エピソード

  • When You Find Yourself Judging Other People

    When You Find Yourself Judging Other People
    2026/08/07
    We size people up in a second, then miss the story we can't see. Discover why Romans 14:4 says the person you're judging was never yours to judge, and how to catch yourself in the moment.You're standing in a checkout line, or scrolling a feed, and you catch yourself passing judgment on someone you've never met. The way they're handling their kids. The opinion they posted. In a second flat, you've tried them and moved on, and half the time you don't notice you did it until it's already done. The verdict feels like insight in the moment. Most of the time it's just a guess dressed up as knowing.This episode opens with Jason Wright, who stopped at the same convenience store every morning and decided he had the clerk figured out. Her name was Cheri. She rarely smiled and kept her answers short, and Jason wrote her off as unfriendly, a woman who probably hated her job. One morning he asked the manager why Cheri always seemed so down, and the manager stopped and looked at him.Paul asked the Romans a question that stops you cold when it's aimed at you. Romans 14:4 says, "Who are you to condemn someone else's servants? Their own master will judge whether they stand or fall. And with the Lord's help, they will stand and receive his approval." Every person you're tempted to size up belongs to somebody, and that somebody is God. When you pass judgment on a stranger, you pick up a gavel that belongs to the Judge of all the earth, and He never handed it to you.Notice how the verse ends. With the Lord's help, they will stand. Paul goes further than telling you to back off. He tells you what God is doing in the person you were writing off: working to help them stand. So while you were deciding they were a lost cause, their Master was on their side. There's mercy in that for you, too. You wouldn't want to be judged by a stranger's 10-second read of you on your worst morning, and neither would the person in front of you. Everybody you meet is dealing with something you can't see from where you're standing.That is exactly what Jason found out. The manager told him Cheri had lost both of her parents that year, within a few months of each other, after a lifetime of caring for them. The grouch he'd invented in his head was a daughter buried in grief, and he'd been standing three feet from it every morning without knowing, because he'd already closed the case. That's what judgment does. It closes the case before you've heard any of the evidence.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a snap verdict about a stranger is almost always missing the biggest part of the storyWhat Romans 14:4 says about who has the right to judge another personA simple move for the moment you catch yourself judging someoneThe people you're tempted to judge belong to God, not to you, and every one of them is dealing with something you can't see. Hand the gavel back.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/299Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    6 分
  • What to Do When You're Afraid to Hope

    What to Do When You're Afraid to Hope
    2026/08/10
    After enough letdowns, you decide it's safer to expect nothing. If you don't get your hopes up, they can't come crashing down. You watched a prayer go unanswered. You trusted someone and they let you down. So now you hold everything at a careful distance, bracing for the next disappointment before it comes. Hope starts to feel like a setup.This episode opens with Kashia and Riley Palmer, who longed to be parents for years. After fertility treatments failed, they turned to adoption, and a call came about twin baby boys. They raised 45,000 dollars in two days and flew to meet their sons, only to have a nurse meet them at the hospital door. The birth mother had changed her mind, and they flew home with empty arms and a fear a lot of us know: the fear of ever letting yourself hope again.Solomon named this ache 3,000 years ago. Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life." Solomon is naming something true. When you want something and the waiting stretches on, it wears on you and can leave a bruise that lasts for years. God's Word doesn't pretend that away. But look at the second half of the verse. A dream fulfilled is a tree of life, the kind that grows and shelters. The problem was never hope itself. The problem is where we aim it.When you pin all your hope on one outcome, one answer arriving by a certain date, you're betting your heart on something that might not come. God is asking you to hope in Him, not just in the thing you want from Him. Hoping in an outcome is fragile, because outcomes can fall through. Hoping in God is sure, because He doesn't. He may not give you the exact thing on your timeline, but He has promised never to leave you empty.That is the hope the Palmers finally found. Months later another call came, this time a baby girl. Their hands were up, and they knew they could not guarantee the outcome. That part belonged to God. Scared and hoping anyway, they flew to meet their daughter, and the birth mother looked at them and said, "You're here. You're really here." They came home a family. They didn't hope less the second time. They hoped scared, with their hope resting where it couldn't be crushed.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why disappointment makes so many people quietly stop letting themselves hopeWhat Proverbs 13:12 says about the toll of hope deferred and the life a fulfilled hope bringsHow to keep hoping by aiming your hope at God instead of a single outcomeHope deferred makes the heart sick, but hope aimed at God won't leave you empty. Keep hoping, and aim it at Him.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/300Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    6 分
  • What to Do When Nothing Is Wrong but You Feel Empty

    What to Do When Nothing Is Wrong but You Feel Empty
    2026/08/11
    A lot of Christians hit stretches where nothing is exactly wrong. The bills are paid. The family is functioning. You have plenty to be thankful for, and you are, and still you wake up with a dryness you can't explain. You're moving through good days without tasting them. There's no crisis to point to and no obvious hole to fill, which can be more confusing than an outright problem, because you can't even say what's the matter.This episode opens with Ann Voskamp, who ran a family farm, was raising a houseful of kids, and loved God. By every outward measure she was fine. And still, most mornings, she woke up with a hollow feeling she couldn't explain, thankful on paper and empty inside, unable to fix it. Then a friend gave her a strange little dare.God described this exact condition through Jeremiah. Jeremiah 2:13 says God's people did two evil things: they abandoned Him, the fountain of living water, and they dug for themselves cracked cisterns that could hold no water at all. A cistern is a hole you carve out to store water you've hauled in from somewhere else. These were cracked, so the water leaked out as fast as it went in. God's people traded a spring that flows on its own for a leaky tank they had to keep refilling.That is how emptiness shows up in a comfortable life. You are still drinking, just not from the fountain. You pull little sips of life from your work and your screens, from the next thing that needs you. None of those are evil, but they cannot hold water. They give you a swallow and leave you thirsty again by morning, until you feel hollow in the middle of a life that looks full. The answer is to go back to the source. Working your cisterns will only wear you out, because they were never going to hold. Ordinary time with God, unhurried, with your Bible open and your phone away, is the thing that refills a soul, and there is no substitute for it.That is what Ann discovered. Her friend dared her to write out 1,000 small gifts she'd been walking past, and as she paid attention, gift by gift, she noticed God right there in the dishwater and the noise. Nothing about her life changed. The dryness did. The fountain had been within reach the whole time, and she had simply stopped drinking from it.**BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:**- Why you can feel empty even when your life is stable and nothing is wrong- What Jeremiah 2:13 reveals about the cracked cisterns we dig instead of drinking from God- A simple way to get back to the fountain and let God refill your soulWhen the soul runs dry in a life that looks full, the answer is to go back to the fountain: ordinary time with the God who never runs out.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/301Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    6 分
  • What to Do When You're Tempted to Check Up on an Ex

    What to Do When You're Tempted to Check Up on an Ex
    2026/08/13
    Years after a relationship ended, a lot of people still feel the pull to look. You scroll the profile at midnight. You ask a mutual friend how they're doing, like it's just curiosity. Each little check feels harmless. It isn't. Every time you go back to look, you pull the scab off a wound that was trying to heal, and you plant yourself again in a place God already led you out of.This episode opens with Linnie, who spent 3 years trying to move on after a 7 year relationship ended. She threw herself into work and read her Bible, and still part of her wondered what would happen if she just reached out. So one day she sent him a message, hoping the door might still be open. He was already with someone else, and within a few months he married her. Linnie fell apart, standing in front of a closed door and knocking when God had already moved her down the hall.Paul knew the pull to live in the past, and he made a decision about it. Philippians 3:13-14 says he focused on one thing: forgetting what was behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the prize God was calling him to. When Paul says forgetting, he means he refused to keep living back there. His memory still worked; he just stopped treating his past as a place to visit whenever the present got painful, and he faced forward and ran.That is the choice when you're tempted to check up on an ex. Going back feels like it will bring relief, a hit of connection or some sense of closure, but it never delivers. It just reopens the wound and leaves you standing in the past while your life waits up ahead. And here is a truth that helps: some of the doors in your life, God closed on purpose, and He closed them for you. That ended relationship may be an exit He walked you through. The relief you're aching for was never behind that door. You'll find it on the other side of putting the phone down and letting the past stay past.That is what Linnie learned. She stopped knocking, turned around, and found God in the hallway. She let the man go, and in time she could even pray for his marriage. Freedom like that is waiting for you on the other side of stopping.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why "one more look" at an ex reopens a wound instead of bringing closureWhat Philippians 3:13-14 means by forgetting the past and pressing forwardA practical way to guard your heart the next time you feel the pull to check upSome doors God closes for your good. The relief you're looking for is on the far side of putting the phone down and letting the past stay past.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/303Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    6 分
  • When You Can't Stop Thinking About Someone Who Hurt You

    When You Can't Stop Thinking About Someone Who Hurt You
    2026/08/12
    Some wounds don't stay in the past. They move into your head and take up residence. You replay the conversation, or the thing they said that you can't unhear, and every time you run it, you feel it again, fresh, like it just happened. That's what makes it so exhausting. You're not being hurt once. You're being hurt on a loop, and it can go on for years before you notice what it's costing you.This episode opens with Lysa TerKeurst, who led a growing ministry and loved her family, then found out her husband had been unfaithful. The affair hurt, but a second pain came after, and it lived entirely in her head. Long after the discovery, her mind kept playing the betrayal back to her, ambushing her while she folded laundry or drove, and she would feel it as if it were happening for the first time. Forgiving the man was one battle. Getting her mind to stop rehearsing what he had done was another.There is a promise in Isaiah for a mind that won't settle down. Isaiah 26:3 says God keeps in perfect peace all whose thoughts are fixed on Him. Notice the word fixed. Older translations say stayed. To stay your mind on God is active work, keeping it brought back on purpose, again and again, the way you hold a boat straight against a current. You can't always stop a memory from arriving. But when the loop starts, you don't have to press play one more time. You can catch it, turn your attention to God, and do it again the next time, and the time after that.The harm did happen, and you are not asked to deny it. What you are choosing is to stop reopening a wound you want healed. Some wounds only close when you finally stop picking at them. Handing the memory to God, over and over, is how you let Him do the healing you can't do by reliving it.That is the work Lysa had to do. She came to see forgiveness as a daily choice, one she made again every time the replay started, catching it and handing it back to God instead of pressing play. Her marriage did not survive, and she says so plainly, but the loop did not get to run the rest of her life. She turned it off, one interruption at a time, and built something new on the other side.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why replaying a hurt keeps wounding you long after the event is overWhat Isaiah 26:3 means by a mind stayed on God, and why it takes active effortA practical way to catch the replay and turn it off, one interruption at a timeThe harm did happen, but you don't have to keep pressing play. When the loop starts, turn your mind to God and let Him do the healing.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/302Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    6 分
  • When You're Wondering If You Made the Right Choice

    When You're Wondering If You Made the Right Choice
    2026/08/18
    You took the job. You said yes to the person. You made the move and signed the papers. And now you're a few months or a few years in, and you catch yourself wondering if you got it right. Second-guessing is common, and it isn't always a red flag. Sometimes it's grief, a mourning for the roads you didn't take and the life that might have been down the one you passed up.This episode opens with Grace, who left a secure job after 2 years, sure God was calling her to become a teacher, and enrolled in a master's program. Then the program turned out tougher than anything she'd expected. She felt behind, questioned whether she belonged, and the doubt went deeper than the coursework. She started questioning the whole decision, wondering if she'd made a mistake and walked away from a good job for nothing.Psalm 32:8 holds a promise for the person on the far side of a decision: "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye." Read the tense. Every verb points forward. God cares about more than the decision behind you; He is committed to the steps ahead of you. Whatever you already chose, He is still saying, from here, I will guide you.That matters, because a lot of us live with a fear that one wrong turn puts us outside God's guidance. That is not how He works. He doesn't require you to have made the flawless choice before He'll lead you well. He meets you on the road you're on now and walks you forward from there. And hardship along the way is not proof you chose wrong. Following God comes with one promise about the road: that He will be with you on it. The road itself may get steep, and you can be in the middle of trouble and still be right in the center of His leading.That is what freed Grace. A trusted older friend told her to just go and try, and if she couldn't, to come home. It was permission to try without having to be perfect. She had believed that following God meant nothing could go wrong, and when it did, she assumed she'd failed. Instead she found a God who stayed with her and kept leading, one steep step at a time. She didn't need a guarantee she'd chosen perfectly. She needed to know He was with her, and He was.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why second-guessing a decision is common, and often more grief than red flagWhat the future tense of Psalm 32:8 says about God guiding you after a choiceTwo things to do when you can't tell whether you made the right callYou don't have to have chosen perfectly for God to lead you well from right where you are. His promise to guide you points forward.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/306Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    6 分
  • When Your Kids Still Want You Around

    When Your Kids Still Want You Around
    2026/08/14
    A close relationship with an adult child doesn't come standard, and it's easy to stop noticing it. Discover why John called this the greatest joy, and how to receive it with gratitude.This episode is for the parents whose grown kids call. Whose kids text just to check in, or make room for you at the table when they didn't have to. That kind of relationship does not come standard. A grown child who wants you around is choosing you, over and over, with a life full of other options, and some part of you already knows how rare it is. Bart knows the feeling. His kids are grown and close, and he doesn't take it for granted, because he has counseled too many parents who would give anything for a Sunday dinner with a child who no longer calls.This episode opens with Brad Ryan, whose grandmother, Joy, was almost a stranger to him. Joy had spent her whole life in small-town Ohio and, into her 80s, had never seen a mountain or the ocean. Then Brad, now grown, called the grandmother he barely knew and asked if she wanted to go camping. She said yes.The apostle John knew this kind of joy. 3 John 4 says, "I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children are following the truth." He mostly meant his spiritual children, and what filled him with joy was simple: they were walking with God. A close relationship with your grown child sits in that same kind of joy, and it's easy to let it fade into the background. When something good becomes familiar, we stop seeing it. The visits become normal, and a gift that would have stunned you 20 years ago becomes something you barely notice. John refused to let that joy fade. He named it.So do something with the closeness you've been given. Feel it and thank God for it, instead of rushing past a gift He knit together. Then tell your kids, in plain words, what their nearness means to you. They may shrug it off. Say it anyway. People rarely regret telling someone they love that they matter.That is where Brad and Joy's story went. The one camping trip became another, and over several years the grandson and his grandmother visited all 63 national parks, finishing when Joy was 93. Two people who had barely known each other became close, Joy saw mountains and the ocean for the first time, and she has said these years are the best of her life. Nobody made Brad pick up the phone. He just wanted her around, and it gave an 85-year-old woman a whole new life.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why a close relationship with a grown child is rarer and more precious than we treat itWhat 3 John 4 shows about the joy of the people we love walking with GodWhat to do with that closeness before it fades into background noise, and why naming it aloud mattersA grown child who wants you around is one of life's rare joys. Thank God for it, and tell them what it means.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/304Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    5 分
  • What to Do When a Bible Verse Bothers You

    What to Do When a Bible Verse Bothers You
    2026/08/17
    Every long-term Bible reader hits verses they struggle with. A command that sounds harsh. A line that seems to contradict something you were taught to believe about God. The pull is to slide past it and stick with the parts that comfort you. Most of us have a private list of verses we've been avoiding for years. Bart hears it often. People bring him the verse that bothers them, half expecting him to be shocked, and he tells them: don't skip it, stay with it.This episode opens with Martin Luther, a monk desperate to be right with God, who came to Paul's phrase "the righteousness of God" in Romans and heard a verdict he could never meet. He said he hated that verse, and hated the God he thought it revealed. Most people would have turned the page. Luther couldn't. He kept circling back to the words that tormented him, trying to understand what Paul meant.The Bible itself admits some of it is difficult. In 2 Peter 3:15-16, Peter says that some of what his beloved brother Paul wrote is difficult to understand, and that unstable people twist it to their own destruction. Notice that an apostle, writing Scripture, names the difficulty rather than hiding it. So if you have felt faithless for struggling with a verse, let that go. Peter gives one warning and one instruction: don't twist the difficult parts to mean whatever you want, and stay grounded while you keep reading. His answer to a troubling verse is to stay with it, on solid ground, until it opens up.That is the choice when a verse bothers you. You can turn the page, or you can dig in. Study it, read what comes before and after, and find out what the words meant to the people who first heard them. Bring your questions straight to God, who is not nervous about them. Some of the growth He has for you is buried in the verses you'd rather skip.That is what happened to Luther. Slowly, then all at once, he saw he had been reading the phrase backwards. Paul was describing a righteousness God gives as a gift, received by faith in Christ. The standard Luther had been straining to reach was one God had already provided. The verse that felt like a death sentence turned out to be the doorway to grace, and it lit the Reformation. He found his way to grace by staying with the verse he had wanted to avoid.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why struggling with a difficult verse is normal, and named in Scripture itselfWhat 2 Peter 3:15-16 says to do with the passages that are difficult to understandA practical way to go toward the verse that bothers you instead of skipping itThe verse that bothers you is one to stay with. God isn't afraid of your questions, and He often grows you most through the passages you'd rather skip.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/305Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.
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    6 分