“When we fritter away our one and only life doing things that don’t really matter, we sacrifice the things that do matter.”- Bill Hybels Simplify: Ten Practices to Unclutter Your Soul is the latest book by Bill Hybels, founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL. Pastor Hybels coaches and […]
“We don’t follow clarity. We follow God.”- John Ortberg “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day- and there will be no night there.”- Revelation 21:24-25 (NRSV) John Ortberg concludes Chapter 10 of All the Places […]
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength.”- Deuteronomy 6:4-5 “It’s not what’s on the other side of the door that gives me confidence to go through; it’s the one who goes with […]
“So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.”- Hebrews 12:13 Today John Ortberg looks at the second reason we’re tempted to give up searching for the door when the wall seems insurmountable. 2. God is not good enough. Pastor Ortberg states we become afraid God will […]
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”- Hebrews 11:1 (ESV) “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal . . .”- Philippians 3:13-14 In Chapter 10 of All the Places to Go, John Ortberg states that “at the […]
“Many doors that look large to us are small to God, and many doors that look small to us are very large to him.”- John Ortberg Today John Ortberg concludes his discussion of four reasons why some doors remain closed to us (Chapter 9, All the Places to Go) 4. Doors remain closed because God […]
“Often it may be that when the door marked ‘Go’ looks closed, it’s because there’s a door marked ‘Grow’ that’s wide open.”- John Ortberg In today’s blog, John Ortberg discusses the third reason why some doors remain closed to us. 3. Doors close because I need to grow. Pastor Ortberg tells of a time he […]
Today John Ortberg discusses the first two reasons why some doors remain closed to us (Chapter 9, All the Places to Go). 1. Knocking at the wrong door. Pastor Ortberg states that sometimes doors are closed because we want the wrong thing. Throughout the Bible we see closed doors in response to wrong requests. As […]
“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.”- Revelation 3:7 In Chapter 9 (“Thank God for Closed Doors) of All the Places to Go, John […]
“For I know that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”- Jonah 4:2 John Ortberg concludes Chapter 8 of All the Places to Go by noting something about Jonah’s prayer (Jonah 4) that would have been very apparent to its Old Testament readers. In Jonah 4:2, Jonah […]
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”- Jonah 3:4 As John Ortberg continues Chapter 8 of All the Places to Go, he observes that the story of Jonah is “left on a strange, unresolved, discordant note”- on purpose. Pastor Ortberg emphasizes […]
“And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”- Jonah 1:17 John Ortberg continues Chapter 8 of All the Places to Go by noting that when the sailors hurled Jonah into the sea, the Lord “appointed” a great fish […]