Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down… and he began to teach them saying… Matthew 5:1-2
…while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret… Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. Luke 5:1-3
And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. Mark 10:1
Jesus often taught large groups of people, down by the sea from a fishing boat or up on a hill, sometimes in the thousands. Of those thousands, how many actually converted? At that time, very few. Many followed for the miracles, the feedings, the blessings. But, seeds were being planted. The Lord of the Harvest not only meets with people one on one, He also casts a large net.
Along with serving the poor and homeless and leadership training, our third ministry is reaching people through the Internet. By the Lord’s grace every day we reach a portion of the more than 250 million people in Portuguese speaking countires like Brazil, Portugal, Angola, and Mozambique.
What gave me the idea for this ministry was seeing how expensive books were for the average reader in Brazil. Most Brazilians were lucky to have a Bible at home, but no access to Bible study material or devotionals. I wanted to provide solid, biblical teaching for free to whoever was seeking the Lord.
By God’s grace, for 18 years now we have been filling up page after page on our sites, and sending out daily devotionals to Portuguese speaking readers around the globe. While email is not the essential communications tool it was at one time, we have reached over the years literally tens of thousands of subscribers. Thousands of others access our sites daily to read the devotionals, Bible studies, lessons, and messages we host.
Many are like Luciano, who recently sent us a note of thanks:
Good morning! How are you all doing?
Looking more closely at this email today, I realized I’ve been subscribed since 2008 (when I was 31)—that is, for 18 years.
I want to thank you for all these years of inspiration and words of comfort.
So many times I’ve wept while reading the daily devotional; so many times I’ve felt comforted and often guided on how to face the day.
I pray for God’s grace to be upon you.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Sincerely,
Luciano Cunha
None of this would have been possible without the generous support of my dear friend Phil Ware of Heartlight.org. Phil not only allowed us to translate and post his own four year “Today’s Verse” devotional into Portuguese, he also graciously hosted our websites on Heartlight’s servers as well as providing subscription and email services to our readers via Heartlight’s email service. Phil gave us all of this free of charge. Over the years we’ve taken on some of those expenses. Still, we owe Phil a huge debt for seeing sound biblical teaching reach literally tens of thousands of souls in the Portuguese language.
There’s a cost for website servers, the work of our webmaster Josh who keeps our sites updated and secure, ongoing payments for the website domains we “rent”… You might think we get a lot from advertising or reader subscriptions. Nope. No advertising. And access to the sites and subscriptions to our devotionals are free. That is part of our gift back to the Lord. And what we pray is an open door to anyone looking for Bible based messages about who Jesus is and how to follow Him.
The first two sites we launched were iluminalma and hermeneutica. Iluminalma was basically a mirror of Phil’s Heartlight site, right down to the made-up name that’s basically “light of the heart” in Portuguese. For iluminalma we had Phil’s “Today’s Verse” devotional, and I wanted a devotional for Hermeneutica. I wrote to a number of publishers, promising to honor their copyrights and link to their online stores. Alas, none were willing to allow us to use their material.
So, as the Lord often does, He set it on my heart to write my own. Our subtitle and goal for the Hermeneutica site is “Interpreting the Scriptures in the Light of Jesus”, so I decided to write a daily devotional focusing not so much on the Gospel narratives, but on Jesus’ very words. I called it “Jesus said… (365 days in the words of Jesus).
“Jesus said… ” daily devotional
The first year I wrote in Matthew. Year 2 was in the material unique to Mark and Luke. It’s taken 18 years, but I’m finally getting around to working on what will eventually be year four in the Gospel of John. The plan is to then go back and write year two in Mark and year 3 in Luke. Please pray for the devotionals in the Gospel of John.
If you would like to read a sample of the devotionals (in English), you can read and/or download the reflections for today and the next six days here. If you do, I would love to hear any critique or suggestions on how to imoprove the devotionals.
Please continue to pray for support. We are facing another significant cut in our funding for both salary and work fund. I know the Lord will provide. His faithfulness gives me that assurance. But believe me, your prayers make a big difference! If you have any questions or would like to know more about how to help, please email me at dennis@iluminalma.com
By the way, while I don’t yet have a daily devotional available in English, Phil’s site Heartlight.orgJesus said… August 4-10 is still up and running and chock full of numerous daily devotionals and longer reflections. And they too are supported entirely by donations from believers like you!