10 Biblical Purposes for Fasting

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10 Biblical Purposes for Fasting


 
 
Throughout the Bible we most often find God’s people turn to fasting as the natural, inevitable response to a grievous sacred moment in life, such as death, sin and tragedy. But other times a fast is not a spontaneous reaction and we have time to prepare to respond both physically and spiritually.

Fasting is not an end unto itself, but a means of focusing our minds and bodies for a spiritual reason. Whenever you fast, do so for a reason that is mentioned or modeled in the Bible. Here are ten primary purposes for fasting mentioned in Scripture:¹

1. To strengthen prayer (e.g., see Ezra 8:23)

Numerous incidents in the Old Testament connect fasting to prayer, especially intercessory prayer. Fasting does not change whether God hears our prayers, but it can change our praying. As Arthur Wallis says, “Fasting is calculated to bring a note of urgency and importunity into our praying, and to give force to our pleading in the court of heaven.”²

2. To seek God’s guidance (e.g., see Judges 20:26)

As with prayer, fasting to seek God’s guidance isn’t done to change God but to make us more receptive to his guidance.

3. To express grief (e.g., see 1 Samuel 31:13)

Expressing grief is one of the primary reasons for fasting. Ever notice that when you’re moved to tears by grief you lose the urge to eat? When we grieve, our family and friends often have to plead with us to eat because our body’s appropriate response to grief is to fast. A prime example occurs in 2 Samuel 1:12, where David and his men are described as having “mourned and wept and fasted till evening” for their friends, their enemies and their nation.

4. To seek deliverance or protection (e.g., see 2 Chronicles 20:3 – 4)

Another common reason for fasting in the Old Testament was to seek deliverance from enemies or circumstances. In Scripture, this type of fast is generally carried out with other believers.

5. To express repentance and a return to God (e.g., see 1 Samuel 7:6)

This type of fasting helps us to express grief over our sins and shows our seriousness about returning to the path of godly obedience.

6. To humble oneself before God (e.g., see 1 Kings 21:27 – 29)

“Remember that fasting itself is not humility before God,” reminds Donald Whitney, “but should be an expression of humility.”³

7. To express concern for the work of God (e.g., see Nehemiah 1:3 – 4)

As with Nehemiah, fasting can be a tangible sign of our concern over a particular work God is doing.

8. To minister to the needs of others (e.g., see Isaiah 58:3 – 7)

We can use time we’d normally spend eating to fast and minister to others.

9. To overcome temptation and dedicate yourself to God (e.g., see Matthew 4:1 – 11)

Fasting can help us focus when we are struggling with particular temptations.

10. To express love and worship for God (e.g., see Luke 2:37)

Fasting can show, as John Piper says, that “what we hunger for most, we worship.”⁴

How should we equip ourselves when God calls us to “declare a holy fast”? Here are some things to consider as you prepare for fasting:

Pray and confess your sins
A necessary step before fasting is to humble yourself before God (see Psalm 35:13) and confess your sins (see 1 Samuel 7:6). Prayer should be our sustenance throughout the fast, but it is imperative we begin the fast with a contrite heart.

Turn to Scripture
Spend additional time meditating on God’s Word, before and during the fast.

Keep it secret
Fasting is unbiblical and even spiritually harmful when we do it to show off our spirituality (see Matthew 6:16 – 18) or when we focus more on our own fasting than on the clear needs of others (see Isaiah 58:1 – 11). Don’t boast about your fast; tell people you won’t be eating only if necessary. Fasting should not be done when imposed for false motives (see 1 Samuel 14:24-30).

Prepare your body
Fasting, especially for days or weeks, can have unexpected and even detrimental effects on your health. There is no scriptural warrant for harming yourself to undergo a fast. Be sure to consult a doctor before starting any fasting regimen to make sure you can fast in a healthy manner.

Fasting is an appropriate bodily reaction to the grievous state of our soul. If it is done correctly you can expect many results, including growing closer to God, feeling more solidarity with those who suffer, and increasing self-control.

For Reflection

Rather than wondering whether you should fast, ask why you would want to miss out on the Father’s reward.

From the NIV Bible Blog

Bill Muehlenberg: We Told You So: Everything Has Changed – For the Worse

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From Bill Muehlenberg’ Culture Watch blog.

We Told You So: Everything Has Changed – For the Worse

Jul 3, 2019

Children being thrown out of the classroom for saying there are only two biological genders. Teachers losing their jobs for saying the same thing. Star athletes losing their entire careers for simply quoting from the Bible on their own time. Males claiming to be females sending female athletes to hospital.

Churches embracing what the Bible has always called sin. Public libraries using tax dollars to have young children read stories by drag queens. Christians businesses being forced to close down for refusing to submit to the militant homosexual agenda.

People arrested for simply declaring in public what almost everyone throughout human history believed about human sexuality. People fined for affirming the truth that marriage is between a man and a woman. Children too young to know what a puberty blocker is directed by adults into renouncing their natal sex. Tampons put in men’s bathrooms.

Welcome to the brave new world of the sexual revolution – particularly the bitter fruit of the radical homosexual takeover of the West. The world is unravelling before our eyes at such a rapid rate, that anyone living just a few short decades ago would be utterly amazed at the speed and degree of the decline.

There were some voices seeking to warn about all this decades ago. We especially warned that granting special rights to homosexuals, including the destruction of marriage along the way, would impact every single one of us, and open up a Pandora’s Box never again to be closed. Obviously our concerns fell on deaf ears.

While I have warned for over three decades about the tsunami of destruction that the sexual revolution is unleashing, I have been warning for over a decade about the consequences of legalising fake marriage. As I wrote nine years ago:

It is very common for homosexual activists to argue that granting special rights to homosexuals and legalising homosexual marriage will not impact on anyone in any way. They claim that faith-based communities have nothing to fear, and no one will be forced to embrace their lifestyle, and things will simply go on as normal.

Of course they are lying through their teeth, and they know it. They are being deliberately deceptive here. They know full well that everything will radically change. So they have to rely on subterfuge and deceit to seek to make their case. Both faith and family suffer tremendously when these radical social upheavals are inflicted upon the rest of the community.
billmuehlenberg.com/2010/12/10/same-sex-marriage-who-says-nothing-will-change/

I wrote article after article on this theme. Here are just a few of them:

billmuehlenberg.com/2012/02/07/war-has-been-declared/

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2012/09/12/the-never-ending-story-of-tolerance/

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2012/05/15/homosexual-marriage-everything-will-change/

billmuehlenberg.com/2015/07/01/this-is-how-homosexual-marriage-impacts-me/

billmuehlenberg.com/2016/09/30/yes-homosexual-marriage-impacts-every-single-one-us/

While a few folks paid attention to the warnings and heeded the alarms, most did not. Most simply slept through the revolution. And now we are all paying the price for this moral and spiritual slumber. Simply consider the hyper-radical trans revolution.

No one was even thinking or talking about this a decade ago. Now it is everywhere, and children all over the West are being subject to radical child abuse as activist adults are foisting all this on them. So mainstream has all this become, that I have already penned over 180 articles on this.

One of my first pieces on this was written in 2008: billmuehlenberg.com/2008/04/05/pregnant-males-and-a-lost-civilisation/

Now we have the absolute insanity of American Democrat presidential contenders actually arguing – with a straight face – for abortion rights for biological males. In a debate last week, Julián Castro was asked about abortion funding. He answered:

“I believe in reproductive justice, and what that means is just because a woman — or, let’s not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female — is poor doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise the right to choose.” 
www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/julian-castro-democratic-debate-reproductive-justice_n_5d141d98e4b0e455603742aa

Just a few short years ago a remark like this would have had him laughed off the stage – or booed off. Now it is seen as something completely normal – even something a potential leader of the free world would happily promote. Wow, talk about a moral, cultural and spiritual freefall!

But as always it is the diabolical war on children that is especially grievous to behold. Be it denying a child the right to a mother and father, or twisting their vulnerable minds into embracing a lie that biological sex is merely a social construct, the militants HAVE declared an all-out war on our children.

And one of the most recent and disgusting cases of this was written up in this report:

A west coast public library “Drag Queen Story Time” has evolved beyond drag queens reading pro-gay and pro-transgender books to kids to permitting children to frolic on the floor and lie on top of a man dressed as a woman. Photo evidence of children having inappropriate contact with drag queen Carla Rossi at Portland, Oregon’s St. John’s Library last October has been brought to the attention of LifeSiteNews. The photos are posted on the Multnomah County Library’s own Flickr account (Note: photos have been removed after LifeSiteNews published this report. The photos can be found here WARNING: Link leads to images of child abuse).

“I wouldn’t let my kids crawl on top of random strangers no matter how said strangers are dressed,” commented Kaeley Triller Harms on Facebook. “Even as a day camp counselor 15 years ago, we were pretty carefully trained about not giving kids piggyback rides or letting them sit on our laps,” continued Harms. “And if they asked for hugs, we took the side hug approach.”
www.lifesitenews.com/news/shocking-photos-kids-lie-on-man-dressed-as-woman-at-drag-queen-story-time

 

happen, they would have been shut down by now. And all this is not new. Two years ago the “Activist Mommy” wrote a piece on similar things, with the title, “Brazilian ‘Art’ Exhibition Promotes and Normalizes Pedophilia In A Disgusting Way.” The article and pictures of this are found here: activistmommy.com/brazilian-art-exhibition-promotes-normalizes-pedophilia-disgusting-way/

Also, we have this piece from a few months ago:

On Monday, 10-year-old Canadian boy Nemis Quinn Mélançon-Golden was featured in a troubling Huck Magazine piece highlighting the life of a so-called “child drag queen.” Young Nemis, whose drag name is “Queen Lactacia,” was shot by photographer Jonathan Frederick Turton for the spread. In one of the shots that did not make the magazine, Nemis, in full drag makeup and a black dress, is posing for a photo with the Season 7 winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Violet Chachki. In the shocking photo, Violet is wearing nothing but a pair of heels and a small piece of fabric covering his genitals
www.dailywire.com/news/42081/10-year-old-boy-dressed-drag-pictured-naked-amanda-prestigiacomo

Yet this is the logical endgame of the sexual revolution. It involves the “p” word. Many of the more honest activists have admitted that adult-child sexual relations is the last great taboo that must be eliminated altogether. It is time to wake up folks.

They ARE targeting our children, and they ARE softening them up to accept child-adult sexuality. Indeed, way back in 2011 in my book Strained Relations I documented plenty of this. For example, one early list of demands put out by the homosexual community included these items:

• Repeal of all laws prohibiting private sexual acts involving consenting persons.
• Repeal of all laws prohibiting prostitution, both male and female.
• Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.

Two more short quotes from my book can be offered here:

And then we have had pro-homosexual authors writing in praise of lowering age of consent laws. One university press published a book by Judith Levine arguing that it is harmful to protect children from sex. In it she said age of consent laws should be reduced to 12 for sexual relations between children and adults.

Australian expatriate Peter Tatchell, a leading British homosexual activist, has made his views clear on under-age sex: “The age of consent should be reduced to 14 for everyone – gay and straight – and consensual sex involving people under 14 should not be prosecuted providing there is no more than three years difference in the partners’ ages.”

This has always been pushed by some in the homosexual camp. And just as it is now almost becoming illegal to say anything negative or critical about homosexuality and the trans revolution, I can assure you that soon enough it will also become illegal to say anything against “intergenerational sex” as they like to euphemistically call it.

Um, the word is paedophilia in case you still don’t get it. They militant adults WANT our children. The sexual revolution may well be the most devastating, destructive and diabolical revolution of our time. And the culmination of this has always been the direct targeting of our vulnerable children.

happen, they would have been shut down by now. And all this is not new. Two years ago the “Activist Mommy” wrote a piece on similar things, with the title, “Brazilian ‘Art’ Exhibition Promotes and Normalizes Pedophilia In A Disgusting Way.” The article and pictures of this are found here: activistmommy.com/brazilian-art-exhibition-promotes-normalizes-pedophilia-disgusting-way/

Also, we have this piece from a few months ago:

On Monday, 10-year-old Canadian boy Nemis Quinn Mélançon-Golden was featured in a troubling Huck Magazine piece highlighting the life of a so-called “child drag queen.” Young Nemis, whose drag name is “Queen Lactacia,” was shot by photographer Jonathan Frederick Turton for the spread. In one of the shots that did not make the magazine, Nemis, in full drag makeup and a black dress, is posing for a photo with the Season 7 winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Violet Chachki. In the shocking photo, Violet is wearing nothing but a pair of heels and a small piece of fabric covering his genitals
www.dailywire.com/news/42081/10-year-old-boy-dressed-drag-pictured-naked-amanda-prestigiacomo

Yet this is the logical endgame of the sexual revolution. It involves the “p” word. Many of the more honest activists have admitted that adult-child sexual relations is the last great taboo that must be eliminated altogether. It is time to wake up folks.

They ARE targeting our children, and they ARE softening them up to accept child-adult sexuality. Indeed, way back in 2011 in my book Strained Relations I documented plenty of this. For example, one early list of demands put out by the homosexual community included these items:

• Repeal of all laws prohibiting private sexual acts involving consenting persons.
• Repeal of all laws prohibiting prostitution, both male and female.
• Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.

Two more short quotes from my book can be offered here:

And then we have had pro-homosexual authors writing in praise of lowering age of consent laws. One university press published a book by Judith Levine arguing that it is harmful to protect children from sex. In it she said age of consent laws should be reduced to 12 for sexual relations between children and adults.

Australian expatriate Peter Tatchell, a leading British homosexual activist, has made his views clear on under-age sex: “The age of consent should be reduced to 14 for everyone – gay and straight – and consensual sex involving people under 14 should not be prosecuted providing there is no more than three years difference in the partners’ ages.”

This has always been pushed by some in the homosexual camp. And just as it is now almost becoming illegal to say anything negative or critical about homosexuality and the trans revolution, I can assure you that soon enough it will also become illegal to say anything against “intergenerational sex” as they like to euphemistically call it.

Um, the word is paedophilia in case you still don’t get it. They militant adults WANT our children. The sexual revolution may well be the most devastating, destructive and diabolical revolution of our time. And the culmination of this has always been the direct targeting of our vulnerable children.

Wow. If a day-care centre or Sunday School allowed something like that to happen, they would have been shut down by now. And all this is not new. Two years ago the “Activist Mommy” wrote a piece on similar things, with the title, “Brazilian ‘Art’ Exhibition Promotes and Normalizes Pedophilia In A Disgusting Way.” The article and pictures of this are found here: activistmommy.com/brazilian-art-exhibition-promotes-normalizes-pedophilia-disgusting-way/

Also, we have this piece from a few months ago:

On Monday, 10-year-old Canadian boy Nemis Quinn Mélançon-Golden was featured in a troubling Huck Magazine piece highlighting the life of a so-called “child drag queen.” Young Nemis, whose drag name is “Queen Lactacia,” was shot by photographer Jonathan Frederick Turton for the spread. In one of the shots that did not make the magazine, Nemis, in full drag makeup and a black dress, is posing for a photo with the Season 7 winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Violet Chachki. In the shocking photo, Violet is wearing nothing but a pair of heels and a small piece of fabric covering his genitals
www.dailywire.com/news/42081/10-year-old-boy-dressed-drag-pictured-naked-amanda-prestigiacomo

Yet this is the logical endgame of the sexual revolution. It involves the “p” word. Many of the more honest activists have admitted that adult-child sexual relations is the last great taboo that must be eliminated altogether. It is time to wake up folks.

They ARE targeting our children, and they ARE softening them up to accept child-adult sexuality. Indeed, way back in 2011 in my book Strained Relations I documented plenty of this. For example, one early list of demands put out by the homosexual community included these items:

• Repeal of all laws prohibiting private sexual acts involving consenting persons.
• Repeal of all laws prohibiting prostitution, both male and female.
• Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.

Two more short quotes from my book can be offered here:

And then we have had pro-homosexual authors writing in praise of lowering age of consent laws. One university press published a book by Judith Levine arguing that it is harmful to protect children from sex. In it she said age of consent laws should be reduced to 12 for sexual relations between children and adults.

Australian expatriate Peter Tatchell, a leading British homosexual activist, has made his views clear on under-age sex: “The age of consent should be reduced to 14 for everyone – gay and straight – and consensual sex involving people under 14 should not be prosecuted providing there is no more than three years difference in the partners’ ages.”

This has always been pushed by some in the homosexual camp. And just as it is now almost becoming illegal to say anything negative or critical about homosexuality and the trans revolution, I can assure you that soon enough it will also become illegal to say anything against “intergenerational sex” as they like to euphemistically call it.

Um, the word is paedophilia in case you still don’t get it. They militant adults WANT our children. The sexual revolution may well be the most devastating, destructive and diabolical revolution of our time. And the culmination of this has always been the direct targeting of our vulnerable children.

Reflection on Psalm 30

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Scripture

You have turned my mourning into dancing

You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy.


Reflection

With you O Lord

There is joy

Even in the shadows

In the valley of death.


I have tasted grief

Mourning has torn my soul

But you touched me

Turning it into joy


My joy is in you Father

My hope is set on you my God

You give me reason to live

And to laugh at my enemies.


Yes mourning comes and sadness strikes

But you are my joy and my strength.

Thirty Years of “Climate Change”

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The Global Warming scare is 30 years old! Happy birthday AGW. Congratulations to the thousands of people who have made their living from the greatest scam in the history of the world. And here we all are not frying, drowning, dehydrating of being eaten by an uncontrollable population of feral cats.

From wattsupwiththat.com

30 Year Anniversary of the UN 1989 “10 years to save the world” Climate Warning

 / 11 hours ago June 30, 2019
UN 30 years fake warnings

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Global warming was not reversed by the year 2000 – yet we are still here.

U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
PETER JAMES SPIELMANN June 30, 1989

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. 

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. 

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control. 

As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday. 

Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study. 

″Ecological refugees will become a major concern, and what’s worse is you may find that people can move to drier ground, but the soils and the natural resources may not support life. Africa doesn’t have to worry about land, but would you want to live in the Sahara?″ he said. 

…

Read more: https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0

Link to a PDF copy of the AP article, in case the original is “disappeared”.

What other great examples of failed climate warnings can you remember?

Mario Murillo: :”Still thinks its a game”

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The Democrats have made it plain: free healthcare for illegals paid for by you. They are not hiding anything. They want the right to kill newborns. They will force the church to stop teaching God’s word on sexual immorality. They will remake America. We see their true colors. They couldn’t be any clearer.

What I don’t get, is how the American church can still think this is all a game.

Because of man, and nature—planet Earth is ready to explode—not from global warming but from moral cooling.  Matthew 24:12 “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”

Meanwhile, the church—like passengers partying on the deck of the Titanic—pats herself on the back for what she considers her ‘big events.’

Nothing has stopped America’s headlong depravity. Nothing has even slowed it down. We have spent more money, more time, and more talent than ever—yet the church never asks, “Why do we keep doing things that don’t work?” Why can’t we impact culture?”

When the church:           

-Feeds a powerless Gospel to a sick nation, a Gospel that does not deliver us from evil, but even worse, makes those who have already been converted still weaker, the church must think it is a game.

-When the church no longer views the works of Satan as the enemy, but believes the worst thing that can happen is to have an unsuccessful life—the church is just playing a game.  The only solution is a return to the Bible.  The Bible needs to set fire to our sermons.

Sadly, even many of my Spirit-filled acquaintances are also playing games.  Facebook is like a Petri dish for Pentecostals.  In one compressed medium you witness the banal bacteria that excite Charismatics today.

Read the rest here

Which War Are You Fighting?

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I read a lot of political and cultural commentary blogs. As you might imagine there has been a lot written about Israel Folau over the last few weeks.

For somebody who is apathetic about sport generally and Rugby Union in particular, I have written a lot myself about Israel Folau.

It is clear that many of the so-called “quiet Australians” who ignored the self-appointed political and cultural elites last month to vote in a Liberal/ National Party Government, are now ready to revolt against the moral standards the same elites have bullied us into acquiescing to. That much is clear from the huge support for the appeal to fund Folau’s legal fight.

For christians it is time to wake up and start fighting not just the cultural war but the spiritual war that is at the heart of this.

Writing at xyz.net.au David Hilton wrote a sentence that stuck in my mind:

The reason Christians have kept losing the culture war of the last fifty years is because we’ve been fighting a culture war while our enemies have been fighting a spiritual war.

https://www.xyz.net.au/unlike-globohomo-christianity-isnt-a-religion/

He goes on to describe how the progressive left has all the hallmarks of a religion- a moral code, sacred places, deities, proselytism (what we call evangelism), judgement and excommunication. Because it is a religion, not merely a cultural construct, it cannot be fought as a culture war.

This is very much a spiritual war that will define the future of this nation. Will we let satan crush the church or will we crash through the gates of hell?

My fear is that the church will continue in its sleepy way, neglecting the spiritual weapons at its disposal while the enemy continues in its mission to destroy us.

It’s been long said of western churches that the prayer meeting is the least attended activity of the church. I know that’s true of most churches, including my own.

Wake up christians! We need to pray as never before, not just for Israel Folau but for every aspect of our culture. We need to open ourselves to the direction of the Holy Spirit so that we can tale on the forces of darkness and shine the light into the world.

“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”. (2 Corinthians 10:4,5)

Reflection on Galatians 5:13-25

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Scripture

For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead use your freedom to serve one another in love.

Observation

We have been called to freedom, but it is a freedom to do right not freedom to sin. Our flesh fights against the Spirit, so that we are not free in ourselves to carry out our good intentions. But when we live in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are not under any obligation to the Law of Moses or to the desires of the flesh.

The sinful nature manifests itself in all kinds of sexual immorality, idolatry, anger, ambition and such like. The Holy Spirit produces Christ- like actions in us such as love, joy, peace, and so on.

As people living in the power of the Holy Spirit, we should let the Spirit dominate in every part of our lives.

Application

Christ has brought us freedom from every kind of bondage. Now we are called to live lives of freedom. But it is not freedom to sin. That would be just the same kind of “freedom” the world offers.

The Good News is that we do not have to be good enough to prove we are acceptable to God. We are saved by grace because God loves us.

This is not an excuse to sin. We are not saved by good works, we are saved for good works.

The freedom we have in Christ is not freedom to do as we please. It is freedom to do what pleases God. Before Jesus came into my life, I had no alternative to self- centred sin. But in Christ I now have the freedom to do what is right, not by compulsion, but in joyful surrender to the Holy Spirit.

This freedom in the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self- control. What a wonderful gift!

Prayer

Holy Spirit come and direct every part of my life. I surrender all of me to you. Amen.

Rainbow Rabbi and Friends Declare They Have No Faith

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The ABC was very excited about “religious leaders” meeting to declare they have no faith in coal. As expected it was the usual suspects of the extreme religious left who actually have very little faith in Jesus, together with a rainbow rabbi and a couple of Imams. Hardly representative of anybody really.

Jo Nova writes:

ManBearPriestMonks are the new climate experts: they declare faith in IPCC instead of God

Religious leaders dump coal, declare “no faith”

There goes my world. Who knew they had faith in coal?

So forget science, climate change is a moral problem. Is climate sensitivity 1 degree or 3? Ask a priest.

A group called Australians Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC) has badgered 150 soft targets in the religious world to sign a grandiose letter making coal into the new Lucifer.

The Guardian

In an open letter headed “no faith in coal”, the leaders say the climate crisis is a profoundly moral problem and Australia’s response will be crucial in addressing it.

Signatories to the letter include bishops, rabbis, theologians, the grand mufti of Australia and the heads of the Uniting Church, the Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils, Muslims Australia and the National Council of Churches.

Remember the alarmist maxim: ask a plumber to do the plumbing, a heart expert to do the surgery and when you want to predict the climate, ask an Imam.

Or failing that — ask a school student — which is what the religious leaders have done. Let’s quote their letter:

As you know, thousands of school students have been protesting in our streets about this emergency. They have three demands. We are writing to urge you to agree to them:

  1. Stopping the proposed Adani coal mine
  2. Committing to no new coal or gas projects in Australia
  3. Moving to 100% renewable energy by the year 2030.

Let’s ask innumerate teenage girls to set national energy policy. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s not like they are easily fooled slaves to fashion who make great cheerleaders.

The sound of breaking commandments:

I count five:

  1. Thou shalt have no other Gods (since when was the IPCC sacred?)
  2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain (don’t use God for Renewable industry advertising)
  3. Honour thy father and mother (not the teenage false saints)
  4. Thou shalt not bear false witness  (praise not the scientists who hide declines)
  5. Thou shalt not steal.  (see the Australian Renewable Energy Target — solar panels.)

The BishopRabbi economist says automation is bad for jobs

Solar power apparently makes more jobs:

The Adani mine in Central and North Queensland is an excellent example. People there need new, reliable jobs. Yet serious investment in solar would yield far more jobs than the Adani mine would, as it is less automated. And rejecting new coal will also help to protect jobs that depend on the Great Barrier Reef. There are currently 60,000 people whose livelihood depends on the Reef.

Let’s get rid of washing machines too and then women can be full time housewives again. That’ll create lots of jobs.

Solar power makes jobs in the same way that freight by horse and buggy does: a small high-maintenance unit can’t be used in an efficient way with economies of scales. Those economies being what makes trucks cheaper.

So the nice but weak religious leaders have handed their moral power to children and activists. There’s no reason they shouldn’t speak up on climate change, but if they care about their flock, they might want to research the positions they advocate. That means reading the arguments for and against. Instead they blindly follow a group that treats the IPCC as a God — the ARRCC describes its policy as pretty much everything the IPCC ever said.

Thou shalt not question foreign committees

After donating their brains to the IPCC the ARRCC rationalizes why any outcome at all proves they are right:

How the climate is changing

While the numbers above may seem small, their impact is much greater than just a global warming of temperatures by 1-2 degrees. This is firstly because this amount is just an average – the changes in temperature is unevenly distributed across the globe Some places around the world will experience much greater increases than this and some places will actually experience a DECREASE in temperatures.

This phenomenon of cooling and warming at the same time is partly explained by the effect that warming has on ocean temperatures and currents. As the air and land temperatures warm, so too does the average ocean temperature. The increased air and ocean temperatures causes accelerated melting of the ice in the arctic and Antarctic, resulting in an increase of cold water flowing into the oceans. The colder waters interact with the warmer waters to change the patterns of ocean currents, which sees some of this colder water flowing to places that in past have experienced warm ocean currents. As ocean temperatures mediate coastal land temperatures, the colder waters will cause colder temperatures.

So, religious geniuses, tell us what outcome would prove the theory wrong? If temperatures stayed exactly the same? And what does God/Budda/Mohammed say about scientists who are hiding data, declines, history, adjustments and methods?

Changing air and water temperatures also affects the weather. As ocean currents change this affects the air currents that flow above the oceans, changing cloud formation and wind patterns. The overall effect of these changing air currents is that most places around the world will actually experience much less frequent rain fall. However when rain does occur, it will happen with much greater intensity. This leads to a pattern of both droughts and floods. It also means that sometimes actual rainfall seasons will change, with dry weather during traditional wet seasons, and very wet weather during traditional dry seasons. The main effect though is to make the rainfall very unpredictable based on past experiences. Changing rainfall patterns also have an effect on traditional water catchment areas and existing river systems, which can affect previously reliable sources of fresh water.

Let’s all pay homage to the pagan rites of climate superstition: Droughts, heatwaves, random noise is “proof” of anything you like. They’re not worse than ones we had 1,000 years ago. Floods are not worse either.

A third effect of changing water temperatures and currents is an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as tropical storms.

Except tropical storms are not occurring more frequently, and the worst storms were hundreds of years ago.

ManbearMonkPriest says skeptics are wrong because of a flawed keyword study of pal reviewed abstracts in a biased-funding safe space for b-grade thinkers. That and because name-calling “denier” sounds so scientific.

Sceptical arguments

The above impacts are not just predictions but things that are being observed right now around the world. However there is still a significant and often vocal body of people who are either sceptical of climate change science or outright deniers.

The prominent people amongst this group are rarely climatologists or even scientists at all – they are generally social scientists such as economists, politicians, people connected with big business or social commentators.

Prominent? Tell that to Professor Richard Lindzen.

While there are a few scientists among this group of people, research by Cook et al in 2013 (“Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”) found that 97% of published climatologists believe in the existence of human-induced climate change. That is, 97% of all scientists whose field of expertise is climate, and who have gone through the process of having their research peer-reviewed by other qualified scientists and published in a scholarly journal believe that climate change is happening and that it is directly linked to human activity. There have now been several pieces of research showing that sceptical scientists and think tanks indirectly receive substantial funding from fossil fuel industries.

Yes, and some unnamed research about unnamed people and unlisted sums claims they are paid hacks. These 150 gullible patsies will believe anything. They give religion a bad name.

Unfortunately the science of climate change is most often misrepresented in the media as a ‘debate’ between roughly even numbers of believers and sceptics, giving the impression that the scientific jury is still out. If the portrayal were more accurate, the picture would reflect an almost total consensus on the science, with only the tiniest minority of dissenters.

The media IS misleading. Skeptics outnumber and outrank believers. They won real Nobel Prizes, NASA awards, they walked on the moon they are MIT Professors of Meteorology. Half of meteorologists — fergoodnesssake — are skeptics, and survey after survey shows that two-thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics.

There is no consensus among scientists, there never was, and it wouldn’t prove anything even if there was.

Reflection on 2 Kings 2:1-14

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Scripture

Elisha replied, “Please let me inherit a double portion of your spirit and become your successor.”

Observation

Just before Elijah is about to be taken up to heaven, he goes on a tour of key sites in Israel- Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho and the Jordan River. At each place, Elijah tells Elisha to stay, but he refuses.

Elijah asks Elisha what he can do for him before he is taken up to heaven, so Elisha asks for the double portion of Elijah’s spirit.

Suddenly a chariot of fire appears between the two men, and Elijah is lifted up to heaven by a whirlwind. Elisha picks up Elijah’s cloak and uses it to drive back the waters of the Jordan River in order to cross it.

Application

People often ask for a “double portion” of the Holy Spirit, thinking that it is about getting more of the Holy Spirit in their lives. This overlooks the fact that we already have all of the Holy Spirit, and what is needed is for the Holy Spirit to have more of us.

The language of “double portion” refers to inheritance. The first born son inherited twice as much as other sons in order to carry on the family farm or business.

Elisha is asking to inherit Elijah’s ministry as the leading prophet in Israel. He wants to be the successor to Elijah.

The fact is that Elijah and Elisha had a close relationship. Elijah had been mentoring or discipling Elisha for some time. Elijah was a spiritual father to Elisha.

The closeness of the relationship is seen in the grief Elisha experienced at Elijah’s departure. Elisha was not just in the ministry business, he really loved Elijah.

The first step in receiving the “double portion” is to be a son or daughter to a pastor or other leader, seeking to serve them and love them. When we are willing to invest our lives into their lives, then we have the possibility of inheriting their spiritual gifts and graces.

Prayer

Lord, please help me to love and to serve those over me. Help me to invest my heart and life into their ministry. Amen.