Despite what you may think, I’m not talking about my age (haha)! Today marks the 30th straight day that I’ve published Gospel Encouragement Today (GET). This was my goal when I started — to do thirty consecutive daily devotionals, after which I’d evaluate things and determine my next steps..
Before I get to that, let me share with you briefly why I started this project in the first place. I initiated it, first, for my own sake.
Truth is, I battle discouragement, anxiety, and negativity just like anybody else. Yet Scripture says that the joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh. 8:10). Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the Spirit” (John 7:38-39). True joy flows from the Holy Spirit within us, not from happy circumstances around us.
The Lord has taught me the same lesson that he taught George Müller two centuries ago — “a truth” Müller said, “the benefit of which I have not lost, though now … more than forty years have since passed away.” Here’s the lesson, in Müller’s own words (it’s a lengthy quote but well worth reading):
The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.
Before this time my practice had been to give myself to prayer…. Now I saw the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed … [and] be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. …
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake or preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. …
The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, very soon after, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man. …
I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow-believers to ponder this matter….
Okay! If you’ve read this far, then hopefully you’ll read just a little more of my own thoughts.
Scripture commands us as believers to “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thess. 5:11). Yet over the course of the last year, I had not seen many edifying posts and comments on social media. Quite the contrary, I have seen a lot of negativity!
The positive posts I did see were mostly superficial and centered on the happiness of the moment (e.g. birthday or anniversary celebration, family vacation, and the like). Certainly there is a place for that, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for the person who’s lonely, worried, or depressed.
So my goal was to share with others the joy that I myself have attained through daily meditation on the word of God, and how the truth of the gospel relates to everyday life.
Recently my son wanted the recipe for a breakfast dish his mother had made. He loved it so much that he wanted to fix it for himself. My wife had gotten that recipe from my aunt, after having tasted her breakfast dish! In much the same way, I’m hoping that as people read these daily devotionals, they will want to meditate more on God’s word themselves and share it with others.
Looking Back … Looking Ahead
Writing these daily devotionals is a significant time commitment. Each article takes, on average, almost two hours a day to complete. If I am going to sustain this blog ministry over the long haul, I’m going to have to write a little less. Just a little.
So my plan is to continue writing five articles per week, Monday through Friday, and then take the weekends and vacations off. My hope is that with this slight modification in output, I’ll be able to sustain this blog ministry for the foreseeable future.
I welcome your feedback and would appreciate your “sharing” on social media any articles that you think are worth passing on to others. After all, everyone could use some Gospel Encouragement Today!