When the Calling You Thought You Had Hasn't Come

What to Do While You're Waiting for News That Might Change Everything

There's a kind of waiting that can undo you: the hours before you know how something will turn out, when you can't fix a thing. This episode looks at what to do in that waiting, and how God meets people right there in the corridor between the news and whatever comes next. Waiting tests anyone. But there's a kind of waiting that can undo you, the kind where the news might change everything and there's nothing you can do but wait for it. You're in the hospital corridor. You're holding the phone, willing it to ring and dreading it at the same time. You can't fix it, and you can't think your way out of it. All you can do is wait, and the waiting itself can feel like more than you can take. Time stops behaving normally; an hour can stretch into what feels like a week while your mind runs the same loops with no new information to work on. Heather Bixler knew that feeling. A couple of weeks before a family vacation, her father called with two words that stopped everything: colon cancer. Her family was shocked and overwhelmed. Her father knew what the word meant in a way most people don't; he had watched his own father die of cancer at 17 and had lost three siblings to the same disease. And now it was his turn to hear it. What stands out is when Heather wrote about it. She wrote from inside the waiting, before anyone knew how it would go. She anchored herself in God's presence and in what she knew was true about Him, and she brought her honesty into it, the same way she had in an earlier stretch when she lay under a weighted blanket wondering if anything would get better. She had reached the place where she couldn't think her way through what she was feeling, and faith was the only solid thing left to stand on. Psalm 130 was written for that exact place. The writer cries out from the depths, and he doesn't pretend he's fine; he tells God exactly what he's doing while he waits, putting his hope in God's word and longing for Him more than a sentry longs for the dawn. A night watchman can't make the sun rise. He just keeps watching for it, certain it's coming. That is what waiting on God looks like. It's active. You hold on to what He has said, and you keep your eyes up for the first light. You put your weight on what you know about God, even when you can't know anything yet about how it ends. So here's what to do in the corridor. You bring God your honesty, fear and all, because He can handle it. And you don't wait alone. You let people in, the way God built His people to hold each other up. In this episode, Bart speaks from both sides of this, the pastor who has waited in hospital corridors with families and the man who has done his own waiting, and points to the God who meets people in the not-knowing. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why waiting for an unknown outcome is its own kind of trial * What Psalm 130 shows about waiting on God as an active kind of trust * Two concrete things to do while you wait for news you can't control You can't make the news come any sooner, and you don't have to. The One who is already in the corridor with you is watching for the dawn on your behalf. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/257 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/257] 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]. 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

When the Calling You Thought You Had Hasn't Come

Many of us were handed a sense of calling when we were young, and decades later it still hasn't taken the shape we expected. This episode looks at why the years of waiting may not be a delay at all, but the calling itself taking shape as God builds you for what He promised. A lot of us were handed a sense of calling when we were young. Maybe a teacher or a pastor looked at you and said they saw something in you. Maybe you felt a stirring you couldn't shake. You believed it, and then the years passed, and the thing never took the shape you expected. The door didn't open. The gift didn't get used the way you pictured. And somewhere along the way you started to wonder if you misheard God, or if the calling was meant for someone else. Jenita Matteson lived in that question for four decades. As a young woman, she saw a clear vision: a property where people would come to be discipled and to discover what God had called them to do. She believed it, then spent the next 40 years trying to make it happen and finding she couldn't. Every attempt taught her something, and none of them moved the vision forward. When her husband died in 2007, it would have been reasonable to declare the dream finished. She was older, she was alone, and the money for a facility had never come. The story of Joseph shows what's really happening in a wait like that. Joseph was 17 when God gave him a dream, and 13 years passed before it came true, years filled with betrayal and a prison cell. Looking back at the end of his life, he told the brothers who sold him, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good." The word is intended. God was working good through every piece of it. Those years were not a holding pattern before the calling. They were the calling taking shape, and God was building Joseph into the man the vision would require. That is the part you can't see from the inside. God is not ignoring the calling He put in you. He is growing you into the person who can hold it when it arrives. The patience and the dependence on Him that the younger you didn't have yet are exactly what the waiting has been forming. In 2018, Jenita received a large and unexpected financial gift, and the vision she had tended for 40 years finally had ground to stand on. She launched Gold Standard Ministries. When COVID shut everything down in 2020, the pause freed her to finish the curriculum and to see that the training could reach people around the world online, something she could never have planned for in 1978. As she put it, she finally understood why God kept Moses in the wilderness for 40 years. The vision took that long because God was using the years to build her for it. In this episode, Bart shares his own redirected calling, the music major who sensed an unexpected pull toward ministry, and what it took to trust that God hadn't scrapped the plan. If you're discouraged by a calling that still hasn't come, this is an encouragement to keep going. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why the gap between a calling and its fulfillment is rarely wasted time * What Joseph's 13-year wait reveals about how God prepares a person for a promise * A simple way to notice what God has been building in you during the wait The years between the promise and its fulfillment are not empty. God is building you for the very thing you have been waiting for. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/256 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/256] 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]. 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

When Your Spouse Doesn't Share Your Faith

When the most important thing in your life isn't shared by the person closest to you, marriage can hold a loneliness you rarely say out loud. This episode looks at what Paul tells the believing spouse to do, and why your faithfulness in that home matters more than you might think. For a lot of believers, the deepest strain in marriage isn't conflict over money or chores. It's that the most important thing in their life, their faith, is the one thing the person closest to them doesn't share. Maybe you came to Christ later, after the wedding. Maybe your spouse's beliefs shifted over the years. Either way, you end up praying alone, sitting in church next to someone whose heart isn't there, and making most of the decisions about the kids and faith by yourself. It's a loneliness people feel without ever putting it into words, and it can linger in a marriage that's good in every other way. Sam Dahlhauser lived in that place for years. Her husband, Mike, wasn't hostile to her faith, but he wasn't interested in it either. She didn't lecture him or turn his soul into her project. She kept praying and kept showing up for the marriage, trusting God was doing something she couldn't yet see, even when there was no evidence anything was changing. That kind of faithfulness rarely gets applause, and it can feel like shouting into an empty room. Paul spoke to this exact situation in the early church. In 1 Corinthians 7, he tells the believing wife not to leave her unbelieving husband, and the believing husband not to leave his unbelieving wife. Then he says something surprising: the believing spouse brings holiness to the marriage, and even to the children. He doesn't spell out what that looks like day to day, or how long it takes. He simply says your presence in that home matters. It's holy ground, set apart by God for something He's doing in the places you can't see. That word matters most when you've been at this for years with no sign of change. God works on a longer timeline than we do. Mike Dahlhauser describes God pursuing him across decades, through his wife's persevering prayers and a group of men at Austin Ridge Bible Church who got close enough to matter, before he finally surrendered. A long stretch with no visible movement can still be a time when God is doing His deepest work. In this episode, Bart draws on years of counseling couples in exactly this position, where one believes and the other doesn't, and the conflict that tension can create. The encouragement is plain and practical. Your job was never to convert your spouse. Your job is to love them well and stay faithful in prayer, and to leave the timeline and the outcome with God. That frees you from a burden you were never meant to hold and puts it back where it belongs. Sam couldn't see what God was doing. She prayed and stayed anyway, and God was working the whole time. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why a divided-faith marriage carries a loneliness most people never say out loud * What Paul tells the believing spouse to do, and why their presence is called holy ground * How to love your spouse well without turning their faith into a project Your presence in that home is not wasted. Love well, keep praying, and trust God with the timeline and the things you can't see. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/255 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/255] 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]. 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 Costly Parts of Leading Anyone

Leadership of any kind carries a cost most people never see, and trying to absorb all of it eventually wears a leader down and spreads to everyone around them. This episode looks at why one person was never meant to do it alone, and the help God built into leadership from the start. Leadership has a price tag most people never notice. The decisions you make alone, with no one to share the blame if they go wrong. The criticism you take and let stand. The patience you keep extending to people who may never return it. Whether you lead a team, a congregation, or a family, the part that wears on you is the part nobody can see, and the part nobody thinks to check on. There's data behind that feeling. A 2025 report in Fortune, drawing on research in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that burnout gets more expensive the higher up it goes. A burned-out individual contributor costs an organization around $4,000 a year. A manager costs more than double that, and an executive higher still. The reason is what researchers call the social contagion effect: when a drained leader walks into a room, the mood of everyone in it drops, even before a word is spoken. Employee engagement researcher Leah Phifer named the root of it as mattering erosion, the slow accumulation of small losses, and asked the question that lands hardest: who's supporting the support? Scripture put that question on the table a long time ago. In Exodus 18, Moses was settling every dispute among the Israelites from morning to night, doing every job himself, with no one asking how he was holding up. His father-in-law, Jethro, watched for a single day and told him plainly that he was going to wear himself out, and the people with him. Then Jethro gave him a plan: appoint capable, trustworthy leaders, let them handle the smaller matters, and bring only the major cases to Moses. As he put it, they will help carry the load and make the task lighter. The fix for an overwhelmed leader was not more willpower. It was distribution. One person absorbing everything was never God's design, because one person absorbing everything eventually breaks, and the people downstream pay for it. Jethro saw the pattern thousands of years before a research team put a dollar figure on it. The help was already built in; Moses just had to be willing to use it. In this episode, Bart speaks from his own experience of leadership, including the cost of absorbing criticism and choosing to let God handle it rather than defend himself. The encouragement runs in two directions. If you're the one doing every job, handing part of it off might be the most responsible move you can make. And if you're pouring into everyone while no one pours into you, that deserves your attention this week. The leader needs a leader. You were never meant to be the one who only gives, and the strongest thing you can do for the people you lead is to make sure you don't run dry. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why the hardest costs of leading are the ones no one else can see * What current burnout research reveals about how a drained leader affects everyone around them * What Jethro's counsel in Exodus 18 shows about God's design for sharing the load You weren't built to absorb everything. Asking for help is how you keep leading the people who depend on you. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/254 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/254] 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]. 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 Care for a Loved One Without Losing Yourself

When you're caring for someone you love through decline, the part that wears on you most is the grief no one recognizes and the drain that never lets up. This episode names what you've been feeling and points to the mercy that begins fresh every morning, enough for one more day. When someone you love starts to decline, the role that lands on you can be one of the most disorienting things you'll ever do. The person who once held things together now needs you to hold things together for them, and the switch doesn't happen cleanly. There are the appointments and the worry that won't shut off. And there's a kind of grief most people never name, even though that's what it is. You're losing them in pieces while you're still trying to honor them, and the world has no category for grieving someone who's still right in front of you. The wearing-down rarely comes from one dramatic crisis. It comes from the sameness, the same tasks today that you'll do again tomorrow, with no finish line in view. You can love someone with everything in you and still feel yourself running empty. Wanda Medina knew that exhaustion from the inside. Her husband, Hector, a 20-year FBI agent who had always been gentle and thoughtful, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's at 56. The man she had built her life with began to disappear, his temper rising and his patience gone, and she slid into a depression she couldn't shake. She described herself as lost and lonely. Years later, in therapy, she learned that what she'd been feeling all along had a name. She had been grieving. Tom Manak felt it too, caring for his wife, Ro, through Parkinson's until she died in 2021. As the losses added up, he said, he felt less like her husband and more like her caregiver. What changed things for him was a Parkinson's support group at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, a circle of caregivers who stayed in touch and reminded each other they weren't alone. He kept meeting with them every week, even after Ro was gone. Both of them found the same thing: this role can't be sustained alone, and no one had told them that at the start. That's where Lamentations 3:22-23 meets the caregiver. Jeremiah wrote it while everything he loved fell apart, and still he said the Lord's mercies begin fresh each morning. The promise is for the one doing the caring too. You don't have to find strength for the whole long road tonight. You only need enough for today, and tomorrow the mercy will be new again. Bart speaks to this from his own life, caring for his wife through chronic pain, and from years of counseling people in the same place. The point is plain. Mercy often arrives through other people, and asking for help is part of loving someone well. The strongest thing you can do for them is to make sure you don't collapse. You were never meant to do it on willpower alone. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: * Why caring for someone you love brings a grief that often goes unnamed * What two real caregivers learned about why the role can't be sustained alone * What Lamentations 3:22-23 promises the caregiver, and one step toward the support you need You can love someone with everything you have and still need help to keep going. His mercy is new every morning, and it's enough for today. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/253 [https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/253] 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]. 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