The August Experiment is now over because it’s not August anymore.

Even though I got sick in the middle, I managed to put up a couple of posts a day through to the end.

It takes more work for both writing posts and keeping up with comments, which I always welcome. But I learned that in trying to come up with more posts, there is more to write about than I thought and I can write more personal fluffy type stuff and still stick to Biblical subjects.

Alexa ranking went way down (lower the better) for some reason but that makes no difference. I didn’t get any more people buying books from Amazon through the blog unfortunately.

I learned a lot and it was a good experience. Some things will be kept up. Others will be reduced. And we’ll see how things go. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

The August Experiment is going well. Posting more has its pluses and minuses. A plus and minus are the comments. When there are a lot it can be a lot to keep up with. But it’s the comments that I learn from and is part of what makes blogging worthwhile. I would always rather have too many than not enough.

Another plus is posting more helps me come up with even more ideas for some reason. I don’t know how that works.

I also have been posting with a little more of my own personality mixed in, hopefully without getting self-indulgent which I think is a good thing for a blog.

I’m learning that too many substantive posts are too much for both the writer and the reader. This month is unusual for the writer because I prepared a lot of the posts in late July and also took some posts from my other blogs and modified them or expanded on them. But it’s also a lot to expect of readers to want to read that much. I can’t get myself to post complete fluff (not that there’s anything wrong with that) because it goes against the purpose of this blog. So I always want to tie in Scripture or something related to Christianity with each post.

Although it was never a goal to increase stats because I don’t care much about them, they haven’t gone up, so more posts doesn’t seem to equal more visitors although it’s only been two weeks. Every now and then I try to do a post that will benefit people who come in from search engines. A post on Jeremiah 29:11 is by far the most popular post coming in from people searching on it.

I would like to sell more books from people clicking on Amazon links but that hasn’t happened either.

There are quite a few posts I want to do that would take some time. 1 Peter 1 is one of them among many others. I’m going through France’s commentary on Matthew so I don’t want to spend a lot of time on writing longer posts but will at some point because it’s beneficial to me.

So there you have it. I will try to keep it up for the rest of the month. Maybe I can make myself post fluff but I don’t know if I muster up the strength. This post has gotten too long so I will sign off for now. Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts let me know.

I don’t presume that people should care what I think.

But then I write a blog don’t I? (A “Weblog” [full name] is like a journal.)

But I write about mainly what I’m learning from others and mostly post quotes about what others think or teach. I also post links to resources I want to keep track of.

But those quotes aren’t always as interesting or valuable on a blog if there isn’t some personal commentary along with them.

I don’t know why people would be interested in reading personal things about me.

But then I like reading personal things (to a degree) about others. After all, many of the blogs I read are written by people who I call my blogging friends.

It’s a fine line. I know, I shouldn’t worry.

Explanatory post on the August Experiment

I’ve often read how people love the “prolific” blogs. I don’t know why, but I find this intriguing. Many people like blogs of people who post a whole lot. So I’m thinking of trying it. I’m not looking for stats or accolades or awards. I don’t like awards and I never mention when I make the top XX or whatever. So that’s not what I’m after. I just want to see what it’s like and see what happens.

I’ve always been extremely focused on Scripture and things relevant to God and Christianity. I will be a little looser (that’s how you spell looser and not loser, all you bad spellers) in that regard. I won’t be a tabloid biblioblog–entertaining people with other people’s total depravity. I won’t write about my cats because that’s kind of pathetic, as much as I love them. I won’t write about what I ate for breakfast or the underwear I bought.

I don’t have the courage or the creativity to bring up too much controversial stuff like TC does. I don’t read enough variety of books to review as much as Nick does (or play enough games, or watch enough movies). I don’t have the secret news sources that Joel has and I’m not a Dr. But I think I can come up with some stuff.

I’m probably trying to be somebody I’m not, but I just want to see what it’s like for a month. What do you think? I may run out of prolificness before the end of the month but I might give it a try.

The big change is I made is the title, or subject line of each post bigger and with more space above and below it. In Internet Explorer (does anyone still use that?), the text looks huge. But it probably did before too. On Chrome the title didn’t look different in size than the other text, on my system anyway–it was just bold and squeezed in. The CSS code was puzzling to me, but I finally figured it out.

I dread the day, which may have already come, when the theme looks outdated. I hope, at least, it’s very readable and well organized. I spent too much time on it to want to change it, even though that was initially about seven years ago.

I’m still on somewhat of a blogging hiatus or slump. I’ve been having some difficulties and low motivation along with it, but I’m confident it will come back again at some point. I’m wondering about another August Experiment, but I have no idea if the mojo will be back by then. I had just gotten started on the Christian Sayings series before the hiatus/slump. I plan on getting that going again.

For those who know him, I heard a tiny whisper that Esteban, who helped me with learning the reconstructed historical Koine Greek pronunciation, as opposed to the barbaric Erasmian phonetic pronunciation rules, which nobody who spoke or speaks Greek ever sounded like in any way (don’t get me started), might be looking at his pen. Esteban keeps teasing us once every six months on Twitter and I really don’t like it. At all. Maybe, just maybe, it will really happen this time, but I’m not going to expect it and get my hopes smashed (worse than dashed) yet again.

And for you grammar geeks, if you haven’t seen it yet, I give you this video, which was presented to me by Stan.

Some people have been writing eclectic stream of thought posts and I thought I would give it a try. It’s much easier than trying to write a real and intelligent post anyway.

I had lower back surgery three weeks ago. A double fusion of S4 – S1, laminectomy/decompression and removal of scar tissue from a previous surgery. The doctor said the surgery was textbook. The post op was not. For at least half a day, probably more, my morphine was unknowingly dripping on the floor instead of going into me. So I had no pain medication for quite a while. I’ve never felt so much pain in my life. They also kept getting my other psych meds wrong. I had an anxiety attack and was sweating so much for two days the bed was soaked. I couldn’t sleep much because of pain and people parading through my room at all hours of the day and night. I’m still traumatized by the whole experience.

Since then my mobility has steadily increased, my exercises are improving and the pain has gone down somewhat. I won’t know if the bone is starting to fuse well until three weeks from now when I get the first x-ray.

For the first time in a long time my faith is really being tested. I’m having a hard time trusting God for anything. I’m doing all my devotional stuff and have started doing my ‘extra’ reading again as I become more coherent after surgery but it’s been tough. I’m scared the bone won’t fuse and I’ll have to go back for more surgery. Seems like I’m just scared of everything. I’m praying constantly but not getting much help yet. It’s very inconsistent from day to day.

Friends on Facebook gave me:
“…if we are faithless, he remains faithful– for he cannot deny himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13)

In distress you called, and I delivered you; (Psalm 81:7a ESV)

2 Corinthians 12:9
9 But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

Robert Jimenez is starting a series called: Has inerrancy outlived it’s usefulness? Part One. Many people are excited about this one. Tune in if you’re interested.

I believe the Bible is inerrant. Meaning I believe all of it is true. I’m thankful that the majority of people on the major Bible translation committees feel the same. It seems that there are many different definitions and modernistic baggage so that it’s not helpful anymore. I’m not always up to speed on how these terms morph, but I’m not really concerned so much. If it’s a dirty word then I’ll just say that I believe all of the Bible is true. It’s not high on my priority list of things to read right now but I did read an article I liked for the most part:
IS THE BIBLE INERRANT?

A verse about me:

For the first time in a year and a half I’ve slacked off on learning Greek. It’s hard to concentrate on anything when in pain and on pain meds (and sleeping a lot) but I think it’s about time I got back to it.

Right now in addition to reading the OT I’m still reading Ryken’s Bible Handbook and Unburdened, which is about worry and is very timely, at the same time. I will eventually be reviewing both of them.

I would really like to be blogging more, especially about what I’m reading in the OT, but it’s difficult right now. I remember “The August Experiment” last year when I posted at least once, usually multiple times a day and the stats went way up. I really don’t care about stats though.

I better stop there or I’ll run way beyond most people’s internet attention span. Thanks for reading.

These are posts from this blog that I think are worth reading again. It was nice to look back over the year.

January

• That’s God’s Problem

February

• Encouragement for Learning Original Languages
• Spurgeon: A Defense of Calvinism (and Arminians)

April

• American Idol
• Christ’s Substitutionary Atonement In Scripture

June

• Jesus Cleansing The Temple In Mark’s Gospel
• Scripture of the Day – most comments on this blog

July

• Be a Kinder Calvinist
• My definition of a “Calminian”
• Women in the Gospel of Mark

August (The August Experiment)

• How To Be A Cool Biblioblogger
• Marketing Slogans for the TNIV Translation
• Couldn’t the elders and angels in Revelation do something useful?
• The End

October

• When You’re Too Tired To Pray
• Why The Bible Is More Than Just An Owner’s Manual

December

• Power Outage

For the last few weeks, I’ve been in training, trying to limit my online time because I’m reading France’s commentary on Matthew which is about 1200 pages. I don’t want to be reading this commentary forever. I want to reduce online time to spend more time on the more important things.

Look for some posts on that. I’ve been having a great time with it.

I’ll admit this is rather ironic because I’m also doing the August Experiment at the same time. I did have many of the posts already started or written though beforehand. But it does still take time.

So anyway today I found some Twitter tweets or whatever they’re called and thought it was pretty funny. Wait till you see the last one.

————–
Slept in some this morning. Xxxxxx’s making pancakes for breakfast.
about 23 hours ago from web

Watching ‘Wyatt Earp’ on tv. ‘Tombstone’ was better.
about 23 hours ago from web

XXXXX’s home from work finally!
3:29 PM Aug 7th from web

I woke up this morning and found that cricket dead on the floor. Sometimes I like that we have a cat.
7:17 AM Aug 7th from web

The apartment had my package all this time (almost a month) and never told me. Boo apartment life!
4:19 PM Aug 6th from web

Wish there was more time in the day. I’d love to get more done.
8:14 PM Aug 5th from web
————
Hmmm. I wonder how they could save time and get more done?

Related post:

• The Benefits of Twitter

During (The) August (Experiment) I will post a photo each Sunday. They are a celebration of God’s creation.

Today’s is a Daylily.

Luke 12:27-32
“Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 28And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

29“And don’t be concerned about what to eat and what to drink. Don’t worry about such things. 30These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world, but your Father already knows your needs. 31Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.

32“So don’t be afraid, little flock. For it gives your Father great happiness to give you the Kingdom.

Photo © Jeff at Scripture Zealot