The Disciples Road is hosted by Word Press, and Word Press does an excellent job of providing in-depth statistical analysis for the blog. Anytime, night or day, I can click on “Stats and Insights” and get all kinds of information regarding the blog’s views for the day, the week, the month, the year, or all time. I can find out which posts are being viewed the most, which referrers (Search Engines, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)  are bringing people to the blog site, which countries are reporting views, and a whole lot of other info that I don’t even need. Needless to say, Word Press makes it easy for me to provide a year-end report regarding what’s going on with the blog.

And just exactly what is going on? Well, it’s all good. For the first time since I began the blog in 2009, the total views for the year exceeded 40,000. Right now they stand at just under 45,000, and that’s with most of a day to go. That breaks the previous year’s record, last year’s 36,830, by over 8,000 views. When the final numbers are posted, the end result will be a betterment of approximately 700 views per month.

November’s 5,182 views and average of 173 views per day made that month the year’s best in terms of views. October’s 4,878 views and average of 157 views per day ranked second in both categories. The fact that these months fall late in the year indicate that the blog’s views are trending upward. Admittedly, December’s views fell back to just under 4,000, but December — with everything that goes on that month — always sees a decrease in views.

While a blog’s number of views typically serves as the primary indicator in regards to readership, the number of visitors to the site is a big deal as well. Just by way of a reminder, one person visiting the site registers as one visitor, but if that person views two posts the number of views comes in at two. For 2019, 27,190 people visited the blog, and the average number of views per visitor was 1.65. Both of those were increases from 2018’s 23,260 visitors and 1.58 average number of views per visitor.

As for the posts that received the most views this year, there were some changes from the 2018 list. For each of the past several years, Does God Want Everyone to Get Married? has held the top spot as the most viewed post, but this year it fell to #3 with a current total number of views of 1,724 for the year. Ahead of it on the list were What a Bird’s Nest Can Teach Us About God’s Will (currently at 1,756 views for the year) and The 10 Times Israel Tested God (currently at 3,713 views for the year).

Those 3,713 views for The 10 Times Israel Tested God were an increase of over 2,500 views from that post’s 1,151 views last year. Did I see that coming? No way. When I wrote that post in 2018, I never dreamed that it would do much more than get its share of views as the new post on the site and then fade into obscurity as I wrote more posts to push it further down the list of the latest posts. Boy, was I wrong.

Anyway, here are the top 10 most viewed posts for 2019:

1. The 10 Times Israel Tested God (3,713 views)
2. What a Bird’s Nest Can Teach Us About God’s Will (1,756 views)
3. Does God Want Everyone to Get Married? (1,724 views)
4. How Does a Worm Get Inside an Apple? (1,380 views)
5. How Would You Describe Your Walk With the Lord These Days? (1,111 views)
6. “Lord, Why am I Having to Wait?” (863 views)
7. Lessons From Habakkuk (800 views)
8. What Satan Did to Joshua: Accusation (613 views)
9. About the Author & the Blog (546 views)
10. The Importance of Spanking a Child (380 views)

It’s significant that the bottom 5 posts on that list are different from last year’s bottom 5 of: What Will Life Be Like in Christ’s Millennial Reign?; Should We Pray Silently to Keep Satan From Hearing?; Why God Hates Gambling; The Old Testament’s General Teaching on Prayer; and the Mayonnaise Jar. That indicates that the site is getting even more healthy as a wider selection of posts are finding increased traction with readers. In other words, the site’s numbers aren’t just being driven by two or three popular posts.

Here now is the updated list of the posts that have been viewed the most all time on the site. That list currently reads as follows:

1. Does God Want Everyone to Get Married? (17,860 views)
2. How Does a Worm Get Inside an Apple? (7,461 views)
3. The 10 Times Israel Tested God (4,862 views)
4. What a Bird’s Nest Can Teach Us About God’s Will (4,495 views)
5. Oral Roberts & “Seed Faith” Giving (2,079 views)
6. How Would You Describe Your Walk With the Lord These Days? (1,193 views)
7. What Does the Bible Teach About Divorce & Remarriage? (1,857 views)
8. The Importance of Spanking a Child (1,530 views)
9. Should We Pray Silently to Keep Satan From Hearing? (1,528 views)
10. The Importance of Individuality in a Child (1,354 views)

Now let me say a word about how God is using the blog around the world. In 2018, the blog registered at least one view from 174 different countries, and this year’s number matched that number perfectly. 2019’s top-10 list of countries that registered views for the site currently reads like this:

1. United States (32,227 views for 2019) (134,734 views all time, #1)
2. India (1,437 views) (3,319 views all time, #5)
3. South Africa (1,302 views) (3,735 views all time, #4)
4. United Kingdom (1,310 views) (5,129 views all time, #2)
5. Canada (1,105 views) (4,612 views all time, #3)
6. Nigeria (938 views) (2,322 views all time, #8)
7. Philippines (898 views) (2,947 views all time, #7)
8. Australia (607 views) (2,958 views all time, #6)
9. Kenya (531 views) (1,136 views all time, #10)
10. Singapore (390 views) (1,329 all-time views, #9 all time)

In closing, about all I can say is “THANK YOU” to each one of you out there who has ever registered a view on the blog. And for those of you who are regular readers, I hope it goes without saying that you have my undying appreciation. Many of you I know personally. Others of you I’ve never met. Either way, though, without you this blog’s scope and influence would be a shell of what it is. As you’ve probably noticed, I don’t allow any advertisements on the blog. (If you see one, I didn’t put it there.) Also, I don’t promote the blog other than sharing a short paragraph on Facebook or Twitter whenever I publish a new post. That means that much of the work to grow the readership comes from God using word of mouth.

As always, I have no plan concerning the blog. I just write new posts, on average three per week, and launch them out onto the internet. I have no agenda, no long-range goals, no plans to rule the world. My entire approach is simply to write what God lays on my heart to write. I’m pretty good at grammar and punctuation, but a true expert could find enough errors to hurt my feelings. And typos? Let’s just say they come with the territory.

In the end, though, I trust that you can hear my heart by reading my words. Even more than that, I want the Lord to use my stuff to help you not only learn the Bible but also learn how to better walk with Him and serve Him. As I’ve explained before, the word “disciple” literally means “learner,” and that’s why the blog is called The DISCIPLE’S Road. I myself am still learning, and so when I write about a topic, that is me writing myself clear about that topic. You, the reader, receive the overflow, and hopefully that overflow is a help to you. That’s how this blog thing has been working and how it will continue to work.

So, as we stare down the gun barrel of 2020, my prayer is that God will continue to use this blog in great and mighty ways, and that each person who clicks on the site will be genuinely blessed by doing so. If you want to pray something for me, please pray that I’ll be encouraged in the work. In case you don’t know, life is hard and serving Jesus can make it harder because it puts you on the radar screen of the devil and his demons. That’s why it’s so encouraging to read a year-end report like the 2019 one for the blog. For that, again I say, “Thank You.” I really don’t have the words to adequately express the full measure of my appreciation, but just know that the measure is plenty deep and plenty wide.