Quote

Ironically, often the thing that keeps me from experiencing joy is my preoccupation with self. The very selfishness that keeps me from pouring myself out for the joy of others also keeps me from noticing and delighting in the myriad small gifts God offers each day. This is why Walker Percy describes boredom as the self stuffed with the self.

John Ortberg

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John Ortberg
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 5
Author
Psychologist
Theologian
Rockford
Illinois
Offers
Preoccupation
Delighting
Joy
Noticing
Walker
Small
Pouring
Myriad
Often
Experiencing
Walkers
Others
Selfishness
Ironically
Also
Boredom
Stuffed
Self
Gifts
Describes
Thing
Keeps
Percy

More quotes by John Ortberg

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If you can't do great things, Mother Teresa used to say, do little things with great love. If you can't do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you can't do them with a little love, do them anyway. Love grows when people serve.
John Ortberg
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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
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Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.
John Ortberg
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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.
John Ortberg
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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
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I'm more concerned about who you're becoming than what you're doing.
John Ortberg
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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
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Sometimes in churches somebody will discover a particular vein of spirituality and seek to recruit others into it, or assume a superior position because they have found certain techniques - but no one actually wants to become like them.
John Ortberg
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We must assess our thoughts and beliefs and reckon whether they are moving us closer to conformity to Christ or farther away from it.
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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
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The miracle of Sunday is that a dead man lives. The miracle of Saturday is that the eternal Son of God lies dead.
John Ortberg
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If ever there were a true just as I am church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended - we could not make enough room inside the building.
John Ortberg
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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
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The main measure of your devotion to God is not your devotional life. It is simply your life.
John Ortberg
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The Bible does not say you are God’s appliance it says you are his masterpiece. Appliances get mass-produced.
John Ortberg
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We are tempted to live under the illusion that somewhere out there are people who are normal.
John Ortberg
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The most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become.
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There is a immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something....Sp iritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.... Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange my life around activities that enable me to live in the fruit of the Spirit
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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.
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Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny, failed movement appeared clearly at an end.
John Ortberg