John Ortberg Jr. Quotes

When God calls people to do something, their initial response is almost always fear. If there is a challenge in front of you, a course of action that could cause you to grow and that would be helpful to people around you, but you find yourself scared about it, there's a real good chance that God is in that challenge.

Prayer, perhaps more than any other activity, is the concrete expression of the fact that we are invited into a relationship with God.

Biblical prayer is impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous. It is more like haggling in an oriental bazaar than the polite monologues of the churches.

A pastor struggled for years with sexual addiction, eventually becoming so despondent that hospitalized himself. He joined an inpatient group and was mostly silent as others shared.
When he decided not to come one day, the leader found he had fallen back into his addiction the previous night. Against every fiber of his instinct, he came back to the group. He shared how much he despised himself and his hypocritical behavior.
When he saw that others wept for him, the weight of the secret that piled on the shame was broken. As Ortberg puts it, the man was able to taste the grace he taught about.

The one thing needed is the decision to live so continually in Jesus' presence as to be always covered with the dust of the rabbi. Martha got

Somebody once said that the biggest difference between you and God is that God doesn't think he's you. In pain, we get very clear about not being God.

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.

No matter how little money we have, no matter what rung we occupy on anybody's corporate ladder of success, in the end what everybody discovers is that what matters is other people. Human beings who give themselves to relational greatness - who have friends they laugh with, cry with, learn with, fight with, dance with, live and love and grow old and die with - these are the human beings who lead magnificent lives.

Joy is God's basic character. Joy is his eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in the universe.

eschatological thinking.

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.

You want to see how devoted we are to comfort? Walk into the average American home and hide the remote control, and watch what happens. Life without the remote control is an unbearable burden for the average American family. Then someone invented a TV with a beeper so that when you clap your hands, the remote control will beep until you find it.

Ever console or scold people hurt in human relationships that satisfaction comes from God alone? Stop. Adam's fellowship with God was perfect, and God Himself declared Adam needed other humans.

We have largely traded wisdom for information, depth for breadth. We want to microwave maturity.

As frustrating as people can be, it's hard to find a good substitute.

What makes a man's 80 year-old Irish uncle skip like a little boy? Me Father is very fond of me!

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. Before Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio that finally worked, he tried two hundred unsuccessful ones. Somebody asked him, "How did it feel to fail two hundred times?" "I never failed two hundred times in my life," Salk replied. "I was taught not to use the word 'failure.' I just discovered two hundred ways how not to vaccinate for polio.

Jesus put it like this: You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Others have come before you. Others will come after you. But this is your day. If God's kingdom is to manifest itself right now, it will have to be through you. God himself will not come to take your place. You are on a mission from God.

The Bible's teaching on prayer leads overwhelmingly to one conclusion: Prayer changes things.

I can buy baseball cards to view an entire career on the back of a little square of cardboard. But nobody sells major league father cards with key statistics on the back ("Had a great season in 2005: set career highs in unforced expressions of affection and averaged 87 minutes of quality time per day.")

God wants to be known, but not in a way that overwhelms us, that takes away the possibility of love freely chosen. "God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away," said Meister Eckhart.

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