Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

Somebody gets short with you, and a group goes flat when you walk up. Learn what Romans 14:19 asks of you once you suspect you've been the friction at your own church, and where the pursuit starts.

This one is for the person who has finally noticed. Maybe somebody said something to you kindly, and it stayed with you longer than they meant it to. Maybe you started seeing a pattern in how conversations at church go when you're part of them. Somebody gets short with you. A group goes a little flat when you walk up. And you're starting to wonder whether the difficult person at your church might be you. That's uncomfortable to see, and it's one of the better things that can happen to a person, because nobody changes something he can't see.

This episode opens with Lara d'Entremont, who knew her theology. She had read the books and learned the arguments, and she was sure she had it right. So when her family started attending a church that did things differently, she walked in with her guard up. She scoffed at the way they read certain passages and got annoyed at their worship style, and in the back of her mind was a private verdict about these people. She figured she was there to put up with them until something better came along.

Romans 14:19 speaks to that moment: "So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up." Paul writes it at the close of a chapter about believers divided over food and holy days, and over how they were treating each other about it. Look at the two verbs. Aim for. Try to build. Both take effort, and both point outward at other people. Older translations put it as pursue, and you pursue something by going after it on purpose.

So if God is showing you that you've been the friction, stopping is half of it. The other half is the pursuit, and pursuit in a church building is ordinary work. You let a comment go by without correcting it, and you look for a chance to build somebody up out loud, where it costs you a little something to say it. Then you go find the person you've been short with and tell them you were short with them.

If God used a person to show you this, that person did you a kindness most people are too polite to do. Thank Him for it, and then thank them if you can stand to. Bart shares his own version of this, the list of difficult people he has kept over years of pastoring, and the question a man who keeps a list that long ought to ask himself. Lara's turn came through a loss, when the people she had looked down on were the ones who showed up at her door.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

What Romans 14:19's two verbs ask of you beyond simply stopping Ordinary ways to pursue peace in your own congregation this week One question to ask someone who will tell you the truth

She kept every conviction she walked in with. What she put down was the ranking. He's showing you now, while you still have time to be different in that building, with those same people.

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Every so often God puts His finger on something in your life and asks you to open your hand. A possession you've grown attached to. A relationship you've been trying to control. You probably know what yours is already, because it came to mind the moment you heard the title of this episode. And the first thing you feel is loss. You start counting what it would cost you, and the number gets bigger the longer you stare at it.

This episode opens with Jeff and Kari Patterson, who had finally built the house they always wanted after years of saving and planning. It was brand-new, with room to spread out and everything the way they liked it. Then Kari read a book that asked how much a family needs, and the question would not leave her alone. She looked around at the dream house they had just moved into, and for the first time it felt like too much.

Mark 10:21-22 tells of a man who ran up and knelt in front of Jesus, asking what he had to do to inherit eternal life: "Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. 'There is still one thing you haven't done,' he told him. 'Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'" Look at the order Mark gives us. Jesus looked at the man and loved him, and then He made the request. The love comes first.

The man had a long list of things he'd gotten right, and Jesus went straight to the one that owned him. Then the sentence ends with an invitation. Then come, follow me. The selling was the doorway, and Jesus was standing on the other side of it. The man's face fell, and he went away sad, because he had many possessions. He's one of the few people in the Gospels who heard Jesus say follow me and turned it down. He wanted what Jesus was offering. He wanted his stuff more.

Sometimes the thing God asks you to release is the thing He knows is standing between you and Him. If He is asking, He is inviting you into something better than what you'd be letting go of. Bart shares his own version of this, the months when he and Katharine felt the Lord impress on them to give everything they had left, and how God met their needs every time. The Pattersons found the same thing. They sold the house, and what they got back was a life that fit what they believed.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

Why Mark records Jesus loving the man before He made His request What the invitation at the end of verse 21 reveals about the ask A one-minute prayer for opening your hand over the thing God is pointing to

All of us have something God can use. The size of the thing matters less than whose hand it's in. If He's asking you, He's inviting you.

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Somebody tells you they're praying for you, and you don't quite know what to do with it. You mumble a thank you. It feels awkward, and you couldn't tell anybody why. Maybe part of you wonders whether they mean it, or whether it's the church version of saying take care. And underneath the awkwardness there's usually a thought you would never say out loud. You aren't sure it does anything.

This episode opens with Kent Brantly, a young doctor who had gone to Liberia to care for people nobody else would touch. Then the disease he was fighting got into his own body. The tests came back positive for Ebola, and everyone knew what that usually meant. He grew weaker by the day, his body shutting down, the treatments a long shot at best. Thousands of miles from home and shut inside an isolation ward, he had every reason to feel alone.

Paul had a different view of prayer, and he had earned the right to hold one. 2 Corinthians 1:11 says, "And you are helping us by praying for us. Then many people will give thanks because God has graciously answered so many prayers for our safety." Look at the verb. Helping. Paul writes that a few sentences after telling the Corinthians he had been crushed by pressure in Asia to the point that he despaired of life itself. When he accounts for how he came through it, he puts the prayers of a church in Corinth on the list. Those people were hundreds of miles away and couldn't send a doctor. What they could do was pray, and Paul counted it as help that arrived.

Then look at the back half of the verse. A crowd prays and God answers, and that same crowd ends up thanking Him for it. The person being prayed for is one part of something much bigger than his own situation.

So thank them out loud, and mean it while it's coming out of your mouth. Then, if the moment allows, give them something to aim at. Tell them a particular thing. When you hand somebody a particular thing, you turn a kindness into a partnership. Bart shares his own version of this, the quick thank-you he catches himself giving on the way past somebody in the hallway. Brantly learned only afterward that thousands, maybe millions, of people who had never met him had been praying for him by name while he lay too sick to know it.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

Why Paul called the prayers of a distant church help that arrived Two things to say the next time someone tells you they're praying for you What Kent Brantly learned only after he walked out of the hospital

Paul called it help, and he meant the word. Stop and thank them, and then tell them what to pray for.

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Someone brings you information about another person that you had no need to know. Learn why Proverbs 20:19 aims its warning at the listener, and what to say when the conversation starts.

Gossip has a pull that most Christians underestimate. Somebody comes to you with information about another person that you had no need to know. And here's the part we skip over. There's a small rush that goes with it. Being handed something private feels a lot like being trusted. So you feel the tug to ask one follow-up question, or you say nothing and file it away, and then you pull it back out three months later when it turns out to be useful. Either way, you took delivery. The arithmetic here is simple. Nobody gossips into an empty room. It takes two people.

This episode opens with Joshua, who had a coworker named Carrie who barely acknowledged him until one afternoon she pulled up a chair and started talking. He thought a friendship was starting. Then he caught the pattern. Carrie only came around when she had something bad to say about their boss. Joshua listened and nodded, telling himself he was being a good ear, and every visit left him feeling a little dirty. He was also starting to see his boss through her eyes.

Proverbs 20:19 speaks to that chair: "A gossip goes around telling secrets, so don't hang around with chatterers." Look at who Solomon is talking to. The warning goes to the listener. He tells you what to do about your own company, because the talker already has a habit and you have a choice about whether to stand there for it. The second half is where he gives the instruction. Don't hang around with chatterers. That's about your feet more than your mouth.

Being on the receiving end makes you a participant. The information travels only because somebody takes it in. You don't have to be rude about stopping it, either. Most people are braced for rudeness, which is part of why the gentle version works as well as it does. You can say, I don't think I need to know this. Or, I'd rather not talk about her when she isn't here. Say it early, because the longer you listen, the more it costs you to stop.

Here's what you get out of it. The person being talked about is spared a wound they will never know about, and you keep your own view of them clean. Bart shares his own version of this, the pull he still feels when somebody starts telling him something about somebody else. Joshua found his way through by saying something kind and direct the next time Carrie rolled her chair over, and by turning his mind toward whatever is true and honorable, the way Philippians 4:8 puts it.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

Why Proverbs 20:19 aims its warning at the person listening Two short sentences that stop a conversation without rudeness What listening to gossip does to your view of the person being discussed

They won't thank you, and they'll never find out. Do it anyway. Most of the kindest things anybody has ever done for you happened in rooms you were never in.

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You get asked how you're doing maybe a hundred times a week. The checkout line, and the hallway at work. Every time, you say fine. And most of the time you aren't. You're worn out in a way that sleep hasn't touched in a while, or you're grieving something nobody around you can see. Fine is the polite answer that ends the conversation, which is exactly the job it was built to do. The trouble starts when fine becomes the only setting you have left. You say it to your spouse across the supper table, and you say it to God at eleven at night when you're too worn down to pray anything else.

This episode opens with Mark Dance, who had preached for more than twenty years. He was the man people came to when their lives were falling apart, the one with the wisdom and the good word from Scripture. And all the while he was falling apart himself, living in a fog he couldn't think through. Every Sunday he stood up and ministered to everybody else, and every time someone asked how he was doing, he said he was fine.

Psalm 32:3-5 describes what that costs: "When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long... My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt." Look at how physical David's account is. The thing he was holding was sin, and he says so plainly. What you're holding may be something else entirely. It might be grief, or an illness with a name and a treatment. Depression is not a sin to be confessed. What travels from David's experience over into yours is the mechanism. Concealment costs something, and the body is where the bill arrives.

Then look at the turn in verse 5. Finally, I confessed. That word finally is doing a lot of work. David held out for a while, and eventually the holding out cost more than the telling would have. God doesn't need you to be fine before you talk to Him. He already has the long version. Bart shares his own version of this, the Sundays he preached with nothing left in the tank and then stood at the door telling a hundred people he was doing good. Mark found his way out by telling one person who could do something about it. He told his doctor the truth, got a diagnosis of clinical depression, and a week later a licensed counselor from his own church reached out.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

What Psalm 32 says holding something in does to a body

Why God doesn't require you to be fine before you talk to Him

The one sentence that can start to lift months of pretending

The first sentence is the one that costs you, and it's also the one that opens the door. Tell God the long version tonight. Then tell one person.

A note on today's topic. If what you heard today sounds like your own life, please talk to your doctor or a licensed counselor. Asking for help is a step of wisdom, and it is what Mark did. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which is available around the clock in the United States.

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A lot of Christians have picked up a message from the culture without meaning to. A meaningful life has to be big. A platform, and a story people would want to hear. And then there's the week in front of you. You got up and went to work, and at some point you made supper and helped somebody with homework. Most people's lives are made of small things. Raising children, and staying married for a few decades. Somewhere in there a thought shows up. Is this all there is. You would never say it out loud in a small group, and it stays with you anyway.

This episode opens with Tish Harrison Warren, who set out to write a book about the Christian life and made a strange choice about where to start. She began with waking up and making the bed, the most forgettable minutes of the day, the stuff you do half-asleep before the coffee kicks in. Underneath that mundane opening was a question a lot of us live with. She looked at her own days, full of dishes and the same tasks on repeat, and wondered where God was in any of it.

Paul wrote something to the Thessalonians that cuts straight across the pressure to be big: "Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands... Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others." Look at the verb he leads with. Make it your goal. Some translations render it aspire. That's an ambition word, the kind you expect in front of something impressive, and Paul aims it at a life nobody is going to write about.

Then he gets specific. Mind your own business, and work with your hands. Paul wrote that into a world already crowded with self-promotion, where Roman culture ran on patronage and public reputation. Manual labor was looked down on in that setting, and he tells them to go do it anyway and earn their own way. Then look at the two results he names. Outsiders will respect the way you live, and you won't have to lean on anybody to get by. You can start building that this week, and it requires nobody's permission.

Bart shares his own version of this, a week made of study and sermon writing and the drive across town to check on somebody who's sick. He spent a long stretch treating those weeks as the in-between parts. Warren found the same thing in her routines. She came to see them as training, the way a runner logs unglamorous miles.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

Why Paul pointed an ambition word at an unremarkable life What minding your own business cost a Christian in Roman culture Two ordinary things you can do today as though God is in the room

The ordinary life you have is what God entrusted to you, and He is at work in the middle of it. Most of your life with God happens off any stage. Those hours are the life itself.

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Your kids are grown, and you can see things you would do differently. Learn why Psalm 103 ties God's tenderness to what He knows about you, and what one sentence to an adult child can still open up.

A lot of parents get to a point where they look back at twenty years of raising kids and see things they would do differently. You were more critical than you needed to be, and you said things you can't unsay. Maybe you worked through years when you should have been at the table.

And now they're grown. The window for changing how you did it closed while you weren't watching. You can't go back and be a gentler father to a nine-year-old who is thirty-four now. So the regret has nowhere to go. It circles. You replay one specific afternoon, or the tone you used, and there's nothing to do with any of it at eleven o'clock at night.

This episode opens with Christina Leimer. By the time she was grown, the distance between her and her father was simply a fact of her life. Whatever had gone wrong in the raising of her had hardened into the way things were, and she had stopped expecting anything different from him. Then, later in his life, her father did something she hadn't seen coming. He brought it up himself and started to say he was sorry for the past, for how he had been.

Psalm 103:13-14 speaks to the parent in that chair: "The LORD is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust." Look at the reason the verse gives for the compassion. He remembers we are only dust. God's tenderness toward you is tied to what He knows about the material He is working with. He made you, and He knows what you were parenting through. He also knows what your own father handed you to work with when you started. He is not grading you against some other parent who had more sleep and more help than you had.

So bring Him the regret. A Father who remembers you're dust doesn't flinch when you tell Him what you got wrong. And here is where this turns. You still have a relationship with these people. They are adults now, and adults can be talked to. You can go to your grown son and name one thing, and one is enough to start. Bart shares his own version of this, the inventory he ends up doing on the drive home after those conversations. Christina's father found the same door. He went first, without waiting for her to make it easy, and that gave the two of them somewhere to start.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

Why Psalm 103 ties God's compassion to what He knows about you What is still open between you and your grown children One sentence you can send an adult child this week

The years stay what they are. The repair can still begin in adulthood, long after childhood is over, because one parent decides it isn't too late to try.

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You went into the appointment with ordinary worries and came out with something that changes everything. Learn what Isaiah 43:2 promises about God's presence in the days after a diagnosis, and how a church is meant to show up.

A diagnosis changes the shape of your life in a moment. You went into the appointment with the ordinary worries about parking and getting back to work in the afternoon. You came out with something that reorders everything. The drive home is a strange thing all by itself. The radio is still playing, and the world has no idea that yours just changed.

Then come the days after. You're making phone calls you never rehearsed and reading things at midnight that you have no business reading. Somewhere in there you have to work out how to tell your kids. Everybody wants to know how you're doing, and you have no answer for them, because you don't know yet. The church is sometimes slow to know what to say to somebody in that week. People mean well. They send a verse that shuts the conversation down, or they say nothing at all because they're afraid of getting it wrong.

This episode opens with Dr. Ivan Parke, a Bible professor at Mississippi College who had spent his career teaching other people what Scripture says about faith when life falls apart. Then in early 2025, life fell apart for him. The doctors told him he had ALS, the disease that slowly shuts the body down. There is no cure, and everyone in that room knew what the word meant. Everything he had told his students about trusting God was suddenly his own to live.

Isaiah 43:2 was written for exactly this: "When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown." Look at how the promise is built. Every line assumes you are already in the water. God names the trouble in plain detail, and then He puts Himself inside it with you. The word to hold onto is through. There is a far side to this, and God is with you every step of the way there. Isaiah wrote those words to people headed into exile, and they read the promise on their way into the trouble.

There is a second half to how God keeps a promise like that, and it usually has a name and a phone number. Much of the time He is with you through people who show up at your door. Bart shares his own version of this, the appointment where Katharine was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, and what he has learned since about asking God each morning for that day's strength. Ivan found the same two things: one verse, Joshua 1:9, and a church and college that brought meals and prayed.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

What Isaiah 43:2 promises about God's presence when you are already in the water Why the next step in front of you is the whole assignment for today How to show up for a friend who just got the news, even with nothing to say

A promise and some people. That combination is how anybody gets through a week like this. Take the next step, and let people help you.

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Sometimes the thing that bothers you most about God is the schedule itself. Learn what Jesus did when Martha accused Him of showing up four days late, and why you can say the same sentence out loud.

You know the feeling if you've prayed about something long enough. A door that stays shut year after year. A diagnosis that arrives in the worst possible month of the worst possible year. And the part that gets under your skin is the schedule itself. God could have done this last spring. He didn't. He was able the whole time. He waited anyway, and you're the one living in the meantime. Most of us handle that by getting polite with God. We pray around the thing, and we use phrases like trusting the process when what we mean is that we're furious.

This episode opens with Kate Bowler, a historian at Duke who built her career studying the belief that enough faith earns you health and money. She knew every promise people made about how faith pays off. Then at 35, a new mom with a toddler at home, she was handed a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer. Here was a woman who taught for a living that faith produces good outcomes, and her own body had just handed her the opposite.

John 11:21 records a woman who skipped the polite version entirely: "Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.'" Her brother had been in the tomb four days, and the first words out of her mouth were an accusation about the schedule. She had a point. Jesus got word that Lazarus was sick and deliberately stayed where He was for two more days. He was late on purpose.

Watch what He does with her line. He never corrects her, and He never explains the two days. He asks where they put the body, and then the shortest verse in the Bible tells us what happened. Jesus wept. He stood there and cried with a woman who had just told Him He was too late. Mary comes out minutes later and says the identical sentence, so Jesus walked into a house where His timing was the main topic of conversation, and He didn't defend Himself one time. Then He raised the man.

So take yours to Him. God is more secure than the version of Him you were taught to protect, and He would rather have your frustration than a performance of patience you don't feel. Bart shares his own version of this, the years he answered people's anger about God's timing by reaching for a reason, and how long it took him to quit talking and let them say it. Kate found the same door. She threw out the tidy explanations and told God the truth about how unfair the timing felt, and she kept talking to Him.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

What Jesus did when Martha accused Him of arriving four days late Why a complaint about God's timing can come from inside your faith A sentence you can pray today without cleaning it up first

Anger that keeps praying is still a conversation, and God can work with a conversation. Say it, and then stay in the room.

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The kids are grown and gone, and the house feels different in a way it hasn't in twenty years. Learn why grieving an empty nest is normal for a Christian parent, and what the arrows of Psalm 127 say about the work you already finished.

The empty nest is one of the more disorienting transitions in adult life. The house feels different in a way it hasn't in twenty years. You walk past a bedroom that's made up and stays made up all week. The rhythm you built your whole life around, the practices and the late-night talks in the kitchen, isn't there anymore.

Here's what makes it confusing. You're proud of your kid and you wanted this. You worked twenty years for exactly this outcome, and you miss them anyway. Both of those are true at the same time, and most people have no idea what to do with that. So you stand around in a house with more room than you know what to do with.

This episode opens with Jill Savage, whose house was full of noise for more than twenty years. Four kids will do that. There were carpools and somebody always needing something, and it wore her out plenty of days. It was also her whole life. Then came the morning she had known was coming and still wasn't ready for. The kids were grown and gone, and the house was empty. She poured a cup of coffee and stood in her own kitchen while something rose up in her that she didn't expect.

Psalm 127:3-5 gives us the picture that reframes it: "Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him. Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior's hands." Start with the gift, because that's where the grief is coming from. Nobody mourns something that meant little to them. Then stay with the image. An arrow is built to leave the quiver, and every part of it is shaped for the moment of release. A warrior who never fires one has a nice collection and an unfinished job. The releasing was always the reason for the making. So the empty house is what the work looks like when it succeeds.

Knowing something was supposed to happen doesn't cancel the grief over it. Every good ending has loss buried in it somewhere. Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb minutes before raising him, and He knew how it would end. So you can believe every word of Psalm 127 and still stand in a made-up bedroom and cry. Bart shares his own version of this, the night he and Katharine sat down to a table set for two with a whole lot of table left over, and how a career spent across from people in grief still didn't prepare him for that.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

Why an empty house is evidence that you finished the work God gave you What the arrow image in Psalm 127 says about releasing your kids Why believing the promise and grieving the loss belong to the same faith

Give the grief its time. Don't rush yourself through it, and don't let anybody suggest that being proud of your kid means you're finished missing them. You raised them to go.

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