John Ortberg Quotes

90 Sourced Quotes

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

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
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.

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
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
Significance is about who we are before it is about what we do.

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

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

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
The life of Abraham Lincoln is by most accounts an amazing study in character formation. Yet he was notoriously disorganized; he even had a file in his law office labeled If you can't find it anywhere else, try looking here.

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

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
The most frequent promise in the Bible is 'I will be with you.'

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

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

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

John Ortberg
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.

John Ortberg
I am disappointed with myself. I am disappointed not so much with the particular things I have done as with the aspects of who I have become. I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be.

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
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.

John Ortberg
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
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
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.

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
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.

John Ortberg