Beverly Chandler helps readers use her experiences to develop their own relationships with God through short posts on her blog, called “Morning with Beverly.”
"The main thing I try to press upon them is that they need to be in the word," Chandler said. "I started blogging because I was not being in the word on a daily basis, and when I started blogging, that's when I realized I was being in the word, and the Lord was speaking to me about something very specific every time I was in the word."
Chandler, who lives in Madison County, has attended Living Water Baptist Church in Arnoldsville for 12 years. Before she began writing “Morning with Beverly,” she managed an insurance agency in Oconee County for 10 years and worked with the Madison County Board of Education as a technology specialist for more than two decades.
Chandler said she started her blog — which is at morningwithbeverly.blogspot.com/ — in August 1998, and she has posted nearly every Monday through Friday since. She began sending devotionals to her friends every night, and they then began sharing them with others.
When people began contacting her and asking about her writings, she started sharing them through email, and as her reader base grew, she began a blog and posted her writings on social media.
Now, she has readers all over the world.
"My blogging over the last 25 years has given me some exposure to a few people who have encouraged me to write beyond the blog," Chandler said.
She’s also been teaching the Bible to women for more than 10 years.
“I write my own curriculum,” she said. “One of my Bible studies, 'The Pure in Heart,' was self-published and distributed in several countries: Uganda, Mexico, Guatemala, Philippines, and even translated into Spanish."
At one point, Chandler said she thought about giving up writing. She wasn't a fan of social media and she'd been doing it for so long.
However, her husband, Bill Chandler, convinced her to keep posting because of the impact her writing has had on so many people — even herself.
"Honestly, she's never really happy unless she's got half a dozen irons in the fire," Bill said. "I asked her not to stop the blog as it might cause her to stop studying the Bible with the fervor she uses to write it. If she was going to study the Bible anyway, writing the blog was the small thing involved timewise."
The Oglethorpe Echo publishes a piece written by Beverly every other week titled "Words From The Well." Similar to her blog, this tries to further readers' relationships with God and encourages them to read the Bible.
“If there was one overall thing, it is that whatever is going on in our lives, God knows it, and He's got something to say about it,” Beverly said. “We'll never know what he has to say if you don't pick up his word.”