I have waited a week or so to write about this whole Harold Camping thing, just in case he was sort of right. Incase God decided to come on May 22nd instead, just to make Camping doubt himself a little. Of course, that didn’t happen.

If you are a Christian, you have thought about the rapture at one point in your life. You might ask for forgiveness constantly from God just to make sure you two are on the same page about your salvation. You sometimes compare yourself to your friends to make sure you’re doing ok in God’s sight. You make sure to check and see if some people who you think are holier than you are still here, just so you know the rapture hasn’t happened yet. Maybe your thought process is more profound and you think about the folding or piling of your clothes.

So, when Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on May 21st and then it didn’t, it still had us all thinking, “So, when is thing really going to happen?” People have been talking about it for years. People have been saying it’s going to be soon and we are all still waiting. I mean Earth is great and all, but I imagine Heaven to be at least 100 times greater.

Anyways, I have a feeling that when anyone predicts a time and day that God will come back, God won’t come back. Maybe Camping was right about the prediction,but he went and made God change His schedule. God’s probably more mad about that than anything. I hate it when something comes up and I have to change my schedule.

The other thing is that I feel sorry for the people that went and gave away all of earthly possessions since they listened to Harold Camping who thought God was coming back on May 21st. Right now they have to be hurt from the people who led them to believe something that wasn’t true.

In the end, the predictions not coming true really just makes “Christians” look stupid. You just can’t predict it. The predictions make people confused and angry when it doesn’t happen. It also wastes a bunch of time. Change the world while we’re still here. Feed the hungry, help the poor, love one another.

God is coming back for us one day. That’s all I know.

We probably haven’t talked in a minute.

So…

What’s one awesome thing that happened to you this week?
How are you doing?
Really.

You’ve probably already seen this video informing us that Chan is now writing a book on hell. He does make sure to say that he is going to just put the facts out there. He also asks for prayer that he doesn’t put his opinions in there, but just the facts.

To tell you the truth, I can’t wait to read this book from Chan. Everything I’ve read from his, I like. But, he is human, so I will wait to read his book before I say anything about his view on hell. I do think this is the area where a lot of people went wrong on Rob Bell’s latest book, “Love Wins.” I’ve read his other books and haven’t seen something I necessarily had a problem with.

After hearing that he said some things against “Love Wins” by Rob Bell at Exponential Conference, we all knew it was just a matter of time that his book came out. So yeah, putting opinions in the book will most likely prove to be a difficult task after hearing that he’s already had some opinions of other books that are out there.

Me writing about what I thought of “Love Wins” by Rob Bell comes a little late, but to be honest I tried to read it and didn’t quite finish it. I read enough though to  know it was a better use of my time to stop reading something that lost my interest rather than push through it. Also, This review from Relevant Magazine pretty much sums up some thoughts of mine.

I guess your opinion on all of this will stem from what your view on hell is. It really depends on what you believe happens after this life.

I grew up studying that hell is a real place that some people can go to.

Yep that’s right, even if I want to believe that all people go to heaven. But no, I don’t want to see people go to hell. Yes, that is my interpretation and of course your interpretation is yours. And yes, I understand that saying all people don’t go to heaven isn’t really a positive thing. But yes, Jesus coming back for His Bride is most definitely a positive thing. And yes, God’s thinking is above my thinking. And no, I don’t get everything God thinks of.

… A lot of “yes’s & no’s”.

What do you think about this video?

The above tweet got a big response last week, so it got me thinking about the negative mentality that people naturally have towards Mondays. Most of the negative mindset people have is about starting the work week. If you have a job that you dread, then I can see why you don’t want to go to work. So yes, I’d say that finding a job that you love is pretty important. Or, maybe money is that thing that makes you happy, because your job is decent enough to handle, but the money coming in allows you to do what you want to when you’re not at work.

I will say that weekends are pretty awesome because it gives you time to spend with family and go do the “fun stuff” while kids are out of school and most jobs allow you to be off. But, maybe you have a job that allows you to take off time during the week as well.

I do think that Mondays can be great if you decide to make them great. The cool thing is that we can control what happens on Mondays for the most part and we can control how we react to Mondays.

So, what does your typical Monday look like? Is there anything special you do on Mondays to make them a little easier?

People come back to blogs or books or magazines or television shows or whatever else there is because of the content.

People get sucked into the story and the story starts to become part of them. They have to find out what happens next.

Here is four ways to step up your content:

1. Make the content mandatory to read. Easy enough, right?

Of course, if people find the content mandatory to read, they will come back for more. The difficult part is having information every single day that is important enough that people will come back again and again to read. If it’s not instructions on how to accomplish something, there are a few other ways to make info mandatory. You can make it be informative for a specific niche, build your brand around the writer, make it humorous or just plain well-written. Which leads us into our next way into making your readers coming back for more…

2. Form your media to a specific niche.

I don’t do this so well. I really still don’t feel there’s a formula to the correct way to blog. There are tons of niche blogs out there and there are a ton of random blogs out there. I read both and enjoy both. I usually talk about what’s on my mind, but niche blogs are very informative. It really depends what you want to accomplish. The main reason I love niche blogs is that I know what I’m going to get before I even go there.

3. Write about what you love and write about what you know.

This is probably the most important step. If writing starts to feel like work then you will most likely rush getting through it and post mediocre content. This has happened to me before. Life gets busy and you need to post some sort of content, so you post the first thing that comes to mind. That’s not always a bad thing to write things top of mind because that content is usually inspired by the moment. Personally, I do like to write my posts ahead of time for scheduling purposes. It really depends what time of person you are if scheduling will work for you. I just appreciate planning more than people pulling stuff out of their butt. (I’ve never really gotten that saying, but I like it.) The things you need to decide before scheduling your posts is,

a. How many posts do you want to publish per week?

b. When do you want to write your posts?

and

c. What is the best time during the week to block out for writing?

4. Know your audience.

If you write about what you love and what you know you will most likely attract people like you. You would think so, anyways. If you know your readers you can still stay true to yourself  and cater to your readers at the same time. Kind of like public speaking. You also want to know how long you can hold your audience’s attention. I have found that my readers like shorter posts for the most part. I go to some blogs and end up trying to read a book and only end up getting through half of the post. I do mix some longer posts in here sometimes, like this one, but shorter posts seem to fit my style better.

Those are my initial thoughts on media publishing and now I’d love to hear how you do what you do.

What would you add to this list to take content up to the next level?

“The best musicians are either running away from God or running towards God.” -Bono

There’s definitely a difference between the two, but…

What do you think of this quote?

Yes, life has been busy lately. But, not too busy for close relationships.

My first response to people wanting or needing something from me is usually “I’m too busy” without giving the situation more thought than that. I mean I was supposed to meet with three different people this past week and I ended up telling them all that I was just too busy. To be honest, my response to them bummed me out. I love those guys.

Well, I’m sitting in Starbucks drinking another Mocha Coconut Frappuccino right now thinking about my week. Dang, I love this drink. Anybody read this blog that works at Starbucks? I need to know how to make this drink at home.

Anyways, I’m thinking about all the missed opportunities that I want back. And no I can’t change the past, but I can plan my days better for the future. So, I know some planners have to read this blog, right?

How do you handle your hustle?

Personally, I just get angry when people hand me stuff like this.

It’s ok not to know the answer to something.

The question is how do you react to a problem when you don’t know it?

You can either admit that you don’t know the answer or you can make it up and act like you know the answer. Some people confuse the respectful thing to do here. Some people believe that pulling the answer out of your butt is the better thing to do. Only a few people get that it’s better to admit that you actually don’t have the answer. A lot happens in that moment when you admit your mistakes, where you need help and your weaknesses to a team of people that you work with day in and day out. That’s where vulnerable trust happens with a team. You and your team won’t be able to have real trust until everyone can admit their weaknesses and be open and honest with each other. And since every relationship is built on trust, I would tell you to start here…

Be honest.
Be open.
Be real.

Humility goes a long way.
Everyone around you needs that.

It’s ok not to know.