About blogging...

In January of 2009 I started this blog. It wasn't my first blog. In August 2006 I started The Quiet Life, a more personal blog and one which I still keep up to this day. I picked up on blogging only a bit late, 2004 was proclaimed the Year of the Blog. Before that I'd been writing for newspapers and before that I'd been writing academic papers for Universities as a graduate student. 2004 was the year that the medium burst onto the scene and journalism has never been the same. Neither have activism, diaries, relationships, or book publishing. Even some churches have their own anonymous blogger watchdogs.

So in 2009 I received a conviction that my lifetime of writing would and could be put to good use for Jesus. World Wide Web outreach was possible through this medium. However, I was daunted in January of 2009 by the sheer number of blogs out there. Blogs covered every topic and every corner of the internet. "[T]he current estimates say there are about 450 million “active” English language blogs right now, but that number varies according to the source. Technorati estimated over 200 million blogs at the start of 2009, with exponential growth since then." (source)

200 million blogs? Plus one more? Was anyone even going to notice my blog? My paltry words floating out on the ethersphere? But I leaped in, confident that the Holy Spirit knew what He was doing and that even if only one person ever read this blog that it would be the right person at the right time. So on January 6, 2012 it  will be the three-year anniversary of this blog. I've blogged on this blog 1411 times, an average of 470 essays per year. More than one a day, every day, for three years. The Holy Spirit is endlessly creative.

I thought that the economic crash of October 2008 was a huge end time sign and was pleased to be used of the Lord for His name by writing. I love writing and I love the Lord so it is literally a match made in heaven. Through prayer and bible study the Spirit makes me aware of the deeper things of the Word and then I can turn around and write on topics I feel led by the Spirit to write about. If what I write is of the Spirit, He will pierce the heart of the person and they will be convicted, or encouraged. I'm humbled by this process, and often am reduced to tears of thanks when someone writes that they were moved by something on the blog. When that happens it is a visible manifestation to me of the Spirit's working in the world.

But not so many visitors came in 2009 even after the crash. People still thought what was happening in the world was kind of normal. I didn't think so but I knew the nature of birth pangs would be such that eventually they'd become noticeable to a wider swathe of the population, and then they would come running for answers. Hopefully they would accept Jesus as that answer.

For all of 2010 there were still millions of blogs being opened each day. I blogged on. Sometimes I'd get discouraged that the people would not respond as well to the theological posts as they would the weird posts. Essays about UFOs or sinkholes or weird noises or vampires always got lots of hits and the ones about Jesus being God ... didn't. But in the end I was grateful that someone felt compelled to read what is here because that meant they were searching for a Divine reason for the weird things happening rather than a secular one.

In January 2011 the page views went from the steady hundreds per day as they had been for two years, to a steady thousands per day. If you remember January 2011 opened with Aflockalypse. That was the world-wide event where thousands of birds at various locations simply dropped dead to the ground. Then it started happening with fish and then other wildlife such as starfish or penguins or seals. THAT seemed to get people's attention in a way that even the economic crash of 2008 hadn't. In March 2011 was the all-time high for page views and you'll remember that was when the Japan earthquake and tsunami and resulting nuclear disaster occurred. People were awake now.

Since Aflockalypse, the page views have only been upward.  Last night I passed 1 million views.

Though the numbers are humbling to me, they aren't really so great in the blogosphere. Many, many other blogs get a million views per day, not a million views in three years. But I wanted to take a moment to thank the Holy Spirit for this ministry, because each and every one of those views is a blessing. Someone, somewhere, looked at a page here and in so doing learned a little bit about Jesus. Each time I write I aim to exalt Him, and to promote that He has a plan for each of us and that it is available to each of us if we will just repent of our sins.

I boast of Him, and the opportunities and ministries He gives us for His name. Delivering information about Jesus, connecting people with Jesus, alerting people about Jesus' soon arrival, urging people to repent before it is too late, are blessings for me to perform in His name. Seeing the interest in prophecy go up as the page views rise (not just my blog but many others) means that people are becoming alerted to the times. They are waking up. And it is a blessing because He gave us a more sure word, prophecy, and it is coming to pass just as He said. (2 Peter 1:12-21).

THIS is the reason for this blog: (Philippians 2:6-11):

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

I want this blog to be as this verse, "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Thank you all for your visits and your encouragement. I will keep blogging until the day I die or the rapture, whichever comes first. I will keep proclaiming the Goodness of Jesus until the end of time and then for all eternity. I hope that for your Christmas present you fall out of love with your sin and in love with the Savior from your sins.

As we read in the above sermon, "Romans 10:9-10, 'If you confess Jesus as Lord with your mouth, and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved.' Saved from hell, from sin, from judgment. Better to confess it now and go on confessing it forever in heaven than to go on confessing it in bitterness and remorse forever in hell. Every tongue will confess it." (source). Will you confess today? It would be the best Christmas present ever.

Tweet