Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

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...

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 ev...

Most of us have at least one thing we've never said out loud, and we keep it because the secret feels safer buried. This episode looks at why hidden things grow in the dark, and how James 5:16 ties confession to the healing you've been needing. Almost everyone is keeping something. A thing they did, or a thing done to them, that they decided no one would ever hear about. It feels safer buried, and...

A lot of us say yes to almost everything, then resent the very people we said yes to. This episode looks at why we do it, and how telling the truth about your capacity frees both you and the people you love. Most of us don't set out to live overcommitted. We say yes to one good thing, then another, until the calendar is full and so is the resentment we can't quite name. We agree to the lunch and t...

You can be managing for months and then fall apart in a grocery store. That's not falling behind. In this episode, discover what grief research and Psalm 147:3 both say about the pace God heals the brokenhearted. A woman walked into a grocery store three months after her father died. She wasn't falling apart. She'd been managing: gotten through the funeral and the paperwork, and gone back to work....

Your track record is working against you. The people around you are still responding to who you were. In this episode, discover what Philippians 1:6 says about the work God started, and why He doesn't need anyone else's vote to finish it. Rusty came out of prison with a changed heart and a track record that said otherwise. He'd grown up in southeast Oklahoma with a county sheriff for a father and...

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...

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 find...

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....

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...

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 Bibl...

Every year, 2.7 million Americans stop going to church. Most walked away from something that wounded them. In this episode, discover what God says to the person whose church let them down, and where the road back actually starts. Natalie Runion grew up as a pastor's daughter in Cincinnati and spent her whole life in the church. Then she watched her family get pushed out of the congregation her fat...

Most of us want to be trusted. But trust is built through small, unspectacular decisions made when no one is watching. In this episode, discover what Luke 16 says about how character is built, and where it actually starts. In 2019, a team of researchers spread out across 40 countries and dropped 17,000 wallets in banks, hotels, and public offices. Each wallet had cash inside, ranging from nothing...

There's a kind of grief that comes from watching someone you love suffer and knowing you can't make it stop. In this episode, discover what Job 2 says about presence, and why staying in the room is often the most loving thing you can do. Heather Tomlinson is a journalist in the UK who was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, went through 2 operations and a round of radiotherapy, and wrote abou...

Some marriages have more than friction. In this episode, discover what it looks like to keep loving a difficult person, what 1 Corinthians 13 says about love as a practice, and where the resource comes from when yours is gone. A woman who asked to remain anonymous wrote her story for FamilyLife after 47 years of marriage. She had married at 18 to a man who was chronically negative, self-centered,...

Most of us wait until the work slows down before we rest. It never slows down. In this episode, discover what Genesis 2 and decades of workplace research say about rest as something you were built for, not something you earn. Two researchers named Charlotte Fritz and Sabine Sonnentag spent years tracking what happens to workers who never fully stop. Study after study showed the same pattern: the w...

Most of us know what it feels like to carry something unresolved for longer than we should. In this episode, discover what Acts 24:16 says about a clear conscience, and what it costs to get one back. In the summer of 2014, a 15-year-old girl walked into a bookstore in Miami and walked out with a copy of Agatha Christie's Third Girl without paying. She immediately regretted it. Two years later, she...

Some losses come with a casserole and a card. Others you carry alone because the world doesn't have a name for them. In this episode, discover what Psalm 34:18 says about which broken hearts God draws close to. Ryan Cole and his wife Kelsi had the nursery ready and the bags packed when they lost their son Whitson at 36 weeks. After he died, the support poured in for Kelsi. Meals arrived and messag...

There's a loneliness that comes with being the person everyone leans on. In this episode, discover what God said to Moses when he hit his limit, and why the load He designed for you was never meant to be carried alone. In 2022, 65 percent of American pastors reported regular feelings of loneliness and isolation. That was up from 42 percent in 2015, meaning the share of pastors describing themselve...

Most of us carry a picture of what our lives were supposed to look like by now. In this episode, discover why the gap between that picture and your life produces grief worth naming, and why God's plan fits better than the one you drew up. Paul Helsby had been the one who fixed things his whole life. He stepped up at 11 when his father wasn't around and his mother was disabled. He ran the household...

Most of us were taught that anger at God is off-limits. In this episode, discover why the Psalms say otherwise, and how bringing your fury to God is an act of faith rather than a failure of it. Micca Campbell was 21 years old and a new mother when her husband was burned in a house fire. More than 80 percent of his body. She sat in the hospital waiting room, and when the doctor walked through the d...

Most of us aren't confused about whether we're holding a grudge. We know. In this episode, discover what bitterness does to the people carrying it, and why letting go is an act of self-preservation. Thomas Haberbush was a teacher in Saratoga Springs, New York. In the 1970s he received poor job reviews and eventually lost his position. That was roughly 30 years before the police showed up. In 2003,...

Purpose doesn't always disappear because of a crisis. Sometimes it just fades when a chapter ends. In this episode, discover what Esther 4:14 says about timing, calling, and what God tends to do at the moment you think you're finished. Sharon Stevens was a hairdresser and a single mother in Louisville, Kentucky. One morning she sat down with her coffee, opened the newspaper, and read about a widow...

Telling the truth comes with a price. So we soften it or skip it. In this episode, discover what Ephesians 4:15 asks of us, and what a relationship built on comfortable half-truths actually costs. Kristina had spent her university years in New Zealand building an image she was proud of. She was a dancer and a performer who got high grades. She knew exactly how to look like she had it together, and...

When someone you love is caught in addiction, you're carrying a grief most people around you can't see. In this episode, discover what God says to the ones who keep loving, keep praying, and keep standing at the door. Charles and Janet Morris were the kind of parents who prayed for their kids, and they needed to be. Their oldest son Jeff struggled from early on, and as the years passed his behavio...