Ortberg The Life Quotes & Sayings

Two great questions are often posed about worthwhile living: Who has the good life? and Who is a good person? The first question gets addressed in ads, the second at funerals. Two — John Ortberg

The most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become. — John Ortberg

We must learn to cast off our anxieties because we have so many of them. The world destroys spiritual life by generating constant anxiety. Jesus said that the life of the gospel is choked out by the cares of this world. We know this to be true yet we are more chained and tethered to the world than ever before in the human race. — John Ortberg

I am the God of the universe, maker of heaven and earth. I designed your body, I fashioned your world, I created your potential. I have wisdom and guidance and love that I long to communicate to you but I can't get through. Your heart and life are too noisy, and I will not scream. I love you. But you need a button for — John Ortberg

The most important thing in your life," Dallas said, "is not what you do; it's who you become. That's what you will take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. — John Ortberg

The time to love is now. When we love, we enter into the mystery of eternity. Nothing offered in love is ever lost, for this mortal life is not the whole story. This life is to the next a kind of school, a kind of preparation for the me you were meant to be. That person will go into eternity. — John Ortberg

I was operating on the unspoken assumption that my inner world would be filled with life, peace, and joy once my external world was perfect. — John Ortberg

The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he's coming down. — John Ortberg

Scratch the surface of any cynic, and you will find a wounded idealist underneath. Because of previous pain or disappointment, cynics make their conclusions about life before the questions have even been asked. This means that beyond just seeing what is wrong with the world, cynics lack the courage to do something about it. The dynamic beneath cynicism is a fear of accepting responsibility. — John Ortberg

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. — John Ortberg

Depression cannot be overcome by listing a series of good things in one's life, any more than a broken foot can be healed by thinking about all the other bones you have that aren't broken. — Mallory Ortberg

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

It only makes sense to ask God for guidance in the context of a life committed to "seeking first the kingdom." — John Ortberg

Not wanting to give everyone in your life one of your kidneys is not the same thing as hoping they die of kidney failure. — Mallory Ortberg

John of the Cross, writing from his prison cell, says in the dark night the soul is pained but not hopeless. "God's love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness ... No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night." We — John Ortberg

I spent the first 22 years of my life absorbing everything, like a big disgusting cell, and now I'm disgorging it with jokes added out into the world. That's a really gross metaphor. — Mallory Ortberg

The life of Abraham Lincoln is by most accounts an amazing study in character formation. Yet he was notoriously disorganized; he even had a file in his law office labeled If you can't find it anywhere else, try looking here. — John Ortberg

(Remember you always have the option of taking to the sea.) — Mallory Ortberg

Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. — John Ortberg

They devote themselves every day to what Jesus taught: to prayer, to fellowship, to breaking of bread together. They shared what they owned; they served each other's needs. Ethnic barriers came down as they became known by the way they loved each other. It's a different community, devoted to a Jesus way of life with God. — John Ortberg

The child in Bethlehem would grow up to be a friend of sinners, not a friend of Rome. He would spend his life with the ordinary and the unimpressive. He would pay deep attention to lepers and cripples, to the blind and the beggar, to prostitutes and fishermen, to women and children. He would announce the availability of a kingdom different from Herod's, a kingdom where blessing - of full value and worth with God - was now conferred on the poor in spirit and the meek and the persecuted. — John Ortberg

The "with God" life is not a life of more religious activities or devotions or trying to be good. It is a life of inner peace and contentment for your soul with the maker and manager of the universe. The "without God" life is the opposite. It is death. It will kill your soul. — John Ortberg

The primary goal of spiritual life is human transformation. — John Ortberg

deliberately look for God in the ordinary moments of everyday life. — John Ortberg

A paradox of the soul is that it is incapable of satisfying itself, but it is also incapable of living without satisfaction. You were made for soul-satisfaction, but you will only ever find it in God. The soul craves to be secure. The soul craves to be loved. The soul craves to be significant, and we find these only in God in a form that can satisfy us. That's why the psalmist says to God, "Because your love is better than life ... my soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods." Soul and appetite and satisfaction are dominant themes in the Bible - the soul craves because it is meant for God. "My soul, find rest in God. — John Ortberg

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 10:39) "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24) "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24) — John Ortberg

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.

Real life, however, begins when I die to the false god that is me. — John Ortberg

Jesus' life as a foot-washing servant would eventually lead to the adoption of humility as a widely admired virtue. — John Ortberg

Every day. I wrote Dallas's words on a piece of paper, and they hang above my office door: "Arrange your days so that you experience total contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God." They are the first words I see every morning when I come to work. The stream is your soul. And you are the Keeper. — John Ortberg

In the context of worship, amusement is a waste of time and a waste of life, and therefore a form of sin. — John Ortberg

There is a immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something ... Sp iritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely ... Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange my life around activities that enable me to live in the fruit of the Spirit — John Ortberg

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. — John Ortberg

I need to learn. Joy is at the heart of God's plan for human beings. The reason for this is worth pondering awhile: Joy is at the heart of God himself. We will never understand the significance of joy in human life until we understand its importance to God. I suspect that most of us seriously underestimate God's capacity for joy. — John Ortberg

The best place to start doing life with God is in small moments. — John Ortberg

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. — John Ortberg

At the deepest level, pride is the choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts. Jesus said the essence of the spiritual life is to love God and to love people. Pride destroys our capacity to love. — John Ortberg

Life goes on. The world spins out another day. The mystery of human life and hope goes on. And here and there, the luminous light that shone out from a carpenter in Nazareth glimmers and flickers in the darkness. And we hope again for what life might become. The soul waits. — John Ortberg

What is running your life at any given moment is your soul. Not external circumstances, not your thoughts, not your intentions, not even your feelings, but your soul. The soul is that aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self. The soul is the life center of human beings. — John Ortberg

For much of our lives, we live in the shallows. Then something happens - a crisis, a birth, a death - and we get this glimpse of tremendous depth. My soul becomes shallow when my interests and thoughts go no further than myself. A person should be deep because life itself is deep. — John Ortberg

The greatest moment of your life is now.
Not because it's pleasant or happy or easy, but because this moment is the only moment you've got. Every past moment is irretrievably gone. It's never coming back. If you live there, you lose your life.
And the future is always out there somewhere. You can spend an eternity waiting for tomorrow, or worrying about tomorrow. If you live there, you likewise will lose your life.
This moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you. — John Ortberg

Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation. — John Ortberg

I want to love my wife, care for my kids, and give life to my friends. I want to do the work God made me to do. I want to love God and the world he made. I want to do my part to help it flourish, for my spiritual maturity is not measured by following rules. "The me God made me to be" is measured by my capacity to love. When we live in love, we flourish. That is the dance. — John Ortberg

The main measure of your devotion to God is not your devotional life. It is simply your life. — John Ortberg

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. — John Ortberg

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. — John Ortberg

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus. — John Ortberg

The hurried can become unhurried. But it will not happen by trying alone, nor will it happen instantly. You will have to enter a life of training. — John Ortberg

The record of his life and teaching, the Gospels, have impacted the world so much that they have been translated into 2,527 languages. The second-most-translated book, Don Quixote, has been translated into about 60 languages. The — John Ortberg

The good news as Jesus preached it is not just about the minimal entrance requirements for getting into heaven when you die. It is about the glorious redemption of human life-your life. — John Ortberg

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.

Everybody wears an unseen sign that reads: Inspire me. Remind me that my life matters; call me to be my best self; appeal to whatever in me is most noble and honorable. Don't let me go down the path of least resistance. Challenge me to make my life about something more than the acquisition of money or success — John Ortberg

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.

The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life. — John Ortberg

David is called a man after God's heart. This can be a little confusing when you get into his story, because he's guilty of adultery and murder and cover-up. He's a train wreck as a husband, and he's worse as a dad. But his heart belongs to God. His whole life is immersed in the presence and story of God. What lights him up is to serve God and love God, and when he mess up - and he does - he repents and wants to get right with God again. — John Ortberg

Frederick Faber: In the spiritual life God chooses to try our patience first of all by His slowness. He is slow: we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been for eternity ... There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them. We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and He will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go their road. When He comes, go with Him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when he quickens His pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when He slackens, slacken at once: and do not be slow only, but silent, very silent, for He is God. — John Ortberg

God's primary will for your life is not the achievements you accrue; it's the person you become. — John Ortberg

Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny, failed movement appeared clearly at an end. — John Ortberg

Training is essential for almost any significant endeavor in life - running a marathon, becoming a surgeon, learning how to play the piano. — John Ortberg

Sheldon Vanauken wrote that the strongest argument for Christianity is Christians, when they are drawing life from God. The strongest argument against Christianity? Also Christians, when they become exclusive, self-righteous, and complacent. — John Ortberg

How often in spiritual life do we get burdened because we try to wield weapons that have helped someone else in the battle? We hear about how someone else prays, or reads Scripture to start or end their day, or worships, or studies, or serves - and we feel guilty if we don't do the same. We get frustrated because what works for someone else is not helpful to us. We are like David, trying to walk around in Saul's — John Ortberg

Thomas Kelly wrote, We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow ... We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center! ... We have seen and known some people who have found this deep Center of living, where the fretful calls of life are integrated, where No as well as Yes can be said with confidence. — John Ortberg

Death is the prerequisite to resurrection, the new life God intends. — John Ortberg

As Parker Palmer puts it, The divided life is a wounded life, and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound. — John Ortberg

The reason our souls hunger so is that the life we could be living so far exceeds our strangest dreams. — John Ortberg

The practices that once fed my soul feed it no more. John of the Cross, writing from his prison cell, says in the dark night the soul is pained but not hopeless. God's love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness ... No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night. — John Ortberg