15
Fifteen
XV
What's such a big deal about the number 15?
Fifteen years ago today, we launched Heartlight on the web. There was not much in the Christian community online at the time and the call to pursue Internet ministry was not very glorious. I can still remember praying and asking for God's guidance for media outreach on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving in 1995. I had just finished communion, and as I was praying for guidance, I kept having the words, "The Internet, Dummy!" repeated in my heart over and over again.
Over the years we've had all sorts of experiences, faced some very difficult challenges, changed the look and content of Heartlight several times, but one thing has remained consistent: God has been very gracious to us and provided for every key move that has been successful and lifted our spirits when we've "goobered up" or done something stupid. No matter what's happened, how tired or confused we've been, God has always brought us a blessing at just the right time.
Over the next several weeks, you will see articles from some of our most popular contributors over the years as well as a site re-design that is intended to be simpler to navigate, cleaner, and introduces a new logo and look. In addition, we are pursuing several new outreach efforts as well as focusing on several of our strengths.
We will continue to expand our Facebook offerings as well as put more emphasis on mobile resources and further expansion into international resources. You will find links to some of these resources at the bottom of this post.
We want to thank you for your long-term faithfulness, encouragement, prayer, and support. You are one of two key reasons why we do this — the call of God is the other — and your encouragement has kept us going! We hope and pray that 15 is just God's start of what he wants to do with us. Yet anything past 15 will be in the Father's hands.
You will want to check out the links below for more information of Heartlight's launch and history. Our most important words are not our own, but the apostle Paul's powerful thanksgiving and praise to God, for whom we do everything and by whose power every good thing we've experienced has happened.
"Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?"
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen (Romans 11:35-36 NIV).
Thanks for your partnership in the Heartlight influence and ministry!
By God's grace,
Phil Ware for the Heartlight Team
Our First article, "Wildfires" (http://bit.ly/f26ptF) and please don't laugh at the design, it was 15 years ago!
For other views on the significance of the number 15, see Wikipedia, from which we get this little tidbit:
15 (fifteen) is the natural number following 14 and preceding 16. In English, it is the smallest natural number with seven letters in its spelled name."What if We Can?" (http://bit.ly/i7sFm2) is a great introduction to some of the ideas behind Heartlight and the dream of reaching others through the web, written by Danny Sims.
Heartlight's Facebook App can be found here:
http://bit.ly/e5SPVK
Heartlight's Facebook Page can be found here:
http://on.fb.me/gcEEmK
Heartlight Mobile can be found here:
http://heartlight.mobi
Heartlight in Portuguese is called Iluminalma:
(http://bit.ly/fy7tM4)
Heartlight in Spanish is called laluzdelalma:
(http://bit.ly/gf0ye8)
Heartlight partner in Russian is RadioKD:
(http://www.radiokd.ru)
Also check out Heartlight's "Verse of the Day":
(http://bit.ly/gM1cvT)
Please pray for the Lord to lead us to a partner in Chinese!
For other article links, see the Related section below.
