- John Ortberg -
Over time, grit is what separates fruitful lives from aimlessness.
-- John Ortberg -
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It's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy.
-- John Ortberg -
Acceptance is an act of the heart. To accept someone is to affirm to them that you think it's a very good thing they are alive.
-- John Ortberg -
The greatest moment of your life is now. This moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you.
-- John Ortberg -
Skepticism can keep us from blessing, can keep us trapped in two minds.
-- John Ortberg -
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Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don't have.
-- John Ortberg -
Habits eat good intentions for breakfast.
-- John Ortberg -
We must learn to cast off our anxieties because we have so many of them. The world destroys spiritual life by generating constant anxiety. Jesus said that the life of the gospel is choked out by the cares of this world. We know this to be true yet we are more chained and tethered to the world than ever before in the human race.
-- John Ortberg -
God wishes to be seen, wishes to be sought, wishes to be expected, and wishes to be trusted.
-- John Ortberg -
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Jesus ... associated with the outcasts; he spoke with them, touched them, ate with them, loved them.
-- John Ortberg -
Ironically, often the thing that keeps me from experiencing joy is my preoccupation with self. The very selfishness that keeps me from pouring myself out for the joy of others also keeps me from noticing and delighting in the myriad small gifts God offers each day. This is why Walker Percy describes boredom as "the self stuffed with the self."
-- John Ortberg -
God is not interested in our spiritual life. He's interested in our life.
-- John Ortberg -
There is no way for a human being to come to God that does not involve surrender.
-- John Ortberg -
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If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat.
-- John Ortberg -
Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.
-- John Ortberg -
The test of love is that it gives even when there is no expectation of a return.
-- John Ortberg -
The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he's coming down.
-- John Ortberg -
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Will you keep going when you don't know why? When you can't get any answers that would make the pain go away, will you still say, 'My Lord,' even though his ways are not clear to you? Will you keep going-with all the grace and grit and faith you can muster-and live in hope that one day God will set everything right. Will you trust that God is good? ... Ultimately, the choice everyone faces is the choice between hope and despair. Jesus says, 'Choose hope.'
-- John Ortberg -
The main measure of your devotion to God is not your devotional life. It is simply your life.
-- John Ortberg -
The Bible does not say you are God’s appliance; it says you are his masterpiece. Appliances get mass-produced.
-- John Ortberg -
If I have the courage to acknowledge my limits and embrace them, I can experience enormous freedom. If I lack this courage, I will be imprisoned by them.
-- John Ortberg -
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I hate how hard spiritual transformation is and how long it takes. I hate thinking about how many people have gone to church for decades and remain joyless or judgmental or bitter or superior.
-- John Ortberg -
The ministry of bearing with one another is learning to hear God speak through difficult people.
-- John Ortberg -
It may be a very bad thing that I needed God to die for me, but it is a wonderful thing that God thinks I am worth dying for.
-- John Ortberg
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