Alright, so once again welcome everyone to today's online workshop and today the topic is ideas for getting more views on your blog. So I'm Ben and I've lived in Japan ever since I was two years old so I don't look Japanese but inside I feel I'm pretty Japanese. I've been a WordPress user since 2014 so about eight years now and for a couple of years I was a WordPress technical support so I helped people figure out different issues they were having with their site and this year I've started to contribute full-time to the WordPress training team which is the team behind these online workshops and tutorials and other educational content about WordPress. So yeah that's a bit about me and for those who attending online workshops for the first time welcome these workshops are intended as sessions where we all learn together. So you can ask questions at any time and you can ask in the chat or you can unmute yourself and ask via audio and I don't have to be the one answering the questions either so if anybody knows the answer to a question in chat feel free to send that answering and we can all share information with each other. This session will be recorded and we upload it to WordPress.tv so that people who couldn't attend the session can still watch the recording and learn from the content as well. And finally if you're interested in hosting online workshops at the end of these slides I will have my contact information and you can reach out to me and I can help you figure out how you can host them as well which reminds me I am going to share my slides with you all. All right so these slides will be shared after the session is over as well but I've just dropped the link in the Zoom chat so feel free to open that up in your computer follow along and if you have any questions you can pause and ask me at any time. All right so before we jump in who has a blog today a lot of the things we'll be talking about today apply to blogs. So I want to know how many people have a blog and how long have you been blogging. So feel free to answer in the Zoom chat. Me personally I have a blog B Sun's blog and I think my first post was probably 2018 around November 2018 so 19 so four years now I've been using this blog. Who don't you say you have a you've had a blog since 2006. Wow have you always used WordPress or have you used other sites as well. Jonathan since 2008 WordPress since 2008. Udo okay so I wonder what version that would have been. Udo and Jonathan you would have seen WordPress scale through many different updates and changes and you've seen the whole history of WordPress I imagine. 1.5 wow okay how about other people here I was on Drupal before WordPress. Okay does anybody else have a blog maybe or maybe you'll think about starting a blog and that's totally fine as well. Okay so you in my mind I think people find your blog in two different way like two main ways. The first way is through search results so they look up something in a search engine like Google and then Google suggests our blogs as a result to that search and the other way I've just categorized as everything else so people find your blog either through search results or either in other different ways and preparing your blog for search results is often called search engine optimization or shortened as SEO and SEO is a whole nother topic on itself so I will actually be doing a online workshop I think next week next week yeah next week I'll be doing another online workshop just about SEO search engine optimization and today when we talk about increasing views on our blogs we'll be talking about the everything else section so not related to search engines what can we do to increase the views on our blogs so there'll be a slide later on as well where I introduce my session from next week so if you're interested please sign up for that and I hope to see you there as well but today we're going to focus on different ways to get people to our blogs that doesn't that don't rely on using search engines okay so well there's some ideas you can try to get more views on your blogs I've come up with a few I'm sharing your blogs in creative ways using links to engage your audience using WordPress categories and tags on your posts and using keywords to highlight your content content in search results so that that fourth one does tie back to search results I'm cheating on my own rules here but hopefully there's enough content here to give people just new ideas about how you can get more people to your blog before we go into my slides though I actually wanted to flip this session around and have an open floor discussion first so for the next 10 15 minutes and I want to ask everybody in the workshop what do you do to get more views on your blog are there different like tricks or tips you've tried maybe something you've read on another person's blog somewhere and you're thinking about trying it on your site what ideas does everybody in the session today have about getting more views to your blog you can type in a zoom chat or you can unmute and say it out loud what what ideas do people have to get more views to your blog so Jonathan you say you rely on me on auto sharing your posts to Twitter so do you use a plugin for that or yes there's I think I think it's jetpack I think jetpack has a social sharing feature and so you can you can set it you can set it up so that as soon as your post gets published and I think you can or scheduled it'll automatically post to Twitter all right so plugins jetpack social yeah I'm guessing this is the one all right so I think I think so I think it's just I think it's just built into jetpack core as well but I think they're busy separating them up now but I think currently it's in just core jetpack it's just a yep feature yeah okay so um I'm actually familiar with this plugin as well and what it does is you connect um some of your social media accounts and so when you publish a post on your WordPress site it automatically also like cross not cross post like tweets them or post them on your Facebook and there are a couple of other plugins that do this as well um and I think different plugins might have like free versions and paid for versions but you definitely sharing on your social media is a good way to try and get more people to your blog um so I actually have a um a slide here which I wanted to write people's ideas down so we can come back to it later um share to social media all right Udo you say social media as well so she you share on Twitter Facebook um again what what plugin do you use if you're happy to share that I'd like to look it up and share it with the team so let's see so Jonathan you use so I've just dropped the link to this plugin in the chat and then Udo you say you also use newsletters um so that's a good idea so newsletters I think is um people sign up to your blog or subscribe to your blog so that anytime you publish a new post they get an email about that new post I actually have done on my site as well let's see so oh that's a bit large but anyway um into your email address below to receive updates from my blog so I have a subscription field as well um so people can sign up and get updates um there so um news later subscription Udo plugin WP to Twitter okay so let's look that up WP to Twitter and if any other people have other ideas about getting more views to your site continue dropping those in the chat there let's see post tweets from WordPress to Twitter um okay let me share that link yeah so I've shared the link to that plugin in the zoom chat as well and I could list those ideas down here too what other things do people do not a lot more ideas coming through Jonathan is there anything you've heard of before that other people do that maybe you weren't adventurous enough to try but you've heard it might work not really no I'm terrible when it comes to marketing and that kind of thing so okay no problem well we we have a good start here I'm automatically sharing to social media news and subscriptions and maybe this session is perfect for everyone then because I've come I've come prepared with like 15 slides or something with ideas so hopefully you can get new ideas here try them out and maybe grow your audience as well so my ideas for getting more views on your blog um first of all my suggestion is to start by asking two questions what is the goal for your blog and who is the audience of your blog so the goal for your blog and the audience of your blog and I think the answer to these questions will decide what specific like tricks and that are going to work to get more people to your blog so a goal for a blog there are a number of things that could be a goal so maybe you're just doing personal journaling so you don't actually want people to come and see your site it's just for you to personally keep track of your life um or maybe you're sharing memories with just close family and friends so you don't actually want people to find you on so um search engines you just want your close relatives and friends to know different updates about you or maybe the goal for your blog is to share your experience with the world um in my case that is actually what I started this for if I can so about Beesons blog Beesons blog started out as a record of my path to reapplying to work at automatic but now I use it to share my life the life of an automatician living in Japan so initially I started my blog to share with people how I failed to get into automatic a company and how I was like studying and doing all these different things to reapply and get back in again um and as I was doing that people did contact me and like asked me for help um because they were trying to apply to the same company and so I was able to share my experience with them um and actually one of my followers also joined the company after I did so that was exciting to see um another goal for your blog might be to provide resources around a certain topic so this could be like um recipe blogs you have um recipes you want to share with the world or maybe you have a um like a tech blog where you want to share different tech tips um with people um another another goal for your blog is collecting information from other resources so you might not be putting out a lot of new content but you're gathering important information from lots of places instead of making a catalog for people to come to and easily find the additional resources so there are there are lots and lots of goals um for a blog does anybody in the the group who wants to share what their goal for their blog is it can be any of the reasons I've listed here can be something else what is what is the goal for your blog or maybe you don't have a goal you've just started and that's totally fine too so Jonathan you say um your goal was to originally just a personal journaling of your journey learning PHP yep so that that would be this first one I've listed here in which case maybe you're not too aggressive in getting more people to see your blog it's just for you to the publish out that yeah so um there are different exactly that right all right so diving deeper into your goals so once you've figured out what your goal is there are a couple of questions you can ask um do you want a a quick place to journal like if journaling is all you're doing do you want a quick place to journal um and maybe in that case like the WordPress app um you using that on your phone gives you a quick way to journal um and you don't really need to worry about your theme and your plugins and all that it just you can write content there for yourself um if you just want your family to have access then um maybe you want to set up things on your blog so search engines can't find you um or if it's a resource you'll actively share with people is it a resource you really want to share with other people um do you want the general public to find your blog another good question is are you looking to monetize your blog so are you wanting to earn money from your blog like add maybe put ads on or um have I don't know pay um collect payment from other people so that they can come and post on your blog um if you're looking to monetize your blog then you you really do want to increase your audience the more audience you get probably the more money you'll collect um so diving deeper into your goals helps you understand what like how you want to promote your site how much you want to promote your site how much effort you want to put into that um so once you've clarified your goals I think it helps you make decisions like should you turn comments on on your site um if you want it to be an interactive site um you can turn comments on um but for example my wife she she also has a blog but she doesn't have comments on because um she wants it to be a quiet place where she gives information to the real world rather than a um active place of communication between lots of people um do you want to add a contact page so people can contact you in my case my blog does have a contact page because I wanted that interact with different people um but clarifying your goal will help you make those decisions about your site um do you want to search about on your site do you want people to be able to search through your site and find older posts as well or maybe you just want them to see your newest posts do you want to show ads do you want to share your personal information what will be in your menu so these are all different decisions you'll make about your site and once you clarify your goal it'll help you make those decisions and then finally who is your audience so your goals will help you identify who your audience is it's just family in that case you just want to promote your site to your family or maybe it's a ring of close friends in which case you want to find ways to promote to your friends or is it a more wide group of people on the internet like you you want everybody to come and see your site um and then considering what interests them so this is going to help you decide how to promote your blog because you want to promote your blog with things that interest your audience so what questions do they have that you can answer or what delights them what can you post on your site that delights them how can you promote your site that brings joy to them or maybe there's there's something your audience is struggling with how can you help them and so once you ask these questions and clarify your your goals and your audience this gives you a bit of a framework as you figure out how to exactly promote your site okay and so what I've listed here are different ways for you to get to know your audience a bit more like maybe you can place surveys on your blog you can ask people for feedback about your blog like even if it's just for family you can actually you can ask your family what did you think about my blog get feedback from them apply it to your blog and hopefully you can make it a more attractive blog to your family and if you have a larger blog and you start to get different people following you and subscribing to your blog then you can check out their blogs too to see find out maybe how they are doing promotion how are they letting people know about their content how are they growing their audience and get hints from them as well so the first step into growing your audience is asking yourself two questions what the goal is for your blog and who your audience is for your blog and that will set the framework for then how specifically what specifically can you do to grow your audience so next we'll start talking about the creative ways you can show your blog are there any questions so far about asking these questions about clarifying your goals clarifying your audience in like um like general marketing world professional marketing people also start with these questions what is the goal for their their site whatever they're trying to promote who is the audience and this helps them clarify their marketing strategies for their products or for their sites or for their services so these questions are actually something I borrowed from that marketing environment something we can also ask ourselves as we try to promote our blogs all right no questions coming in so now let's dive into the actual ways you can try and grow more audience on your blog and the first one I listed was share the social media so we're doing Jonathan you've already got that one done announce your post on social media and I've listed you can plug in to automatically do this for you so I left a few links in the zoom chat here and something you can do is like manually share your content on social media as well so if you're if you're chatting with someone on social media and maybe they bring up a topic you've already posted about in the past go ahead and copy that link paste it then say yeah actually I have some ideas about this check out my blog and you can read about it there so you can do automatic promotion through plugins but you can also do manual promotion on social media and I think many times blogs about topics that are relevant to our lives and so just casually sharing it with your friends or people you interact with can be a good way to generate more people to come and see your blog so using social media definitely and the next one I wrote was allowing people to subscribe to your blog so you've got that one down as well set up a subscription form on your blog and I've written you can use plugins for this and yeah so this one was covered before as well if you're looking for an active interactions and post comments use a plugin that allows people to follow comment threads as well so some plugins add a subscription form to your site but some plugins can also add like a subscription form to comment threads so people can follow the site itself but if there's an interesting conversation going on in the comments people can subscribe to those comments and get updates when somebody else comments in that thread so if you want your comments to become an active part of your site then turning something on like that will actually be a good idea as well another thing you can do is read and comment on other blogs so depending on what comment plugin people are using when you comment on somebody else's site sometimes you have to log in and make an account sometimes you have to share a bit of a bio about yourself and you can actually slip your own blog link into your bio there I don't recommend like promoting your sites in comments on other people's sites like the comments about that person's content so just writing randomly come check out my site isn't a good promotional strategy but you can put the link in your comment bio and then when people see you're making interesting comments or meaningful comments to the conversation they might check your bio out and then notice your site link and come over to your site and see what you're doing there as well so something I mentioned earlier was checking out people who come to your site seeing what they do for their promotions and you can do the same with the other way around as well so put your link in your different bios and introductions so people can come back to your site when they find you interesting and they want to engage more with you another thing you can do is sharing your blog on business cards so this is something my wife actually does she has printed physical cards with her blog URL so when she meets somebody at events or in social activities and she introduces herself she always hands in this card which has a link to her blog and people can come to her blog and find out more about her there and it's a good way to keep a connection with people people have met her and then sent a contact form in to stay connected with my wife and so the business cards have actually helped in the past to generate an audience there um not all of well not that's not accurate some companies aren't using business cards anymore so business cards are starting to fade away but it's a good way if you have a lot of real life connections with people then this is another way you can share your blog with them Jonathan I found the comments I do approve on my own blog to have links are those that are adding value to the blog post okay so going back to the comments section here comments you approve on your blog that have links are those that are adding value to the blog post so commenting on other people's blogs is one way to get engagement and let other people know about like just that you exist out there that your blog is out there and when people find value in what you're saying they will come back so Jonathan has proven my point here that this does help and I imagine Jonathan you've probably checked out a few people's blogs that way as well to see what what they're like yep let's see what other ideas do we have so talk about your blog with real life friends um when I started my blog I was very nervous um it was like the first time I was putting myself out there in the world and it took me a couple of weeks before I actually started bringing it up in conversations with people I was sort of it was my secret identity for a while but now if I think about it um I wish I talked about it more sooner so more people would have found out about it and given me feedback too like maybe there was something on the site that was difficult for them to figure out or maybe there was a particular topic or post they they found interest in um so just talking about your blog with real life friends can generate an audience through your site um so for example I started the blog six months ago I now have 20 followers come check my site out um I think this is something very similar to what I said to say my parents um when I talk to them about my blog um or um when you meet someone who you think they've been following your blog but might not have checked out recent articles you can say something like did you read my last blog post I should follow those from my trip to the beach last week so um if in conversation you get a sense that maybe they haven't been checking your blog out recently then you can casually bring your blog up in conversation and generate another audience member there um or the third example I wrote here is I know you love chocolate so I wrote this post all about chocolate bunnies this week thinking of you come have a look um I've never written a post about chocolate bunnies but this is some random one that came in my mind um just talking about your articles and things you're interested in um is another way to grow your audience um in real life connections this is an idea somebody else brought to me and that is to print your url on a t-shirt and wear it to events so like if you're an active member in different communities and um you think your blog content it would be interesting to that community printing on your t-shirt wear it to an event and then it can become a conversation startup so you can think outside the box and come up with these like creative ideas to share your site with different people something else I wrote here was um printing your blog url on mugs and handing them out in your neighborhood maybe your your blog is content about local events and um people in your community like right where you're living might be interested as well so that's one way to get people to know your blog um and then adding a blog url to holiday or birthday cards you send out to people so if you mail cards out to people add a url to your blog and they might come in um check out what you've been publishing there so that was that was a bit of a longer list there but sharing to social media allowing readers to subscribe read and comment on other people's blogs share your blog on business cards talk about your blog with real life friends print your url on a t-shirt and wear it to events and just get creative um sharing your blog in real life situations so let me pause there are there any questions or comments or any other ideas you came up with where we can creatively share our blogs with other people Jonathan says um you have no questions but you're definitely going to start using some of these um next time you co-host you can wear a t-shirt with your blog url on it that's exactly what i was thinking oh it was okay the only the only problem i have is my my blog domain is my full name dot com so it's going to be the full jonathan messenger dot com so we're going to have to somehow make it like across each other or something yeah um was that like 25 letters or something yeah i i find like i need so i was gonna say i need a i need a cool nickname like you that i can just use yeah um because i live in japan um for those um some people might know in japan they add son to people's names um so i would be ben sun and that's where my blog domain came from i'm the b is for benjamin and i'm a son so ben b sun's blog um so yeah the the other reason why i did that is because there are so many benjamins in the world that a domain name that uses the word benjamin is probably already taken already i tried like 15 different options trying to find a domain with benjamin it just wasn't out there um all right so those are different ways um you can share your blog and grow your audience something else i wanted to talk about um which is a little more technical but that is using links to engage your audience so once people come to your blog you want them to be interested in what you're writing there and you want them to stay there as long as possible so they can read more content find more interesting stuff and then hopefully they'll go back and share that with their friends and family as well and one way to keep them on your site is to use links so you can use links in a couple of ways um one of them is um linking to your other posts in your content so um if you're like writing a series um then or linking to your previous posts so people can go back and check those out um or even if you've written similar content in the past by linking to that similar content um people can open another person spend another few minutes there checking out your site um linking to other content on your site is called internal linking um and is a good way to grow engagement on your site something i like to do is set links to open in a new tab so that people don't lose where they were reading in their current content um so in WordPress you can turn the setting on so that links open in a new tab and that's one way to help people keep the current tab open but still open a related article in a new tab so linking to other posts another thing to consider is what do people see after reading a post so like physically on the screen what do they see when they get to the bottom of a post um do they see a script a subscription form do they see links to related articles do they see excerpts of another post maybe a short biography of who is writing the post um so um specifically who let's use my blog here as an example so um this is my most recent article here and so you scroll all the way down so if somebody reads this far ta-da that's me and my wife um so if somebody reads this far what do they see at the bottom of your post and this is where you can either connect them to um other articles in your site or keep them reading keep them engaged or if there's nothing else to click on people can disappear so open your site have a look at the very bottom of the post and see what options you offer for example i have here links to similar categories um or tags um in this in in this article so for example if somebody clicks on food they'll be able to find all the other articles about food on my blog so hopefully that's one way to keep them engaged um if you and you see i have a comments area here if you go further um i have links to my social media accounts and a subscription form but i don't know maybe looking at this now they do have to scroll down quite a bit before they find the subscription form so if i want to increase engagement on my site maybe i could bring the subscription form further up so it's right here after the after the blog post content finishes um so before i lose people they know they can sign up um let's have a look at another blog and um see what they have at the bottom of the site i'm offering the wordpress.org site there was a blog here they recently updated the the um the menus at the top and i thought there was a link here to the wordpress blog is that it nope is that it i think it's there we go it's just news yeah it's just the first link there oh okay okay all right so let's open their most recent um post scroll down to the bottom and see what oh so you can see here they they're using a lot of internal linking to connect people with other resources in the wordpress field keep them connected all right and then at the very bottom you can see the wordpress blog has all these different links here which connect to other sections of the site um let's see there's a link here to the previous article so if you want to go back one article and read that you can do that um and then links here to the different um authors of the post so that's probably even more simpler than my blog even so there's many links there but this is just an activity you can do on your side pull up one of your posts go to the very bottom what would people do once they get to the very bottom of that post and something else i recommend doing is doing it on mobile so on desktop this is this is about all that fits into a screen so i realized my subscription form isn't there and i might want to bring that up so it's a bit more prominent to people how does your site look on mobile one way you can do that is using the inspect tool i'm using google chrome some it's called inspect um different browsers call it different things but there's a tool and usually there's an option to toggle your site to the mobile view so this helps you so see what your site looks like on mobile you can also open your site on your mobile phone and check it there as well um so if you come to the bottom of the post um so i see again that the categories and tags are listed here um but they do have to scroll down a bit more before they find the subscribe field so maybe i could add like images of related posts here and maybe the images would capture people's attentions and help them stay engaged on the site um let's see what the WordPress.org brought log looks like so you come to the bottom of the post there's a link to the previous post link to the author's profiles and then you have a list of different menu items here so for different other pages on the WordPress.org website um so that's an activity you can do to see how is there anything there inviting people to stay on your site and stay engaged okay um and then something you're someone in the shed is using categories and tags to engage your audience so you saw my blog i have um categories or like the category food if you open that up you can see i've got a good number of logs related to food there and then i've also got different tags here so let's see if you click on the birthday tag i actually have a couple of posts related to birthdays as well and so categories and tags um have a few positive effects on your site and one of them is to keep people engaged with your content they can pull up other related posts um that are part of both categories or tags and stay engaged and then in the WordPress in the core WordPress there are three blocks here that i wanted to recommend the categories block the tag cloud block and the query loop block these all use categories and tags and you can actually show posts from different categories or posts from using different tags at the bottom of your pages um so looking at my blog that's probably something i can do as well here at the moment i just list the categories and tags but maybe i could add a query loop block so people actually see an image and maybe even an excerpt of a related post and then click on that and keep them engaged so using categories and tags a good way to keep people there um oh and one thing i recommend once you start using categories and tags you can you can end up with hundreds of categories and tags like um me i've been blogging for four years and i think i have like 150 even 200 tags um and so periodically go back and just organize those categories and tags um do any of your categories need renaming so maybe it started off as snacks but when you look back you realize you're posting food articles that aren't specifically snacks so maybe you should retitle snacks to food or maybe should you create subcategories maybe snacks should be a subcategory of food and then you also have like breakfasts and dinner and so you have the different just come back and organize your categories um so when people click on them they are getting targeted content related to those categories and tags all right so i listed a couple ways there ways there to use links to keep your audience engaged link to other posts um what links do people see at the bottom of post to keep them engaged and one thing you can use are categories and tags to keep your audience there um so they click on related articles and keep reading all right and then the last thing i wanted to talk about was keywords but before we jump in were there any questions or comments so far well let's jump into keywords keywords to highlight your content in search results so next week we'll be talking more about search engine optimization um and if you click on this this image in the slides i shared that will take you to next week's online workshop page so you can sign in register and attend that one as well um and we'll be talking about keywords a lot more um in detail there but for the moment i just want to take a quick look at keywords and see how we can use those to improve um or to to get more audience to our site so keywords um what people use the words people use to search for your content so what do people you search for when they try to find your blog um so for example a keyword for my blog might be b sun i have no idea if this will work well if if you type b sun um no b sun blog no b sun is probably not a good keyword for my site um but what what keywords that people use to find your size for example source created from tomatoes are people going to search for source created from tomatoes or are they going to search for tomato source so probably in this case tomato source is the keyword you want to focus on um and there are tools out there that help you um oh and Jonathan you say yours is just your name let's i'd be interested to see if that comes up so let me see let's see there we go so if i search for your name all right so that's your that's your blog and your name does bring it up so i'd like to actually i was i was i was joking obviously my name would come up but one of the keywords i was actually targeting for when i was working as a freelancer was the word codable um so i'd like to see if codable still comes up either codable or codable yeah codable or codable review um so that's that's the codable sites okay and if you search for codable review because at one point i was i was actively trying to there's what i was a freelancer and i just want to see if mine comes up in that list any there it is here it is it still comes up for one two three four fit one down so that's pretty good yeah yeah this probably won't work because there are a ton of Benjamin yeah there was when i was when i was working as a freelancer i was specifically targeting um that word because people were searching for reviews of the of the company okay and hopefully finding my blog post and then from there hopefully hiring me so that was a a thing that i did for a while okay all right um well Benjamin haven't talked about that's being pretty specific that did bring my face up um so next week we're talking about search engine optimization and then in November i'm actually doing another session about image seo image search engine optimization um and so this image is probably very optimized for search engines which is why i came up with this name um but anyway that's another topic we plan on coming um to next month so there's a tool here to see how people search for similar sites so um what is a a similar site so well what you would do is you'd find the site out there that's similar to what you want to write and see what people type to search for that site um so it doesn't really work well if you use your own site if you're just starting up because people haven't really been searching for your site um but just to show what this tool does i'll type my blog domain in there um let's just keep that united states all right let's see how it goes so what this tool is doing is figuring out what people have searched for in the past to pull my site up okay um live work work community work life manage life okay so these seem like keywords people use have found my site in research results and landed on it um so what you would do is do this for similar sites to yours similar sites similar people are searching for to find those sites and those would become the keywords for your site once you've figured out what your keywords are you would want to stick to those same phrases in your site so for example that tomato sauce example before if tomorrow if you've identified tomato sauce as a keyword then you want to use that separate tomato sauce in different places in your site you don't want to keep switching it out for sauce created from tomatoes or um tomato uh saucy tomatoes or i don't know but you don't want to rephrase it you want to keep to the same words and if you keep to the same words throughout your site search engines are going to automatically pick up that that's probably a keyword you're aiming for um you then want to add keywords in prominent locations like your site title and tagline um post titles post egg serves and also use your keywords naturally throughout your content so this site says life work is a keyword on my site on my blog and that's probably because my tagline says the work and life of a community education manager in japan so search engines have identified my tagline and taken words out of that and figured that must be the keyword on my site um so identify your keywords use them in prominent locations and use them throughout your content and by doing that when search engines um when people search for those keywords search engines are more likely to bring those up um and show your site in results so in jonathan's example it was um codable review so i imagine at one point you were using those words maybe in your site or targeting those audiences and so these were the keywords you would sort of naturally plant in your site um but we'll talk about keywords more next week in search engine optimization so if you want to know more about that um do come join my session next week and we can look into that in more detail so we've been talking about a lot as i just wanted to sort of give a summary of what we've discussed today um different ways you can use to grow your audience one of them is to share your blog in creative ways print it on mugs share it in conversation real life friends um manually send links on social media so people can link on that and come back check your site out another thing we talked about is using links to engage your audience so once they do come to keep them there so that they keep reading and engaging in your content and one way to do that is to use wordpress categories and tags and there are different blocks that also um help you use those categories and tags to link people to different um content um and finally we briefly touched on keywords to highlight your content in search results but we'll be talking about that more next week in more detail um so anything you'd like to to ask or share if there are any final questions you we didn't cover today feel free to drop in the zoom chat um and then i just wanted to add one more note thank you for attending today um in the training team wordpress training team right now we are conducting a individual learner survey and what this is is we want to figure out what do you want to learn about wordpress how do you like to learn do you like videos do you like live sessions you like text-based courses um do you like learning groups do you like to learn on your own uh we just want to figure out what people how people like to learn so we can make content um tailored towards our audience so um i've left a link here to the individual learner survey um do fill that out and that will help us create more content in the future um aimed at what interests you so i just wanted to give a brief announcement about that um and finally you'll see a link to my site profile and my twitter handle so is there any questions about this session feel free to reach out there um and then that's all i have for today so thank you Arthur, Stephen and Udo for staying and thank you Jonathan for co-hosting and i look forward to seeing everyone in my next session Arthur thank you it was very interesting as always i'm glad you found it interesting and hopefully i'm looking forward to seeing Jonathan wearing a t-shirt with his the blog URL on it someday so make sure you check out his um online workshops as well um and we'll see what if he ever does that all right then i'll finish the recording thank you everyone and have a good rest of your day bye


We believe in free thought. No religion likes that. They all want to control thought right inside your head. And Islam is among the worst of them.  You can't have free thought. If you have free thought there, that's criminal. No, this is like a caricature. It's not a caricature, that's a fact. Okay, so all governments restrict certain forms of speech, investigation. But we're talking about thought. You've somehow conflated that to free speech. Whereas I was talking about free thought and belief. So which Muslim country can actually scan your mind to determine what thoughts you have? Thoughts are expressed through speech. It's the same, there's no distinction between free thought and free speech. Yes. And you can go straight to the heart of the Muslim world and have all kinds of blasphemous, satanic thoughts. No one can do anything about it because it's in your head.


We're going to continue through starting at verse number 9. We looked at verse number 8 on Sunday morning talking about Joe Rogan. But we're going to look at verse number 9 on, and especially at this point in the Sur, in Colossians chapter 3, the Bible really starts talking about relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ here for the next few verses. It gives some very specific advice on how to handle your relationships with your fellow Christians. So let's go ahead and look at that. We've done a couple of these things we've talked about before, but there's one thing specifically that I'm going to spend some time on this evening that I don't think I've actually preached an entire sermon on. So we're going to look at this idea tonight. But let's go ahead and look at verse number 9 and get into the sermon right away. Colossians chapter 3, look at verse number 9. The Bible says here, now we're talking about relationships with each other. So here we had some advice on putting off anger, wrath, malice, all these things, that you should do. Now Paul is going to start talking to you about how you should be treating each other, how we should relate to one another in the church. Look at verse number 9 where the Bible says, lie not to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. So there's some pretty specific advice here. And now it just basically says don't lie to each other. Don't be liars. Now look, lying is one of those things that we use this sin all the time out soul winning. I think it's one of these things that we talk about so much that we kind of pass over it sometimes. We use it all the time just to prove everybody's a sinner because everybody has lied. Everyone's done it. But the thing is, we don't ever want to get to the point where we're like, we talk about it so much. We use it as a sin that everybody has done where we're like, yeah, it's no big deal. So first of all, look, is it ever okay in the Bible? I was having this discussion with my family. And there is a couple points in the Bible where somebody lied. And it's not that God in those points actually turned to Exodus chapter 1. It will look at one of those points this evening. But there is actually a point in the Bible where somebody lied. And it never says that God was okay with it. But it did say God didn't judge it. Look at Exodus chapter 1. The two points in the Bible that I can think of specifically, I think there's some other minor issues where people lied in the Bible, where God didn't judge it, but where the midwives in Egypt, they lied to the Egyptians saying that they, we'll look at that here in a second, but they lied to save the children of Israel.  And then of course there was Rahab who also lied to get the spies out to help the spies. So let's just look at one of these examples. Look at Exodus chapter 1 in verse number 15. Exodus chapter 1, look at verse number 15. The Bible says, And the king of Egypt spake unto the Hebrew midwives of which the name was one was Shephra and the name of the other Pua. And he said, When do ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women and see that this sit upon the stools? If it be a son, then ye shall kill him. But if it be a daughter, then ye shall live. So of course Pharaoh was worried that the Israelites were just like they were spreading and they were just like they were growing too fast. Their numbers were getting too big.  But the midwives feared God and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives and he said unto them, Why have ye done this thing and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women for they are lively and they're delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. They said basically the children were born. They didn't need the midwives. They delivered the babies without midwives. Therefore God dealt with the midwives and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. So look, this was a lie for good, you could say. It was a lie that stopped murder in this case, right? It was a terrible time of oppression. Look, it doesn't say that the midwives, I mean just think about the situation. It doesn't say the midwives saved all the Hebrew male children. But I mean they saved some of the children.  But the point I'm trying to make is the two points in the Bible that were what you want to call lies that God was okay with. Maybe you could make that argument. They were saving people's lives. I mean they were saving people's lives against an oppressive government that was there to murder people, okay? So let's be real, these are very extreme cases that none of us have been in, right? So the point is that lying is actually a big deal in the Bible. So it's not that we should go out and just talk about it so much, soul winning, that it just becomes a small thing to us. The Bible here is saying don't lie to each other. Look, if you want to have good relationships, don't lie to each other. But the fact is that people don't lie today to save people's lives, to stop an oppressive government from getting people. They lie to cover sin. They lie to turn to Proverbs chapter 6. They lie to lift themselves up. They lie to destroy. They lie to, you know, make other people look bad. Look at Proverbs chapter 6. Let's look at what God thinks about lying. It's not a small thing. Look at Proverbs chapter 6 and verse number 16. The Bible says, These six things doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto him. And then we're going to see seven things listed here. The Bible says, A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, and heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among the brethren. It's interesting to note that out of these seven things, at least three of them, I could argue more than three, but at least three of them have to do with lying. And these are things that the Lord hates. So my point I'm trying to make is, this is an easy one and it's not the point of the sermon, is that lying just because we talk about it all the time out, soul winning, is something that we should strive to not do in our lives, obviously, especially to each other. I mean, just embrace truth in your life is all you have to do.  You're going to mess things up in your life.  You're going to do things that you shouldn't have done in your life just own those things. That's it.  Just own those things. And guess what? If you go through your life where you're just like, you know what, whenever I make a mistake, I'm just going to own that mistake. And first of all, I should own that mistake as quickly as possible. There's a time factor in there. If you hang on to the sinking ship, you're obviously much more likely to drown. If you hang on to a bad idea, you hang on to a lie, you hang on to something, some sin that you've done or you're into, the quicker you get in the truth and the quicker you just own that mistake, the better it's going to be for your life, the people around you, all of that. And guess what?  Yes, I did that. I'm sorry. Guess what? You're going to think twice before making those mistakes.  Nobody thinks it's fun. They'll go up to people and be like, hey, you know, I'm sorry that I did that to you or I'm sorry that I said these things or I'm sorry I did these things. Look, that's not a good time for anybody. Even though that's what you should do, it'll make you think about doing things like that in the future. It'll make you think about that. It's just like this person just covers everything up and just never wants to take responsibility for anything. They're just going to become known as a liar, unfortunately. So embrace the truth in your life. And look, lying, especially about sin, will just make things worse and worse and worse. Think about David. Think about David. He starts out, you know, with lust and that ends up into adultery. Then he starts lying. Then he starts lying to cover things up. And then what happens? Now we have murder. Now we have murder of multiple people. Multiple people were murdered to cover up David's adultery. So back to, you know, Colossians. The point is don't lie to each other. Turn to Proverbs chapter 12. Turn to Proverbs chapter 12. Yes, I get it. We've all lied. But look at Proverbs chapter 12 and we'll close the book on lying this evening. But look at Proverbs chapter 12. We have all lied. It is true that we are all liars. We go out soul-winning and we read that to people and we're like, you know, and all liars. I get it. We're all liars. But guess what? Look at Proverbs chapter 12 and look at verse number 22. The Bible says lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. But they that deal truly are his delight. Yes, we have all lied. But guess what? There are some people that would be known as honest and some people that will be known as liars. That's what Proverbs chapter 22 is saying.  But there are people that deal truly. There are people that deal truly. And you want to have that name that you deal truly with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Look at Colossians chapter 3 in verse number 10. So that's pretty Christianity 101 right there. Let's go on to some more complex relationship advice from Colossians chapter 3 this evening. Look at verse number 10. And the Bible says, And put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him where there is neither Greek nor Jews circumcision nor uncircumcision Barbarian, Scythian, Bonn or Free but Christ is all and in all. So what are we dealing with here again? We're dealing with people from all different cultures all different places. Paul is saying there's none of that. He's like there's none of these nationalities. There's none of there's Greeks nor Jews. There's none of that. He's like we're all in Christ. He says put on therefore as the elect of God you're saved. You're all saved. That is what you all have in common. That is your culture now. Put on therefore as the elect of God holy and beloved bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering, forbearing. And then we see a semicolon. Okay. So we see all these things separated by commas. These are all characteristics that we're to have to do what? So we can forbearing one another. This idea of forbearing one another. We're supposed to have bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering while we're doing this forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any even as Christ forgave you so also do ye. So let's look at this idea. All these characteristics that we're supposed to have so we could forbear one another. I'm supposed to look. I'm supposed to forbear you. You're supposed to forbear me. You're supposed to forbear each other. What does it mean? Shouldn't we understand what it means to forbear one another? Forbearing, turn to Romans chapter 2. Forbearing and look, you should appreciate forbearing. You should appreciate forbearing. I'll show you why in Romans chapter 2. But forbearing means to behave in a patient way at a time where you would have a right to be upset or angry. It means that you have a right to be mad. You have a right to pass judgment but you don't. You withhold that. You just, you have patience. You have, that's why it says long suffering right before it goes into forbearing. It's basically to be, to be forbearing means to hold back judgment, to be patient, to have self-control. And here's why it's important why you do your very best to be forbearing. Look at Romans chapter 2 and look at verse number 4. Romans chapter 2 and verse number 4. The Bible says, Or despises thou the riches of his goodness. So this is, Paul here is talking about the riches of God's goodness towards us. Okay, he's saying, Do you despise the riches of his goodness and what? And forbearance and long suffering. See how those two go together? Just like in Colossians chapter 3. So God has forbearance and long suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. So the Bible here is saying is that God is forbearing towards us. That's God's goodness towards us. It's his forbearance towards us. He's, that means God is delaying his judgment towards us. Forbearance means we deserve it, but he's, he's just delaying. He's holding back that judgment that he could righteously pour down upon us. He's just being patient. He's being long suffering with us.  Our country you could easily say right now because we look at all the wickedness going on in this country. We look at all the horrible things that our country is doing and we, you could say rightly so looking at Romans chapter 2 and verse number 4 that we are under the forbearance of God in this country right now. I mean, look, we're running on God's forbearance of his judgment. Look, we deserve it. We deserve it, but we're operating, we're operating in the red.  When you get in your car tonight, you'll have a tachometer on the, on, you know, it shows the RPMs of your engine and there'll be a red part. When it gets up to, you know, four or 5,000 RPM, there'll be a red part. Guess what? If you rev your engine into that red zone, your engine is not going to explode right away. You can operate for a certain amount of time in that red zone, but eventually you're going to be in trouble if you're running your car in that red zone. Look, because of the abortion in this country, because of the blasphemy in this country, because of turning our backs on God, because of the normalized sin, because of the perversion, because of all these things in general, just, just rejecting the word of God, rejecting Jesus Christ. We are operating in this red zone. We are operating in the forbearance zone of God in this country. We're redlining the engine in this country. And look, you know, I don't know. Here's what I do know.  Judgment's coming on this country. The forbearance is just a delaying of judgment. It's not a taking away of judgment. If you know anything from the Bible, if you know anything from the Old Testament especially, it's that judgment, if it's deserved, is coming. God is just giving us more time. And I like to think that ministries like this and, you know, ministries like ours, I like to think that we're maybe delaying that judgment. That we're maybe, you know, helping God be more forbearing, helping God be more long-suffering. Just convincing God in some small way, give us a little bit more time. Every single week, we get more people saved in this ministry. And then, you know, just God looked down, and I'm just hoping he says maybe another week, maybe another two weeks, maybe another two months. But we are definitely operating in God's forbearance zone. And I'm thankful as a Christian for God's forbearance towards us. So what is Paul saying? In Colossians chapter 3, he's saying we should have that same forbearance towards each other. So I'm going to give you two steps tonight on how to be forbearing to your brothers and sisters in Christ. Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 7. Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 7.   Step one is this. Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 7, and I'll explain to you step one. Step one is this. Here's how you become more forbearing in two simple steps. The first step is this. Stop being offended by everything. That's step one. Look, give people the benefit of the doubt in your life. You know, there's a lot of things that people get offended about that, you know, maybe people should just think, you know what, maybe they didn't mean it that way. Some people just think the worst of every situation, and these types of people, look, every, they, you know, they're so easily offended, they think every little thing, was that talking about me?  Somebody didn't say hi to me, or somebody didn't smile at me the way that they smiled at me last week. Look, there's people that operate their lives this way, and they're never going to have any friends because they're not forbearing. If you are so sensitive that you get offended by everything, that is the exact opposite of forbearing, folks. Look, I mean, I don't know, when I walk in here on Wednesday, I don't know what you've gone through for three days since I saw you, or two days since I saw you on Sunday. You don't know what I've gone through. I don't know what Brother Matt's gone through.  Maybe that's just something that I should just be like, man, maybe he just had a bad couple of days, and I shouldn't just take everything so personally in my life.  So let it go, forbear it. Not forbearing is actually selfish, actually, and that's why it talks about humility and meekness. In the words right before being forbearing. It talks about mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, it says. Meekness in verse number 12, long suffering. Now look at Ecclesiastes chapter 7, look at verse 22. Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verse 21, I'm sorry, verse 21. This is such a brilliant piece of wisdom right here. If it, you know, you would never know this if it wasn't in the Bible. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 7 and verse number 21.  For oftentimes also, thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise have cursed others. You know, the best way I can explain these two verses is, I was thinking like of an analogy I could give you to explain these two verses. I mean, hopefully you understand those two verses, but think about like road rage. This is such a great way to explain this. Road rage, I had this friend one time that I used to work with like 15 years ago. He was like, you know, he was the quietest guy, but you get in a car with him? Like I never wanted to ever get in a car with him because the guy was crazy.  I don't know what his problem was, but think about road rage for a minute. Think about road rage. You get these people and they pull up behind somebody at a stop light and the stop light goes green and the person doesn't like take off like they're in a NASCAR race, right?  They're ready to smash cars. They're ready to, I mean, this guy, you would get in a car with this guy and before he would let somebody merge, he would get in a car accident. He actually said that. He's like, I'm not letting this guy in, brace for impact. He told me one time. I'm just like, man, what's the deal? You know, because he's like, this guy he should have got in back there.   This guy doesn't know how to drive. He's thinking, this guy, he's thinking, I would never do this, right? This is the road rage guy. He says, oh, never do this. I would never do this. And then he gets to the light, the next light up ahead after he just berates somebody and honks at somebody. He gets at the next light and he's the front of the light and he's texting on his phone and the light goes green and here's somebody honking at him. He's all, hey, hey, hey. And he just did it to somebody else. You know, this is Ecclesiastes chapter 7 in verse 21 and verse 22.   It's this crazy correlation that Ecclesiastes chapter 7 in verse 21 and 22 makes that, look, if you didn't have life experience and or the Bible, you would never make, you would never guess this correlation. But the people that are offended by everything in verse 21, you should make a note of this in your Bible because this is so true. The people that are offended by everything, verse 21, are the same people in verse 22 that are constantly saying things that offend or would offend other people if they heard those things. It's so true. Solomon's wisdom just pops right out of the Bible here. It's just the greatest thing. It's look, it's the same. If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones, right? But the truth is that people that live in a glass house are walking around with shotguns, blasting shotguns everywhere. That's how it works. And that's what Ecclesiastes chapter 7 is talking about.  Just think about that. I mean, as a pastor, I just can't allow certain things in a church, but let me tell you something. If I was obsessed with things that people said to me constantly, if I was just constantly offended or annoyed, I just couldn't be in the ministry. It just wouldn't be possible, you know? So look, if you can have mercy on people in these cases and just give people the benefit of the doubt, just be like, you know, I'm sure they didn't mean anything by that. You know, before bearing, you will have great relationships if you can do this. That's what Paul is talking about in Colossians chapter 3. We live in a society today, actually, look, this is actually a term now. It's actually a term. I think it's in the dictionary now, but we live in a society that is convincing everyone that they should be offended at everything constantly. It's called, there's a generation called the snowflake generation now. If you became an adult in 2010, you're called the snowflake, the snowflake generation. The actual definition is someone who has an inflated view of their uniqueness, of their importance. It wasn't humility part of being forbearing. Was it, you know, having an inflated view of how important you are is the opposite of meekness. It says a snowflake is a person who has an inflated view of their uniqueness, of their importance. They have a sense of entitlement. They're overly emotional and they're easily offended. This is the snowflake. So look, we should have no part of that. We should have no part of whatever culture is popping up in this country. We're not taking part of anything that this country, this culture moves to, we're staying where we are. We went over that on Sunday morning. So basically step one is don't be a snowflake.  So that's step one. Just don't be a snowflake. Don't be offended by everything. Turn to 1 Corinthians 6. So if you want to be a forebearing person, just let things, you know, give people the benefit of the doubt. It must have had a bad day. You know, Brother George comes in and he's super rude to me.  Okay, I mean, it's just the way you have to be before bearing to people. Look at 1 Corinthians 6. What are things like more than words?  Well, what do we do then? Look at 1 Corinthians 6. This goes for, you know, comments and things people say as well. But look at 1 Corinthians 6. Look at verse number seven. So here Paul is talking about, he goes into this church and this church, they're just like, they're just like taking each other to the law for everything. So they're, they have conflicts in the church and they're taking each other to like the, you know, the civilian authorities outside the church. And he says, you know, he basically says like, why would you go to the godless for these things? He's like, can't you judge yourselves? He's like, you're saved. You're, you're saints. Now therefore, look at verse seven. There is utterly fault.  Why do you rather not take wrong? Why do you rather not suffer yourselves to be defrauded? So I understand the conflict here that Paul's talking in this specifically is about, you know, they're basically suing each other is what's going on. They're basically ratting each other out to the authorities. He's saying, hey, handle things in house. But the main thing he's saying here is just, just suffer yourself to be wronged. Just suffer yourself to be wronged. Look, if you can, if you can, just suffer yourself to be defrauded. Say somebody just did say something that was just blatantly rude to you or to me or to whoever. Look, if you can just suffer yourself to be defrauded. I mean, sticks and stones may break my bones. Words will never hurt me. You know, what about, what about like this one where you could actually take somebody to court though?  And he, he just wrecks the tool and he's like, you know what, I just don't have the money to pay you. So I mean, literally you could end up with a situation like that in the church where one brother could actually take another brother to small claims court and ensue him for that tool. And the Bible here is seeing, Paul is just seeing, he's just let it go. Just suffer yourself to be in front. He's like, oh, it's a thousand dollars though. Yeah, but here's the thing, is who cares? It's just money. And if you can't afford to lose something, like if you can't afford to lose something, you should never borrow it to somebody in the first place. If you can't afford to, you know, borrow somebody $500 and never get that $500 back, don't give it to them in the first place. Just assume that it's gone when you borrow something.  Because I mean, who cares? It's a car.  It would be the main concern. But the point is, if a car, if something that I had was so important to me that borrowing it to you would literally endanger our relationship because I couldn't forebear that. I couldn't suffer myself to be defrauded from that thing. I should never, look, I should never be in that position anyway with material things. But if I am, I should never borrow it. Because what I'm doing is I'm taking risk with our relationship. And I should never do something like that. You should never do something like that.  Look, let it go. Forgive it, forget it, move on. That doesn't mean you have to keep borrowing them money. That doesn't mean that you think that that person's trustworthy or you think that they're responsible. That's, that's not what it means. It just means that you're going to move forward with no ill will about that situation. Okay. Go back to Colossians chapter three. Go back to Colossians chapter three. So those are the two steps. Just basically, don't get offended by every single thing that happens. Everything, single thing that's said. We've all said plenty of things that would offend plenty of people if everybody knew everything that we ever said about everybody.  Just don't be offended. Sometimes people have a bad day. Sometimes people don't get back to your text right away.   The first one is just not be offended by every little thing. The second one is to just suffer yourself to be defrauded. Suffer yourself to be defrauded. Okay, especially material things. Look, folks, they don't matter. None of it matters. None of it is worth just a friendship. We'll get Colossians chapter 3 in verse 13. So we're going to forbear. We're going to forgive. We're going to let things go. Look at verse 13. And above all these things put on charity, that's love, which is the bond of perfectness. In verse 15, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts. To the which also you're called in one body and be thankful and be thankful. Here's the reasoning behind it right here in verse 15. The reasoning between all for all this advice that we're getting from verse nine up to verse 15 is so peace can rule in our hearts. It's so the peace of God can rule in our hearts. Who would want to live with strife and contention in their life? Why? Why would people want that? You want peace with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And look with honesty and forbearance that's what you will get is peace. I mean the other choice is what we saw earlier. Anger, wrath, malice seems an easy choice on which one that we should choose. Now here's the last thing I want you to remember tonight. Turn to James chapter two. So why, why? I mean why doesn't everyone choose this? Right? I mean when we're, you know, why shouldn't we just all forbear each other, all forgive each other, all be honest with each other? This is the last thing I want you to think about right here. Look at James chapter two. This is a philosophy that God operates on and you need to understand this. Whenever we are asked to do something with our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, when we are asked to treat them in a certain way, this is a super important methodology that is throughout the Bible. When you are asked to treat your brothers, your sisters, your neighbors, those around you in a certain way because God treats you that way, there's something that you need to understand. Look at James chapter two. There's a philosophy that you need to understand. Look at James chapter two in verse number 13. The Bible says this. It says, For he shall have judgment without mercy. Oh. So here's a guy, here's a guy that's going to get judgment with no mercy. Who wants to be that guy? Raise your hand. That just when he does something wrong, whether it's your brothers and sisters, whether it's God, it's just judgment right away. Look, forbearance isn't about. Look, forbearance is not about the absence of fault. Forbearance is being patient and long suffering even though there has been a fault. The Bible says, For he shall have judgment without mercy that showed no mercy. And mercy rejoices against judgment. So the point I'm trying to make is if you are going to be this type of person that is going to bring down the world on people and have no mercy on people, no forgiveness on people, no forbearance on people, God is not going to grant you those things. That's what you need to understand. We are all operating individually in the forbearance zone of God. Romans chapter 2 in verse number 4. We are all underneath God's forbearance. So if you decide I'm just not going to forbear other people and I'm just going to forget about this, you're at a major risk in your life. So humble yourself and forbear because the more you grant, the more will be granted to you. In your life. Now people do this. People do this with people's kids. People do this with all.  This is a perfect example.   Look, they have no forbearance. Think about it. It's not that kids don't do anything wrong. But when somebody else's child does something wrong, they just like come down on them like a ton of bricks. But then it's like my children can do no wrong in their life. Look, those people will be given no mercy by God. And look, all of our kids are going to do things wrong.  It's literally, look, it's literally we're talking about a win, win, win here tonight. We're talking about you win, your brother wins and God wins. You got to embrace those situations in your life. Look, it's hard. It's hard to do because you get in the flesh. You get in the flesh and you get mad that somebody did wrong to you. You get upset that somebody did wrong to you. Forbearance, like I said, somebody has done wrong to you or you perceive that they've done wrong to you. Forbearance is just is letting that go. It's letting it go. You got to recognize these win, win, wins and take them in your life. And the better you can get at this and the better you can you can shut off your flesh and just, you know, kill that inner that person that wants to just have no mercy on people and be super judgmental on people the better you can do it the better friends you're going to have. The longer friendships you'll have in your life the closer friendships you'll have in your life you'll have friends that trust each other the stronger church we will be and we need to take advantage of these things in our lives and guess what? The more mercy God and the more forbearance God will have on us as a church individually. So let's recognize these lessons. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


Welcome back to my channel. I hope you're good. So basically a couple days ago I was on books and others channel on a live and there are a few of us there Chanel Aaron Joel Molly and me and A few of them were talking about how they make like seasonal TBR videos instead of monthly because then it's a lot less Pressure and I just had like a light bulb moment. I was like You deserve an Oscar.  I'm gonna do a spring TBR Because my reading isn't It's not going great at the moment. I have read two books in March So I'm hoping that by talking about these books I picked eight out So if like eight is a reasonable number to pick out, I'm hoping that by talking about them I will make myself read. That's the aim of the game here So the first book on this list is a book I have hauled quite recently and it is a good girls guide to murder by Holly Jackson I hold this in my last video my book haul. I hold it in my book haul And a lot of you said that you think this is like the perfect book to get me out of a reading slump It is like a YA murder mystery where there was a murder in this girl's town And she wants to do like a research project because she doesn't believe that the correct person was What's the word? Convicted right? She doesn't believe it.  So if you said like you stood up to like 5 a.m. Reading it So I'm feeling pretty pretty good about this. I don't know. I'm just in the mood for it Like it was never a book that was fully a top of my radar and then as soon as I received it I was like, why do I want to read you so bad right now? Like I'm totally in the mood I was already like kind of looking at it like You know like making eyes at it like Then loads of you were in the comments saying how you loved it and you think I'm gonna love it too And you think it's gonna get me at my reading slump So definitely when I want to get too soon you may notice that a lot of these books are quite short I'm in the mood for short books. The next one is come tumbling down by Sean and Maguire This is the just the fifth. Yes, it's the fifth in the way with children series Classic yeah This series is about like portal fantasy I'm sure you've heard of it where these kids like go to these worlds that are perfect for them and like Living these magical worlds with really unique rule systems And then some of the books are set at a school They go to afterwards to kind of help them Readjust to the world and I know in this one We are following Jack and Jill who we followed in the second one and in the first one a little bit So I'm really intrigued to see where their story is gonna go Sean and Maguire's writing is absolutely amazing the way That these these stories are written is so interesting like you become so absorbed in it in such a short period of time Jack and Jill weren't my favorite character I know a lot of people love them, but they weren't my favorite characters from the series I'm intrigued to see where the story is gonna go and I really want to get the sixth one across the Greengrass Fields, which came out February in the UK I know it came up before that in like the US they came up February in the UK So super excited to get to this hoping for the best love Sean and Maguire I've never given something I've read by Sean and Maguire less than four stars So definitely one of my favorite authors. Next we've got watch over me by Nina Lacour Molly for mind of Molly has been chatting about this saying how much they loved it I've heard quite a lot of good things and also the cover just like something about it appeals She's so beautiful. She's a mammoth, of course Like you know what a cover really makes you want to read a book like this is that so this is about a girl Who I believe has kind of like grown up in the foster care system kind of she has offered a teaching job at this farm When she gets there there's ghosts and it's like haunted but from what I've heard from some reviews You're not actually sure if it is haunted or if it's maybe in her head I think it's a lot to do with trauma And so you're not sure whether the ghosts are Representations of that trauma or if the place is actually haunted I have had mixed things and I Riley didn't really rate it I think she gave it like three stars or something but Molly loved it and The cover is so cool and oh my god.   You know what I mean Does anyone else understand this like the silliest things that most of my new things can make me so excited to read a book So next is one of the non fictions I'm most excited to read and it is forgotten women the writers by zing sing I have read forgotten women the leaders This is a four-part series and basically these are super under read like I think some in the series I think maybe forgotten women the scientists only has like 30 ratings on Goodreads or something This series is basically non fiction about women from all around the world It's really diverse in terms of like the countries that it covers. It's not just like Western history it's from all over the world and It's just this beautiful book with these gorgeous illustrations of all these women and you kind of only have like Two or three pages on each of them But I just really love learning about these women that history has forgotten our history is so Meldominated literally only following men and their lives and I love learning about these women who should be remembered And we should be taught about and we should know off the top of our heads like so many men We know off the top of our heads I think reading stuff like this puts life in perspective and makes you realize, you know, all the amazing things have been done by women before you and I just really love like I'm a bit obsessed with learning about forgotten women like I love podcasts on forgotten women I love watching like the YouTube videos on history about forgotten women like I just love it I'm obsessed and because this is the writers I'm really intrigued to read it and also maybe get a bit inspired because I do want to write but life keeps getting in the way Uni I am so excited for you need to be done. I'm so excited for you need to be done.  I love like the variety in the art It's by a diverse writer with diverse women. It's amazing So you should definitely go pick this series up. Okay, so next is another mystery, and it is the big four by Agatha Christie This is the next book in the acuparo Series by Agatha Christie, which I am reading in order. I believe this is the fifth one I've heard this is kind of like a collection of short stories Like it's not really the next one in the series in the way that like I've got the one after that The mystery of the blue train is do I mean? I think it was like I think it was written in a bit of a strange way Like it's like a collection of short stories or something, but I'm so excited to read it You know mystery is my favorite genre, and I think it's really hard like I wish there was more like straight-up mysteries released now Do you know what I mean? I don't feel like we have enough of them Maybe there is but like any time there's a mystery like a murder mystery kind of thing Please let me know because I will eat it up. We need this. This is essential. This is a crisis But yeah, I'm just excited to continue on the journey Agatha Christie I definitely want to like start reading them again Because I think the last time I read Agatha Christie was November October November last year so it's been a while So yeah, I'm just ready to like continue on and read the next one in the series Next are a couple new releases that I'm really excited about the first is another kind of like murder mystery I spoke about these both in my recent haul as well So I'll only touch them quickly but we have The Islanders by SV Leonhard. This is basically Love Island turned murder mystery. Our main character goes to be on the show Love Island, essentially, and then one of the contestants is murdered within hours after they've all been like socializing and like, ooh, and then someone's dead, you know? But that's quite dramatic. And then an announcement comes that one of The Islanders is a murderer and the main character must work out who. For every hour it takes her, one will person or die. We have got murder mystery. We have got games. We've got like a, it's almost hurtful to me to watch her be so dumb. I am so, so excited for this. I think this is gonna be like a new favorite book. I think it's gonna be so good. I'm just so excited to read you. Like I'm just, I'm just so excited. I'm just so excited. Like it's gonna be so good. It's gonna be so good. I'm so excited. And then the other new release I am most excited to read is Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas. This came out right at the start of the year and I still haven't gotten to it. This follows Maverick who is the dad from The Hate U Give and it's about him growing up and figuring himself out, becoming a young dad, dealing drugs, figuring out what he wants to do. And I've just heard so many good things about it. Everyone who has read it, I have like heard them, heard that they've read it in like a day or two. I just love The Hate U Give and I wanna come up so much but I'm so excited to get to this. And I have read the other two via audiobook. So I'm intrigued to see what it's gonna be like to read this one physically. Like what a different reading experience it's gonna be. And then finally, I don't even wanna talk about it because I have been saying I'm gonna read this book for like a year, right? Every single, every single reading list I do where I'm like, I wanna read these books. I put it on there. Have I read it yet? No. This is so humiliating. Here we go. So who next is Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie Macklemore. I just, I just really wanna read Anna-Marie Macklemore. Yeah, I've never read anything by them and I just really want to. I don't really know what this is about either because everyone says like you shouldn't know what it's about. But it's magical realism. I never hear a bad thing about Anna-Marie Macklemore's writing. Like never, like never. And I love magical realism. Definitely another one of my favorite genres that I don't read enough, like magical realism or fabulism, that kind of thing. Frankly, I'm just embarrassed. Like, I'm gonna put this on every list of books I wanna read until I read it. So really, I need to just read it. I need to just read it. We're so beautiful, isn't it? Oh my God, it's so beautiful. So yeah. So they are the books that I wanna read soon. As you can tell, they're short. I wanna read short books. I'm not in the mood for any big boys right now. But hopefully I will get to these soon because they are the ones that I'm most excited for. I'm aiming to get them all read in the next couple months. That would be amazing. Oh my God, that would be so happy. That is it for this video. If you've gotten to the end, comment a flower emoji. Any flower you fancy because I just love this cover so much. Anyway, I just love it so much. And I hope you're doing good and I will see you very soon with another video. Bye.