Become New with John Ortberg

What is self-control? Is it trying through blood, sweat, and tears to make ourselves miserable? Maybe not. Maybe, a miserable life of constant resistance isn’t a God shaped life. The Apostle Paul calls self-control the final fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), not because it’s least important, but perhaps because (maybe) it takes the longest to grow. At its core, self-control is about spiritual ren...

Reality is where life happens. It’s where we learn, fail, love, and find hope. It in our nature to be out in nature. On a quiet deck in the presence of birds, dogs, and laughter. We’ve said it a lot in this series, but we will keep saying it, “We Need to Get Out More.” Not just for exercise or aesthetics, but for spiritual formation. Today John and Nancy have a conversation about a recent hike in...

When Tiffany and her husband Cam moved across the country to pursue their dream of running a mountain camp, they had no idea what was waiting for them. A financial crisis, a pandemic, wildfires, floods, and windstorms. They had to deal with one disaster after another. Each event felt like a reason to give up. But looking back, those same struggles became the soil where deep spiritual resilience to...

God didn’t design us to live behind glass, protected, isolated, or untouched by risk. That’s the danger of our screen-saturated, control-craving world: we can build an “unrisky life” that appears safe but leaves our spirits weak. John draws out a striking metaphor from Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation , where he talks about trees planted in a perfectly controlled environment that grew fast...

Sometimes the best theology is found on the back deck. A small bird on a simple patrol caught the attention of a friend, and in that moment the truth came to light. That mockingbird, later named “Jabez,” seemed to be extending its reach, enlarging its territory. And just like that, we’re reminded of a prayer tucked quietly into 1 Chronicles 4:10, a prayer that asks God not for riches or comfort, b...

Today, we’re keeping the gentleness discussion going. We are invited to get out of our hurried, harsh, screen-ridden worlds and into God’s world–the real world, full of life and joy. We’re reflecting on this truth from Jesus in Matthew 11: “I am gentle and lowly in heart.” Gentle and lowly? What countercultural words. And this isn’t the watered-down kind of gentleness; this is full-on fruit-of-the...

In our culture, revenge is pervasive. In fact, John unpacks research showing a hidden framework for understanding human revenge, rage, and violence. In practice, revenge actually operates like an addiction in our brains. The cycle begins with grievance. And every little grievance - from a driver who maybe cuts us off, to a coworker who forgets our name - can trigger imagined injustice. We indulge...

Today’s journey of We Should Get Out More brings us to something a little different: a chat with Len Vanden Bos, chaplain of the Buffalo Bills– where John and Len visit one of the largest maximum-security prisons in the U.S. John and Nancy recently visited and what they saw was staggering. Angola holds countless stories not just of pain and injustice, but amazingly, deep transformation and freedom...

Today’s episode of We Should Get Out More might just be an introduction to your new favorite Bible verse. It’s an often-overlooked passage in Romans 16:22: “I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord.” And while this might seem like a verse you’d look past, it’s significant because it’s Paul offering dignity to someone the world considered insignificant. Tertius was a scribe (ma...

Dr. Rick joins today to discuss what it really means to become a good person. Despite all his years of counseling, Rick shares that no one has ever walked into his office saying, “I want to be a good person.” However, by the end of their sessions, that desire is typically surfaced. It’s the realization that we all want to become someone who is grounded. Generous. Integris. That little question: Am...

Today, John talks with Glenn Packiam about how resilience begins with recovery: the ability to return to a place of spiritual rest. Like a stress test measuring how fast your heart returns to normal, true spiritual health isn’t the absence of struggle, but the speed at which we return to God after it. There is no such thing as a life without trouble, which is why Jesus promised that he would be wi...

Today, John talks with Pastor Steve Cuss who shares his practice of “tripping over God’s presence” 10 to 12 times a day through intentional micro-habits. These small moments that look like savoring a meal, noticing a sunset, holding a loved one’s hand, or hearing from a friend are more than pleasant. They are reminders that life is good and full of God’s presence if we could notice, tune in, and a...

Social media loves to make promises. Promises about optimizations, quick fixes, the perfect skin, the perfect parenting hacks, and on and on. These promises are tempting, but the problem is that social media rarely delivers on the promises it makes. This keeps us consuming more and more looking for the next best hack. We arrange our lives around this pursuit, only to find out—sometimes painfully—t...

What if you stopped doomscrolling and started life-scrolling instead? In today’s message, you’ll discover a better way to navigate screens and the bad news cycle — by tasting real goodness, practicing gratitude, and sharing hope like the bees do their waggle dance. Let’s get out more, root ourselves in God’s presence, and bring goodness into the real world together. Become New is here to help you...

John invites us to consider how our digital lives often differ from kindness and tend toward condemnation. All one needs do is get online and look at the Subtweets and group chats that exclude others. There are endless examples of passive-aggressive stories and soft blocks. We’ve been trained to cancel people but Jesus did something different. He didn’t cancel people, he canceled sin.  Become New...

Happy Fourth of July from Become New! Today marks not only a holiday, but also a shift in direction for us. As we sat with the title, You Should Get Out More, for the past few weeks, we noticed something felt off. It’s a single word, but it makes all the difference. We should get out more. As we explore this topic, know that we aren’t pointing the finger your way; we’re learning these concepts rig...

The word of the day is patience. The kind that reshapes your soul over time. A long faithfulness. As we continue You Should Get Out More, John invites us into something countercultural: living as pilgrims, not tourists. Tourists pick their destinations, stay as long as it’s fun, and move on when they lose interest. Pilgrims, though? They’re going somewhere. They’re going to God and the path for ge...

Today’s thought is kindness. And if that sounds a little too soft for your inbox this morning, hang tight because what we’re covering today isn’t shallow or merely sentimental. John is joined by Kara Powell, the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute, and they’re discussing the kind of radical, steady, others-focused kindness that can actually change us and change the world. Find out mor...

Take a deep breath. Remember, patience is a fruit of the spirit. It’s about living with an unhurried spirit. Often, people confuse patience with a lack of urgency but the truth is, patience is the ability to live with calmness and poise in the face of obstacles and delay. It’s living with an unhurried spirit in a sped-up world.  Become New is here to help you grow spiritually one day at a time. 📲...

The invitation for today is to live at peace, but not the kind you might think. This isn’t only silence or stillness, but rather the deep, soul-rooted type of peace that Jesus offers in a world full of noise and division. As we continue our series, You Should Get Out More, John contrasts peace and contempt, which is what pastor and author Jay Kim says are actually opposites. Contempt is a mindset...

The lines between physical and digital reality are increasingly blurred, especially for children. Today’s conversation between John and his daughter Laura, reminds us that spiritual formation and family life are happening at the same time. Often in the midst of unprecedented technological change. The challenge, then, is not to fear technology but to become wise in how we use it, especially when it...

Doesn’t it seem like everything is hyperconnected, screen-centric today? In a matrixed existence how are we meant to find pockets of peace in the day? It can feel almost impossible to grasp. The peace has a hard time flourishing in an online environment that usually amplifies outrage, judgment, and anxiety. Leading voices today have noted that social media gives us the power to express contempt wi...

Joy is not an accident. It's a fruit of the Spirit that grows from attention, action, and cultivation. In contrast much of our online lives are lived passively comparing ourselves to others without even thinking about it. Algorithms are designed to keep us longing for what we don’t have, by showing us lives just out of reach. This is an upward envy that creates a downward disdain and erodes j...

Jay shares his personal experience, as well as his pastoral perspective, on the mental, emotional, and spiritual costs of being chronically online. The issue is not the existence of technology, but how subtly and deeply it forms us into distracted, image-obsessed and ultimately hopeless people. The point of the conversation is to remind us that our digital tools are using us often more than we are...

In a world shaped by online personas, it's easy to mistake what looks good for what really is and emotion for identity. We have been conditioned to scroll through the highlight reels of others' lives, unaware of the building loneliness and pain that is masked by the doom scroll of online life. But the truth is that social media is not truly social, a fact we must remember because while i...