About this site

There are verses we have said so often that they slide past us.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.
Come unto me, all ye that labour.
Blessed are the meek.
It is finished.

The English is gentle. The cadence is familiar. We have heard these verses in church, on calendars, on the walls of waiting rooms. We have stopped hearing them.

But the Hebrew and the Greek translated into English are not always smooth. Follow is a hunter's verb. The yoke Jesus offers is not lighter; it is shaped to fit. The meek are not the weak; they are the strong who have laid the strength down. It is finished is a single Greek word that carries the weight of a debt stamped paid in full.

VerseVoices is a publication for verses like these. Places where the English translation has gone soft, and the original languages possibly have much more to say. Each VerseVoices devotion takes one powerful verse, researches the force of one word, pairs it with inspiring art, and concludes with an idea the reader can carry with them.

The publication arrives weekly to biweekly. There is no daily devotional pressure. There is no notification. Just the next entry when it is ready.

Who I am

I am Mark Lawrence. I am an artist, a writer, and a business professional. I am not a Hebrew or Greek scholar.

For years I have run VerseVisions, a gallery of paintings paired with scripture. Over six hundred works on canvas, all of them my way of seeing what the text was saying. VerseVoices is the writing side of the same vocation. The VerseVisions gallery sees; the VerseVoices publication speaks.

Faith came later for me. I was married with one child and another on the way when my business failed and I lost everything. I prayed a real prayer for the first time in my life: Lord Jesus, here I am. If you will have me, I want you to be my Lord. He has carried us through many storms since. That is when I started reading the Bible every day. I still do.

I have read the Bible cover to cover, for thirty years. I also listen to sermons from my favorite pastors every day. Charles Stanley, Adrian Rogers, John MacArthur, and Billy Graham are a few of my personal favorites. The reading and the listening have shaped me in my journey through this world. God's Word brings me comfort, peace and hope.

My favorite time of the day is when I sit in my favorite chair every morning and open my Charles Stanley Life Principles Bible, pen in hand, and spend time with God. I have a prayer I wrote on one of the blank leaf pages of my Bible that I try to read before I begin:

Father, as I open your Word today, I come seeking you.

Open my eyes to behold wonderful things from Your law.

Speak to me through these pages.

Let your voice be clear and your presence near.

Quiet my heart, remove distractions, and help me to rest in your finished work through Jesus.

Holy Spirit, guide me, teach me, and transform me by your truth and your love.

I surrender this time, and my life, to you. Please draw me deeper into your peace and rest.

Fill me with spiritual wisdom, spiritual knowledge, spiritual understanding, and give me spiritual discernment.

Fill me with the knowledge of your purpose and will for my life.

I ask you for the exceeding greatness of your power to be at work in me.

Let your spirit breathe life into these verses, making them alive and active in my life.

Heal any unbelief, calm any fear, and fill me with your peace that surpasses understanding.

I love you Lord Jesus. Please speak, for your servant is listening. Amen.

I have prayed this prayer many, many mornings. VerseVoices is part of the answer. I believe that there is work to be done here that God has given me. I invite you to join me on that journey.

On the AI partnership

I use a computer every day in my work, and this new work is no different. VerseVoices is written with the help of AI research tools that have an unprecedented ability to store the standard Bible lexicons and commentaries in working memory. This is disclosed once on this page and once in every entry's references section. I want it to be plain.

I use the AI tools to produce briefs for each entry. The brief is the lexical work: what the word means, how the translations have handled it, where else it appears in scripture, where the scholars agree and where they disagree. Devotional in register, not academic. I read the brief, find the diamond facet idea to explore, and write the entry in my own voice.

The seeing is mine. The writing is mine. The conviction is mine.

The Hebrew and Greek scholarship is not. That part comes from my AI partner. Every entry's references section shows the work so you can verify it for yourself, follow the trail further, and judge the reading on its merits.

I think this is the honest way to learn and write. Scholars have always relied on reference works; AI is the reference work available to our generation. The difference is the disclosure. I would rather tell you how the work is done than perform a credential I do not have.

The vision behind VerseVoices

The premise is simple. To know God as deeply as is humanly possible. To dig as deeply as possible into the gift of His Word with the tools available to me.

I see the Bible as one cohesive story about who God is. A single diamond with many facets, where every word turns a new face to the light. The theme I keep coming back to is dunamis. The Greek word for power that gives us dynamic and dynamite. The same force that raised Christ from the dead. The exceeding greatness of power that Paul prayed the church would know.

Too often we may skim past those passages and miss the weight of what they really mean or promise. VerseVoices is my attempt to hear, understand, and obey the God who has given me the gift of His Living Word.

I do not start with the answer. I sit with the verse until something catches my attention. Then I do the work to find out what it is. Then I write what I see.

What VerseVoices is not

A few things this publication is not, so you know what you are reading:

This is not a translation project. The verse stays in the King James Version. Only the explanation of what the original is saying is the work.

This is not academic biblical scholarship. This is not a daily devotional. The cadence is weekly to biweekly. Some entries take longer to write than others. The publication arrives when the next entry is ready.

If you want to subscribe

Subscribe and the entries arrive in your inbox. There is no notification. There is no app. The publication is free.

The work is offered as a gift. The seeing is what I owe to anyone who has read this far.

— Mark Lawrence