John Ortberg People Quotations

God has entrusted us with his most precious treasure - people. He asks us to shepherd and mold them into strong disciples, with brave faith and good character.

People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible - they just don't actually read the Bible.

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.

People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with their calling. They are preoccupied with the Caller.

God has decided, for his own good reasons, that people are not transformed outside of community.

My wife is one of the most extroverted people I know. She could out-talk Oprah and Joyce Meyer simultaneously.

'Who Is This Man?' is about the impact of Jesus on human history. Most people - including most Christians - simply have no idea of the extent to which we live in a Jesus-impacted world.

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.

When people feel they're getting to speak into what's being preached, there is high built-in motivation to participate.

We all want to feel spiritually vigorous, and we hurt when we don't. This pain is intensified for people who lead church ministries.

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.

The single dynamic that helps people be most aware of God and most experiencing the fruit of the Spirit is gratitude.

Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me.

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.

Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences.

The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable.

Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand.

One of the great misconceptions about spiritual growth that develops in a lot of churches is that information alone is adequate to produce transformed human beings. So if we want to have a church of spiritually mature people, let's just keep cramming more and more information into them... Information alone is not adequate for the transformation of the human personality.

Every day you and I walk through God's shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.

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

Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don't have.

If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.

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

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.

Ever console or scold people hurt in human relationships that satisfaction comes from God alone? Stop. Adam's fellowship with God was perfect, and God Himself declared Adam needed other humans.

The Holy Spirit will lead you to be with people as Jesus would be with them if He were in your place.

If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards.

We who preach have one tool. We are people of the book.

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!

People who are servants-humbly, honestly, and joyfully-keep getting revealed as the biggest winners. People who recognize and embrace their smallness keep getting bigger and bigger in God's eyes. It's the oddest scoring system.

True joy, as it turns out, comes only to those who have devoted their lives to something greater than personal happiness. This is most visible in extraordinary lives, in saints and martyrs. But it is no less true for ordinary people like us.

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

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

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

Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

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.