Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - When God Seems Distracted | The Gospels | Matthew 9:18–38

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Have you ever felt like God has forgotten about you? Why does Jesus pause to help a woman while a desperate father waits for him to heal his dying daughter? And what does this story teach us about trusting in God’s timing? In today’s episode, Patrick explores Matthew 9:18–38 and reminds us that God hasn’t forgotten us, even when he asks us to wait and trust his purposes. Want to become a more consistent Bible reader? Download our free Ten Minute Bible Guide and start building a simple, sustainable habit of meeting with God through his word. Grab your guide here. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Matthew 9:18–38

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. I try to be a good dad, but I'm far from perfect. In one area, I make an effort, but still fall short, is with my devices. Early on in parenting, I had this realization that if I didn't keep my phone under control, my kid's memory of me wouldn't be of a father-loving and engaging with them, but of a dad loving his phone. Now, the truth is that I've gone through faces.

Sometimes I'm doing better, sometimes I'm doing a little worse, but in general, I kind of thought that things were going well until I had a dire conversation with my daughter. She said the words that I had always dreaded. You only pay attention to your phone. Pay attention to me instead. That was a dagger to the heart. My worst nightmare turned real. Maybe not the worst nightmare, but certainly one that I had. And I think I fear it so much because I know that my actions communicate my heart.

and in that moment my actions were communicating a heart I don't really have that my daughter iris doesn't really matter that iris is second to my phone that iris isn't interesting that iris isn't a little girl that I love more than just about anything else of course none of those things are true in the depths of my heart but my actions were saying otherwise and as i think about my relationship with god i have to make a confession sometimes i feel like god's distracted sometimes i feel like he's looking at his phone instead of looking at me, and I know I'm not the only one. Matthew's gospel tells such a story. Let's pick up in Matthew 918. While he, this is Jesus, was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, My daughter has just died, but come and put your hand on her and she will live.

Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples. Just then, a woman who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, if I only touch his cloak, I will be healed. Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said. Your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed at that moment. Now at this point, I just want you to put yourselves in the shoes of the synagogue leader.

His daughter has just died. This is an urgent situation, life and death. But on the way to go resurrect his daughter, a woman shows up with a chronic illness. So what did he expect Jesus to do in that moment? I don't know, but I know what I'd expect. I'd expect Jesus to say to the woman, I care about you, but we've got an urgent situation. I'll come back and help you later. But that's not what Jesus does.

Instead, he stops, he turns to her, he talks to her, and tells her that she's healed. In other words, Jesus takes his eye off the urgent situation with a dead child and helps a woman in need. And again, I wonder how the synagogue leader felt, maybe a bit like my daughter. Jesus, I came to you, I trusted you, I needed you urgently right now, but you're not. allowing yourself to be distracted. You're allowing your attention to go elsewhere. Do I even matter to you? Does my daughter matter to you? Or am I just a wallflower beyond the scope of your concern? And I wonder if you've ever felt the same way. Maybe you've gone through a bad diagnosis. Maybe it was someone that you love. And you've prayed, you've asked God to heal and to help,

but nothing changes. Or maybe you're battling a sin you can't beat. And you've asked God to deliver you, to take this in a way, but it's still a struggle. Or maybe you're just in a difficult life situation, something you don't want, a job that's miserable, or maybe you're single but you wish you were married, or maybe you want kids, but you can't get pregnant. So you pray and you ask God to help to change your situation, to make things better, but nothing changes. And I think in these moments and in others like them, it's hard not to wonder, is God distracted? Does God care? Is God busier with other things because I don't matter? The story continues in Matthew, verse 23. When Jesus entered the synagogue leader's house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes,

he said, go away. The girl's not dead, but asleep. But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread throughout all the region. So here we have it, the happy ending, the girl comes back to life. The challenge for us is that life rarely moves this quickly. But I can promise that when your child is dead and Jesus is helping someone else, time slows down. The weight is painful, and Matthew wants us to wrestle with that. And the conclusion, which is the resurrection of the girl, that's not an accident, because that conclusion speaks a promise to us all. God never forgets. God is never distracted. You matter more to him than you could ever imagine, but your timing is not God's timing.

Your plan may not be God's plan. He never delays. He never fails to do what he intends, but there are times when he leaves us waiting. Sometimes it's for an afternoon, sometimes it's for years, and he knows that we're waiting on him. But the waiting is the purpose, because it's in the waiting that God forges us. It's in the waiting that God strengthens our faith.

It's in the waiting that we learn to rely on him and not ourselves. It's in the waiting that some of the real healing, some of our real need, some of our truest transformation takes place. and that couldn't happen unless God gave us the gift of waiting. And the story ends on resurrection for a reason, because there's a promise in resurrection to all of us when we're waiting. And the promise of the resurrection is that the wait will end.

We may die waiting. We may not. But a day is coming when he will raise us up to life, and all will be well, all will be whole, all will be made right. But until then, we wait, and we learn to rely on God and understand how much, much we matter to him in a new way that we wouldn't choose, but that he chose for us because he loves us.