Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

John Ortberg

Hope

Business

Church

" I have always heard that you need to give yourself a long time to unplug when you do a sabbatical. I unplugged so fast I was a little concerned that I was losing brain capacity. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" A simple way to address hidden curriculum issues is to spend time talking with staff and key leaders about their spiritual lives. "

" Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them. "

" Gratitude is what we radiate when we experience grace, and the soul was made to run on grace the way a 747 runs on rocket fuel. "

" A bad sermon is like a car wreck - everyone slows down to see what happened. "

John Ortberg

See

Everyone

" 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

" When people feel they're getting to speak into what's being preached, there is high built-in motivation to participate. "

" The soul is both the most fragile and most resilient thing about you; a healthy soul is what holds you together when your world falls apart. Since you will carry your soul into eternity, it's worth checking up on it at least as often as your teeth. "

" Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists 'out there.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison. "

John Ortberg

Feeling

Leave

" Sloth is the failure to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done - like the kamikaze pilot who flew seventeen missions. "

John Ortberg

Who

Pilot

" We do not need answers or formulas to minister in crisis. "

" Prudence is not hesitation, procrastination, or moderation. It is not driving in the middle of the road. It is not the way of ambivalence, indecision, or safety. "

" 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. "

" The most important criterion is this: hire someone whose character and humility and attitude you would like to have reproduced in your church and in yourself. "

" 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. "

" This much I have learned: human beings come with very different sets of wiring, different interests, different temperaments, different learning styles, different gifts, different temptations. These differences are tremendously important in the spiritual formation of human beings. "

" 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. "

John Ortberg

Church

" 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

" Death is the prerequisite to resurrection, the new life God intends. "

" I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up. "

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