Ordinary Daily Devotions — Press On, Don't Short-Change the Process

✦ Ordinary

Le chose the word that the formula-makers would never choose. Ordinary. Not spectacular. Not dramatic. Not the mountaintop experience that leaves everyone breathless. Ordinary. Normal. Not special or different in any way. A woman in a motorhome in Dax, opening her Bible before dawn, talking to her God — the way she has every morning for five years.

And that is exactly where the power is. Not in the extraordinary moment but in the ordinary faithfulness. Not in the single flash of insight but in the daily return to the same discipline, the same reading, the same quiet conversation with the Father. The formula-makers chase the spectacular. The pilgrim shows up. Every morning. Ordinary. And God does the rest. 🙏

✦ 1. Soul Shaping — Romans 12:2

The body generally takes the shape of how we exercise it. The same is true for the soul. It will conform to how we exercise — or don't exercise — it.

Five years of mornings before dawn, Le. Five years of exercising the soul in the same direction, day after day. The woman who once found it difficult to call God Father now says it as naturally as breathing. That did not happen in one dramatic moment. It happened the way a river carves a canyon — not by force, but by faithfulness. Day after day after day. The soul has taken the shape of that discipline. And the shape is beautiful. 🙏

✦ 2. Bible Knowledge — Fuel for the Fire

Provides fuel for the fire of worship and increases our ability to draw from all parts of the Bible in applying God's wisdom to life.

Le carries James Smith and Spurgeon and Bowen and Luther and Augustine and Lewis and Bunyan and Fosdick and Jowett and Macduff and Wigglesworth — not as a bibliography, but as living voices. She draws from all parts of Scripture in a single morning — Luke illuminated by Paul, Peter completed by Isaiah, Colossians binding everything together, Deuteronomy promising strength equal to the days. That is the cumulative harvest of five years of ordinary devotions. The fire of worship does not lack for fuel. The storehouse is full — because she filled it, morning by morning, one handful of grain at a time. 🙏

✦ 3. Fight Training — The Sword of the Spirit

Daily handling and using the sword of the Spirit makes us more skilled spiritual warriors.

Spurgeon said fear to fear — be afraid to be afraid. Le said "let not" means I decide. That is a woman skilled with the sword — not because she went to seminary, but because she has handled it every morning for five years. When trouble arrived unexpectedly beside the canal, the word was already in her heart before she knew she would need it. Macduff's needful grace was already there — placed at dawn for a trial that came at lunch. The fight was already won before she knew there was one. That is what daily training produces. 🙏

✦ 4. Sight Training — Emmaus Moments

Daily devotions are an important way to train our faith-eyes to see the glory of Jesus in his word and to train our emotions to respond to what our faith-eyes see. Keep looking for glory. Jesus will give you Emmaus moments.

Luke 24:31-32 — did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us on the road? That is what happens every morning in this journal. Le reads — and suddenly she sees. The connection between Bowen in Bombay and Luther in Wittenberg. The woman with the issue of blood and the woman at midnight in Lubbock. Augustine's paradoxes and Lewis's living God. Bunyan's lilies and Spurgeon's treasury. Those are Emmaus moments — eyes opened, hearts burning — and they come to the one who keeps looking.

Bloom says keep looking for glory. Le has been looking for five years. And Jesus has been giving Emmaus moments — thirty-eight of them written in gold and darkness, and uncounted more that never reached the page. The sight gets sharper with use. The glory gets clearer with practice. The Emmaus road gets more familiar — not less wonderful, but more. Every morning, the eyes open a little wider. 🙏

✦ 5. Delight Cultivation — The Cumulative Power

Devotions are one of the ways we cultivate delight in God. Many days it may seem mundane. But we will be surprised at the cumulative power they have to deepen our love for and awareness of Him.

Le said it yesterday in three sentences that no theologian could improve: My need of devotional time is my simple need to talk to my God, whom I love with all my heart and soul. I am not a writer, not a theologian. I'm just a child in my Father's eyes.

That love — that deep, natural, unforced love — did not arrive fully formed. It was cultivated. Day by day. Morning by morning. Ordinary devotion by ordinary devotion. Many mornings may have seemed mundane. But the cumulative power was at work beneath the surface, the way roots grow underground before the tree appears. And now the love is so deep that missing a morning is unthinkable — even in a motorhome, even on the road, even when the winds blow and the plans change and Spain is a day away. The delight is the fruit of the ordinary. 🙏

✦ Something Extraordinary From the Ordinary

Brick upon brick. Lesson upon lesson. Stroke upon stroke. Morning upon morning. That is what this journal is — thirty-eight bricks laid before dawn, thirty-eight strokes on a canvas that is still being painted, thirty-eight lessons in a degree that will never be finished this side of heaven.

From Nahum 1:12 in Caldas da Rainha — though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more — to Jon Bloom in Dax — press on, don't short-change the process. From the foundation scripture to today's encouragement. From the first brick to the thirty-eighth. And God is making something extraordinary through it.

Le did not set out to build a journal. She set out to talk to her God before dawn. The journal came because the conversation overflowed — because the mornings were too rich to hold in one heart, because Bunyan's lilies kept appearing along the path and someone needed to pick them up and press them into pages. The extraordinary grew out of the ordinary. As it always does. As it always has. As it will continue to do — morning after morning, brick upon brick, all the way home to Portugal and beyond.

Press on. Don't short-change the process. Le never has. Five years of proof. And the building is rising. 🙏