Keep the Heart

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit, where you can listen to a Proverbs chapter in under five minutes! Proverbs 16 is loaded with life application principles that guide us into handling matters wisely. 

God's Word teaches us not only how to live, but even how to speak. Words have power, and when we employ them like power tools--with care--we arrive at better outcomes in our interactions with others. Here's a great verse example:

Welcome to Teachback Tuesday, where we play the most popular episodes from previous seasons! 

This week's episode, "Three Great Relationship Habits" has a short list of goals that are easy to achieve. Life is a vapor, and that includes our relationships. Take a 10-minute break to listen to this helpful relationship-building episode from Season Three. 

Apply: Living What We Learn--31-Day Devotional by Francie Taylor

NEW! Herbs for t...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit. The first day of each month puts us at the beginning of the book of Proverbs. This introductory chapter lays the foundation for the purposes of Proverbs in our lives:

"To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion." (Proverbs 1:4) The word "subtilty" means "wisdom and prudence." In other words, Proverbs teach us how to apply practical wisdom to the issues that we f...

Do you have a problem that is over 12 years old? Maybe your situation has gone on longer. One thing is certain: your issue is not too hard for God. We may not understand His timing, but we can trust His goodness. When we don’t understand, Psalm 119:68 makes an excellent prayer request: "Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes." 

There was an unnamed woman in the New Testament who had a "12-year issue of blood," which m...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit, where you can listen to a chapter of Proverbs in about 5 minutes or less. The goal of these chapter episodes is to build a habit of daily Bible reading. While listening may not be the same as reading from a physical Bible, this is a great way to establish your habit.

Here's a verse from Proverbs 18, reminding us that arrogance is destructive, while humility is rewarding:

"Before destruction t...

When I was a senior in high school, I was selected to participate in a foreign exchange student program that led me to live in Chile for a year. My first few months were hard. I felt like a person who didn’t fit in anywhere. There were some days when I just felt lonely and wanted my old familiar life back. 

Grief is like that.

The foreign land of grief is unfamiliar and can even make us feel hopeless at times, but there is hope bey...

Welcome to Replay Wednesday, where you'll hear some of the most popular episodes from the previous season. This week's episode, Calm in the Chaos, struck a chord with last season's listeners. When life is chaotic for too long, it changes from challenging to tormenting. It's doubly distressing when we don't know why things are so disorderly and confusing.

If you missed this episode in 2024, take a break for less than 15 minutes to c...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit, where you can listen to a chapter of Proverbs in under 5 minutes. The point isn't to make Bible study as short as possible. The goal is to build a daily Bible habit. Time in the Word is personal time with God: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) 

In less time than it takes to scroll through social media, you could listen to a chapter of...

The Bible has historic accounts of the lives of people who were just like us. We are not the first to wrestle with uncertainty, disbelief, or even skepticism. God can help us to grow in our ability to trust Him, but we'll need to deal with the doubt. Let’s look at three ways that doubt works against our faith, and consider how we can surrender our doubts to God.

Mentioned in this episode: Secret Doubts: Working Through Unspoken Unb...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit! The habit of being in the Word of God daily builds us up, making us spiritually stronger. God uses the "knowledge of the holy" to give us understanding, helping us to make wiser decisions and choices in our lives.

Proverbs 14 is full of instructions, observations, and even warnings like this: "Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge." (Prov...

Welcome to Replay Wednesday! This episode, "How to Handle Discouragement" from Season One continues to be one of the most frequently-downloaded episodes. No surprise. Discouragement is a common experience, and it has a lot of causes.

Maybe you've lost a job and haven't been able to find another one yet. Or perhaps there's trouble in your family and it feels like the problems are multiplying. Or maybe there's something you have been...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit, where you can listen to a chapter of Proverbs in about five minutes. This is a habit that pays in the currency of godly wisdom, which the Bible calls "the principal thing (Prov. 4:7).

If you've ever wondered why it seems like divisiveness is increasing, there is an answer to that question in Proverbs 29:27: "An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is abo...

Prideful thoughts sound like these:

• Who do they think they are?
• She/he thinks her/his way is the only way to do things.
• Why do they get praised for doing the same work that I do?
• I should get recognition for this.
• I'm not bragging, but...

Welcome to a Bible Study segment from the series, ICU: In Christ Unconditionally-Heart Conditions. This week's episode is a study of "The Proud Heart." This is a 25-minute episode, sinc...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit! This week, Proverbs 15 opens the chapter with a lesson on the "soft answer." We need this lesson. When people speak to us harshly, it's human nature to want to respond the same way. Our carnal nature is not interested in godliness. It is human to have a classic case of "how dare they speak to me like that." 

When we tell someone off and imagine that it will settle things, instead this wrong m...

When I had a heart procedure done a few years ago, I was told that I would be feeling great afterwards. This was not my experience! Instead, shortly after going home I was taken right back to the ER with overwhelming pains that were shooting through my body. The heart procedure had damaged some nerves at the point of entry for the surgery. These nerves went crazy and sent lightning bolts of pain through my body for a few days. Once...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit! One of the greatest habits you can develop for the health of your soul is to feed it daily from the Word of God. Just as the physical body needs nourishment, so does the soul.

The 3rd chapter of Proverbs is full of instructions that guide and direct us in our daily living. In fact, the first two verses point us to the importance of remembering God's Word and living by it.

"My son, forget not ...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit, where you can listen to a chapter of Proverbs in five minutes or less. The habit of feeding your soul from the Bible daily is like the habit of providing nourishment for the physical body. Just as junk food doesn't build strength, filling the mind with everything but the Bible leads to spiritual weaknesses. Building a daily Bible habit will build your wisdom and understanding. 

Read a chapter...

Have you ever had a problem that you could not figure out? That's like asking if you have a pulse. It is part of life to face things that are hard to understand, let alone solve. That's a good time to pray at least three words:

"Give me understanding."

The words, "give me understanding" appear five times in Psalm 119. This episode briefly covers those five verses, all of which make excellent prayer requests.

Stumped? No clue what t...

Welcome back to Build Your Bible Habit, with episodes that take you through a chapter of Proverbs in under 5 minutes. Proverbs chapter 12 covers a broad range of life topics, from righeous living to the hazards of laziness. Applying the instructions from Proverbs leads to better relationships and wiser decisions. Daily Bible reading is a habit that makes life better!

"Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth re...