The Blood of Jesus on Trial!

This was emailed to me by one of my friends

One night in a church service a young woman felt the tug of God at her heart. She responded to God's call and accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior. The young woman had a very rough past, involving alcohol, drugs, and prostitution. But, the change in her was evident. As time went on she became a faithful member of the church.

She eventually became involved in the ministry, teaching young children. It was not very long until this faithful young woman had caught the eye and heart of the pastor's son. The relationship grew and they began to make wedding plans.

This is when the problems began. You see, about one half of the church did not think that a woman with a past such as hers was suitable for a pastor's son. The church began to argue and fight about the matter. So they decided to have a meeting.

As the people made their arguments and tensions increased, the meeting was getting completely out of hand. The young woman became very upset about all the things being brought up about her past. As she began to cry the pastor's son stood to speak. He could not bear the pain it was causing his wife to be.

He began to speak and his statement was this:
"My fiancee's past is not what is on trial here. What you are questioning is the ability of the blood of Jesus to wash away sin. Today you have put the blood of Jesus on trial. So, does it wash away sin or not?"

The whole church began to weep as they realized that they had been slandering the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Too often, even as Christians, we bring up the past and use it as a weapon against our brothers and sisters. Forgiveness is a very foundational part of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If the blood of Jesus does not cleanse the other person completely then it cannot cleanse us completely. If that is the case, then we are all in a lot of trouble.

What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! End of case!!!!

He Showed Me Mercy!

I traveled out of town down to my home-town. It was a trip long overdue. I had a nice time visiting places I have not been to for years. I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent there. However, when the time I scheduled for staying there was over, I was in a big haste to get back to the city.

For one, I missed my family; also I missed the opportunity of browsing and doing my usual stuff online. In my haste to get back as fast as possible. I changed my plan of traveling. Instead of boarding a vehicle in the early hours of the day, I opted out for an earlier trip via night bus! The dreaded night bus! The queen wasn’t in support of the silly idea, but I cunningly cut her off and went ahead with my foolish decision.

All went well at first. The bus started the journey which is over 800km at 6.00p.m. I was happy about the early start. However, around 8p.m, we started having problems. Then it dawned on me that I had made a very stupid decision. The driver stopped on the side of the road and refused to continue the journey because a passenger made a call using his cellphone. Of course before departure, we all were told to switch off our cellphone. The driver insisted that he cannot continue the journey because he doesn’t know who the passenger was calling on the cellphone. After much pleading, he continued.

At that point, I started imagining the hazards lying ahead. Fellow passengers started recounting the terrible incidents of armed robbery attacks that have occurred on this same road in the recent times. Beside this, while travelling down, I had noticed that the road was full of deadly potholes and there were several motor accidents. In my haste to get back to my place of residence, I had ignore all these danger signs.

Some hours later, we had a flat tire and we had to change the tire in the middle of nowhere. While the tire was being changed, a lot of scary thoughts were running through my mind. I knew I had made a very stupid mistake, and I was begging God to grant me safe journey down home base on His mercy alone.

After that, we got to a spot where all vehicles ahead of us had stopped and switched off. Reason, they are afraid of continuing the journey because of the possibility of getting robbed. So we were stuck in the middle of nowhere! Up till now, I can’t explain how we got out of that one. I just woke up (I had to force myself to sleep since we were categorically told that the vehicles ahead of us won’t move until 4a.m in the morning) and discovered that we were moving.

So many other things happened. For example, when the journey was almost completed, we got to another dead-end around 9a.m. Rioters had blocked the expressway and they refused to move. They were protesting against the Nigerian Policemen who had mounted checkpoints along that expressway. After spending about an hour and the confusion was not subsiding, our bus driver decided to use a track-road to bypass the angry rioters.

I eventually got home around 2p.m. I was grateful to be alive and whole! Did I say, grateful, surely that was a slip of tongue, I meant VERY GRATEFUL to God for sparing my life!

Entrecard - The Bloggers' First Choice

Call it whatever you like. Entrecard is making wave and it has come to stay. Few big time bloggers are calling the traffic generated by this community-effort junk-traffic. In my opinion that is just a way of letting out their frustration that the system is not recognizing them. The system cares less, who you are. As long as you visit and drop cards on other's site, you must have traffic.

For the past two months, I have visited blogs and website that I might not have visited in the next 5years irrespective of how much advertisement they might buy from Google and the rest advertisers.

The system put in place by Entrecard is so natural. It is like visiting individuals in their homes one by one. Of course, the response is quite encouraging. If you call at my home as a friend and drop a note, it is most likely that I will want to check on you too. If for nothing else, just to reciprocate the love shown.

Beside this, the rewarding system put in place by the Entrecard team has turned out to be another unique innovation on the internet. Gone are the days that you can only buy things if you have PayPal or credit cards. Now I can buy advertisement, books and some other things and actually pay using the Entrecard Credits that I have accumulated. This might not mean so much for those of you readers in developed countries. For some of us in third world countries it is a great relief.

For some months now, I have been having a serious challenge. I wanted to purchase some services over the net, but the companies are not willing to have anything to do with me just because I do not own a credit card. Yet I have the physical cash to pay. They don't want wire transfer, they don't want Western Union and that is it. Maybe in few months to come, they will be willing to accept EntreCash! :-)

I personally look forward to more innovation from the Entrecard Team. Bloggers that are members of the Entrecard communities too have been developing wonderful ideas. I guess Google and other advertisers will have to buckle up. Thumps up to Entrecard!

Which hosting company? BlueHost vs Hostgator

Having settled the name I want to call my new blog, the next hurdle was that of choosing the webhosting company to use. Since I planned a lean budget, I had to look for the manageable quality at affordable price J. A tough one isn’t it.

After spending hours reading reviews and checking out forums, I have zeroed down to two choices. But picking the best of the two is difficult. There are too many users praising both. So, I said to myself, why not seek the opinion of my readers and fellow bloggers, they will be more sincere since they are not marketing either of the two companies.

So, in your candid opinion, which do you prefer and why? Waiting for your comments! Thanks.

I got Spammed!

I never appreciated the need for activating comment moderation on my site until today. For the first time since I started my blog in July, 2007, I got spammed today. See below the comment.

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barb michelen said...

Hi again, see tthis is the site i told you i signed up to. It has some nice information about how to make money using OPP, i think you might find it interesting. here it is. bye!

January 19, 2008 4:06 PM

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I suspected that this comment was a spam because the commentator sounded as if I have had previous contact. So, I went ahead to check out the supposed commentator's blog and there was none. After that I checked the "here it is" link and it was one of those "Get Rich Quick" sites. I was asked to pay $99 as if I have stolen money that I don't know how to spend. I didn't stop there, I googled the name and I was not surprised to see that the same "robot" has been dropping spam comments on other blogs. That was it!

I quickly fired up my blog's admin page and activated comment moderation and word verification.
I never wanted to because I felt that people should not be restricted from dropping their candid opinions (without me tinkering it) on my post as fast (without being forced to type jargons dictated my a computer) as they can! But then, I don't want to share my blog with "robots".

So, I am apologizing in advance to my regular visitors for the inconvenience the word verification may cause you! Thanks for keeping this blog alive. Without your patronage, I won't be inspired to put down my ramblings. Enjoy!

N.B - Please, drop your comment about this issue. I might learn something new! Thanks.

Are you a slave or you are a master..?

Are you a slave or you are a master of your personal finances? You are either in charge of your personal finances and on your way to a brighter future or you’re unwittingly spending the whole of your lifetime sweating for unknown masters.

Whether you agree or not at one time or the other you made the choice or you will make the choice!

The above comment sounds harsh and perhaps rude, but it is the truth. So many unknowingly are slaves working for others. They earn salary that is never enough and accumulate debts that will further enslave generations unborn.

• If you spend more than you earn (meaning you owe debt) then you are already a slave .
• If you spend all that you earn (meaning you have no savings) then you are a servant.
• If you spend less than you have(meaning you have savings but you are at the mercy of inflation and adverse economic policies), then you are a paid laborer.
• If you earn without lifting a finger (meaning your money is working for you) then you have mastered your finances.

The biblical injunction that a borrower is a servant to the lender (Proverb 22:7) is a timeless truth that will endure until the end of the ages. Don’t you think it is time you get rid of those debt and plan for a better future. A good man leaves an inheritance for his children not debt! (Proverb 13:22)

Less than Expectation!

When the result is less than expectation, what do you do? There are moments in ones life when grumbling and complaining seems to be the right thing to do. You feel life is not just been fair. The unqualified seems to get the best result while the hard-worker is left with crumbs.
Thank God for life in Christ! That is what makes the difference. My life is priceless. The value of my life is not based on human recognition of my little effort rather it is based on the priceless value of the blood that was shed at the cross of calvary.
It is time for me to shout a bigger halleluya! Yes, because the JOY of the Lord is my strength.
If you are downcasted or feeling gloomy, I will suggest you dial J-E-S-U-S, someone is waiting at the end of the line to attend to you promptly. Shalom.

Choosing the Right Domain Name

There are millions of blogs and websites already in existence on the world wide web. Yet, many more are being launched each day. Each one is christened with a name that is deemed unique enough to differentiate it from the millions that are already in existence.

So, how do I choose a name that is: (1) Unique (2) Easy to remember (3) Relevant to my content (4) Contains my keywords for SEO

I have been reading a lot of materials and visiting websites in the past one week. I desire to have my blog on a paid hosting platform. But choosing a name that reflects what I want to achieve has been a difficult decision to make.

The blog is meant to be a business blog. Not a diary like this one. It will be focusing on making money by rendering services online. My target audiences are: Newbie bloggers looking for tips, Newbie Online Entrepreneurs and bloggers from the developing nations. (A very large market ;-)

I have been made to understand that choosing the right name is like having a solid foundation for my website. Here are the issues I need to take into consideration:

• The name must be unique, else there will be branding problem. Imagine me registering JohnChow.com (lol) of course it is impossible to register a name that is already in use. Also, I don’t want to be a copycat or a duplicate, so I won’t register JohnChowJr.com

• The domain name must be simple and easy for any dummy to remember without searching in Google (lol). The ability of would be visitors to remember the website name without assistance is very crucial. Their repeated visit might just depend on it. So it is better to combine simple meaningful words to form the domain name than to use complicated words such as w9jfq4gy.com

• I should avoid hypens and dash. They can be confusing. During my tour, I came across some beautiful sites that I would have love to revisit. However, since I failed to write their address down, and I wasn’t in the mood to add them to my bookmarks, attempts to return to same sites were frustrating. I couldn’t remember where the hyphens and dash were suppose to be this_is-an_example.com

• My domain name must be relevant to the goal of the website. It is needless naming a website that deals with pets as motherandchilddelight.com this will attract the wrong category of visitors and the goal of the website will most likely be defeated.

The domain name if possible should contain at least one or two of my keywords (SEO). That one is the greatest headache I’m having now. It seems all the keywords have been overused!

That’s about the summary of all I have learnt. Now, I want to appeal to you my reader to come to my help. What is your advice? Should I use a name like nigerianbloggers.com or just my personal name like johnchow.com Thanks in advance.

Another Weekend in the Office

It’s been a quite but busy Saturday. I happened to be the only one that came to work in my department. Many of my colleagues are out on the field digging it out with assignments given by clients. This year started well and this first quarter promise to be a busy and prosperous one. I wish though that I was back at home playing with the princesses. But then, my presence with them may be worthless if I am unable to attend to my financial obligations. So I choose work first.

That is not to say that I won’t give them the attention they deserve, however, whenever duty calls, I have to attend to it first. We can always find some other time to socialize.

Today, I added to my knowledge online. I learnt a lot of useful stuff about Wordpress. I’ve always been in love with Wordpress themes, but I never knew that it is not as easy to use as Blogger themes. Also, Wordpress.com doesn’t allow newbie bloggers who aren’t willing to pay some cash to advertise on their freely-hosted blogs. So to me, that is thumps-down for wordpress, and thumps up for Google!

To all my readers, I wish you a wonderful weekend. Cheers.

My Entrecard Tour Day 4

I’ve been very busy since yesterday. Keeping to my schedule of tour was extremely difficult as I had to leave my desktop constantly for urgent official assignments. However, I am pleasantly surprised to discover that I have been able to achieve 50% of my target already within these four days.

Of course I had to make a lot of sacrifices. For example, I couldn’t visit my favorite blogs. I had to keep to the plan for the tour. Also, some of the blogs I visited were actually frustrating. They contained too many multi-media contents such that they upload at snail speed. However, my worst experience so far was a blog that I personally classify as “an adult content blog” http://lordlikely.co.uk. I was embarrassed visiting the blog. Of course it will be the last time I visit the site.

Since, I have accomplished 50% of the goal I set for myself. I am going to give myself a break for some days. I will still be visiting sites and dropping cards, but I will not do the tedious work of taking note of the address or number of sites that I visit per day until I resume the tour.

Find below the sites that I visited today. Some of them do not have the Entrecard Widget on them though, so I couldn’t really fully benefit from my laborious visit to those ones. Cheers.

Update: List of blog removed 'cos I got penalized by Google!

My Entrecard Tour Day 3

It has been quite exciting visiting the Entrecard Members Sites. My tour today took me to several sites. I was able to visit a total of 150 sites. That brings the total sites that I have visited to 253blogs.

I have learnt some useful lesson during the course of this tour and I hope to learn some more before it ends. Also, I have made some new friends. Hopefully, God willing, the tour will continue tomorrow. For the current list of the sites visited, you can check my post Goal - Visit 1,000 Entrecard Members sites Cheers.

My Entrecard Tour Day 2

Like I promised in my post yesterday Goal - Visit 1,000 Entrecard members sites. I have started visiting and recording the Entrecard Member sites that I visited and dropped cards. The tour has been a tedious one because a greater percentage of the sites that I visited contained heavy multimedia contents that makes them load at snail speed.

Also, I discovered that many of the sites do not understand the importance of placing their Entrecard Widget high up on their site so that visitors can easily locate them. Some actually hid theirs in obscure places (mostly at the end of their homepage). A few that I visited do not even have widget on their site. I wonder how come the Entrecard team has not noticed this. I thought there is a way for them to detect automatically sites that are not featuring the Entrecard widget.

In conclusion, I must say that the goal of dropping 300 entrecards per day is a tall one. One must have a lot of idle time to accomplish it. So far I have visited 104 sites. You can see the result here. The tour will continue tomorrow!

Goal - Visit 1,000 entrecard member sites!

I have set a goal for myself. A funny one, but one that I feel will be interesting. I plan to visit at least 1,000 Entrecard Member sites before the end of February! I have been visiting members site and dropping cards, but it has been haphazard. I don't keep record.
I was actually challenged when I saw fellow members of Entrecard who claims they drop the maximum number of cards allowed per day. That means they visit at least 300sites on daily basis. Why won't they have traffic! Entrecard has been a good traffic provider for my site of recent. So, I am going to embark on these project and I will be reporting as I visit. This post might end up the single longest post in the history of this blog. So here we go!

Hopefully, the list will grow daily!

Update: List of blogs removed 'cos I got penalized by Google! Never post more than 150links on a page, it is a bad SEO practice that can get you penalize. A pity I learnt a bit late. Hoping Google will reconsider and restore my PR.

Free traffic from RSSHugger

Well like any other blogger out there, I desire traffic. Voluminous and consistent traffic. No matter how wonderful a blog is, if it is ‘undiscovered’ it will be like a lamp hidden under the desk where it is of no benefit to anyone. So, in my quest for traffic, I came across this website that promise me a lot of ‘free’ traffic.

I have checked on some bloggers who registered before me and their review is that that RSSHugger is delivering traffic to their site as promised. So here we go, more exposure for our blog! We can concentrate on posting interesting articles, while RSSHugger does the herculean task of delivering them to readers all over the globe.

If you have not joined, I will suggest that you give it a try. After all, it will cost you just few seconds of registering. The registration process is quite straightforward. You can join by clicking here.

Blogging Like a Pro!

Blogging like a Pro, that is my desire! I want to blog like a professional! That is my next goal. I don’t want to just be a nobody in the blogosphere. I want to make impact. I want to add value. I want my readers to come calling back without being cajoled.

How am I going to achieve that? Well, I have not been able to figure it out yet. I have been reading a lot of books and articles on what an ideal professional blog should look like. Unfortunately, the information that I have come across has not been really simple. It has been a bit complicated.

However, I have come to understand one fact, bloggers cannot just be lumped into two categories. Bloggers for money and Bloggers for fun. There are several categories. There are bloggers for fun, who make money from their blogs. But their main satisfaction comes from the wide readership they enjoy, not necessarily the income they make from their blog. There are corporate bloggers who tries to promote corporate products, services or ideas. There are even political bloggers.

Also, there are professional online marketers who are only out to make as much income as possible. So they only use their blogging skill to lure readers to their site so that the site enjoys good patronage and return good income.

So the question is, what kind of professional blogger do I want to be. I have been doing so much of reading and visiting blogs and less of posting on my blog. I am beginning to get bored with the whole exercise. I am almost telling myself that I should just be a rambling blogger! Yes, I blog for myself and anyone that identifies with my ramblings.

So, what do you think! Your suggestion may be the singular inspiration I have been waiting for. You never can tell, you may turn me to a Professional blogger. Thanks for calling anyway.

First Sunday of the Year

What better place to spend today than in the gathering of fellow believers. I need to shout a big halleluyar that will be louder than that of my neighbor. Yes, because the Lord has been so good to me. I and my family have a lot to be grateful for. Also, my local church has good reason to be thankful. If not the Lord who has been on our side!

First Saturday of the Year

I won’t go to work today. I seem to have been overworking myself. Since it is the first weekend of the New Year, I plan to spend it with my family. Afterall, the whole oil city is still yet to recover from the holiday mood. So many workers that travelled to their villages and hometowns are yet to return to the city.
The roads are quite free. You can dash from one end of the city to another within minutes. Each of those traffic junctions, that on normal days are nightmare for motorists, are quite free now. The whole thing looks funny to me. Human beings moving up and down, so busy hurrying to move from one place to another, as if there is no tomorrow. God is gracious enough to accommodate our funny view about life.
Enough of my ramblings. I got to go and attend to the Queen, the Princesses and Sharon. By the way Sharon is becoming too playful. I guess, she might end up as a pet instead of a family guard dog!

Turn one computer into two, three …ten Free!

I don’t think HP, Dell, Toshiba, Intel, AMD, Microsoft will like this idea! But a Canadian software company is already out with the software and they are giving it out free!

As I was stumbling through the net today, I came across an article in Digital Journal that shows that Userful.com has produce a software that can allow one desktop computer to be splitted into ten! You only need to add extra video cards and usb cards so as to accommodate the extra monitors and keyboards for the 9 extra users.

The main gist is that the software is free! What effect will that have on the big hardware producers. Then won’t Microsoft get angry that 10 people are using the same software that is licensed for just one user!

Read the rest of the article here.

Make Money Online!

Make Money Online! That is one screaming headline that gets good attention on the web. Make Money from Home. Work from Home. You too can blog for money blah, blah, blah.... There are thousand upon thousands of websites that promises to take a novice from $0 dollar to whopping six digit income with their magic online marketing formula overnight!

Unfortunately, many of these Instant Miracle Millionaire Formula never work. The poor newbie entrepreneur ends up having a leaking pocket and heart-ache. I have come across so many of such get rich quick advert that I cringe whenever I site the topic Make Money Online!

Does that mean it is impossible to make money online? There are many big time online entrepreneurs who claim they make their living off the net. Some of them have gone as far as showing photos of their pay-cheque from the big advertisers such as Google, PayPerPost etc. Are they all telling lies?

The answer is NO. It is indeed possible to make money online. However, if you are lazy and unwilling to pay your dues, in terms of putting the required effort into your online business, you will end up a failure.

Just like any offline business you need to make goals, set targets, plan on how to achieve them and then work consistently until you achieve your set goals. Obviously, this cannot be achieve overnight in the physical business environment. So also, it is impossible to achieve such overnight in the blogosphere. Remember, people are the real factor for success in any business venture. If you assume they are dumb, in less than no time you will soon discover that they are not. And they will go to any length to proof it to you.

So I will advice that if you are serious about making money online, you need to sit down and set a goal. Carry out extensive research on the web. Study those that are successful in the niche you’re interested in and then follow their footstep. This method is slow, but you will no in time that it is steady and it works! See you at the top. Cheers.

I Just Earned a cool $20 from PayPerPost!

I submitted my first PayPerPost post on 28th December, 2007. The post was
titled I signed up for PayPerPost I was surprised to receive a mail today that the post has been
approved and I will receive my pay in another 24days from now. I guess, some
will say it sounds too good to be true so I made a screenshot of my account
and you can see for yourself.
Now I am set to take more opportunities from PayPerPost. If you desire to
make money while blogging about things you love, I will recommend PayPerPost
to you. You can join by Clicking on the badge below.

Better still if you are not in a hurry, you can fill out the subscription form below. Enjoy!

An Attempt to Show Love turned Sour!

I came across a beautiful love link post by a blogger, Jason. He posted an Entrecard Wall Paper that contained the picture/logo of about 1,300 bloggers who are registered members of Entrecard. To me it was a beautiful work and its effect on fellow Entrecard members will be free advertisement and an improvement on their ranking with the search engine. So, I decided to post same in my blog (He actually encourage anyone that feels like to copy and paste same). I acknowledge in my post that I got the link love from Jason.

I was shocked when I received some furious comments from fellow bloggers on the post. One went as far as claiming that I stole his copyrighted logo and he was going to report me to Google. About three others follow suit hailing the first blogger. Some other bloggers commented that the whole point being made by the first blogger was ridiculous as I do not directly benefit from the post. The benefit actually goes to the fellow Entrecard members whose blogs were being advertised on my blog without them paying for it.

Well in the spirit of peace. I took down the Love Link Wallpaper. Not because I was afraid of being reported to Google (lol). However, I noted that about two of the bloggers that commented were pure hyprocrites who were looking for an avenue to make name out of controversy. I will explain what I mean.

These guys demanded that I remove their pictures and their links (the items being referred to are so tiny that you might not even noticed them as there were about 1300 of such in the wallpaper) from my blog because I am not permitted to put their picture and link (which they claimed were copyrighted) on my blog without their permission, this sounds ridiculous enough but wait. The same pretenders, now went ahead to include links to their blogs in the comment they wrote. Isn’t that hypocrisy? Well, the whole experience is just added to my box of online-wisdom. However, as much as I can, I won’t recommend anyone doing business with those guys. You want their names and blog address, no, I won’t give you. But you can discover it yourself from the comments they made on this blog. Enjoy!

First Business Day Of The Year

Today is the first business day of the New Year. Activities in my organization are on with fervor. There is so much to do that I hardly have time for myself. Unlike past years when activities only picked up towards the end of the first quarter, this year promise to be better.

There are challenges, but then, the fact that we are having jobs and ongoing transactions is a lot encouraging. We give all the glory to the Almighty God. Indeed, I can testify that my company and I are already experiencing the NEXT LEVEL.

Happy New Year!

Halleluyah! Blessed be the name of the Lord. Praise and glory be to the Almighty for keeping us alive to be partakers of this new year. Shalom.