Top 260 Quotes & Sayings by John Ortberg - Page 3

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

Genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality.

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

As long as we have unsolved problems, unfulfilled desires, and a mustard seed of faith, we have all we need for a vibrant prayer life.

To become truly free, you must surrender.

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.

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

There is a immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something....Sp iritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.... Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange my life around activities that enable me to live in the fruit of the Spirit

In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.

Prayer allows us to wait without worry.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

There is a world of difference between being friendly to someone because they're useful to you and being someone's friend.

Make your life about something bigger than your life.

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.

Waiting on the Lord is a confident, disciplined, expectant, active, sometimes painful clinging to God.

Habits eat good intentions for breakfast.

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

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

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

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.

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

If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards.

Over and over in the Bible, it is fear that threatens to keep people from trusting and obeying God.

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.

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

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

For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear -- because peace and fear are both contagious.

Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

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

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

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.

Many Christians expend so much energy and worry trying not to sin. The goal is not to try to sin less. In all your efforts to keep from sinning, what are you focusing on? Sin. God wants you to focus on him. To be with him. “Abide in me.” Just relax and learn to enjoy his presence. Every day is a collection of moments, 86,400 seconds in a day. How many of them can you live with God? Start where you are and grow from there. God wants to be with you every moment.

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.

How hard is it for God to get your attention? Do you regularly practice turning aside in your day? That is, taking a moment to listen to God- because God, through the Holy Spirit, really is speaking, because we know, every place is filled with the presence of God. There is not an inch of space, not a moment of time, that God does not inhabit.

There is no way for a human being to come to God that does not involve surrender.

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.

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

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.'

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.

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.

We are tempted to live under the illusion that somewhere out there are people who are normal.

Too often we argue about Christianity instead of marveling at Jesus.

True love is willing to warn, reprove, confront or admonish when necessary.

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

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.

The Bible does not say you are God’s appliance; it says you are his masterpiece. Appliances get mass-produced.