Do Your Devotions 2012

In 2011 do your devotions.com was a great year. We saw some new teenagers join and become very faithful in Gods word each day. We have also seen several of our small group leaders join in very faithfully setting an example for their small groups.  As of today, our website has been visited 47,649 times since it has been developed. One amazing thing is that every day we have vistors on any number of random pages from past devotions. People will go to google and search certain passages and often times, it will bring them right to our blog. What an incredible impact and opportunity we have to share Gods word with thousands of people through this tool.

We started our devotional blog in January of 2008. You can check out the old website at this link: http://getintheword.blogspot.com/

In March of 2010, we moved our blogger website to wordpress, where we have been ever since.

In the year 2011 we saw incredible faithfulness from a small number of people, with a large number of other people visiting the blog from time to time. It is my goal to change that in 2012. Over the last several years, I have tried to carry this blog on my own shoulders and it has become a burden in some ways, but it is not something that I am willing to give up. I believe that this blog has been the most succesfull tool that our church has used to get individuals into the word of God. Therefore I have a vision for doyourdevotions in 2012. I want to share the load, and make this site an incredible place for teenagers and adults to visit daily to read a powerful and practical application of Gods word.

I will share some of the things that I have in mind, and then I will ask you to post other ideas in the comment section below so that we can make 2012 the most succesfull year that Do Your Devotions.com has ever had!

Who is with me?

Well, here is what I would like to see us do:

1. I would like to share the daily posting of devotions. I would like to get 4 qualified leaders who will each take a day of the week, and post a devotion based on the passage that we are all studying together. This would mean that I would post on Monday, and another leader would post on Tuesday, and another on Wednesday, and so on. I think that this would create more of a quality post because it is only one per week.

2. Second, I would like to give responsibilities to different teenagers to be teen leaders that will be in charge of online community building. They will be responsible for connecting with teenagers and encouraging teenagers online. For example, when another teenager posts a comment, they will be responsible to read their posts and comment on them. Maybe even post a comment to them in an email, text, or facebook comment. This will create a community atmosphere which will make students more likely to return.

3. Finally, I want to create a posting strategy that keeps things interesting. I want to find out the most effect method of posting either questions, comments, or other creative methods. I need advice on this.

4. I also want to merge all of the past devotions into one blog so that we have easy access to every post and comment ever made on our site in one place.

5. If you have any other creative ideas to make 2012 the greatest year ever for our devotional blog, please share them in the comments below!

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Only One Day Left

You guys made many great comments over the last two days! I am so thankful for all that you have shared about the last year, both the good and the bad. Yesterday it was neat to read the goals and dreams for 2012 by Nicci, Amber and Rachel. I wish there were more of you posting about your plans. I think that often times we are afraid to post about our goals or our “resolutions” because too often we do not accomplish those goals.

I loved come specifric goals yesterday: For example:

1. Bible Reading

2. Scripture Memorization

3. Discipleship

4. Lead some of my family to Christ ( LOVE THAT ONE AMBER)

5. Write down answers to prayer

6. Mom, IT WOULD BE INCREDIBLE TO CLIMB MOUNT ST. HELENS!! Let me know when we are going!! 🙂

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Some of you mentioned that you would like to read my comments on those, I will try to post those before the day is over some time tonight!

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One Day left. This will be a fun devotion once again. If you found out that tomorrow was not only the last day of the year, but it was the last day of your life, then what would you want to do tomorrow? Seriously, take about a paragraph to explain what you would do tomorrow, who you would be with, what you would say, and then take another paragraph to explain WHY. I think this will be very helpful to show you the greatest priorities in your life!

Thanks for being faithful!

 

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You guys are the best!

Wow! I was so thankful and impressed today at the faithfulness of you all. Seriously, even in my unfaithfulness in posting devos you are still faithful and that is a great encouragement and motivation! I have some great ideas for devotions over the next year, and I want us to do some team work to make these better than ever! I have already talked with a few of you about help[ing and I want to talk to a few more! If you are interested in posting and helping out in leadership on the devos, please let me know! Thanks for being faithful!

Ok, so your posts yesterday were outstanding! I learned so much about you guys, and I was impressed by how many things have changed in the last year. I am so thankful that God was given the glory for all the great things that have happened in the last year. I believe that yesterday we set a platform to observe some things. Here are some things that I observed:

1. Only one thing stays the same, that is, EVERYTHING CHANGES. I cannot believe how much of your lives is completely different. JUST ONE YEAR AGO, you guys lived in different places, with different people, had different influences, made different decisions, had different goals and different dreams, and believed differently about God. So much of your life is completely different and it has only been ONE YEAR!

2. No matter how different things are from one year ago, and no matter how different things will be in one year from now, God remains the same. God is faithful. His Word is never changing!

3. Many of you talked about how your life is better because of the people you have around you now. Influences are an incredible force in whether or not we will succeed or fail in life.

4. Perspective is EVERYTHING. Some of you have gone through tough things this year, but you have chosen to have a postitve perspective about your situation and about God and this has made a tough situation bearable or even enjoyable for Gods glory!!

Today, I want us to look forward, using the platform that we established yesterday. In other words, knowing what we know about the last year, what are some things we want to accomplish in the upcoming year. Let me be clear: I am not talking about high unachievable goals like reading the Bible through 50 times this year. NO WAY! I am talking about simple goals, for example: Through yesterdays comments, I was reminded that influences are vital to my success, so how can I improve my influences over the next year? Understand? Go through and list several things that you can grow in over the next year, based on the things you read yesterday from other peoples devotions.

By the way, if you did not read some of the posts from yesterday: You missed out! They were great! Every single one of them! Rachel, Nicci, Emily, Scott, and Amber!! Wow! So encouraging!! Lets be intentional about how we will grow over the next year!

Read Proverbs 3:5-6; Philippians 3:13-14; Isaiah 43:18-19; and then explain some clear steps that you can take over the next year to move in the direction that you want to go!

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