John Ortberg Jr. Quotes & Sayings

Bitterness is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

When you're in your twenties, someone once wrote, you live to please other people. When you're in your thirties, you get tired of trying to please others, so you get miffed with them for making you worry about it. When you're in your forties, you realize nobody was thinking about you anyway. — John Ortberg Jr.

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

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

Low self-esteem causes me to believe that I have so little worth that my response does not matter. With repentance, however, I understand that being worth so much to God is why my response is so important. Repentance is remedial work to mend our minds and hearts, which get bent by sin. — John Ortberg Jr.

Researchers have found there is simply no correlation between hurry or Type-A behavior and productivity. — John Ortberg Jr.

According to a much-traveled analogy, if we put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately hop out. But put the frog in water that's at room temperature and heat it slowly, and the creature will stay there until it boils to death. Put him in a lethal environment suddenly, and he will escape. But introduce the danger gradually, and he will never notice. The truth is that the dangers to which we are most vulnerable are generally not the sudden, dramatic, obvious ones. They are the ones that creep up on us, that are so much a part of our environment that we don't even notice them. — John Ortberg Jr.

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

There is a very important theological distinction between being a prophet and being a jerk. What burns deeply in the heart of a true prophet is not just anger but love. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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.") — John Ortberg Jr.

Someone once asked a desert father named Abba Anthony, "What must one do to please God?" The first two pieces of advice were expected: Always be aware of God's presence, and always obey God's Word. But the third was surprising: "Wherever you find yourself - do not easily leave." The idea was that community is hard, authentic friendship is hard, patience in work is hard - so leaving will always look more attractive in the short run. But over the long haul, leaving easily has a tendency to produce people who live in a pattern of giving up. Do not easily leave. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

God is so immense that if he were 'too visible,' people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there. — John Ortberg Jr.

Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend ... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear
because peace and fear are both contagious. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you. — John Ortberg Jr.

We have largely traded wisdom for information, depth for breadth. We want to microwave maturity. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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 — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

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. — John Ortberg Jr.

The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God.
Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father. — John Ortberg Jr.

eschatological thinking. — John Ortberg Jr.

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

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