write devotionals so others can benefit from my experiences

I think its safe to say that at least a third of the posts on my blog can be classified as devotionals depending upon how they are read.

Alright, I’ve got another illustration thing I want to post. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. What the title of this is supposed to mean is that we always hear “Quality over quantity!” However, I’d like to say “Quality will lead to quantity!” At least in the case of what this illustration is talking about:

I’m constantly hearing people talk about how we need to go out and evangelize more. Don’t get me wrong, I agree wholeheartedly with that, but I would also like to make a different point.

The point I’d like to make is that we also need to spend more time discipling those that have already come to know the Lord. I’ve seen many times where people go forward in church to accept the sacrifice Jesus made for them. They will continue going to church for a while, but since there was nothing specifically in place to help with the growth of new believers, many times they don’t see any growth and begin losing hope again and gradually slide away.

If we spent more time discipling those new believers, then they too would be able to go out and spread the gospel. That way not only are we showing people the truth, we are also helping them to grow in their relationship with God.

For example, let’s say you lead one person to the Lord each year, and for the rest of that year discipled them, helping them grow and giving them the knowledge and wisdom to lead others to the Lord. Then the next year, you do the same thing with another person, and the person you discipled the first year does too. If you continue this pattern, it may not seem like you are doing much in terms of evangelism. However, the numbers grow quite rapidly.

In the first year, there would be one new believer. The second year, three(the one from the first year, plus two more). Following that pattern out:

Year-Number of new believers
1——1
2——3
3——7
4——15
5——31
6——63
7——127
8——255
9——511
10—-1023

By the end of the 10th year, you would have only directly led ten people to the Lord. However, through that service, there would be 1023 people that not only now have a new personal relationship with God, but are also prepared to pass on that gift to others in coming years. For you to have led that many people to the Lord, that would be about 102 people each year. Not to mention all of the people you would have to witness to that would reject Him. And there would be no way for you to help each of those 102 people each year to grow significantly in their relationship with God.

Now imagine if not only you were doing this, but also the rest of your church. Now THAT would be an amazing form of evangelism in my mind.

I’ve always been told, “Quality, not quantity.” Well, in this case, quality leads to quantities that would’ve been unthinkable before.

As far as this goal goes, I haven’t actually been writing devotionals yet. However, I have been writing down some of the illustrations I may use(like I talked about in the past couple of entries). So I think I might post them on here every once in a while. I probably won’t post all of them, but just one here or there. For the most part they are just kind of rough drafts so that I will have something to refer to when I actually am ready to use them. Maybe once I get more of them written out and organized, I will go back and fix them up a little nicer. For now though, there seems to be an endless supply of illustrations and I’m going to mainly focus on trying to get them written down.

Stay in the Light

I grew up close to Native American Bible Academy. Throughout the year, there would be groups that came in from around the country to do work with the Native American churches in the area, to do construction projects around the school, or some combination of the two.

One night, I was over there visiting with one of the groups after we had come back from one of the local churches. That same night, there was another group that was getting ready to leave. All at once, they decided they each wanted a million pictures of the group that was staying behind. Flashes began going off everywhere.

When that all began, I was standing in a doorway behind the people they were taking pictures of. Not wanting to ruin too many cameras, I decided to step outside and out of the way. Soon I noticed that the countless flashes were painful for my eyes. When I had been standing in the doorway, the flashes weren’t as much of a contrast to the light I was already standing in. Once I stepped out into the darkness, it was painful to look upon the light.

When we step out of God’s picture, we step into darkness. Soon, our spiritual eyes adjust to the darkness that is all around us. Then when we look back upon the light, God’s truth, it can be painful even though we were dwelling in it not long ago.

In my last entry, I mentioned that I was going to start writing down my illustrations that I come up with.

Well, when I started doing that today, I realized something. I have no idea how I’m going to organize them. I was going to put them all in a really big Word document so they’d all be there in one place. Then I realized it would be really hard to find the right one later one. So I need to find some way to organize them, probably by topic(but even then some could apply to more than one topic). For now, I’m just going to put each one of them in its own file and keep them all in the same folder. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out some kind of system that will work though.

It may come down to just making a different folder for each topic and then if something fits into more than one topic, maybe keep it in both folders or something.

Another idea is to go ahead and keep all of them in one folder and then have a separate file for each topic and in those files have a list of the names(and maybe some variation of the Dewey Decimal System or whatever) of each illustration I have that fits into that topic.

I dunno, I’ll figure something out. For now, I don’t have enough written out for it to matter all that much, but I’d like to have something figured out before it gets crazy.

I’ve always liked illustrations in sermons, when they’re used well. It has always fascinated me how something seemingly unrelated can be used so effectively to get a point across.

Over the past few weeks, I haven’t been able to spend much time directly working on this goal. However, I’ve made a lot of progress on it. The Lord has been showing me that just about anything can be used to illustrate a Biblical point if you’re creative enough. I think there is a point where you’re trying too hard and it stops working well, but if you find the right way to do it, you can make an illustration out of just about anything. After that, it’s just a matter of finding the right illustration for the point you are trying to make.

Even though a lot of the illustrations I’ve been seeing everywhere wouldn’t necessarily work for themes I’ve already got planned for my devotionals, I think I’m going to start writing them down and making a list so that I’ll eventually build up quite a few of them and whenever I need one for a particular idea, I’ll just be able to look back and find the best one I’ve come up with so far, or decide that I need to come up with one for that concept.

I know I haven’t updated this in at least a week, but I am still working on it(and will be for a long while). Right now, I still haven’t got a singled complete devotional. I’ve just got an assortment of scribbles, notes, verses, thoughts, ideas, and partially started devotionals.

I know where I”m going, but like I said before, getting started is kinda slow. I expect the pace to pick up once I’ve got a bit more momentum(though my expectations aren’t always right).

Well, I’ve been trying to figure out where to start with all this. There’s millions of possible topics I could go with. And even after picking the first topic, where would I go next? I think I’ve got it figured out now. The plan at the moment is to write 365 devotionals – one for each day of the year. Around holidays I can maybe pick up a theme that relates to that holiday. Other than that, I think a lot of the topics will kind of flow from one to the next, so that will make the decision of where to go next easier.

365 is a big number, and I’m sure that will take a while. Especially since I doubt I’ll be able to smash out one a day. I’m sure after I’ve done a good number of them, it will come easier, but for now it’s taking me a while to even do the first one. Then again, they say getting started is the hardest part.

Luckily, God didn’t give me a deadline, he just told me to do it.

Ever notice God doesn’t like excuses?

Well, in my last entry I wrote that I wasn’t sure if I had the wisdom to pull something like this off. Then a little bit ago I opened up a program called eSword(great program btw) so I could start studying. After a little while, I looked over to the notes section where some time ago I had pasted a verse:

Jam 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

I don’t remember why I had pasted that over there(other than it being a great verse), but I have a feeling He knew I was going to need it later.

I also have a list of quotes from one of my other goals. I was looking through it earlier and saw this:

“God does not chose the qualified, he qualifies the chosen.”

So I guess the thing to take away from this is that I in fact don’t have the wisdom needed, but through God, I can do it. He will give me the wisdom.

I think this is something the Lord has been trying to get me to do for a while now. I still wonder if I have enough wisdom, or even knowledge to pull this off. However, the most recent goal I added to my list(before this one) is “Give God All of Me” and I think this is a part of me I need to trust him with and just go for it. Besides, they say the best way to learn is to teach, so I figure this will be pretty much the same thing. I’ll learn more doing this than I ever would just studying for myself.