Become New with John Ortberg

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 poetry of John Milton and the lives of Hank and Jan, a couple whose faithful care for one another became a powerful expression of love.

John does not try to explain away suffering. He invites us to consider what love can still look like within it: noticing someone who feels invisible, offering help, caring for a loved one, or doing our ordinary work with God.

The episode closes at the cross, where nails hammered into a tree become part of the Christian story of self-giving love. Your wounds matter. What might God help you grow from here?

Scripture connections: Matthew 25:14–30; John 15:4–5, 12–13

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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 something more specific than a difficult season: a time when the pleasure and reassurance someone once found in spiritual practices seem to fade. For some, John of the Cross believed, that season can become part of learning to love and trust God more deeply.
Through the image of a weaned child in Psalm 131, John asks what it means to remain with God even when we are not receiving the comfort we want. He also remembers learning to ride a bike as his father ran beside him. When his father let go, the support felt different, but his father had not abandoned him.
If God feels hard to find right now, you do not need to manufacture a spiritual feeling today. You can bring your honest experience to him and ask for the grace to wait.
Scripture: Psalm 131:1–3

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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 followers are passive or weak. A follower of Jesus can be courageous, curious, persistent, and willing to learn through mistakes. Following means letting Jesus shape the way we think, see, love, and act.

John also makes the invitation wonderfully concrete: Do one thing today simply because Jesus said to do it. Forgive someone. Refuse to judge. Offer kindness where you’ve felt hostility. Give your time or resources in service of someone else. What might change if, for one moment today, you let Jesus lead?

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0:00 Why is everyone talking about leadership?
2:42 The leadership industry
3:52 Are all these leaders making things better?
5:01 What does it mean to be a leader?
6:06 Jesus’ invitation: “Follow me”
6:27 Reclaiming the word “follower”
7:21 Jesus follows the Father
8:24 What a follower of Jesus looks like
8:48 If you follow, stay behind him
9:47 Move at Jesus’ pace
10:15 Do one thing because Jesus said to

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 struggle, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” But then he invites us to take on his yoke. How can a yoke, an instrument of work, lead to rest?

John explores the difference between exhausting yourself with willpower and learning a way of life from Jesus. Drawing on Dallas Willard and BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits, he shows how motivation, ability, and prompts shape what we do. Sometimes a meaningful change begins with something as small as moving your phone out of the bedroom or putting away one book at the end of the day.

What’s one habit you’d like to change? Bring it to Jesus without shame, and consider one small step you could take today.

Scripture: Matthew 11:28–30; Mark 12:30

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0:00 The habits we want to change
1:27 You are not alone in this struggle
2:02 Jesus’ invitation to the weary
2:47 The easy yoke versus willpower
3:32 How habits make action easier
4:13 Motivation, ability, and prompts
6:31 Why some habits stick
7:42 Making an unwanted habit harder
8:39 Making a good habit easier
10:38 Choose one small change

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, Jeremiah, and Abraham each had reasons to think they weren’t the right person for what God was asking. Yet their limitations did not limit God. John explores how humility can open us to wonder, why Jesus chose to embrace the limits of human life, and what Paul means when he says we carry treasure in “jars of clay.”

What limitation have you been fighting? Today, consider what it would mean to offer it to God as a place where you might meet him.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:6–7; Exodus 4:10–12; Judges 6:12–15; Jeremiah 1:6–8; John 1:14

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Music Credits:
Welcome to the World by Sarah Watson
License# MB01XUUTGU633PL

0:00 I can’t, but God can
0:47 What limitation frustrates you?
2:13 From rejection to acceptance
3:06 Why trying harder isn’t always the answer
3:54 Your limitations don’t limit God
5:10 Humility, wonder, and the sublime
7:18 The people God chooses
8:50 Jesus chose human limitation
10:20 Treasure in jars of clay
11:10 Offer your limitation to God