What to Do When Someone You Love Is Suffering

Finding God's Presence in Life's Worst Moments

Life has a way of sorting itself into before and after. In this episode, discover what Ruth's story reveals about God's faithfulness in the territory you didn't choose, and why the after isn't as empty as it looks. Chris Singleton was 18 years old and finishing his freshman year at Charleston Southern University when he got the call on June 17, 2015. His mother Sharonda Coleman-Singleton had been at a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. A gunman had opened fire. Nine people were dead. His mother was one of them. Two days later he stood in front of news cameras outside that church and said 5 words that stopped the country: love is stronger than hate. Most of us have a day like that. Before it and after it, life looked different. The world on the other side felt like unfamiliar territory, because it was. You were somewhere you hadn't planned to be. Over the years in pastoral ministry I've sat with people whose lives were divided by a moment like that. A phone call or a diagnosis. A conversation that ended something. Some drew closer to God through it. Others pulled away. The ones who drew closer weren't spared the grief. They just found something in the grief that the others hadn't found yet. Ruth crossed into unfamiliar territory too. She had lost her husband and left her homeland to follow her mother-in-law Naomi to a country she'd never lived in. Her words to Naomi in Ruth 1:16-17 are some of the most committed in all of Scripture: wherever you go, I will go. Your God will be my God. What Ruth found when she arrived was that God's faithfulness had preceded her. The provision was already in place, in a field she'd never walked before, before she knew she would need it. That's the pattern this episode returns to: the after isn't empty. God was already there. In the days after his mother's murder, Chris Singleton said the forgiveness he extended came from somewhere outside himself. He said it had to be God, because nothing in his own resources could have produced it on the worst day of his life. He went on to play minor league baseball for the Chicago Cubs, then left baseball entirely to speak and write. His message has never changed: love is stronger than hate. It came to him in the after. God was already in that territory before Chris arrived. Through Chris's story and Ruth 1:16-17, this episode makes the case that the day that divides your life is not the end of God's work in it. It may be where that work becomes most visible. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * What Ruth's crossing into Moab reveals about God's faithfulness in the territory you didn't plan to enter * Why some people draw closer to God through a dividing-line moment and others pull away, and what makes the difference * One question you can bring to God today about the after you're living in The after isn't empty. God was there before you arrived. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/248 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/248] 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://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1]. Mentioned in this episode: Join Our Private Facebook Community If you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

How to Have the Conversation You've Been Avoiding

Most of us have at least one conversation we know we need to have and keep putting off. In this episode, discover what research and Matthew 18:15 both say about what avoidance costs, and what it takes to finally go. Researchers at Saint Louis University recruited 1,471 adults across the United States and measured one thing: what happens to people who keep avoiding necessary conversations. The finding was consistent across men and women and across a wide age range. People who consistently avoided conflict showed measurably higher psychological distress than those who addressed it. People who resolved conflict showed significantly lower distress than those who left it unaddressed. The researchers' conclusion was something most people already suspected: avoidance doesn't make the situation go away. It makes the person carrying it worse. Most of us have at least one conversation on our list right now that we know we need to have and have been putting off. We tell ourselves we're waiting for the right moment. The right moment rarely shows up on its own. I'm not someone who runs from a confrontation, but there have been times I've delayed a conversation I knew I needed to have. In every case the situation didn't improve on its own. The thing I was avoiding just sat there and took up space while the relationship drifted further. Jesus gives one instruction in Matthew 18:15: go to the person, privately, with the goal of winning them back. One word carries the whole verse: go. The goal matters as much as the action. When restoration is the aim, the conversation looks different than it would if the goal were to be right or to be understood. Most of us approach these conversations, when we finally approach them, hoping to be vindicated. Jesus sets a different target. Going in with the relationship as the goal changes both the tone and the outcome. Through the Saint Louis University research and Matthew 18:15, this episode makes the case that the discomfort of the necessary conversation is almost always less costly than the damage of avoiding it. The researchers measured it in distress scores. Jesus measured it in relationships worth saving. God's already told you the answer. He said go. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * What a study of 1,471 adults reveals about the psychological cost of avoiding necessary conversations, and why avoidance makes things worse * What the single word Jesus uses in Matthew 18:15 tells us about when and how to approach the conversation you've been putting off * One concrete step you can take today to stop avoiding the conversation and start preparing to have it The right moment rarely shows up on its own. You have to make it. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/247 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/247] 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://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1]. Mentioned in this episode: Join Our Private Facebook Community If you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

What to Do When Everything Feels Overwhelming at Once

Some years pile everything on at once. Aaron and Jennifer Smith called 2024 "whiplash." In this episode, discover what Psalm 55:22 says to the person who is overwhelmed and running out of their own resources. Aaron and Jennifer Smith went into 2024 as Christian podcasters and parents of 5 with more momentum than they'd had in years. By December 2023 Aaron's father was sick. Then his brother died. The grief bled into January and kept going. Their home church was struggling. Financial investments didn't go as planned. Jennifer found out she was pregnant with their sixth child and needed an emergency C-section midway through. The baby arrived healthy on September 14, but Jennifer spent the months that followed navigating postpartum anxiety and depression. Aaron called 2024 "whiplash." Most of us know something of that experience, when the pressure doesn't come from one direction. It stacks up from every angle at once and none of it is small enough to ignore and none of it is fully in your control. And feeling like you should be handling it better doesn't help. Nobody handles that gracefully. You just get through it. I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed by things piling up. There have been stretches in my own life when the pressure wasn't coming from one direction and I couldn't push through on my own. Psalm 55:22 is where David puts his answer. Give your burdens to the Lord, and He will take care of you. The word translated burdens there means your lot, your portion, the weight God has assigned to your life. David is saying give Him the weight and trust that He will sustain you under it. That's a different promise than relief. God is offering something that lasts longer: His presence in what you can't manage alone. Jennifer said, looking back on the year, that when you hit the wall of your own capacity, let it be a cue to pray. She was describing the experience of running completely out of your own resources and discovering that God's hadn't run out. Aaron said they came out the other side with one clear conclusion: they couldn't do any of it without Jesus. They stopped pretending they could. Through their story and Psalm 55:22, this episode makes the case that overwhelm is a cue, not a verdict. The weight is there. The God who can hold it is also there. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why the pressure that comes from every direction at once is different from a single loss, and why that difference matters * What the Hebrew word for "burdens" in Psalm 55:22 reveals about what God is actually promising when He says He'll take care of you * One concrete practice you can start today to hand the weight to God before it buries you When you hit the wall of your own capacity, God's hasn't run out. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/246 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/246] 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://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1]. Mentioned in this episode: Join Our Private Facebook Community If you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

The Lasting Impact of a Mentor Who Believed in You

Ronnie Herrera knocked on a stranger's door in the Dominican Republic looking for a mentor. What followed reached villages that had never met the man who started it. In this episode, discover what 2 Timothy 2:2 says about the lasting impact of one person's investment in another. Ronnie Herrera grew up in the Dominican Republic without his father. His dad had left for the United States when Ronnie was 8, looking for work. Over the years that followed, the family lost everything to Hurricane George, and his father suffered a brain blood clot from the accumulated stress. Ronnie was a teenager, and he felt hopeless. He came to faith at a Christian school and felt pulled toward mission work. He and a friend heard about an American missionary couple living nearby, so one day they walked up to that door and knocked. The couple who answered, Miguel and Kristina Santiago, had been praying for months for God to send them young people to disciple. What happened next stretched across decades and into villages that had never met the man who started it. Most people who are doing something meaningful can trace it back to someone who saw something in them before they could see it themselves. This episode is about that person and that investment. There's a man in his nineties named Dr. Hugh Huguley who probably doesn't fully know what he did for me. He was a Bible college professor and I was going through some of the toughest stretches of my life. He believed in me when I wasn't sure I believed in myself. His smile and his encouraging spirit kept me going more than he probably realizes. We still talk on the phone from time to time. I'm still standing in part because of what he put in. Paul describes this chain in 2 Timothy 2:2. What was put into him, he put into Timothy. What Timothy received, he was responsible for passing to others. The investment was always meant to multiply. Seth Barnes spent one month with Miguel Santiago in Peru in 2002. Miguel took what he received and invested it in Ronnie. Ronnie took it into his village. His village took it into the next one. By the time Ronnie was done, there were communities full of people whose lives had been shaped by what Seth put into one man for 30 days. Seth had never met most of them. That's the math of mentorship. The original investor rarely sees the full return. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * How one man's month-long investment in Peru reached villages he never visited, and what that reveals about the return on mentorship * What Paul's instruction to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2 says about the responsibility that comes with being invested in * 2 concrete challenges: one for the person who needs to find someone to invest in, and one for the person who needs to call the mentor who shaped them One investment in one person can become more than you'll ever see. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/245 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/245] 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://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1]. Mentioned in this episode: Join Our Private Facebook Community If you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group

How to Handle Jealousy When Someone Else Is Blessed

When someone else gets what you've been praying for, something in you twists. In this episode, discover what Asaph did with his envy, and why bringing it to God finds a different home than burying it in private. Asaph had one of the most important jobs in all of Israel. King David appointed him as chief worship leader, he led the tabernacle choir, and he composed psalms that are still in your Bible today. By every visible measure, this was a man whose faith was settled. And then he watched the wrong people prosper. His feet started to slip. He wrote about it in Psalm 73, plainly and without softening it. He'd been serving God faithfully while the people around him who did none of that were healthy and without a care, doing fine by every outward measure. He envied them. He tried to figure out why God would let it go on, and he described that work as almost more than he could stand. Most of us know that feeling, even if we won't say it out loud. We call it frustration, or we say we're processing. But when someone else gets the job or the recognition we've been praying for, something in us twists. We know exactly what it is. Envy is one of those things most people bury rather than bring to God. We figure we should have outgrown it, or that it'll pass if we wait long enough. So it goes underground, where it starts affecting things in ways we don't connect back to the original feeling. Asaph took it somewhere else. He walked into the sanctuary. And what he found there changed everything. This episode includes something personal. I've spent most of my ministry watching other speakers and wishing I had what they had: the ones who grab an audience from the first sentence, who have a story for everything told so well you forget the room you're sitting in. I've felt envy toward those speakers. What I've had to come back to is that God made me the way He did for reasons He understands better than I do. My job is to admit what I feel and develop what's already in my hands. Through Asaph's story and Psalm 73, this episode makes the case that envy brought to God finds a different home than envy buried in private. Asaph got something better than an answer. He got a perspective so complete that the question stopped mattering the way it had. He came out and wrote: "Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you." BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why burying envy produces no perspective, and what bringing it to God does * What Asaph found in the sanctuary that changed his entire view of the prosperity he'd been watching * One concrete prayer you can bring to God today about what you're envying and what's underneath it Envy brought to God finds a different home than envy buried in private. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/244 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/244] 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://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1]. Mentioned in this episode: Join Our Private Facebook Community If you're looking for a place to connect with other Daily Devotions listeners and pray for each other, I'd love for you to join our private Facebook community group. Come find us at https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/group