Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

Bart Leger
  • 5.0 (12)
  • Christianity
  • Daily

You meant to spend time with God this morning. Then the day started without you. This daily devotional podcast gets you back to Him in 7 to 9 minutes. Each weekday, pastor and author Dr. Bart Leger opens Scripture with a true story from everyday life and one practical way to apply God's truth. Listeners call it quick and to the point, a bit of calm at the start of the day. Press play and start your day anchored in God's Word.

  1. 2d ago

    When You Can’t Keep Your Mind on Prayer

    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.

    When You Can’t Keep Your Mind on Prayer

  2. 3d ago

    When Your Relationship with God Has Changed Over Time

    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.

    When Your Relationship with God Has Changed Over Time

  3. 4d ago

    What to Do When You’ve Been Giving Advice You Aren’t Following

    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.

    What to Do When You’ve Been Giving Advice You Aren’t Following

  4. 5d ago

    When You’ve Been Praying for Yourself More Than Others

    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.

    When You’ve Been Praying for Yourself More Than Others

  5. 6d ago

    What to Do When You’ve Been Hiding a Struggle From Your Spouse

    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.

    What to Do When You’ve Been Hiding a Struggle From Your Spouse

  6. Oct 23

    When Your Church Has Gotten Political and You Feel Out of Place

    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.

    When Your Church Has Gotten Political and You Feel Out of Place

  7. Oct 22

    What to Do When You’re Embarrassed of Your Past

    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.

    What to Do When You’re Embarrassed of Your Past

  8. Oct 21

    When You’ve Been Fighting About the Same Thing for Years

    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.

    When You’ve Been Fighting About the Same Thing for Years
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About

You meant to spend time with God this morning. Then the day started without you. This daily devotional podcast gets you back to Him in 7 to 9 minutes. Each weekday, pastor and author Dr. Bart Leger opens Scripture with a true story from everyday life and one practical way to apply God's truth. Listeners call it quick and to the point, a bit of calm at the start of the day. Press play and start your day anchored in God's Word.

Information

  • Creator
    Bart Leger
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    300
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Daily Devotions for Busy Lives
  • Show Website
    Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

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