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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Prayer allows us to wait without worry.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

We are too often double espresso followers of a decaf Sovereign.