VOTD – Verse of the Day

Those who sow in tears
Shall reap in joy.

He who continually goes forth weeping,
Bearing seed for sowing,
Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
Bringing his sheaves with him.

Psalm 126:5-6
May you be blessed abundantly today!

NOTE: I started thinking about the years worth of VOTD’s archived at the web site and how they ought to be useful for something – so I figured out how to present a topical index. I pray it will be a help to you. ~George

Read Context and alternate translations

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Unless otherwise noted all scriptures are
from the New King James Version
Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

Now you can easily share the VOTD.ORG Verse of the Day with your friends and followers on popular social networks or via email!

Just click the “Share” button on any VOTD.ORG page you wish to share.

VOTD will take vacation until Monday September 29th!

If you are missing verses, this is why!

See you on the 29th!

George

VotD Family,

Next week I will be going on a much needed vacation without cell phone and laptop and will not be publishing VOTD until Monday September 29th. This week has been hectic cramming in all the things I need to get done before leaving town so this is why you haven’t seen a full week of verses.

Only today do I have time to post so I’ll say in advance “Have a blessed weekend”, and be sure to get up early these next 6 weekdays, grab your bible and get a Verse of the Day to meditate on.

HIS peace,

George

NEW feature for those using Google as their homepage  simply click here

(http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http%3A//votd.org/votdblog/feed/rss2/) to add VOTD. Every time you open your web browser the daily scripture verse will appear!

It was brought to my attention that yet another VOTD service has popped up recently. This one is quite good in my opinion – it uses flash’s ability to deliver dynamic content to other web sites. This is something I’ve considered for a long time but never had time to implement.

The person that brought it to my attention asked if we were trademarked or copyrighted. The answer is no. Honestly I never asked Dave Perkins if we were the first to use the name, because it never seemed to matter. I do keep tabs however, on the various other VOTD web sites and services – I’m even aware of a local New York radio station that uses VOTD for a short segment in which they read a verse (and I used to know the people at the station – it is probable that they did “lift” the name from our VOTD), thinking back it is quite possible that we were first, but I can’t really say. Seeing VOTD’s come and go over the years I can say with certainty that we are the longest running – and we still are the only one that’s hand picked daily (as opposed to a database full of verses that show randomly via a script). We are not so much a service as a family! It always was like that, and always will be!

Now can we/should we step up, legally get control of the name and issue cease and desist letters to everyone else, including the local radio station? Maybe if Dave or I thought differently at the beginning we could have made a career out of VOTD. Maybe we could have sold it to Google by now but this is one case in life where imitation and competition is part of the objective – which is to get God’s Word out. I welcome it! I’m thrilled to see others take it farther than we can and to different places on the ‘net we can’t reach. Our VOTD isnt a means to being a celebrity or to bring wealth – or more specifically a way to gain web site hits and search engine ranking. For Dave it was his ministry at the time, for me I call it my “other church” because of all the “pastoring via email” I do for list members.

Am I crazy for not being interested in controlling the name? Maybe. I just feel that this is the Lord’s will for our VOTD. Only He can change my mind.

Maybe Google could sway me with the right offer (perhaps in the neighborhood of what the YouTube folks got recently – yeah baby!) But the stipulation would be that VOTD remains free of charge and wholly committed to the propagation of God’s Word on the ‘net. Dave, I’ll cut you in if they respond

I pray that our Lord blesses and prospers all the VOTD’s and other means by which the ‘net is flooded daily with His Words!

Pastor George

Thanks to all the VOTD family that contributed and brought an end to the webhost standoff! They refused to provide adequate resources to allow VOTD to run properly, we responded by moving to a new service.

As posted previously we have contracted with another company to provide a home for VOTD. This time we have a VPS – Virtual Private Server, which is the next best thing to having a physical server. It is still technically a shared hosting solution but unlike typical hosting, VOTD runs in its own “space” as though it were the only thing on the server. In short, the amount of resources VOTD will steal from other web sites and email services is minimal – and vice versa.

So far, so good… every day last week we cranked out all email in well under an hour – a benchmark we haven’t enjoyed in several years! At this time VOTD.ORG is fully propagated around the ‘net so there should be no more problems sending email to every domain on the list. Life is good right now for VOTD!

For those who gave, here is a brief financial statement so you know I’m not vacationing in Switzerland on the donated money:

Amount donated by VOTD members to date: 458.00 (income)
VPS Hosting with new vendor: 399.48 per year (expense)
George’s Swiss Alps vacation (yes, kidding!): 58.52 (difference)

God provided basically what we needed – the leftover amount (58.52) should be sufficient to cover any miscellaneous fees if any – like bandwidth overages, or it will simply be applied to next year’s bill.

Since VOTD is formally considered an outreach of the church, it is part of the church’s accounting. Going forward, should anyone have questions or need to know more details about the costs and income of VOTD please contact us.

And by the way, in the next 30 – 40 days or so (end of January-ish) we will be sending all those who gave a receipt. Contact us if for some reason you don’t receive it come tax time.

Aint God great??!!

As many of you suspected, Verse of the Day was (once again) being killed by our web host.
The last post was Monday, the list has been shut down since.

The reason for being killed is the size of the list. 2,000 plus emails going out at once can put
a load on a server – especially in the typical shared hosting environment where 100’s of sites
reside on one machine. The host’s answer to the problem was to limit outgoing email to 500
per hour, and when the other 1500 or so VOTD folks got backed up in the queue, the host
would go in and delete them before they could get sent. Crazy.

This isn’t the first time we have experienced this problem, we have switched hosts and email
applications many times over the years trying to keep hosts happy and things up and running.

Well, our latest and prayerfully our last remedy is the moving of VOTD to a private server.
This move was completed today. There are still some tests to run (the sending of this email
is one of them!) so I’ll ask that you be patient this upcoming week as we get everything
worked out in our new environment.

There is something else that I’d like to mention. Because of the new hosting setup for
VOTD, it no longer shares space and resources with Calvary Chapel of Montclair. It now
has its own account and its own costs, which are significantly higher than before.

VOTD has been absolutely FREE since inception and it will always continue to be FREE,
but having said that I just want to let you know that we are “passing the hat” if anyone would
feel so inclined to give. There is no obligation on your part, Calvary Chapel will continue to
support the ministry (and of course where God guides, He provides) but perhaps some of you
would like to help out with a one time gift or even give often to VOTD.

If you look down near the bottom of this email you’ll see a link to Calvary Chapel’s secure
Online donation site for VOTD. If you cant, or don’t feel prompted to give, that’s perfectly fine.
I would ask whether you give or not to pray for the ministry of VOTD!

“…So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:11

Thanks for your support of VOTD and your love of His Word!

George

VOTD Family,

Last week I had mentioned that I’d be away in Bay St. Louis Mississippi serving here

What a great experience, what a needed ministry!

While the media coverage has been reduced to residual levels, the catastrophe and the needs go on. Please pray for this ministry and others still operating in the gulf region.

I really thought I’d be able to send VOTD at least most of the week, but the camp was understaffed and we ended up being extremely busy.

Tomorrow morning VOTD should resume as usual.

George

Beloved VOTD Patrons:

There will be no VOTD tomorrow – and possibly Monday. Over the next several days the list will be moving to (yet another) a new list manager. “PHP-List” has served us well, but something on our host’s new server hates it. This is why we have had more than the typical amount of outages lately.

Rather than spend more time then pastors have to troubleshoot and modify the existing manager, I decided to move it to the standard “Mailman” list manager… some things may change, like the way you subscribe/unsubscribe, nothing should get worse however.
Please pray for this move, I’m anticipating a minimal amount of downtime – but you know how all things computer related go… :-/

Thanks for your patronage and support of this ministry!

Blessings!

George

VOTD Members,

It came to my attention late yesterday (Friday) that our web host was hacked. Thank the Lord it wasn’t our site or email list. While working on their issue however, the host disabled outbound email on Thursday and Friday.

The script that I use to send VOTD reported that all mail was sent, though the server sent none of it, so I was thinking all was fine. After the fact I realized I never received VOTD through my test accounts, I should have known there was a problem.

Things prayerfully are better now, I’m testing by resending the missing VOTD’s.

Remember, for such emergencies always keep a bible handy in case you need to look up your own VOTD in the morning! In fact, to be better prepared begin NOW to read the bible daily so you’ll be in practice for the day VOTD fails to arrive

Blessings!

PG

I’ve been playing with creating VOTD for cell phones and need testers! It currently works on WAP emulators and my own cell phone which is Sprint PCS Vision, but I want to see how it works (if it works) on other phones / providers.

If you have a web-enabled cell phone, use it to go to this url: http://votd.org/t/

Right now you should see the current VOTD formatted for your phone. The script will in the future (if these tests go well) send a daily text message that will contain the url for VOTD. Only those that sign up on a separate list will recieve these daily text messages.

Bear in mind that depending on your contract, you may get charged for this – please understand that we cannot be responsible for the charges, so weigh your participation carefully, considering the potential cost!

The next phase will be to establish the list, but for now I want to see if the WML works on other phones / providers.

Report your findings here….

Blessings!

George

Once again the web host/server we use has been tagged by AOL as a spam source. We are never sure whether this is because someone has submitted VOTD to AOL complaining (though we do not spam, VOTD is an OPT-IN list with clear instructions on how to unsubscribe) or if there is another offender on the same server at our web host.

What this means is that until AOL removes us from that “list” all of our AOL subscribers will not get VOTD.

If you’d like, please send a message to AOL letting them know that VOTD isn’t spam and you don’t want it blocked. The info is in the headers of the bounced mail we get:

SMTP error from remote mailer after initial connection:
host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [64.12.138.185]: 554-(RLY:B2) The information presently available to AOL indicates this
554-server is transmitting unsolicited e-mail to AOL. Based on AOL's
554-Unsolicited Bulk E-mail policy at http://www.aol.com/info/bulkemail.html
554-AOL cannot accept further e-mail transactions from this server.
554-Please have your ISP/ASP or server admin call AOL at 1-888-212-5537,
554 or visit http://postmaster.info.aol.com for m


Apologies,

Pray it get resolved soon.

Blessings!

PGeo

As you can see I’m on a crusade to improve VOTD!! The latest feature is a handy invitation form.

You can send a friend or family member a special invite to join VOTD!

Try it out – http://votd.org/invite.cgi

Also those of you who subscribe via email, and have opted to recieve HTML email you’ll notice an improved look. Minor changes but I hope you’ll find it cleaner looking.

The text email is slightly cleaner too – less text after the verse. This may make it better for those who view VOTD on your cell phone!! (and I know there are some of you true technogeeks who do!)

Other features are in the works… feel free to suggest… in fact one person already suggested multi translation options… I don’t know that I’ll publish VOTD mutliple times in different translations due to time constraints, but I’m already looking at adding a dynamic link to one of the popular bible search sites so you can easily view the verse on the web in any translation you like…

Blessings!

PG

I received the following email yesterday:

Hi,

Thanks so much for VOTD. I always look forward to it at the office. I had a thought. I liked today’s verse so well that I put it on my “Active Desktop” so that I can see it all day as part of my background. I wondered whether there is an automated way of updating this each time you sent out a new VOTD in my email.

Not being an Microsoft Windows expert, I said a quick prayer for an idea. Here’s what was provided. Its not totally automated, but its simple and should be email system independent. Anyone with an active desktop and email that handles attachments should be able to do this.

Here it is. If you were to attach a copy of the VOTD to the email that you broadcast each day as the file VOTD.htm in htm format, then the receiver can:

The first time:
1. Detach and save VOTD.htm to the desktop.
2. Add the file to the active desktop by right clicking on the desktop, then select Active Desktop>New Desktop Item.
3. Position the active desktop window as preferred.
4. Lock the desktop by right clicking on the desktop and selecting Active Desktop>Lock Desktop Items.

Successive times:
1. Detach VOTD.htm from the new email and save it to the desktop
2. Select the desktop with the mouse. Press F5 to refresh the background.

Use the attachments below as an example: follow 1-4 on the first attachment, and 1-2 the second time. You will notice I’ve appended “test 1″ on the first file and “test 2″ on the second file.

As an alternative, a person could just modify the icon representing the VOTD.htm to activate MSWord when its double clicked. Then a person could just copy and paste the VOTD text right out of the email and paste it the htm file through MSWord. That is probably the approach I’ll take for now.

Have a Great Day!

Andy L. Saxsma

My response was:

Andrew,

Thanks so much for the suggestion. My gut feeling is that not so many desktops actively use active desktop I personally haven’t much experience with (or desire for) it, so I can’t be too much help there.

A probable issue with your plan is that it would mean that I would have to publish the verse in one more format which would be a stretch for me right now. I could create or append my scripts to do this but after spending the last three months creating/tweaking a web blog, rss feeds and other new features I doubt I’d get to it any time soon.

I had a thought – if you can get an html page with JavaScript to run on your active desktop, you may be able to use the code to display VOTD on a web page found here: http://votd.org/promotevotd

Additionally, looking beyond Microsoft’s world – VOTD does go out as an rss feed (see http://votd.org/votdblog for info) and there are some folks who reportedly have been able to display rss feeds on their desktops via scripts or some other technology. You may want to hit google for leads…

Hope this helps!

PG

I wanted to post it here in case any other VOTD subscribers have suggestions, experiences or solutions to share.

I just created a page to explain how you can help spread the word about VOTD!

We used to have icons that we distributed but I haven’t done that for a very long time. With the implemnetation of our web blog it is now possible to get VOTD via a news reader and have it “served” to web pages via JavaScript… see below for details!

http://votd.org/promotevotd.htm

I was “googling” VOTD and verse of the Day the other day and found myself literally pouring through thousands of results!

I remember back in the early years when “VOTD” and “Verse of the Day” were catchy names for our unique service. Now they are descriptors for all kinds of sites – some biblical, some not. Some inspirational, some scary. VOTD can stand for anything – for example “Valley of the Dolls” “Video of the Day” (which you really don’t want to search out – trust me!) or even the evidently popular “Vital speeches of the Day”. The titles are certainly public domain and I’m thrilled to see so many options for viewing scripture via email, blogs, web sites and newsfeeds, but I felt kinda lost in a crowd with our own site.

Now a while back when I was feeling the same way I changed the wording on the site to emphasize the fact that we’ve been up and running since 1993, but looking at it now it makes the service and site seem a little pretentious. To me it smacks too much of marketing to say “The Original…” or “The Longest Running…” – we really aren’t in competition nor in need of hard selling our service but again there’s a real need to stand out in a sea of VOTD

Here’s what I propose… lets have a naming contest… if you have any suggestions for a catchy name for our VOTD post it here or email – I’ll pick the best – or most popular and from that time forward we’ll be known by that name.

Sound like fun? Suggest away!

Blessings!

Geo