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I have been blogging since 2012. I began in simple obedience to what I believed God was prompting me to do. I didn’t initially set out to write for anyone in particular. I endeavored only to be obedient to use the gifts God has given me. This blog began as a journey of faith for me, not just as a way to be obedient, but as a way of listening, seeking to understand, and working out what God was working in me.

This blog still is those things, but I soon realized that I wasn’t just writing for me, that I had an audience, albeit a very small one. The audience to whom I found myself writing in those early days was the seeker, the unbeliever, the curious, and the doubter.

Over the years I find have found myself writing often for a different audience. I still have a heart for the seeker, but I find myself writing more to the American church, the people who call themselves Christians, whether their claim is predominantly political, cultural, or spiritual.

I see a large segment of the church identifying uncritically with a political and cultural form of Christianity, as I once did, and missing the ever counter-cultural nature of the kingdom of God. My heart is to urge people to be faithful to Christ alone – not to a nation, a culture, a political party, or even a denomination.

These concerns prompted the article that had the highest views in 2024. With 6241 views, Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today? was the most read article on Navigating By Faith this year. Fitting it is, given the shift in my writing.

This article was a “Covid baby”, written in 2020, as I wrestled with the way some Christians, including some of my friends, embraced a mixture of unabashed support for Donald Trump and an appetite to follow crazy conspiracy trails down rabbit holes as we neared a presidential election in the throes of a worldwide pandemic.

Our nation was greatly polarized, and voices in American church were just as polarized as the world around us. Those tensions over politics, how we should respond to COVID, and how we should faithfully reflect God to the world around us drove me to reflect on the days when nation of Israel was torn between King Saul and David, the man after God’s heart.

These tensions continue today. We all want (or should want) to be people after God’s heart. We still need to know how to understand the times and how God would have us live in them, being faithful to His purpose in harmony with the kingdom of God, which is not a kingdom of this world. These concerns have not abated, which may be why this article has been the most read article each year since I wrote it.

Another, more personal and timeless reflection was the subject of the second most read article in 2024: The Redemption of Korah: the Sons of Korah. Also written during COVID in 2020, this article was viewed 3580 times this year. It has been the second most read article on this blog each year since I wrote it in 2020.

The Redemption of the Sons of Korah speaks to the redemptive work of God despite our worst tendencies. The article followed some research I did about the sons of Korah. Korah led his tribe in rebellion against God’s man, Moses, and they were all swallowed up by the earth.

That seemed to be the end of the story, but something in the text caught me attention, and began to search the rest of Scripture to find out whether any descendants of Korah survived and what became of them. What I found is one of the most poignant, but beautiful, redemption stories in the Bible.

One other article topped 3000 views in 2024, but before I get to it, I pause to reflect on the fact that I previously measured the most read articles of each year in the hundreds. In some years, I could not find ten articles with even 100 views. By 2019, the total viewership had risen to just over 10,000.  It jumped to 20,000 in 2020, the year of COVID. The next three years topped out around 30,000, but this year viewership has jumped above 61,000!

I have no idea what accounts for the change. It isn’t that I have written more articles. I have written double the number and triple the number of articles in previous years. I don’t know what the explanation is for the increase. I don’t monetize this sight, and I only post the articles on my Facebook group, typically. Sometimes, I post to my public Facebook feed, and I post to LinkedIn even more rarely.

I don’t spend much effort to be found, but people seem to find me. In fact, 114,190 people found Navigating By Faith on search engines this year according to WordPress. This compares to 5272 people finding the blog on Facebook where I post all of the articles. Go figure.

Any way, rounding out the top 3 articles is God Meets Us Where We Are, with well over 3000 views. The three most read articles in 2024, including this one, were all written in 2020, during the “COVID era”. During that time, we were all home more, reading more, and reflecting more on the state of the world and our lives.

This article explores who does the searching and the finding: God or us. While, we are invited to seek, I believe we may give ourselves too much credit in the finding!

The 4^th most viewed article in 2024, Apologetics: What It Means for Our Speech to Be Seasoned with Salt, represents my shift in audience focus from “outsiders” to “insiders”. It explores aspect of apologetics that I think is often lacking: the importance of HOW we speak to people outside our tent, our actions, and demeanor, and how we say what we say. I believe these things are more important than any arguments we can make.

The 5^th most read article carries forward the same theme. The Critical Difference between the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Fruit of the Holy Spirit explores how the fruits of the Holy Spirit are more important than the gifts. Gifts are given to us, but the fruit of the Spirit can only develop over time as we abide in God and allow Him to work His purposes deep within us. The faithful fruit is the real proof of God’s work in our lives, not the glamour of the gifts.

The 6^th most read article is a theme I often return to: CS Lewis on the “True Myth”. CS Lewis is not only my favorite Christian thinker; his concept of myth and true myth (borrowed from JRR Tolkien and Hugo Dyson) continues to spark my imagination, and it apparently does the same in readers of the blog.

The next several articles in the most read list for 2024 were written this year. Number 7, The Significance of Eve’s Seed in the Plan of God, involves several themes that I have noted as I read through Scripture on a regular basis: how God’s revelation elevates women and the Genesis narrative that sets God’s story into motion in the history of humankind. I love it when I see new things in texts I have read many times, and this is the fruit of a new revelation to me.

I suppose I should note another shift in my writing while I am on the subject of “reading the text”. “The” text is the Bible of course. I have followed year long reading plans in each of the last 6-7 years, and many of my articles are borne out of my daily reading.

At number 8, the article, Is Merely Believing In Jesus Enough?, pushes the envelope of popular orthodoxy a little bit. Only a little bit, though. James says in Epistle that even the demons believe, so “mere” belief obviously isn’t enough. There must be something more to it!

The 9^th most read article this year grew out of the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Yes, I am behind the times, but then I am not a bandwagon jumper.

Diving for Pearls in the stories of Dustin Kensrue and Mark Driscoll also grew out of my appreciation of the music of Dustin Kensrue, who led worship in a Mars Hill church. His musical shift away from orthodox Christian themes inspired me to listen to the podcast to understand his “deconstruction”. Kensrue’s life and new album speaks to the dangers of celebrity pastors and reminds me of the need for empathy and kindness for those who struggle because of bad church leadership.

Rounding out the top 10 most read articles in 2024 is another article that pushes the bounds of popular orthodoxy, Wrestling with the Accuracy and Inspiration of the Bible. Long ago, I set out to defend the inerrancy of the Bible in a college thesis paper, but I didn’t turn in the paper because I wasn’t satisfied with the effort. My views are still developing 40+ years later.

In the first several years writing this blog, I struggled to find 10 articles with more than 100 views. Now, I can round out a list of top 20 most read articles with more than 500 views each. Not that my goal is the number of readers, but I hope to make some difference in the world and to bear some fruit from what God is working in me. Therefore, I celebrate the increase. The next 10 most read articles follow in order:

• An Interview with Dr. Bruce Greyson on Near Death Experiences, Part 2 (2022):
• The Message in the Earliest Creeds in the New Testament (2016);
• Tuning In To God’s Frequency (2016);
• Was the Garden of Eden Really Perfect? (2023);
• What Does It Mean to Be Transformed By the Renewal of Your Mind? (2022);
• Jesus Among the Religious and Political Groups of His Time (2022);
• The Boldness that Comes from Being Filled with the Holy Spirit … and Refilled (2022);
• What It Means to Bear God’s Name and the Significance of Not Taking God’s Name in Vain (2023);
• The Vital Importance of Encounter with God (2021); and What Laws Must a Christian Follow? (2022)

Thank you for reading this article and my blog in 2024. Please consider leaving a comment. What is God working in you? What are the themes you are seeing in your Scripture reading? How have you changed in your journey this past year? Let me know in the comments. I look forward to engaging with you in 2025!