We Are All Witnesses

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.  - Rev 1:1-2

A few years ago, Nike launched an ad campaign heading into the NBA season with the tag line, “We are all Witnesses”.  It was meant to highlight the glory of LeBron James as he dominated another season with his other-worldly basketball skills and led his team to an NBA Championship.  Of course it didn’t quite turn out that way, LeBron failed in the postseason and eventually bolted for another team in another city.  We are all witnesses indeed.

John is our Witness

Something similar happened 2 thousand years ago on the isle of Patmos but instead of millions watching one man, one man witnessed the plan of God and told it to all the world.  That man was the Apostle John and through him, we get a front-row seat to exactly how God’s plan for this world will finally be culminated.  Not to stretch an analogy too far but where LeBron failed in his quest to win a championship, Christ will certainly succeed in His quest to redeem the world and restore it back to its rightful state as perfect and free from decay.

Now it’s our turn

Now the torch has been passed to us.  God has saved us and confirmed His Word to us, now we have the responsibility to be witnesses to the Truth.  Not just observing the Word but testifying to its power and relevance to the world.  All the words of this Life are entrusted to each generation and each generation must go preach the Word, convicting the world of sin and showing them the beauty of the Christ.  God is glorified when His people witness the truth and proclaim it boldly.  We are all witnesses.

Looking for a Reformed Church in Arlington TX?  Visit us at www.ArlingtonBelievers.com.

How to increase your backlinks Part Two

In my previous article, we looked at  a few ways to increase the number of backlinks that exist for your site.  Backlinks are important because Google counts each link as a “vote” for your site and judges it’s relevance accordingly and also because it’s a great way to get traffic to your site.  I can attest to the fact that traffic to my blog varies dramatically depending on where my links go.  If someone fairly popular mentions my blog then visits go up accordingly, so thank you to everyone who reposts, retweets, or mentions this blog!

FaceBook

Let’s face it, everyone is on FaceBook.  My 80 year old MIL is on FaceBook.  People’s pets have their own FaceBook page.  It’s absolutely huge so harnessing the power of FaceBook needs to be part of your backlinking strategy.  This is a fairly simple process, once you write a post you want to share, put a link to it on your FaceBook page.  Once you do that (and this is the key!) ask your followers to share it with their followers.  You don’t want to do this every time because it can get annoying but if you have something you think a lot of people would benefit from, don’t be shy about asking people to share it.  FaceBook makes it easy by having a “Share” button right below each post so all they have to do is hit that and FaceBook does the rest and you have multiple high-quality links back to your site.

Guest Posts

Keep an eye out in the Social Media streams for the blogs in your niche, occasionally one of them will request a guest post. (Usually the blogger needs a break or is going on vacation, something like that.)  When that happens, offer your services and write a VERY high quality post that includes a short bio at the end with a link to your site.  Keep it short, entertaining, and informative because this may be the only exposure your site gets to this segment of readers so you want to put your best foot forward.  Alternatively, you can request to write a guest post on someone’s blog but I recommend you have some kind of relationship with the person first, maybe a conversation through Twitter or email.

Press Releases

Press releases are great ways to get links out about your site.  These are very helpful when you first launch your site, are celebrating a anniversary, or just completed a redesign.  Anything noteworthy is a good excuse to write a press release and have it distributed.  Use a free service like www.bignews.biz or www.transworldnews.com to send your releases out for the world to see.

How do you get links for your site?  Leave a comment and let me know!

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Book Review : The Treasure of God's Word

As we approach the 400 year anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, it's natural to look back at the impact this book has had on Western culture. The Treasure of God's Word is more like a starter book that gives you the history of this translation of the Bible as well as giving examples of Bible verses covering various topics. For instance, you get a short essay on how the translation team was selected then chapters of verses covering subjects like God's Mercy, God's Grace, etc.

It's a beautiful book with a faux-leather cover and gold-gilded pages and large, easy to read text.  The short essays are very interesting and are full of information that most people wouldn't know about how this Book came together. It was a great read and I would recommend it to anyone that is curious about the King James Bible (arguably the most influential book ever published) or just wants to be reminded of the beauty and majesty of the King James language.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Looking for a Reformed Church in Arlington TX? Come visit us at ArlingtonBelievers.com

What are Angels?

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,  - Rev 1:1

To ensure that His revelation would be given to John exactly right, He entrusted it’s transmission to one of His angels.  This angel was given the incredibly important task of revealing to John all the things that would happen in the next few chapters and God’s prophetic message for each of the seven churches we will meet in chapters 2 and 3.

What are angels?

The most descriptive Bible verse dealing with angels is Hebrews 1:14, where the author reminds us that angels are “all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation”.  Angels are not “little gods” but servants of the true God who serve God by serving us, His people.  The Greek word translated “angel” is literally “messenger”, angels are messengers of God’s will.  This is why God knew He could trust the angel to deliver the revelation safely to John because that is precisely the reason God created angels in the first place.

Do we worship angels?

In years past it has been popular to focus an inordinate amount of time on the study of angels, as if angels were meant to be the focus of our faith.  Angels are servants of God and are not meant to be what we worship.  This is something like standing in a beautiful building and praising the hammers and saws used to build it instead of the architect that designed it.  Idolatry is an easy sin to slip into because our hearts are idol-factories, constantly churning out new things to turn our love and affection towards instead of God.  Making idols out of angels is even easier because they are stronger than us, holier than us, and we know they live in the presence of God, but they are not God.  They are finite in power, love, and righteousness and do not even compare to the infinite worth of our God.

Why did God make angels?

Angels are used to help remind us that as great as angels are, they are still just created beings like us and we should worship the One who created them from nothing.  God does not need angels, because He is infinite and in need of nothing, any more than He needs us but yet He chooses to love us and include us in His plans.  He even created the angels to serve us and to help us in our journey towards His glory.  Praise God that He has provided everything we need for life and righteousness before we even knew we needed it!

Looking for a reformed church in Arlington TX?  Want to read more posts like this one?  Come visit us at www.ArlingtonBelievers.com.

WordPress Wednesday - How to Embed a Form

There are probably as many ways to do this as there are products but I’m going to show you the way I do it because it is by far the simplest way I’ve ever seen.

Step #1 – Navigate to Google Docs

Head to Google’s free document center, Google Docs.  If you don’t already have a Google account you will need to start one.

 

 

Step #2 – Create a new form

Go to the “Create New” dropdown button and scroll down to “Form”.

 

 

 

 

Step # 3 – Fill out the form

This is where you ask your questions.  What do you want to know?  You can also make the answers multiple choice or allow long-form text responses.

 

 

Step #4 – Embed the form

This is where Google Docs really shine because they make this so simple.  Simply go to the “More actions” button and drill down to “Embed”.  It will provide you a short line of code that just needs to be copied and pasted into your post.  If you are using something like “Windows Live Writer” make sure this code gets posted in the “Source” or “HTML” tab.  In this case it turns “iframe src="https://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?formkey=dHFFak9ZRVdfYkFKanNuNTFibW9CZnc6MQ" width="760" height="671" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0">Loading...</iframe>

into this:

Loading...

 

Step #5 – Read the results

Once the form is embedded and you start receiving answers, all the data will sent automatically to a Google Spreadsheet that will be available in your list of documents.  Go there and start learning what answers people gave to your questions!

Did you find this helpful?  Leave a comment to let me know.

Need a Free SEO Site Assessment? Visit us at www.SEOAssistant.org for one today.

Best of Today's SEO - 10/05/2010

7 Ways to Find Inspiration – At a loss for what to blog about?  Need some fuel for the fire?  Here’s a couple great tips.

Want a Video Game on your Site? – Ever thought about adding a video game to your site to increase the time people spend there?  Here’s a few pointers.

Reputation Management – Unsure of the best way to brand yourself using social media?  Try this advice.

Ok.  This has no SEO value I just found it interesting.  This is a round computer so Asians will not lose their “slant-eyed” look.  That sentence is so incredibly offensive I can’t believe I wrote it.

Need a Free SEO Site Assessment?  Visit us at www.SEOAssistant.org for one today!

How to increase your backlinks Part One

One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is through backlinks.  A backlink is a link to your site from somebody else’s site and a rule of thumb is that the more of them you have out there on the internet, the more traffic comes to you and the more relevant your site is seen as by the search engines.  Backlinks are an important way to get the word out about your site. If you have the best content in the world it won’t matter if no one can find you, so here are a few “tried-and-true” ways to get them.

Blog Comments

One of the best parts of the internet is the fact that no matter what your niche is, there is somebody else out there with either the same or similar interests.  Once you find these other blogs, be sure to follow them and read what they are saying and if they say something that moves you to chime in on the conversation, leave a comment.  Just remember a few rules. #1 Keep your comment on topic. (Otherwise, it’s just spam.) #2 Contribute something to the conversation (Otherwise, it’s pointless) #3 Keep it positive. (If you have something negative to say it may be better to send a private message to the blog writer.  Or not. Use wisdom.) #4 Make sure the comment includes a link so people can find you if they like your comment. (Most comboxes do this automatically now but just be sure)  The important thing to remember is that this is another person’s sandbox so you don’t want to do anything that will come off as just a spammer trying to “game” the system.  Be relevant, be thoughtful, be concise.

Articles

This is a great way to get backlinks and one a lot of bloggers don’t make use of.  Write an article about some facet of your niche and submit it to an article marketing site. (E-zine Articles is a good one.)  Make sure that in the “About the Author” section there is a link back to your site.  The great thing about this is you probably already have great content you can re-purpose for an article.  Go back over your posts, find something interesting and rewrite it in article form.  Once you post it you will have a great backlink to your site.

Twitter

Twitter is another great way to get a backlink. Try to use the shortlink that WP provides instead of the ht.ly shortened URL if there is enough room in your tweet ( www.SEOAssistant.org/p=6 vs ht.ly/pOGD45) This will get you a direct link instead of going through a link shortener and if your tweets end up on a static page or get retweeted a lot it’s a nice way to get a backlink to your site.

I hope you found this helpful.  How do you get backlinks?  Leave a comment and tell me.

Need a Free SEO Site Assessment?  Visit us at www.SEOAssistant.org for one today!