Spiritual Growth Episodes

Most people have a preferred way to numb out when life gets uncomfortable. The scroll. The extra hour of TV. Neither is wrong by itself. But when one of them becomes the place you run every single time you don't want to feel what you're feeling, it stops being a break and starts being an escape hatch. And the more you use it, the better you get at not feeling anything at all. This episode opens with a research experiment. People were put alone in a bare room for 15 minutes with no phone and not...

Some Christians are the only person in their extended family who prays for the rest of them. There's the spouse who doesn't believe, and the grown kids who walked away from the faith they were raised in. Somehow the job of bringing that whole family before the Lord has fallen to one person, and that person is you. Nobody assigned it. You just love them, and you seem to be the only one on your knees. It can feel lonely and pointless, like your prayers go up and nothing comes down. This episode o...

The fear of getting old alone is one people don't talk about much, but it lives in a lot of hearts. Some pictured a spouse walking through the later years with them, and that person never came. Others raised kids who grew up and moved across the country, and now they lie awake wondering who will be there when they can't drive themselves to the doctor, and who would even notice if they got sick. It's a frightening thing to wonder about, and most people wonder in silence. This episode opens at a ...

You took the job. You said yes to the person. You made the move and signed the papers. And now you're a few months or a few years in, and you catch yourself wondering if you got it right. Second-guessing is common, and it isn't always a red flag. Sometimes it's grief, a mourning for the roads you didn't take and the life that might have been down the one you passed up. This episode opens with Grace, who left a secure job after 2 years, sure God was calling her to become a teacher, and enrolled ...

Every long-term Bible reader hits verses they struggle with. A command that sounds harsh. A line that seems to contradict something you were taught to believe about God. The pull is to slide past it and stick with the parts that comfort you. Most of us have a private list of verses we've been avoiding for years. Bart hears it often. People bring him the verse that bothers them, half expecting him to be shocked, and he tells them: don't skip it, stay with it. This episode opens with Martin Luthe...

Years after a relationship ended, a lot of people still feel the pull to look. You scroll the profile at midnight. You ask a mutual friend how they're doing, like it's just curiosity. Each little check feels harmless. It isn't. Every time you go back to look, you pull the scab off a wound that was trying to heal, and you plant yourself again in a place God already led you out of. This episode opens with Linnie, who spent 3 years trying to move on after a 7 year relationship ended. She threw her...

A lot of Christians hit stretches where nothing is exactly wrong. The bills are paid. The family is functioning. You have plenty to be thankful for, and you are, and still you wake up with a dryness you can't explain. You're moving through good days without tasting them. There's no crisis to point to and no obvious hole to fill, which can be more confusing than an outright problem, because you can't even say what's the matter. This episode opens with Ann Voskamp, who ran a family farm, was rais...

After enough letdowns, you decide it's safer to expect nothing. If you don't get your hopes up, they can't come crashing down. You watched a prayer go unanswered. You trusted someone and they let you down. So now you hold everything at a careful distance, bracing for the next disappointment before it comes. Hope starts to feel like a setup. This episode opens with Kashia and Riley Palmer, who longed to be parents for years. After fertility treatments failed, they turned to adoption, and a call ...

We size people up in a second, then miss the story we can't see. Discover why Romans 14:4 says the person you're judging was never yours to judge, and how to catch yourself in the moment. You're standing in a checkout line, or scrolling a feed, and you catch yourself passing judgment on someone you've never met. The way they're handling their kids. The opinion they posted. In a second flat, you've tried them and moved on, and half the time you don't notice you did it until it's already done. Th...

Some of the things that worry us most are the ones we have the least power over. You can't control what your adult child decides to do. You can't guarantee your health will hold up tomorrow. The economy, or what other people think of you, some of it you can nudge and a lot of it you simply can't touch. Part of why we grip these things is that worrying feels like doing something. If I'm anxious about it, at least I'm taking it seriously. But worry only wears the costume of responsibility. It chan...

Some Christians look back on a stretch of their lives and see wasted years. Time sunk into a relationship that damaged you. A career you chased that turned out to be the wrong one. A lot of the time there's no big sin to confess, just the grief of years you can't return and can't redo. That's its own kind of loss, and it deserves to be named. Bart has watched people, good people, add up years of their lives and call them a waste, and he's learned to take that grief seriously, because God does. ...

There comes a stretch of years when the mirror stops feeling like a friend. Your knees don't work the way they used to. The energy you took for granted at thirty isn't there when you reach for it. You catch a photo of yourself and don't recognize the person looking back, and something in you resents it. Bart knows the feeling. In his mind he still feels like he's in his thirties, until he bends down to tie his shoes, hears himself groan, and remembers his body didn't get the memo. This episode ...

The death of a loved one who never professed faith carries a grief few people know how to talk about. Discover why the secret things belong to God, and how that gives you room to grieve with hope. Losing someone you love turns everything sideways under any circumstances. When the person who died never professed faith in Christ, there's an added layer of grief, and most people don't know how to talk about it. You replay old conversations. You wonder if there was one more thing you could have sai...

There are stretches of the Christian life when you pray and it feels like nothing is happening. The words come out of your mouth and vanish into the room, with no sense that anyone is on the other end. You start to wonder if you're doing it wrong, or whether God is listening at all. That kind of stretch can make you want to quit praying, because talking to the ceiling starts to feel pointless. This episode opens with Amy Carmichael, who spent 35 years rescuing children in southern India and was...

Over time, a job can quietly become the answer to who you are, until work slows down and you feel invisible. Discover why your work is an assignment from God, and never your name. It happens over time, without you noticing. Your job title becomes the answer to the question of who you are. Somebody asks about you, and you lead with what you do for a living. You measure your weeks by what you produced. And when work slows down, when the projects dry up or the phone stops ringing, you feel invisib...

Some people find it far easier to help than to be helped. Discover why Peter refused to let Jesus wash his feet, and why learning to receive may be exactly what God is asking of you. You will drop everything when a friend is in trouble. You will bring a meal and take the late phone call. But turn it around, and you go stiff. When you are the one in trouble, you wave people off. I'm fine. I've got it. You would let a friend do for you a fraction of what you would gladly do for them. This episod...

Most adult Christians spend their time with people in the same life stage, and miss the wisdom of believers who have walked with God far longer. Discover what older Christians offer, and how to find one. Most of us spend our time with people in our own stage of life. Parents of young kids know other parents of young kids, and those friendships matter. But when your whole circle is people the same age and mileage as you, something gets left out. Nobody in that circle has been where you are going...

A lot of Christians keep praying and attending while quietly keeping God away from what matters. Discover why God's first question in the garden was "Where are you," and how answering it is the way back. A lot of Christians go through stretches of avoiding God without ever calling it that. You are still praying and still in your seat on Sunday, and God is still being kept away from the part of your life that matters right now. Maybe there is something you have been doing that you would rather n...

Every long-term Christian hits stretches where opening the Bible feels like a chore. Discover why God's Word often unfolds hours after you read it, and why the flat mornings are never wasted. Every long-term Christian has stretches when opening the Bible feels like a chore. You sit down and read a chapter, the words look dull on the page, and 5 minutes after you close it you could not tell anyone what you read. Then the thought creeps in that something must be broken in you, because other peopl...

Something knocked you down, and you have been off balance ever since. Discover why confidence built on your track record cracks, and how God rebuilds it on ground that can hold you. There was a stretch of years when you knew who you were and what you were doing. You were good at the job, or the role you had grown into. Then something happened. The job you were sure about ended, or the thing you were certain you could handle turned out to be beyond you. You have been off balance ever since, seco...

Losing a pet is a grief the people around you often minimize. Discover why your loss counts, and how the God who made animals and called them good cares for them and for you. Losing a pet is one of those griefs the people around you tend to minimize. It was just a dog, they say. Just a cat. You learn to keep the grief to yourself, going to work with a hole in your day and saying nothing, because nobody hands out bereavement leave for a cat. But you know what that animal was to you. She was ther...

There are moments when you know what you have to do and you're terrified to do it. Discover how God meets you inside the fear, and why a scared little yes is still courage. There are moments in most lives when you know exactly what you need to do, and you are scared to death of doing it. Send the email. Have the conversation you keep putting off. Fear has a sneaky way of making the ground under your feet feel like it could give way, so that doing anything at all feels like a risk you cannot aff...

Betrayal changes the way you see people, and forgiving someone is a different thing from trusting them again. Discover how God rebuilds trust by inches when you make Him the refuge under everything else. Betrayal changes the way you see people. A friend talked about you behind your back, or a spouse lied, or someone you counted on walked away right when you needed them. Even years later, long after the wound closed over, you catch yourself flinching at things a healthier version of you would ha...

Being overlooked stings most when the people passing you over already know your work. Discover what God was doing while David stood forgotten in a field, and how to stay faithful in the work in front of you. Some people spend years being the one who doesn't get picked. You watched a colleague take the promotion you were more qualified for. You watched a friend get invited to something nobody thought to include you in. The sting cuts deepest when the people passing you over already know your wor...