Author: newlifenarrabri

Reflection on Matthew 3:13-17

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Scripture

But Jesus said, “It must be done, for we must carry out all that God requires.”

Observation

Jesus goes from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptised by John the Baptist. John tries to talk Him out of it, but Jesus replies, “We must carry out all that God requires.”

As Jesus comes up out of the water, the heavens open, and the Spirit of God comes on Jesus in the form of a dove. A voice from heaven says, “This is my dearly loved Son who brings me great joy.”

Application

Obedience to God is not a matter of choice or convenience.

Jesus says, “We must carry out all that God requires.” For Jesus the great test was to accept the suffering of the cross.

We see our lives as a series of choices from what to wear to what to eat, whom to marry, and so on. In this series of choices, we see obedience to God as an option.

For a person committed to walking in the way of Jesus, there is no choice to be made.

Obedience is obedience at every point. We cannot be 80% obedient. We cannot pick and choose how we will serve God and in what parts of our lives we will be surrendered. We have to carry out all that God requires, and not just the bits we enjoy.

Surrender to Christ means to give up the right to choose- perhaps even our choice of clothes.

As soldiers in an army obey their orders without question, so too christians must learn to obey God’s orders without hesitation.

Prayer

Lord Jesus please teach me what it means to be obedient to you in all thing, so that I can carry out all that God requires. Amen

Germany Weighs Electricity Rationing Scheme To Stabilise Its Now Shaky Green Power Grid

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Germany is a warning of where Australia will be in 10 years or less, unless we regain some sanity in electricity production.

From wattsupwiththat.com.

Germany Weighs Electricity Rationing Scheme To Stabilise Its Now Shaky Green Power Grid

 

Putting matches in charge of fighting gasoline fires?

Even more interference appears to be the German government’s approach to solving the power grid mess that its earlier meddling created in the first place.

Germany struggles to keep the lights on, looks for a law to prevent its power grid from crashing. 

Before the days of climate alarmism and hysteria, the job of deciding how to best produce electricity was left to power generation engineers and experts – people who actually understood it. The result: Germany had one of the most stable and reliable power grids worldwide.

Green energies destabilized the German power grid

Then in the 1990s, environmental activists, politicians, climate alarmists and pseudo-experts decided they could do a better job at generating power in Germany and eventually passed the outlandish EEG green energy feed-in act and rules. They insisted that wildly fluctuating, intermittent power supplies could be managed easily, and done so at a low cost.

Blackouts threaten

Fast forward to today: The result of all the government meddling is becoming glaringly clear: the country now finds itself on the verge of blackouts due to grid instability, has the highest electricity prices in the world, relies more on imports and is not even close to meeting its emissions targets.

Germany’s rickety and moody power grid now threatens the entire European power grid stability, as we recently witnessed.

The need for “smoothing out” demand peaks

So what solution does Berlin propose today? You guessed it: more meddling and interference, more outlandish bureaucrat solutions. Included among them are shutting down the remaining baseload coal-fired and nuclear power plants, and relying even more on the power sources that got the country into its current mess in the first place.

And new are restrictions as to when power can be consumed by consumers and industry! Energy rationing and targeted blackouts.

Hat-tip. Tichys Einblick

Cutting off e-vehicle battery chargers and industry

To deal with the power grid problems, Germany’s Economics Minister Peter Altmaier presented a draft law that would allow electric utilities “to temporarily cut off charging power for e-cars when there is once again too little electricity available”, an idea known as “peak smoothing”.

“Shutdowns due to power shortages have been practiced for some time. Aluminum smelters, for example, have to put up with having their power cut off for limited periods of time,” reports Tichys Einblick. “These, like refrigerated storage facilities, consume great amounts. It’s a dangerous game because after three hours the molten metal has solidified and the factory is ruined.”

Situation now “too critical”

The situation in the German power grid has deteriorated so much that Tichys Einblick also comments: “The situation in the power grids has become too critical. The only thing that helps are abstruse ideas like: ‘You are not allowed to refuel your car from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day!’”

A law that would allow for “peak smoothing” has been demanded by power utilities for some time now as they struggle to keep the increasingly wind and solar powered grid from careening out of control and into blackness. In other words: targeted blackouts.

And as Tichy Einblick mentions, the increasing number of cars on the market will only serve to cause more extreme power demand peaks. Currently Germany is set to make a major push into electric mobility this year.

No electricity for up to 2 hours a day

In the proposed draft law, which has since been recalled because it was deemed so embarrassing, it was written that “controllable consumption facilities” would be able to receive no electricity for up to two hours per day if there was a threat of overloading the grid.

“This includes charging stations for e-cars as well as heat pumps, which can already be temporarily disconnected from the power supply,” reports Tichy.

More burden on power grid

Currently there are only 33,000 electric car charging points in Germany, a country with over 50 million cars, and the government plans a vast expansion in the future, yet isn’t sure what that infrastructure should look like. It’s a policy of going  full speed in total blackness and hoping there won’t be a brick wall in the way.

Government admits it’s not going to function

Tichy comments further: “The German government has recognized that in the future electricity system, it will no longer be possible to satisfy every demand at all times. Therefore, the control of the consumer side should be put on legal feet.” […] “Controllable consumers such as heat pumps, electric heaters and wall-boxes, i.e. charging stations for e-mobiles, would then be switched off variably at times.”

This is the sorry state of Germany’s once highly regarded power grid.

Reflection on Matthew 3:1-12

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Scripture

“Repent of your sin and turn to God, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

Observation

John the Baptist begins preaching in the wilderness. He preaches that people should repent and turn to God.

He is the one who was sent by God to prepare the way of the Lord. He calls the Pharisees and Sadducees vipers for their hypocrisy. He warns that the axe of God’s judgement is about to fall upon them.

John baptises with water, but someone is coming who will be far greater and who will baptise in fire and the Holy Spirit.

Application

The gospel of God’s kingdom is the same through the ages. The message in fact predates Jesus and goes back through the prophets to to Moses and right to the beginning of humanity.

The message is simple- we must repent. To repent means literally to change your mind. We must see our sin for the abomination that it is. We might have once thought that we were OK with God, but now we must recognise that He not impressed with anything that we say or do. A new heart is required, and that comes as a gift from God.

The second step is to turn to God. We no longer run our own lives as if we are our own king. We recognise that God is King. He is the one who created us and gave us life. Therefore we are to be under His reign.

To become a follower of Jesus involves a total change in our life direction and our lifestyle. It means giving up on the things which displease God and living His way instead. When we do this, we stop being God’s enemies and we become His friends.

Prayer

Lord, what an awesome privilege it is to be called your friend. Please help me to live for you in every part of my life. Amen.

Ephesians 4:7

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Here is my commentary on Ephesians 4:7 . I am publishing these once or twice a week, but you can read all of the available articles at our web-site, http://www.new-life.org.au

Ephesians 4:7

“But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

This verse could be more accurately translated: “but grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”

By its definition, grace is a gift from God. So this gift was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Paul wants to emphasise here that what you have from God is freely given by Him.

Paul has already written at length about grace in this letter to the Ephesians .

In chapter 1, he talked about the blessings that we received through Christ, having been chosen before we knew him. We have forgiveness and redemption “ according to the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” (1:7).

In chapter two, Paul describes how we were lifted up from the darkness of this age and we are now seated with Christ. “ For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.” (2:8)

In chapter 3, Paul talks about the work of grace in his own life, and the mystery revealed to him. He concludes that chapter with a prayer for the Ephesians that they would receive a greater revelation of the extent of God’s love.

Grace can be defined as God’s love in action. it is freely given to us, and to all people. The heart of the idea is that it comes to us as a gift and not always a something that we seek.

Common grace is the grace that God gives to all people. Jesus said that God sends the rain to the righteous and the unrighteous alike. In other words, favour and prosperity given are to all people regardless of their salvation or otherwise.

Prevenient grace is the grace that draws us towards God before we are saved. It is God’s gift that makes us open to the gospel message before we come to know Jesus.

Saving grace is a gift that applies the power of the cross to my specific need. it comes as conviction of sin and understanding that God loves me so much that He sent His Son to die for me. My sin- addled brain and corrupted heart could never have made that connection, unless the Holy Spirit made it very simple. I could never appropriate the message without the gift of faith.

Sanctifying grace is the ability which the Holy Spirit imparts to us that enables us to cast off our old sinful nature and put on Christ’s nature. Over time, our sins are put to death, and holiness grows in us.

Finally, there is enabling grace. This grace empowers us to work in co-operation with the Holy Spirit to fulfil His calling on our lives. it is grace to love others, whether saved or not yet saved, to receive gifts of the Holy Spirit for ministry, to do ordinary things in ways that are beyond our natural ability.

When Paul says that each one of us has received grace, he is not just limiting this to salvation. It is true that unless we received saving grace we could never have been saved.

Paul is saying here that all of us have sanctifying grace and enabling grace. We have all been given the necessary grace to become all that God has called us to be.

We all have a measure of grace because we all have a measure, so to speak, of the Holy Spirit. if you are a follower of Jesus, you have received the Holy Spirit and you have received grace – indeed grace upon grace.

Each one of us has received grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. What is that measure? The measure is “more than enough.”

Paul is telling us that each of us have grace given by someone who lavishes it on us, who piles up the superlatives and pours it out to us. Can we measure it? No, it is too big.

If I were to compare the grace on my life with the grace on your life (assuming that such a thing were possible), I might find you have received five times more grace than me. But I have received more than enough grace for my need, so I don’t need the same amount you do. There is no need to feel jealous of other believers; nor any need to feel superior because we have more grace .

We all have a measure of grace and the measure of grace is more than we need. This means that we can all pray bold and effective prayers. We can all share the gospel with our friends. We can all exercise spiritual gifts. We can all be ministers of grace .

The reason that God gives us “ more then enough” grace is that there is always plenty to share with our brothers and sisters, and also with those who do not know Jesus yet.

If grace were money, we might imagine that when we get saved we received a billion dollars. So after you buy a new house and a new car, what are you going to do? The only useful thing to do is share it with other people. We might buy them nice things to show the love of God in practical ways. We might pay for somebody’s medical procedure. Even as you give it away you can’t keep up ahead of the supply.

Grace is like that. The more of ourselves we invest in others people, and the more we access the Holy Spirit to do this, and the more that we exercise faith, then we see the kingdom grow and grace multiply.

And each of us has received this more than enough grace.

Key points in this verse:

  • We have all received grace from God.
  • There are many kinds of grace, but just one giver of grace
  • God gives us grace according to the measure of Christ
  • God gives more than enough so we can share it with others