John Ortberg Quotes

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

The most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become.

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

Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don't have.

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.

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.

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.

Wise people build their lives around what is eternal and squeeze in what is temporary. Not the other way around.

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.

I don't have a problem with delegation. I love to delegate. I am either lazy enough, or busy enough, or trusting enough, or congenial enough, that the notion leaving tasks in someone else's lap doesn't just sound wise to me, it sounds attractive.

Never try to have more faith - just get to know God better. And because God is faithful, the better you know Him, the more you'll trust Him.

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.

Everybody wears an unseen sign that reads: Inspire me. Remind me that my life matters; call me to be my best self; appeal to whatever in me is most noble and honorable. Don't let me go down the path of least resistance. Challenge me to make my life about something more than the acquisition of money or success

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.

When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.

Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

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

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.

Imagine watching all that God might have done with your life if you had let him.

Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.

Who you become while you're waiting is as important as what you're waiting for.

Jesus ... associated with the outcasts; he spoke with them, touched them, ate with them, loved them.

The most frequent promise in the Bible is ‘I will be with you.’

Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand.

Genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality.

Sheldon Vanauken wrote that the strongest argument for Christianity is Christians, when they are drawing life from God. The strongest argument against Christianity? Also Christians, when they become exclusive, self-righteous, and complacent.

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.

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.

True joy, as it turns out, comes only to those who have devoted their lives to something greater than personal happiness. This is most visible in extraordinary lives, in saints and martyrs. But it is no less true for ordinary people like us.

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

If we do not become changed from the inside-out - if we don't morph - we will be tempted to find external methods to satisfy our need to feel that we're different from those outside the faith. If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or conformed.

Jesus is mysterious not just because of what we don't know about him, but because of what we do know about him.

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.

If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat.

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.

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.

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.

One of the hardest things in the world is to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother.

The greatest moment of your life is now. This moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you.

We'd like to be humble...but what if no one notices?

In a contagious world,we learn to keep our distance. If we get too close to those who are suffering, we might get infected by their pain. It may not be convenient or comfortable. But only when you get close enough to catch their hurt will they be close enough to catch your love.

God is still in the business of coming down to earth: to this cubicle, this email, this room, this house, this job, this hospital room, this car, this bed, this vacation. Any place can become Bethel, the house of God. Cleveland, maybe. Or the chair you're sitting in as you read these words.

The test of love is that it gives even when there is no expectation of a return.

Habits eat good intentions for breakfast.

Having faith does not mean never having doubts or questions. It does mean remaining obedient.

The main measure of your devotion to God is not your devotional life. It is simply your life.

Make your life about something bigger than your life.

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.

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.

True repentance never leads to despair. Its leads home. It leads to grace.