In a contagious world,we learn to keep our distance. If we get too close to those who are suffering, we might get infected by their pain. It may not be convenient or comfortable. But only when you get close enough to catch their hurt will they be close enough to catch your love.

John Ortberg

Peace doesn't come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in the boat.

John Ortberg

christian peace jesus

The most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become.

John Ortberg

tasks important life-is

Everybody wears an unseen sign that reads: Inspire me. Remind me that my life matters; call me to be my best self; appeal to whatever in me is most noble and honorable. Don't let me go down the path of least resistance. Challenge me to make my life about something more than the acquisition of money or success

John Ortberg

self challenges inspire

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

John Ortberg

love-always take-time people

Peace does not lie in getting God to give me other circumstances.

John Ortberg

doe giving lying

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

John Ortberg

godly attention people

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

neat-and-tidy community love

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.

John Ortberg

faithful knowing-god trying

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

jobs facts thinking

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

John Ortberg

wise people way

What repeatedly enters your mind and occupies your mind, eventually shapes your mind, and will ultimately express itself in what you do and who you become.

John Ortberg

christian-inspirational christian mind

There is such a love, a love that creates value in what is loved. There is a love that turns rag dolls into priceless treasures. There is a love that fastens itself onto ragged little creatures, for reasons that no one could ever quite figure out, and makes them precious and valued beyond calculation. This is love beyond reason. This is the love of God.

John Ortberg

rags treasure dolls

Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

John Ortberg

problem prayer today

Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.

John Ortberg

shapes doe way

The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God. Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.

John Ortberg

prayer father jesus

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.

John Ortberg

true-joy ordinary people

The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.

John Ortberg

choices mean jesus

Imagine watching all that God might have done with your life if you had let him.

John Ortberg

imagine done might

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

pain comfort reality

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

John Ortberg

pay attention people