A beautiful morning after a couple of rainy days. It was a great ride if you overlook being whacked on the head multiple times by several magpies.
Today’s Bike Ride
Quote for the Day
While the laws of individual nations lasted only as long as the nations themselves, Christendom offered a higher set of standards and mores, which alone could claim to be universal. Philip Jenkins
Reflection on Hebrews 6:7-12
Scripture
Dear friends, even though we are talking this way, we really don’t believe that it applies to you. We are confident that you are meant for better things, things that come with salvation.
Observation
Ground that soaks up the rain and bears a good crop for the farmer has God’s blessing. But if a field is useless, the farmer will burn it.
Even though the author is talking like this, he says that he doesn’t believe it applies to them. They are meant for better things, to walk in the fullness of salvation.
His great desire is that they continue to care for other believers. They will be following the example of those who inherit God’s promises.
Application
Sometimes Christian leaders can seem harsh and unloving to their followers. The leaders themselves can be discouraged because their people seem so far behind where they should be.
This is because many leaders have high ideals for their churches. They love God passionately and have such a close relationship with the Lord, and they want everyone to be in the same place they are so that they can have the same joy.
I sometimes am tempted to feel that way about my congregation. I fell let down sometimes by people who don’t live up to my expectations.
But then I think seriously about them, and I see people who love the Lord as passionately as I do, who use their gifts to bless other people, who share the gospel with unbelieving friends, and who give generously to the church and to missions.
Like the writer to the Hebrews, I have to say, ” I don’t really believe that this applies to you.” Of course, we all have room for improvement, but that is the Holy Spirit’s job, not the pastor’s.
Prayer
Thank you Father for the privileges of salvation and of serving you. Thank you for my brothers and sisters you share the journey with me. Amen.
Reflection on Hebrews 6:1-6
Scripture
So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding.
Observation
We have to stop going over the basics and move on to maturity. The fundamental teachings such as repentance from sin, placing faith In God, baptism, and laying on of hands don’t need to be repeated endlessly.
It is impossible to bring back to repentance people who were once walking with the Lord and then turn away from God. They have rejected the Son of God and are effectively nailing him to the cross again.
Application
It seems that many Christians are content to stick with the basics of doctrine. They are happy to hear endless repeat of how get saved, the importance of baptism, and so on.
I believe that we need to have a strong foundation for our faith so that we know why we are saved and where we are going.
In order to be mature in our faith, to be the over comers we are meant to be, we must move on. Preachers need to teach their congregations how to pray and read the Bible, how to tithe, how to move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
In Acts we read of numerous occasions where miracles and expulsion of evil spirits caused people to be amazed and to put their trust in the Lord .
Every Christian must be an effective minister in the word of God and the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer
Lord, please help me to become more mature. Show me where I am lacking and where I can improve in my relationship with you. Amen.
Survey Shows Many Pastors Are Teaching Deception
‘What a Lie’: Franklin Graham Reacts to Shocking Pastoral Survey, Lambastes ‘False Teaching…Leading People & Churches Astray’
From faithwire.com
Evangelist Franklin Graham reacted this week to shocking survey data showing more than one-third of senior pastors purportedly believe “good people” can earn their way to heaven, with Graham lambasting some of the findings as “false teaching.”
“I don’t know which 1,000 pastors this group surveyed, but the results are concerning,” Graham tweeted Monday. “39% of ‘evangelical’ pastors they asked said there is no absolute moral truth & that ‘each individual must determine their own truth.’”
He added, “What a lie.”
Graham’s strongly-worded response came after pastoral survey results were published by The American Worldview Inventory, an annual report from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.
At least one-third of respondents also said they believe the Holy Spirit isn’t a person and is instead a “symbol of God’s power, presence, or purity,” with at least the same proportion preferring socialism over capitalism. At least one-third also believe “having faith matters more than which faith you have.”
Perhaps most stunning, though, is the 39% figure Graham cited, as that’s the percentage of evangelical pastors who reject the idea of absolute morality and believe individuals get to “determine their own truth,” as The Christian Post reported.
In an age of moral chaos and confusion, these statistics are deeply troubling, which is something Graham underscored as he warned of the impact false beliefs have on the body of Christ.
“The survey also said that 30% of evangelical pastors do not believe that their salvation is based on having confessed their sins & accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior,” he continued in another tweet. “This kind of false teaching is what is leading people & churches astray.”
Graham concluded his tweets on the matter with a passionate defense of the Gospel.
“The Bible is God’s Word, from cover to cover,” he wrote. “It is the absolute truth — it is what counts, not our opinion.”
As Faithwire previously reported, alarming data on American pastors’ beliefs is nothing new. Earlier released data from the Cultural Research Center revealed just 37% of U.S.-based pastors hold to a “biblical worldview.”
Today’s Bike Ride
A little breezy this morning but a good ride.
Quote for the Day
Since there were only a handful of charismatics and Pentecostals in 1900, and several hundred million today, is it not reasonable to identify this as perhaps the most successful social movement of the past century? Philip Jenkins
Car Pooling For Bikes in Car Crazy L.A.
Car Pooling For Bikes in Car Crazy L.A.
From Bloomberg.com
For 2-Wheel Commuters in LA, ‘Bikepooling’ Brings Safety in Numbers
A UCLA project that uses an app to organize group rides aims to promote car-free transportation for Los Angeles residents.
A bicyclist in downtown Los Angeles. Despite its agreeable climate, LA isn’t known as a welcoming city for bike commuters.
On paper, Los Angeles looks like bike commuter country: The sprawling LA basin boasts glorious year-round riding weather and generous expanses of largely flat streetscape.
But only about 1% of LA commuters get to work by bicycle, according to the US Census Bureau, a figure that reflects the challenges that riders face in a freeway-laden city that’s been optimized for the automobile. Protected bike lanes are rare, and the streets of Southern California are among the most dangerous for two-wheeled travelers. Between 2011 and 2020, 276 cyclists were killed in traffic in Los Angeles County — the most of any US county. In 2018, Bicycling Magazine declared LA the “Worst Bike City in America.”
To encourage more Angelenos to take to the streets by bike — and keep them safe there — a demonstration project set to launch this fall will encourage residents from low-income neighborhoods to bike to work in groups.
“It’s not just an informal group of cyclists — it’s a public transportation system based on bicycles,” said Fabian Wagmister, an associate professor at the University of California Los Angeles School of Theater, Film and Television and the founder and principal investigator of the Civic Bicycle Commuting research project, also known as CiBiC.
The concept is simple: Wagmister describes CiBiC as “carpooling, but on bikes.” In the pilot program set to start Oct. 1, users put their destination and arrival time in an app that determines the best route — or “flow” — to bring them to work. The app then pairs bike commuters with each other in groups of up to 12, known as a pod, led by two experts whose job is to prioritize safety on the road over efficiency.
A group of CiBiC riders road-test a “flow” in Northeast LA in advance of the program’s October launch.
Photo courtesy of CiBiC
Bikepooling, Wagmister hopes, will help participants save money and improve their health and well-being while reducing vehicle emissions in a traditionally car-centric city. Armed with a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Civic Innovation Challenge, researchers at UCLA and community partners will focus on five Northeast Los Angeles neighbourhoods — including Chinatown, Solano Canyon and Lincoln Heights — which are home to lower-income communities of colour. According to a CiBiC survey, 73% of respondents in the area the pilot serves drive for commutes of less than five miles.
Read the full story at bloomberg.com
Today’s Bike Ride
Discovered yesterday that I had a puncture in the rear wheel of my bike. I haven’t fixed it yet, so today I went for a shorter ride on my old bike.
Britain’s Blind Farmers Are Teaching Others How to Grow
Credit: Alexander Turner
“All I’ve ever wanted in life is to be a farmer,” says Mike Duxbury, who lost his sight at the age of six through infantile glaucoma. Having grown up on the family farm, he was determined not to let the loss of his sight stop him chasing the only career he ever wanted.
In the late 1980s, Duxbury applied to every agricultural college in the country before being accepted by just one: Warwickshire College of Agriculture. He qualified as an animal nutritionist and graduated in 1990 with a degree in agricultural business management.
“Even back then, prejudice was very high, but I learned at college to do the things I wanted to do. They gave me every opportunity; they never put up a barrier.”
Today, Duxbury and his partner Ness Shillito have established one of the UK’s first working farms dedicated to training people with disabilities for a career in agriculture.
Read the full article at Reasons To Be Cheerful
