John Ortberg Quotations

I hate how spiritual formation gets positioned as an optional pursuit for a small special interest group within the church.

My main job is to live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in my everyday experience of life with God. Everything else is job number two.

For most 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. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.

To have my mind racing and my heart beating fast over glorious possibilities is very close to the summit of life experience for me.

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.

Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, the death of every victim of every war.

Universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard all began as Jesus-inspired efforts to love God with all ones' mind.

Women are the first witnesses to the resurrection and pillars of the early church.

People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible - they just don't actually read the Bible.

As much as we complain about it, though, there's part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don't have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness.