Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

Bart Leger
  • 5.0 (11)
  • Christianity
  • Updated 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. 1d ago

    When You Keep Starting Things and Not Finishing Them

    You begin with excitement, and by week six the momentum runs out. Learn what Solomon puts beside starting in Ecclesiastes 7:8, and the second prayer most of us never think to pray. Some Christians have noticed a pattern in themselves. You start with excitement. A new project, or a new commitment at church. For a few weeks it's the best thing going. Then somewhere around week six, the momentum runs out. It stops being fun, and the thing stays half-done while you're already getting interested in something else. What wears on you is the accumulation. One unfinished thing is nothing. Eleven of them start to feel like a verdict on your character. This episode opens at West Point, where thousands of new cadets arrive every summer for a training so brutal they simply call it Beast Barracks. Some of the most talented young people in the country walk in, and a lot of them do not make it to the end. Psychologist Angela Duckworth wanted to know why. She had the cadets' test scores and fitness numbers in front of her, and she figured the strongest and smartest would be the ones still standing when it was over. Ecclesiastes 7:8 says, "Finishing is better than starting. Patience is better than pride." Look at what Solomon puts side by side. Finishing goes with patience, and starting goes with pride. That second line stings a little, and there's something to it. The start is where you get to picture yourself finished. You see the completed thing in your head and get a little of the feeling of having done it before you've done any of it. Starts are cheap. A start costs you an afternoon and a trip to the store. A finish costs you the ninety days in the middle when nobody is watching. So ask God for two things, and understand that they're two different requests. The first is the grace to finish what you start. That's endurance, the willingness to keep going after the feeling that got you started is long gone. The second request gets less attention, and it may be the one you need more. Ask for the wisdom to know what is important enough to start in the first place. Some of your unfinished things were never yours to begin. A man who starts six things and finishes one has a discernment problem as much as an endurance problem. Bart shares his own version of this, the college year he walked away from and the second attempt a few years later that ran all the way through grad school to a PhD. Duckworth found something similar at West Point. The scores and fitness numbers told her what a cadet was able to do, and nothing about who would still be standing on day thirty-nine. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What Solomon sets beside starting, and why it stings The second prayer to pray about your unfinished list One thing to finish today and one thing to quit on purpose Grit gets built the same way every time, by finishing something small and then finishing the next thing after it. Finish one small thing today, and quit one on purpose. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/339 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 Keep Starting Things and Not Finishing Them

  2. 2d ago

    When Your Family Holidays Are Unrecognizable Now

    A parent died or the kids moved away, and the holidays look nothing like they used to. Learn what Psalm 30:5 promises and what it leaves open, plus how to sort the traditions you keep from the ones you set down. The holidays you grew up with are not the holidays you have now. A parent died, or a marriage ended. Your grown children moved across the country and they rotate years with the in-laws now. The table you used to gather around doesn't exist anymore, and the one you sit at now can feel like a smaller, sadder version of the original. Here's what makes it lonesome. Nobody else in the room seems to be grieving the way you are. The kids are fine. Somebody put music on. And you're standing in the kitchen doing the math on how many people used to be in this house on this day. This episode opens with Teri, who spent almost thirty-seven years building a life with her husband. The holidays looked pretty much the same every year, the smells from the kitchen and the way the house filled up when everyone arrived. Then in the fall of 2019, a terminal illness took him, and the first Christmas came anyway. She barely remembers it. She thinks she put up a tree, but she can't say for sure how she managed it. Psalm 30:5 says, "Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning." Look at what David hands you. A night, and a morning. That's a pattern he had watched God keep, and a pattern tells you what happens without telling you when. People use this verse as a promise that relief shows up on a schedule. David is making a bigger claim than that, and a slower one. Notice the order too. Weeping comes first, and it gets its own line in the verse. David doesn't rush past it or apologize for it, and you don't have to either. So cry about what ended. The holiday you grew up with was something, and it deserves to be missed. Grieving it is the price of having loved the people who used to be at that table. Then look at how God tends to work on the other side of a loss. He rebuilds, and what He rebuilds rarely matches the blueprint of what stood there before. Different house, same builder. Which gives you something to do this year. Take your traditions one at a time and sort them. Some still mean what they always meant, and you keep those. Some only hurt now, and you have permission to set those down without explaining yourself. That leaves room for one or two you have never done before. Bart shares his own version of this, the first Christmas after Katharine's mother passed away. Teri found the same road, keeping what still meant something and letting go of the rest. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What Psalm 30:5 promises, and what it leaves open Why weeping gets its own line before the morning arrives A twenty-minute exercise for sorting your holiday traditions She wrote that she wanted the grace and courage to enjoy the life God still gives. Still gives. Present tense. She was not finished being given things. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/338 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 Family Holidays Are Unrecognizable Now

  3. 3d ago

    What to Do When You've Been Treated Unfairly at Work

    Someone less qualified got the promotion, or your idea showed up with another name on it. Learn what Psalm 37 says to stop doing, and the active command that keeps resentment from shrinking your work. There are stretches when your workplace is fair, and there are stretches when it isn't. You watched somebody less qualified get the promotion. Your idea showed up in a meeting with another person's name attached to it. It is one thing to be treated unfairly. It is another thing to keep showing up on Monday and act like it never happened. And here's where the damage gets done. You start running the thing on a loop, rehearsing what you should have said and doing the math on who knew about it and who said nothing. You drive home composing an email you will never send. The unfair thing happened once. The fretting happens every day, and that's the part that eats you. This episode opens with Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a graduate student staring at long rolls of chart paper when she noticed a strange little signal, a pulse repeating with impossible regularity. She had found a pulsar, something no one had ever seen, and it would change astronomy. The discovery was hers. But when the Nobel Prize came in 1974, it went to her male supervisor, and her name was left off entirely. Psalm 37:1-3 speaks straight into that: "Don't worry about the wicked or envy those who do wrong. For like grass, they soon fade away... Trust in the LORD and do good." Look at what David tells you to quit doing. Older translations say fret not. Fretting is a word for gnawing on something, and it keeps an injustice alive for years after the event that caused it is over. Then David gives his reason, and it's an argument about time. Like grass, they soon fade away. The person who took credit for your work is operating on a clock that runs out. Then comes the part to write down. Trust in the LORD and do good. Two commands, and the second one is active. Keep doing your work well, even where nobody is handing out credit for it. That asks more of you than it sounds like, because the natural move after you've been passed over is to start giving less. You pull back an inch and nobody notices except you, and then your work slips. Psalm 37 blocks that exit. Your integrity is not on loan from your employer. Bart shares his own version of this, the years at the sheriff's office when they brought in an instructor from another state to teach a class he was certified to teach, while departments across the country were flying him in to train their people. Bell Burnell took a longer road. She kept doing excellent science for decades, and in 2018 she gave away a three million dollar prize to help women and minority students become physicists. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Why fretting does more damage than the unfair event itself The time argument David makes in verse 2 One active command that keeps resentment from shrinking your work God sees what your manager never saw, and He is a truer judge than any HR department. Take it to God, and then go do good work. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/337 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 Treated Unfairly at Work

  4. 4d ago

    Help, My Marriage Survived but Never Healed

    The crisis is years behind you and the marriage works, and there's still a list of subjects neither of you brings up. Learn why Ephesians 4:32 speaks to a couple who assumed the healing ended long ago. Some couples went through a crisis, or a string of them, and they made the decision to stay married. That was the right call, and they have lived with it for years now. And the deeper wounds from what happened never fully closed. You still avoid certain subjects, and both of you know which ones they are. The marriage functions, and something in it feels haunted. Here's the part I want to get at. Most couples in this position have quit expecting anything else. You're not in a crisis, and nobody is threatening to leave. You made your peace with a ceiling, and you assume what you have now is the finished product. As far as you can tell, the healing stopped years ago, and you filed the rest under this is just how we are. This episode opens with a picture of a husband and wife married a long time. A few years back something happened between them, a betrayal, and it nearly ended everything. They talked it through and decided to stay together, and they did. They pay the bills and raise the kids, and most nights they eat across the table from each other. But there's a list of subjects neither of them brings up. From the outside the marriage looks healed. Inside, it feels like a house divided. Ephesians 4:32 speaks into that: "Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you." Look at who Paul was writing to. The verse right before this one lists off bitterness and rage, which tells you plenty about that church. These were people with reasons to be less than kind to each other, and he tells them to be kind anyway. Kindness is the material you rebuild with after trust has cracked, and it stays available when the big conversations are closed off. Then look at the standard Paul attaches. Just as God through Christ has forgiven you. That's the measure, and it's also the supply. And here's the push. God has not signed off on the ceiling you've accepted. He is patient with a marriage that stayed, and patient means He is still working on it. Bart shares his own version of this, the couples he has counseled in exactly this spot and what he has had to admit about what he can see from the pulpit. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Why kindness is the material that rebuilds a marriage after trust cracks What Paul attaches to the command, and why it changes where the supply comes from One small thing to do for your spouse today, with no conversation attached There is no single dramatic scene that fixes a marriage like this. What heals takes small acts over time. He is patient with a marriage that lasts, and He is not finished with it yet. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/336 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.

    Help, My Marriage Survived but Never Healed

  5. 5d ago

    What to Do When Your Prayer Has Become Mostly Complaint

    After a stretch of difficult months, some Christians notice that complaint is nearly all their prayer has been. Learn what Colossians 4:2 attaches to prayer, and the one sentence that changes where your praying starts. Prayer is one of the places God welcomes your complaint. He wants to hear about what's wrong, and Scripture is full of people who told Him at length and got no rebuke for it. But some Christians get to a point, usually after a stretch of difficult months, where they notice that complaint is nearly all their prayer has been. Every prayer is either asking for something or reporting what hurts. If you could play back the last thirty days of your prayer life, it would sound like a list of grievances read into the dark. Nothing went wrong to make that happen. It fills up the way a gutter fills up, one leaf at a time, and you don't notice until the water has nowhere to go. This episode opens with Anne Marie Winz, who started noticing her body giving out on her. Her muscles were losing their strength, and the doctors eventually called it myositis. She prayed, the way anyone would, but her prayers had turned into one long complaint. When a friend suggested she try thanking God in the middle of it, something in her pushed back. She told God straight out that she could not find a single thing to be thankful for. Colossians 4:2 gives a short instruction for that: "Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart." Look at how Paul packages it. Thanksgiving is inside the command about prayer, riding along with devotion and an alert mind. For Paul, thankfulness is part of the equipment you pray with, the same way attention is. And notice what he never says. He doesn't tell them to quit bringing God their trouble. Paul wrote that letter from a prison cell, and a few verses later he mentions his own chains and asks them to pray about his situation. Here's what makes this workable. Thankfulness is a discipline, and a discipline does its job whether or not the feeling shows up that day. You don't have to feel grateful to say something true about what God has done. You only have to say it out loud, in His presence, while the difficult thing is still there and still unchanged. So start with one thing, make it the first sentence of your prayer, and then go on and say everything else you were already going to say. Bart shares his own version of this, how close he gets to that line some weeks and the two truths that pull him back. Anne Marie started small. Thank You that I can still lift my arms over my head to put on a shirt. The disease did not back off, and her muscles kept weakening. What changed was where her prayer started. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Why Colossians 4:2 attaches thanksgiving to the command about prayer itself How a discipline works on the days the feeling never arrives One sentence to put in front of your prayer tonight The lament stays right where it is. You're adding one sentence in front of it, and that's the whole assignment. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/335 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 Your Prayer Has Become Mostly Complaint

  6. Sep 25

    What to Do When You're Afraid Your Child Is Dating the Wrong Person

    You see things your child can't see yet, and every word you say seems to push them further in. Learn what Psalm 25:12 changes about the way you pray, and what fifty years of research says about a parent's leverage. Few things pull on a parent like watching your child with somebody you're worried about. You see things they can't see yet. You've been around long enough to know how much a partner shapes a life, and you can already picture the next ten years of it. And you're walking a line every day. Say too much and you push them closer to that person and further from you. Say nothing and you feel like you stood there and watched it happen. Most parents end up doing both. You hold it in for weeks, and then it comes out sideways at the supper table in a tone you never planned on using. This episode opens in 1972, when a team of researchers set out to test something every worried parent wonders about. They tracked dating and married couples for months, watching what happened as families pushed against the match. The numbers seemed to confirm a parent's worst fear. The more the parents disapproved, the more in love the couples said they were. They called it the Romeo and Juliet effect, and for decades the takeaway was that fighting your kid's relationship only pours gas on it. Psalm 25:12 changes the question a parent brings to God: "Who are those who fear the LORD? He will show them the path they should choose." Look at who does the work in that sentence. He will show them. God does the showing. The path gets revealed to the person walking it, and you aren't the one holding the flashlight. That ought to change what you ask God for. Most of us pray about the other person. Psalm 25 points somewhere else entirely. Pray that your child can see. Ask God for discernment in your son or daughter, for eyes to recognize what's in front of them and the spine to act on it. That prayer has an advantage the other one doesn't. It never requires you to be right about this person. You might be right. You might also be wrong, and every parent listening knows a family who was dead wrong about somebody. The door does open sometimes, and when it does, say one thing and keep it to what you've noticed. Then stop, because the stopping is what keeps the door on its hinges. Bart shares his own version of this, the parents who sit across his desk hoping he'll hand them a sentence that makes their kid see it, and what he tells them now instead. As for that 1972 study, later researchers went back to repeat it, and the original story fell apart. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What happened when researchers tried to replicate the Romeo and Juliet effect How Psalm 25:12 changes what a worried parent prays for One way to speak when the door opens, and when to stop talking There was no reliable lever a parent could pull. You can pray, and you can speak when the door opens. The work of turning a heart belongs to God. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/334 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 Afraid Your Child Is Dating the Wrong Person

  7. Sep 24

    When You Realize You've Been the Difficult Person at Church

    Somebody gets short with you, and a group goes flat when you walk up. Learn what Romans 14:19 asks of you once you suspect you've been the friction at your own church, and where the pursuit starts. This one is for the person who has finally noticed. Maybe somebody said something to you kindly, and it stayed with you longer than they meant it to. Maybe you started seeing a pattern in how conversations at church go when you're part of them. Somebody gets short with you. A group goes a little flat when you walk up. And you're starting to wonder whether the difficult person at your church might be you. That's uncomfortable to see, and it's one of the better things that can happen to a person, because nobody changes something he can't see. This episode opens with Lara d'Entremont, who knew her theology. She had read the books and learned the arguments, and she was sure she had it right. So when her family started attending a church that did things differently, she walked in with her guard up. She scoffed at the way they read certain passages and got annoyed at their worship style, and in the back of her mind was a private verdict about these people. She figured she was there to put up with them until something better came along. Romans 14:19 speaks to that moment: "So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up." Paul writes it at the close of a chapter about believers divided over food and holy days, and over how they were treating each other about it. Look at the two verbs. Aim for. Try to build. Both take effort, and both point outward at other people. Older translations put it as pursue, and you pursue something by going after it on purpose. So if God is showing you that you've been the friction, stopping is half of it. The other half is the pursuit, and pursuit in a church building is ordinary work. You let a comment go by without correcting it, and you look for a chance to build somebody up out loud, where it costs you a little something to say it. Then you go find the person you've been short with and tell them you were short with them. If God used a person to show you this, that person did you a kindness most people are too polite to do. Thank Him for it, and then thank them if you can stand to. Bart shares his own version of this, the list of difficult people he has kept over years of pastoring, and the question a man who keeps a list that long ought to ask himself. Lara's turn came through a loss, when the people she had looked down on were the ones who showed up at her door. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What Romans 14:19's two verbs ask of you beyond simply stopping Ordinary ways to pursue peace in your own congregation this week One question to ask someone who will tell you the truth She kept every conviction she walked in with. What she put down was the ranking. He's showing you now, while you still have time to be different in that building, with those same people. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/333 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 Realize You've Been the Difficult Person at Church

  8. Sep 23

    When God Asks You to Give Something Away

    Every so often God puts His finger on something in your life and asks you to open your hand. A possession you've grown attached to. A relationship you've been trying to control. You probably know what yours is already, because it came to mind the moment you heard the title of this episode. And the first thing you feel is loss. You start counting what it would cost you, and the number gets bigger the longer you stare at it. This episode opens with Jeff and Kari Patterson, who had finally built the house they always wanted after years of saving and planning. It was brand-new, with room to spread out and everything the way they liked it. Then Kari read a book that asked how much a family needs, and the question would not leave her alone. She looked around at the dream house they had just moved into, and for the first time it felt like too much. Mark 10:21-22 tells of a man who ran up and knelt in front of Jesus, asking what he had to do to inherit eternal life: "Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. 'There is still one thing you haven't done,' he told him. 'Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'" Look at the order Mark gives us. Jesus looked at the man and loved him, and then He made the request. The love comes first. The man had a long list of things he'd gotten right, and Jesus went straight to the one that owned him. Then the sentence ends with an invitation. Then come, follow me. The selling was the doorway, and Jesus was standing on the other side of it. The man's face fell, and he went away sad, because he had many possessions. He's one of the few people in the Gospels who heard Jesus say follow me and turned it down. He wanted what Jesus was offering. He wanted his stuff more. Sometimes the thing God asks you to release is the thing He knows is standing between you and Him. If He is asking, He is inviting you into something better than what you'd be letting go of. Bart shares his own version of this, the months when he and Katharine felt the Lord impress on them to give everything they had left, and how God met their needs every time. The Pattersons found the same thing. They sold the house, and what they got back was a life that fit what they believed. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: Why Mark records Jesus loving the man before He made His request What the invitation at the end of verse 21 reveals about the ask A one-minute prayer for opening your hand over the thing God is pointing to All of us have something God can use. The size of the thing matters less than whose hand it's in. If He's asking you, He's inviting you. Share This Episode: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/332 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 God Asks You to Give Something Away
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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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