It’s Our 10th Anniversary!
~ Today’s post takes a look back while giving God the glory for the 10th anniversary of Write Them On My Heart! ~
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WOW! Write Them On My Heart is celebrating 10 years! To God be all the glory!
And I can’t thank YOU enough for coming along on this journey of loving and writing God’s Word – whether with a pen or a paint brush.
At first I thought about filling this post with fun numbers like the one I did for our first anniversary.
For example, the last 10 years held …
- 165 blog posts
- 241 hand-lettered verses
- 7979 email subscribers
- 1584 journals that YOU are writing in
- 449 5-star reviews in our Etsy Shop (Thank you SO much!)
But it was never about numbers. So that kind of celebration couldn’t be all there was to it.
So let’s take a little look back and note what God has done.
Because it sure wasn’t me! Since I have no background as a writer, God had to write every one of the posts on this website. All I did was pray – and He came through with the words every time. (He’s doing it right now!) Also, I am not a Bible scholar nor do I have any kind of seminary training. I just LOVE being in God’s Word. That’s what I’ve tried to pass along for the last 10 years.
If any of you have caught the fire of loving the Bible and wanting to spend more time digging in it to become more like Christ (and I know you have because you’ve blessed me by telling me so), then my goal has been reached!
All the praise goes to Jesus!
It all began with a desire to be in ministry. I had become an empty nester and was winding down an office job. What did the Lord want me to do next? I enjoyed serving at my church in all sorts of ways including going on mission trips, but was God calling me to do more? After all, I was getting ready to have additional time available. I wrestled in prayer with these questions because I wanted to serve Him however He wanted me to!
But I’ll be totally honest with you. The Lord never gave me a neon sign of what He wanted me to do. So I just kept plugging along following the wise advice I had learned from the Bible study Experiencing God (see my review here), which was: Find out what the Master is doing, and that is what you need to be doing.
John 12:26a (ESV): If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.
At the time, blogging was on the rise and I enjoyed reading several blogs. I could see God working in a new innovative way through these Christian blogs that I followed.
You can guess where this is going.
A new blog was born – with a whole lot of help from my patient and generous son who built my website for me!
And then … I had a LOT to learn!
Thankfully, I love learning. Research ensued and to this day I am still learning new things all the time – between the website, the shop, the email providers, marketing, and even new watercolor techniques, there is always more to learn, updates to keep track of, and new advancements to keep up with. Don’t get me started on AI.
Side note: You see that run-on sentence above that ends with a preposition? There’s your proof that I’m not a real writer. Especially since I’m leaving it in! {grin}
Anyway, when I posted the very first blog on June 15, 2016, I barely knew what I was doing. All I knew for sure at that time was that I couldn’t go wrong with sharing Bible verses – and it was even better if it also exercised my God-given artistic skills. (Fun fact: I have a degree in graphic design.)
From the beginning, I felt – and still feel – a call to be extra careful and reverent when it comes to God’s Word. I have a healthy fear to not inadvertently steer you wrong. So I pray like crazy over every typed word and mostly I simply point out observations and the context. But I do sometimes quote trusted Bible scholars and books. And I like to share what I learned through interpreting Scripture with Scripture using the cross references in my Bible. I adore digging into all the related verses!
Which brings me to: Scripture Writing.
I wrote about how I fell into Scripture writing here, but long story short, that grew into making journals for you! And what a joy that has been. Not only because of how they’ve changed your heart, but my own too. I even look forward to writing in the very journals I just compiled – probably because God’s Word is living and active and always has something new to glean. And as I have said many times through the years, there’s just something about writing down God’s Word that is special, that builds a love and a desire for more.
Speaking of journals and intentions of the heart (from the verse above), there’s one more thing I’d like to share. Something I have yet to share in a blog post – until now. From Day One the Lord pressed on my heart to put any and all profit back into ministry. Granted, when I first started everything went back into this ministry since I had promised my husband that I would make sure it paid for itself. When I said that, I had no idea how many costs and fees would be associated with running a small online business. The personal calling I felt also included advertising. I felt strongly that the Lord wanted ALL the profits to go to ministry, so I have never paid for an ad of any kind.
And the Lord graciously provided and brought YOU one by one to cross my path at a pace I could handle. So through the years I have given the profits to my local church, to some local short-term ministry projects, to support several missionaries overseas, to Compassion International, and of course to the continued fees associated with running this ministry. To be clear, this business is not an official non-profit organization, but I strive to run it like one – maybe even more than one since I don’t pay myself.
Another commitment I stand by is having all our journals printed in the U.S. This means that our cost per journal is higher, but I feel that it falls under our values of giving back. Also, I don’t mark up the price of the journals very much – just enough to cover our cost and the shipping fees plus a few extra dollars to give to the ministries listed above.
In summary, this little ministry has been a 10-year exercise in building my faith to trust the Lord and let Him be in charge. Isn’t that just like God to use a ministry to grow me even more than the people I serve? Even when at times I wished it would grow faster and bigger to “reach more people” (said with air quotes because I needed to check my heart), He taught me that He knows what is best. Trust Him.
He has provided every step of the way. One amazing joy He dropped into my lap about 5 years ago was when my daughter-in-law, Heather, asked if she could help me! Are you kidding? YES! To this day she ships all the journals and does all the accounting – which I truly needed so I wouldn’t give away more than I had! Lol. Remember when I said it wasn’t about the numbers? Well, I am so thankful that the Lord knew better and blessed this ministry with Heather, a numbers-gal to complement this prominently right-brained-gal.
So today we are celebrating what God has done! Because what we’ve witnessed these last 10 years are nothing short of amazing! And we are also looking forward to the new things He has in store.
Join us in thanking and praising Him alone!
*My prayer for you is … that this blog will inspire you to open your Bible every single day to seek God’s face and write His Word on your heart – because HE’S the key to lasting heart change!
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