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" There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God's counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator. "

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" 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. "

John Ortberg

Language

Women

Sick

" We call an obsession with having someone's approval 'co-dependency;' the Bible's word for it is idolatry. A country can be an idol. A family can be an idol. "

" 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. "

John Ortberg

Courage

Gift

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

" Tithing is considerably less popular than words like generosity or sharing. "

John Ortberg

Words

Sharing

" 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. "

" Better to be a loving person without knowing how you got there, than an expert no one can stand to be around. "

" 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. "

" Love of learning led to monasteries, which became the cradle of academic guilds. "

" Learning something new is a fabulous way to be refreshed. When work can grind you down, something about learning a new activity thrills the soul. It reminds you that the world is bigger than your desk and your to-do list. "

" No one wants pain. Not even long-time, mature Christians who want to grow. We will always find ways to avoid pain. Pain itself is a bad thing. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My wife is one of the most extroverted people I know. She could out-talk Oprah and Joyce Meyer simultaneously. "

" Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences. "

" The irony is that 'looking down on everybody else' is a violation of the law of love, which, according to Jesus, is the absolute essence of righteousness. "

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

" 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. "

" The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation. "

" Opposition is an inevitable reality of pastoral life. "

" When the soul is understood and attended to, we can be liberated from hurry, preoccupation, unsatisfied desires, and chronic discontent. "

" Far more books get written about how to get more people in your church than how to get the people already in your church to have more humility and sincere love. "

" I wrote 'Soul Keeping' because we are taught more about how to care for our cars than how to steward our souls. But you cannot have an impactful life with an impoverished soul. "

John Ortberg

Care

Soul

" Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It's the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects. "

" Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It's mere diversion. "

" Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin. "

" What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well. "

" When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part. "

" 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. "