Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

Always being available may look like generosity, but it slowly drains you dry. Discover why Jesus withdrew from people who needed Him, and how his example frees you to be unreachable sometimes.

Some of us take pride in being reachable. The text gets answered the second it comes in. You never turn down the request for coffee, and you never let a call go unanswered. From the outside it looks like generosity, and part of it is love. But some of it is something else, a person who has never learned how to disappoint anyone, who feels a low hum of guilt whenever they're not available to meet a need. That way of living has a cost, and it comes due whether you plan for it or not.

This episode opens with Wayne Cordeiro, a pastor who almost never told people no. For years his constant availability looked like love, and much of it was. Then one evening, out for an ordinary jog before a leadership conference, he found himself sitting on a curb, crying, unable to remember how he got there. He had been leading on empty for so long that he finally hit bottom.

Scripture points to a wiser pattern. Luke 5:16 says of Jesus, "So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed." Notice the word often. There were still sick people who wanted healing and crowds who wanted teaching, and Jesus walked away from them to be alone with His Father. He left needs unmet on purpose, because He knew that being on call every hour would leave Him with nothing to give. His withdrawing was how He kept having something to offer.

If the Son of God needed to pull back and pray, so do you. You are allowed to be unreachable sometimes. You can turn the phone face down and let the request wait until tomorrow. The world will not fall apart, and you will not have let anyone down. Your health depends on it, and so does your walk with God, because time with Him is the first thing crowded out when you're available to everyone else. Bart shares his own struggle to rest, and how he came to treat the Sabbath as a command to obey rather than laziness to feel guilty about. Wayne's road back took nearly three years, and he came to see the rest he had refused as the very thing that saved his ministry and his health.

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

• Why constant availability drains the very thing people come to you for
• What Luke 5:16 shows about Jesus withdrawing from people who still needed Him
• A simple step for building unreachable, restful time into your week without guilt

You are allowed to be unreachable sometimes. Pull back and rest the way Jesus did, so you'll still have something to give the people who need you.

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Feeling guilty for being okay when people around you aren't is more common than you'd think. Discover why you can stop apologizing for your stable life, and how God means for you to spend it on others.

Sometimes the trouble is that your life is holding together while someone close to you is falling apart. Your marriage is solid and theirs is ending. Your kids are fine while someone else's are in crisis. Instead of being grateful, you feel almost ashamed of it. You hide the good news and downplay the vacation, because it feels cruel to be okay when someone you love is not. Somewhere in there, you start to believe you don't have permission to enjoy your own life while another person suffers.

This episode opens with a woman named JoHannah, who had a good life and felt bad about it. Her family was close and her faith was intact, while all around her people faced chemo, divorce, and persecution overseas. She decided she had no business having things this good, so she tried to pay it back. She said yes to every request and made every need her own, running herself down until doing so much good left her going under.

Scripture speaks straight to that guilt. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 that God "comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." Read the purpose in that verse. God comforts us so we can comfort others. The comfort is a supply, given to be passed on. Your stable marriage is a resource. The peace you have is something God is placing in your hands to hand to someone who has none right now.

That reframes what being okay is for. You don't have to hide your blessing or burn it down out of guilt. You get to be grateful for it, and then spend it on people. The friend going through chemo needs you to come with your health and sit beside her. The woman whose marriage is ending needs the strength of yours to hold onto for an afternoon. Bart shares his own version of this guilt, driving home to a house that's still standing after praying with someone whose life is coming apart. JoHannah found her freedom the same way: she stopped trying to sacrifice her way out of a gift, received God's kindness, and finally had something to offer.

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

• Why feeling guilty for being okay is common, and where that guilt comes from
• What 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says about comfort being a supply meant to be passed on
• A simple step for turning your stable life into help for someone who's hurting

You don't have to apologize for being okay. Be grateful for what God has given you, then spend it on the person in front of you who needs it.

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Watching a parent lose their memory is a grief that starts long before anyone dies. Discover why that grief counts, and how numbering your days helps you love the parent who's here today.

There's a grief that comes long before the funeral. It shows up when your father asks the same question three times in an hour, or when your mother calls you by your brother's name. The person who raised you is losing pieces of themselves right in front of you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You go through it mostly alone, because the world doesn't have a category for it. There's no casserole for the slow goodbye, no card that says "sorry your mother forgot your wedding." So you wonder whether you're even allowed to grieve someone who's still here.

You are. This episode opens with a woman Bart talked with for his book on caregiving. She cared for her husband through Alzheimer's after his diagnosis in his early 60s, and she promised herself she'd keep him at home no matter what. But the disease kept taking more of him. One day she stood in the middle of a highway with him, cars coming, and hit the end of what she could do alone. Right there she prayed out loud for help.

Scripture speaks straight to that place. Long before any of us faced a diagnosis, Moses prayed in Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Numbering your days means facing the truth that time with the people you love is short and precious, and letting that shape how you spend it. You may not have the father you had ten years ago. But you still have this version of him, and this version won't be here forever either. So love the one who's here now.

That means speaking the words that need to be said while there's still someone to hear them. It also means bringing what you're grieving to God, who is not far from any of it. He is with your parent, the one losing their memory, holding them even in the confusion. And He is with you, the one keeping watch, seeing every day nobody else sees. You don't have to face the slow goodbye alone. Bart shares what these caregiver interviews have shown him about loving his own people while he has them, and the woman's own conclusion after years of caring for him: "The Lord, he will pull you through it."

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

• Why grieving a parent who's still alive is real grief, even without a funeral
• What Psalm 90:12 teaches about numbering your days and loving the parent in front of you
• A simple step for saying the words that need to be said before it's too late

You may be grieving someone who's still here, and that grief counts. Number these days, love the parent who's in front of you today, and bring the rest to the God who never forgets a single name.

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Every praying Christian goes through stretches where the words feel automatic. You bow your head, and the same phrases come out that always come out, the ones you learned years ago and reach for at meals and at bedtime. Somewhere along the way you stopped hearing them, and you can't remember the last time one of those prayers meant something as you said it. It can start to feel fake, like you're reciting lines to an audience of one.

This episode opens with a small experiment you can try. Pick a simple word, say "door," and repeat it out loud, past 20, past 30 times. Somewhere in there the word comes apart in your mouth and turns to gibberish. It has a name: semantic satiation. When you repeat a word fast and often enough, the part of your brain that supplies its meaning briefly stops firing. The sound keeps coming, but the meaning drops out from under it.

The same thing can happen to the phrases you say to God, and Jesus spoke to it. Matthew 6:7 says, "And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words." Jesus is describing people who thought the trick was volume, as if enough words would impress God into answering. He wanted something else. Look at the next line in that chapter, where He teaches His followers to pray to their Father. Prayer was meant to be a conversation with a Father who already knows you, in your own words, the way a child talks to a father who knows him.

Here is the good news. If your prayers have gone rote, your faith is not in trouble. The meaning wore off the way it did with the word door, and the fix is simple: slow down and say something true. You can stop in the middle of a stale prayer and say, God, I don't want to just recite at You. I want to talk to You. Help me mean this again. That is one of the truest prayers there is, because God was never listening for polished language. He was listening for you, the person behind the words. Your faith is fine. Your words just need to slow down and fill back up.

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

• Why familiar prayers lose their meaning, the same way a repeated word turns to gibberish
• What Matthew 6:7 says about empty repetition and praying to a Father who knows you
• A simple way to slow down and pray afresh when the words have gone stale

When your prayers go rote, your faith is fine. Your words just need to slow down and fill back up, because God is listening for you, not for the perfect phrases.

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Most people have a preferred way to numb out when life gets uncomfortable. The scroll. The extra hour of TV. Neither is wrong by itself. But when one of them becomes the place you run every single time you don't want to feel what you're feeling, it stops being a break and starts being an escape hatch. And the more you use it, the better you get at not feeling anything at all.

This episode opens with a research experiment. People were put alone in a bare room for 15 minutes with no phone and nothing to read, and asked to just sit and think. Most of them hated it. So the researchers left a device on the table that would give a mild electric shock, one everyone had already tried and said they'd pay to avoid. When the door closed, a striking number of people shocked themselves rather than sit alone with their own thoughts. We will do almost anything to keep from feeling what is going on inside us.

Peter gave the early church a short, pointed instruction. 1 Peter 5:8 says, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." Peter is calling for wakefulness, enough alertness that you notice what's happening in you instead of drifting through your days on autopilot. And here's something to notice: the enemy doesn't always come at you with a dramatic sin. Sometimes his whole strategy is just to keep you numb, scrolling, one show deep, so that year after year you never turn and face what God is trying to deal with in you. A person who feels nothing never grows.

The way out of numb is presence. Another distraction only digs the rut deeper. Presence means turning off the screen, letting yourself feel the thing you've been running from, and bringing it to God. That's uncomfortable at first, because the stuff you've been avoiding comes up. But that discomfort is the beginning of something changing. Numbing keeps you exactly where you are, frozen, wondering why nothing ever gets better. Presence with God is the thing that moves you.

Those people chose a shock over sitting still with their own minds. That's how strong the pull to escape is, and you feel it too. But the shock and the scroll keep you from the one thing that would help most: being present, with yourself and with God, long enough for Him to meet you in it. The discomfort you're avoiding might be the doorway He's standing in.

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

• Why a harmless habit becomes an escape hatch when you run to it every time you don't want to feel
• What 1 Peter 5:8 says about staying awake to your own life
• A simple practice for choosing presence with God over numbing out

Numbing keeps you exactly where you are. Presence with God, even when it's uncomfortable, is what moves you forward.

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Some Christians are the only person in their extended family who prays for the rest of them. There's the spouse who doesn't believe, and the grown kids who walked away from the faith they were raised in. Somehow the job of bringing that whole family before the Lord has fallen to one person, and that person is you. Nobody assigned it. You just love them, and you seem to be the only one on your knees. It can feel lonely and pointless, like your prayers go up and nothing comes down.

This episode opens with a bored, unbelieving teenager named Hudson Taylor, who wandered into his father's library and pulled a gospel tract off the shelf. What he didn't know was that his mother, miles away that week, had shut herself in a room and was praying for his salvation, hour after hour, until she felt sure God had heard. Bart shares his own family's version: his mom, the only believer in her family, watched her sister trust Christ in her final days before passing away.

There's a moment in Acts that speaks right to the lone believer. A jailer in Philippi asked Paul how to be saved, and Paul told him, in Acts 16:31, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." By morning the man's whole household had believed and been baptized. One person's faith became the doorway for an entire family. That is a pattern all through Scripture and history. God loves to reach a whole household through the faith of one member of it, the one who prays, the one who keeps believing when nobody else does. He is not put off by being outnumbered in your family tree.

So if you're the only one praying, hear this: your prayers are not vanishing. You can't see what God is doing behind the closed doors of the people you love, but He is doing something. He is patient with them in ways that would exhaust you, and He is at work in rooms you will never walk into. Hudson Taylor sat alone in that library, sure no one was thinking of his soul, while two women prayed him into the kingdom. He read a line about the finished work of Christ, and he gave his life to God right there. He felt completely alone, and he was completely surrounded. You may feel the same, and heaven may be fuller of your requests than you know.

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

• Why being the only one praying for your family is more common, and more powerful, than it feels
• What Acts 16:31 shows about God saving a whole household through one person's faith
• How to keep praying for your family without giving up, even when you can't see anything happening

You may be the only one praying, but you are not praying alone. God reaches whole families through the faith of one, so keep going.

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The fear of getting old alone is one people don't talk about much, but it lives in a lot of hearts. Some pictured a spouse walking through the later years with them, and that person never came. Others raised kids who grew up and moved across the country, and now they lie awake wondering who will be there when they can't drive themselves to the doctor, and who would even notice if they got sick. It's a frightening thing to wonder about, and most people wonder in silence.

This episode opens at a small church in Skiatook, Oklahoma, where a growing group of widows knew that fear. Many had been married 50 or 60 years, their spouse was gone, and their kids were far away. One woman, Vicki Hendryx, couldn't stop thinking about them and didn't want a single one to feel forgotten, so she made a plan.

An old man in the Psalms prayed this exact fear straight to God. Psalm 71:9 says, "Do not cast me off in the time of old age; Do not forsake me when my strength fails." It's a raw prayer from a man who could feel his strength going and dreaded being discarded, and he said it right to God's face. God's answer, all through Scripture, is the same: I am with you, I will never leave you or forsake you. When your friends are gone and your strength has failed, He is still there. Old age does not move you one inch outside His reach.

Often, God answers this fear with skin on. He sends His people. The church was built to be a family for exactly the person who has no other family left. When a congregation takes its widows and older singles under its wing, that's more than kindness. It's God keeping His promise through His people, in the parking lot after church and in the hospital waiting room.

That's what Vicki built. She had the church adopt its widows one by one, making a profile for each and matching every widow with at least two volunteer families, so no one slipped through the cracks. More than 30 widows in that church now have people who show up for them every week. Nobody there ages alone. As Bart notes, his own church cares for its widows and older singles the same way, so no one with no family nearby has to face aging by themselves.

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

• Why the fear of aging alone is so common and so rarely spoken
• What Psalm 71:9 shows about bringing that fear straight to God
• Two things to do with the fear, and how the church becomes family to those who have none

God will not cast you off in your old age. Much of the time He answers the fear of aging alone by sending His people to stay close.

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You took the job. You said yes to the person. You made the move and signed the papers. And now you're a few months or a few years in, and you catch yourself wondering if you got it right. Second-guessing is common, and it isn't always a red flag. Sometimes it's grief, a mourning for the roads you didn't take and the life that might have been down the one you passed up.

This episode opens with Grace, who left a secure job after 2 years, sure God was calling her to become a teacher, and enrolled in a master's program. Then the program turned out tougher than anything she'd expected. She felt behind, questioned whether she belonged, and the doubt went deeper than the coursework. She started questioning the whole decision, wondering if she'd made a mistake and walked away from a good job for nothing.

Psalm 32:8 holds a promise for the person on the far side of a decision: "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye." Read the tense. Every verb points forward. God cares about more than the decision behind you; He is committed to the steps ahead of you. Whatever you already chose, He is still saying, from here, I will guide you.

That matters, because a lot of us live with a fear that one wrong turn puts us outside God's guidance. That is not how He works. He doesn't require you to have made the flawless choice before He'll lead you well. He meets you on the road you're on now and walks you forward from there. And hardship along the way is not proof you chose wrong. Following God comes with one promise about the road: that He will be with you on it. The road itself may get steep, and you can be in the middle of trouble and still be right in the center of His leading.

That is what freed Grace. A trusted older friend told her to just go and try, and if she couldn't, to come home. It was permission to try without having to be perfect. She had believed that following God meant nothing could go wrong, and when it did, she assumed she'd failed. Instead she found a God who stayed with her and kept leading, one steep step at a time. She didn't need a guarantee she'd chosen perfectly. She needed to know He was with her, and He was.

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

• Why second-guessing a decision is common, and often more grief than red flag
• What the future tense of Psalm 32:8 says about God guiding you after a choice
• Two things to do when you can't tell whether you made the right call

You don't have to have chosen perfectly for God to lead you well from right where you are. His promise to guide you points forward.

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Every long-term Bible reader hits verses they struggle with. A command that sounds harsh. A line that seems to contradict something you were taught to believe about God. The pull is to slide past it and stick with the parts that comfort you. Most of us have a private list of verses we've been avoiding for years. Bart hears it often. People bring him the verse that bothers them, half expecting him to be shocked, and he tells them: don't skip it, stay with it.

This episode opens with Martin Luther, a monk desperate to be right with God, who came to Paul's phrase "the righteousness of God" in Romans and heard a verdict he could never meet. He said he hated that verse, and hated the God he thought it revealed. Most people would have turned the page. Luther couldn't. He kept circling back to the words that tormented him, trying to understand what Paul meant.

The Bible itself admits some of it is difficult. In 2 Peter 3:15-16, Peter says that some of what his beloved brother Paul wrote is difficult to understand, and that unstable people twist it to their own destruction. Notice that an apostle, writing Scripture, names the difficulty rather than hiding it. So if you have felt faithless for struggling with a verse, let that go. Peter gives one warning and one instruction: don't twist the difficult parts to mean whatever you want, and stay grounded while you keep reading. His answer to a troubling verse is to stay with it, on solid ground, until it opens up.

That is the choice when a verse bothers you. You can turn the page, or you can dig in. Study it, read what comes before and after, and find out what the words meant to the people who first heard them. Bring your questions straight to God, who is not nervous about them. Some of the growth He has for you is buried in the verses you'd rather skip.

That is what happened to Luther. Slowly, then all at once, he saw he had been reading the phrase backwards. Paul was describing a righteousness God gives as a gift, received by faith in Christ. The standard Luther had been straining to reach was one God had already provided. The verse that felt like a death sentence turned out to be the doorway to grace, and it lit the Reformation. He found his way to grace by staying with the verse he had wanted to avoid.

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

• Why struggling with a difficult verse is normal, and named in Scripture itself
• What 2 Peter 3:15-16 says to do with the passages that are difficult to understand
• A practical way to go toward the verse that bothers you instead of skipping it

The verse that bothers you is one to stay with. God isn't afraid of your questions, and He often grows you most through the passages you'd rather skip.

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A close relationship with an adult child doesn't come standard, and it's easy to stop noticing it. Discover why John called this the greatest joy, and how to receive it with gratitude.

This episode is for the parents whose grown kids call. Whose kids text just to check in, or make room for you at the table when they didn't have to. That kind of relationship does not come standard. A grown child who wants you around is choosing you, over and over, with a life full of other options, and some part of you already knows how rare it is. Bart knows the feeling. His kids are grown and close, and he doesn't take it for granted, because he has counseled too many parents who would give anything for a Sunday dinner with a child who no longer calls.

This episode opens with Brad Ryan, whose grandmother, Joy, was almost a stranger to him. Joy had spent her whole life in small-town Ohio and, into her 80s, had never seen a mountain or the ocean. Then Brad, now grown, called the grandmother he barely knew and asked if she wanted to go camping. She said yes.

The apostle John knew this kind of joy. 3 John 4 says, "I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children are following the truth." He mostly meant his spiritual children, and what filled him with joy was simple: they were walking with God. A close relationship with your grown child sits in that same kind of joy, and it's easy to let it fade into the background. When something good becomes familiar, we stop seeing it. The visits become normal, and a gift that would have stunned you 20 years ago becomes something you barely notice. John refused to let that joy fade. He named it.

So do something with the closeness you've been given. Feel it and thank God for it, instead of rushing past a gift He knit together. Then tell your kids, in plain words, what their nearness means to you. They may shrug it off. Say it anyway. People rarely regret telling someone they love that they matter.

That is where Brad and Joy's story went. The one camping trip became another, and over several years the grandson and his grandmother visited all 63 national parks, finishing when Joy was 93. Two people who had barely known each other became close, Joy saw mountains and the ocean for the first time, and she has said these years are the best of her life. Nobody made Brad pick up the phone. He just wanted her around, and it gave an 85-year-old woman a whole new life.

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

• Why a close relationship with a grown child is rarer and more precious than we treat it
• What 3 John 4 shows about the joy of the people we love walking with God
• What to do with that closeness before it fades into background noise, and why naming it aloud matters

A grown child who wants you around is one of life's rare joys. Thank God for it, and tell them what it means.

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