Top 200 John Ortberg Jr. Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “When preaching is done right, it can change lives. When it’s done badly, my failure goes beyond the merely human.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

152. “The soul of one person can become intertwined with the soul of another. Aristotle is supposed to have said: “What is friendship? It is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” The ancient term for such a relationship is “soul friend,” defined as one with whom I have no secrets. The ancient Celtic Christians said that “a person without a soul friend is like a body without a head.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

153. “Somebody said that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

154. “They devote themselves every day to what Jesus taught: to prayer, to fellowship, to breaking of bread together. They shared what they owned; they served each other’s needs. Ethnic barriers came down as they became known by the way they loved each other. It’s a different community, devoted to a Jesus way of life with God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

155. “The more concerned you are about your own fulfillment, the less fulfilled you will be.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

156. “My main job is to remain connected to God. When my primary focus is being present with him, everything else has a way of falling into place.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

157. “Whether with an entire day, or periods of time set aside every day, your soul needs rest. Not a change of scenery or a spiritual retreat – those are fine and may contribute to rest. But to remain healthy, our souls need solitude with no agenda, no distractions, no noise. If someone asks you what you did in your “time apart,” the correct response should be, “Nothing.” Doing nothing does wonders for the soul.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

158. “The reason our souls hunger so is that the life we could be living so far exceeds our strangest dreams.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

159. “Francis Fenelon reminds us, “God is merciful, showing us our true hideousness only in proportion to the courage he gives us to bear the sight.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

160. “A soul without a center feels constantly vulnerable to people or circumstances.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

161. “God is so immense that if he were ‘too visible,’ people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

162. “If I have the courage to acknowledge my limits and embrace them, I can experience enormous freedom. If I lack this courage, I will be imprisoned by them.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

163. “Greatness is never achieved through indecision.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

164. “One of the most impressive aspects of Jesus is how he was impressed by unimpressive people.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

165. “The unlimited neediness of the soul matches the unlimited grace of God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

166. “Spiritual greatness has nothing to do with being greater than others. It has everything to do with being as great as each of us can be.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

167. “Sin is not just the wrong stuff we do; it’s the good we don’t do. It’s the starving children we don’t want to look at, the volunteering we avoid, the poor we don’t want to serve, and the money we don’t want to give.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

168. “The most frequent promise in the Bible is ‘I will be with you.’”

— John Ortberg Jr.

169. “Joylessness may be the sin most readily tolerated by the church.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

170. “Over and over in the Bible, it is fear that threatens to keep people from trusting and obeying God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

171. “A bad sermon is like a car wreck – everyone slows down to see what happened.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

172. “Author and former seminary professor Neal Plantinga once said something amazing about our capacity for addiction. He said it shows that we were wired for ecstasy. Not the drug, but pure, ecstatic joy. Our ceaseless craving for more, though it can kill us when unredeemed, may be a hint of the joy that we were made for when the soul finds its center in God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

173. “For Jesus, identity and acceptance come before achievement and ministry. This is joy no one can take away. You cannot earn acceptance.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

174. “The late John Stott wrote, “Paul is not saying he did a careful study of every sinner in human history and found out he came in last place. The truth is, rather, when we are convicted by the Holy Spirit, an immediate result is we give up all such comparisons.” Paul was so vividly aware of his own sins that he could not conceive that anybody could be worse.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

175. “Flourishing is not measured by outward signs such as income, possessions, or attractiveness. It means becoming the person he he had in mind in creating you. Flourishing means moving toward God’s best version of you.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

176. “God designed us so that our choices, our thoughts and desires, and our behavior would be in perfect harmony with each other and would be powered by an unbroken connection with God, in perfect harmony with him and with all of his creation. That is a well-ordered soul.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

177. “Self is a stand-alone, do-it-yourself unit, while the soul reminds us we were not made for ourselves. The soul always exists before God. So soul is needed for deep art, poetry, and music.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

178. “The only cure from sin is by maintaining a vision of God.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

179. “The world conspires against our souls by blinding us to the depth and glory of their God-given design and tempting us to be satisfied with immediate gratification.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

180. “If you have a positive attitude, you are likely to live a decade longer than people with a negative attitude.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

181. “I don’t know why some prayers get yeses and some prayers get nos. I know the anguish of a no when you want a yes more than you want anything in the world. But I don’t know why. I only know that in the Cross God’s no to his only Son was turned into God’s yes to every human being who ever lived.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

182. “The test of love is that it gives even when there is no expectation of a return.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

183. “When I teach the formal curriculum, I have the chance to think about it ahead of time. I can rehearse it. I can illustrate it with self-deprecating humor and humble-sounding personal disclosure. I can try to make it comes out just right.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

184. “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.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

185. “The Spirit never just flows in us; he always flows through us so that others might flourish as well.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

186. “Self-improveme nt is no more God’s plan than self-salvation.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

187. “Repenting of our sin is never despairing of our sin; it is always done in hope.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

188. “All work was designed by God to be priestly work.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

189. “Skepticism can keep us from blessing, can keep us trapped in two minds.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

190. “When the will has become enslaved by its need, when the mind has become obsessed with the object of its desire, when the appetite of the body has become master rather than servant, the soul is disordered. The ultimate reality behind human dissatisfaction is sinful souls that have been cut off from the God we were made to rest in. That’s why we’re dissatisfied.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

191. “Work is a form of love. We cannot be fully human without creating value.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

192. “I am so wrapped up in the hurt I have received that I do not notice the hurt I inflict.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

193. “I don’t deserve a soul, yet I still have one,” writes Douglas Coupland. “I know because it hurts.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

194. “The sequence in the Bible is usually not calling; deep feeling of peace about it; decision to obey; smooth sailing. Instead, it’s usually calling; abject terror; decision to obey; big problems; more terror; second thoughts; repeat several times; deeper faith.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

195. “Joyful people make us come alive.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

196. “The truth is, the soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

197. “God’s primary will for your life is not the achievements you accrue; it’s the person you become.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

198. “Ask God to make your work go well today.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

199. “A soul without a center has difficulty making a decision. One of the pictures James uses of this condition is that the double-souled person is like a wave on the sea, driven forward one moment and backward the next. People whose souls are rooted in a center find it brings clarity to their decisions.”

— John Ortberg Jr.

200. “The goal is not for us to get through the Scriptures. The goal is to get the Scriptures through us.”

— John Ortberg Jr.