John Ortberg

“A bad sermon is like a car wreck - everyone slows down to see what happened.”

“We all want to feel spiritually vigorous, and we hurt when we don't. This pain is intensified for people who lead church ministries.”

“Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.”

“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.”

“Authentic spiritual authority is what puts you in touch with reality.”

“We complicate our faith and lives in many ways, but at the core, our purpose is simple: We are called to love.”

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

“Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.”

“...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.”

“Spiritual formation is for everyone. Just as there is an 'outer you' that is being formed and shaped all the time, like it or not, by accident or on purpose, so there is an 'inner you.' You have a spirit. And it's constantly being shaped and tugged at: by what you hear and watch and say and read and think and experience.”

“The church is in the hope business.”

“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.”

“In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison.”

“The church is in the hope business. We, of all people, ought to be known most for our hope because our hope is founded on something deeper than human ability or wishful thinking.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away. They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life. When people were first made, our deepest longing was to know and be known. And after the Fall, when we all got weird, it's still our deepest longing - but it's now also our deepest fear.”

“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.”

“The single dynamic that helps people be most aware of God and most experiencing the fruit of the Spirit is gratitude.”