Happy sixth birthday (and a free book for you!)

Escape to Reality is six years old today – hooray! – so this seems like a good opportunity to take a moment to reflect on the past and future of the blog.

Since our last birthday I have published 58 new articles. The most popular was “The 9 lies of religion.” That one was fun to write, but my favorite article was the one entitled, “Is grace a person?” I also enjoyed doing the series on Job. (One day I may write a book about this poor man.)

Who’s reading this stuff?

According to the annual report prepared by WordPress, last year E2R was visited half a million times by readers in 222 countries. Since this blog exists to proclaim the good news of Jesus to the widest possible audience, those numbers are nice.

But the number that really encourages me is this one: 4000. That’s the number of new comments from readers in 2015. If you took to the time to write in, perhaps to encourage, discuss, or ask questions, thanks!

I always enjoy hearing from readers. However, as the blog grows I find it increasingly difficult to respond to comments. So I am particularly grateful to those of you who respond to readers’ questions. There are about 30 people who respond regularly with wisdom and grace. If I tried to name you all I’d miss some, but I will single out the five most prolific commenters and they are Warren, Barry, Chris, Earl, and Colleen. Thank you all!

Stuff you may have missed

Three things you may have missed last year: First, E2R’s Scripture Index grew to more than 1000 scriptures. So if you have a question about a certain verse in the Bible, the chances are increasingly good that you’ll find a grace-based interpretation there.

Second, I put several notes on Facebook that you won’t find here on E2R. These notes tend to be responses to questions readers have asked me such as “Should you tithe?” “Why did Jesus ask for swords?” and “Did the Israelites ask for law?”

Third, E2R’s Greatest Hits series was finished. If you’re new here and find the archives overwhelming, you can find the very best articles in a series of books with groovy names like Grace Party and Grace Disco.

What’s coming in 2016?

You may not know this, but I do most of my writing for E2R in concentrated bursts during the school holidays. Over Christmas and New Years I wrote several articles with titles like these:

Is grace a license to be lazy?
How does faith establish the law?
What are heavenly treasures?
The gospel of hope
What is the purpose of the law?
8 signs a church doesn’t get grace
How do I know I’m saved?

You won’t want to miss any of these new articles and the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is by signing up today as an email subscriber.

Get a free book!

Since it’s our birthday, I want to give away some books. I have 100 copies of the recently released Greatest Hits collection to give away. This ebook contains the entire greatest hits series – all 60 articles along with reflections, follow-up questions, and back-stories – in a single volume.

To get your free copy:

1. Go to the book website and click on the big red button that says PDF
2. On the page that opens, click the button that says “I want this”
3. Copy and paste the following offer code (with no spaces) and the price will drop to $0:

[UPDATE: All free copies have gone. But you can still get all 4 Greatest Hits books for the price of 2.]

Grace is fun! Thanks for sharing the journey.

Paul