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Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.

John Ortberg

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John Ortberg
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 5
Author
Psychologist
Theologian
Rockford
Illinois
Churches
Resistance
Places
Church
Become
Pessimism
Cynicism

More quotes by John Ortberg

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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
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In the beginning, we're told, was the word. Every once in a while someone shows up on the planet who is word-obsessed and word-gifted and the light and darkness get named again. In our day, that someone is Buechner.
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God is never a God of discouragement. When you have a discouraging spirit or train of thought in your mind, you can be sure it is not from God. He sometimes brings pain to his children-conviction over sin, or repentance over fallenness, or challenges that scare us, or visions of his holiness that overwhelm us. But God never brings discouragement.
John Ortberg
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If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.
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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Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.
John Ortberg
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Joylessness may be the sin most readily tolerated by the church.
John Ortberg
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Your Mission starts where you are,Not where you think you should be.Sometimes we're tempted to think that our current position/job/situation is a barrier to our mission, but, in fact, it is where it starts.
John Ortberg
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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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Jesus gave the world its most influential movement.
John Ortberg
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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
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It's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy.
John Ortberg
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Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much.
John Ortberg
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When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.
John Ortberg
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The life of Abraham Lincoln is by most accounts an amazing study in character formation. Yet he was notoriously disorganized he even had a file in his law office labeled If you can't find it anywhere else, try looking here.
John Ortberg
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Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.
John Ortberg
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You can only love and be loved to the extent that you know and are known by somebody.
John Ortberg
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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
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To become grateful, I must learn that I can handle disappointment and delayed gratification with grace and perseverance. This is why practices such as fasting and simplicity are such powerful tools for transformation. The experience of frustration and disappointment is irreplaceable in the development of a grateful heart.
John Ortberg
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We who preach have one tool. We are people of the book.
John Ortberg