“This flow’r, whose fragrance tender / With sweetness fills the air, / Dispels with glorious splendor / The darkness everywhere. / True man, yet very God, / From sin and death he saves us / And lightens every load.”- Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming, LSB 359, v. 3 “Now after Jesus was born in […]
“In the life of the spirit there is no standing still; if a person does not do what is right the very second he knows it is the right thing to do . . . the ‘knowing’ becomes more and more obscured.”- Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death “If we say that we have no […]
“Silence happens on Saturday. After trouble hits you, after the agony of Friday, you call out to God. . . . On Saturday, in addition to the pain of Friday, there is the pain and the silence of the absence of God.”- John Ortberg, Who is This Man? (2012) “Surely he hath borne our griefs […]
When the Game is Over (Zondervan, 2007) John Ortberg, senior pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, wrote When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box in 2007. In this book, John’s competitive Monopoly games with his grandmother serve as an analogy to the game of life. As Pastor Ortberg learned, the […]
I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me (Tyndale, 2017) Pastor and author John Ortberg titles his latest book I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me: Getting Real About Getting Close. Although we crave intimacy, it remains a scary concept for a lot of people. Therefore, intimacy cannot be coerced. […]
The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Zondervan, 2010) John Ortberg, senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, wrote The Me I Want to Be in 2010. First, John explains that the most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become. In other words, […]
“God made you to flourish — to receive life from outside yourself, creating vitality within yourself and producing blessing beyond yourself.”- John Ortberg “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”- Ephesians 2:10 (NIV) In its heyday, Hawthorn-Mellody Farms & Amusement […]