Getting to Know: Dennis Smock

By Our Town Gwinnett Staff

Everyone has a passion. Everyone has something that intrigues them and drives them to do what they do. If you are like most people, you have had several of these passions during your lifetime, but there is always a single, underlying passion that drives everything. It is the foundation for everything that you do. And though all others are secondary, they are all related to your primary purpose in some manner. For many, their primary purpose does not fully manifest itself until the time is right, until everything they have experienced has been nurtured and matured to the point of action.

My name is Dennis Smock. I am a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology. For the longest time, I seemed to simply go with the flow – albeit the flow saw me do things without truly pursuing them. Most people who do pursue them never get to take part in the manner that I was able to. I got to be part of a team that was tasked with putting together a computer monitoring system for a nuclear power plant. I got to be part of the team that designed many recognizable buildings in Atlanta, L.A., San Francisco, and Times Square in New York. I have a patent in my name. I was VP of Creative Services for a $45 million/ year retail design/build firm. I was adjunct faculty at a small design college. I was a nationally recognized consultant and had several trade articles published. I was also able to be involved in the music scene and have many stories to tell – but none of these things were my passion.

It is funny how God will use a still, small moment to get your attention. About twenty-five years ago, my wife and I were sponsored to go on a threeday church retreat. The men go one weekend and then the women go the following weekend. During those three days, and the following few weeks, my purpose, my passion, slowly started to come into focus. The number of people in my community who had been on previous weekends like this numbered over one thousand, and they had only the US Postal Service to stay in touch. I was asked to put together the email addresses that they had and use these as a basis for mass email communications. These early communications were simply to notify people of upcoming events and urgent prayer requests. I soon found myself wanting to send out positive messages, and so the daily devotionals were born. Recipients started asking if these could be shared, so I opened the list to anyone who wanted to receive them.

I worked from home during the early years of the daily devotionals. One day, something happened that solidified my passion. I have always used two computers, and this particular day had me only working on one computer with the other computer completely turned off. I heard the familiar sound of the second computer starting up and looked over to see that it had started and had loaded a web browser. It opened a site that I had never been to. It was a site put together by an engineer who set out to disprove the Bible, but became a follower of Jesus. This experience has given me the drive to read, study, and write.

“Be Still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10a) had become my life verse. From the beginning, the daily devotionals were written to be able to be read in just a few minutes. They were created to allow a brief escape from the otherwise hectic lives that we find ourselves living in today’s society. These devotionals have always asked pointed questions that basically try to make the reader respond with personal reflections on how they are living up to the concepts presented in the Scripture for that day. I do not know how many times that I have heard from people telling me that what I had sent out was exactly what they needed to read that day. To make a long story short, my twenty-four years of doing this have not been without distractions and troubles. Many times, the passages and insight gleaned from my experiences have also fallen right into place. I have become a student of God’s Word. I read and cross reference many different translations. I have also put some of that experience into Biblically-based books. I have also reviewed and edited the devotional archive and have created three devotional journal books.

DAILY LIVING Ministries, Inc. provides daily opportunities to allow God’s Word to take priority in our lives. Based on this mission, the decision was made to focus on providing resources that can go with people on the very thing that all of us take with us everywhere and the very thing that we can’t seem to live without - OUR PHONES!

We are a society that seems to not be able to go anywhere without our smartphones. I recently had an epiphany and realized that everything that I have written and built is designed to be at our fingertips on these very devices. The website can be viewed on a phone. The devotionals can be viewed on a phone. The books are designed to be able to be read on a phone. If we can’t find the time to sit still with a Bible, most people can read on their phones. The resources created by DAILY LIVING Ministries, Inc. are designed to work in conjunction with the apps that are currently installed on your phones, and it is recommended that the reader cross reference Scriptures by downloading a Bible app. In this ever-increasing hectic world, we need to find any and every opportunity to sit in His presence. We need to find time to “Be Still.” I seldom look at the analytics, but I had a reason to do just that not too long ago. Besides the daily emails, and the postings to social media, the new website has seen visitors from 128 countries and six continents in the last twelve months. Many of these countries would surprise you if I listed them. This country count doesn’t even include the visitors to the backup blog site! DAILY LIVING Ministries is reaching the world.

I, too, still find myself using my degree from Georgia Tech. Many days are less than ideal. Deadlines and commitments, pressure and stress still abound; but I will make a daily decision to sit in His presence. I make a daily decision to share what I have learned.

More information at https://dailylivingministries.org/