John Ortberg

But I do think...

And I love this idea, Dallas Willard, when John Ortberg asked him, hey, what's the key to kind of spiritual growth discipleship? Dallas said, the ruthless elimination of hurry.

I would follow it up pretty quickly and say the ruthless elimination of information because there's so much of it that's not filtered, not processed.

And so what you have is people doom scrolling.

And actually, every time we're in the presence of God, he softens our heart again.

In John, we read this, Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

This is not a temporary thing.

So the reason that the prophet can say this to Gideon is because he knows the power.

This is the power of God, the mighty warrior, because God sees us very differently to how we see ourselves.

Colossians 3, verse 3, we read, "'For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.'" John Ortberg, who writes brilliantly, by the way, about sin, he says this, the cure for sin is maintaining a right vision of God.

Many Christians expend so much energy trying not to sin.

How is your prayer life? How many of you had like a little right there? How is your prayer life, you know? I mean, I wonder how many of us, we get just like just a little twinge of guilt when asked that question.

There's a retired pastor and author, John Ortberg.

He once said this.

I read it in a book.

is that we're actually asking the wrong question.

You know, rather than asking the question, how is your prayer life? I think the much better question we need to start asking is this, is how prayerful is your life? How prayerful? I mean, what if prayer was intended to be not just another spiritual activity that we squeeze into our already busy lives, but what if God intends prayer to be something that's actually woven into every aspect of our lives? What if God's intention for prayer is not just something we do, but it's actually how we live? How we live.

There's a word in that quote from John Ortberg that I think just might be a big part of the problem.

I mean, let's look at that quote again.

Now, what about you when it comes to spiritual matters? Do you have a desire to be different? Do you want to see change? Do you want to see growth? Do you want to see progress? Do you want to be different? Because it's not going to be easy, and it takes work.

I love how writer John Ortberg says it.

He says, there is an immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something.

This is what he says.

As you look at training of pastors and the ongoing training of pastors, I talked about going to a spiritual director.

My friend, our friend, John Ortberg, prayed with a nun.

I prayed with a Catholic priest.

What kind of training could overcome these differences and these fracturings, whether it's how we do education or pastors getting together? Do you have any comment on that?

You can dig deeper if you want.

But growing up in the church, doing all that, I'd say that one of the biggest things I found is that I just heard a guy talk about this the other day, John Ortberg, and he talked about shadow missions.

And that's basically that temptation of What's your temptation that you kind of fall to more often? And mine is pleasing people or appearing good before people kind of thing.

And so finding my shadow mission all the way back as a little kid was always like people liking me and affirming me and people pleasing kind of thing.