Awesome ride this morning to Turrawan and Tariaro. The Namoi River is looking splendid. #cycling #Narrabri #Biketooter
Today’s Bike Ride
Month: January 2024
Quote for the Day
Prayer is the most important task as a small group leader. Success here will make success in the other habits much easier. Failure here will make success in the other habits nearly impossible. Dave Earley
Bloganuary Snacks
What snack would you eat right now?
Snacking is the one habit that undermines my health goals.
We always have a cornucopia of food on hand, much of it the glorious sweet variety. I love chocolate. We have a special drawer in our fridge called “The Chocolate Drawer.”
What snack would I eat right now? All of them!
What snack will I eat right now? A crunchy apple, a flavoursome peach or a handful of nuts.
You see, I am training my habits to include healthier options.
Do not fear
Reflection on Isaiah 25
Scripture
He will swallow up death forever! The Sovereign Lord will wipe away all tears. He will remove forever all insults and mockery against his land and people. The Lord has spoken!
Observation
The Lord does wonderful things. He turns mighty cities into ruins. He is a tower of refuge for the poor and needy.
He will swallow up death forever. He will wipe away all tears and remove mockery and insults against His people.
People will proclaim that the Lord has saved them because they trusted Him. The Lord’s hand will rest on Jerusalem, but Moab will be crushed.
Application
The good news is that God will swallow up death forever. In Christ’s death and resurrection, the power of sin and death was defeated. Everybody who puts their faith in Jesus will live forever with God.
In Revelation 21, John tells us that God will wipe away our tears. But that is not the future, it is here and now. When we follow Jesus, He heals the hurts of the past. He turns our mourning into dancing. The joy of the Lord is our strength
We all go through tough times. The assurance of Scripture is that God is with us, and He strengthens us in the midst of grief.
God will also remove all insults and mockery against His people. Those who refuse to hear the gospel, those who revile Christians or persecute them, will be judged for their deeds. They will not go to heaven. They will not be allowed to continue their defiance against God and His people.
Prayer
Lord, I thank you for these awesome promises. You have defeated death, you wipe away our tears, and you will bring all insults and mockery to an end. Amen.
Jo Nova: Hertz To Sell One Third of EVs Because Customers Don’t Want Them.
What does this say really about the future of Electrical Vehicles?
From jonova.com
With the western world hurtling into new cars that are more costly, inconvenient, slower to refuel, and prone to burning down carparks and cargo ships, it was only a matter of time before the cracks in the socialist car market started to show.
Around the world tonight headlines are sharing the news that Hertz is selling off 20,000 EVs, one third of their fleet, in order to buy some more fossil fuel cars. That can’t be inspiring news for customers thinking of giving up their gas guzzlers. As Oilprice said: Hertz’s Big Move Into EVs Turned Out To Be A Dud. And as Reuters headlined: Rental giant Hertz dumps EVs, including Teslas, for gas cars.
It was the perfect storm in a bad way. Apparently the customers didn’t want to rent them, and when they did and they scratched them, they cost too much to fix. (Repair costs were twice as high). Then the bottom fell out of the second-hand market, and to recover the depreciation losses, Hertz would have to raise the prices on a product customers already didn’t want. There was no way this was going to work.
The official dry Hertz announcement politely says that customers want fossil fueled cars and EV’s were too expensive to fix:
“..expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EVs, remained high in the quarter”
“The Company expects to reinvest a portion of the proceeds from the sale of EVs into the purchase of internal combustion engine (“ICE”) vehicles to meet customer demand.”
Back in October 2021 it was all champagne and fireworks
Hertz put in an order for 100,000 EVs which was so exciting it pushed Tesla shares up 9% briefly to “a trillion dollar valuation”. (Two years later Tesla is worth 30% less.) At the time, Hertz expected to get the 100,000 cars by the end of 2022. Luckily for them, this didn’t happen. Instead they only got 50,000 by the end of 2022. This worked out to be about 11% of the Tesla total fleet. So these EV’s are not even very old. No one can say “the new models are better, because these are new models.
Some of the cars are already on the market. Two year old Telsa Model 3 EV’s are going for $22,000 US.
Hertz will book a $250 million dollar loss, and stocks in both Hertz and Tesla fell on the news.
With uncanny timing the Australian Albanese government is about to launch emissions standards we don’t need to coerce people to buy a product they don’t want, in the hope, they say, of changing the weather.
The insanity would be hard to fathom if EV’s weren’t also the ideal tool for spying, data collection, law enforcement, and political control. Benefits that can launch a thousand political careers…
Today’s Bike Ride
The humidity is settling down a bit, so it was a fantastic morning for riding. I went to Jacks Creek and Gun Club Roads. #cycling #Narrabri #Biketooter
Quote for the Day
Highly effective small group leaders view prayer as a non-negotiable aid in their ministry to others. They use it often and well. They build it into their daily schedules and make it a high priority. They don’t just pray a little; they pray a lot. Dave Earley
One thing…
Fasting
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast, on my bike, about fasting for miracles. This particular speaker is a part of a church in the USA where members regularly fast for 21 days in January. As I was listening I was drawn to the idea of fasting as a congregation, not in January which doesn’t work at all in Australia, but through Lent.
I have spoken to a few people who think, as I do, that the Lord is calling the church to do this project together. It is interesting that at the time that the Holy Spirit was talking to me about it, He was also talking to other people.
Fasting is not a big part of the Western church in our times. The idea of voluntarily abstaining from food for even just 1 day fills many of us with anxiety. I think because we are so used to having food of almost any sort, whenever we feel like it, we can’t imagine not eating when we are hungry.
I confess that I have not been a big practitioner of fasting at any time in my life, except for brief times. Yet this was a big part of living for followers of the Lord in the Old Testament and for followers of Jesus. The early church, and right through to modern times, extolled the value of fasting as a spiritual discipline.
If you search for “Fasting” on Amazon, there are literally thousands of titles on fasting for health, intermittent fasting, and so on. The number of christian titles on fasting is much smaller.
There are two things, I want to emphasise in this short article.
Firstly, Christian fasting is linked to prayer. It is not about just doing without food, but setting apart a time period when we seek the Lord with such intensity and passion, that you are willing to do without food for a period of time. There are many testimonies of people being saved, healed, receiving miracles, breakthrough prayers being answered because people fasted and prayed. Fasting turbo charges your prayer life by reminding you that you are dedicating this period to the Lord. Every time your stomach growls is a call to prayer.
Secondly, Christian fasting is about your relationship with God. In the Old Testament, various people are described as humbling themselves before the Lord, and usually in connection with fasting. Fasting reminds us very powerfully that we are totally dependent on the Lord for everything we need for life.
We fast for spiritual reasons, but there are health benefits. I have a tendency to snack almost constantly. When I fast it resets the bad habit of picking up food and mindlessly eating. Often people experience a detox process as their bodies take the opportunity to process and eliminate the bad stuff in their bodies. It gives your digestive system a rest and renews its strength.
So what does a Lenten Fast look like? How long do you have to keep it up for? What can I expect?
We will explore these topics and much more as we get closer to Lent.
New Life Narrabri 