Become New with John Ortberg

Is pride running your life in ways you don’t recognize? John Ortberg explores pride as an alignment problem: the gap between what we know is good and the desires that pull us in another direction. In this opening teaching focused on pride, John shares a story about his first car, a personal moment of defensiveness, and an unexpected lesson from a four-year-old singing a Rolling Stones song. Throug...

Why does telling yourself “Don’t do it” sometimes leave you stuck on the very thing you want to avoid? John Ortberg uses a golf analogy to explore the thoughts shaping our character and a simple way to invite God into everyday life. In episode six of Become New’s series on sin, the seven deadly sins, and grace, John traces the framework’s history through Peter Jones’s Self-Help from the Middle Age...

John Ortberg challenges the quiet belief that our everyday choices don’t matter and explores how good intentions can give way when we feel pressured, insecure, or afraid. Drawing on Christian Miller’s The Character Gap and Langdon Gilkey’s Shantung Compound, John examines the difference between wanting to do good and developing a character that keeps choosing love under difficult circumstances. He...

Sin isn’t only about the wrong things we do. It’s also about the good we leave undone. John Ortberg explores the two kinds of sin, commission and omission, and the spiritual practices that help us address each. Drawing from Proverbs, James, and the teachings of Jesus, John explains how to strengthen your “don’t” and “do” muscles. He also introduces a surprising spiritual discipline: chatting. An o...

Why do we stretch the truth, even when we want to be honest? John Ortberg explores the insecurity, desire for approval, and self-protection that can drive our little lies, and how God helps us become truthful from the inside out. In episode three of Become New’s series on sin, the seven deadly sins, and grace, John shares a funny story from a pastors’ conference where church attendance became a me...

Do you really want the truth about yourself, or would you rather have it sugarcoated? John Ortberg explores why honest self-examination matters for spiritual growth and how knowing we are loved gives us the courage to face what needs to change. In episode two of Become New’s series on sin, the seven deadly sins, and grace, John draws on Dallas Willard, Peter Jones’s Self-Help from the Middle Ages,...

Why do I keep doing what I don’t want to do? And beneath the problems with my job, finances, or circumstances, am I actually becoming a more loving person? In the opening episode of Become New’s series exploring sin, the seven deadly sins, and grace, John Ortberg starts with a funny parallel-parking encounter and a surprisingly important question: “What’s your problem?” Through Romans 7, John expl...

Why do AA meetings sometimes feel like the safest place to tell the truth? And what could the church learn from that kind of honesty, acceptance, and shared dependence on God? In this episode, John Ortberg explores how the 12 Steps can help us approach spiritual growth, stubborn habits, and the struggles we keep trying to overcome alone. Whether you’re wrestling with anger, fear, control, greed, o...

Can you have peace while the situation you’re facing is still unresolved? During one of the darkest periods of his life, John Ortberg found himself awake early in the morning, needing something solid to hold onto. A passage from Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart helped him consider what peace might mean when circumstances remain frightening. John explores the exhausting work of trying to co...

What do you say to yourself when you make a mistake? For many of us, one wrong answer, awkward conversation, or disappointing performance can turn into a harsh verdict about who we are. John Ortberg offers a different response, borrowed from conductor Benjamin Zander: “How fascinating!” Through stories about music, tutoring, Eugene Peterson, and the disciple Peter, John explores how a growth minds...

Why does God sometimes make us wait for something we’ve asked him for again and again? Jesus tells us to keep praying, asking, seeking, and knocking. Yet the silence can be difficult to understand, especially when someone we love needs help. John Ortberg explores that tension through Jesus’ encounter with a Canaanite woman in Matthew 15. She comes to him pleading for her daughter, and at first Jes...

Can you lead with authority and still be genuinely vulnerable? Many of us treat those qualities as opposites. If we want to be strong, we assume we need to protect ourselves from being hurt. But in this conversation with Alan George, John Ortberg offers another picture of leadership. Drawing on Andy Crouch’s Strong and Weak , John explains that authority and vulnerability are two distinct qualitie...

What can still grow in your life after you’ve been hurt? John Ortberg explores that question through a story author James Michener remembered from childhood: an aging apple tree, eight rusty nails, and an unexpected harvest. Years later, after heart surgery and other painful health challenges, Michener returned to that image. He resolved to keep bearing fruit. John connects his story with the poet...

What do you do when God seems absent from your story?  Maybe you still pray, read Scripture, and show up, but the closeness you once felt is gone. Does that mean you’ve done something wrong? Has God left? John Ortberg explores those questions through John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century spiritual writer associated with the phrase dark night of the soul . John explains that this phrase can mean...

Everybody wants to make a difference. We spend billions developing leaders, and schools, businesses, and churches all talk about raising up the next generation of them. But when Jesus began the movement that would change countless lives, his invitation was just two words: “Follow me.” In this episode, John Ortberg asks what it really means to be a follower of Jesus. He challenges the idea that fol...

Is there a habit you keep trying to break, or one you wish you could finally build? You’re in good company.  When John Ortberg asked the Become New community about their habits, more than a thousand people responded. They named struggles with worry, anger, procrastination, screen time, negative self-talk, and much more. Some felt too ashamed even to say what their hardest habit was. Into that stru...

What do you do with a part of yourself you wish you could change?  Maybe you feel limited by your personality, your abilities, your age, or something your body can’t do. It’s easy to compare yourself with someone else and believe that if you just tried harder, you could finally become enough. In this episode, John Ortberg invites us to practice radical acceptance of our limitations. Moses, Gideon,...

What happens when someone really listens to you? In this special bonus episode, John Ortberg sits down with Become New Creative Director Jackson Lane, who shares a story about a childhood stuffed animal, a remarkable ninth-grade teacher, and one small act of kindness he still remembers nearly 15 years later. The story leads John to a beautiful idea about the way God loves us: there is a kind of lo...

Today we're revisiting an episode from SHINE, our walk through the book of Philippians. And there's a reason we're bringing this one back: we've just launched a new Bible reading plan on the Bible App based on the SHINE series. So if today's teaching is helpful to you and you'd like to go deeper, you can now walk through the whole series one day at a time in the Bible...

Thank you for being part of Become New, a global community growing spiritually in Christ, one day at a time. With an impromptu message from John, filmed on his iPhone in the Grand Tetons, this video is a personal thank-you for being part of this community—and an invitation to help make this work possible. Your generosity helps our small team create and share daily Bible teaching, prayer, study gui...

Why did Frodo need Gollum? Coming to you from Hobbiton, New Zealand, John Ortberg explores one of the deepest themes running through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings : Mercy. Bilbo could have killed Gollum. Frodo could have killed him. Sam could have killed him. But pity stayed their hands. And when Frodo finally reaches Mount Doom, something surprising happens: he fails. His own willpo...

Your life was made to be a Psalm. As this journey through the Psalms draws toward its close, John Ortberg reflects on where the Psalter has been leading us all along. Psalm 1 begins by asking what kind of life we will live. The Psalms then carry us through fear, anger, grief, confession, hope, and joy. But the final five Psalms end in an explosion of one thing: Praise. In Psalm 148, everything is...

What can a therapist teach us about prayer? John Ortberg sits down with his longtime friend and therapist Dr. Rick to explore the Psalms as a kind of “divine therapy with God.” The Psalms are messy. Angry. Afraid. Contradictory. Unfiltered. And according to Rick, that's exactly where healing begins: ruthless honesty inside a relationship where we know we're accepted. So what would happen...

Suffering can do one of two things: break us or break us open. Beginning with Frederick Buechner's unforgettable image, John Ortberg explores Psalm 110 and one of the deepest ways Christians have read the Psalms: seeing the story of Jesus in their suffering, longing, and hope. Drawing from C.S. Lewis, Plato, and the mysterious biblical figure Melchizedek, John looks at how Jesus brings togeth...

Are you actually experiencing joy, or are you mostly experiencing relief when problems finally go away? In Psalm 68, John Ortberg explores the biblical idea of exultation: deep, expressive joy that can exist even when life isn't going perfectly. Drawing from C.S. Lewis and Dallas Willard, John looks at why we can spend our lives clearing one hurdle after another and mistaking the resulting re...