Spiritual Growth Episodes

Within ninety seconds of opening your eyes, your phone has told you what to be afraid of. Learn what David asked God for each morning, and why strength for one hour is the right request. Some people wake up with a knot in the stomach before their feet hit the floor. Something you were worried about last night is right there waiting on you. Something you have to do today feels too big to start. The list begins running before you're all the way awake. And the first thing most of us do is reach fo...

You're waiting for the conversation where they finally admit what they did, and it isn't happening. Learn where Jesus placed the command to forgive in Mark 11:25, and why that makes it available to you tonight. You know exactly what you're waiting for. The email. The sit-down conversation where they finally say the words and admit what they did. And it isn't happening. Days turn into weeks, and then the months go by. You check to see whether they've reached out. They haven't, and you tell yours...

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 ...

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 li...

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 ...

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 t...

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 c...

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 d...

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 t...

Somebody tells you they're praying for you, and you don't quite know what to do with it. You mumble a thank you. It feels awkward, and you couldn't tell anybody why. Maybe part of you wonders whether they mean it, or whether it's the church version of saying take care. And underneath the awkwardness there's usually a thought you would never say out loud. You aren't sure it does anything. This episode opens with Kent Brantly, a young doctor who had gone to Liberia to care for people nobody else ...

Someone brings you information about another person that you had no need to know. Learn why Proverbs 20:19 aims its warning at the listener, and what to say when the conversation starts. Gossip has a pull that most Christians underestimate. Somebody comes to you with information about another person that you had no need to know. And here's the part we skip over. There's a small rush that goes with it. Being handed something private feels a lot like being trusted. So you feel the tug to ask one ...

You get asked how you're doing maybe a hundred times a week. The checkout line, and the hallway at work. Every time, you say fine. And most of the time you aren't. You're worn out in a way that sleep hasn't touched in a while, or you're grieving something nobody around you can see. Fine is the polite answer that ends the conversation, which is exactly the job it was built to do. The trouble starts when fine becomes the only setting you have left. You say it to your spouse across the supper table...

A lot of Christians have picked up a message from the culture without meaning to. A meaningful life has to be big. A platform, and a story people would want to hear. And then there's the week in front of you. You got up and went to work, and at some point you made supper and helped somebody with homework. Most people's lives are made of small things. Raising children, and staying married for a few decades. Somewhere in there a thought shows up. Is this all there is. You would never say it out lo...

Your kids are grown, and you can see things you would do differently. Learn why Psalm 103 ties God's tenderness to what He knows about you, and what one sentence to an adult child can still open up. A lot of parents get to a point where they look back at twenty years of raising kids and see things they would do differently. You were more critical than you needed to be, and you said things you can't unsay. Maybe you worked through years when you should have been at the table. And now they're gr...

You went into the appointment with ordinary worries and came out with something that changes everything. Learn what Isaiah 43:2 promises about God's presence in the days after a diagnosis, and how a church is meant to show up. A diagnosis changes the shape of your life in a moment. You went into the appointment with the ordinary worries about parking and getting back to work in the afternoon. You came out with something that reorders everything. The drive home is a strange thing all by itself. ...

Sometimes the thing that bothers you most about God is the schedule itself. Learn what Jesus did when Martha accused Him of showing up four days late, and why you can say the same sentence out loud. You know the feeling if you've prayed about something long enough. A door that stays shut year after year. A diagnosis that arrives in the worst possible month of the worst possible year. And the part that gets under your skin is the schedule itself. God could have done this last spring. He didn't. ...

Some of the loneliest people are living in a house full of people. Your spouse is buried in work. The kids are behind a bedroom door with their phones. You get through a whole evening under one roof and exchange maybe forty words, most of them about the schedule. Then you look around at the family you helped build and feel like a guest in it. It's a strange kind of lonely, because you can't point to the thing that went wrong. Nobody fought. Nobody walked out. It came apart slowly over a few yea...

A lot of families are spread out now. Grandparents live in one state, parents in another. The grandkids grow up on a handful of visits a year. Jobs move people. Housing prices move people. Nobody sat down and planned it this way, and here we are anyway. Some things get lost in the spread. The stories your parents could tell your children about where the family came from and what God did for them back when things were tight. The habits and small kindnesses grandkids pick up just from being aroun...

Some nights the day ends and you have nothing left, and the prayer you meant to pray never comes. Learn why a short, plain prayer counts with God, and what Jesus said about willing spirits in worn-out bodies. There are stretches when the day finally winds down and you know you should pray, and you have no energy left for it. The words won't come. The moment you close your eyes, your mind wanders off to the grocery list or something your boss said that afternoon. You start to wonder if there's s...

Almost every Christian goes through this at some point. You pray, and it seems like the words don't get past the ceiling. You open your Bible, and the verses that used to move you read flat. Nothing scandalous has happened. You didn't walk away. God just feels far off, like He stepped back and didn't say why. It's disorienting, and it can last a lot longer than you expected, weeks or even months of reaching for a presence that feels absent. This episode opens with Sara Hagerty, who wanted to be...

Familiar Christian music can hold you when nothing else quite does. Discover why the songs you've sung for years reach places words can't, and how God meets you in a melody when your faith feels dry. There's a comfort that comes the moment you hear the first few notes of a song you've known forever. Maybe it's a hymn you sang as a kid, standing next to your mother in the pew. Maybe it's the one they play at every funeral you've been to. Before you've thought about a single word, something in yo...

Watching your congregation shrink is a grief few people talk about. Discover why declining numbers don't get the final word, and how Jesus keeps building His church even when yours feels small. If you love a local church, a shrinking congregation can be depressing. You stand at the back and count, and there are fewer heads than a year ago, far fewer than five years back. You know the empty seats by name: the family that moved for a job, the couple that slowly stopped coming. Every absence is a ...

You watch another couple, and something in you twists. They finish each other's sentences. They laugh at each other's jokes in a way you and your spouse haven't in a long time. You drive home from that dinner feeling worse than when you walked in, taking inventory of everything your own marriage seems to be missing. The comparison feels like information, as if you're seeing the truth about their marriage and yours side by side. But the comparison is rigged. You're measuring what they let you see...

Always being available may look like generosity, but it slowly drains you dry. Discover why Jesus withdrew from people who needed Him, and how his example frees you to be unreachable sometimes. Some of us take pride in being reachable. The text gets answered the second it comes in. You never turn down the request for coffee, and you never let a call go unanswered. From the outside it looks like generosity, and part of it is love. But some of it is something else, a person who has never learned ...