A biography for John Ortberghasn’t been written yet.
“Sin is protean. It is a cancer that keeps mutating, and just when you think you have killed off one form, it turns out a deadlier strain yet is threatening your heart.”
“I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up.”
“I know that those of us who go into church work are to regard ourselves as servants, are to offer our lives as a gift.”
“Sometimes in churches somebody will discover a particular vein of spirituality and seek to recruit others into it, or assume a superior position because they have found certain techniques - but no one actually wants to become like them.”
“Better to be a loving person without knowing how you got there, than an expert no one can stand to be around.”
“We may be unlovely yet we are not unloved.”
“Jesus viewed his own destiny - to be glorified in and through death - as an expression of a kind of cosmic principle: the pathway to life runs through death.”
“Prudence is what makes someone a great commodities trader - the capacity to face reality squarely in the eye without allowing emotion or ego to get in the way. It's what is needed by every quarterback or battlefield general.”
“Prudence is not the same thing as caution. Caution is a helpful strategy when you're crossing a minefield; it's a disaster when you're in a gold rush.”
“There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text.”
“The only true and lasting inspiration for life is genuine love for God, and submitted gratitude that I get to be a part of the redemptive quest.”
“People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with their calling. They are preoccupied with the Caller.”
“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.”
“Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It's mere diversion.”
“'Amusement' is appealing because we don't have to think; it spares us the fear and anxiety that might otherwise prey on our thoughts.”