Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

Some losses come with a casserole and a card. Others you carry alone because the world doesn't have a name for them. In this episode, discover what Psalm 34:18 says about which broken hearts God draws close to.Ryan Cole and his wife Kelsi had the nursery ready and the bags packed when they lost their son Whitson at 36 weeks. After he died, the support poured in for Kelsi. Meals arrived and messages filled the mailbox. People sat with her through the worst days. That's what the community of faith does when a mother loses a baby, and the people around them did it well.Nobody called Ryan.He said later that men are the overlooked partners in pregnancy loss. The grief is present, the loss is his, but nobody has built a category for it. The world doesn't have a script for that conversation, so most men carry it in silence. By the time Ryan started talking publicly about what he and Kelsi had been through, they had lost five pregnancies. He co-founded Foreknown Ministries so other fathers wouldn't have to carry what he carried alone.Ryan's story opens an episode about something most of us have experienced but rarely have a name for: the loss that doesn't come with a casserole.Some grief the world knows how to receive. Someone dies after a long illness, the church brings food, the cards arrive. People ask how you're doing for weeks. But there's another category that comes with none of that. The miscarriage early enough that nobody knew you were pregnant. The friendship that ended without explanation and the dream you let go of without telling anyone. The loss is yours, and the world doesn't have a name for it, so you carry it alone.Psalm 34:18 says the LORD is close to the brokenhearted. It leaves the category blank. Your name is already on that list, regardless of whether anyone else knew to bring a casserole.Katharine and I lost a granddaughter at full term. Our daughter and son-in-law named her Hope. I held her lifeless little body, and I wasn't ashamed to cry. That loss didn't fit a neat category either. Grandparents aren't always who people think to call. But the grief was there, and it was ours.Through Ryan's story and Psalm 34:18, this episode stays close to that grief and names it before asking anything of the person carrying it.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why unrecognized grief tends to go underground when there's no one to bring it to, and what it does when it stays thereWhat Psalm 34:18 says about which kind of broken heart God draws close to, and why the category doesn't matterOne specific thing you can do today with the loss you've been carrying without a nameThe size of your loss is not determined by whether the people around you recognized it. God sees it. And He is close.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/237Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

There's a loneliness that comes with being the person everyone leans on. In this episode, discover what God said to Moses when he hit his limit, and why the load He designed for you was never meant to be carried alone.In 2022, 65 percent of American pastors reported regular feelings of loneliness and isolation. That was up from 42 percent in 2015, meaning the share of pastors describing themselves as lonely had grown by more than half in roughly 7 years. Among pastors who felt lonely, 26 percent had experienced thoughts of self-harm. Among pastors who felt connected and supported, that number dropped to nearly zero.Most of those lonely pastors had never told a single person.The people in their pews had no idea. They brought their prayer requests on Sunday morning and leaned on their pastor through the painful things in their own lives, and assumed he was fine because he always seemed fine. He was the one you called. That's just who he was.This episode is for the person who is always the one everyone leans on and nobody ever asks how they're doing. It's also for the person who is leaning on someone and has never thought to ask.Being the person everyone depends on comes with its own kind of loneliness. You're surrounded by people. They trust you and need you. You make the calls and absorb the weight of the decisions. You show up no matter what. And nobody asks.Moses felt every bit of this. In Numbers 11, he had been leading an entire nation through the wilderness and something in him broke. He told God he'd rather die than keep going. God didn't rebuke him for it. He looked at what Moses was carrying and gave him 70 people to share the load. God's response to exhaustion was community, more people to carry it with him.This episode also includes something personal. There have been decisions I had to make in my ministry that I knew wouldn't be popular. There were seasons I was close to handing in my resignation. What kept me going, more than anything, was 2 or 3 other leaders I could call when I needed to talk. Just to say it out loud to someone who understood. Those relationships have been the difference more than once.Through the Barna data and Numbers 11, this episode makes the case that the load God designed for you was never meant to be carried alone. The provision is there. But you have to be willing to ask for it.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the loneliness of being the person everyone depends on is its own kind of isolation, and why it tends to stay hiddenWhat God's response to Moses's exhaustion in Numbers 11 reveals about how He provides for leaders who are carrying too much2 concrete challenges, one for the person everyone leans on, and one for the person doing the leaningThe load God designed for you was never meant to be carried alone. He provides for it. But someone has to ask.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/236Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Most of us carry a picture of what our lives were supposed to look like by now. In this episode, discover why the gap between that picture and your life produces grief worth naming, and why God's plan fits better than the one you drew up.Paul Helsby had been the one who fixed things his whole life. He stepped up at 11 when his father wasn't around and his mother was disabled. He ran the household and made sure his younger siblings were fed, and he kept moving. He built a business in Barnsley, England with his wife Sam, and that same identity followed him through every year of it.Then he had a stroke. The business closed. The debt piled up. They borrowed from their own children and eventually handed back their phones and cars. A food pantry got them through the week.The life Paul had built didn't survive the stroke. But something else came through on the other side.Most of us carry a picture of what our lives were supposed to look like by now. The marriage we expected, the career we planned. And when the life we're living doesn't match that picture, there's grief in the gap. This episode takes that grief seriously before it does anything else.Proverbs 16:1 says we can make our own plans, but the Lord gives the right answer. The word translated "right answer" means the fitting response, the answer that suits the moment. God's plan fits better than the one we drew up, even when it's painful to receive it.This episode also includes something personal. Growing up, I had one plan: join the Navy or the Air Force and fly a fighter jet. I'd been flying with friends, loved every minute of it, and was ready to start lessons when I found out I'm colorblind. That door closed completely. Years later, a church member who was a commercial pilot began teaching me to fly unofficially. By the time we were done, I could do everything but solo. God redirected the dream through a different door than the one I'd planned.Through Paul's story and Proverbs 16:1, this episode makes the case that grieving the life you didn't get to have is necessary before you can fully receive the life you're in. Bypassing the grief buries it. Naming it out loud to God does something that keeping it inside can't.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the gap between the life you planned and the life you're living produces grief, and why naming it matters before moving onWhat Proverbs 16:1 reveals about God's plan and why it fits better than the one you drew up, even when you can't see that yetOne specific prayer you can bring to God today to begin receiving the life you're actually inGod's plan was never going to match the one you drew up for yourself. But His is better.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/235Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Most of us were taught that anger at God is off-limits. In this episode, discover why the Psalms say otherwise, and how bringing your fury to God is an act of faith rather than a failure of it.Micca Campbell was 21 years old and a new mother when her husband was burned in a house fire. More than 80 percent of his body. She sat in the hospital waiting room, and when the doctor walked through the door still in his surgical clothes and knelt beside her chair, she knew before he said a word. Her husband had gone into cardiac arrest on the table.She told God she didn't care if he came home without his arms. She just wanted him home, and she said every word of it out loud.He died anyway.After the funeral, after the people went home, Micca sat alone with her newborn and the anger came. One night she cried out everything she hadn't let herself say: Why did you take him? God, I need to know why.Most of us were taught, at some point, that anger at God is off-limits. So when it comes, we dress it up as confusion or disappointment. We stop praying, because praying feels hypocritical when what we're feeling is fury. This episode is for the person who is there right now.Lament is a biblical category. The Psalms are full of people who brought their fury straight to God and didn't soften it, and God included those prayers in His Word. Psalm 13 is one of them. David tells God He's forgotten him, that he's going to die if God doesn't show up. There's no careful theological framing. There's just a man in pain saying what he feels to the only One who can do anything about it. God heard it, preserved it, and put it in the Bible so every generation of people in pain would know: this is what prayer looks like when it costs you something to say it.My wife Katharine has suffered with an autoimmune disease for years. There have been stretches when the pain was so bad I've stood at her bedside wondering why God wouldn't take it from her. I've prayed those prayers more times than I can count, and the pain didn't go away. I still trust Him. But I know what it feels like to be angry at God and not know where to put it.Lament keeps the door open. The person who is furious with God and still praying is still in the conversation. The person who goes silent has closed the door on the very thing that could help them. David didn't walk away, he screamed into the room. And God was in the room.Through Micca's story and Psalm 13, this episode makes the case that you can keep praying without pretending you're okay. God can handle what you feel. He'd rather have that than nothing.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why lament is a biblical category and what the Psalms tell us about God's willingness to receive anger and grief without pulling awayThe difference between being angry at God and walking away from God, and why that distinction mattersOne specific step you can take today to say the thing you've been afraid to sayMicca never got her husband back. But she said the closest she ever came to God was on the night she stopped pretending she was okay and told him the truth.God can handle everything you've been holding back.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/234Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Most of us aren't confused about whether we're holding a grudge. We know. In this episode, discover what bitterness does to the people carrying it, and why letting go is an act of self-preservation.Thomas Haberbush was a teacher in Saratoga Springs, New York. In the 1970s he received poor job reviews and eventually lost his position. That was roughly 30 years before the police showed up.In 2003, at 72 years old, Thomas pleaded guilty to stalking and criminal mischief. He had spent the previous 2 years targeting 9 former school board members and supervisors, scattering roofing nails across their driveways and spattering paint on their garage doors. The police investigator said: "It's very bizarre to carry around a grudge for nearly 30 years."Nobody sets out to spend 30 years feeding a grudge. Thomas probably told himself he'd move on. He probably thought about those supervisors less as the years passed. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he was still keeping score. And by the time he showed up with roofing nails, the people who had hurt him were retired and had likely moved on. The only one still paying every day was Thomas.Bitterness keeps the wound open. The person who hurt you has already moved on.Most of us aren't confused about whether we're holding a grudge. We know. We've just decided, for now, that we're entitled to it. The wrong happened, the person hasn't changed, and letting go feels like letting them off the hook. This episode takes that feeling seriously. And then it asks what carrying the grudge is doing to you.Hebrews 12:15 uses 2 images worth slowing down for. The first is a root. Bitterness starts underground and grows before you notice it. By the time you do, it's already spreading into places you didn't expect. The second is corruption, a word that means to defile or contaminate. What starts between 2 people doesn't stay there. It comes out at the dinner table and in how you respond to people who remind you of the person who hurt you. It shows up as a distance from God you can't quite explain.The bitterness you're carrying doesn't stay where you put it. It moves.Through Thomas's story and Hebrews 12:15, this episode makes the case that letting go of a grudge is an act of self-preservation. The person who hurt you doesn't lose anything when you forgive them. You gain something back. That root doesn't have to keep growing. You can pull it up today, and you may need to pull it up again tomorrow, and that's how forgiveness tends to work.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why bitterness spreads beyond the original wound and affects people who had nothing to do with what happenedWhat the 2 images in Hebrews 12:15 reveal about how a grudge grows and what it corrupts over timeOne specific prayer you can bring to God today to start releasing what you've been holdingLetting go of a grudge is an act of self-preservation. The person who hurt you has already moved on.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/233Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Purpose doesn't always disappear because of a crisis. Sometimes it just fades when a chapter ends. In this episode, discover what Esther 4:14 says about timing, calling, and what God tends to do at the moment you think you're finished.Sharon Stevens was a hairdresser and a single mother in Louisville, Kentucky. One morning she sat down with her coffee, opened the newspaper, and read about a widower trying to raise 2 daughters alone while they waited for a liver transplant they couldn't afford. She couldn't eat after that. She couldn't sleep. She described it later as a true calling.She had no credentials for what she was about to do. She walked into a stranger's life and spent the next year raising tens of thousands of dollars and lining up corporate jets until an entire city was behind her. On January 17, 1994, in the middle of the worst snowstorm Louisville had seen in decades, hundreds of people showed up with shovels and snow plows to clear a helicopter landing pad by hand so a little girl named Michelle could make it to her transplant.Michelle lived. She graduated from college, got married, and went to work with children in the medical field. Sharon said afterward: "I'm just an ordinary person. If I could do it, anyone can."She didn't set out to find her purpose. She just couldn't put down a newspaper.Most of us who've lost our sense of purpose are looking for something bigger than a newspaper story. We're waiting for the vision, the clear sign, the feeling that used to come when what we were doing felt significant. But Sharon's story and Esther 4:14 point in the same direction: purpose tends to arrive as a pull toward something in front of you. The plan tends to become clear as you move.This episode is for the person who has finished a chapter without the next one starting. The kids moved out and the career leveled off. The project ended. And now you're sitting there wondering what you're supposed to do with yourself. That loss is there, and it doesn't look like grief from the outside. But it is grief.Through Sharon's story and the pointed question of Esther 4:14, this episode makes the case that God has a pattern of giving people their clearest sense of purpose at the exact moment they thought they were finished. Moses was 80 at the burning bush. Anna was 84 and still showing up to pray. God was not done with either of them.He's not done with you either.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why losing your sense of purpose often feels more like boredom than grief, and why that distinction mattersWhat Esther 4:14's "for such a time as this" reveals about how God thinks about timing and callingOne specific question to bring to God today that tends to move purpose from abstract to concretePurpose tends to find you when you're doing the next faithful thing. Searching for the feeling rarely brings it back.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/232Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Telling the truth comes with a price. So we soften it or skip it. In this episode, discover what Ephesians 4:15 asks of us, and what a relationship built on comfortable half-truths actually costs.Kristina had spent her university years in New Zealand building an image she was proud of. She was a dancer and a performer who got high grades. She knew exactly how to look like she had it together, and she would have told you plainly she wasn't someone who needed to be fixed.When a friend named Michelle kept inviting her to a young adults group, she said no for years. She finally showed up one Thursday, more to end the conversation than because she wanted to be there. A girl sat across from her and told her the truth about Jesus.Kristina was furious.Most of us know what it feels like to avoid a conversation we'd rather not have. We soften the truth or skip it altogether. We call it being considerate. Sometimes it is. But sometimes we're just protecting ourselves while the person in front of us goes without what they needed.This episode looks at both sides of that. There's the person who needs the courage to speak. There's also the person on the receiving end who may not want to hear it. Kristina's story sits on both sides of that line. She didn't want to hear what the girl said. And the girl had to say it anyway.Ephesians 4:15 gives us the standard: speak the truth in love. Paul connects it directly to becoming more like Christ. That phrase has 2 parts, and we tend to collapse it into one. Some of us are good at the truth part but skip the love, and what lands is a lecture. Others are good at the love part but soften the truth until it says nothing, and the person walks away unchanged. What Paul is describing is both at once, truth that tells the person you care about them enough to say it.I've hesitated to tell someone the truth more than once. I knew what they needed to hear, and I knew saying it would cost me something, so I let the moment pass. Looking back, that was about my comfort more than their good.Through Kristina's story and Ephesians 4:15, this episode takes a close look at what it costs to be a person who tells the truth, and what it costs everyone when we don't.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why speaking the truth and speaking it in love are 2 separate skills that both require something from youWhat Ephesians 4:15 reveals about the connection between telling the truth and becoming more like ChristOne specific step you can take this week to say something you've been putting offSpeaking the truth in love costs something. But a relationship built on comfortable half-truths doesn't go anywhere worth going.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/231Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

When someone you love is caught in addiction, you're carrying a grief most people around you can't see. In this episode, discover what God says to the ones who keep loving, keep praying, and keep standing at the door.Charles and Janet Morris were the kind of parents who prayed for their kids, and they needed to be. Their oldest son Jeff struggled from early on, and as the years passed his behavior grew more destructive. They prayed for him constantly, did what they could to keep him connected to the church, and watched him move in a direction they couldn't turn him from. In the last few weeks of his life, he had started coming to services on his own.Then came a late summer night in 2003, a phone call, and the news that Jeff had been found dead from a drug overdose.If you love someone caught in addiction, you know something of what Charles and Janet carried. The grief of it doesn't show up on your face the way other losses do. It doesn't look like other losses, and most people around you can't quite see it. You've made promises to yourself that you've broken, and you've swung between pulling close and pulling back. Neither one seems to move things forward.This episode doesn't offer a formula, because Scripture doesn't give us one. What it does give us is a God who knows this grief from the inside.Hosea 11:8-9 is one of the most personal passages in all of Scripture. God is speaking to a people who have kept running from Him, and He describes what that costs Him: His heart is torn. His compassion overflows. He knows what it costs to keep pursuing someone who keeps leaving, and He has not stopped.That's the God who is with you in this.This episode also takes an careful look at the line between love that holds the door open and love that lets the destruction keep going unchecked. Loving someone in addiction means keeping the door open. It also means recognizing that absorbing every consequence of their choices can let the addiction survive longer. That line is different for every family, and most families need outside help to find it. If you're not sure where to turn, Celebrate Recovery exists specifically for people who love someone in addiction.Through Charles and Janet's story and Hosea 11, this episode moves slowly through the grief without rushing to answers, and offers one concrete step for the person who has been carrying this alone.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:What Hosea 11:8-9 reveals about a God who knows the cost of loving someone who keeps runningThe difference between love that keeps the door open and love that enables the destruction to continueOne specific step you can take this week if you've been carrying this by yourselfGod's grace is for the ones caught in addiction. And it's for the ones who keep standing at the door.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/230Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

There are moments when what God seems to be asking feels like more than you can offer. In this episode, discover what it looks like to keep moving toward God when the ask feels like too much, fear and all.Basil Scott was 8 years old when the Japanese army took over his boarding school in Shanghai. His parents weren't with him. He spent the next 3 years in a prisoner of war camp, a child on starvation rations with no way to reach his family. At 10, he contracted meningitis and was paralyzed down one side. The mission doctor who treated him called his survival one of 2 miracle cases in the camp.He made it home after liberation in 1945, came to faith as a young man in England, and began building a life that had nothing to do with Asia.Then in November 1955, he heard Billy Graham preach on sacrifice at Cambridge. And somewhere in that room, Basil felt God asking him a question he didn't want to answer. He described what followed as an overwhelming call back to Asia as a missionary, back to the part of the world that had taken 3 years of his childhood and almost taken his life.He had every reason to say no. He went anyway.Most of us will never face anything like what Basil faced. But a lot of us know what it feels like to be in front of something God is asking that feels like more than we have. The cost is too high and you've been going for a long time, and the question you keep coming back to is whether God knows what He's doing.This episode takes that question seriously. Jeremiah told God he felt deceived. Abraham climbed a mountain without knowing how it would end. Both of them kept moving toward God while carrying everything they were afraid of. Through Basil's story and Jeremiah 20:7-9, this episode looks at what faith under pressure looks like in practice, and what God asks of the person who is running low.I've been in that place. When I was in college studying music, God started nudging me toward pastoral ministry. I'm an introvert. Standing in front of people and speaking isn't how I'm wired. My first response was that God had the wrong person. Forty-five years later, I know He didn't. But at the time, what He was asking felt like more than I had.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why Jeremiah's complaint to God in Jeremiah 20 is one of the most underappreciated pictures of faith in ScriptureWhat Abraham's reasoning in Hebrews 11 reveals about how to keep moving when the circumstances make no senseOne concrete step you can take today if you're carrying something that feels like more than you haveGod rarely shows the full picture before He asks you to take the first step. The picture comes into focus as you walk.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/229Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

It's possible to have all the right answers and still be largely unchanged by them. In this episode, discover what James 2 says about faith that doesn't show up in how you actually live, and what it takes to close the gap.Kyle Wong grew up in a Christian family in Calgary. By every visible measure, he was doing everything right. He attended church every Sunday, knew the Bible stories cold, and lived exactly the way he was supposed to live. And none of it was changing how he spent his week.He described it later as spiritual complacency. Not rebellion. Not doubt. Something more gradual than either of those. He believed the right things and showed up in the right places. But somewhere along the way, his faith had stopped connecting to how he actually lived Monday through Friday.Kyle's story is more common than most people want to admit. And it's exactly what this episode is about.There was a season in Bible college when I began treating my walk with Christ more like an intellectual pursuit than something that was supposed to make a difference in how I made decisions. I was studying the Word every day. I could argue theology. But knowing the right things and being shaped by them were not the same thing for me. There was a gap, and I had gotten comfortable enough with it that I barely noticed it anymore.That gap is what James 2:17-18 addresses directly. James is writing to people who already believe, and his concern goes past their theology to their assumption that belief alone is the point. He calls faith without works dead. The word he uses for works is the Greek ergon, meaning actions, things done. His argument is behavioral: genuine faith changes how you live, and if the behavior hasn't changed, it raises an honest question about what the faith is doing.The pattern James describes is one a lot of believers fall into over time. More knowledge comes in. Attendance becomes more consistent. The language of the church becomes more fluent. And somehow, less changes as a result than did at the beginning. Belief becomes something you know rather than something you live by.Through Kyle's story and the plain challenge of James 2, this episode asks the question that's easy to skip: where is your faith supposed to make a difference this week, and is it?BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why accumulated knowledge and consistent attendance can coexist with a faith that isn't changing anythingWhat James 2:17-18 reveals about the difference between faith as a position you hold and faith as a force that moves youOne practical, specific challenge to help you identify the gap in your own life and take one step toward closing itBelief was always meant to move you somewhere. If it hasn't moved you lately, today is a good day to start.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/228Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

A lot of couples end up here, and most of them are too ashamed to say it out loud. In this episode, discover why the distance in your marriage didn't happen overnight, and what it takes to start closing it.Jerry Dugan was 11 years old when his parents divorced. He spent the rest of his childhood watching his dad fall apart, and he decided right then that his own marriage would look different. Years later, he married Olivia. They both came from divorced homes, and they both meant every word of their vows.A few years in, something started to shift. No blowup, no affair, no dramatic moment anyone could point to. They were just gradually becoming 2 separate people who shared a house, passing each other in the kitchen and dividing up the responsibilities. Making it work. Just not really connecting anymore.Jerry said later that if they had stayed on that road, by year 14 or 15 they probably would have ended up exactly like their parents. Nobody had done anything wrong. The drift just kept going.I've sat across from couples in my office who looked just like that. They'd come in and press themselves into opposite armrests as far from each other as the couch would allow. You could see the distance before a single word was spoken. Most of them were too ashamed to name what they were really feeling.So here it is: you love your spouse, but you don't really like each other anymore. The warmth is gone. The conversation has dried up. The person you share a life with feels like someone you used to know. That's a painful place to be, and it's more common than anyone talks about at church.Malachi 2:15-16 says this twice: guard your heart. The repetition isn't accidental. The heart wanders when it isn't being tended, and guarding it is something you have to do every day, on purpose. Most couples don't end up distant because of one catastrophic decision. A thousand small moments of choosing not to engage did it instead.The distance didn't happen overnight. It won't close overnight either. But it can close. Through Jerry's story and the pointed call of Malachi 2, this episode makes the case that a God-centered marriage doesn't drift into health. You have to choose it, even when you don't feel like it.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the drift in a marriage is rarely caused by one big moment, and what creates the distance over timeWhat Malachi 2:15-16's repeated command to guard your heart means for couples who've stopped choosing each otherOne small, concrete step you can take today to begin closing the gapGod hasn't given up on your marriage. And someone has to go first.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/227Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Many believers carry low-grade guilt every time they say no, even when the request is more than they can give. In this episode, learn what Jesus shows us about setting limits, and how to say no without feeling like you're letting God down.Most of us don't say no easily. The request comes in, the person sounds like they really need you, and turning it down feels like a character flaw. So we say yes one more time, even when our calendar, our family, and our energy are already stretched past the breaking point.Then comes the guilt that follows every no we manage to give. We wonder if we let someone down. We wonder if we let God down. Over time, that low-grade guilt shapes how we live, and we end up carrying responsibilities God never assigned us.In this episode, we follow the story of Deborah, a working mom of four who said yes to leading a church prayer group during the pandemic. What started as a small WhatsApp check-in grew into a community of seventy-seven women expecting nightly devotions, prayer reactions, and twice-weekly Zoom calls. Deborah kept showing up, because that's what you do when it's church and the work is for the Lord. Until one day she finally admitted what she had been afraid to say.Her story sits next to a moment in Mark 1:35-38 that most of us read past without noticing. The whole town of Capernaum had come to Jesus the night before. The next morning, the disciples find Him praying alone and tell Him, "Everyone is looking for you." And Jesus says no. He moves on to the next town while there are still people in Capernaum who hadn't been touched. If anyone could have justified saying yes to every need, it was Him. He still drew a line.That line is the freedom many of us are looking for. Saying no is not a failure of love. It's part of how Jesus stayed faithful to what He was sent to do, and it's part of how you stay faithful to what God has actually called you to.This episode walks through three things you can carry with you the next time a request lands in your lap and the guilt starts to whisper.By the time you finish listening, you'll discover:Why a life with no limits cannot be sustained, and why God never asked you to carry all of it. What Mark 1:35-38 shows us about Jesus setting limits in the middle of legitimate human need. How to recognize the difference between conviction and the false guilt that follows almost every no. Three plain steps to help you say no with kindness and clarity, without spending the rest of the day second-guessing yourself.The cause is real. The need is real. The person asking might really need help. None of that means you're the one God has assigned to meet it. The most faithful word in your vocabulary today might be the one you've been afraid to say.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/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.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/226Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Some regrets don't fade with time. In this episode, discover what God says about the mercy that covered your sin, and why you can start moving forward before the regret is gone.Some regrets don't fade with time. They replay the moment. They rerun the choice. They remind you of who you were at your worst, sometimes years later, and they show up when you least expect them. If that's you, this episode is for you.In this devotional, we follow the story of a young, single mom named Allison. She was scared, alone, and convinced an abortion was her only way out. She went through with it and kept going to church, believing the grace of Jesus applied to everyone except her. She buried the secret for years. Then one day her youngest son was diagnosed with special needs, and the thought that cut through everything else was, "This is my fault. God is finally punishing me for what I did."Allison's story and Isaiah 43:25 frame the main idea of this episode. Regret has a long memory, but the mercy of God does not. Isaiah 43:25 says, "I, yes I alone, will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again." That verse is not a suggestion. It's not a reward you earn by feeling bad for the right amount of time. It's what God has already done.Too many believers have decided that their sin was the one thing God couldn't cover. They keep showing up to church. They keep reading their Bible. But somewhere inside, they've agreed with the lie that the gospel has an asterisk next to their name. Regret becomes the lens they see themselves through, and they wait for a feeling of freedom that never quite arrives.But God doesn't wait for you to feel forgiven before He forgives you. He doesn't wait for the regret to stop replaying before He moves you forward. The same mercy that covered your sin the day you first trusted Christ is the same mercy covering it right now, and it will still be covering it long after your feelings have caught up.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why regret feels like proof that God is still holding something against you, and why that's not how God works.What Isaiah 43:25 reveals about the completeness of God's forgiveness and why He says He does it for His own sake.Two things you can do today to start moving forward even while the regret is still there.Regret has a long memory. God doesn't. You can take the next step in obedience today without waiting for the feelings to change, because the God who already blotted out your sin is the same God calling you forward.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/225Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

The door you prayed for closed. Now what? Paul had a plan to preach in Asia, and God said no twice before redirecting him to Macedonia. This episode walks through what to do when a closed door leaves you wondering about yourself or about God.You prayed for that door, and you built your life around the assumption it was going to open. Then it closed, and you were left standing there trying to figure out what it means about you or about God.That is where Paul finds himself in Acts 16.He has a good, strategic plan. He is going to take the gospel into the Roman province of Asia. Then the Holy Spirit says no. So Paul pivots and tries Bithynia instead. The Spirit of Jesus says no to that one too. Two closed doors in a row from the God who called him into ministry in the first place. Paul and his team end up in Troas, a port city, with no clear next step. That night Paul has a vision of a man from Macedonia pleading with him to come and help. And Paul goes.That redirect led to the gospel entering Europe. It led to Lydia, the first recorded European believer, and to some of the most fruitful chapters of Paul's ministry. None of it was Plan A.In this episode, we follow the story of Elana Duffy, a soldier who had worked her entire adult life to earn a place in an elite Army intelligence unit. A traumatic brain injury ended her career almost overnight. She fought the medical retirement for as long as she could. When she finally stopped fighting the closed door and started paying attention to what was in front of her, she realized there were other veterans stuck in the same kind of limbo. She eventually co-founded Pathfinder, a platform that now helps veterans find resources and connection during their own hardest seasons. The career she fought to keep is gone. The mission she has now is reaching people she never could have reached from inside her old unit.Paul's closed doors were not a failure of his calling. They were the method God used to deliver him to the people He actually wanted him to reach. That is worth understanding before you assume a closed door is punishment.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:How to tell the difference between a closed door that calls for more faith and one that calls for a change of directionWhat Paul's experience in Acts 16 teaches us about God's leading when the map stops workingPractical ways to respond when a door you were counting on slams shutSometimes God's no is not a rejection of you. It may be the way He protects you from a road that would have led somewhere worse, or redirects you toward a room full of people you would have never reached otherwise. The closed door is rarely the end of the story. It is often the start of a better one.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/224Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

We spend a lot of time asking God to show up, and then we miss Him when He does because He showed up smaller than we expected. In this episode, discover how to recognize God's presence in the ordinary moments you've been rushing past.In August of 1999, Joanna Watson was hanging upside down in a wrecked car on a mountain road in the United States, alone in the dark, unable to move, with 2 fractured vertebrae. She was in a country that wasn't hers, on a road she didn't know, with no way to reach anyone.And then the strangers started showing up. One, then another. A doctor arrived. A Christian arrived. Each person appeared in the order she needed them, bringing exactly what that moment required.She didn't call it a coincidence. She called it a God-incidence: provision that looks random until you look more carefully at it.Her story is the anchor for an episode about something most of us do more than we realize. We ask God to show up, and then we miss Him when He does because He showed up in a smaller package than we expected. We're waiting for the burning bush. Meanwhile He's arriving in a conversation that came at exactly the right time, or a passage that finally lands after we've read it a hundred times.The Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6:24-26 has been spoken over God's people since Moses. Protection and grace. Favor and peace. Most of what it asks for is quiet. A sense of being watched over. A peace that doesn't depend on circumstances making sense. These aren't dramatic. They're already in motion. The question is whether we're paying attention.Psalm 34:8 calls it tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. That's an invitation to notice. To slow down enough to receive what's already in front of you. And for most of us, slowing down is the hardest part.I'm almost always up before sunrise, but I rarely stop to look. Yesterday morning, as I was recording this episode, I stepped out onto our front porch and saw one of the most beautiful sunrises I can remember. An explosion of color across the sky. Five minutes, and then it was gone. And I've walked past mornings like that more times than I can count.That's what this episode is really about.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a theology that only recognizes God in dramatic moments causes you to miss most of what He's doingWhat the Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6 reveals about the quiet, ordinary ways God is already present in your daysA simple, concrete practice for training yourself to notice what you've been walking pastGod is already present. We just have to stop long enough to notice.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/223Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

There's a particular weariness that comes from praying for someone you love who remains far from God. In this episode, discover why the silence isn't absence, and what God asks of you when you can't see what He's doing.Calum Mackenzie grew up in Scotland watching his father transform overnight after reading the Gospel of John. His dad had been a violent man who drank and made the house unsafe. Then he encountered Christ, and everything changed. Calum saw it happen with his own eyes.And he wanted nothing to do with it.By the time he left home, he'd decided God could keep his religion to himself. He spent the next 22 years trying everything else, running hard and going nowhere in particular. His family prayed for him the entire time, without a single visible sign that anything was changing.Twenty-two years.There's a particular kind of weariness that comes from praying for the same person for years. You've prayed the same prayer so many times you've lost count. You've watched someone you love make choices that break your heart, and kept loving them anyway. And somewhere in all of it, the question starts to press in: is anyone listening?That weariness is real, and it doesn't get talked about much in church.My wife Katharine and I know something about it. After our oldest son graduated from high school, he strayed from God and began drinking. For a few years, we prayed for him consistently, asking God to do whatever it took to bring him back. There were stretches where nothing looked different. But we kept praying. Eventually, our son repented and returned to God. Today, he's a deacon in our church and a worship leader. I don't tell you that because the ending was quick or easy. I tell you because I want you to know the waiting is hard, and God is still working in it.First Peter 3:1-2 speaks directly to this. Peter is writing to wives with unbelieving husbands, but the principle reaches further. When someone you love refuses to respond, his counsel isn't to push harder or say more. It's to live faithfully and trust God with the outcome. Because your job was never to fix them. What you can do is keep the door open and trust that the same God who pursued you is still pursuing them.Through Calum's story and the steady counsel of 1 Peter 3, this episode takes an honest look at the particular exhaustion of long-term intercession, and what it means to keep praying when you can't see what God is doing.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why God's silence in unanswered prayer is often evidence that He's working somewhere you can't see yetWhat 1 Peter 3:1-2 says about the role of faithful living when words and arguments have stopped workingA practical challenge for releasing the outcome without abandoning the prayerThe silence isn't absence. God is still working. And He honored 22 years of prayer for Calum. He sees the name you've been praying too.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/222Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

There's a version of the Christian life that starts with real fire and gradually cools into something you can barely feel anymore. In this episode, discover what finishing strong actually looks like when the urgency is gone and the pace has slowed.Carol Wright was 69 years old when she decided to run a half marathon. She'd never been a runner. But she started training, and she finished. Then she kept going. By 2014 she'd completed her first full marathon. In 2022 and 2023 she failed to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Most people her age would have called it a good run and moved on.Carol went back to training.In April 2024, she crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon at age 82. She won her age division. She was the oldest finisher in the entire race that year. When someone asked what she'd tell others who feel like giving up, she said: don't stop. She had no dramatic ending in mind. She just kept showing up for the next training run.That's the image this episode builds around. Because finishing strong in the Christian life looks a lot more like Carol's story than most of us expect.There's a version of faith that starts with real fire and gradually cools into something you can barely feel anymore. You still show up. You go through the motions. But somewhere along the way the urgency left, and you can't quite pinpoint when. That's not a rare experience. It's one of the most common ones I hear about as a pastor.Near the end of his life, writing from a prison cell in Rome, Paul told Timothy something worth sitting with. He said he'd fought the good fight, finished the race, and remained faithful. He was about to be executed. He'd been shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned, and abandoned by people he loved. And what he said was: I finished.He didn't say he won every battle or that he always felt the fire. He said he stayed in it. That kind of ending doesn't happen by accident. It happens because someone kept choosing to take the next step, on the days it cost them and the days it didn't.Hebrews 12:1 calls it running with endurance. Endurance is a decision. And the good news is that you don't have to manufacture feelings you don't have. You just have to take the next step.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a faith that feels flat can still be a faith that finishes, and what Paul's words from prison reveal about what finishing well actually looks likeWhat endurance looks like on the days when passion isn't availableOne specific step you can take this week to close the distance between where you are and where you want to beFinishing strong doesn't always look like passion. Sometimes it just looks like the next step.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/221Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

A lot of people stay away from God longer than they need to because they're waiting until they feel worthy enough to return. In this episode, discover why you don't have to get right before you come back. Coming back is how the getting-right starts.Autumn Miles grew up a pastor's daughter. She knew the language of faith from the inside out. But after an abusive marriage and a church that turned her away when she needed help, she ended up alone one night in a level of despair she hadn't known was possible, as far from God as she'd ever been.That night, she picked up a Bible and opened it. She fell to the floor and asked Jesus to come into her heart. She came with nothing resolved. She came in the middle of the wreckage, and that's where God met her.Her story is one I've seen echoed in pastoral conversations more times than I can count. People sit across from me and say, "You don't know what I've done," when I tell them God will accept them just the way they are. Shame convinces a person that their case is the exception. That grace applies to everyone else, but what they've done puts them in a category of their own.That's a lie. And it's a lie that keeps people away from God far longer than they need to stay away.Jesus told a story in Luke 15 about a son who burned through his inheritance and ended up feeding pigs in a foreign country. The plan he rehearsed on the way home wasn't about cleaning himself up first. He came back broke and humiliated, with a speech that amounted to: I've ruined everything, please just let me be a servant.That's when the father ran.He saw his son coming from a long way off, which means he'd been watching the road. He ran to him and embraced him before a single word of apology was spoken. The son was still rehearsing his confession when the father was already calling for a celebration.That picture is the answer to the lie. God is not standing at the door with a checklist, waiting to see if you've cleaned yourself up. He's watching the road. He sees you coming. And He's moving toward you before you've finished the sentence.Through Autumn's story and the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, this episode makes the case that the father restored his son the moment he showed up. The return to God is where the recovery begins.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why shame convinces people their past disqualifies them, and what Jesus' parable says directly to that lieWhat the father's posture in Luke 15 reveals about how God responds when we finally turn toward homeWhy coming back is where the getting-right begins, and what that first step can look like todayYou don't have to get right before you come back. Coming back is where the getting-right starts.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/220Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

When God is transforming you, the old version of yourself stops fitting. In this episode, discover why the disorientation of spiritual growth is normal, and why Romans 12:2 frames transformation as a process worth trusting.Shannon Jacobs had spent most of her life chasing the feeling that she had finally made it. She poured herself into academics and social standing, always wanting to be recognized. And no matter what she accomplished, there was an emptiness underneath all of it that she couldn't outrun.In her second year of college, she trusted Christ. And she had no idea how much was about to change.The change wasn't dramatic. It was gradual. Her priorities reordered. She started seeing people as people, where before she had seen them as competition. The drive to be recognized started to loosen its grip. Her closest friends noticed before she could put it into words.She later wrote that one of the most unexpected things about following Christ was realizing the self she'd spent years building had to give way to something she hadn't chosen for herself. That was disorienting. It was also, she said, the most freeing thing she'd ever experienced.Most of us who've been following Christ for a while have felt some version of this. You're not who you used to be, and the life you've been living doesn't quite fit anymore. Old habits are losing their grip. Some relationships feel strained in ways you can't fully explain. The version of you that's emerging doesn't match the version everyone around you has known.That in-between place is uncomfortable. And it's also exactly where God is working.Romans 12:2 calls this the renewing of your mind. Paul frames it as an ongoing process: let God transform you, present tense, something still happening. The Greek word he uses is metamorphoo, where we get metamorphosis. That's not a quick event. It's a complete restructuring from the inside out, and it takes time.This episode takes an close look at what that process actually feels like, why the disorientation is a sign the work is underway, and what it means to be patient with a transformation that God Himself is doing.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the discomfort of spiritual growth is normal and what it signals about what God is doing in youWhat Romans 12:2 reveals about the ongoing, gradual nature of transformation and why it doesn't feel clean while it's happeningOne practical way to name what God is changing in you and cooperate with the processThe disorientation of becoming someone new isn't something going wrong. It's God doing exactly what He promised.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/219Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

The desire for a life partner is one of the most tender longings a person can carry. In this episode, discover what God is actually doing in the waiting, and why Psalm 84:11 is a promise worth standing on.Irene became a Christian in college and knew from the start what she wanted in a husband: a man with a solid faith. Pastor-level, she called it. She was still single at 27, watching friends marry one by one. Still single at 30, when the panic set in. She told God she was willing to meet Him halfway. Even a child, she said, she could do without. Just a husband. Please.He didn't answer. Not the way she was expecting.So she kept going. She threw herself into church ministry, served wherever she could, and kept bringing her desire for a husband back to God, year after year. For 20 years.At 39, she married a man named Mike. A man she had already met. In high school.Looking back, she wrote that she had gone into the waiting focused on finding the right person. She came out of it understanding what it meant to actually know God. She had shed a pride she hadn't known was there. When Mike finally showed up, she almost pushed him away because he didn't fit the checklist she had built. It took God changing her heart before she could see the man in front of her clearly.This episode takes that longing seriously. No hollow platitudes. No "it'll happen when you stop looking." Just an honest look at what Scripture says about desire, timing, and what God is doing when He hasn't yet answered the prayer you've been praying the longest.I've counseled singles who were carrying this longing with genuine grief. I've also sat across from people years later who married out of impatience and were living with the consequences. Both conversations broke my heart. Forcing God's timing does damage that takes years to undo. This episode is for the person who wants to wait well, and needs something more than a cliché to hold onto.Psalm 84:11 is that something. The LORD will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right. If marriage is a good thing, and it is, then God is either preparing it for you, or preparing you for it, or both.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the desire for a spouse is God-given, and what goes wrong when it quietly becomes a fixationWhat Psalm 84:11 actually promises, and how to stand on it without treating God like a vending machineWhat Irene's 20-year wait produced in her that made her ready for the marriage she almost missedGod is not withholding something good from you. Trust the timing to the One who sees the whole picture.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/218Need 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Most of us worry about the sins we commit. Fewer of us stop to consider the good we never did. In this episode, discover why indifference is not neutral, and what Jesus said about the people who walked past someone bleeding on the road.It was 4 degrees in Buffalo on Christmas Eve when Sha'Kyra Aughtry heard screaming outside her window. She looked out and saw a man stumbling in the snow. His name was Joey White. He was 64, developmentally disabled, and had wandered away from his group home in the middle of one of the worst blizzards in the city's history. His hands were encased in ice.She brought him inside. She called 911. Nobody came. She called the National Guard. They put her on a list.Sha'Kyra later said she had to talk herself into opening the door that night. She wasn't sure it was safe. She didn't know the man. But she opened it anyway. And because she did, he's alive.That decision, the choice to stop rather than pull the curtain and go back to bed, is exactly what Jesus was describing in Luke 10 when he told the story of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten and left half dead on the road. A priest comes along, sees him, and crosses to the other side. A Temple assistant does the same. Then a Samaritan, someone the original audience would have written off entirely, stops, kneels down, and does what it takes to get the man to safety.Jesus didn't hold up the priest and the Temple assistant as villains. They weren't cruel men. They were busy men with reasons to keep moving. And he held them accountable anyway.That's the part most of us don't sit with long enough. Indifference is not neutral. Seeing a need and walking past it is a choice, and James 4:17 names that choice plainly: it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.This episode takes an close look at the sin of omission, the good we never did, the person we never reached, the moment we let pass because it wasn't convenient. It's a more uncomfortable category of sin than most, because it doesn't feel like anything. It just feels like a normal day.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why Jesus treated the inaction of the priest and Temple assistant as a moral failure, not a neutral non-eventWhat James 4:17 says about the sin of knowing what you should do and choosing not to do itOne concrete step you can take this week to stop walking past the person you've been meaning to reachIndifference is a choice. And so is stopping.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/217Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

There are moments when following God means losing something you love. In this episode, discover what it looks like when obedience stops being a concept and becomes a cost, and why God has never failed anyone who said yes.Obedience sounds inspiring on Sunday morning. It sounds clean and simple when it's someone else's story. But there are moments when following God means losing something you love, saying no to something you want, or walking away from something that has been the center of your life. That is where faith stops being a concept and becomes a cost.In this episode, we follow the story of Ramata, a 17-year-old girl in the Ivory Coast who came to faith in Christ after a miraculous healing. Her family was Muslim. Her community was Muslim. When word got out that she had trusted Jesus, her family locked her in the house, took her food and water, and gave her four days to renounce her faith.She wouldn't.What happened next cost her everything she had built her life around, and opened a door she never could have found any other way.Her story runs parallel to one of the most overlooked lines in all of Scripture. Genesis 12:4 says simply: "So Abram departed as the LORD had instructed." Four words that contain one of the most remarkable acts of faith in human history. Abraham was 75 years old. He had deep roots, a known identity, and a life that made sense. God told him to leave all of it for a destination He did not name. No map. No explanation. Just go. And Abraham went.That is still the shape of costly obedience. Not a dramatic moment of courage, but a quiet decision to trust God's character more than your ability to see where you're going. And most of us, if we're telling the truth, stall out right there. We'll follow God as long as the cost stays manageable. When it requires a real loss, that's when the negotiating starts.This episode also includes something personal. I was ten years old when my family first heard that salvation was a free gift because of what Jesus did on the cross. That night changed everything. And it cost us. My grandparents decided we had betrayed them and their religion. The relationship went cold for years. I watched my mom carry that. The obedience came first. The restoration came later, on a timeline none of us controlled.Through Ramata's story, Abraham's departure, and that personal piece of my own family's history, this episode makes the case that God does not ask for sacrifice carelessly. He sees what He's asking you to leave. And He has never called anyone forward and then abandoned them in the going.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why costly obedience requires trusting God's character more than your ability to see the destinationWhat Genesis 12:1-4 reveals about the kind of faith that moves before it has the full pictureThe difference between the yes that costs nothing and the yes that changes everythingThe elder's curse didn't hold. God's call did. And it never has failed anyone who said yes.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/216Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Looking back, most of us can point to a prayer God said no to that we are now grateful He didn't answer. In this episode, discover why God's refusals are not rejections, and how His no is often the most loving thing He does for us.On the morning of September 11, 2001, Genelle Guzman-McMillan went to work in her office on the 64th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. When the building collapsed, she was pinned in the rubble on the 13th floor, alone in the dark, unable to move, with no way of knowing that every coworker she had been descending with was gone.Genelle had not been a woman of faith before that morning. But in the darkness, she began to pray. And then a hand reached through the rubble and took hers. A man's voice told her his name was Paul. He told her to hold on. He told her she was going to make it.She was pulled out twenty-seven hours after the towers fell, the last living person removed from the rubble of the World Trade Center. When she asked about the man named Paul, nobody could find him. Nobody had seen him. Nobody knew who he was.Genelle did not get what she would have prayed for that morning. She would have prayed to never be there. She would have prayed for the building not to fall. None of those prayers were answered the way she wanted. But what she found in the rubble, that hand, that presence, that encounter with a God she had not been looking for, became the turning point of her life.Her story is one of the most striking illustrations of what this episode is really about: that God's refusals are not rejections. They are often the most strategic, most loving, most carefully considered responses He gives us.The Apostle Paul experienced this firsthand. In 2 Corinthians 12, he describes a painful, persistent thorn in his flesh that he begged God three times to remove. God said no. Not because He didn't hear, but because what the thorn was producing in Paul was worth more than the relief Paul was asking for. God's answer was direct: my grace is enough, and my power works best in weakness.Through Genelle's story and Paul's thorn, this episode takes an honest look at the prayers God chose not to answer the way we wanted, and what His refusals can produce in us that His yes never could.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why God's no is often the most loving and purposeful response He can give, and what it is designed to produceWhat 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 reveals about the relationship between unanswered prayer, weakness, and God's powerA practical challenge to help you look back at one prayer God refused, and find His hand in the refusalGod is not careless with your prayers. He sees the full picture when you can only see the corner you're standing in. And sometimes the most loving thing a Father can do is refuse to give His child what the child is convinced they cannot live without.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/215Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Do you feel the quiet pressure to blend in, stay silent, or water down your convictions when belief isn't welcome? In this episode, discover why God has never been impressed by majority opinion, and what it looks like to stand alone.Maybe it's your workplace, where faith is treated as a quirk. Maybe it's your family dinner table, where your beliefs are the subject of gentle mockery. Maybe it's a college campus, a friend group, or a professional setting where Christianity is quietly considered out of place.The pressure in those environments is rarely loud. It's the gradual accumulation of small moments where blending in would be easier than standing firm. And over time, that quiet pressure can wear something down in you if you're not paying attention to it.In this episode, we follow the story of Joe Kennedy, a retired Marine who became a high school football coach in Bremerton, Washington. Before his very first game, he made a private promise to God: after every game, win or lose, he would walk to midfield, take a knee, and offer a brief prayer of thanks. Just fifteen seconds. Just him and God.For seven years, nobody said a word. Then one day in 2015, a visiting administrator noticed. The school district told him to stop. They offered a compromise: he could pray, but only in secret, somewhere no one could see him. Coach Kennedy said no. And the district fired him for kneeling alone on a football field for fifteen seconds.His story is a modern echo of Daniel 3, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood before the most powerful ruler on earth and refused to bow to a gold statue while everyone around them already had. Their answer included one of the most remarkable phrases in all of Scripture: "But even if he doesn't." Their obedience was not conditional on a favorable outcome. They were not making a calculated bet. They were simply refusing to bow, regardless of the cost.That kind of conviction is only possible when your identity is more anchored in who God is than in what the people around you think of you.Through Coach Kennedy's story and the bold stand of Daniel 3:16-18, this episode draws an honest line between choosing your moments wisely and slowly editing your faith out of every conversation where it might cause friction.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the quiet pressure to blend in is more spiritually dangerous than open oppositionWhat the "even if he doesn't" faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego looks like in everyday modern lifeThe difference between discernment and slow compromise, and how to tell which one you've been practicingGod has never been impressed by majority opinion. Some of His greatest work happens through one person willing to stand alone.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/214Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

What do you do when the person who hurt you never apologizes, never acknowledges the harm, or has already passed away? In this episode, discover why forgiveness is not for them. It is for you.Most teaching on forgiveness has a built-in assumption: eventually, the other person comes around. They realize what they did. They say the words you've been waiting to hear. And that's when the healing begins.But what happens when they never come? What happens when the person who hurt you feels no remorse, offers no acknowledgment, and may never even know the damage they caused? What if they've already passed away, and the apology you needed died with them?Forgiveness without an apology feels unjust. It feels like letting someone off the hook they deserve to stay on. And so a lot of people don't do it. They hold on, they wait, and they rehearse the wrong, and they keep the wound fresh. And while they do, something is quietly happening inside them.Stanford researchers wanted to know exactly what. So they studied it. What they found was not strength or self-protection. Every time a person revisited an old wound, their body responded as if the injury was happening all over again. Stress hormones spiked. Blood pressure climbed. The immune system took a hit. And in people who had been rehearsing their grievance for years, the damage had been accumulating the entire time.Dr. Fred Luskin, founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, spent over thirty years studying unforgiveness and its effects. His conclusion was consistent: forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. It does not require their participation, their awareness, or their apology. The key that unlocks the door is already in your hand.That lines up precisely with what Jesus says in Matthew 18:21-22. When Peter asked how many times he should forgive someone who sinned against him, Jesus answered with a number so far beyond counting that the point is unmistakable. Forgiveness is not a limited resource dispensed to people who have earned it. It is a posture. A continual release of debts that others owe you, whether or not they ever acknowledge owing them.Through the Stanford research and the direct teaching of Matthew 18, this episode draws a clear line between forgiveness and reconciliation, explains why bitterness costs far more than most people realize, and makes the case that releasing the debt is not injustice. It is freedom.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:The critical difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, and why only one of them requires the other personWhat Stanford researchers found happens inside the body and mind of someone who refuses to forgiveWhy bitterness is a prison where the wrong person ends up locked inside, and how to find your way outThe apology you have been waiting for is not the key that unlocks the door. You already hold that key.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/213Need 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/Download Forgiveness: A Step-by-Step Plan for Freedom Guidehttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/forgiveConnect 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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Spiritual pride doesn't look like arrogance. It looks like conviction. In this episode, discover how theological knowledge can quietly make you superior rather than compassionate, and what God says about it.He had written more than fifty books on Christian theology. Billy Graham called him one of the greatest spokesmen for evangelicalism the world had ever produced. Time magazine named him one of the hundred most influential people on the planet.And one morning in Argentina, after a long night of travel through heavy rain, John Stott, the most celebrated evangelical theologian of the twentieth century, was found crouched on the floor of their shared quarters, quietly brushing the mud off of a colleague's shoes.Not his own shoes. Someone else's.That image is the whole episode in one picture. And it raises a question worth sitting with: is your knowledge of Scripture making you more compassionate toward other believers, or more impatient with them?Spiritual pride is one of the most difficult sins to detect because it doesn't feel like pride from the inside. It feels like conviction. It sounds like discernment. But when theological knowledge starts producing quiet superiority rather than a deeper desire to serve, something has gone wrong. The most informed person in the room is not automatically the most Christlike one.Paul addresses this directly in 1 Corinthians 8:1-3. Writing to believers in Corinth who were looking down on less mature Christians over a theological dispute, he draws a clear line: knowledge makes us feel important, but it is love that strengthens the church. The person God recognizes is not the one who knows the most. It is the one who loves.James 4:6 goes further: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Not mildly inconvenienced. Actively opposed. Spiritual pride is not just an unpleasant character trait. It is a posture that puts you in direct opposition to what God is doing in your life.Through the story of John Stott and the pointed warning of 1 Corinthians 8, this episode takes an honest look at how spiritual pride develops, what it actually looks like in daily life, and how genuine knowledge of God is supposed to change us.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:How to recognize spiritual pride in yourself, including the subtle, everyday ways it tends to surfaceWhat 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 reveals about the difference between knowledge that builds up and knowledge that puffs upThe one question that serves as a reliable test for whether your theology is producing Christlikeness or superiorityKnowledge and transformation are not the same thing. The goal of knowing Scripture is not to be recognized by others. It is to become more like the One you have been studying.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/212Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Do you minimize your pain and carry things alone because you don't want to be a burden? In this episode, discover why that belief is not just unhelpful, it's wrong, and how letting others in is exactly what God designed.She hadn't eaten a real meal in two days. She was sitting in her car in the church parking lot after the service, watching everyone else laugh and make lunch plans. And she thought: I cannot tell any of these people what is happening in my life right now.Not because they were unkind. Not because they wouldn't care. But because somewhere along the way she had decided that her problems were too heavy to hand to someone else. That asking would be an inconvenience. That needing something from the people around her would be too much.So she smiled, waved, and drove home alone to an empty refrigerator.A lot of us live in that parking lot. We carry things quietly, minimize our pain in conversation, and only reach out when things have gotten so bad we have no other option. We tell ourselves it's strength. But most of the time, it's isolation with better posture.In this episode, we look honestly at the belief that your needs are too much, where it comes from, why it persists, and why Scripture pushes back on it directly. Romans 15:1-2 describes the body of Christ as a community of mutual burden-bearing, where those with capacity in a given season carry for those who don't, and then the season turns. Galatians 6:2 goes further, calling this kind of burden-sharing obedience to the law of Christ. Which means that when you refuse to let anyone in, you are not being noble. You are making it harder for the people around you to do what God has called them to do.We also look at a Stanford research study that tested exactly what happens when people ask for help. Help-seekers consistently predicted they would inconvenience or annoy the people they asked. They were wrong, consistently and significantly wrong. The people who were asked didn't feel burdened. They felt glad, useful, and genuinely satisfied to be able to show up for someone who needed them.The story we tell ourselves, that we are too much, that our needs are an imposition, that asking will drive people away, is not just unhelpful. It is measurably, reliably wrong.Your needs are not an imposition on the body of Christ. They are an invitation for it to be exactly what God designed it to be.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why carrying things alone is not strength, and what it is actually costing you and the people around youHow Romans 15:1-2 and Galatians 6:2 reframe asking for help as participation in God's design, not weaknessWhat Stanford researchers found when they studied the gap between what we fear will happen when we ask for help and what actually doesYou were not designed to fall alone. And the people around you may be waiting for you to give them the chance to show up.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/211Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Most believers don't walk away from God in one dramatic moment. They drift. In this episode, discover how the slow, silent drift happens, and how to find your way back one small step at a time.Most people who have drifted from God can't tell you exactly when it happened. There was no single decision, no dramatic moment of walking away. Things just got busy. Life got loud. A skipped quiet time became a week, then a month. Church became occasional. Prayer shrank down to emergencies only. And one day, without any clear turning point to point to, God felt far away.That is one of the most common experiences in the Christian life, and Hebrews 2:1 names it with a single, precise word: drift.In this episode, we follow the story of Dan Ho, a 63-year-old man who swam at Cedar Beach on Long Island every single morning. He knew those waters. He was comfortable there. On an ordinary Tuesday in July 2023, he waded in and started his usual swim. He felt nothing unusual. No sudden pull. No moment of alarm. The water felt exactly like it always did.Then he looked up. And the shore was gone.A rip current had taken him, gradually and silently, without a single moment he could identify as the one where things went wrong. He was now alone in the open Atlantic Ocean, two and a half miles from where he had entered the water, with no idea how far out he actually was.That image captures exactly what Hebrews 2:1 is warning us about. The drift that pulls a believer away from God rarely announces itself. It doesn't feel like rebellion. It feels like ordinary life moving at its ordinary pace. The danger is precisely that it feels like nothing at all, until the day you look up and the shore isn't where it used to be.Through Dan's story and the sober warning of Hebrews 2:1, this episode takes an honest look at how the drift happens, what it costs, and what the return actually looks like. Because here is the good news: you come back the same way you left. One small step at a time. And God's posture toward the person who has drifted is not disappointment or distance. It is the posture of the father in Luke 15, scanning the horizon, already running toward you before you finish your rehearsed speech.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:How the slow, silent drift away from God happens, and why it is so difficult to detect while it's happeningWhat Hebrews 2:1 reveals about the specific kind of danger that faces committed, believing ChristiansA simple, honest self-audit to help you identify where you actually are, and one practical step to start closing the distanceThe drift is slow and silent. But so is the return. And God has been watching for you the whole time.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/210Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Staying strong and holding it together isn't always what faith looks like. In this episode, discover why God doesn't look away from your tears, and why crying out to Him is one of the most honest acts of trust you can offer.There is an unspoken rule in a lot of Christian circles. Strong faith means staying composed. Smiling through the hard stuff. Saying "I'm blessed" when someone asks how you're doing, even when you are barely holding it together.But that is not biblical faith. That is performance. And it is costing a lot of people the very comfort God is trying to give them.When Elizabeth Groves' husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she knew all the things a person of faith is supposed to do. Stay strong. Be an example to the kids. Hold it all up so nobody else crumbles. But she looked at her husband and her children and realized something: if she pretended she was fine, she would be lying to everyone in the house, including God.So she made a decision. Right at the beginning of the hardest season of their lives, she gathered her family and established one simple house rule: in this home, it is always okay to cry.That decision, grounded in what Scripture actually says about grief and tears, changed everything for her family.Psalm 56:8 is one of the most tender verses in the Bible. It tells us that God keeps track of every sorrow, collects every tear in a bottle, and records each one in His book. That is not the picture of a God waiting for you to compose yourself before He shows up. That is a God paying close, careful attention to every moment of pain you have ever carried.The Psalms are full of honest, unfiltered grief. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. In the garden before His death, Hebrews 5:7 tells us He offered up loud cries and tears. If the Son of God grieved openly and loudly, then composure was never the standard.Grief is not the opposite of faith. In a broken world, grief is often what faith looks like. And the tears we suppress don't disappear. They go underground, hardening into bitterness, numbness, and a quiet distance from God that is difficult to explain.Through Elizabeth's story and the tender promise of Psalm 56:8, this episode makes the case that bringing God your honest pain, tears and all, is not a sign of weak faith. It is one of the deepest acts of trust you can offer Him.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why performing composure in grief is costing you the comfort God is already trying to giveWhat Psalm 56:8 reveals about how personally and carefully God attends to your painWhy suppressed grief doesn't disappear, and what it costs you spiritually when it goes undergroundYou do not have to be fine. You just have to be honest.God is already in the room, already collecting every tear, already recording every sorrow. Bring Him the real thing.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/209Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Major life transitions can leave you feeling unmoored and alone. In this episode, discover how God's unchanging presence becomes the anchor you need when everything around you looks completely different.Moving to a new city. Starting over after a job loss. Graduating into a future that feels more uncertain than exciting. Retiring and losing the identity that came with your career. Getting married, or watching a marriage end.Major life transitions share a common thread. Everything familiar disappears at once. Your routines are gone. Your support system is somewhere else. And the life you're trying to build still feels more like a construction zone than a home. The loneliness that comes with that kind of upheaval is real, and it is harder to explain than most people expect.In this episode, we follow the story of Sarah, a military spouse who packed up her family and moved eight times in eleven years. Eight times she left behind friends, routines, churches, and every comfortable thing she had built. The most recent move landed her in rural Illinois, alone in a room full of moms who all knew each other, sitting in what she called a crappy corner chair with a crappy cup of coffee, too proud to admit how desperately she wanted someone to just notice she was there.She had spent eleven years telling herself she was strong. But that afternoon, she wasn't so sure anymore.What Sarah discovered on the other side of that moment is the same thing Joshua 1:9 has been telling God's people for thousands of years. God's presence is not tied to a zip code, a familiar church, or a community that knows your whole story. He goes with you. He arrives before you. He is already in the new city, the new office, the new neighborhood, waiting to be found there.Through Sarah's story and the steady promise of Joshua 1:9, this episode offers a honest, practical look at how to anchor yourself spiritually when a major life transition has pulled everything familiar out from under you.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why God's presence is the one constant that doesn't change when everything else doesHow to establish spiritual anchors early in a transition season, before life feels settled enough to deserve themWhy grieving what you left is not a lack of faith, and how honesty with God accelerates healingYou may be sitting in your own version of that observation room right now. New place. No one who knows your story. No idea how to build a life here yet.The God who knew your name before you arrived already knows the address.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/208Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Major moral failures rarely happen overnight. In this episode, discover how small, seemingly harmless compromises quietly pull us off course, and how to recognize the bait before it hooks you.Most of us didn't arrive at our worst moments in one big leap. We got there one small step at a time.The affair didn't start with an affair. The debt didn't start with financial ruin. The addiction didn't start with rock bottom. They all started somewhere small, somewhere manageable, somewhere that felt entirely under control. That's not an accident. That's how temptation is designed to work.In this episode, we follow the story of Rob, who was 18 years old when a friend pulled out a phone during an Eagles game and showed the group a sports betting app. Just a few dollars. Just a way to make the game more interesting. His friends tried it, had fun, and moved on. Rob couldn't move on. Six years later, he was standing in a casino bathroom at midnight with three maxed-out credit cards in his pocket, staring at his own reflection.He said this about the beginning, and it's worth sitting with: "It was genuinely really fun at first."That's always how it starts. Temptation doesn't arrive wearing a warning label. It shows up wearing the face of something harmless, something enjoyable, something you're completely in control of. A lingering glance you brush off. A small exaggeration on a report that saves an awkward conversation. A habit that helps you unwind after a hard day. None of these feel catastrophic in the moment. That's exactly the point.James 1:14-15 describes the progression with precision: entice, drag away, give birth, grow, death. That is not a sudden collapse. It is a slow drift. And the drift almost always begins somewhere that barely registers as a warning sign.Through Rob's story and the clear warning of James 1:14-15, this episode takes an honest look at how small compromises quietly accumulate, and what it takes to recognize the pattern before it leads somewhere you never intended to go.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why major moral failures almost always begin with small, seemingly harmless compromisesWhat James 1:14-15 reveals about the deliberate, patient progression of temptationThree practical steps to help you identify the bait early and take the way of escape God has already providedSin is patient. It doesn't need to win today. It just needs you to stay comfortable right where you are. But God is greater than every desire that has been quietly pulling at you, and the best time to deal with a small compromise is right now, while it's still small.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/207Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Forgiveness can happen in a moment, but rebuilding trust takes much longer. In this episode, discover the critical difference between the two and what genuine reconciliation actually requires from both people.Most of us know how to say "I'm sorry." Far fewer of us know what comes next.Whether it's a marriage that absorbed a serious betrayal, a friendship fractured by a broken confidence, or a professional relationship where trust was violated and things have never quite recovered, the road from apology to genuine restored trust is longer and harder than almost anyone expects. And most people quietly give up somewhere in the middle because nobody told them the process was supposed to take this long.In this episode, we follow the story of Jill and Mark Savage, a couple whose marriage was shattered when Mark looked his wife in the eye and confessed an affair he had no intention of ending. Jill had five kids, a ministry, and a marriage in pieces. What she did next, and what the long, painstaking road to restoration taught them both about forgiveness, trust, and grace, is worth paying close attention to.Their story surfaces one of the most important distinctions this episode makes: forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. Forgiveness is a decision, a choice made by grace to release someone from the debt they owe you. Trust is something different entirely. It is built through observed behavior over time, earned back one kept promise, one humble conversation, and one consistent action at a time. Confusing the two causes enormous pain, and keeping them separate is not a lack of faith. It is wisdom.Jill and Mark developed a picture for what the rebuilding process actually looks like. They called it the trust bucket. Betrayal doesn't chip away at trust gradually; it dumps the whole bucket out at once. And you can't refill it with a single apology. It goes back in one drop at a time.That image lines up precisely with what Proverbs 17:9 describes. Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, not glossed over, not rushed past, but genuinely forgiven and then patiently rebuilt through consistent, changed behavior over time.If you are in the middle of that road right now, this episode is for you.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why forgiveness and trust operate on two completely different timelines, and why that distinction mattersHow God models both instant forgiveness and patient, gradual restoration in His relationship with usWhat genuine trust rebuilding requires from both the person who caused the hurt and the person who was hurtThe length of the process is not evidence that something is wrong. It's evidence that something real is being rebuilt. And with God's grace, both forgiveness and restored trust are possible.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/206Need 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/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.

Are you spending more time living in the past than embracing the present? In this episode, discover why Solomon called nostalgia unwise, and how to stop missing the fresh provision God has for the season you are actually in.There's a season most of us return to in our minds more than we probably realize. Maybe it's the years when the kids were small and the house was loud and life felt full in a particular way. Maybe it's a job you loved, a church that felt like home, or a chapter that just seemed to fit better than the one you're in now.Cherishing good memories is not a sin. But there's a real spiritual cost to taking up permanent residence in the past. And Solomon, one of the wisest people who ever lived, didn't mince words about it.In this episode, we go back to 1688, where a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer first coined the word "nostalgia" to describe a medical condition he was observing in soldiers stationed far from home. Irregular heartbeat. Insomnia. Wasting away. He didn't call it sentimentality. He called it a disease.We've softened the word since then. But the danger Solomon identified in Ecclesiastes 7:10 hasn't changed. When longing for the past becomes a way of life, it blinds us to what God is doing right now. And that's a problem, because God doesn't operate primarily in the past. He is the God of the present and the future, and He has fresh provision for the season you are actually in.The Israelites learned this the hard way. Just weeks after watching the Red Sea split in two, they were sitting in their tents weeping, not over hardship, but over the food they missed from Egypt. Cucumbers. Garlic. Leeks. The food of slavery. Meanwhile, God was dropping fresh manna on the ground every single morning. They couldn't gather it because their hands were still reaching backward.That image is worth sitting with. God's provision for today doesn't keep. You can't live off yesterday's manna. And you can't receive what He has for this chapter if you're still measuring everything against a chapter He has already closed.Through the story of the Israelites and the pointed wisdom of Ecclesiastes 7:10, this episode draws a clear line between remembering God's faithfulness and being held captive by a past season. One builds faith. The other quietly erodes it.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why nostalgia has a spiritual cost, and how it blinds you to what God is doing in your current seasonThe critical difference between remembering God's faithfulness and longing for the pastA simple, practical challenge to help you identify the fresh manna God has already placed in front of you todayGod has something for the season you are in right now. Don't miss it by looking backward.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/205Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

That voice in your head that calls you a failure, a fraud, or not enough? It is not God. In this episode, discover the critical difference between conviction and condemnation, and learn how to replace your harshest critic with the truthful, grace-filled voice of the Good Shepherd.If you spoke to your closest friend the way you speak to yourself in your head, how long do you think that friendship would last?For a lot of us, the inner critic is relentless. It replays old failures, attacks our appearance, and turns minor mistakes into permanent verdicts. We assume that harsh voice is just honesty, maybe even conscience. But that condemning voice is not the Holy Spirit, and it is not your Father.In this episode, we follow the story of David, a college soccer player raised in the church who carried one core belief about himself for as long as he could remember: not enough. The voice followed him onto the field, into the locker room, and into his sleep. It took a teammate's brush with cancer, and one unexpected moment alone in prayer, to finally break through the lie he had lived under for decades.Through David's story and the steady anchor of 1 John 3:20, this episode draws a clear line between the accuser's voice and the Shepherd's. One drives you toward shame and isolation. The other calls you by name and leads you toward truth.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:The critical difference between conviction and condemnation, and a simple test to tell them apartWhy the inner critic is not your conscience, and where that voice actually comes fromA practical, Scripture-based approach to replacing the lies you've believed about yourself with what God says is trueGod knows everything about you. Every failure, every regret, every ugly corner you'd rather keep hidden. And He still says: I want you.The critic in your head is lying. And today, we're going to start fighting back.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/204Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Has a pastor or spiritual hero ever let you down so deeply that it shook your faith? In this episode, discover how to keep your trust anchored in the only leader who has never once failed the people who followed Him.Maybe it was a pastor whose secret life came to light. Maybe it was a mentor who betrayed your trust, or a Christian leader whose public reputation turned out to be a carefully built illusion.If you've been there, you know the particular weight of that kind of wound. It doesn't just hurt your feelings. It can make you question your own judgment, your church, and sometimes your faith itself. For a lot of people, it's the moment they quietly stopped going back.In this episode, we look at the story of Christine Sneeringer, a woman who crossed the Atlantic to train under one of the most respected Christian apologists in the world, Ravi Zacharias. She gave a year of her life to sit under his teaching and sharpen her defense of the faith. Then a report surfaced in February 2021, and the man she had trusted turned out to be living a deeply deceptive double life.What she did next is worth paying attention to.Through Christine's story and the steady anchor of Hebrews 12:1-2, this episode makes the case that the failure of a human leader is painful, but it doesn't have to be fatal to your faith. Because your faith was never supposed to rest on them in the first place.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why placing your trust in a spiritual leader, even a gifted one, builds on a foundation that can't hold that weightHow Hebrews 12:1-2 gives you a fixed point to return to when a leader's failure leaves you spiritually disorientedThe practical difference between grieving a betrayal and letting it pull you away from ChristThe people God sends to point us toward Jesus are gifts. But they are not the destination. Jesus is. And He has never failed anyone.Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/203Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Is the constant flood of wars, disasters, and bad news leaving you spiritually hollow before your feet even hit the floor? In this episode, discover how to stay informed without being consumed, and how to place the weight of the world into the hands of a God who is still on the throne.Have you ever reached for your phone first thing in the morning and felt the weight of the world settle on your chest before you even got out of bed?Wars. Shootings. Economic collapse. Natural disasters. Our phones deliver the pain of the entire planet in real time, every single day. And while God calls us to care about the world, the human heart was never designed to carry its full weight every hour of the day. Over time, that constant intake of tragedy doesn't just make you sad, it hollows you out spiritually, replacing peace with a low-grade despair that never fully lifts.In this episode, we explore the story of Jason Woodruff, a Christian man who realized one morning that scrolling through the news had quietly shifted something inside him. It wasn't grief anymore. It wasn't anger. It was despair. So he built something about it, a Christian news organization called The Pour Over, designed to help believers stay informed without being spiritually destroyed by the process. Their tagline says it all: Peace isn't found in the headlines, it's found in Christ.Through his story and the unshakeable promise of Psalm 46:1–2, you'll see that there's a critical difference between caring about the world and carrying the world. Only God can do the second one. And He's inviting you to set that weight down.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why "doomscrolling" is quietly eroding your spiritual health and what it signals about the weight you're carryingHow Psalm 46:1–2 anchors your heart in God's sovereignty when the headlines scream chaosA simple, practical change you can make this week to consume the news without being consumed by itYou don't have to carry the weight of the world today. That job is already taken by a God who is still on the throne.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/202Need 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/Mentioned in the episode:Politically Neutral, Christ-First Newshttps://thepourover.org/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Ever avoided apologizing because admitting you were wrong felt too risky? In this episode, discover the spiritual power of a genuine, defenseless apology, and how four simple words might heal what years of excuses never could.Have you ever hurt someone and found yourself wrapping your apology in an excuse just to protect yourself?"I'm sorry, but if you hadn't…" "I'm sorry, but I was stressed." "I'm sorry, but you need to understand my side." The moment you add "but" to an apology, the person on the other end doesn't hear the sorry; they hear the excuse. Human nature constantly wants to justify itself. When we wound someone, our instinct is to explain, minimize, or shift blame. But a genuine, defenseless apology—one with no caveats, no spin, no self-protection- is one of the most powerful and Christlike things a person can offer.In this episode, we explore the remarkable story of Louie Amundson, whose ten-year-old daughter's school project about bullying resurfaced a memory he hadn't touched in over twenty years. He remembered a boy he and his friends had bullied through the hallways of their Alaska junior high. Instead of brushing it aside, Louie tracked down that boy, now a grown man named ChadMichael, and sent a message with no excuses and no explanations. Just: I was wrong. I'm sorry. You deserved better.Through his story and the healing promise of James 5:16, you'll see that confession and healing are directly connected. Not confession and shame. Not confession and rejection. Confession and healing. Dropping your defenses and owning your mistake might be the most courageous thing you do today, and it might be exactly what someone has been waiting years to hear.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the "but" apology does more damage than no apology at allHow James 5:16 directly connects honest confession to the healing of broken relationshipsThe courage to reach out to one person this week with a genuine, defenseless apologyFour words, "I was wrong," might be the most healing sentence in the human language. And someone in your life may have been waiting years to hear you say them.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/201Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Carrying an unanswered "why" that still haunts you? In this milestone 200th episode, discover how to make peace with the unexplained by leaning into God's proven character when life simply doesn't make sense.Have you ever reached a point where you simply couldn't make sense of what God was allowing in your life?We love neat resolutions. We want formulas that work, prayers that produce the outcomes we expect, and a faith that wraps up every loose end. But life in a fallen world is full of broken reality, sudden illnesses, senseless tragedies, and chapters that defy logic. We want the "Why?" answered. And when it isn't, we feel stuck, confused, and sometimes angry at the God we thought we understood.In this special 200th episode, we explore the story of Laura Story, a worship leader whose life fell apart shortly after her wedding when her husband Martin was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The surgery saved his life, but the damage permanently changed everything. The future she had imagined simply disappeared. And like anyone facing that kind of moment, Laura found herself asking, "God… why?" The answer never came the way she hoped. But what she discovered instead was something she wouldn't trade: a deeper, more anchored trust in the character of God. Out of that season came the beloved song "Blessings," reflecting the hard-won lesson that sometimes the moments that confuse us most are the ones where God is quietly shaping our faith the deepest.Through her story and the challenging wisdom of Proverbs 20:24, you'll see that real faith doesn't require understanding everything along the way. It requires trusting the One who directs your steps, even when those steps make no sense to you.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why demanding an explanation from God before you'll trust Him again keeps you spiritually stuckHow Proverbs 20:24 frees you from the exhausting need to understand everything along the wayA practical way to release one unanswered "why" to God and lean into His proven character insteadYou may never get the explanation you're looking for this side of heaven. But you can make peace with the unexplained by resting in the One whose character has never changed.This is Episode 200! Thank you for being part of this journey. If these devotions have made a difference in your life, I'd love to hear your story. Email me at [email protected] and let me know how God has used this time in your life. Your story matters to me.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/200Need 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/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. Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Do you sing about joy on Sunday but feel hollow on Monday? In this episode, discover why the gap between who you want to be and who you actually are doesn't make you a fraud; it makes you a Christ-follower in progress.Have you ever given someone biblical advice that you yourself were struggling to follow?You lead the Bible study but privately wrestle with doubt. You post the encouraging verse but feel spiritually empty inside. You preach patience to your kids but lose your temper in traffic. And quietly, a voice whispers, "You're a fraud. If people really knew you, they'd never listen to a word you say."That tension between what we believe and how we actually live haunts more believers than you might think. In this episode, we explore the story of writer Emily P. Freeman, who stood in front of a Bible study group week after week looking like she had it all together—while privately wondering if she was the least qualified person in the room. When she finally admitted her struggle out loud, something surprising happened: every woman in the room began admitting the same thing.Through her story and Paul's raw confession in Romans 7:15, you'll see that feeling the gap between who you are and who you want to be isn't hypocrisy—it's proof that the Holy Spirit is alive and pulling you forward. God doesn't require polished performers. He prefers honest, limping strugglers who bring their inconsistencies to Him rather than hiding behind a mask.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the Apostle Paul's honest struggle in Romans 7 is one of the most comforting passages for anyone feeling like a spiritual imposterThe critical difference between a hypocrite who pretends there is no gap and a growing believer who feels the tensionHow confessing your inconsistencies to God and one trusted person can replace shame with freedom and communityThe struggle you feel isn't proof that you're a fraud. It's proof that God is still at work in you—one imperfect step at a time.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/199Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Staring at a door that just slammed shut and wondering what went wrong? In this episode, discover how closed doors in God's economy are rarely punishments; they're often divine redirections toward a path you couldn't see.Have you ever prayed fervently for something and watched the door close right in your face?The job went to someone else. The relationship ended. The plan you carefully built fell apart. A closed door can feel deeply personal, like rejection, like failure, like God Himself is saying you weren't good enough. And in the painful silence that follows, it's easy to spiral into self-doubt, wondering what you did wrong or whether God is even paying attention.In this episode, we explore the story of John Erickson, a writer who dreamed of becoming a serious literary author. Publisher after publisher turned him down. He worked blue-collar jobs just to survive while the dream he had carefully planned kept running into one closed door after another. Eventually, at "rope's end," he borrowed $2,000, started his own tiny publishing company, and began selling stories about a ranch dog named Hank the Cowdog out of the back of his pickup truck at cattle auctions. What began as a last-ditch effort grew into one of the most successful children's book series in the country, selling millions of copies.Through his story and the wisdom of Proverbs 16:9, you'll see that we can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. A closed door is rarely a dead end. It's most often God's way of steering you toward something you couldn't see from where you were standing.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a closed door is most often divine protection or redirection, not punishment or rejectionHow the Apostle Paul's closed doors in Acts 16 led to the gospel entering an entire continentA practical way to bring your closed door to God and ask Him to open your eyes to the redirectThe door that slammed shut may be the very thing that pushes you toward something far greater than the plan you started with.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/198Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Convinced that the good life is always happening somewhere else while yours feels ordinary? In this episode, discover how trusting God's boundaries for your life frees you from the fear of missing out and helps you bloom exactly where He planted you.Have you ever scrolled through your phone and felt a sudden panic that life is passing you by?Everyone else seems to be traveling, getting promoted, getting married, or stepping into exciting new chapters, while your life looks ordinary, stuck, or even small by comparison. That quiet fear convinces you that God is withholding the "good stuff" and that the real life is happening somewhere else. Over time, FOMO doesn't just steal your contentment; it quietly accuses God of not being generous enough with you.In this episode, we explore the story of pastor Jeff Manion, who spent years serving the same church in the same community while watching friends move to bigger cities and chase bigger platforms. He and his wife wrestled with the same question many of us face: are we missing out? But instead of constantly searching for something bigger, they chose to stay planted—and discovered that what once felt ordinary had quietly become something deeply meaningful.Through his story and the beautiful declaration of Psalm 16:5–6, you'll see that the boundaries God has placed around your life, your geography, your calling, your limits, are not punishments. They are expressions of His protection and love. True joy isn't found by chasing someone else's story. It's found by blooming exactly where God planted you.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why FOMO is more than a cultural trend, it's a spiritual issue rooted in doubting God's generosityHow Psalm 16:5–6 reframes your current season as a "pleasant land" and a "wonderful inheritance"A practical way to replace the scroll-and-spiral of comparison with gratitude and trustThe good life isn't always happening somewhere else. God has planted you right where you are for a reason, and that land is pleasant.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/197Need 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/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.

Does success make you forget the God who made it possible? In this episode, discover why abundance is often a greater test of faith than adversity, and how intentional humility keeps your heart anchored to God on the mountaintop.Have you ever noticed that you pray the hardest when life is falling apart, but barely whisper a prayer when everything is going well?We cry out to God in the valleys, during health scares, financial crises, and broken relationships. But when the promotion lands, the bank account is full, and life is comfortable, we quietly coast. Success has a subtle way of inflating our pride and leading us to believe we achieved everything on our own. Over time, we stop leaning on God as heavily, and the dangerous illusion of self-reliance takes root.In this episode, we explore the story of Stanley Tam, an Ohio businessman whose small plastics company grew into a thriving national enterprise. As success increased, he wrestled with a question most successful people quietly face: did I achieve this on my own, or did God entrust it to me? His answer led to a stunning decision that challenged everything the business world values.Through his story and the warning of Deuteronomy 8:17–18, you'll see that the greatest spiritual test often isn't how you handle adversity, it's what comes to the surface when you're enjoying abundance. God doesn't oppose your success. He simply asks you to remember where it came from.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why success can quietly breed spiritual forgetfulness and a dangerous sense of self-relianceHow Deuteronomy 8:17–18 was specifically written to prepare God's people for the test of abundanceA simple daily practice to stay humble and grateful in the good seasons, not just the hard onesThe mountaintop is where we are most likely to forget the God who carried us up the hill. Stay anchored in gratitude, and never let abundance make you forget the One who provided it.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/196Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Do you ever feel like you did everything "right" but God didn't hold up His end of the bargain? In this episode, discover how to break free from a transactional view of faith and learn to praise God for who He is, even in the pain.Have you ever secretly felt cheated by God when life fell apart despite your faithful obedience?Subconsciously, many of us treat God like a cosmic vending machine. We believe that if we read our Bibles, serve at church, tithe, and live right, we can insert our good deeds and receive a pain-free life in return. We assume we have a quiet deal with God: our good behavior in exchange for His protection.But when a devastating diagnosis hits, a relationship fails, or a job is lost, the machine gets stuck. We start keeping a spiritual scorecard, wondering why our obedience wasn't enough to secure a blessing, and resentment begins to take root. In this episode, we explore the heart-wrenching story of Kara Tippetts, a young pastor's wife and mother of four who was diagnosed with terminal cancer despite doing everything "right." Through her profound journey and the staggering reaction of Job in Job 1:21, you'll see why letting go of a transactional faith is the only way to survive life's darkest valleys.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:Why treating God like a vending machine ultimately leads to spiritual exhaustion and bitternessHow Job’s response to losing absolutely everything completely shatters the "good behavior equals good circumstances" mythThe deep, anchoring freedom found in praising God for who He is, rather than just what He givesTrue faith isn't anchored in the comfort of your circumstances; it's anchored in the unchanging character of God.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/195Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Are you struggling to find your footing now that the kids have moved out and the house is quiet? In this episode, discover why the empty nest season isn't the end of your purpose, but the beginning of an exciting new chapter with God.Have you ever stood in your quiet, empty house and wondered, “If I’m not needed in the same way anymore… what comes next?”For a couple of decades, your life revolved around a chaotic schedule of school runs, sports practices, laundry piles, and curfews. Your purpose was clear from the moment your feet hit the floor every morning. But when the last car pulls out of the driveway, and the house suddenly becomes silent, that newfound freedom can feel incredibly heavy. It’s easy to absorb the lie that because your daily parenting role has shifted, your overall purpose in life has expired.The danger of the "empty nest" isn't the quiet house; it's rushing to fill the silence with busyness just to avoid the transition. In this episode, we explore the story of Linda Campanella, a mom who faced the echoing silence of an empty house and slowly realized it didn't mean the end of her story. Through her journey and the timeless wisdom of Ecclesiastes 3:1, you'll see that God didn't design you only to raise children. Parenting was a vital, holy assignment, but God is the author of seasons. You still have gifts, wisdom, and a calling waiting to be unleashed.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:Why grieving the end of your active parenting years is an entirely normal and healthy processHow Ecclesiastes 3:1 reframes the empty nest from a loss into a God-ordained transitionA simple, practical exercise to help you ask God to reveal your next assignmentYour calling doesn't expire when the kids move out; it’s just the dawn of an exciting new season.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/194Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Have you ever been unfairly criticized or falsely accused when your motives were pure? In this episode, discover how to find peace by entrusting your reputation to God instead of fighting to set the record straight.Have you ever had your motives completely misunderstood or faced unjust criticism for doing the right thing?Few things burn quite like being falsely accused when you know your heart was in the right place. Your immediate instinct is to retaliate, defend yourself, and try to make sure everyone knows the real story. But fighting every critic and trying to control your own reputation is an exhausting, impossible battle that will eventually drain your soul.In this episode, we explore the story of NYPD officer Larry DePrimo, whose viral act of kindness toward a homeless man was met with unexpected cynicism and accusations online. Instead of going on the defensive, he simply stepped back. Through his quiet response and the powerful example of Jesus found in 1 Peter 2:23, you will learn how to stop fighting for the crowd's approval and start resting in the hands of the ultimate, righteous Judge.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why our natural instinct to fiercely defend ourselves often steals our peace instead of restoring itHow Jesus responded to the ultimate unjust accusations, and what His silence means for your own lifeA practical way to release the need to set the record straight and trust God to protect your characterYou don't have to answer every accusation when you know the Judge already sees the truth.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/193Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Are you quietly exhausted from trying to get absolutely everything right? In this episode, discover why God isn't looking for flawless performance and how to trade the heavy burden of perfectionism for the absolute freedom of His grace.Have you ever felt completely burned out by the constant pressure to present a flawless version of yourself to the world?Many of us unknowingly bring a "performance review" mindset into our faith. We start to believe that our acceptance is tied to how perfectly we behave, how neatly we organize our lives, or how tirelessly we serve. We think that if we just try a little harder and do a little better, we’ll finally measure up to God's standards and the expectations of others.But attempting to be the savior of your own story is an exhausting treadmill. In this episode, we explore the findings of psychologist Thomas Curran, whose research shows that the modern obsession with perfectionism is leaving us more anxious and depleted than ever. Through his striking conclusions and the piercing truth of Galatians 3:3, you'll see that perfectionism is actually rooted in self-reliance, not faith. The gospel doesn't say, "Fix yourself so God will accept you." It says, "You are already accepted in Christ; now let God heal you."BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:Why the relentless drive to prove you are "good enough" is a trap that never leads to peaceHow Galatians 3:3 challenges the foolishness of trying to perfect our spiritual lives through human effortA practical, in-the-moment response you can use to choose surrender the next time you feel the pressure to be perfectYou are not required to be perfect today; you are simply invited to be dependent on Christ.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/192Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Caught in the “sandwich generation” and feeling exhausted by the demands of caring for an aging parent? In this episode, discover why this emotionally brutal season of role reversal is actually a profoundly sacred act of worship that actively pleases God.Are you trying to hold your own family and career together while simultaneously managing the declining health of your aging parents?For many adults, there comes a jarring season of role reversal where the child must step in to parent the parent. You suddenly find yourself scheduling their medical visits, making hard care decisions, and watching the people who once guided you through life become incredibly vulnerable. The emotional toll of watching a sharp mind fade or a strong body weaken is heartbreaking. Coupled with the sheer physical exhaustion of being the "sandwich generation," it’s easy to feel stretched to the breaking point, guilty that you aren't doing enough for anyone.In this episode, we explore the story of Sandy Sabatka, a working mom who found herself unexpectedly caught between the needs of her growing children and her rapidly declining parents. While the tension was emotionally draining, Sandy later reflected that she wouldn't trade those years. Through her moving story and the clear instruction of 1 Timothy 5:4, you'll see why God views your unseen, exhausting caregiving as an incredibly sacred and holy calling.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:Why the heartache of role reversal is a normal, valid grief that God understands and comfortsHow Jesus’s final moments on the cross elevate the work of caring for our parents to a sacred act of worshipThe encouragement and grace you need to keep showing up on the days you feel completely inadequate as a caregiverThe world may not applaud your quiet sacrifices in doctors' waiting rooms, but God sees every moment. Your care is a beautiful offering that brings Him joy.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/191Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Are you exhausted from endlessly living for people’s approval to keep everyone around you happy? In this episode, discover the absolute freedom of stepping off the people-pleasing treadmill and learning to live entirely for an audience of One.Have you ever found yourself completely exhausted from trying to manage everyone else's opinions of you?Deep down, every believer possesses a holy longing to hear God say, "Well done." The problem is, we often take that deep desire and try to satisfy it with cheap, immediate substitutes. We hustle for social media likes, overwork ourselves for a boss's nod, and compromise what we know is right just to avoid someone's disapproval. But the applause of people is incredibly fickle; today, it’s easy to go from hero to zero faster than you can say, “What happened?”In this episode, we tell the story of the legendary composer Johann Sebastian Bach. He worked under intense pressure to please demanding royals and town councils. His livelihood depended on their favor. Yet, Bach approached his blank manuscripts differently. He began every piece with the letters J.J. ("Jesus, help me") and ended them with S.D.G. ("To the Glory of God Alone"). Bach viewed his daily work as a private offering. He stopped composing for the applause of the German courts and started writing for his ultimate audience: God.Through Bach’s example and the promise of Matthew 25:21, you'll see why the praise you receive from people is fleeting, but the approval of God is eternal.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:Why seeking the approval of people is a treadmill that will eventually drain you dryHow Matthew 25:21 provides the ultimate antidote to our obsession with human applauseA simple, practical daily habit to help you transform your ordinary tasks into an offering for an audience of OneWhen you stop performing for the crowd, everything you do changes, even when no one else is watching.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/190Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Is the desire to stay safe and comfortable keeping you from doing what God has asked you to do? In this episode, discover why following Jesus requires stepping out of the safe harbor and how leaving your comfort zone leads to a deeply fruitful life.Have you ever sensed God calling you to do something, but backed away simply because it felt too risky, awkward, or inconvenient?We live in a culture entirely structured around protecting our ease, and if we aren’t careful, we import that same mindset into our faith. We begin evaluating God's will based on what feels safe, and as a result, we avoid the hard conversations, resist the stretching callings, and quietly settle for spiritual mediocrity. We don't actively rebel against God; we just hit the snooze button on obedience because following through would cost us our comfort. We fall prey to the idol of comfort.In this episode, we explore the inspiring story of Katie Davis, a teenager who had the ultimate comfortable American dream handed to her on a silver platter. She was homecoming queen, class president, and headed to college with a predictable and safe future. Yet, she felt a powerful pull to walk away from it all and move to Uganda to teach kindergarten at an orphanage. Though terrified by the uncertainty, her choice to abandon her comfortable life led to a massive ministry that has reshaped thousands of lives.Through her story and the challenging words of Luke 9:23, we're reminded that while comfort isn't inherently evil, protecting it above all else makes it an idol. Jesus never promised a comfortable life, but He did promise His sustaining presence when we take up our cross.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:Why making your personal comfort your ultimate goal quietly chokes out your spiritual growthWhat it actually means when Jesus tells us to "give up our own way" and "take up our cross"The courage to take one specific, uncomfortable step of obedience this weekThe most fruitful seasons of your life usually begin on the exact other side of a step you're currently afraid to take.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/189Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

Feeling sidelined because of your age, declining health, or retirement? In this episode, discover why you’re never too old to be used by God, and how your later years can actually be your most fruitful.Have you ever started to feel like your best days of being useful to God are quietly slipping behind you?Our culture sends a loud message that value is tied to youth, speed, and earning power. When you retire from your career, experience declining health, or watch a younger generation take the reins, it is so easy to feel sidelined and forgotten. You begin to absorb the lie that your time for productivity is over, leaving you wondering if you still have anything meaningful to contribute.In this episode, we look at the inspiring story of Jim Annis, an 80-year-old man who refuses to spend his retirement in a recliner. Instead, he spends his days covered in sawdust, building hundreds of handmade wooden toys to donate to the Salvation Army every Christmas. Through his beautiful example and the powerful promise of Psalm 92:14, you'll see how God views aging completely differently than the world does. Moses, Caleb, and Anna prove that God doesn’t issue expiration dates on His callings. Your assignment may change, but your purpose remains.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:Why retiring from your career doesn't mean you are retiring from your callingHow Psalm 92:14 promises that you can remain "vital and green," producing fruit even in old ageThe unique and desperately needed gifts that only older believers can bring to the ChurchYou are never too old to be used by God. Instead of disqualifying you, age positions you to offer wisdom forged through decades of walking faithfully with Him.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/188Need 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/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.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our Private Facebook CommunityIf you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group