John Ortberg Quotes

I’m more concerned about who you’re becoming than what you’re doing.

Peace does not lie in getting God to give me other circumstances. Peace lies in finding God in these circumstances.

The miracle of Sunday is that a dead man lives. The miracle of Saturday is that the eternal Son of God lies dead.

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.

Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.

One of the most painful aspects of suffering is the loneliness of it. Others may offer support or empathy, but no one can walk the road to Moriah in our place.

God is so immense that if he were ‘too visible,’ people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there.

The ministry of bearing with one another is learning to hear God speak through difficult people.

Our beliefs are not just estimates of probabilities. They are also the instruments that guide our actions.

Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.

The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he’s coming down.

We who preach have one tool. We are people of the book.

What matters is not the accomplishments you achieve; what matters is the person you become.

Failure is not an event, but rather a judgment about an event. Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things. It is a way we think about outcomes.

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.

Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from a messiah complex-except one.

Prayer allows us to wait without worry.

Skepticism can keep us from blessing, can keep us trapped in two minds.

Passion for our work is not usually a subterranean volcano waiting to erupt. It is a muscle that gets strengthened a little each day as we show up – as we do what is expected of us, and then some.

Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.

Grace is the offer of God’s ceaseless presence and irrational love that cannot be stopped.

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.

Peace doesn’t come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in the boat.

If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.

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.

Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us. Solitude requires relentless perseverance.

The goal is not for us to get through the Scriptures. The goal is to get the Scriptures through us.