Top 200 John Ortberg Jr. Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The primary goal of spiritual life is human transformation.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

52. “The greatest battle of life is spiritual. It is the struggles with resentment and anger and greed and superiority that keep me from living in the flow with God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

53. “Significance is about who we are before it is about what we do.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

54. “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 Jr.

55. “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.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

56. “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 Jr.

57. “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.

58. “Death is the prerequisite to resurrection, the new life God intends.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

59. “There is a world of difference between being friendly to someone because they’re useful to you and being someone’s friend.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

60. “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 Jr.

61. “Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

62. “The Holy Spirit says: You are it. You are God’s plan. In a thirsty world, people need to be refreshed. It is a broken world, and people need to be healed. Now get out there and do it!”

— John Ortberg Jr.

63. “The soul is not well when we rush so much. If it does not get the rest it needs, it becomes fatigued.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

64. “It may be a very bad thing that I needed God to die for me, but it is a wonderful thing that God thinks I am worth dying for.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

65. “Self-improvement is no more God’s plan than self-salvation. God’s plan is not just for us to be saved by grace – it is for us to live by grace.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

66. “Grace is the offer of God’s ceaseless presence and irrational love that cannot be stopped.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

67. “The ministry of bearing with one another is learning to hear God speak through difficult people.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

68. “Low self-esteem causes me to believe that I have so little worth that my response does not matter. With repentance, however, I understand that being worth so much to God is why my response is so important. Repentance is remedial work to mend our minds and hearts, which get bent by sin.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

69. “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.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

70. “We are tempted to live under the illusion that somewhere out there are people who are normal.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

71. “There is no way for a human being to come to God that does not involve surrender.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

72. “Too often we argue about Christianity instead of marveling at Jesus.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

73. “One of the great illusions of our time is that hurrying will buy us more time.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

74. “I’m more concerned about who you’re becoming than what you’re doing.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

75. “Imagine watching all that God might have done with your life if you had let him.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

76. “May your expectations all be frustrated, May all of your plans be thwarted, May all of your desires be withered into nothingness, That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and can sing and dance in the love of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

77. “You can only love and be loved to the extent that you know and are known by somebody.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

78. “The more you think you’re entitled to, the less you will be grateful for. The bigger the sense of entitlement, the smaller the sense of gratitude. We wonder why in our world we keep getting more and more and more and keep being less and less and less grateful.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

79. “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 Jr.

80. “Waiting on the Lord is a confident, disciplined, expectant, active, sometimes painful clinging to God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

81. “Wise people build their lives around what is eternal and squeeze in what is temporary. Not the other way around.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

82. “People would rather debate doctrine or beliefs or tradition or interpretation than actually do what Jesus said. It’s not rocket science. Just go do it. Practice loving a difficult person or try forgiving someone. Give away some money. Tell someone thank you. Encourage a friend. Bless an enemy. Say, “I’m sorry.” Worship God. You already know more than you need to know.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

83. “To be fully known and fully loved is the most healing gift one human being can give another.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

84. “Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

85. “God is not interested in our spiritual life. He’s interested in our life.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

86. “If we do not become changed from the inside-out – if we don’t morph – we will be tempted to find external methods to satisfy our need to feel that we’re different from those outside the faith. If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or conformed.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

87. “We demean people when we forget they have the depth and dignity of a soul. Even the people I don’t like have souls.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

88. “Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from a messiah complex-except one.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

89. “At the heart of Christian faith is the story of Jesus death and resurrection.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

90. “The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

91. “No heart is as whole as a broken heart, and no faith is as solid as a wounded faith.” Elie Wiesel.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

92. “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 Jr.

93. “Our world has replaced the word soul with the word self, and they are not the same thing. The more we focus on our selves, the more we neglect our souls.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

94. “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 Jr.

95. “When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

96. “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 Jr.

97. “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.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

98. “I was practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

99. “God wishes to be seen, wishes to be sought, wishes to be expected, and wishes to be trusted.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

100. “The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.”

— John Ortberg Jr.