Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

You went into the appointment with ordinary worries and came out with something that changes everything. Learn what Isaiah 43:2 promises about God's presence in the days after a diagnosis, and how a church is meant to show up.A diagnosis changes the shape of your life in a moment. You went into the appointment with the ordinary worries about parking and getting back to work in the afternoon. You came out with something that reorders everything. The drive home is a strange thing all by itself. The radio is still playing, and the world has no idea that yours just changed.Then come the days after. You're making phone calls you never rehearsed and reading things at midnight that you have no business reading. Somewhere in there you have to work out how to tell your kids. Everybody wants to know how you're doing, and you have no answer for them, because you don't know yet. The church is sometimes slow to know what to say to somebody in that week. People mean well. They send a verse that shuts the conversation down, or they say nothing at all because they're afraid of getting it wrong.This episode opens with Dr. Ivan Parke, a Bible professor at Mississippi College who had spent his career teaching other people what Scripture says about faith when life falls apart. Then in early 2025, life fell apart for him. The doctors told him he had ALS, the disease that slowly shuts the body down. There is no cure, and everyone in that room knew what the word meant. Everything he had told his students about trusting God was suddenly his own to live.Isaiah 43:2 was written for exactly this: "When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown." Look at how the promise is built. Every line assumes you are already in the water. God names the trouble in plain detail, and then He puts Himself inside it with you. The word to hold onto is through. There is a far side to this, and God is with you every step of the way there. Isaiah wrote those words to people headed into exile, and they read the promise on their way into the trouble.There is a second half to how God keeps a promise like that, and it usually has a name and a phone number. Much of the time He is with you through people who show up at your door. Bart shares his own version of this, the appointment where Katharine was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, and what he has learned since about asking God each morning for that day's strength. Ivan found the same two things: one verse, Joshua 1:9, and a church and college that brought meals and prayed.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:What Isaiah 43:2 promises about God's presence when you are already in the water Why the next step in front of you is the whole assignment for today How to show up for a friend who just got the news, even with nothing to sayA promise and some people. That combination is how anybody gets through a week like this. Take the next step, and let people help you.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/326Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Sometimes the thing that bothers you most about God is the schedule itself. Learn what Jesus did when Martha accused Him of showing up four days late, and why you can say the same sentence out loud.You know the feeling if you've prayed about something long enough. A door that stays shut year after year. A diagnosis that arrives in the worst possible month of the worst possible year. And the part that gets under your skin is the schedule itself. God could have done this last spring. He didn't. He was able the whole time. He waited anyway, and you're the one living in the meantime. Most of us handle that by getting polite with God. We pray around the thing, and we use phrases like trusting the process when what we mean is that we're furious.This episode opens with Kate Bowler, a historian at Duke who built her career studying the belief that enough faith earns you health and money. She knew every promise people made about how faith pays off. Then at 35, a new mom with a toddler at home, she was handed a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer. Here was a woman who taught for a living that faith produces good outcomes, and her own body had just handed her the opposite.John 11:21 records a woman who skipped the polite version entirely: "Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.'" Her brother had been in the tomb four days, and the first words out of her mouth were an accusation about the schedule. She had a point. Jesus got word that Lazarus was sick and deliberately stayed where He was for two more days. He was late on purpose.Watch what He does with her line. He never corrects her, and He never explains the two days. He asks where they put the body, and then the shortest verse in the Bible tells us what happened. Jesus wept. He stood there and cried with a woman who had just told Him He was too late. Mary comes out minutes later and says the identical sentence, so Jesus walked into a house where His timing was the main topic of conversation, and He didn't defend Himself one time. Then He raised the man.So take yours to Him. God is more secure than the version of Him you were taught to protect, and He would rather have your frustration than a performance of patience you don't feel. Bart shares his own version of this, the years he answered people's anger about God's timing by reaching for a reason, and how long it took him to quit talking and let them say it. Kate found the same door. She threw out the tidy explanations and told God the truth about how unfair the timing felt, and she kept talking to Him.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:What Jesus did when Martha accused Him of arriving four days late Why a complaint about God's timing can come from inside your faith A sentence you can pray today without cleaning it up firstAnger that keeps praying is still a conversation, and God can work with a conversation. Say it, and then stay in the room.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/325Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

The kids are grown and gone, and the house feels different in a way it hasn't in twenty years. Learn why grieving an empty nest is normal for a Christian parent, and what the arrows of Psalm 127 say about the work you already finished.The empty nest is one of the more disorienting transitions in adult life. The house feels different in a way it hasn't in twenty years. You walk past a bedroom that's made up and stays made up all week. The rhythm you built your whole life around, the practices and the late-night talks in the kitchen, isn't there anymore.Here's what makes it confusing. You're proud of your kid and you wanted this. You worked twenty years for exactly this outcome, and you miss them anyway. Both of those are true at the same time, and most people have no idea what to do with that. So you stand around in a house with more room than you know what to do with.This episode opens with Jill Savage, whose house was full of noise for more than twenty years. Four kids will do that. There were carpools and somebody always needing something, and it wore her out plenty of days. It was also her whole life. Then came the morning she had known was coming and still wasn't ready for. The kids were grown and gone, and the house was empty. She poured a cup of coffee and stood in her own kitchen while something rose up in her that she didn't expect.Psalm 127:3-5 gives us the picture that reframes it: "Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him. Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior's hands." Start with the gift, because that's where the grief is coming from. Nobody mourns something that meant little to them. Then stay with the image. An arrow is built to leave the quiver, and every part of it is shaped for the moment of release. A warrior who never fires one has a nice collection and an unfinished job. The releasing was always the reason for the making. So the empty house is what the work looks like when it succeeds.Knowing something was supposed to happen doesn't cancel the grief over it. Every good ending has loss buried in it somewhere. Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb minutes before raising him, and He knew how it would end. So you can believe every word of Psalm 127 and still stand in a made-up bedroom and cry. Bart shares his own version of this, the night he and Katharine sat down to a table set for two with a whole lot of table left over, and how a career spent across from people in grief still didn't prepare him for that.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why an empty house is evidence that you finished the work God gave you What the arrow image in Psalm 127 says about releasing your kids Why believing the promise and grieving the loss belong to the same faithGive the grief its time. Don't rush yourself through it, and don't let anybody suggest that being proud of your kid means you're finished missing them. You raised them to go.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/324Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some of the loneliest people are living in a house full of people. Your spouse is buried in work. The kids are behind a bedroom door with their phones. You get through a whole evening under one roof and exchange maybe forty words, most of them about the schedule. Then you look around at the family you helped build and feel like a guest in it.It's a strange kind of lonely, because you can't point to the thing that went wrong. Nobody fought. Nobody walked out. It came apart slowly over a few years while everybody was busy being responsible.This episode opens with a national AARP survey on loneliness. Researchers asked married people over the age of 45 a simple set of questions, and close to a third of them gave the same answer. They were lonely. These were couples sharing a house and a bed with someone, and feeling alone anyway. Relationship expert Pepper Schwartz described the ache as having a body right next to you while your deepest needs go unseen by the one person who should know you best.Psalm 68:5-6 speaks into that house: "Father to the fatherless, defender of widows, this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families." Read that line with your own household in mind. God is the one who does the placing, which means He put you there on purpose, and He didn't move out when the warmth did. Look at who He is in those verses. Father to the fatherless. Defender of widows. He goes straight to the people who have nobody, which means the loneliest person at your dinner table already has His full attention.The survey covers marriages, and the ache runs wider than marriage. Plenty of parents feel it with a teenager who used to talk to them. So ask God to change what you have no power to change on your own. You can't reach inside your spouse and make them want you again, and you can't schedule the moment a sixteen-year-old opens up. Then start small. One meal with the television off. One conversation where nobody is holding a phone. Bart shares his own version of this, the years in ministry when he was out of the house most nights, coming home late to a family that had already gone on with the evening without him. He was pastoring other people's families while his own learned to run without him in it, and he calls that a sobering thing to figure out about yourself.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:What an AARP survey found about loneliness inside marriage The promise in Psalm 68 that is easy to read past Two small changes that give a distant household somewhere to startA home like this can be rebuilt, one small turn toward each other at a time. God placed you in that house, and He is still in it. Be the one who moves first tonight.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/323Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You went to the person. You told them you were sorry. And they didn't accept it. Maybe they told you it was too late. Maybe they got up and left the conversation without saying anything at all. Most of us grew up with a simple picture of how this is supposed to work. You apologize and they forgive you. Things go back to normal. When the second half never comes, you're left holding something you already paid for with nowhere to put it.So you start second-guessing the apology itself. Maybe you said it wrong. Maybe you waited too long. You think about going back and saying it again, better this time, and somewhere in there you know that a second run at it would be more about your relief than about them.This episode opens with David, who had spent years running from King Saul. Saul had turned on him out of jealousy and hunted him through the wilderness with an army, though David had served him faithfully and even married into his family. Then Saul walked alone into the cave where David and his men were hiding, defenseless, with his back turned. David's men were certain God had handed the king over. David rose and crept toward him with a blade.Psalm 34:14 speaks directly to that moment: "Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it." Search for peace. Work to maintain it. Both of those are things you do with your own hands, and neither one arrives on command. Look at what the verse assigns you: the searching and the work. The other person's answer was never on your list. Paul says the same thing in Romans 12. As much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. That phrase is a limit, and the limit is a mercy.So a finished apology looks like this. You named the thing you did without softening it, and you didn't attach conditions. Then you stopped. If that's what happened, the apology is complete whether or not they received it. God measures your repentance by what you brought Him. Bart shares his own version of this, an apology he made as a youth pastor that a father would not take, and a man who left the church over it. David learned the same lesson the long way. He cut a corner from Saul's robe and let the king walk out alive. Saul wept and confessed, and before long the chase started up again anyway.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:What makes an apology complete even when the other person refuses itHow Psalm 34:14 marks the boundary between your part and theirsWhat David did when the man he had spared came after him againYou can search for peace and work to maintain it. You cannot hand it to someone who won't take it. Do your part and keep your hands clean. Leave the rest with God.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/322Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

A lot of families are spread out now. Grandparents live in one state, parents in another. The grandkids grow up on a handful of visits a year. Jobs move people. Housing prices move people. Nobody sat down and planned it this way, and here we are anyway.Some things get lost in the spread. The stories your parents could tell your children about where the family came from and what God did for them back when things were tight. The habits and small kindnesses grandkids pick up just from being around older people who love the Lord. Those don't transfer over a two-day Christmas visit with everybody rushing.This episode opens with Dale Russell, whose granddaughter was two years old and lived five hours away. He did the thing everybody recommends and hopped on a video call, and she lost interest almost immediately. A toddler has no use for making conversation with a face on a screen. She would wander off after a minute, leaving him holding a phone and watching the top of her head. Five hours was too far for a quick visit, and Dale could see where it was headed. At that rate he would be a nice man who showed up a couple times a year.Psalm 145:4 puts a name on what that distance costs: "Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power." Look at the verb. Tell. One generation tells the next, spoken out loud, from somebody who was there to somebody who wasn't. That kind of telling takes a person in the room and enough time for the story to come up on its own. The best of it happens sideways, in the car or standing at the sink drying dishes.So if distance is what you have, use what you have. Video calls do more than they seem to do in the moment, and a visit twice a year that everybody plans around will accomplish more than four visits nobody prepared for. What you say matters more than how long you talk. A five-minute call where you tell your grandchild one thing God did in your life will outlast a thirty-minute call about the weather. Bart shares his own version of this, the calls with his grandkids that get one-word answers and a shrug. Dale found his way through by changing what the two of them did together on the call. He read her picture books over live video, and the ones he reached for most were Bible stories.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:What gets lost between generations when families live far apartWhy Psalm 145:4 describes faith being handed down out loud, in personOne change that turns a video call into something a young child will stay forChristian grandparents have one thing above all to hand down, and that is their faith. The miles change how it happens. They don't have to stop it.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/321Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some nights the day ends and you have nothing left, and the prayer you meant to pray never comes. Learn why a short, plain prayer counts with God, and what Jesus said about willing spirits in worn-out bodies.There are stretches when the day finally winds down and you know you should pray, and you have no energy left for it. The words won't come. The moment you close your eyes, your mind wanders off to the grocery list or something your boss said that afternoon. You start to wonder if there's something wrong with your faith. Usually the answer is simpler. You're worn out.This episode opens with Charlotte Elliott, who had been sick so long she'd almost forgotten what a strong day felt like. Her brother, a minister, was raising money for a school, and the whole family went to help. Charlotte was too weak to go. Lying alone at home, an old accusation came back: she was useless and a burden, and if she couldn't even help with a fundraiser, God probably had no use for her either.Scripture speaks to that exhaustion with more tenderness than most of us expect. On the night before the cross, Jesus asked His closest friends to stay awake and pray with Him in Gethsemane, and He came back to find them asleep. Matthew 26:41 records what He said: "Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak." He looked at grown men who couldn't keep their eyes open on the worst night of His life, and He put His finger on the right cause. Their spirit was willing. Their flesh had run out. There's no contempt anywhere in the diagnosis. Jesus knew what tired felt like, and He was hours from the cross when He said it.So prayer when you're wiped out can be short and plain, and God still hears every word of it. It can be one line. God, I'm here. Or, God, help me. That is a prayer, and He receives it the same way He receives the polished ones. Some of the best praying you'll ever do will be short and direct. Peter, sinking into the water, managed three words. Bart shares his own version of this, the nights he starts praying in bed and never finishes the sentence, and the years he spent waking up feeling like he'd stood God up. Charlotte's answer came the same way. With no strength and nothing to bring, she reached for pen and paper and wrote one line of a prayer that became the hymn "Just As I Am."BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why exhaustion at prayer time usually says nothing about the state of your faithWhat Jesus said in Gethsemane about willing spirits in worn-out bodiesA one-line prayer you can pray tonight when you have nothing else leftGod has a long habit of using people who come to Him with nothing left but themselves. Say your one line tonight, and let Him handle the rest of it while you sleep.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/320Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Almost every Christian goes through this at some point. You pray, and it seems like the words don't get past the ceiling. You open your Bible, and the verses that used to move you read flat. Nothing scandalous has happened. You didn't walk away. God just feels far off, like He stepped back and didn't say why. It's disorienting, and it can last a lot longer than you expected, weeks or even months of reaching for a presence that feels absent.This episode opens with Sara Hagerty, who wanted to be a mother while the answer stayed no year after year. She was a believer who had known God as close and warm, but somewhere in the long wait He seemed to step back. She prayed about the emptiness and felt like she was talking to a shut door, and the strange part was that she hadn't done anything to cause it.Scripture answers that ache with an invitation. Isaiah 55:6 says, "Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near." Notice the tone. God is inviting you to come, and He attaches a promise to it: He can be found, and He is near. When God feels far, the feeling is telling you one thing and God is telling you another. He says He is near, even on the mornings your heart can't detect Him.So the way back is simpler than you'd guess. First, keep coming. Don't wait until you feel something to pray or open the Word; come while it's dry and keep the habits you had when He felt close. Second, tell Him the truth about where you are, without dressing it up. A prayer as plain as "God, I can't feel You right now, and I'm still here" honors Him more than a polished one, because it's true. Bart shares his own version of this, the Sundays he preached about God's nearness while feeling a thousand miles away, and how doing the next faithful thing brought the nearness back. Sara found the same path. She kept coming, told God the truth about her grief, and in time the nearness returned, even in a life that still held loss.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why feeling distant from God is common and usually says nothing about your standing with HimWhat Isaiah 55:6 offers as an invitation when God feels far awayTwo simple steps for coming back when His presence feels absentGod does not always hand you the felt sense of His nearness on demand, and He is always closer than you think. Keep coming, tell Him the truth, and trust the promise that He is near.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/319Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Familiar Christian music can hold you when nothing else quite does. Discover why the songs you've sung for years reach places words can't, and how God meets you in a melody when your faith feels dry.There's a comfort that comes the moment you hear the first few notes of a song you've known forever. Maybe it's a hymn you sang as a kid, standing next to your mother in the pew. Maybe it's the one they play at every funeral you've been to. Before you've thought about a single word, something in you settles. The music has been holding a memory for you, keeping it safe and connected to a time and a person you loved. When life gets to be too much, that melody can reach a place plain words can't.This episode opens with Gerald Wolfe, a gospel musician at his dying father's bedside. His dad had slipped somewhere conversation couldn't reach, and most days there was little left to say. One afternoon Gerald started an old hymn his father had sung for years, just to fill the room with something familiar. What happened next changed the rest of Gerald's life.Scripture shows why music does this. Paul wrote in Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." Paul wanted God's truth to take up residence in us, deep down and settled in, and he named singing as one of the ways it happens. A truth you only hear, you might forget by Friday. A truth you've sung a hundred times gets down inside you and stays. That's why the words come back when almost everything else is gone.So if your soul feels dry, put on a hymn you loved as a kid, or a worship song that has meant something to you. Don't analyze it. Let it play and let the words return on their own. The song can pray for you when you can't, working truth back into you that you couldn't reason your way to. Bart shares his own take, that modern worship tends to move him most, though the lyrics of the old hymns still stop him cold. Gerald's father proved the point. When Gerald sang, his dad began to sing too, verse after verse, the words returning the second the melody did. It was the last song they shared, and it sent Gerald mailing hymn recordings to nursing homes, where people who can't hold a conversation still open their mouths and sing every word.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a familiar hymn can reach you when plain words no longer doWhat Colossians 3:16 says about singing as a way God's word settles in youA simple step for letting a song revive a faith that feels dryWhen words fail and your soul feels dry, God can meet you in a melody you forgot you knew. Put on the old song and let it lead you back.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/318Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Most of us have a friend we've slowly let drift, and the longer we wait, the more awkward it feels to reach out. Discover why the fix is simpler than you think, and how to make the first move.A lot of us have a friend we used to be close to, and we can't quite remember when we stopped calling. Life sped up. New responsibilities came in. Somewhere in there the calls got rarer, then stopped, and neither of you meant for it to happen. Then one day their name crosses your mind, you realize how long it's been, and a wave of embarrassment hits. Right behind the thought of reaching out comes the excuse: it's been too long, they've probably forgotten all about it, they might not even want to hear from me.This episode opens with Pak Yan and Joe Chan, boyhood friends in Hong Kong who lost touch after Joe's family moved to America in 1962. Thirty-eight years passed. Pak never let go of the friendship, so he searched Joe's name, found one hundred and eight strangers, and started dialing down the list, leaving one voicemail after another.Scripture speaks straight to the drift. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 27:10, "Do not forsake your own friend or your father's friend... Better is a neighbor nearby than a brother far away." Solomon is talking about more than betrayal. He means the slow forsaking that happens by neglect, when a good friendship dies because nobody tended it. Friendships need active tending, or they fade, and nobody sends you a reminder that it's been eight months since you talked.So drop the story you've been telling yourself about how your friend must feel. You can't know for sure. They may be waiting for your call, or feeling the same guilt you are, each of you waiting for the other to go first. Go first anyway. The way through the awkwardness is a text that says, "I've been thinking about you, and I'm sorry it's been so long." Most of the time, that one message reopens the door. Bart shares his own version of this, a friend he keeps meaning to call while the awkwardness keeps building. Pak's story ended well: on his 104th call, Joe called back, and it felt like they picked up right where they left off. Now they meet every week, two old friends who almost lost each other to nothing more than time.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why good friendships fade through simple neglect, with no one meaning for it to happenWhat Proverbs 27:10 says about tending your friendships instead of forsaking themThe one simple text that gets you past the awkwardness and reopens the doorYou are not too late. Send the text, own the silence, and let God warm up a friendship that only drifted because life got busy.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/317Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Watching your congregation shrink is a grief few people talk about. Discover why declining numbers don't get the final word, and how Jesus keeps building His church even when yours feels small.If you love a local church, a shrinking congregation can be depressing. You stand at the back and count, and there are fewer heads than a year ago, far fewer than five years back. You know the empty seats by name: the family that moved for a job, the couple that slowly stopped coming. Every absence is a person you prayed for and did life with, and it can start to feel like a verdict, as if the decline is God's grade on your church, or on you.This episode opens with a sobering headline. In 2024, more Protestant churches in America closed their doors than opened them, around four thousand in a single year. The churches most likely to be shrinking are the older, smaller ones, and the pastors least sure they'll last another decade are the ones leading small congregations. That number can tell you the loss you feel is common. It cannot tell you what God is doing in the people who remain.Scripture holds a promise no attendance chart can touch. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus told Peter, "On this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." Hear who does the building. Jesus does. He was speaking about the whole body of Christ across the world and the centuries, and that church has never once stopped growing somewhere on earth. Your job is to be faithful right where He has placed you, and to leave the numbers with Him.Every local congregation has its own story under God's care, and He counts what you can't count. Sometimes the very decline that grieves you is what He uses to call a church back to its knees and into new life. Bart shares his own passion for church revitalization and his work as a Certified Church Consultant with Church Answers, and he invites pastors and members longing to see their church grow again to reach him at mykingdomimpact.com. The prayers going up in a half-full room still reach God. Jesus is still building, and no closure notice gets to overrule His promise.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a shrinking church is a common grief that no number fully explainsWhat Matthew 16:18 promises about who is responsible for building the churchA simple step for encouraging the people who are still in the roomJesus is the one building His church, and your job is to stay faithful where He planted you. Trust Him with the growth, and watch for the new life He can bring.Links Mentioned in this Episodehttps://mykingdomimpact.com/Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/316Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You watch another couple, and something in you twists. They finish each other's sentences. They laugh at each other's jokes in a way you and your spouse haven't in a long time. You drive home from that dinner feeling worse than when you walked in, taking inventory of everything your own marriage seems to be missing. The comparison feels like information, as if you're seeing the truth about their marriage and yours side by side. But the comparison is rigged. You're measuring what they let you see against everything you know about your own.This episode opens with Jenn, scrolling one night past a friend's glowing anniversary post. Jenn was married and happy enough, but something still pinched. She remembered her dating years, when friends talked openly about the good and the messy, so no relationship looked flawless. Married life felt different. Her friends' marriages looked airtight, while hers, seen from the inside, looked like ordinary work.Scripture goes to the root of that discontent. Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6:6-8, "Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content." Paul is warning against measuring your life by what you don't have. The moment you rank yourself against everyone else, you lose, because there is always someone with more, and the wanting never ends. Contentment breaks that cycle by receiving what God has given you as enough.Bring that home to your marriage. Yours is not their marriage, and it was never supposed to be. You don't see the tense conversations and the weeks they'd never post about. What you have in front of you is your own marriage, with its ordinary work and its own history, and God can do something in it that no amount of comparing ever will. Bart shares what he hears as a pastor from people discouraged about their marriages, and the reminder he gives every time: you're only seeing that couple from the outside. Jenn came to the same insight. Once two people say "I do," they stop airing the small stuff, so every couple looks like one happy unit while the arguments happen offstage. She had been comparing her backstage to everyone else's highlight reel.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why comparing your marriage to others is a rigged game you can't winWhat 1 Timothy 6:6-8 says about contentment being great gainA simple step for trading envy for gratitude in your own marriageYou've been comparing your backstage to someone else's highlight reel. Be grateful for the marriage in your hands, and let God do what comparison never could.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/315Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

When a close friend disappears without a word, the world rarely treats it as a loss. Discover why that grief is allowed, and how David and Jesus both knew the sting of being abandoned by a friend.One of the more disorienting hurts in life is when someone who was close to you disappears. No explanation, no conversation. They just stopped responding, and now weeks or months have gone by. Because there was no ending and no reason given, your mind goes to work trying to supply one. You run back through your memory looking for what you did wrong, and a lot of the time you never find the answer. What makes it worse is that hardly anyone treats it as a loss. When someone dies, people bring meals and gather around. When a friend quietly walks out of your life, you're expected to shrug and move on.This episode opens with Diana, who met Lindsay at UCLA and became inseparable with her for years. Then Lindsay moved away for a banking job, the calls started going unanswered, and one message became a long stretch of nothing. Diana kept making excuses for her friend until she finally admitted the truth: she'd been dropped, and no one was ever going to explain it.Scripture speaks straight to that wound. In Psalm 55:12-14, King David wrote, "For it is not an enemy who reproaches me; then I could bear it... But it was you, a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together." David could have handled an attack from an enemy. What cut him down was that the betrayal came from a close friend, someone he had prayed with and walked into worship beside. The closeness is what made the wound so deep, and David brought that grief straight to God instead of burying it.You can do the same. You don't have to have it resolved first or understand why they left. And the God you bring it to knows the sting from the inside. On the night He was betrayed, one of Jesus' own friends handed Him over and the rest scattered. So when you tell God about the friend who ghosted you, you're bringing it to the one Person who understands completely and who will never do that to you. People may disappear without a word. God stays. Bart shares his own lost friendship, one that faded after a move and was never explained. Diana found her healing the same way: months later a therapist gave it a name, disenfranchised grief, and once it had a name she let herself grieve it as the loss it was.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why being ghosted by a friend is a loss that deserves grief, even when no one else treats it that wayWhat Psalm 55:12-14 shows about David grieving betrayal by a close friendA simple step for naming your loss and bringing it to GodWhen a friend disappears without a word, that grief counts. Bring it to the God who was abandoned Himself, name it for the loss it was, and let yourself grieve.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/314Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Always being available may look like generosity, but it slowly drains you dry. Discover why Jesus withdrew from people who needed Him, and how his example frees you to be unreachable sometimes.Some of us take pride in being reachable. The text gets answered the second it comes in. You never turn down the request for coffee, and you never let a call go unanswered. From the outside it looks like generosity, and part of it is love. But some of it is something else, a person who has never learned how to disappoint anyone, who feels a low hum of guilt whenever they're not available to meet a need. That way of living has a cost, and it comes due whether you plan for it or not.This episode opens with Wayne Cordeiro, a pastor who almost never told people no. For years his constant availability looked like love, and much of it was. Then one evening, out for an ordinary jog before a leadership conference, he found himself sitting on a curb, crying, unable to remember how he got there. He had been leading on empty for so long that he finally hit bottom.Scripture points to a wiser pattern. Luke 5:16 says of Jesus, "So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed." Notice the word often. There were still sick people who wanted healing and crowds who wanted teaching, and Jesus walked away from them to be alone with His Father. He left needs unmet on purpose, because He knew that being on call every hour would leave Him with nothing to give. His withdrawing was how He kept having something to offer.If the Son of God needed to pull back and pray, so do you. You are allowed to be unreachable sometimes. You can turn the phone face down and let the request wait until tomorrow. The world will not fall apart, and you will not have let anyone down. Your health depends on it, and so does your walk with God, because time with Him is the first thing crowded out when you're available to everyone else. Bart shares his own struggle to rest, and how he came to treat the Sabbath as a command to obey rather than laziness to feel guilty about. Wayne's road back took nearly three years, and he came to see the rest he had refused as the very thing that saved his ministry and his health.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why constant availability drains the very thing people come to you forWhat Luke 5:16 shows about Jesus withdrawing from people who still needed HimA simple step for building unreachable, restful time into your week without guiltYou are allowed to be unreachable sometimes. Pull back and rest the way Jesus did, so you'll still have something to give the people who need you.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/313Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Feeling guilty for being okay when people around you aren't is more common than you'd think. Discover why you can stop apologizing for your stable life, and how God means for you to spend it on others.Sometimes the trouble is that your life is holding together while someone close to you is falling apart. Your marriage is solid and theirs is ending. Your kids are fine while someone else's are in crisis. Instead of being grateful, you feel almost ashamed of it. You hide the good news and downplay the vacation, because it feels cruel to be okay when someone you love is not. Somewhere in there, you start to believe you don't have permission to enjoy your own life while another person suffers.This episode opens with a woman named JoHannah, who had a good life and felt bad about it. Her family was close and her faith was intact, while all around her people faced chemo, divorce, and persecution overseas. She decided she had no business having things this good, so she tried to pay it back. She said yes to every request and made every need her own, running herself down until doing so much good left her going under.Scripture speaks straight to that guilt. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 that God "comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." Read the purpose in that verse. God comforts us so we can comfort others. The comfort is a supply, given to be passed on. Your stable marriage is a resource. The peace you have is something God is placing in your hands to hand to someone who has none right now.That reframes what being okay is for. You don't have to hide your blessing or burn it down out of guilt. You get to be grateful for it, and then spend it on people. The friend going through chemo needs you to come with your health and sit beside her. The woman whose marriage is ending needs the strength of yours to hold onto for an afternoon. Bart shares his own version of this guilt, driving home to a house that's still standing after praying with someone whose life is coming apart. JoHannah found her freedom the same way: she stopped trying to sacrifice her way out of a gift, received God's kindness, and finally had something to offer.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why feeling guilty for being okay is common, and where that guilt comes fromWhat 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says about comfort being a supply meant to be passed onA simple step for turning your stable life into help for someone who's hurtingYou don't have to apologize for being okay. Be grateful for what God has given you, then spend it on the person in front of you who needs it.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/312Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Watching a parent lose their memory is a grief that starts long before anyone dies. Discover why that grief counts, and how numbering your days helps you love the parent who's here today.There's a grief that comes long before the funeral. It shows up when your father asks the same question three times in an hour, or when your mother calls you by your brother's name. The person who raised you is losing pieces of themselves right in front of you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You go through it mostly alone, because the world doesn't have a category for it. There's no casserole for the slow goodbye, no card that says "sorry your mother forgot your wedding." So you wonder whether you're even allowed to grieve someone who's still here.You are. This episode opens with a woman Bart talked with for his book on caregiving. She cared for her husband through Alzheimer's after his diagnosis in his early 60s, and she promised herself she'd keep him at home no matter what. But the disease kept taking more of him. One day she stood in the middle of a highway with him, cars coming, and hit the end of what she could do alone. Right there she prayed out loud for help.Scripture speaks straight to that place. Long before any of us faced a diagnosis, Moses prayed in Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Numbering your days means facing the truth that time with the people you love is short and precious, and letting that shape how you spend it. You may not have the father you had ten years ago. But you still have this version of him, and this version won't be here forever either. So love the one who's here now.That means speaking the words that need to be said while there's still someone to hear them. It also means bringing what you're grieving to God, who is not far from any of it. He is with your parent, the one losing their memory, holding them even in the confusion. And He is with you, the one keeping watch, seeing every day nobody else sees. You don't have to face the slow goodbye alone. Bart shares what these caregiver interviews have shown him about loving his own people while he has them, and the woman's own conclusion after years of caring for him: "The Lord, he will pull you through it."BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why grieving a parent who's still alive is real grief, even without a funeralWhat Psalm 90:12 teaches about numbering your days and loving the parent in front of youA simple step for saying the words that need to be said before it's too lateYou may be grieving someone who's still here, and that grief counts. Number these days, love the parent who's in front of you today, and bring the rest to the God who never forgets a single name.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/311Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Every praying Christian goes through stretches where the words feel automatic. You bow your head, and the same phrases come out that always come out, the ones you learned years ago and reach for at meals and at bedtime. Somewhere along the way you stopped hearing them, and you can't remember the last time one of those prayers meant something as you said it. It can start to feel fake, like you're reciting lines to an audience of one.This episode opens with a small experiment you can try. Pick a simple word, say "door," and repeat it out loud, past 20, past 30 times. Somewhere in there the word comes apart in your mouth and turns to gibberish. It has a name: semantic satiation. When you repeat a word fast and often enough, the part of your brain that supplies its meaning briefly stops firing. The sound keeps coming, but the meaning drops out from under it.The same thing can happen to the phrases you say to God, and Jesus spoke to it. Matthew 6:7 says, "And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words." Jesus is describing people who thought the trick was volume, as if enough words would impress God into answering. He wanted something else. Look at the next line in that chapter, where He teaches His followers to pray to their Father. Prayer was meant to be a conversation with a Father who already knows you, in your own words, the way a child talks to a father who knows him.Here is the good news. If your prayers have gone rote, your faith is not in trouble. The meaning wore off the way it did with the word door, and the fix is simple: slow down and say something true. You can stop in the middle of a stale prayer and say, God, I don't want to just recite at You. I want to talk to You. Help me mean this again. That is one of the truest prayers there is, because God was never listening for polished language. He was listening for you, the person behind the words. Your faith is fine. Your words just need to slow down and fill back up.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why familiar prayers lose their meaning, the same way a repeated word turns to gibberishWhat Matthew 6:7 says about empty repetition and praying to a Father who knows youA simple way to slow down and pray afresh when the words have gone staleWhen your prayers go rote, your faith is fine. Your words just need to slow down and fill back up, because God is listening for you, not for the perfect phrases.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/310Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Most people have a preferred way to numb out when life gets uncomfortable. The scroll. The extra hour of TV. Neither is wrong by itself. But when one of them becomes the place you run every single time you don't want to feel what you're feeling, it stops being a break and starts being an escape hatch. And the more you use it, the better you get at not feeling anything at all.This episode opens with a research experiment. People were put alone in a bare room for 15 minutes with no phone and nothing to read, and asked to just sit and think. Most of them hated it. So the researchers left a device on the table that would give a mild electric shock, one everyone had already tried and said they'd pay to avoid. When the door closed, a striking number of people shocked themselves rather than sit alone with their own thoughts. We will do almost anything to keep from feeling what is going on inside us.Peter gave the early church a short, pointed instruction. 1 Peter 5:8 says, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." Peter is calling for wakefulness, enough alertness that you notice what's happening in you instead of drifting through your days on autopilot. And here's something to notice: the enemy doesn't always come at you with a dramatic sin. Sometimes his whole strategy is just to keep you numb, scrolling, one show deep, so that year after year you never turn and face what God is trying to deal with in you. A person who feels nothing never grows.The way out of numb is presence. Another distraction only digs the rut deeper. Presence means turning off the screen, letting yourself feel the thing you've been running from, and bringing it to God. That's uncomfortable at first, because the stuff you've been avoiding comes up. But that discomfort is the beginning of something changing. Numbing keeps you exactly where you are, frozen, wondering why nothing ever gets better. Presence with God is the thing that moves you.Those people chose a shock over sitting still with their own minds. That's how strong the pull to escape is, and you feel it too. But the shock and the scroll keep you from the one thing that would help most: being present, with yourself and with God, long enough for Him to meet you in it. The discomfort you're avoiding might be the doorway He's standing in.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a harmless habit becomes an escape hatch when you run to it every time you don't want to feelWhat 1 Peter 5:8 says about staying awake to your own lifeA simple practice for choosing presence with God over numbing outNumbing keeps you exactly where you are. Presence with God, even when it's uncomfortable, is what moves you forward.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/309Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some Christians are the only person in their extended family who prays for the rest of them. There's the spouse who doesn't believe, and the grown kids who walked away from the faith they were raised in. Somehow the job of bringing that whole family before the Lord has fallen to one person, and that person is you. Nobody assigned it. You just love them, and you seem to be the only one on your knees. It can feel lonely and pointless, like your prayers go up and nothing comes down.This episode opens with a bored, unbelieving teenager named Hudson Taylor, who wandered into his father's library and pulled a gospel tract off the shelf. What he didn't know was that his mother, miles away that week, had shut herself in a room and was praying for his salvation, hour after hour, until she felt sure God had heard. Bart shares his own family's version: his mom, the only believer in her family, watched her sister trust Christ in her final days before passing away.There's a moment in Acts that speaks right to the lone believer. A jailer in Philippi asked Paul how to be saved, and Paul told him, in Acts 16:31, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." By morning the man's whole household had believed and been baptized. One person's faith became the doorway for an entire family. That is a pattern all through Scripture and history. God loves to reach a whole household through the faith of one member of it, the one who prays, the one who keeps believing when nobody else does. He is not put off by being outnumbered in your family tree.So if you're the only one praying, hear this: your prayers are not vanishing. You can't see what God is doing behind the closed doors of the people you love, but He is doing something. He is patient with them in ways that would exhaust you, and He is at work in rooms you will never walk into. Hudson Taylor sat alone in that library, sure no one was thinking of his soul, while two women prayed him into the kingdom. He read a line about the finished work of Christ, and he gave his life to God right there. He felt completely alone, and he was completely surrounded. You may feel the same, and heaven may be fuller of your requests than you know.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why being the only one praying for your family is more common, and more powerful, than it feelsWhat Acts 16:31 shows about God saving a whole household through one person's faithHow to keep praying for your family without giving up, even when you can't see anything happeningYou may be the only one praying, but you are not praying alone. God reaches whole families through the faith of one, so keep going.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/308Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

The fear of getting old alone is one people don't talk about much, but it lives in a lot of hearts. Some pictured a spouse walking through the later years with them, and that person never came. Others raised kids who grew up and moved across the country, and now they lie awake wondering who will be there when they can't drive themselves to the doctor, and who would even notice if they got sick. It's a frightening thing to wonder about, and most people wonder in silence.This episode opens at a small church in Skiatook, Oklahoma, where a growing group of widows knew that fear. Many had been married 50 or 60 years, their spouse was gone, and their kids were far away. One woman, Vicki Hendryx, couldn't stop thinking about them and didn't want a single one to feel forgotten, so she made a plan.An old man in the Psalms prayed this exact fear straight to God. Psalm 71:9 says, "Do not cast me off in the time of old age; Do not forsake me when my strength fails." It's a raw prayer from a man who could feel his strength going and dreaded being discarded, and he said it right to God's face. God's answer, all through Scripture, is the same: I am with you, I will never leave you or forsake you. When your friends are gone and your strength has failed, He is still there. Old age does not move you one inch outside His reach.Often, God answers this fear with skin on. He sends His people. The church was built to be a family for exactly the person who has no other family left. When a congregation takes its widows and older singles under its wing, that's more than kindness. It's God keeping His promise through His people, in the parking lot after church and in the hospital waiting room.That's what Vicki built. She had the church adopt its widows one by one, making a profile for each and matching every widow with at least two volunteer families, so no one slipped through the cracks. More than 30 widows in that church now have people who show up for them every week. Nobody there ages alone. As Bart notes, his own church cares for its widows and older singles the same way, so no one with no family nearby has to face aging by themselves.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the fear of aging alone is so common and so rarely spokenWhat Psalm 71:9 shows about bringing that fear straight to GodTwo things to do with the fear, and how the church becomes family to those who have noneGod will not cast you off in your old age. Much of the time He answers the fear of aging alone by sending His people to stay close.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/307Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You took the job. You said yes to the person. You made the move and signed the papers. And now you're a few months or a few years in, and you catch yourself wondering if you got it right. Second-guessing is common, and it isn't always a red flag. Sometimes it's grief, a mourning for the roads you didn't take and the life that might have been down the one you passed up.This episode opens with Grace, who left a secure job after 2 years, sure God was calling her to become a teacher, and enrolled in a master's program. Then the program turned out tougher than anything she'd expected. She felt behind, questioned whether she belonged, and the doubt went deeper than the coursework. She started questioning the whole decision, wondering if she'd made a mistake and walked away from a good job for nothing.Psalm 32:8 holds a promise for the person on the far side of a decision: "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye." Read the tense. Every verb points forward. God cares about more than the decision behind you; He is committed to the steps ahead of you. Whatever you already chose, He is still saying, from here, I will guide you.That matters, because a lot of us live with a fear that one wrong turn puts us outside God's guidance. That is not how He works. He doesn't require you to have made the flawless choice before He'll lead you well. He meets you on the road you're on now and walks you forward from there. And hardship along the way is not proof you chose wrong. Following God comes with one promise about the road: that He will be with you on it. The road itself may get steep, and you can be in the middle of trouble and still be right in the center of His leading.That is what freed Grace. A trusted older friend told her to just go and try, and if she couldn't, to come home. It was permission to try without having to be perfect. She had believed that following God meant nothing could go wrong, and when it did, she assumed she'd failed. Instead she found a God who stayed with her and kept leading, one steep step at a time. She didn't need a guarantee she'd chosen perfectly. She needed to know He was with her, and He was.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why second-guessing a decision is common, and often more grief than red flagWhat the future tense of Psalm 32:8 says about God guiding you after a choiceTwo things to do when you can't tell whether you made the right callYou don't have to have chosen perfectly for God to lead you well from right where you are. His promise to guide you points forward.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/306Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Every long-term Bible reader hits verses they struggle with. A command that sounds harsh. A line that seems to contradict something you were taught to believe about God. The pull is to slide past it and stick with the parts that comfort you. Most of us have a private list of verses we've been avoiding for years. Bart hears it often. People bring him the verse that bothers them, half expecting him to be shocked, and he tells them: don't skip it, stay with it.This episode opens with Martin Luther, a monk desperate to be right with God, who came to Paul's phrase "the righteousness of God" in Romans and heard a verdict he could never meet. He said he hated that verse, and hated the God he thought it revealed. Most people would have turned the page. Luther couldn't. He kept circling back to the words that tormented him, trying to understand what Paul meant.The Bible itself admits some of it is difficult. In 2 Peter 3:15-16, Peter says that some of what his beloved brother Paul wrote is difficult to understand, and that unstable people twist it to their own destruction. Notice that an apostle, writing Scripture, names the difficulty rather than hiding it. So if you have felt faithless for struggling with a verse, let that go. Peter gives one warning and one instruction: don't twist the difficult parts to mean whatever you want, and stay grounded while you keep reading. His answer to a troubling verse is to stay with it, on solid ground, until it opens up.That is the choice when a verse bothers you. You can turn the page, or you can dig in. Study it, read what comes before and after, and find out what the words meant to the people who first heard them. Bring your questions straight to God, who is not nervous about them. Some of the growth He has for you is buried in the verses you'd rather skip.That is what happened to Luther. Slowly, then all at once, he saw he had been reading the phrase backwards. Paul was describing a righteousness God gives as a gift, received by faith in Christ. The standard Luther had been straining to reach was one God had already provided. The verse that felt like a death sentence turned out to be the doorway to grace, and it lit the Reformation. He found his way to grace by staying with the verse he had wanted to avoid.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why struggling with a difficult verse is normal, and named in Scripture itselfWhat 2 Peter 3:15-16 says to do with the passages that are difficult to understandA practical way to go toward the verse that bothers you instead of skipping itThe verse that bothers you is one to stay with. God isn't afraid of your questions, and He often grows you most through the passages you'd rather skip.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/305Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

A close relationship with an adult child doesn't come standard, and it's easy to stop noticing it. Discover why John called this the greatest joy, and how to receive it with gratitude.This episode is for the parents whose grown kids call. Whose kids text just to check in, or make room for you at the table when they didn't have to. That kind of relationship does not come standard. A grown child who wants you around is choosing you, over and over, with a life full of other options, and some part of you already knows how rare it is. Bart knows the feeling. His kids are grown and close, and he doesn't take it for granted, because he has counseled too many parents who would give anything for a Sunday dinner with a child who no longer calls.This episode opens with Brad Ryan, whose grandmother, Joy, was almost a stranger to him. Joy had spent her whole life in small-town Ohio and, into her 80s, had never seen a mountain or the ocean. Then Brad, now grown, called the grandmother he barely knew and asked if she wanted to go camping. She said yes.The apostle John knew this kind of joy. 3 John 4 says, "I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children are following the truth." He mostly meant his spiritual children, and what filled him with joy was simple: they were walking with God. A close relationship with your grown child sits in that same kind of joy, and it's easy to let it fade into the background. When something good becomes familiar, we stop seeing it. The visits become normal, and a gift that would have stunned you 20 years ago becomes something you barely notice. John refused to let that joy fade. He named it.So do something with the closeness you've been given. Feel it and thank God for it, instead of rushing past a gift He knit together. Then tell your kids, in plain words, what their nearness means to you. They may shrug it off. Say it anyway. People rarely regret telling someone they love that they matter.That is where Brad and Joy's story went. The one camping trip became another, and over several years the grandson and his grandmother visited all 63 national parks, finishing when Joy was 93. Two people who had barely known each other became close, Joy saw mountains and the ocean for the first time, and she has said these years are the best of her life. Nobody made Brad pick up the phone. He just wanted her around, and it gave an 85-year-old woman a whole new life.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a close relationship with a grown child is rarer and more precious than we treat itWhat 3 John 4 shows about the joy of the people we love walking with GodWhat to do with that closeness before it fades into background noise, and why naming it aloud mattersA grown child who wants you around is one of life's rare joys. Thank God for it, and tell them what it means.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/304Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Years after a relationship ended, a lot of people still feel the pull to look. You scroll the profile at midnight. You ask a mutual friend how they're doing, like it's just curiosity. Each little check feels harmless. It isn't. Every time you go back to look, you pull the scab off a wound that was trying to heal, and you plant yourself again in a place God already led you out of.This episode opens with Linnie, who spent 3 years trying to move on after a 7 year relationship ended. She threw herself into work and read her Bible, and still part of her wondered what would happen if she just reached out. So one day she sent him a message, hoping the door might still be open. He was already with someone else, and within a few months he married her. Linnie fell apart, standing in front of a closed door and knocking when God had already moved her down the hall.Paul knew the pull to live in the past, and he made a decision about it. Philippians 3:13-14 says he focused on one thing: forgetting what was behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the prize God was calling him to. When Paul says forgetting, he means he refused to keep living back there. His memory still worked; he just stopped treating his past as a place to visit whenever the present got painful, and he faced forward and ran.That is the choice when you're tempted to check up on an ex. Going back feels like it will bring relief, a hit of connection or some sense of closure, but it never delivers. It just reopens the wound and leaves you standing in the past while your life waits up ahead. And here is a truth that helps: some of the doors in your life, God closed on purpose, and He closed them for you. That ended relationship may be an exit He walked you through. The relief you're aching for was never behind that door. You'll find it on the other side of putting the phone down and letting the past stay past.That is what Linnie learned. She stopped knocking, turned around, and found God in the hallway. She let the man go, and in time she could even pray for his marriage. Freedom like that is waiting for you on the other side of stopping.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why "one more look" at an ex reopens a wound instead of bringing closureWhat Philippians 3:13-14 means by forgetting the past and pressing forwardA practical way to guard your heart the next time you feel the pull to check upSome doors God closes for your good. The relief you're looking for is on the far side of putting the phone down and letting the past stay past.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/303Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some wounds don't stay in the past. They move into your head and take up residence. You replay the conversation, or the thing they said that you can't unhear, and every time you run it, you feel it again, fresh, like it just happened. That's what makes it so exhausting. You're not being hurt once. You're being hurt on a loop, and it can go on for years before you notice what it's costing you.This episode opens with Lysa TerKeurst, who led a growing ministry and loved her family, then found out her husband had been unfaithful. The affair hurt, but a second pain came after, and it lived entirely in her head. Long after the discovery, her mind kept playing the betrayal back to her, ambushing her while she folded laundry or drove, and she would feel it as if it were happening for the first time. Forgiving the man was one battle. Getting her mind to stop rehearsing what he had done was another.There is a promise in Isaiah for a mind that won't settle down. Isaiah 26:3 says God keeps in perfect peace all whose thoughts are fixed on Him. Notice the word fixed. Older translations say stayed. To stay your mind on God is active work, keeping it brought back on purpose, again and again, the way you hold a boat straight against a current. You can't always stop a memory from arriving. But when the loop starts, you don't have to press play one more time. You can catch it, turn your attention to God, and do it again the next time, and the time after that.The harm did happen, and you are not asked to deny it. What you are choosing is to stop reopening a wound you want healed. Some wounds only close when you finally stop picking at them. Handing the memory to God, over and over, is how you let Him do the healing you can't do by reliving it.That is the work Lysa had to do. She came to see forgiveness as a daily choice, one she made again every time the replay started, catching it and handing it back to God instead of pressing play. Her marriage did not survive, and she says so plainly, but the loop did not get to run the rest of her life. She turned it off, one interruption at a time, and built something new on the other side.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why replaying a hurt keeps wounding you long after the event is overWhat Isaiah 26:3 means by a mind stayed on God, and why it takes active effortA practical way to catch the replay and turn it off, one interruption at a timeThe harm did happen, but you don't have to keep pressing play. When the loop starts, turn your mind to God and let Him do the healing.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/302Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

A lot of Christians hit stretches where nothing is exactly wrong. The bills are paid. The family is functioning. You have plenty to be thankful for, and you are, and still you wake up with a dryness you can't explain. You're moving through good days without tasting them. There's no crisis to point to and no obvious hole to fill, which can be more confusing than an outright problem, because you can't even say what's the matter.This episode opens with Ann Voskamp, who ran a family farm, was raising a houseful of kids, and loved God. By every outward measure she was fine. And still, most mornings, she woke up with a hollow feeling she couldn't explain, thankful on paper and empty inside, unable to fix it. Then a friend gave her a strange little dare.God described this exact condition through Jeremiah. Jeremiah 2:13 says God's people did two evil things: they abandoned Him, the fountain of living water, and they dug for themselves cracked cisterns that could hold no water at all. A cistern is a hole you carve out to store water you've hauled in from somewhere else. These were cracked, so the water leaked out as fast as it went in. God's people traded a spring that flows on its own for a leaky tank they had to keep refilling.That is how emptiness shows up in a comfortable life. You are still drinking, just not from the fountain. You pull little sips of life from your work and your screens, from the next thing that needs you. None of those are evil, but they cannot hold water. They give you a swallow and leave you thirsty again by morning, until you feel hollow in the middle of a life that looks full. The answer is to go back to the source. Working your cisterns will only wear you out, because they were never going to hold. Ordinary time with God, unhurried, with your Bible open and your phone away, is the thing that refills a soul, and there is no substitute for it.That is what Ann discovered. Her friend dared her to write out 1,000 small gifts she'd been walking past, and as she paid attention, gift by gift, she noticed God right there in the dishwater and the noise. Nothing about her life changed. The dryness did. The fountain had been within reach the whole time, and she had simply stopped drinking from it.**BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:**- Why you can feel empty even when your life is stable and nothing is wrong- What Jeremiah 2:13 reveals about the cracked cisterns we dig instead of drinking from God- A simple way to get back to the fountain and let God refill your soulWhen the soul runs dry in a life that looks full, the answer is to go back to the fountain: ordinary time with the God who never runs out.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/301Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

After enough letdowns, you decide it's safer to expect nothing. If you don't get your hopes up, they can't come crashing down. You watched a prayer go unanswered. You trusted someone and they let you down. So now you hold everything at a careful distance, bracing for the next disappointment before it comes. Hope starts to feel like a setup.This episode opens with Kashia and Riley Palmer, who longed to be parents for years. After fertility treatments failed, they turned to adoption, and a call came about twin baby boys. They raised 45,000 dollars in two days and flew to meet their sons, only to have a nurse meet them at the hospital door. The birth mother had changed her mind, and they flew home with empty arms and a fear a lot of us know: the fear of ever letting yourself hope again.Solomon named this ache 3,000 years ago. Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life." Solomon is naming something true. When you want something and the waiting stretches on, it wears on you and can leave a bruise that lasts for years. God's Word doesn't pretend that away. But look at the second half of the verse. A dream fulfilled is a tree of life, the kind that grows and shelters. The problem was never hope itself. The problem is where we aim it.When you pin all your hope on one outcome, one answer arriving by a certain date, you're betting your heart on something that might not come. God is asking you to hope in Him, not just in the thing you want from Him. Hoping in an outcome is fragile, because outcomes can fall through. Hoping in God is sure, because He doesn't. He may not give you the exact thing on your timeline, but He has promised never to leave you empty.That is the hope the Palmers finally found. Months later another call came, this time a baby girl. Their hands were up, and they knew they could not guarantee the outcome. That part belonged to God. Scared and hoping anyway, they flew to meet their daughter, and the birth mother looked at them and said, "You're here. You're really here." They came home a family. They didn't hope less the second time. They hoped scared, with their hope resting where it couldn't be crushed.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why disappointment makes so many people quietly stop letting themselves hopeWhat Proverbs 13:12 says about the toll of hope deferred and the life a fulfilled hope bringsHow to keep hoping by aiming your hope at God instead of a single outcomeHope deferred makes the heart sick, but hope aimed at God won't leave you empty. Keep hoping, and aim it at Him.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/300Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

We size people up in a second, then miss the story we can't see. Discover why Romans 14:4 says the person you're judging was never yours to judge, and how to catch yourself in the moment.You're standing in a checkout line, or scrolling a feed, and you catch yourself passing judgment on someone you've never met. The way they're handling their kids. The opinion they posted. In a second flat, you've tried them and moved on, and half the time you don't notice you did it until it's already done. The verdict feels like insight in the moment. Most of the time it's just a guess dressed up as knowing.This episode opens with Jason Wright, who stopped at the same convenience store every morning and decided he had the clerk figured out. Her name was Cheri. She rarely smiled and kept her answers short, and Jason wrote her off as unfriendly, a woman who probably hated her job. One morning he asked the manager why Cheri always seemed so down, and the manager stopped and looked at him.Paul asked the Romans a question that stops you cold when it's aimed at you. Romans 14:4 says, "Who are you to condemn someone else's servants? Their own master will judge whether they stand or fall. And with the Lord's help, they will stand and receive his approval." Every person you're tempted to size up belongs to somebody, and that somebody is God. When you pass judgment on a stranger, you pick up a gavel that belongs to the Judge of all the earth, and He never handed it to you.Notice how the verse ends. With the Lord's help, they will stand. Paul goes further than telling you to back off. He tells you what God is doing in the person you were writing off: working to help them stand. So while you were deciding they were a lost cause, their Master was on their side. There's mercy in that for you, too. You wouldn't want to be judged by a stranger's 10-second read of you on your worst morning, and neither would the person in front of you. Everybody you meet is dealing with something you can't see from where you're standing.That is exactly what Jason found out. The manager told him Cheri had lost both of her parents that year, within a few months of each other, after a lifetime of caring for them. The grouch he'd invented in his head was a daughter buried in grief, and he'd been standing three feet from it every morning without knowing, because he'd already closed the case. That's what judgment does. It closes the case before you've heard any of the evidence.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a snap verdict about a stranger is almost always missing the biggest part of the storyWhat Romans 14:4 says about who has the right to judge another personA simple move for the moment you catch yourself judging someoneThe people you're tempted to judge belong to God, not to you, and every one of them is dealing with something you can't see. Hand the gavel back.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/299Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some of the things that worry us most are the ones we have the least power over. You can't control what your adult child decides to do. You can't guarantee your health will hold up tomorrow. The economy, or what other people think of you, some of it you can nudge and a lot of it you simply can't touch. Part of why we grip these things is that worrying feels like doing something. If I'm anxious about it, at least I'm taking it seriously. But worry only wears the costume of responsibility. It changes nothing on the outside and drains you on the inside.This episode opens with Lim Wan Phing, who graduated in 2008 as the global economy collapsed and spent 2 years finding her first job. Four years in, the company folded, and all 60 employees were out of work at once. What unsettled her most was that none of it had been in her hands. She hadn't made a bad call. The company simply came apart around her.Jesus put a plain question to people who worry. Matthew 6:27 says, "Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?" The answer is obvious. Worrying has never added a minute to anyone's life or fixed one thing they feared. Someone once called worry unpaid rent on tomorrow: you pay today, in sleep and peace, for a day that may never come the way you dread. Jesus wasn't scolding people for caring. He was pointing them toward a better place to put what they couldn't fix, telling them again and again to hand it to their Father, who already knows what they need.Here is a practice that helps. Sort your worry into two piles. One pile is what you can do something about, so go do it: take the step, make the call. The other pile is everything outside your reach, and that is the pile to hand to God. Peace usually comes on the far side of admitting a thing was never yours to fix.That is how Wan Phing found her way through. She admitted the whole thing was out of her control and looked somewhere steadier than a paycheck, coming back to Psalm 121, where the writer lifts his eyes to the hills because his help comes from the Lord. She was God's child before the company folded, and God's child after. That was the one thing the collapse couldn't touch, and it is the ground worry can't take from you either.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why worry feels like responsibility while it changes nothing and wears you downWhat Matthew 6:27 says about the futility of worrying over what you can't controlA simple way to sort your worries and hand the uncontrollable ones to GodWorry can't add a single moment to your life. Do the part that's yours, and hand the rest to a Father who can hold what you can't.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/298Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some Christians look back on a stretch of their lives and see wasted years. Time sunk into a relationship that damaged you. A career you chased that turned out to be the wrong one. A lot of the time there's no big sin to confess, just the grief of years you can't return and can't redo. That's its own kind of loss, and it deserves to be named. Bart has watched people, good people, add up years of their lives and call them a waste, and he's learned to take that grief seriously, because God does.This episode opens with Addie Zierman, a teenager youth pastors pointed to, stacked WWJD bracelets up her arm and burning to do everything right for God. She and a boy named Chris set out to be the most on-fire Christians in the room. By her early 20s the fire had turned into exhaustion and anger. She married young and unprepared, and she started to come apart.God speaks to that kind of loss from an unlikely place. Joel wrote to farmers who had lost everything to a plague of locusts, insects that came in waves and ate the crops and the seed, years of work gone. Joel 2:25 records God's promise: "I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts." Notice He doesn't pretend the loss away or tell them it wasn't so bad. He calls it what it was, a great destroying army, and then He promises to give the years back.That is the difference between rewinding and redeeming. Rewinding would erase the years, and no one gets to do that. Redeeming takes those years, locusts and all, and puts them to work for good. You can't reach into the past and refill it. God can take the emptiest stretch of your life and grow something out of it that couldn't have grown any other way. The years weren't wasted after all. They were seed for a harvest you couldn't see yet.That's what happened to Addie. Slowly she found her way back to Jesus and to the ordinary, imperfect people of the church. She traded a faith built on looking on fire for one she could live in, and the years she thought she'd thrown away became the work she's known for now, so other people can find their way back too. The wasted years got more than forgiven. They got repurposed.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why some regret is grief over lost time, with no moral failure attachedWhat Joel 2:25 promises about the years the locusts ateThe difference between rewinding your past and letting God redeem itYou can't rewind the years you lost. The God of Joel 2:25 can redeem them, and He is never handed a ruined thing He can't use.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/297Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

There comes a stretch of years when the mirror stops feeling like a friend. Your knees don't work the way they used to. The energy you took for granted at thirty isn't there when you reach for it. You catch a photo of yourself and don't recognize the person looking back, and something in you resents it. Bart knows the feeling. In his mind he still feels like he's in his thirties, until he bends down to tie his shoes, hears himself groan, and remembers his body didn't get the memo.This episode opens with Sharon Betters and Susan Hunt, two longtime Bible teachers who were each asked to speak on growing older. The surprise was who leaned in to listen. Right alongside older women were women in their 20s and 30s, taking notes on how to age well before they had started. In a culture that spends billions trying to look young, these young women wanted to know how to grow old on purpose, so Sharon and Susan went looking for an answer in Scripture.Paul gave the Corinthians the plain truth and a longer view at the same time. 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, "That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day." Paul does not soften the first part. Our bodies are dying. An older rendering says our outer self is wasting away. He is not going to insult you by telling you your knees are fine.But look at the second half. While the body winds down, something else in you is being renewed, every single day. Your spirit, the person God is making, is not aging. It is growing. The renewal and the decline are happening on the same timeline, in the same person, and the part being built up is the part that lasts forever. The wrinkles and the stiff joints are telling you the truth about the outer person. They just cannot see the part of you that is getting newer while the rest gets older.That is what Sharon and Susan found. They wrote "Aging with Grace," ending each chapter with a friend between 70 and 90 telling how she made peace with her changing body. Sharon, whose own body was giving out, put the heart of it in one sentence: "As my body weakens, my God-ordained purpose to glorify God is unchanged." The years take things from the body. They don't get a vote on what God is doing in you.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why resenting your aging body is a common struggle that few people admitWhat 2 Corinthians 4:16 says is being renewed in you even as the body wears downOne thing you can do to feed the inner person on the days the mirror discourages youYour body is wearing out, but the person God is making inside you is being renewed every day, and that is the person who lasts.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

The death of a loved one who never professed faith carries a grief few people know how to talk about. Discover why the secret things belong to God, and how that gives you room to grieve with hope.Losing someone you love turns everything sideways under any circumstances. When the person who died never professed faith in Christ, there's an added layer of grief, and most people don't know how to talk about it. You replay old conversations. You wonder if there was one more thing you could have said. You want to know what happened between them and God at the end, in a moment you weren't in the room for, and you can't. That not-knowing can eat at you for years.This episode opens with Trudy Harris, a hospice nurse who sat with hundreds of people in their final days. One patient was an older man who had spent his life with no use for God and made his opinion of faith clear. Trudy cared for him anyway, and near the end she felt she should tell him plainly that God loved him.Moses gave grieving believers something to hold on to. Deuteronomy 29:29 says the LORD our God has secrets known to no one, but that we are accountable for what He has revealed. There are things God has shown us plainly, including how to be saved and how to come to Christ. And there are things He keeps to Himself. What passed between your loved one and God in their final hours is one of the secret things. You don't have the whole picture. Only God does.That is grounds for hope rather than dread. The God who holds those secrets is more merciful than you can imagine, and more just than you can imagine, both at once. He is not looking for a reason to turn someone away. He knows what happened in that last hour, the thought your father never said aloud, the prayer your friend may have breathed when no one could hear. Who knows but that they understood the gospel and trusted Christ before they died. You can't see it. He can. You can trust Him with what you can't know, because He loved that person even more than you did.That is the kind of hidden thing Trudy witnessed at the bedside, and it is a reminder that God is often at work in a person's final hours in ways their family never sees. This episode also turns the grief outward, toward the people still living who don't yet know Christ, and the chance you still have to tell them.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the death of a loved one whose faith was uncertain carries a grief few people nameWhat Deuteronomy 29:29 says about the secret things that belong to God aloneHow to hand the question you can't answer to God, and let your grief move you toward the livingThe secret things belong to the Lord. You can grieve with hope and leave what you can't know in the hands of a God more merciful than you can imagine.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/295Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

There are stretches of the Christian life when you pray and it feels like nothing is happening. The words come out of your mouth and vanish into the room, with no sense that anyone is on the other end. You start to wonder if you're doing it wrong, or whether God is listening at all. That kind of stretch can make you want to quit praying, because talking to the ceiling starts to feel pointless.This episode opens with Amy Carmichael, who spent 35 years rescuing children in southern India and was almost impossible to keep still. In 1931 she fell into an unlit pit, shattered her leg, and twisted her spine, and she spent the last 20 years of her life confined to bed in constant pain. She did what she had always done. She prayed, asking God for the one thing she wanted most, to be well enough to get back to her children and her work. And she waited for the answer.The psalmist knew that place. Psalm 88:1-2 says, "O LORD, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry." What makes this psalm different from almost every other one is that it never turns the corner. Most psalms that start in the dark climb toward hope by the end. This one doesn't. The writer cries out day and night, and the last line leaves him in the dark with no answer in hand.Now think about that. The people who assembled the Bible could have left this one out, a prayer with no resolution and no lesson tied up in a bow. They kept it. God kept it, so you would know that a prayer like yours, the kind that seems to go nowhere, belongs in Scripture right alongside the ones that got answered. Your unanswered prayer belongs in the faith. It's printed right in the middle of it.Here is the truth Psalm 88 holds open for you. Some prayers don't get answered in the room where they're prayed. You may hear nothing back. And still, God heard every word you said. The silence in the room was never silence in heaven. Amy Carmichael learned it from a bed she never got up from, and out of those years came a line people still repeat: in acceptance lieth peace.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a stretch of unanswered prayer is not a sign you're doing it wrongWhat Psalm 88 reveals by ending in the dark, with no resolution, on purposeHow to keep bringing God the prayer that feels like it's going nowhere, and leave the answer with HimGod hears every prayer you pray, even the ones that seem to vanish. The silence in the room was never silence in heaven.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/294Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

We can all name a moment we wish we could take back. Discover why James compares the tongue to a spark, and how to go repair the damage even long after the words were said.Most of us can name the moment. The sentence you fired off in an email before you cooled down. The remark about somebody that got repeated and spread further than you ever meant it to. You would give a lot to reach back and pull those words out of the air, but you cannot. That is the trouble with words. Once they are out, they keep going without you.This episode opens with a phone call. Tonya answered to hear a voice she had not heard in more than 20 years, a woman named Jen she had sung with in high school chorale. Jen was not calling to catch up. She had been diagnosed with ALS, and she was spending some of the time she had left reaching out to people she had wronged. She went straight to a day in high school when she had said something cruel to Tonya, and she asked to be forgiven, terrified of what she would hear.James understood the power of a word. James 3:5-6 says the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches, and that a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. A word is small and quick, easy to flick out without thinking. But James watched what a spark does to a dry forest and said the tongue is like that. One sentence can burn through a friendship or a reputation, and keep burning long after you have forgotten you struck the match.Here is the part we cannot dodge. Words do damage that words alone cannot fix. You cannot simply say sorry and make the fire never have happened. The forest is still burned. But the story does not have to end there. You can go to the person you hurt, tell them the truth about what you said without excuses, and let the repair begin. It will not erase the fire, but it can start something new growing in the ashes. And you do not go alone. God goes with you into that conversation, because making it right is exactly the kind of thing He gives grace for.Bart knows this one from the pastor's chair. More than once he has said something, from up front or in a meeting, that came out wrong and stung someone, and he has had to go find that person afterward and own it plainly. It is humbling every time, and it is always better than pretending he never said it.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why words can keep doing damage long after you have forgotten you said themWhat James 3:5-6 reveals about the small spark that starts a great fireHow to go repair the harm your words caused, and why God meets you when you doWords can start a fire you cannot put out on your own. You can still go make it right, and God goes with you when you do.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/293Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Over time, a job can quietly become the answer to who you are, until work slows down and you feel invisible. Discover why your work is an assignment from God, and never your name.It happens over time, without you noticing. Your job title becomes the answer to the question of who you are. Somebody asks about you, and you lead with what you do for a living. You measure your weeks by what you produced. And when work slows down, when the projects dry up or the phone stops ringing, you feel invisible, like you have stopped counting. Bart knows the pull. After years in law enforcement, retiring cost him a piece of his identity, because the badge had become part of how he understood who he was.This episode opens with Anne Beiler, who grew up Amish in Lancaster County and married expecting to spend her life as a farm wife. To help fund her husband's dream of a free counseling center, she took a weekend job at a pretzel stand. The pretzels caught on, the stands spread into malls and then around the world, and more than 1,000 locations ended up bearing her name, Auntie Anne's. She had built something huge with her own name on it.Jesus put a pointed question to anyone tempted to build their whole self on what they achieve. Matthew 16:26 says, "And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?" He is naming a trade. You can pour everything into building and climbing, win the whole world doing it, and still lose the one thing that was you, your soul, the part of you that has nothing to do with your output.The trade sneaks up on hardworking people. You do not decide one day to make your job your identity. It welds itself on slowly, one late night and one proud introduction at a time, until you cannot tell where the work ends and you begin. Work itself is a gift from God, meant to be done well. The trouble starts when the work becomes the thing that tells you whether you matter.There is a better way to hold your work, and Anne Beiler found it. Years earlier she had sensed God tell her plainly that His plan for her, right then, was to make pretzels. That was an assignment for a stretch of her life, and it was never meant to tell her who she was. So in 2005, at the top, she sold the company and walked away, because the One who gave her the work had never been the work. Your job is what you have been given to do for now. It is not the sum of who you are.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:How a job quietly welds itself to your identity without you deciding to let itWhat Matthew 16:26 reveals about the trade you make when your value rides on your workA practical way to loosen the weld and hold your work with an open handYou are more than what you produce. You always were.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/292Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some people find it far easier to help than to be helped. Discover why Peter refused to let Jesus wash his feet, and why learning to receive may be exactly what God is asking of you.You will drop everything when a friend is in trouble. You will bring a meal and take the late phone call. But turn it around, and you go stiff. When you are the one in trouble, you wave people off. I'm fine. I've got it. You would let a friend do for you a fraction of what you would gladly do for them.This episode opens with Avery Rogers, a self-reliant woman who got to college, wanted friends, and made a plan: she would be the helper. She carried people's luggage and brought them food and never asked for a thing back, and she called it generosity. Then a friend told her the truth. A friendship that only runs one way is not a true friendship, no matter which way it is running.Peter had the same instinct, and it collided with Jesus on the last night. When Jesus knelt to wash the disciples' feet, Peter refused. In John 13:6-9 he protests, "you will never ever wash my feet!" and Jesus answers, "Unless I wash you, you won't belong to me." Peter's refusal looked like reverence, but it came from a man who wanted to relate to Jesus on his own terms, as a giver, never as a needy person on the receiving end. Jesus told him that road leads nowhere. The whole faith begins by receiving something you could never earn or repay. If you cannot take grace with empty hands, you cannot have it at all.Here is the turn. Sometimes God is trying to give you something, and your reflex to serve is what blocks it. It might come through a friend who wants to help or a church that wants to bring you meals. When you wave them off, you may be waving off God. Receiving is its own kind of humility. It admits you are not the strong one in every room, and for some of us that admission is what God is after right now.There is one more surprise in Avery's story. Learning to receive made her more generous. Once she quit keeping score, she started seeing the people around her and everything they could do together that she had been trying to do alone.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why some people can give endlessly but cannot let anyone give back to themWhat Peter's refusal at the foot washing reveals about receiving from GodOne step this week to let someone help you, and why it makes you more generous, not lessYou do not have to do it all alone. You were never supposed to.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/291Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Home is supposed to be a place of rest, but for some it feels like a second shift. Discover how a two-minute practice on the drive home can change what happens when you walk in.Some people leave work and feel something tighten in their chest at the thought of pulling into the driveway. Maybe a child is struggling and every evening turns into a battle. Maybe things with a spouse are strained, and the air in the house goes tense the second they walk in. Home is supposed to be the place you finally rest. Some nights it feels like clocking in for a second shift.Part of the trouble is that the day does not stay at work. Whatever wound you up rides home with you and walks in the door on your face and in your voice, before you have said a word. You may not even notice it, but the people waiting for you feel it right away. In this episode, Bart tells his own version. After years in law enforcement, he would pull into the driveway still running at the same high alert the shift demanded, and walk into a house that had been peaceful until he opened the door. His wife, Katharine, deserved better than what he was bringing home.Proverbs 24:3-4 says, "A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense. Through knowledge its rooms are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables." Notice the word built. A home comes together slowly, by wisdom and good sense, which is another way of saying it is shaped by the small choices nobody sees. The tone you bring through the door on a Tuesday night is one of those choices, and the rooms of a home fill over years with the warmth those choices create.Here is the part that is easy to miss. You are one of the things that decides what home feels like. You cannot control what kind of day the people inside have had. You can control which version of you walks through the door. That is where Bart's one practice comes in, a small thing he started doing on the drive home that left most of the day out on the road before he ever pulled in.This episode is an invitation to stop treating home as something that happens to you when you arrive, and to see the drive home as the place you get ready to build it.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the stress of your day follows you through the front door whether you mean it to or notWhat Proverbs 24:3-4 reveals about the slow, invisible work of building a homeA two-minute practice for the drive home that changes who walks in the doorYou cannot control what is waiting on the other side of the door. You can decide who walks in.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/290Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Most adult Christians spend their time with people in the same life stage, and miss the wisdom of believers who have walked with God far longer. Discover what older Christians offer, and how to find one.Most of us spend our time with people in our own stage of life. Parents of young kids know other parents of young kids, and those friendships matter. But when your whole circle is people the same age and mileage as you, something gets left out. Nobody in that circle has been where you are going yet. You are all reading the same map for the first time. What you miss is a believer who has walked with God far longer, someone who can tell you He keeps His word because they have watched Him do it for decades.This episode opens with Barbara Rainey, who came to faith in college during the Jesus Movement and once heard a speaker she had never known before, Elisabeth Elliot, the missionary widow whose husband had been killed in Ecuador. Barbara wanted the kind of faith that woman had, one with some steel in it. Then Barbara married, the babies came, and her world got small fast. While her husband traveled and spoke, she was home changing diapers, and she started wondering whether her faith counted for anything now that nobody was watching her live it.Paul told a young pastor named Titus to knit the generations together in the church. Titus 2:1-5 describes older women training younger women and older men modeling self-control and sound faith for those coming behind, so the generations are mixed in together, learning from one another. Look at what the older ones bring: sound faith and patience. Patience is the kind of thing you only earn by living long enough to watch God keep His word again and again. That is the gift an older believer hands you. They have already seen God do the thing you are scared He will not do.So if you do not have someone like that right now, ask God for one, and then go looking. Find the person a couple of decades ahead of you and get near them. And if you are the older one, your ordinary presence in a younger believer's life means more than you think. The woman who mentored Barbara for years, through a simple folded newsletter that arrived in her mailbox, never once met her in person. An older believer's witness reaches further than you would guess, even at a distance.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a circle made up only of peers leaves a gift out of your spiritual lifeWhat Titus 2:1-5 says older believers offer the younger ones coming behind themA practical step for finding an older Christian to learn from, or becoming one for someone elseGo find a believer who has walked with God longer than you have, or go be one for somebody who needs it.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/289Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

A lot of Christians keep praying and attending while quietly keeping God away from what matters. Discover why God's first question in the garden was "Where are you," and how answering it is the way back.A lot of Christians go through stretches of avoiding God without ever calling it that. You are still praying and still in your seat on Sunday, and God is still being kept away from the part of your life that matters right now. Maybe there is something you have been doing that you would rather not hear from Him about, so you keep the conversation shallow. Maybe you are let down by something He allowed, and you have been keeping your distance without admitting that is what you are doing. This comes up often in a pastor's office. People say they have not missed a Sunday in months, and then admit they have not told God anything that mattered in just as long.This episode opens with Ray LaBatte, who was 15 the night he stood on a bridge in Lomira, Wisconsin, and told God he was finished with Him. His father was an alcoholic who had been through 9 rehabs, and the family had come apart. After a woman in a grocery store line said the town would be ruined if they kept letting families like his move in, Ray walked out to the bridge on Church Street and asked the only question he had left: "If you're really God, why did this happen?" Nothing came back. He walked away from God and stayed angry for the next 15 years.This pattern is old. It is the first thing that went wrong between people and God, and it happened in a garden. Genesis 3:8-10 describes Adam and his wife hearing the LORD God walking in the garden and hiding among the trees, and then God calling out, "Where are you?" Adam answered that he heard God walking, so he hid, because he was afraid.Notice what God asked first. He already knew the answer; the question was for Adam's sake, a way to get him talking. And notice who moved. Adam hid, and God walked into that garden and called for him anyway. The hiding is ours. The searching is His.God still asks that question. It surfaces during a worship song you were not planning to feel, or when someone prays for you and it gets past your guard. The way back is to answer Him plainly: here I am, God, and here is what I have been hiding. You do not have to fix anything first. Adam answered from behind a tree with nothing to offer but the truth about where he was, and God took it from there.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:How believers hide from God while keeping every outward habit intactWhat God's first question in Genesis 3 reveals about how He treats people who are avoiding HimA simple way to answer that question today, even if it has been a long timeThe hiding is ours and the searching is His. The way back starts with four words: here I am, God.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/288Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Every long-term Christian hits stretches where opening the Bible feels like a chore. Discover why God's Word often unfolds hours after you read it, and why the flat mornings are never wasted.Every long-term Christian has stretches when opening the Bible feels like a chore. You sit down and read a chapter, the words look dull on the page, and 5 minutes after you close it you could not tell anyone what you read. Then the thought creeps in that something must be broken in you, because other people come away lit up and you came away with nothing. What you felt while reading is a poor gauge of what God put in you.This episode opens with Howard Rutledge, who spent his boyhood sitting through church in Tulsa and let the verses and old hymns wash right past him. In November 1965 his plane exploded over North Vietnam, and he was thrown into the prison the POWs called the Hanoi Hilton, where he stayed for almost 7 years, 5 of them alone. There was no Bible in that cell and no one to teach him. All he had was whatever was already in his head, so he started digging, rebuilding hymns line by line from Sunday school memory and keeping a running count.The psalmist points to why that mattered. Psalm 119:130 says, "The teaching of your word gives light, so even the simple can understand." An older rendering of the same verse puts it this way: the unfolding of your words gives light. Unfolding is a slow word. It is what a flower does over the course of a morning, and what an old letter does when someone finally opens it after years in a drawer. Nothing about unfolding is instant.So God's Word does not always reach you the moment your eyes cross it. You read a paragraph at 6 in the morning and feel nothing. Then at 2 that afternoon someone says something that cuts you, and a line from that paragraph comes back and meets you right there. Only then do you realize you were reading for a reason. The light showed up hours after the reading did.That is why the flat mornings still count. Every time you open your Bible, you are putting something within reach for a day you cannot see yet. Rutledge was handed his words in a Sunday school room decades before anyone locked a door on him. His one regret in that cell was that he had not hidden more of God's Word while he had the chance.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a flat, forgettable reading session is not evidence that something is broken in youWhat Psalm 119:130 reveals about the slow way God's Word unfolds and gives lightA practical way to read today for a day that has not arrived yet, and what to watch for laterYou are reading now for a day that has not come yet. Keep opening it on the mornings when nothing seems to happen.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/287Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Something knocked you down, and you have been off balance ever since. Discover why confidence built on your track record cracks, and how God rebuilds it on ground that can hold you.There was a stretch of years when you knew who you were and what you were doing. You were good at the job, or the role you had grown into. Then something happened. The job you were sure about ended, or the thing you were certain you could handle turned out to be beyond you. You have been off balance ever since, second-guessing decisions you used to make in your sleep.This episode opens with Shonda Whitworth, a woman who was good with money. She kept a budget and planned ahead, and being the capable one was part of how she saw herself. Then the finances came apart in a way no spreadsheet could fix, and one day this careful, capable woman was sitting in front of a bankruptcy attorney. What that does to a person is difficult to explain. It was never only about money. It was about the story she had told herself concerning who she was. Everything she had been standing on, the competence and the record of doing it right, was gone out from under her. The question on the table that day was simple and brutal: when the thing you were sure you could do turns out to be the thing that just failed, what do you have left to stand on.Here is the trouble with the confidence most of us build. We build it on our track record, on the evidence that we are capable and have handled things before. That kind of confidence works right up until the day the evidence changes. Then it cracks, because it was resting on us the whole time.Solomon points to a different footing. Proverbs 3:26 says, "for the LORD is your security. He will keep your foot from being caught in a trap." Security is the thing you lean your whole weight on. For years that was your competence. Solomon moves it onto firmer ground: the LORD Himself, who does not change when your circumstances do. Look at the promise attached. He will keep your foot from being caught. Solomon knows you will walk toward traps you never see coming. The promise is that God keeps your footing when you do. That kind of confidence can survive the next thing going wrong, because it does not depend on you being good enough.This episode looks at why competence makes such a fragile foundation, and how confidence gets rebuilt on Someone who holds when everything else gives way.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why confidence built on your track record cracks the moment the evidence changesWhat Proverbs 3:26 means when it calls the LORD your security, and what He promises about your footingA practical way to name what your confidence has been resting on and move your weight onto GodYou do not have to lose everything to learn this. Confidence rooted in God can hold you when your track record cannot.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/286Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Losing a pet is a grief the people around you often minimize. Discover why your loss counts, and how the God who made animals and called them good cares for them and for you.Losing a pet is one of those griefs the people around you tend to minimize. It was just a dog, they say. Just a cat. You learn to keep the grief to yourself, going to work with a hole in your day and saying nothing, because nobody hands out bereavement leave for a cat. But you know what that animal was to you. She was there when the house was empty. She lay next to you through the worst stretch you have been through, and she never once asked you to explain yourself. Losing her was losing something you loved, and grief is the reasonable response to that.This episode opens with Ryan Davis and his K-9 partner, Jethro, a German Shepherd who lived at home with the Davis family in Canton, Ohio, and slept on their pillows. Davis said he spent more hours with that dog than with his own family. One night in January 2016, they answered an alarm at a grocery store, and when a man inside opened fire, Davis turned Jethro loose and the dog went through the door first. Three rounds hit Jethro. Not one officer was scratched. Every bullet that could have struck a person that night struck a dog instead.People will tell you the Bible has nothing to say about a dog. Open it and you find otherwise. God made the animals and called them good, and Psalm 36:6 puts it plainly: "Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths. You care for people and animals alike, O LORD." The God who runs the universe keeps the animals in His care. He made them on purpose, and He notices when a sparrow falls. So when you love one of His creatures and lose it, your grief makes sense. You are grieving something God Himself thought was good enough to make.The same verse that says He cares for animals says He cares for people. That is you. He stays close while you hurt over your dog, the way He is always close to the brokenhearted. He can handle a grief that other people wave off. You can bring Him the whole thing: the empty spot by the door, the leash you cannot throw away yet. He will not tell you it was just a dog.This episode gives you permission to grieve the animal you loved, and points you to the God who made it and cares for you now that it is gone.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why grieving a pet is a reasonable response to losing something you lovedWhat Psalm 36:6 reveals about God's care for the animals He madeHow to grieve your pet before God, and how to comfort someone else whose loss is being dismissedYou do not have to pretend the loss was small. The God who made the animals and called them good cares for them, and He cares for you when you lose one.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/285Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

There are moments when you know what you have to do and you're terrified to do it. Discover how God meets you inside the fear, and why a scared little yes is still courage.There are moments in most lives when you know exactly what you need to do, and you are scared to death of doing it. Send the email. Have the conversation you keep putting off. Fear has a sneaky way of making the ground under your feet feel like it could give way, so that doing anything at all feels like a risk you cannot afford. Staying put starts to look like wisdom, when it is only fear dressed up as good sense.This episode opens with Ronda Paulson, a mom in East Tennessee who sat in a foster-parent training class and learned that children removed from their homes sometimes sleep on the floor of a state office while a worker searches for a bed. She pictured a little girl walking in with everything she owned in a black trash bag, and she started to cry. That is when she heard God ask, "These are my children. What are you going to do?" Her answer was, "I had no idea." She had never started an organization in her life. What she could not shake was a picture of a house, not an office, with a bathtub and a hot meal, so no child ever spent another night on a conference room floor.God knew His people would feel this kind of fear, and He spoke to it again and again. He never left the command hanging in the air. He gave a reason. Isaiah 41:10 says, "Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Don't be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand." Notice what He promises. His presence: I am with you. His strength for the middle of it: I will strengthen you and hold you up when you feel like you are going down. That is a promise for the moment your voice is shaking and your palms are wet. He meets you right there, while your knees are knocking, before anything has gone well.That reframes what courage is. Courage is doing the terrifying thing while you are still terrified, because God is with you in it. The shaking hands do not disqualify you. Ronda did not wait to stop being scared before she booked a luncheon, stood up in front of her whole town, and asked strangers for money she did not have. She did it afraid, and God took it from there.This episode looks at why fear makes obedience feel so risky, and how one scared little yes can become something far bigger than you.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why fear makes staying put look like wisdom, and how to tell the differenceWhat Isaiah 41:10 promises for the middle of a terrifying moment, not just the far side of itOne small first step you can take today, while your knees are still shakingYou do not have to feel brave before you move. You have to move, and trust that the God who said "I am with you" meant it.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/284Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Betrayal changes the way you see people, and forgiving someone is a different thing from trusting them again. Discover how God rebuilds trust by inches when you make Him the refuge under everything else.Betrayal changes the way you see people. A friend talked about you behind your back, or a spouse lied, or someone you counted on walked away right when you needed them. Even years later, long after the wound closed over, you catch yourself flinching at things a healthier version of you would have taken in stride. A friend cancels plans, and part of you decides they were never your friend to begin with. That flinch is a scar, and it forms for a reason: your mind learned that people you love can hurt you, so it keeps everyone at arm's length to keep you safe. The trouble is that arm's length is a lonely place to live.This episode opens with Gary and Mona Shriver. Gary came home and admitted a 3 year affair, and the other woman was Mona's close friend, so she lost two people in one day. Gary was repentant and wanted the marriage, and Mona decided to stay. Then she ran into the part nobody warns you about: forgiving him and trusting him again turned out to be two different things, and she had no idea how to get from one to the other.The psalmist points to where that trust has to be anchored. Psalm 118:8-9 says it is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in people, better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes. This verse gets misread as a call to give up on people and rely on God alone. Read closely, it says something better. Refuge is where you run when everything else gives way, and the psalmist is telling you where to put the full weight of your trust: on God, because He is the one who holds. Then, when a person lets you down, and people will, the letdown does not take you down with it. You were never standing on them in the first place.Once God is holding that weight, you are free to love people again. You can risk a friendship. You can rebuild a marriage. You do it by grace, knowing that even if this person lets you down, you will not fall through the floor. The trust you had before was fragile. The trust God builds in you after has a foundation under it.This episode looks at why the flinch after betrayal is normal, what the psalmist means by taking refuge in the Lord, and how trust comes back the way it came back for Gary and Mona: by inches, on a timeline you do not get to pick.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why forgiving someone and trusting them again are two different things, and why that distinction mattersWhat Psalm 118:8-9 means when it tells you to take refuge in the Lord rather than trust in peopleOne small step you can take today to move back toward people without leaving yourself unprotectedYou can love people again. God does the slow work in you, inch by inch, and He becomes the refuge that holds when everything else gives way.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/283Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Being overlooked stings most when the people passing you over already know your work. Discover what God was doing while David stood forgotten in a field, and how to stay faithful in the work in front of you.Some people spend years being the one who doesn't get picked. You watched a colleague take the promotion you were more qualified for. You watched a friend get invited to something nobody thought to include you in. The sting cuts deepest when the people passing you over already know your work.Christine Darden knew that sting. She came to NASA in 1967 with a master's degree in applied mathematics, hired as one of the "human computers" who ran the calculations the engineers needed. Men who walked in with the same degree went straight into engineering, where they ran their own projects and moved up. Darden stayed at her desk running their numbers, watching people who started after her climb past her. She could have decided that's just how it worked. Instead she walked into a director's office and asked him to his face why men and women with the same credentials were being sent down different roads.David knew that sting, too, and the man who overlooked him was his own father. When the prophet Samuel came to Bethlehem to anoint the next king of Israel, Jesse brought out his sons one at a time. God said no to every one of them. Then, in 1 Samuel 16:11, Samuel had to ask a question that never should have needed asking: are these all the sons you have? There was still the youngest, out in the fields watching the sheep.Jesse didn't forget David. He ranked him. He decided which of his sons belonged in front of a prophet and left one out with the animals. But God was never working off Jesse's list. He knew the address of that field, and the meal in Bethlehem stopped until the boy nobody sent for arrived.There's something else in that field. David was out there doing work nobody claps for, and out there he got good with a sling and fought off a lion and a bear. Everything he learned while he was being ignored is what he used the day Goliath showed up. The overlooked years were training.This episode looks at what to do while you're waiting to be seen: how to keep doing good work when no one is writing your name down, when to ask the question the way Christine Darden asked it, and how to leave the answer with the God who already knows exactly where you are.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why being passed over by the people who know you best stings more than being passed over by strangersWhat 1 Samuel 16:11 reveals about the way God chooses, and why He never picks from the lineup men hand HimHow to stay faithful in unglamorous work, and how to speak up without taking the outcome into your own handsGod does not choose from the list men hand Him. He knew where David was the whole time, and He knows the address of the field you're standing in today.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/282Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Family estrangement is one of the griefs almost nobody talks about, and it usually hardens because each side waits for the other to move first. This episode looks at Jacob crossing the river to face Esau in Genesis 33, and the courage it takes to be the one who reaches out.Family estrangement is a grief almost nobody talks about, and it's more common than most people realize. Maybe it's a sibling you don't speak to anymore. Maybe it's a grown child who stopped returning your calls. The reasons vary, but usually both sides are convinced they're the reasonable one, and each waits for the other to move first. So nobody moves. A distance that began with a single wound becomes a habit of silence that outlasts its own cause, and a relationship that could have healed slowly slips away.Grant Phillips knew that silence. He left his father's strict, cold home the summer he finished high school and put 3,000 miles between them. His drinking and rage nearly wrecked his own family, and in recovery he came to the step about making amends and put his father in a category he labeled "when hell freezes over." After 15 years of little more than stiff phone calls, his sister called with news that something was wrong with their dad. Grant dialed the number, worked through the small talk, and with a shaking hand finally said the thing he had never said: "I love you, Dad." For the first time, he heard his father cry. Later he learned the whole truth, that his mother had been an alcoholic and his father had held the family together the only way he knew how. What Grant had read as coldness had been love he couldn't see yet, and the two of them got 17 more years together.Scripture gives us the same pattern in Genesis 33. Jacob had cheated his brother Esau out of their father's blessing and fled for his life. Twenty years later he had to cross a river and face the brother he had wronged. Notice who moved. Jacob, the one in the wrong, walked toward the brother he had every reason to fear, bowing low the whole way. And Esau, who had every right to a grudge, ran to meet him, threw his arms around his neck, and wept.God tends to move first through the person who chooses courage, and it's usually the one humble enough to go first rather than the one with the stronger case. Taking that step guarantees nothing; some doors stay closed, and this episode won't pretend otherwise. But you will never know what God was ready to do until someone is brave enough to start walking.In this episode, Bart draws on years in law enforcement, tracking down next of kin after a death and hearing again and again, "they have a son, but they haven't spoken in 20 years." That is where estrangement ends when no one crosses the river. The door that has been closed for decades can still open, and it often opens for the one willing to reach out first.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why family estrangement hardens when both sides wait for the other to moveWhat Jacob and Esau's reunion shows about the courage to go firstHow to take a small first step toward a family member you've lostGod often moves first through the person willing to be brave. If there's a river between you and someone you love, you can be the one who crosses it.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/281Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Few things burn like being accused of something you didn't do, and sometimes no defense makes it stick less. This episode looks at Psalm 7 and how to hand a false accusation to God as both your refuge and your judge, the way Andrew Brunson did from a prison cell in Turkey.Being falsely accused burns in a way few things do. When you are guilty of something, at least the guilt gives you somewhere to put the pain. A false accusation is different. You know the truth, and you cannot make anyone else see it. Everything in you wants to fix it, to lay out the proof until the room agrees. Sometimes you can. And sometimes, no matter what you say, the accusation sticks, and you are left holding a truth nobody will receive.Andrew Brunson lived the extreme version. After 23 years pastoring a small church in Turkey, he was arrested in the crackdown after a failed coup and charged with terrorism and espionage, with no evidence and a possible 35-year sentence. He spent two years in an overcrowded cell, lost 50 pounds, and admitted later that he did not handle it well, at times wondering whether God was even there. At a hearing, people he had known stood up and repeated accusations they could not back up. When the judge asked if he had anything to say to them, Andrew said his faith taught him to forgive, so he forgave them. He used his one chance to speak to forgive instead of to fight, and handed the whole thing to God.Psalm 7 shows where that strength comes from. David wrote it while being hunted over a lie that could get him killed, and he does two things. First, he runs to God as his refuge: "I come to you for protection, O Lord my God." Second, he asks God to be his judge, and he means it both ways, even opening himself to God's verdict: "if I have done wrong... then let my enemies capture me." That is a man so willing to let God judge the matter that he will accept the ruling even against himself.That second move is what protects your soul. When you say, God, you be the judge of this, and of me, you stop having to control what everyone thinks, a weight you were never strong enough to hold. The accusation may still stick with people, but your vindication was never theirs to give. It belongs to God.There is a place for defending yourself. If a word of truth can clear things up, say it. But there is a point where defending yourself stops being about the truth and becomes about your pride, and past that point you only feed the fire. In this episode, Bart draws on years of praying with people who were falsely accused, and the wisdom that a defense sometimes helps and often makes things worse. When you cannot clear your name, you can still hand it to God, your refuge and your judge, and even forgive, and that is what keeps the accusation from turning you bitter.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a false accusation cuts deeper than being guilty of somethingWhat Psalm 7 shows about making God both your refuge and your judgeWhen to defend yourself and when defending only feeds the fireWhen you can't clear your name, you can still hand the whole thing to God, your refuge and your judge. Your vindication was never the crowd's to give.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/280Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some of us are our own harshest critic, replaying every mistake and calling ourselves stupid long after God has forgiven us. This episode looks at Psalm 42:5 and how to answer that self-directed anger by preaching hope to your own soul instead of just listening to it.There's a kind of guilt that goes past regret. Regret says, I wish I hadn't done that. Self-directed anger goes further. It's a running commentary in your head about your own stupidity, the version of yourself you can't escape, the one who keeps a record of every failure and reads it back to you at night. It tends to hit high-performers and people who were raised to expect a lot of themselves. You would never speak to a friend the way you speak to yourself, and yet you let that voice run, day after day, as if punishing yourself were the same thing as taking responsibility.Tricia Goyer knew that voice. At 15 she made a decision she could never undo, and for years the regret followed her on a loop. Then she came to know Jesus, prayed, and confessed it, believing with her whole heart that God had forgiven her. She knew the verses. She could have told you His mercy covers every sin. And she still couldn't forgive herself. God's forgiveness was settled, but the voice in her own head hadn't gotten the message, insisting a woman with her past had no business being used by God. What finally freed her was receiving the forgiveness God had already given, and learning to see herself the way He saw her: clean, and already His. She went on to write more than 35 books and to mentor pregnant teenagers and teen moms, the girls she used to be.Psalm 42:5 shows a better move. The psalmist was clearly in a dark place, but instead of just listening to his own spiral, he talked back to it: "Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God!" He asks his own soul a question, then answers it with the truth. He preaches to himself instead of just listening to himself, and that is a skill most of us never learned.You can do the same thing. When the self-anger starts up, you do not have to sit there and take it as though it were telling you the truth about who you are. It is one voice in your head, and you are allowed to answer it. You can say to your own soul: yes, I got that wrong, and no, that does not make me worthless, because God has already covered it. He is not standing over you demanding that you punish yourself for what He has already forgiven.In this episode, Bart is candid about his own perfectionism, the forehead smack and the muttered "stupid," and what it took to stop treating self-punishment as a virtue. God does not want you paying a debt Jesus already paid. He wants you to receive it and get up.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:How self-directed anger differs from regret and why it hits high achieversWhat Psalm 42:5 shows about preaching hope to your own soulWhy punishing yourself for a forgiven sin pays a debt already paidThat angry voice in your head does not get the last word. You can answer it with the truth and turn your soul back toward hope in God.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/279Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Some Sundays the last thing you want to do is walk into church, whether the week wrecked you or you're ashamed of something you did. This episode looks at Psalm 100 and why worship is what you do when you don't feel like it, because God often meets the people who almost stayed home.Most of us have had a Sunday when getting out of bed and going to church was the last thing we wanted to do. Maybe the week wrecked you, and the thought of singing about God's goodness feels impossible. Maybe it's shame, and you can't picture walking into a room full of people who assume you've got it together. So you're tempted to stay home, where it's safe and no one can see you. A lot of us give in, on the mornings we need to be there most.Mark knew that feeling. He had led worship at his church for years before he was arrested on fraud and money laundering charges and sentenced to 16 months in federal prison. The story ran in the papers, so there was no hiding it. When Sunday came, he and his wife Joy could walk into their church and face a room that had read all about it, or stay home where it was safe. They went. They had no idea their pastor planned to preach on money and to say Mark's name from the pulpit. As Mark sat there braced for judgment, his small group got up one by one and came to sit around him and Joy, praying for them through the whole message. What met him was grace, with skin on. Their church held them at the lowest moment of their lives.Psalm 100 reads like a song for people having a great day: "Shout with joy to the Lord... Enter his gates with thanksgiving." But it was a call to worship for a whole community walking into the temple, and not everyone in that crowd was having a good week. Some were grieving. Some had dragged themselves there on empty. The psalm didn't wait for them to feel joyful before it called them to come. It called them to come as they were and let the truth about God work on their feelings once they arrived.That reframes worship. We often treat it as something for when we already feel it, and we stay home when we don't. But worship is mostly what you do when you don't feel like it. You come because God is good and his love lasts forever, no matter what kind of week you had. The feelings tend to follow the obedience; they rarely lead it.In this episode, Bart remembers being on staff at a church where the treasurer, who also served as a deacon, embezzled a large sum and then stood before the whole congregation to confess. The church forgave him and kept him. The biggest step of your week may be the one into the building on the morning you'd give anything to disappear. Take it, because that step is often exactly where God meets people.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the Sundays you dread most are often the ones you need mostWhat Psalm 100 shows about worshiping before the feelings arriveHow a church can become grace with skin on at someone's lowest momentWorship is what you do when you don't feel like it. The person who almost stayed home is often the one God meets most.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/278Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

A lot of us assume God can only use the people who seem to have it all together, so we count ourselves out. This episode looks at 2 Corinthians 4:7 and the jars-of-clay truth that your brokenness may be exactly where God's light gets out.A lot of us keep a scoreboard running in the back of our minds. We measure ourselves against the people who seem to have it all together, the Christians who never seem to falter or struggle. Then there's you, with the anxiety you can't shake or the marriage that almost ended. So you draw a private conclusion: God can use people like that, and a cracked pot like you feels like a different case. You decide you'll be useful once you've cleaned yourself up, and you wait for a day that never quite comes.David Ring knew that feeling. Born with cerebral palsy after being deprived of oxygen at birth, he grew up dragging one leg and speaking with a slur that made him a target, and by 14 he had lost both parents. When he told his pastor he felt called to preach, he was met with a flat no, and eventually with the words that a boy like him had no business in a pulpit. David came back the next Sunday and said he'd choke on every one of those words. He was right. He has preached for more than 50 years, in over 6,000 churches, with the same slurred speech that once drew laughter, and he tells crowds that God has a habit of using the things other people throw away.Paul turns our assumptions on their head. In 2 Corinthians 4:7 he writes, "We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves." The image is a cheap clay pot, the common kind from any ancient kitchen, filled with the light of Christ. And Paul says the plainness of the pot is the point. If God only used impressive people who had no crack to show, their talent could explain the results. When He fills a cracked pot and the light pours out anyway, everyone knows the power came from God.That reframes everything. Your brokenness was never the thing keeping you out of God's plans. In His economy, it's closer to a qualification. The crack you've been ashamed of might be the exact place His light gets out. David Ring's slurred speech became the reason no one could explain his preaching apart from God. You were meant to bring your brokenness and be used anyway, and that was the plan all along.In this episode, Bart remembers a young man he knew in Bible College who also had cerebral palsy and felt called to preach. He was difficult to understand, yet full of passion and humor, and when Bart invited him to speak in chapel, a number of students gave their lives to God. The invitation is simple: stop waiting to have it together, and offer God your cracked pot, because the crack is how the light gets out.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why feeling too broken to be used gets God's design exactly backwardsWhat 2 Corinthians 4:7 means by treasure in fragile clay jarsHow to offer God your weakness instead of waiting to fix it firstGod puts His treasure in cracked pots on purpose, so the glory goes to Him. Bring Him yours, and let His light spill out.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/277Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.