Top 260 Quotes & Sayings by John Ortberg - Page 4

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.

Self-improveme nt is no more God's plan than self-salvation.

God wishes to be seen, wishes to be sought, wishes to be expected, and wishes to be trusted.

Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much.

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.

The Holy Spirit will lead you to be with people as Jesus would be with them if He were in your place.

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.

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

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.

One of the great illusions of our time is that hurrying will buy us more time.

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.

We must assess our thoughts and beliefs and reckon whether they are moving us closer to conformity to Christ or farther away from it.

Jesus changed how the world thinks about science, medicine, human rights, education & more.

Joylessness may be the sin most readily tolerated by the church.

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

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."

Greatness is never achieved through indecision.

Real question is not who was this man (Jesus), but who is this man?

You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God.

God is a God of endless opportunities to do good; the God of the open door.

At the heart of Christian faith is the story of Jesus death and resurrection.

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.

God is never a God of discouragement. When you have a discouraging spirit or train of thought in your mind, you can be sure it is not from God. He sometimes brings pain to his children-conviction over sin, or repentance over fallenness, or challenges that scare us, or visions of his holiness that overwhelm us. But God never brings discouragement.

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.

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.

When I repent, here is where it starts. I try to name my sin as honestly and as specifically as possible. Here is what repenting is not. It is not excusing my sin, minimizing my sin, it's not rationalizing my sin ... Repentance is getting painfully honest with God.

The reason our souls hunger so is that the life we could be living so far exceeds our strangest dreams.

It only makes sense to ask God for guidance in the context of a life committed to "seeking first the kingdom."

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

The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.

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.

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

We may be unlovely yet we are not unloved.

To become grateful, I must learn that I can handle disappointment and delayed gratification with grace and perseverance. This is why practices such as fasting and simplicity are such powerful tools for transformation. The experience of frustration and disappointment is irreplaceable in the development of a grateful heart.

Skeptics would rather, even at their own expense, appear to be right than take the risk of trusting.

Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.

Your world could grow infinitely bigger if you were only willing to become...appropri ately small.

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

Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.

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

The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope.

At the deepest level, pride is the choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts. Jesus said the essence of the spiritual life is to love God and to love people. Pride destroys our capacity to love.

One of the great misconceptions about spiritual growth that develops in a lot of churches is that information alone is adequate to produce transformed human beings. So if we want to have a church of spiritually mature people, let's just keep cramming more and more information into them... Information alone is not adequate for the transformation of the human personality.

A boss who interrupts an employee a lot is called an extrovert, whereas an employee who interrupts a boss too often is called an ex-employee.

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.

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.

God is not interested in our spiritual life. He's interested in our life.

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

I need to learn. Joy is at the heart of God's plan for human beings. The reason for this is worth pondering awhile: Joy is at the heart of God himself. We will never understand the significance of joy in human life until we understand its importance to God. I suspect that most of us seriously underestimate God's capacity for joy.

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.

People who are servants-humbly, honestly, and joyfully-keep getting revealed as the biggest winners. People who recognize and embrace their smallness keep getting bigger and bigger in God's eyes. It's the oddest scoring system.

The greatest bloodbaths in the history of the human race were recorded in the twentieth century in countries that sought to eliminate God, worship, and faith.

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

The entire life of Jesus isn't the story of somebody climbing up a ladder; it's a picture of someone coming down-a series of demotions. The problem with spending our lives climbing up the ladder is that we will go right past Jesus, for He's coming down.

Going in faith does not necessarily mean going with serenity or without doubts. Faith can be difficult.

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.

sometimes we do not realize how much we have to be grateful for until it is threatened.

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

One reason why we fail to hear God speak is that we are not attentive. We suffer from what might be called 'spiritual mindlessness.'

The primary goal of spiritual life is human transformation.