223 Quotes by John Ortberg Jr.

The soul is not well when we rush so much. If it does not get the rest it needs, it becomes fatigued.

The only cure from sin is by maintaining a vision of God.

I hate how hard spiritual transformation is and how long it takes. I hate thinking about how many people have gone to church for decades and remain joyless or judgmental or bitter or superior.

Our soul’s problem, however, is not its neediness; it’s our fallenness. Our need was meant to point us to God. Instead, we fasten our minds and bodies and wills on other sources of ultimate devotion, which the Bible calls idolatry.

The soul of one person can become intertwined with the soul of another. Aristotle is supposed to have said: “What is friendship? It is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” The ancient term for such a relationship is “soul friend,” defined as one with whom I have no secrets. The ancient Celtic Christians said that “a person without a soul friend is like a body without a head.

We demean people when we forget they have the depth and dignity of a soul. Even the people I don’t like have souls.

Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.

Repenting of our sin is never despairing of our sin; it is always done in hope.

I was practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.