Today’s Sermon is now available on the New Life web-site.
In this sermon, which is based on 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, I talk about How The Holy Spirit Works.
Click here to listen in your web browser, here to download the mp3
As cyclists, we all enjoy the sun on our face and wind in our hair (albeit through our vents). Now, according to recent research published in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, we can add an increase in grey matter to the benefits of a ride outside, because a spin in the fresh air literally remodels your brain.
That’s right, being outside actually increases the grey matter volume in the right dorsolateral–prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is a part of the brain associated with executive functions like working memory, planning, and selective attention.
Read the rest here: https://flip.it/I2k2Sr
Pastors who are too busy to pastor the people in their church, who are too detached to be spoken to, who are too inaccessible to receive emails and text messages, are too big for their britches. What does it mean to be a pastor if one has no connection to the people? Scot and Laura McKnight

17 No one can have faith without hearing the message about Christ. Romans 10:17 CEV https://bible.com/bible/392/rom.10.17.CEV

Jo Nova writes:
The coral cover as sampled by AIMS across the entire Great Barrier Reef is not just good, but better than it has ever been in the 36 years they have been studying it. If the reef is in danger — it’s from being overgrown with coral. Climate Change, such as it is, has caused no trend at all.
If anything, in the spirit of modern-media-science, climate change causes record coral growth.
Tonight the UN scientists decided not to list the reef as “in danger”. The ABC and every Green group who normally follow UN scientists slavishly said that was “only because of lobbying”.
Record Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef.
The new AIMS report on Monday showed the Great Barrier Reef had a remarkable recovery, but the graphs were of three different sections of the reef (North, central and South). Peter Ridd obtained all the data and combined it to make one graph and discovered that the coral cover of 2020 was a new all time record high.
Strangely none of the government agencies or paid Professors discovered this. You have to be unemployed to discover record coral growth.
Peter Ridd, (The Professor that JCU sacked for being “non-collegial”) The Australian
Like all other data on the reef, this shows it is in robust health. For example, coral growth rates have, if anything, increased over the past 100 years and measurements of farm pesticides reaching the reef show levels so low that they cannot be detected with the most ultra-sensitive equipment.
This data is good news. It could hardly be better. But somehow, our science organisations have convinced the world that the reef is on its last legs. How has this happened?
The only thing the reef is plagued with is “experts”:
It was reasonable in the ’70s to be concerned about these plagues and they ultimately precipitated AIMS’s long-term monitoring of coral and starfish in the ’80s. I was working at AIMS when this important work started, and it is interesting to look back on what has changed. The coral cover is no less, the number of starfish is no more, but the number of scientists and managers working on the reef has exploded. Perhaps this is the problem.
Record coral cover means there was no disaster on the reef. The only disaster is the quality assurance at the science organisations.
In the last few hours the Great Barrier Reef barely escaped being labeled as “in danger” by a branch of the China-friendly-UN. Instead UNESCO will leave it at “critical” and decide again in a year if the 340,000 square kilometer reef is in danger of turning into a calcium-carbonate quarry.
The Australian ABC has already decided this was only because the Minister played games and pulled some tricks on a “whirlwind diplomatic effort” to override the UN body’s scientific advisors. Apparently the science advisors of the UN are so corrupt they can be bought off with a few rushed phone calls from a minor Australian minister, but these same advisors would never be influenced by the giant Chinese Communists with their billion dollar Belt and Roads, debts and honeypot traps.
Remember the UN experts are always right except when they’re not.
But China still wins this round of sabre rattling. By leaning on the UN to tell Australia off, the Australian government is still tying itself in knots and spending millions to save a reef that has already saved itself.
We’ll have to hand in our homework report again as soon as February 2022. And the hack-media are not reporting on why UNESCO don’t care about China’s concrete-the-reef approach.
Greenpeace et al, who would have told us how horrified they were if the reef was listed as “in danger”, said they were disappointed it was not.
UNESCO would not get away with these absurdly transparent games if the Western media and most universities did not provide continuous running cover for their hypocrisy.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science’s (AIMS) Long-Term Monitoring Program – Annual Summary Report on Coral Reef Condition for 2020/21
Those who might otherwise be seen as high-status people in the church—pastors, ministry leaders, prominent parishioners—should turn service into a spiritual discipline. Scot and Laura McKnight

35 But love your enemies and be good to them. Lend without expecting to be paid back. Then you will get a great reward, and you will be the true children of God in heaven. He is good even to people who are unthankful and cruel. Luke 6:35 CEV https://bible.com/bible/392/luk.6.35.CEV
Scripture
“To those who use well what they are given even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.”
Observation
The kingdom of heaven is like a man going on a long trip. He gives five bags of silver to one servant, three to another, and just one bag of silver to another. The first two servants work hard and invest the master’s money to double it. The third servant buries the master’s money in the ground.
The master returns, and the first two servants present him with his money which they have doubled. The third servant returns the original amount of money to the master.
The master commends the two servants and gives them more responsibility. The money is taken from the hapless third servant and given to the first one. The third servant is cast out of the household.
Application
We are used to seeing this parable in terms of our gifts and talents. But really it applies to every part of our lives- our time, money, abilities, opportunities, and so on.
Our whole life is to be dedicated to the Lord. Everything we have comes from Him, and belongs to Him.
Like the servant in the story, we do not own what has been given to us. We are managers on God’s behalf.
The issue is not whether I have a lot to offer to God. It is all about my desire to honour Him with what I do have.
Prayer
Lord, with you in the first place, there is no second place. Everything is subject to you. May my choices and my desires glorify your name. Amen.
This is the first in a series of videos on the history of God’s people.