John Ortberg Quotes

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

~ 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

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.

~ John Ortberg

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.

~ John Ortberg

So it goes for those of us who live in a cul-de-sac, where babies are brought home from the hospital and watched over, where hearts stop and feet slip, where we wonder if there is a hidden road that leads somewhere.We believe and we doubt. Believing and doubting share the same inevitability, but they are not equal. They cannot lay the same claim on our allegiance. They do not share the same power.If there are places beyond the cul-de-sac, doubt cannot take us there.

~ John Ortberg

David is called a man after God's heart. This can be a little confusing when you get into his story, because he's guilty of adultery and murder and cover-up. He's a train wreck as a husband, and he's worse as a dad. But his heart belongs to God. His whole life is immersed in the presence and story of God. What lights him up is to serve God and love God, and when he mess up—and he does—he repents and wants to get right with God again.

~ John Ortberg

Even you can’t tell yourself how to change, because you didn’t create you. 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. He has no other agenda. He has no unmet needs he is hoping you can help him with. And he knows what the best version of you looks like. He delighted in the idea of it, and he is already working on it. The apostle Paul said, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Which means God is at work every moment to help you become his best version of you.

~ John Ortberg

The ministry of bearing with one another is more than simply tolerating difficult people. It is also learning to hear God speak through them.

~ John Ortberg

God says, 'I will measure my people by the one standard that counts. It’s very simple. Are people hungry? Feed them. Are people sick? Help them. Are people oppressed? Stick up for them. Are the widows lonely? Visit them. Are there uneducated children? Teach them. Are people rejected because of the color of their skin? Befriend them.'The widow of Zarephath fed Elijah even though she had but a handful of flour and a little oil in a jug. (1 Kings 17:7–24) In this story she is recklessly generous. She gives the last of what she has to Elijah.We should all pause occasionally to ask if we are living with that kind of generous spirit. Maybe we have an abundance of oil and flour in our jars. Maybe we only have a little. Maybe we have a huge flour jar, or perhaps a very small one. No matter what we have, we can still learn to live with a generous spirit.

~ John Ortberg

True joy, as it turns out, comes only to those who have devoted their lives to something greater than personal happiness.

~ John Ortberg

You don't know how many people have been strengthened because you asked God to encourage them, how many people have been healed because you prayed for their bodies, how many spiritual runaways have come home because you prayed for their souls. None of us may ever know the true effects of our prayers this side of death. But we do know this: History belongs to the intercessors.

~ John Ortberg

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

~ John Ortberg

If I think God’s aim is to produce rule-followers, spiritual growth will always be an obligation rather than a desire of my heart.

~ John Ortberg

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.

~ John Ortberg

...sin is often the attempt to meet a legitimate need in an illegitimate way.

~ John Ortberg

...all of us are somewhere on a journey to God, and the gap between least and most advanced is infinitely smaller than the gap between the most advanced and God himself.

~ John Ortberg

Humility is the freedom to stop trying to be what we're not, or pretending to be what we're not, and accepting our 'appropriate smallness.

~ John Ortberg

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

~ John Ortberg

No heart is as whole as a broken heart, and no faith is as solid as a wounded faith. Elie Wiesel

~ John Ortberg

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

~ John Ortberg

A deep soul lives in conscious awareness of eternity, not simply today.

~ John Ortberg

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

~ John Ortberg

We must minister out of weakness. The reason we help others is not because we are strong and they need us; it is because if we don't help them, we will end up a hopeless relic.

~ John Ortberg

The greatest moment of your life is now. Not because it's pleasant or happy or easy, but because this moment is the only moment you've got. Every past moment is irretrievably gone. It's never coming back. If you live there, you lose your life. And the future is always out there somewhere. You can spend an eternity waiting for tomorrow, or worrying about tomorrow. If you live there, you likewise will lose your life. This moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you.

~ John Ortberg

We are not the passive victim of others' opinions. Their opinions are powerless until we validate them.

~ John Ortberg

Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them.

~ John Ortberg

The most important criterion is this: hire someone whose character and humility and attitude you would like to have reproduced in your church and in yourself.

~ John Ortberg

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.

~ John Ortberg

Sloth is the failure to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done - like the kamikaze pilot who flew seventeen missions.

~ John Ortberg

When preaching is done right, it can change lives. When it's done badly, my failure goes beyond the merely human.

~ John Ortberg

Learning something new is a fabulous way to be refreshed. When work can grind you down, something about learning a new activity thrills the soul. It reminds you that the world is bigger than your desk and your to-do list.

~ John Ortberg

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.

~ John Ortberg

Death is the prerequisite to resurrection, the new life God intends.

~ John Ortberg

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

~ John Ortberg

This much I have learned: human beings come with very different sets of wiring, different interests, different temperaments, different learning styles, different gifts, different temptations. These differences are tremendously important in the spiritual formation of human beings.

~ John Ortberg

Jesus is why women have traveled continents, spent decades learning a strange language so they could translate the Gospel, planting churches, caring for the sick, educating the illiterate, and marching for the oppressed.

~ John Ortberg

Love of learning led to monasteries, which became the cradle of academic guilds.

~ John Ortberg

Churches need to figure out how they will address the spiritual lives of their staffs and leadership teams.

~ John Ortberg

I have given up the idea that there is an opposition-free church out there. But I have gained something else - an appreciation for the gift of opposition. When it comes, I learn something about my motives. When it comes, I get to test my courage.

~ John Ortberg

God has entrusted us with his most precious treasure - people. He asks us to shepherd and mold them into strong disciples, with brave faith and good character.

~ John Ortberg