Quotes from John Ortberg

You have a "turn" every time you have an opportunity to choose. But most of us only see a tiny fraction of the choices we have.

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

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

The most important criterion is this: hire someone whose character and humility and attitude you would like to have reproduced in your church and in yourself.

In the context of worship, amusement is a waste of time and a waste of life, and therefore a form of sin.

The soul is both the most fragile and most resilient thing about you; a healthy soul is what holds you together when your world falls apart. Since you will carry your soul into eternity, it's worth checking up on it at least as often as your teeth.

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.

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

Grace is the offer of God's ceaseless presence and irrational love that cannot be stopped.

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.

The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation.

Never try to have more faith - just get to know God better. And because God is faithful, the better you know Him, the more you'll trust Him.