Top 200 John Ortberg Jr. Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

Featured in: Quotes for Better Decisions

2. “If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

Featured in: Sunday Morning Quotes, Discipleship Quotes, Impossible Quotes, Risk-Taking Quotes

3. “Peace doesn’t come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in the boat.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

Featured in: Happy Sunday Quotes, Peace of Mind Quotes

4. “Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

5. “Over time, grit is what separates fruitful lives from aimlessness.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

6. “You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

7. “Who you become while you’re waiting is as important as what you’re waiting for.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

8. “Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

9. “One of the hardest things in the world is to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

10. “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

11. “The main measure of your devotion to God is not your devotional life. It is simply your life.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

12. “Habits eat good intentions for breakfast.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

13. “Genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

14. “Having faith does not mean never having doubts or questions. It does mean remaining obedient.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

15. “Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

16. “Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don’t have.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

17. “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 Jr.

18. “If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

19. “To become truly free, you must surrender.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

20. “Bitterness is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

21. “The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

22. “God has entrusted us with his most precious treasure – people. He asks us to shepherd and mold them into strong disciples, with brave faith and good character.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

23. “Never try to have more faith – just get to know God better. And because God is faithful, the better you know Him, the more you’ll trust Him.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

24. “The greatest moment of your life is now. This moment is God’s irreplaceable gift to you.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

25. “Every day you and I walk through God’s shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

26. “God is a God of endless opportunities to do good; the God of the open door.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

27. “Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us. Solitude requires relentless perseverance.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

28. “As long as we have unsolved problems, unfulfilled desires, and a mustard seed of faith, we have all we need for a vibrant prayer life.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

29. “Going in faith does not necessarily mean going with serenity or without doubts. Faith can be difficult.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

30. “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.

31. “Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

32. “What repeatedly enters your mind and occupies your mind, eventually shapes your mind, and will ultimately express itself in what you do and who you become.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

33. “Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

34. “True love is willing to warn, reprove, confront or admonish when necessary.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

35. “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.

36. “The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

37. “If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

38. “True repentance never leads to despair. Its leads home. It leads to grace.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

39. “Prayer allows us to wait without worry.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

40. “We must assess our thoughts and beliefs and reckon whether they are moving us closer to conformity to Christ or farther away from it.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

41. “For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

42. “For many 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.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

43. “What matters is not the accomplishments you achieve; what matters is the person you become.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

44. “Acceptance is an act of the heart. To accept someone is to affirm to them that you think it’s a very good thing they are alive.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

45. “Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

46. “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 Jr.

47. “I don’t have a problem with delegation. I love to delegate. I am either lazy enough, or busy enough, or trusting enough, or congenial enough, that the notion leaving tasks in someone else’s lap doesn’t just sound wise to me, it sounds attractive.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

48. “God is still in the business of coming down to earth: to this cubicle, this email, this room, this house, this job, this hospital room, this car, this bed, this vacation. Any place can become Bethel, the house of God. Cleveland, maybe. Or the chair you’re sitting in as you read these words.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

49. “One reason why we fail to hear God speak is that we are not attentive. We suffer from what might be called ‘spiritual mindlessness.’”

— John Ortberg Jr.

50. “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 Jr.