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Prayer time becomes task-switching with your eyes closed. Learn why David asked God to search him after twenty-two verses saying God already had. You sit down to pray and your mind is already somewhere else. The grocery list, or the email you forgot to send. Prayer time turns into task-switching with your eyes closed. You come back and apologize, and twenty seconds later you've drifted off again. Then the grading starts. You figure that if you can't hold your attention on God for five minutes, that says something about how much you want Him. This episode opens with Kyle Strobel, who teaches spiritual formation at a seminary and has spent his career studying how people grow close to God. Prayer has never come easy for him. One time he sat down to pray, and when he came out of it he realized he had just outlined an entire book. Psalm 139:23-24 gives you David's request for exactly this situation: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life." Start with where that request falls in the psalm. Psalm 139 is the one about God knowing everything. Verse 1 says You have examined my heart and know everything about me. Verse 2 says You know my thoughts even when I am far away. So David spends twenty-two verses on the fact that God already sees all of it. Then he turns around and asks God to search him, requesting something he just spent the whole psalm saying God does without being asked. Now look at the words in verse 23. Know my anxious thoughts. The Hebrew there is related to the word for branches, so the picture is a mind splitting off in several directions at once. David had language for the wandering, and he brought the wandering to God as the request itself. Then look at what he asks God to do with those thoughts. Know them. Point out what's wrong in them, and lead him somewhere better. He hands over the contents of his mind as the material God is going to work with. And verse 2 settles something that changes how you pray. God knew where your mind went before you noticed it had gone, so you aren't informing Him when you apologize for it. Bart shares his own version of it, a week when a medical bill kept pulling his mind off prayer until he understood the bill was the thing to pray about. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Why David asks God to search him after twenty-two verses saying God already has What the Hebrew behind "anxious thoughts" pictures about a wandering mind What to do with the next twenty seconds of drift, and why the coming back counts Here's the practical step. Pray for ten minutes today with something to write on beside you. Every time your mind runs off, write down where it went in a word or two. Then look at that list when you're done. What's on the list is what your heart is on, and that's your prayer list for tomorrow. Quit apologizing for the coming back, and just come back. The person who drifted forty times in ten minutes and came back forty times has prayed forty times. Most of us would have written that off as ten wasted minutes. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/359 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

The fire of your early faith has settled and the highs come less often. Learn what Moses told Israel to do with forty years of wilderness, and why verse 4 matters. You've been following Jesus for thirty or forty years, and it doesn't feel the way it did at the start. The worship service doesn't move you like it did when you were twenty-five. Then comes the thought that makes your stomach drop. You start wondering whether you've lost something, or whether you ever had it. That's a frightening thing to wonder about yourself, so most people never say it out loud to anybody. This episode opens with writer J.S. Park, who spent his first few years as a Christian running on adrenaline, with worship nights and goosebumps that felt like God standing in the room. Then it faded, and the songs started to feel routine. Deuteronomy 8:2 gives you Moses' assignment for exactly this moment: "Remember how the LORD your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands." Start with where Israel is standing. This is the second generation, camped on the edge of Canaan and about to walk in. Moses has them look back at forty years before he turns them loose to go forward. Then look at what God was doing out there. The Hebrew under "to prove your character" is to know what was in your heart. He ran that wilderness on purpose, and part of what it did was show them what they were made of. Verse 3 gives His method: He let them get hungry and then fed them manna, to teach them that people don't live by bread alone. Verse 4 is the one almost nobody preaches. For all these forty years your clothes didn't wear out, and your feet didn't blister or swell. Forty years of sandals holding together. Nobody writes a song about that, and Moses makes a point of putting it in the record. So a stretch of faith with fewer highs in it is not a stretch with less God in it. Then stay in the chapter for the warning. Moses tells them to be careful in the years when they're full and prosperous with fine houses built. He puts the danger in the comfortable years. Which gives you a way to tell maturity from drift, and verse 2 already handed it to you. God's test was whether they would obey His commands. A faith that has matured is still obeying and still remembering. Bart shares his own version of it, a stretch of ministry years ago where he couldn't see one thing God was accomplishing, and what he can see in it now. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What the Hebrew behind "to prove your character" says God was after in the wilderness The verse in Deuteronomy 8 almost nobody preaches, and what it says about undramatic providence Where Moses locates the danger, and the one question that separates maturity from drift Here's the practical step. Make a list of what God has done in your life, going back as far as you can remember. Include the things nobody else would find impressive. Then find one entry you couldn't see while you were living it and mark it. That's your evidence He works where you can't watch Him. Then thank Him for both stages, back then and right now. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/358 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You told a friend to rest while you were burning out. Learn what Paul's repeated verb in Romans 2:21 asks, and the one step that closes the split. You've done it. You told a friend to slow down and rest while you were running yourself into the ground. You told your kid to pray about something while you'd been avoiding God for a month. The counsel was good and you meant every word of it. You just weren't taking any of it. This episode opens with King Solomon, called the wisest man alive, with rulers traveling to hear him and his own life a wreck of choices he would have talked anyone else out of. Researchers found the same split running through almost all of us. Romans 2:21 has a question for people in exactly that position: "Well then, if you teach others, why don't you teach yourself? You tell others not to steal, but do you steal?" Back up four verses to see who Paul is addressing. He describes a man who boasts about his standing with God, a man convinced he's a guide for the blind and qualified to instruct everybody else. Then the questions start, and they land like jabs. Look at the verb in that first question. In the Greek it's the same word both times. You who teach another, do you not teach yourself. Paul is asking whether the teacher has ever been in his own audience. Then read three verses further, to verse 24, and the stakes get bigger than personal tidiness. The Scriptures say the Gentiles blaspheme the name of God because of you. People watching a teacher draw conclusions about God from how the teacher lives, and Paul says they're drawing the wrong ones. A chapter later Paul writes that everyone has sinned and we all fall short, which keeps this from becoming a sermon about somebody else. The counsel you gave was good counsel. It just never earned you anything, and treating it like credit is what let the split sit there for years. Bart shares his own version of it. He tells people they need a Sabbath rest built into their week, and he can make the biblical case for it in about four minutes. Then there are plenty of weeks where he works all seven days. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What Paul's repeated verb in Romans 2:21 asks of the person doing the teaching Why verse 24 raises the stakes past your own tidiness What researchers found about taking your own advice, and why age doesn't fix it Here's the practical step. Pick one piece of counsel you've given somebody recently and write it down in the words you used. Then put your own name at the top of it. Start with the one you'd be embarrassed to have the other person find out about, because that's where the seam is widest. If it's good counsel for them, it's good counsel for you. Then do the first piece of it today. One finding from the research ought to get your attention. Older adults reasoned better than younger ones about somebody else's problem. On their own problems, the older group was no better. This does not sort itself out with time. You have to turn your own advice around and aim it at yourself on purpose, which is exactly what Paul was asking of the man who taught everybody else. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/357 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

If the whole shape of your prayer life has become you talking to God about you, something starts to shrink. Learn the two verses before Job 42:10 that change how you read it, and the one name to pick this week. Most of us pray mostly for ourselves. Our worries. Our needs. The job interview coming up, or the decision we've been turning over for a month. Nothing is wrong with any of that, since Jesus taught us to ask for daily bread and He meant ours. Here's the thing to watch for. If the whole shape of your prayer life has become you talking to God about you, something starts to shrink. Your field of vision gets about as wide as your own calendar. This episode opens with Pablo Diaz, a minister whose job and habit was prayer. One day he looked at what he prayed about most and it was almost all one subject. Him. His worries and his needs. The list ran in a loop, and the loop was him. The book of Job ends with a scene almost nobody preaches. Job 42:10 says, "When Job prayed for his friends, the LORD restored his fortunes. In fact, the LORD gave him twice as much as before!" But back up two verses, because the setup is what makes the verse land. Forty chapters of argument are over, and three friends have spent all of it telling Job his suffering proved there was sin in his house. One of them said it about his dead children. Then in verse 7 God tells Eliphaz His anger is burning against him and his two friends, because they have not spoken accurately about Him the way Job has. Here's what God does with that anger. In verse 8 He tells those three men to go to Job, and He says Job will pray for them. He will accept Job's prayer on their behalf, and He won't treat them as they deserve. Read that again. God made Job the intercessor for the men who had accused him, and Job's prayer is the thing standing between his accusers and God's anger. So when verse 10 says Job prayed for his friends, understand that God had already told him to do it. That matters, because verse 10 gets quoted as though intercession were a lever: pray for people and God doubles your holdings. The text won't support that. It records where the turn fell, which is a different claim. And look at how it records it. The Hebrew in verse 10 is an expression older translations give as God turned the captivity of Job, the same phrase used for bringing exiles home. Job had been in a kind of captivity for forty-two chapters, and the hinge came at the point where he was occupied with somebody other than himself. He was still ruined when he started praying for those three men. He prayed for his accusers out of a pile of ashes, and that's where it turned. Bart shares his own version of this, the long list of other people he prays for out loud on a Sunday and the much shorter list he prays when nobody is listening. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: The two verses before Job 42:10 that change how you read it Why God had already commanded the prayer before Job prayed it One name to pick this week, and the right thing to watch afterward Pick one person you haven't been praying for, or one who has wronged you, and start bringing them before God this week. Then watch what happens inside you. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/356 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

The thing you're hiding is doing less damage than the hiding itself, and the upkeep is daily. Learn what the Hebrew behind will not prosper says, and the second verb in Proverbs 28:13 that most people read past. Some Christians have been keeping something from their husband or wife. A struggle with spending, or a doubt about God that's been growing for a year. You've told yourself you'll tell them when the time is right, and you've been telling yourself that for a while now. The time never does get right. Here's what people underestimate about the hiding. It takes work to maintain. You steer conversations away from a subject, and you decide what to leave out of an answer that was otherwise true. All the while you're keeping a running account in your head of what your spouse knows. That upkeep is doing damage every day, and it's doing more of it than the thing you're hiding ever would. You promised to be known by this person, and the secret puts you in a marriage where one of you is being managed. This episode opens with Melissa Houston, who paid the bills in her house and was the only one who saw the number. It started with a few online purchases, then came a family room remodel and a backyard pool. Her husband Jamie had a feeling something was off, but he trusted her with the money and didn't push. By the time Melissa looked squarely at it, the credit card debt had passed one hundred thousand dollars. Proverbs 28:13 reads, "People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy." Start with the word conceal, because in the Hebrew it's the ordinary word for cover. Nothing dramatic in it, which fits, because most hiding is a hundred small coverings. Then look at what happens to that person. He will not prosper, and that Hebrew word means to advance or get somewhere. Solomon doesn't call the concealer a monster. He says the man is stalled, which is worth hearing if your marriage has felt stuck and you couldn't say why. Now the part worth reading before you have the conversation. Count the verbs in the second half. If they confess and turn from them. That's two verbs, and Solomon attaches the mercy to both of them together. So the conversation isn't the whole assignment. Confession without turning is a man telling his wife the truth about something he intends to keep doing, and the proverb doesn't promise him anything. If the struggle is spending, the turning looks like handing over the account access. If it's a doubt, it looks like getting in front of somebody who can help. Bart shares his own version of this, how quick he is to buy what he wants and what he's caught himself doing afterward about when his wife hears about it. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What the Hebrew behind "will not prosper" says about a stalled marriage The second verb in Proverbs 28:13 that most people read past The order to do this in, and what to bring with you to the conversation Pray before you speak, then tell your spouse what you've been keeping. Bring the first step of the turning with you, because mercy is waiting on the other side of both verbs. A note on today's topic. If telling your spouse what you've been keeping would put you in danger, please talk to a pastor or a licensed counselor first and let them help you plan the conversation. That is wisdom, not cowardice. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available around the clock in the United States. Story source. Melissa and Jamie Houston's account was reported by CNBC in February 2022 in a piece on couples who worked through financial secrets in their marriages. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/355 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

The sermons reference political figures and the small group assumes how you vote, so you bite your tongue or stay home. Learn the request Jesus refused to make for His disciples, and what He asked for instead. A lot of Christians are uneasy about what their church has become. The sermons reference political figures more than they used to, and the small-group conversation assumes everybody in the room votes the same way. So you bite your tongue, or you stay home more Sundays and tell yourself it's the schedule. One thing to grant before going further. Once you start listening for politics, you will hear it in places where it isn't. A pastor preaches a passage about marriage or money. It lands on a subject that's in the news, and now it sounds like a campaign speech when it was in the text all along. Both are happening right now, and part of the work is telling them apart. This episode opens with Daniel Breed, a pastor in Appleton, Wisconsin, whose church has voters from both parties in the same rows. All over the country churches are getting political and people are slipping out the back. Daniel had a plan that sounded like the last thing that would work. Jesus prayed about this the night before He died. John 17:14 reads, "I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world." This is hours before the cross, and everything He asks for here, He asks knowing His disciples will be on their own by morning. The Greek behind do not belong to the world is about where a person comes from and whose he is, so He's describing their citizenship. Then comes the verse to hold onto, the one right after it. Jesus says, I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. He had the option and declined it on purpose. What He asked for was protection inside the room, which means if your plan has been to drift out the back, Jesus already prayed against that plan. By verse 21 Jesus prays that they would all be one, so the world would believe the Father sent Him. The unity is part of the argument for Christ, which means a church that sorts itself by party spends the one thing Jesus asked for on His last night. Bart shares his own version of this, the members who once pushed him to promote a political party from the platform, and where he draws the line on what Scripture teaches about our moral and ethical responsibilities. Daniel's answer was a class, with a shared meal and open conversation about how people who vote differently can still belong to the same church. He also gave his own explanation for why it held, crediting the social capital his congregation had already built, the years of ordinary life together that let people hold different opinions and stay. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: The request Jesus declined to make for His disciples, and what He asked for instead Why unity across difference is part of the case for Christ Two things to do that are both harder than leaving Your identity is in Christ before it is in any country, and God is a long way bigger than whatever is happening this month. Pray for your pastor, and stay in the room. Story source. Daniel Breed pastors Emmaus Road Church in Appleton, Wisconsin, a Presbyterian Church in America congregation. His faith and politics class and the fact that no one had left the church over these issues were reported by Christianity Today in October 2024. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/354 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You know God forgave what you did, and you still cringe at the person who did it. Learn where Isaiah 1:18 falls in the chapter, and why God picked the two stains everybody knew were permanent. A lot of Christians have pockets of embarrassment about who they used to be. Decisions you'd never make now, or a choice you look back at and wince about. Here's what's confusing about it. You may be completely settled with God about what you did. You've confessed it. You believe He forgave it, and the guilt is gone. The embarrassment is a different animal. Guilt is about the act. Embarrassment is about the person who did it, which means forgiveness can be fully applied to the deed and you'll still cringe at the self. This episode opens with Andrea, who spent her freshman year of college partying more than studying. Years later she could live with the bad transcript. What stayed with her was the girl she'd been that year, and every time the memory came up she'd wince. She had changed years earlier, and she just hadn't stopped punishing herself for who she used to be. Isaiah has a verse for this, and where it falls in the chapter is half the point. Isaiah 1:18 reads, "Come now, let's settle this," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow." Isaiah 1 is built as a courtroom. God calls heaven and earth as witnesses in verse 2, then brings the charges without softening one of them. By verse 15 He tells them their hands are covered with blood. So the offer in verse 18 arrives after a complete indictment, and God never minimizes a thing on His way to it. Then look at what He proposes. Come now, let's settle this. The Hebrew is a legal word for arguing a case all the way to its conclusion, which is why older translations give it as let us reason together. God is offering to close the file. And look at the colors He picked. Scarlet and crimson came from an insect, and they were the most colorfast dyes in the ancient world. People in that room knew those stains did not come out of cloth. God picks the two permanent ones on purpose, and He offers back the color the wool was before anybody dyed it. Here's what settles the embarrassment. A settled case stays settled. God isn't holding the file open waiting on you to feel worse about it first, and verses 19 and 20 lay out the terms, so there's a cost on your side of it. He closed it. Which means every time you replay that memory and wince, you're relitigating a case that was settled years ago. You're the only party still arguing it. So quit arguing the closed case. When the memory comes back, you don't have to review the evidence again. And let the memory be evidence of the settlement, because that kid in your head is proof of something God did. Bart shares his own version of this, his own freshman year and the 7:30 class he kept missing while his books stayed in his room. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Why embarrassment outlives guilt, even after you know you're forgiven What the Hebrew behind "let's settle this" says about a closed file Why God chose scarlet and crimson out of all the colors available Who you were isn't who you are. God has moved on from it, and He's inviting you to as well. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/353 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You know when it's starting and how it ends, and nothing changes. Learn what James refuses to do when a church brings him their fights, and the one question to ask yourself instead. Some couples and some friends have the same argument every few months. The topic changes and the pattern holds. You know when it's starting, and you know what each of you is about to say. Then the fight ends the way it always ends, either resolved or shelved, and nothing is different. Here's why resolving the topic never fixes it. Both of you are arguing about the surface, and the surface is almost never what the fight is about. This episode opens with Stephanie and Duane, who had the same fight over and over in the first two years of their marriage. They'd blended two families and argued about the kids and money, and about whether it was her job to put away a basket of laundry she had already washed and folded. Every few weeks it came back. Different topic, same fight. James 4:1 asks, "What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you?" Look at what James refuses to do. He never asks what they're fighting about, and he takes no sides on any of the topics. He asks where the fighting comes from, then answers his own question by pointing inside the people doing it. Then look at the phrase at war within you. The Greek is a military word for running a campaign, the kind with supply lines and winter quarters. It points past any skirmish between a husband and a wife to an operation already underway inside one person, before anybody raises a voice. Verse 2 tells you what the campaign is over. You want what you don't have, James says, and then comes the line that does more for a recurring fight than any communication tip: yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. The want is legitimate, and he tells them they've been going after it down a road that can't deliver it. In your case that road is a person at your kitchen table who was never built to supply the thing. Stephanie wanted to be heard, which is a good want. She went after it by handing Duane every bit of stress she had, which got her a fixer when she needed a listener. So when you feel it starting, ask yourself a different question. What do I want right now that I'm not getting. Then take that to God before you take your complaint to the person. Here's the mechanical part. A loop needs two people running their parts, so when one person stops reacting from the same place, the loop has nothing to run on. Bart shares his own version of this, years across the table from couples in this loop and the admission that hearing the pattern from a chair across the room is a different skill than hearing it when you're in it. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What James refuses to do when a church brings him their fights The military word behind "at war within you" and what it says about timing One question to ask yourself the next time you feel the fight starting The surface topic is almost never what the fight is about underneath. Ask God to show you the real source of your anger, and bring it to Him before you bring it to the other person. Story source. Stephanie Boose's account of her marriage to Duane, published by FamilyLife as "We Couldn't Stop Arguing." The Weekend to Remember conference they attended was in September 2006. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/352 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

The answer came and something unexpected came with it, and you can't say so without sounding ungrateful. Learn what Psalm 126 means by like a dream, and the scene in Ezra where weeping and shouting could not be told apart. Maybe you prayed for something for years. The job. The restored relationship. And then it came. So you should be celebrating, and you are, in part. But the answer didn't look like what you pictured, and there's something else mixed in with the gratitude that you weren't expecting to feel. Here's what makes that a lonely place to stand. Say out loud that the answered prayer has a complication in it, and you sound ungrateful, or worse, like you're criticizing what God did. So you keep the second half to yourself and perform the first half. This episode opens with Taylor Beebe, who was adopted from Thailand and raised in the United States. She had wondered about her birth mother for as long as she could remember, and she built a picture of that reunion in her head. In college she started looking. A name on the back of an old photo led her to a Facebook page, and Holt's records confirmed it. After twenty years she booked a flight to Thailand. What she found there didn't match the picture. Psalm 126:1 says, "When the LORD brought back his exiles to Jerusalem, it was like a dream!" Start with that phrase, because we use it differently than the psalm does. We say a dream come true and mean everything landed the way we hoped. The Hebrew is k'cholmim, like dreamers, a picture of people who can't tell whether what's in front of them is real. Now put that next to what the return from captivity was like on the ground. A small group came back to a city in ruins, with the walls down and the temple gone. It was the answer to seventy years of prayer, and it came smaller than anybody had pictured while they prayed for it. There's a scene in Ezra worth handing to anybody in this situation. When they laid the foundation of the second temple, the older men who had seen the first one wept out loud while everybody else shouted for joy. Ezra says the two sounds mixed so completely that you couldn't tell them apart from a distance. Same day, same crowd. Some were celebrating what God had done and some were grieving what it wasn't, and the Holy Spirit saw fit to put both in the record without correcting either one. Then look at what Psalm 126 does with itself. Verses 2 and 3 are laughter and singing, with the line that the LORD has done amazing things for us. Verse 4 turns right around and prays, restore our fortunes, LORD. They're still asking. The answer came, and four lines later they bring God the part that's still unfinished. Scripture puts the thanks and the ache side by side in one psalm. Bart shares his own version of this, the picture he had in his head when he first sensed God calling him to preach, and the forty hours a week of things nobody pictures when they picture preaching. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What the Hebrew behind "like a dream" in Psalm 126 points to The scene in Ezra where weeping and shouting could not be told apart Two sentences to pray tonight about the answer and the picture Thank God for what He gave you, and let yourself grieve what you expected the answer to look like. Both can be true, and He understands the complication of a prayer finally answered. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/351 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

Your practices are intact and your growth has stopped, and coasting looks a lot like stability. Learn what Haggai means by consider your ways, and the one step that came before God stirred them up. Every long-term Christian has stretches of coasting, and here's what keeps yours out of sight. You're still going to church. You're still praying before meals. Nothing has fallen apart, and you're not in some obvious sin. But if you took an inventory, nothing has grown in a while. The devotional time slipped at some point and never came back, and the hunger to know God more has gone flat on you. Coasting looks a lot like stability from the outside, which is why nobody sounds an alarm about it, including you. This episode opens with John Wesley, who by any measure anybody was using in 1737 was the most serious Christian in England. At Oxford he led the group other students mocked as the Holy Club, whose members held each other to daily Bible study and prayer. They fasted twice a week and visited the prisons. He was ordained and elected a Fellow of Lincoln College, and in 1735 he crossed the Atlantic to preach in the new colony of Georgia. He came home convinced it had accomplished nothing, and wrote in his journal, "I went to America to convert the Indians; but, oh, who shall convert me?" Haggai 1:5-6 handles this better than any other passage: "Look at what's happening to you! You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied... Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes!" God's people had come back from exile and started rebuilding the temple. Then the work stopped, and sixteen years went by while they finished out their own houses. In the older translations, verse 5 reads, consider your ways. The Hebrew says set your heart upon your ways, and the word for ways is roads. Set your heart on the road you've been traveling. Then look at how God makes His case, because this is the part that fits a coasting Christian. He never asks them how they feel about God. He points at their output and tells them to read it. Planted much, harvested little. Wages going into a pocket with a hole in it. That's a different test than the one most of us run, where we check our feelings and conclude nothing is wrong because they aren't terrible. Verse 9 says where the trouble came from. They were busy building their own fine houses, so all that effort went somewhere. Coasting in one part of life almost always means the energy got spent in another. God's instruction in verse 8 is one thing: go up into the hills, bring down timber, and rebuild my house. He doesn't ask for a feeling or a new attitude. He tells them to go get wood. Then verse 14 says that after they obeyed, the LORD stirred up their spirit. The hunger came back on the far side of the obedience. Bart shares his own version of this, the stretch when about the only reason he opened his Bible was to find something to preach. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What the Hebrew behind "consider your ways" tells you to look at Why God points at output when He makes His case The one small step to take this week, and when the hunger comes back Coasting doesn't happen all at once. It happens by degrees. Take a clear look. Then pick the smallest practice you can think of and start it before you feel like it. Story source. John Wesley's account comes from his own published journals, including the January 1738 entry ("I went to America to convert the Indians; but, oh, who shall convert me?") and the May 24, 1738 Aldersgate entry, where he records going "very unwillingly" to the meeting where his heart was "strangely warmed." Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/350 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You've said the comforting things and prayed in the kitchen, and the anxiety hasn't moved. Learn who Isaiah 35:3 is speaking to, and what it gives you to say. Maybe you've watched somebody you love wrestle with anxiety that won't lift. A husband or a wife, or a friend you've known for twenty years. You've said the comforting things more than once, and you've prayed with them in the kitchen, and the anxiety is still right where it was. What wears on a person is the part where nothing seems to register. You start to wonder if somebody better at this would have gotten through by now. This episode opens with Matt Haig, who was twenty-four when his mind came apart. A breakdown of panic and depression knocked him flat, until he no longer wanted to be alive. He went home to recover, and recovery was slow and ugly. He couldn't be talked or cheered out of it. Isaiah 35:3 speaks to the one standing nearby: "With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees." Start with who's being addressed, because that's what most people miss. The command doesn't go to the anxious person. It goes to whoever is standing next to them. God hands the assignment to the bystander, which means the job you've been doing clumsily for months is an assignment God gave out on purpose. Then look at the body parts. In the Hebrew the hands have gone slack and the knees are stumbling, which is what exhaustion and fear look like in a body. Isaiah isn't asking you to change anybody's mind. He's asking you to shore up what's giving out. Now look at the first three words. With this news. The strengthening is tied to something you say, and the next verse tells you what it is. Say to those with fearful hearts, be strong and do not fear, your God is coming. That holds up whether or not anybody feels better tonight. Chapter 35 is where the desert blooms and a highway runs through it, so the news is about a future your person cannot see from where they stand. So your part comes down to two things. Keep showing up without requiring proof that it's working, because the measuring is what wears people out and talks them into quitting. And change what you say, from the situation turning out fine to God coming. One more thing belongs in there. If your person needs a doctor or a counselor, helping them get there is part of staying. Bart shares his own version of this, years of chaplain work in rooms where the training and the degree behind his name didn't touch what was in front of him. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Who Isaiah 35:3 is addressed to, and why that changes your job What the Hebrew says about slack hands and stumbling knees One sentence to say this week that holds up on a night when nothing is fine You don't have to fix them. God is doing work inside them you can't see, and your faithful love is one of the ways He's doing it. Stay in the room. A note on today's topic. If you or someone you love is struggling with anxiety or depression that won't lift, please talk to a doctor or a licensed counselor. Getting someone to help is an act of love. If you or they are in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available around the clock in the United States. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/349 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You've joined the church and brought the dish, and there's still a pane of glass between you and the room. Learn why Hebrews 11 calls God's people resident aliens, and what verse 15 says about going back. Some Christians go years feeling like they don't quite fit anywhere. The people at work don't share your faith, so there's a layer of your life they can't go into. The old friends have drifted. You keep looking for the community where you'd finally belong, and it keeps not arriving. What makes it confusing is that you've done the right things. You joined a church. You brought the dish to the potluck and stayed after to help clean up, and there's still a pane of glass between you and the room. This episode opens with Breanne Eckman, who had moved six times and changed schools almost as often by the time she was seventeen. She's what people call a third culture kid, someone who grows up moving between countries. When people asked where she was from, she never had a quick answer. She wasn't fully from her passport country, and she wasn't fully from any of the places she'd lived. Hebrews 11:13-16 has a description of God's people that lands differently once you've felt that. It says they "died still believing what God had promised them," that "they did not receive what was promised," and that "they agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth." Start with how that opens. The writer leads with the not-arriving and shows no embarrassment about it. Then look at the words. Foreigners and nomads. In the Greek those are xenoi and parepidemoi, and a parepidemos is somebody living in a place temporarily, with no rights of citizenship. The writer is describing a legal status, and these people said so out loud. Here's the part almost nobody notices. Verse 15 says that if they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. The road home was open the entire time. Nobody was holding them. They stayed displaced on purpose, year after year, because of where they were headed. Then verse 16 points back at all of it. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God. He ties His own name to people who wouldn't settle for the old country. The last line says He has prepared a city for them, so the belonging already exists and is waiting. The thing you've been auditioning churches and groups for has an address you haven't reached yet. So there are two things to do. Hold it loosely, and quit asking any one group of people to be the whole country, because no church and no friendship was built for that job. Then take what God does give you and receive it as a gift: the Sunday school class where two people know your situation, or the brother at work who prays with you in the parking lot. Bart shares his own version of this, the years he worked full-time as a first responder while serving as a chaplain, swapping the two roles in the same day and never being all the way at home in either room. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What the Greek word parepidemos says about where a believer stands The verse in Hebrews 11 that says they could have gone back, and didn't Why God attaches His own name to people who never quite fit here You don't fully belong here because you were made for somewhere else. Hold that loosely, and enjoy the pieces of belonging God gives you along the way. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/348 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com

Your bills are paid and the arithmetic is still running at eleven at night. Learn why Agur prayed for the middle in Proverbs 30, and what it means to hand God the calculation. Some people have money anxiety that keeps running even when their situation is stable. The calculation never shuts off. Enough for retirement. Enough if the car breaks down in February. What makes it confusing is that nothing is wrong. The bills got paid this month and they'll get paid next month. You've got a little put back, and the arithmetic is still going at eleven o'clock at night. Here's why that worry never has to answer for itself. It dresses up as good stewardship. Responsible people plan ahead, and the Bible says plenty about a man who provides for his household. The worry borrows that language and goes unchallenged for years. This episode opens with a study of millionaires. Most of us assume that if you just had enough money, the worrying would stop, so some researchers surveyed people who by any normal standard had already won the money game. The number on the account had almost nothing to do with the worry. There's a prayer in Proverbs that goes at money from a direction most of us never consider. Proverbs 30:8-9 records the words of Agur: "give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God's holy name." Start with how unusual this is. Proverbs is mostly observation and instruction, a wise man telling you how things work. Here he stops and asks God for something, and what he asks for is the middle. Nobody prays for the middle. Then look at his reasons, because this is where he turns the whole subject around. He gives a spiritual danger for each end. If he gets rich, he's afraid he'll deny God and ask who the Lord even is. If he gets too poor, he's afraid he'll steal and drag God's name through the mud doing it. So Agur is treating an amount of money as a spiritual risk, while most of us treat it as a security target. Those are two different questions, and only one of them has an answer. A target can be hit. A risk has to be handed to somebody who can manage it. Look at the request itself. Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. The Hebrew behind it is lechem chuqqi, the bread of my portion, a ration, the amount set aside for a man for one day. Jesus put the same idea in the prayer He taught us, give us this day our daily bread. Agur never states an amount. He asks God to decide what enough is, which takes the calculation out of his hands. Bart shares his own version of this. He worried about money in college and grad school when there was nothing extra, and he worried years later when there was more than enough. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What the millionaires in that study admitted about feeling secure Why Agur prayed for the middle, and the spiritual danger he saw at both ends One prayer to pray tonight that hands the calculation to God Money worry has a life of its own, and it doesn't shrink as the account grows. Ask God for enough, and leave the amount to Him. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/347 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You reach the first loss that matters and discover you don't have a method for it. Learn what Matthew 5:4 says about mourners, and why the comfort was never tied to doing grief correctly. A lot of adults reach their first big loss and discover they don't have a method for it. Nobody taught them. In the house they grew up in, grief got moved past in a hurry, or somebody handed them the line about being strong, and that was the whole education. Now something has happened. You know what you're feeling, and you've got no idea what to do with it. This episode opens with Jenny, who was forty-one when her mom died. She figured she knew what grief looked like, because she'd seen it in movies. When it was her turn, nothing came. She stood at the funeral dry-eyed, wondering what was wrong with her. Back home she answered the cards and went back to work on Monday like she'd been told good people do. Jenny grew up in a home where nobody cried, so with the biggest loss of her life pressing down on her, she didn't know how to grieve. Here's the thing about a rule you learn that way. You don't remember learning it. You watched the adults around you handle a death by getting back to work, and you filed it away as how it's done. Jesus spoke about mourners early. Matthew 5:4 reads, "God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted." That line opens the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus lists the people He calls blessed. Mourners made the list. He isn't telling them to pull it together, and He isn't waiting for them to finish. The Greek word behind mourn is pentheo, the strongest grief word available to Him. It's the word for wailing at a graveside, and He could have picked something milder. Then notice what's missing. Jesus never describes how to do it. No posture, no timetable. Nothing about whether tears are required. The blessing lands on the condition itself. You qualify by mourning, and that's the whole requirement. The back half of the verse matters too. They will be comforted is passive, and in a sentence like this one it means God is the one doing the comforting. The comfort isn't earned by grieving correctly. It's promised to the person who grieves at all, which means Jenny standing dry-eyed at her mother's funeral was already covered, and so is whatever version you've got. That leaves two things to do, and neither one takes a technique. Say the person's name out loud, and keep telling stories about them past the point where it feels awkward. Then tell God what you've got, in the condition it's in. If what you have is numbness, bring Him that. Bart shares his own version of this, how grief doesn't show up in him as tears right away, and the long stretch where he counted that as a strength. It took Jenny months to understand there was nothing wrong with her, and when the tears came, they scared her, because she'd never watched anybody do this. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Why Jesus blessed mourners without ever describing how to mourn What the Greek word behind "mourn" in Matthew 5:4 means Two things to do tonight that take no technique at all Grief has no formula, and God meets you in whatever version of it you have. Bring Him what you've got. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/346 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.

You catch yourself laughing after a loss, and guilt shows up right behind it. Learn what the ashes of Isaiah 61 were, and who does the exchange that puts gladness back into a grieving heart. There's something that happens to people who have lost someone. You catch yourself laughing, and a flash of guilt comes with it. Being happy starts to feel like a betrayal of the person you lost, as though joy would mean you've moved on before you were ready. This episode opens with Sherri Lynn Miller, a young wife with a toddler and a baby on the way when the call came. Her husband Sean, a school band director, had been killed in a car accident less than a mile from the school where he taught. In the years that followed, every time she laughed or smiled for a photo, guilt came with it. She had decided she was not allowed to be happy again, and she didn't realize she had made the rule. Here's what makes that guilt so convincing. It comes from love. Somewhere along the way you decided the grief was the last thing tying you to that person. So if the grief loosens its grip, you lose them a second time. Nobody says it out loud. You just start living like it's a rule. Isaiah 61:3 speaks to people who knew mourning by heart: "To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning... they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory." Start with the ashes, because the ashes were something the mourner put on himself. You put ashes on your head, and anybody who saw you knew what had happened. God takes those ashes and hands back a crown. In the Hebrew, the two words sound almost alike, pe'er and epher, nearly the same word turned around. Notice who does the handing. He will give. God does the exchange inside the person who is mourning. If gladness after loss is something God hands a grieving person, then the guilt that hit you the last time you laughed was accusing you of something God did. Isaiah finishes with great oaks the LORD has planted. An oak is slow, and a man plants one knowing he won't see it finished. The oak and the ashes share the same ground. Jesus read this passage in the synagogue at Nazareth and said it was being fulfilled that day. Bart shares his own version of this, a funeral meal where the family went to laughing about the man they had just buried, and the moment he caught himself glancing around to see whether that was allowed. More than five years after Sean's death, Sherri wrote the words that set a lot of grieving people free: I'm still allowed to be happy. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What the ashes of Isaiah 61 were, and who God says does the exchange Why guilt over laughing comes from love, and the rule it writes without your permission One question to ask God about the gladness working its way back into you A heart can hold the ache of what it lost and the gladness of being alive at the same time. You have permission to laugh again. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/345 Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.