Top 100 John Mark Comer Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.”

— John Mark Comer

2. “Slow down. Breathe. Come back to the moment. Receive the good as gift. Accept the hard as a pathway to peace. Abide.”

— John Mark Comer

3. “Sabbath is more than just a day; it’s a way of being in the world.”

— John Mark Comer

4. “To restate: love, joy, and peace are at the heart of all Jesus is trying to grow in the soil of your life. And all three are incompatible with hurry.”

— John Mark Comer

5. “To walk with Jesus is to walk with a slow, unhurried pace. Hurry is the death of prayer and only impedes and spoils our work. It never advances it.”

— John Mark Comer

6. “Corrie ten Boom once said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy. There’s truth in that. Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect – they cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.”

— John Mark Comer

7. “Here’s my point: the solution to an overbusy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters.”

— John Mark Comer

8. “The more like Jesus we are, and the more like the image of God we are, the more people see of God’s glory.”

— John Mark Comer

9. “Reminder: Your phone doesn’t actually work for you. You pay for it, yes. But it works for a multibillion-dollar corporation in California, not for you. You’re not the customer; you’re the product. It’s your attention that’s for sale, along with your peace of mind.21.”

— John Mark Comer

10. “Jesus is calling us out. He’s saying that greatness is when we love and serve others.”

— John Mark Comer

11. “Do you enjoy your life? Or are you so focused on the future that you’re missing out on the present? So obsessed with what you don’t have that you forget what you do have? Life is a gift. Deeply enjoy every moment you can. A good night’s sleep. Laughter. Plant your feet on the ground and take it all in. Because what you’re doing now will set the stage for your future.”

— John Mark Comer

12. “The Hebrew word Shabbat means ‘to stop.’ But it can also be translated ‘to delight.’ It has this dual idea of stopping and also of joying in God and our lives in his world. The Sabbath is an entire day set aside to follow God’s example, to stop and delight.”

— John Mark Comer

13. “Hurry and love are like oil and water; they simply do not mix.”

— John Mark Comer

14. “At this point in my life, I’m just trying to not miss the goodness of each day, and bring my best self to it.”

— John Mark Comer

15. “There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

— John Mark Comer

16. “Everything matters to God. The way of Jesus should permeate and influence and shape every facet of your life.”

— John Mark Comer

17. “We’re called to a very specific kind of work. To make a Garden-like world where image bearers can flourish and thrive, where people can experience and enjoy God’s generous love. A kingdom where God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven,” where the glass wall between earth and heaven is so thin and clear and translucent that you don’t even remember it’s there. That’s the kind of world we’re called to make. After all, we’re just supposed to continue what God started in the beginning.”

— John Mark Comer

18. “You were made to do good – to mirror and mimic what God is like to the world. To stand at the interface between the Creator and his creation, implementing God’s creative, generous blessing over all the earth and giving voice to the creation’s worship.”

— John Mark Comer

19. “But for Jesus, leadership isn’t about coercion and control; it’s about example and invitation.”

— John Mark Comer

20. “Working theory of the devil’s strategy: deceitful ideas that play to disordered desires that are normalized in a sinful society Working theory of the law of returns applied to spiritual formation: sow a thought, reap an action; sow action, reap another action; sow some actions, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny, either in slavery to the flesh or freedom in the Spirit.”

— John Mark Comer

21. “Here’s my best shot at a definition of agape love: A compassionate commitment to delight in the soul of another and to will that person’s good ahead of your own, no matter the cost to yourself Love is the desire not to take but to give. It’s the settled intention of the heart to promote good in the life of another. To see the beauty inherent in another soul and help them come to see it as well.”

— John Mark Comer

22. “The church is a hospital – a place where sick, broken, wounded, flawed people are made new by Jesus.”

— John Mark Comer

23. “We make our decisions, and then our decisions make us. In the beginning we have a choice, but eventually, we have a character.”

— John Mark Comer

24. “In fact, God seems to love that kind of raw, uncut prayer, skirting the line between blasphemy and desperate faith. He’s not nearly as scared of honesty as we are.”

— John Mark Comer

25. “An easy life isn’t an option; an easy yoke is.”

— John Mark Comer

26. “Because what you give your attention to is the person you become.”

— John Mark Comer

27. “It’s not failure if you fail at doing something you’re not supposed to do. It’s success. Because with each success, and with each so-called failure, you’re getting a clearer sense of your calling.”

— John Mark Comer

28. “It’s by Spirit and truth that we’re transformed into the image of Jesus, but the reciprocal is also true. It’s by isolation and lies that we’re deformed into the image of the devil.”

— John Mark Comer

29. “To have faith in something is simply to live as if it’s true.”

— John Mark Comer

30. “Our war against the three enemies of the soul is not a war of guns and bombs. It’s not against other people at all. It’s a war on lies. And the problem is less that we tell lies and more that we live them; we let false narratives about reality into our bodies, and they wreak havoc in our souls.”

— John Mark Comer

31. “Often what we believe about God says more about us than it does about God. Our theology is like a mirror to the soul. It shows us what’s deep inside.”

— John Mark Comer

32. “When we say that God is faithful, we don’t mean you’ll never experience suffering. A lot of people – in particular, Americans – misinterpret God’s faithfulness to mean some kind of promise to give us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So when tragedy strikes or the economy goes south or the child tests positive or we don’t find a spouse by thirty, we think God is unfaithful.”

— John Mark Comer

33. “Our job is to make the invisible God visible – to mirror and mimic what he is like to the world. We can glorify God by doing our work in such a way that we make the invisible God visible by what we do and how we do it.”

— John Mark Comer

34. “Do you see your work as an essential part of your discipleship to Jesus and as the primary way that you join him in his work of renewal? If not, you should.”

— John Mark Comer

35. “The word helper is ezer in Hebrew. It sounds derogatory in English, like God made Adam a personal assistant. But it’s not that way at all in the original language. Ezer can be translated “partner” – one who comes alongside to help achieve a goal.”

— John Mark Comer

36. “Yes, Jesus was the template for what Godness looks like. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus of Nazareth. But the mystery of the incarnation is that he was also the template for what real, true humanness looks like. He’s the Son of God and he’s the “son of Adam.” If you want to know what a human being, fully awake and alive, ruling over the world as a conduit for the Creator God’s love looks like in flesh and blood – then look at Jesus.”

— John Mark Comer

37. “Hurry and love are incompatible.”

— John Mark Comer

38. “Will we buy the lie? Go our own way, thinking we know better than God? Flip a coin and hope for the best? Or will we listen, not to the voice of the serpent, but to the Creator. Will we believe that God’s way is the best way? He is the Creator, and he’s good.”

— John Mark Comer

39. “For starters it means that your work is a core part of your humanness. You are made in the image of a working God. God is king over the world, and you’re a king, a queen – royalty – ruling on his behalf. Gathering up the creation’s praise and somehow pushing it back to God himself.”

— John Mark Comer

40. “Followers of Jesus need to come back to the reality that baptism is their primary pledge of allegiance,40 contempt has zero place in the heart of those who claim to apprentice under Jesus, and the litmus test of our faith is the degree to which we love our enemy.”

— John Mark Comer

41. “We find God’s will for our lives in our limitations.”

— John Mark Comer

42. “It’s been proven by study after study: there is zero correlation between hurry and productivity. In fact, once you work a certain number of hours in a week, your productivity plummets. Wanna know what the number is? Fifty hours. Ironic: that’s about a six-day workweek. One study found that there was zero difference in productivity between workers who logged seventy hours and those who logged fifty-five.15 Could God be speaking to us even through our bodies?”

— John Mark Comer

43. “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”

— John Mark Comer

44. “No matter what we sow, the law of returns applies. Good or evil, love or hate, justice or tyranny, grapes or thorns, a gracious compliment or a peevish complaint – whatever we invest, we tend to get it back with interest. Lovers are loved; haters, hated. Forgivers usually get forgiven; those who live by the sword die by the sword. “God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.”

— John Mark Comer

45. “Our time is our life, and our attention is the doorway to our hearts.”

— John Mark Comer

46. “If you want to experience the life “to the full” of Jesus, his nonstop, conscious enjoyment of God’s presence and world, all you have to do is adopt not only his theology and ethics but also his lifestyle. Just follow his way. That’s it!”

— John Mark Comer

47. “When the sun set our rhythms of work and rest, it did so under the control of God; but the clock is under the control of the employer, a far more demanding master.”

— John Mark Comer

48. “The cultural milieu we live in is one of celebrityism. The temptation, when you get really good at something, is to do it to serve and love yourself, not the world, and to do it for your own glory, not God’s. It’s so easy for gifted people to fall into pride, hubris, shameless self-promoting, and self-aggrandizement. It’s lame.”

— John Mark Comer

49. “We were set up to love. To absorb the love of God into our bloodstream and then to share it with another human being.”

— John Mark Comer

50. “Post-Christian culture is an attempt to move beyond the Christian vision while still retaining much of its scaffolding. It’s a reaction against Christianity – the West’s rebellious teenager moment. We’re the stereotypical adolescent, kicking against our parents’ authority and railing against all their flaws while still living in their house and eating all their food.”

— John Mark Comer