Dane Ortlund @daneortlund Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Dane Ortlund

@daneortlund

33,117

Followers

24

Following

69

Media

9,334

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Rescued by Jesus, husband to Stacey, father to five. Shepherd @NaperPres . Stumbling my way to heaven with Jesus' arm around me.

Naperville, Illinois

https://t.co/4itjpJr1jg

Joined July 2008

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

4 months

We are launching a residency for young men training for ministry, ideal as a gap year between college and seminary. If seminary is the "lecture hall" training pastors, this is the "lab." A nine-month Gospel-Culture-immersion. Learn more / apply here:

Gospel Training Center

Gospel Training Center

www.npchurch.org

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

9 months

The only sin Jesus ever had was ours. The only righteousness we can ever have is his. A. W. Tozer

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2 years

What a church sings tells you what they believe. How they sing tells you if they really believe it.

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Dane Ortlund

1 year

Frustrated and considering leaving Church X for Church Y? Let me go ahead and burst the bubble for you—you’re going to find even more reasons to be disappointed at Y than you did at X. Your contentment at your church is not about the church. It’s about you. Dig in and serve.

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2 years

I know today feels like you're trudging through Mordor. That's because you are. As am I. Our tears are real. Despair seems at times to have the upper hand. But the ring will be destroyed soon. And the eagles are coming.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

The deepest way to know a professing Christian’s actual theology is not to ask them which historic confession they subscribe to but to watch how they treat other people.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Six months in to pastoring and I'm learning a ton. One lesson: My greatest tool in ministry is not my library but my tears.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

A tidal wave of pastor resignations is coming in 2022. But that wave can be greatly lessened by the most powerful gift a congregation can give: the ministry of encouragement. Not more vacations and higher salary but ordinary, specific encouragement is what will keep him afloat.

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Dane Ortlund

5 years

Skipping church because you're too tired and discouraged is like skipping a meal because you're too hungry.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Dear church members far and wide, Let me offer a gentle suggestion for your consideration, on behalf of your pastor/s: Withhold that piece of advice for how he should do things differently until you have first given him 10 encouragements. Then maintain that ratio going forward.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

3 years

Spurgeon's last words, the day of his death, January 31, 1892: "Tranquil and happy, though very weak. My theology is simple. I can express it in few words and they are enough to die by. Jesus died for me."

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Dear pastor, If you leave the ministry, you're not any less valuable to Jesus.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

Saying ‘I’m too tired or down to go to church’ is like saying ‘My car is too low on fuel to stop for gas.’

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Calvinism is a theology of comfort.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

A few weeks ago an older pastor said to me in passing, “You’re doing well.” It took him about 5 seconds to formulate the thought, say the words, and move on. Two weeks later—whether he’s right or not—I’m still drawing strength from it. The supernatural power of encouragement.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Rookie quarterbacks have a quarterbacks coach. Medical residents have senior doctors showing them the ropes. What if every young pastor had a mentor 20 years older, all in, un-shock-able, rooting for this young man and rejoicing over him as he stumbles forward into maturity?

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

1 year

Weak faith is still real faith, because weak faith is still faith in a strong Savior. It's his strength, not our weakness, that matters.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Russian Christians, now is your time to speak.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

In the end, gentleness wins.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Galatians is basically Paul telling a bunch of ex-inmates to stop trying to beat down the doors of the prison to get back in.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Until you've encouraged him ten times, you haven't earned the right to correct him one time.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

If you reject Hillsong music, be sure you reject a song on the merit of defective lyrics and not just resentment that they seem to be really really happy.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

"But who is Aslan?" said Eustace. "Do you know him?" "Well—he knows me," said Edmund. C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

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Dane Ortlund

4 years

Leading effective meetings: 1. Start on time 2. End on time or early 3. Be clear about the purpose 4. Draw people out 5. Don't interrupt 6. Move things along 7. But don't be in a hurry 8. Treat others with dignity 9. Humor ok but not sarcasm or putdowns 10. Encourage like crazy

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2 years

Come, thou long expected Jesus Born to set Thy people free; From our fears and sins release us, Let us find our rest in Thee.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Half my sermon prep is structural. Downhill from there. If I can get the structure in place, everything else pretty much falls into place. But man it can be agonizing to figure out how to break down a text.

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Dane Ortlund

1 year

Small ways to encourage your pastor during the preaching event: 1. Sit near the front 2. Keep Bible open 3. Eye contact 4. Whatever non-verbal and verbal feedback you can muster, befitting your culture and personality 5. Phone silenced and away 6. Stifle yawns 7. Stay put

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Fellow preachers, ‘hell’ is not a bad word on Sunday mornings. Let’s talk about it a lot. Jesus did.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

3 years

Suffering is a great seminary. John Piper

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Dane Ortlund

4 years

I am persuaded that if our young ministers gave themselves more really to personal visitation, it would cure some of them of their vague intellectual preaching, and bring them back to the simple gospel. Andrew Bonar, 1891 letter

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Beneath the smiles, people are walking into church today beat down with shame and regret from this past week. Let's dignify them with unhurried greetings and good eye contact. They are God's own divine image, worthy of more glory-acknowledgment than we could ever offer.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Seminaries, if you are considering changing how much Greek and Hebrew you require of your MDiv grads, let me encourage you to do just that--by *adding more.* No such thing as "too much" of the languages. I use them every day in pastoral ministry. Most important classes I had.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

I'm a five-point Calvinist, who also believes in the endless power of the Holy Spirit. Y'all gotta get in on this.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Regeneration precedes faith.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

I wonder how many nervous breakdowns in the ministry could have been avoided through simple, regular, ordinary doses of encouragement.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Heart check: Are my emotions more engaged tonight watching 20-year-olds play a game, than tomorrow hearing that my sins are forgiven and my destiny secure? If I can scream and yell tonight at tiny, passing glory, what should be my response tomorrow at big, eternal glory?

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

I'm learning that pastoring is basically just patience. Hard work too of course, and prayer, and reading good books etc etc. But at the end of the day it's really just patience. In accord with the agricultural metaphors used all over the NT. Giving the plants time to grow.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Right doctrine doesn't change you. Seeing God changes you. But right doctrine focuses God rightly, like focusing a camera on a beautiful sunset. Therefore we need right doctrine. Desperately. But doctrine is a means to an end. The end is seeing God. That's what changes us.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

The pre-meal prayer can tend to be thoughtless, hurried, and perfunctory, breeding cynicism. What if we redeemed it? Slowed down? Incorporated Scripture? Pled for conversions? Confessed sins? Adored God? It's a self-conscious communion with God 3x a day. Let's reclaim it.

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Dane Ortlund

1 year

Leading effective meetings: 1. Start on time 2. End on time or early 3. Clarify purpose at start 4. Draw people out 5. Don't interrupt 6. Move things along 7. But don't be in a hurry 8. Gentle while disagreeing 9. No ridiculing or putdowns 10. Encourage others publicly

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

G&L released one year ago today. I never could have anticipated the ministry God had in mind. My deep thanks to the many friends whose hearts have been captured with mine at the wondrous surprise soaking the universe—the heart of Jesus. "This is the Lord's doing" (Ps 118:25).

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Dane Ortlund

4 years

Something John Owen, the greatest British theologian ever, taught me: The gospel is the stream, God's heart the spring. If we see only the stream we will be amazed but there will be a ceiling on our wonder. When we look beyond the stream to the spring, our wonder knows no end.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Proud people think they are humble. Humble people know they are proud.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Not abiding in Christ darkens all of life. Even the bright spots are dimmed. Abiding in Christ brightens all of life. Even the dark spots are lightened. All of life takes on a different hue.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Discouraged, frustrated, lonely, exhausted? Take heart. We won't work our way up to the Savior. We collapse our way down to him. And that's not a concession on his part. It's *where he lives.* Find him there.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Saturday morning. A great time to pray for your pastor as he agonizes over how best to communicate the gospel to you tomorrow.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Pastoring a church is like watering a garden. Patience, tenderness, gradual change, gentle care—and occasionally rip out a weed.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

You don't get assurance of salvation by looking at your assurance of salvation. You get assurance of salvation by looking at Christ outside you, as the Holy Spirit testifies inside you.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

Sermon prep so far this week. Tired. Afraid. Pray. Read text in English. Read text in Greek. Create a few bad sermon outlines. Despair. Pray. Reread text in Greek. Slow. Pray. Repent. God breaks it open. Start jotting thoughts down. Absolutely cannot wait to preach.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Your pastor is almost certainly encouragement starved. Give him a little thoughtful nourishment today. An email that takes you two minutes to write will keep him afloat for two weeks.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

1 year

Arminianism wrongly emphasizes human responsibility (HR) to the neglect of divine sovereignty (DS). Hyper-Calvinism wrongly emphasizes DS to the neglect of HR. Calvinism follows Scripture in holding up both HR and DS, with DS being the broader wraparound category.

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Dane Ortlund

4 years

Read your Bible today. Pray. Love those you come across. It’s not complicated folks.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

5 years

Tonight and tomorrow, your pastor is probably second-guessing his sermon, certain it stinks, feeling likes he's got nothing. He's wrong. But he doesn't know it. Pray for him on Saturday, email him an encouragement on Monday. That one-two punch might save his ministry.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

I am never again, not ever, as long as I live, going to take for granted the corporate gathered people of God.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

3 years

Our prayer life reveals our actual theology.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

I want to learn how to abide in Christ.

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Dane Ortlund

6 months

Watching your church's livestream is not nourishing to your soul any more than watching the Food Network is nourishing to your body.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

The world is on fire. Lord, come quickly.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Ah, Monday morning. The time of the week more than any other when I need to receive the gospel I preached the day before.

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Dane Ortlund

1 year

Thank you, kind Lord, for the gift to us all of Tim Keller. I cannot express how much he meant to me, from a distance. Tender gentleness. Childlike humility. Soaring intellect. Wide reading. Relational charity. Wondering delight. No one like him in our time. Thank you, Lord.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say: Sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends. C. S. Lewis, 1935 letter

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

90% of my key insights for preaching a text come not from commentaries or study Bibles or dead theologians or Bible software but from reading the Bible text itself, in the original, very, very, s-l-o-w-l-y. Just slow down and notice what is there.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

'Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer . . .' (Phil 4:6). Apparently the opposite of prayer is not prayerlessness; the opposite of prayer is anxiety.

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Dane Ortlund

1 year

‘God loves you’ is not the gospel. ‘Christ died for our sins’ is the gospel. ‘God loves you’ is the *reason* for the gospel.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

The best prayers have often more groans than words. Bunyan

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Dear brothers in your 60s-80s, the 20s-40s in our churches love and respect you. But what they need from you is not mainly your stories. They won't tell you this, but they need 2 things from you: (1) Ask questions, (2) encourage them. Less regaling. More listening, encouraging.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

While God is blessing a man publicly he is often emptying him privately.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Fresh Bible discovery, worth pondering... Christ is called both a lion and lamb in the NT. Satan is called a lion, but never a lamb. In Revelation, the lion metaphor for Christ drops away and the second half of the book only retain lamb imagery for him.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

As we prepare to preach tomorrow let's remember we are channels, not sources. Riverbeds, not springs. Scripture is the source. We're just saying what He said.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

The physical presence of other believers is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. Bonhoeffer

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

God knows that sometimes we are so empty and distraught we feel like we can't even open a Bible. That's why he gave us the Psalms. It's what you read in the Bible when you feel like you can't read the Bible.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

One of the great tragedies of the church today, which we don't even perceive, and which is a vital contributing factor to much quitting, sadness, and loneliness: The withholding of encouragement, specific and sincere, one Christian to another.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Luther, age 48, to a young, overwhelmed preacher: Although I am old and experienced, I am afraid every time I have to preach. So pray to God and leave all the rest to him.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

No one gets injustice from God. Either justice, or mercy. Justice in hell, or mercy in heaven. No injustice. Bad people get a bad result in hell or bad people get a good result in heaven. There's no such category as a good person getting a bad result. Well, once there was.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

My favorite book of all time (thus far in my reading life) is The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. I've read it maybe 30 times. I commend it to you. It's not a book about heaven and hell, but about our perverse resistance to joy while on earth. Profound and searching.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

4 years

The story of the Bible in three statements: God: “I created you so that I could love you.” Us: “Get lost.” Him: “Now I’m really going to love you.”

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

4 years

Proverbs is the Bible's Twitter account.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

3 years

More men are destroyed by prosperity and success than by affliction and apparent failure. Spurgeon

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

3 years

The greatest problem facing the church today is not the world but the church herself. The most dangerous hindrances to our mission are found inside, not outside. In the pews, not DC. We mainly need to hold up mirrors, not magnifying glasses.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

My apologies for the insensitivities reflected in my Mars Hill thread. On reflection, I can see the difficulty it could create for some. I’ve deleted it.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

3 years

Everyone we talk with today—mailman, grocery clerk, work colleague, CPA, pastor, teenager, everyone—is battling a host of adversities invisible to us. Let’s go easy on each other today.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

Neglected skills these days: Listening Breathing Laughing Greeting Resting Over-hyped skills: Leading Talking Joking Influencing Exercising

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

I've never seen this reflected in TV and film depicting Jesus, but I suspect he had the most uninhibited, unrestrained laugh of anyone. Tears, too. But uproarious laughter. I mean, he was the truest human ever, and surely laughter is part of healthy and whole humanity?

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

The physical presence of other believers is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. Bonhoeffer

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

5 years

Dear Pastor, It looks like we're striding into church tomorrow, but we're stumbling. It looks like we're smiling, but we're grimacing. It looks like we're strong, but we're barely hanging on. Be faithful to your text. But whatever you say, please let it smell like Jesus.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

Despite the astonishing technical capability we have today with phones, Zoom, livestream, etc, it remains true that ministry and Christian community require physical togetherness. We are embodied creatures. A handshake, a hug, looking each other in the eye. Irreplaceable.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

The believer weak in intellect, education, and natural giftings, who is praying, is the strongest. The believer strong in intellect, education, and natural giftings, who is prayerless, is the weakest.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

"Encourage one another and build one another up" (1 Thess 5:11). One of the most disobeyed commands in Scripture.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Didn’t always believe this but more convinced of it with each passing year: Better to offer too much encouragement, creating a possibility of pride, than too little, creating a probability of discouragement.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

'A weary world rejoices.' Happy Advent, church. Let's open our hearts more freely than ever to the most wondrous shock human history has ever seen--the Author writing himself into the mud of our Story to deliver us in our hopeless condition.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

My two greatest tools in my first year of pastoring: tears and books. In that order.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Here's my theology of conversion: If we lead someone in a sinner's prayer and at the end of it they are saved, they were already saved before the prayer began. That prayer would never be sincerely prayed to begin with if they were not already born again.

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Dane Ortlund

5 years

Preaching tomorrow? Don't tell us what the commentaries say. Read the commentaries. But figure out a way to use the text as glue to interlock God's heart with ours. Our deepest need is not education, but hope.

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Dane Ortlund

4 years

That Jesus is “lowly in heart” means you don’t work your way up to get to him; you collapse your way down to get to him.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

Preaching today? Me too. Let's remember: They don't need eloquence. They need the tincture of Jesus himself.

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Dane Ortlund

1 year

A few things I'm learning in ministry. Shared tears over answers. Gentleness over zeal. Clarity over volume. Apologizing over explaining. Text over commentary. Face-to-face over email. None is an absolute either/or. All are both/and. But one has more value. What would you add?

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Union with Christ. My favorite doctrine. Never gets old.

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@daneortlund

Dane Ortlund

2 years

Preaching is counseling. A few hundred people in the session, and more one-way than two-way, and with a microphone. But preaching has the same goal as counseling: healing and integration through the love of Jesus. Counseling, not lecturing. Counseling, not impressing. Loving.

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Dane Ortlund

3 years

The law says: You shall. The gospel says: You are.

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Dane Ortlund

2 years

Sometimes I experience such a distinct surge of spiritual strength or calm or joy, out of nowhere, I can only conclude someone was praying for me.

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Dane Ortlund

4 years

How we treat other Christians reveals how we believe—how we really believe, way down deep—God treats us.

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