Three-and-a-half years ago I wrote I Think I’m Finished Now, which I genuinely believed at the time would be my last blog post ever. But here it is, October 3rd of 2016, and I can’t deny that I’m feeling the itch to start posting again. I’ve been feeling it for a few weeks now, but I’ve tried not to rush into anything. You know, I wanted to make sure that me blogging again was a “God thing” and not a “Russell thing.” Well, the fact that you are reading this shows that I believe this new season to be of the Lord. So, here we go again.

Frankly, I’ve been pretty amazed at the staying power of this blog. I assumed that once I stopped posting new material my readership numbers would eventually peter away to nothing. I even went months on end without calling up the blog to check on it, track the number of visitors and views, or gauge the readership numbers for individual posts. In my mind, writing a blog had been an interesting experience in my life and a fruitful corner of my ministry, but it was all in the past, a closed chapter of my life.

To my surprise, though, I eventually discovered that even though I was no longer paying attention to the blog, other people were. Each day a good number of people would visit the site and read things I had written. Some of that is due to the fact that a couple of my posts (Does God Want Everyone To Get Married? and How Does a Worm Get Inside an Apple?) are now either at the top or very close to the top of search-engine listings. But I also like to think that there is a “meat” quality to the writing that causes people to return. After all, it’s said that the best way to build your blog’s readership numbers is to offer excellent content that makes people want to visit again. So, apparently, my blog fits that bill, and I’m grateful for that. Even more than that, though, I want to believe that this site has what you might call “the breath of God” on it. At any rate, I’ve now reached a point where I can no longer ignore something that God is clearly using in an undeniable way.

Last but not least, today is my 50th birthday. Cue the band on that because I’ve always considered 50 to be inordinately significant in a man’s life. There’s just something about that number that strikes a chord of depth with me. In my way of thinking, from here on out no one can truthfully say that I died young. I know, I know, some think of 50 as being merely the beginning of middle-age. My problem there is that I have serious doubts that I will live to see 100. In my estimation, I blew past the beginning of my true middle-age sometime back and I’m now on the shorter end of the whole lifespan thing.

So, what shape will my “wrong side of 50” years take and how will the remainder of my life and ministry play out? I honestly can’t say. All I know right now is that I’m feeling both the mood and the burden to do some more writing on the blog, and I’m going to follow that leading. It’s a journey that I don’t step into lightly and one that I hope you will join me in taking. I’ve never tried to make any money off this blog by allowing advertisements, and I won’t start now. That’s my way of conveying that I don’t do this for profit. My goal here is simply to help people better understand not only the word of God but also the God of the word. And, hopefully, as I do this I’ll come to understand them both better myself.