John Ortberg
There are no clear boundary lines between what is physiological, what is psychological, and what is spiritual. Those are language domains that make sense and have integrity but overlap significantly.
What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.
In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison.
I am struck by how quickly I am prone to judgmentalism.
Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me.
The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable.
Gratitude is what we radiate when we experience grace, and the soul was made to run on grace the way a 747 runs on rocket fuel.
The church is in the hope business. We, of all people, ought to be known most for our hope because our hope is founded on something deeper than human ability or wishful thinking.
I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up.
It strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.
We all want to feel spiritually vigorous, and we hurt when we don't. This pain is intensified for people who lead church ministries.
Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin.
The irony is that 'looking down on everybody else' is a violation of the law of love, which, according to Jesus, is the absolute essence of righteousness.
Sin is protean. It is a cancer that keeps mutating, and just when you think you have killed off one form, it turns out a deadlier strain yet is threatening your heart.
Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It's mere diversion.
'Amusement' is appealing because we don't have to think; it spares us the fear and anxiety that might otherwise prey on our thoughts.
In the context of worship, amusement is a waste of time and a waste of life, and therefore a form of sin.
Sometimes, an inability to believe in Satan reflects a larger inability to believe in a spiritual plane at all.
Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists 'out there.'
I'm not sure ministry can ever have the urgency it requires if it is not aware of evil, both externally and internally.
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.
Preaching a series allows you to go into greater depth in the text, and spending several weeks on one theme allows the teaching to be absorbed more thoroughly.
When people feel they're getting to speak into what's being preached, there is high built-in motivation to participate.
There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text.
When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.
People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with their calling. They are preoccupied with the Caller.
To have my mind racing and my heart beating fast over glorious possibilities is very close to the summit of life experience for me.
I need an inspiration that is grounded in reality while thoroughly transcendent.
The only true and lasting inspiration for life is genuine love for God, and submitted gratitude that I get to be a part of the redemptive quest.
Tithing is considerably less popular than words like generosity or sharing.
Tithing is like training wheels when it comes to giving. It's intended to help you get started, but not recommended for the Tour de France.
Tithing is a bad ceiling but an excellent floor.
As a preacher, my charge is to proclaim the message of the Scriptures. To help the people in my congregation become a people of the book. I love getting to do this.
People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible - they just don't actually read the Bible.
Congregations shaped by the Scriptures generally have preachers who are shaped by the Scriptures.
Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.
Far more books get written about how to get more people in your church than how to get the people already in your church to have more humility and sincere love.
In community, we discover who we really are and how much transformation we still require. This is why I am irrevocably committed to small groups. Through them, we can accomplish our God-entrusted work to transform human beings.
God has decided, for his own good reasons, that people are not transformed outside of community.
As much as we complain about it, though, there's part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don't have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness.
The hurried can become unhurried. But it will not happen by trying alone, nor will it happen instantly. You will have to enter a life of training.
My wife is one of the most extroverted people I know. She could out-talk Oprah and Joyce Meyer simultaneously.
One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.
Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences.
Authentic spiritual authority is what puts you in touch with reality.
As a preacher who is fully human, and clearly not divine, I can't speak as Jesus did. But I do seek to speak truth that carries weight and authority. All of us who preach the gospel aspire to speak under the authority of Jesus.
I know that those of us who go into church work are to regard ourselves as servants, are to offer our lives as a gift.
The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation.
Universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard all began as Jesus-inspired efforts to love God with all ones' mind.