How to Bring Your Worst Week to Worship on Sunday

How to Bring Your Worst Week to Worship on Sunday

Some Sundays the last thing you want to do is walk into church, whether the week wrecked you or you're ashamed of something you did. This episode looks at Psalm 100 and why worship is what you do when you don't feel like it, because God often meets the people who almost stayed home. Most of us have had a Sunday when getting out of bed and going to church was the last thing we wanted to do. Maybe the week wrecked you, and the thought of singing about God's goodness feels impossible. Maybe it's shame, and you can't picture walking into a room full of people who assume you've got it together. So you're tempted to stay home, where it's safe and no one can see you. A lot of us give in, on the mornings we need to be there most. Mark knew that feeling. He had led worship at his church for years before he was arrested on fraud and money laundering charges and sentenced to 16 months in federal prison. The story ran in the papers, so there was no hiding it. When Sunday came, he and his wife Joy could walk into their church and face a room that had read all about it, or stay home where it was safe. They went. They had no idea their pastor planned to preach on money and to say Mark's name from the pulpit. As Mark sat there braced for judgment, his small group got up one by one and came to sit around him and Joy, praying for them through the whole message. What met him was grace, with skin on. Their church held them at the lowest moment of their lives. Psalm 100 reads like a song for people having a great day: "Shout with joy to the Lord... Enter his gates with thanksgiving." But it was a call to worship for a whole community walking into the temple, and not everyone in that crowd was having a good week. Some were grieving. Some had dragged themselves there on empty. The psalm didn't wait for them to feel joyful before it called them to come. It called them to come as they were and let the truth about God work on their feelings once they arrived. That reframes worship. We often treat it as something for when we already feel it, and we stay home when we don't. But worship is mostly what you do when you don't feel like it. You come because God is good and his love lasts forever, no matter what kind of week you had. The feelings tend to follow the obedience; they rarely lead it. In this episode, Bart remembers being on staff at a church where the treasurer, who also served as a deacon, embezzled a large sum and then stood before the whole congregation to confess. The church forgave him and kept him. The biggest step of your week may be the one into the building on the morning you'd give anything to disappear. Take it, because that step is often exactly where God meets people. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why the Sundays you dread most are often the ones you need most * What Psalm 100 shows about worshiping before the feelings arrive * How a church can become grace with skin on at someone's lowest moment Worship is what you do when you don't feel like it. The person who almost stayed home is often the one God meets most. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/278 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/278] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

When the Treasure Is in a Cracked Pot

A lot of us assume God can only use the people who seem to have it all together, so we count ourselves out. This episode looks at 2 Corinthians 4:7 and the jars-of-clay truth that your brokenness may be exactly where God's light gets out. A lot of us keep a scoreboard running in the back of our minds. We measure ourselves against the people who seem to have it all together, the Christians who never seem to falter or struggle. Then there's you, with the anxiety you can't shake or the marriage that almost ended. So you draw a private conclusion: God can use people like that, and a cracked pot like you feels like a different case. You decide you'll be useful once you've cleaned yourself up, and you wait for a day that never quite comes. David Ring knew that feeling. Born with cerebral palsy after being deprived of oxygen at birth, he grew up dragging one leg and speaking with a slur that made him a target, and by 14 he had lost both parents. When he told his pastor he felt called to preach, he was met with a flat no, and eventually with the words that a boy like him had no business in a pulpit. David came back the next Sunday and said he'd choke on every one of those words. He was right. He has preached for more than 50 years, in over 6,000 churches, with the same slurred speech that once drew laughter, and he tells crowds that God has a habit of using the things other people throw away. Paul turns our assumptions on their head. In 2 Corinthians 4:7 he writes, "We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves." The image is a cheap clay pot, the common kind from any ancient kitchen, filled with the light of Christ. And Paul says the plainness of the pot is the point. If God only used impressive people who had no crack to show, their talent could explain the results. When He fills a cracked pot and the light pours out anyway, everyone knows the power came from God. That reframes everything. Your brokenness was never the thing keeping you out of God's plans. In His economy, it's closer to a qualification. The crack you've been ashamed of might be the exact place His light gets out. David Ring's slurred speech became the reason no one could explain his preaching apart from God. You were meant to bring your brokenness and be used anyway, and that was the plan all along. In this episode, Bart remembers a young man he knew in Bible College who also had cerebral palsy and felt called to preach. He was difficult to understand, yet full of passion and humor, and when Bart invited him to speak in chapel, a number of students gave their lives to God. The invitation is simple: stop waiting to have it together, and offer God your cracked pot, because the crack is how the light gets out. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why feeling too broken to be used gets God's design exactly backwards * What 2 Corinthians 4:7 means by treasure in fragile clay jars * How to offer God your weakness instead of waiting to fix it first God puts His treasure in cracked pots on purpose, so the glory goes to Him. Bring Him yours, and let His light spill out. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/277 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/277] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

How to Love Someone Whose Choices You Don't Agree With

When someone you love makes choices you can't celebrate, two instincts pull at you: say nothing and watch, or confront them. This episode looks at the third way Peter points to in 1 Peter 4:8, a love that grieves the choice and keeps loving the person without cutting them off. When someone you love is making choices you believe are wrong, or that you're sure will hurt them, you get pulled two directions at once. One instinct says to keep the peace: say nothing and let them go, because speaking up might push them further off. The other says to confront them and make them see the truth. Both leave you unsettled. Silence feels like you're endorsing it. Confrontation feels like you're driving them away. Most of us swing between the two and never feel right about either. Peter points to a third way. In 1 Peter 4:8 he writes, "Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins." To cover, here, means to keep loving a person right through their sin while still calling the sin what it is. It refuses both easy exits. You don't have to pretend you approve, and you don't have to cut the person off to make your point. You get to do the braver thing: stay in the relationship, and keep showing that your love isn't something they have to earn back. Angela Yuan lived this. When her son Christopher came out and then spiraled into drugs and dealing, she was heartbroken and couldn't pretend she approved. She also refused to cut him off. So she prayed, fasting every Monday for years and kneeling until her knees turned callused, and she kept writing and visiting the whole time. Her love never once told him he was fine, and it never once told him he was too far gone. Years later, in a prison cell with an HIV diagnosis, Christopher found a discarded Bible, started reading, and came home to God. Today he teaches the Bible to others. The point of this is that covering love holds the tension on purpose. It lets you grieve a choice and love the person in the same breath, because those two were never opposites. And the engine under that kind of love is prayer. When you can't change someone, and you've decided not to badger them, prayer is where your love keeps working. You keep loving the person in front of you, and you keep asking God to do the part you can't. In this episode, Bart shares his own experience of loving his oldest son through a stretch of drinking and drifting from the Lord. He and Katharine chose to keep loving him without hounding him, and prayed boldly for God to do whatever it took. Their son came back to the Lord, and today he leads worship in their church. You can grieve someone's choices and love them at the same time, and trust God with the rest. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why loving someone through choices you can't approve pulls you two directions at once * What 1 Peter 4:8 means by love that "covers a multitude of sins" * How to stay in relationship and pray, instead of the two old instincts of saying nothing or confronting You can grieve someone's choices and love them at the same time. Those two aren't enemies, and staying close is often what God uses most. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/276 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/276] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

When You Notice You've Been Becoming Bitter

Bitterness rarely arrives as one big decision; it sets in slowly after a hurt you never processed, until you've become more closed off without choosing to. This episode looks at how to recognize that drift and clear it out the way Paul urged in Ephesians 4:31, before it runs your life. Bitterness is sneakier than most people expect. It rarely arrives as one big decision to resent someone. It comes on slowly, out of a disappointment you couldn't process or a relationship that ended without the apology you were owed. You keep turning it over, and over time, without deciding to, you become a slightly different person: quicker to assume the worst about people, quicker to expect to be let down. One day you notice you've grown more closed off than you were, and you can't quite name when it happened. Greg McLogan knew that place from the inside. When his marriage ended in 2007 with a betrayal, he did what a lot of us would do. He replayed it, nursed the anger, and went back over the ways he'd been wronged until the hurt turned into something worse. The bitterness pulled him into a depression he never saw coming. From there he faced a choice, and he chose to get better instead of staying bitter. It started with admitting he'd become an angry, bitter man, taking the whole thing to God, and confessing the resentment he'd been feeding. Then came the part that took courage: he looked squarely at his own role in how the marriage came apart, rather than aiming the entire story at the person who hurt him. Today he helps other people find their footing after divorce. Paul was direct about this. In Ephesians 4:31 he wrote, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior." Notice the verb: get rid of. Paul treats bitterness as something you have to clear out on purpose, like rot in a wall before it spreads, because it won't leave on its own. Left alone, it grows and feeds on whatever you keep rehearsing. Every time you replay how you were wronged, you water it. Here is where the hope is. Bitterness is one of the few sins that mostly punishes the person holding it. The people who hurt you may not think about you at all, while you lose sleep and lose joy over what they did. Clearing it out is how you take your own life back. The way back has two moves: name it, dropping the softer words and admitting it's bitterness, and then take it to God, confessing your own part and releasing the whole thing to Him for the slow healing only He can give. In this episode, Bart shares his own experience of becoming bitter toward church leaders who treated him badly at a previous church, and how naming it, confessing his part, and releasing it to God let the bitterness slowly lift. Healing is God's work, and He doesn't refuse the people who bring it to Him. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why bitterness sets in slowly, without any single decision to resent someone * What Paul's command in Ephesians 4:31 reveals about clearing it out * Two steps for handing a long-held hurt to God and getting your joy back Bitterness comes on slowly, and it clears out the same way: one deliberate step of naming it and handing it to God. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/275 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/275] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].

What to Do When You've Realized You Hurt Someone

There's a brief window between realizing you hurt someone and deciding what to do about it, and the pull is almost always to explain or defend rather than repair. This episode looks at why Jesus placed reconciliation ahead of worship, and why quick repair costs you far less than repair delayed. There's a moment most of us would rather skip past. A conversation ends, a friend walks off, and it hits you that what you said landed harder than you meant it to. Two roads open up. One is to go and make it right. The other is to start building your case: to explain what you really meant, to defend why you said it, to decide the other person was too sensitive anyway. That second road is easier in the moment, and it's the one most of us take. But there's a short window between realizing you caused harm and choosing what to do about it, and what you do there matters more than you think. Jesus set the bar high. In Matthew 5:23-24 He pictures you at the altar, in the middle of worship, about to present your offering, when you remember that someone has something against you. His instruction is to leave your gift right there, go be reconciled to that person, and then come back and worship. Notice the direction. He isn't describing a grudge you're holding. He's describing a grudge someone might hold against you, something you did. And He says repair comes first, even ahead of worship. That's how seriously God takes a wound you caused. The urgency is practical. Repair done quickly costs you something small: a little pride, an awkward phone call, five minutes of feeling exposed. Repair delayed costs you more. The hurt hardens, the other person builds their own case about who you are, and what could have been mended in a day becomes a wall that takes years to come down. The goal is repair, not self-punishment. You're not groveling. You're closing the gap before it widens. A striking example comes from a church that had split decades earlier, when about a hundred people walked out of St. Andrews Presbyterian for less than noble reasons. Half a century later, the breakaway church's pastor was researching his own congregation's history and found the pettiness at its root, and a group of people who had been hurt and never apologized to. Not one person in his church had been there when it happened. Even so, he wrote St. Andrews a letter, thanking them for giving his church life and apologizing for the ungracious way it began, and his congregation backed the words with gifts right before Holy Week. They went and made right something they hadn't even broken. In this episode, Bart is candid about how often he has spoken or acted without thinking and hurt someone, and how he has learned to go and take full responsibility the moment he realizes it, often after his wife Katharine, with her gift of mercy, points out what he missed. The challenge is simple and direct: think of one person you know you hurt, drop the defense, and close the gap while it's still small enough to close. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why the moment right after you cause harm is so easy to mishandle * What Matthew 5:23-24 reveals about how God ranks repair and worship * Why a quick apology costs far less than a delayed one There's a short window between realizing you hurt someone and deciding what to do about it. The quickest repair is almost always the cheapest one. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/274 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/274] Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail] Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast. https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/] Rate and Review https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/] Connect with Bart Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives [https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives] Website: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com] Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe].