#i was planting thousands of blowtorches a day | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cherryblossomshadow · 1 year ago

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Rather than creating hand-washing rules for restaurant kitchens, we should let restaurateurs decide whether it's economically rational to make us shit ourselves to death. The ones that choose poorly will get bad online reviews and people will "vote with their dollars" for the good restaurants

Regulation is corruptible, but it need not be corrupt

Google and Apple and Meta … claim that a bunch of eminently possible things are impossible. Apple claims that it's impossible to have a secure device where you get to decide which software you want to use and where publishers aren't deprive of 30 cents on every dollar you spend. Google says it's impossible to search the web without being comprehensively, nonconsensually spied upon from asshole to appetite. Meta insists that it's impossible to have digital social relationship without having your friendships surveilled and commodified

We can have nice things … The truth is knowable. Doing stuff is possible. Things don't have to be on fire. (quoted from above)

Great explanation of how neoliberalism keeps the Overton window small, so the real solutions we need don't become part of the conversation. (comment courtesy of @fr-economics)

Greenwashing set Canada on fire

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

As a teenager growing up in Ontario, I always envied the kids who spent their summers tree planting; they'd come back from the bush in September, insect-chewed and leathery, with new muscle, incredible stories, thousands of dollars, and a glow imparted by the knowledge that they'd made a new forest with their own blistered hands.

I was too unathletic to follow them into the bush, but I spent my summers doing my bit, ringing doorbells for Greenpeace to get my neighbours fired up about the Canadian pulp-and-paper industry, which wasn't merely clear-cutting our old-growth forests – it was also poisoning the Great Lakes system with PCBs, threatening us all.

At the time, I thought of tree-planting as a small victory – sure, our homegrown, rapacious, extractive industry was able to pollute with impunity, but at least the government had reined them in on forests, forcing them to pay my pals to spend their summers replacing the forests they'd fed into their mills.

I was wrong. Last summer's Canadian wildfires blanketed the whole east coast and midwest in choking smoke as millions of trees burned and millions of tons of CO2 were sent into the atmosphere. Those wildfires weren't just an effect of the climate emergency: they were made far worse by all those trees planted by my pals in the eighties and nineties.

Writing in the New York Times, novelist Claire Cameron describes her own teen years working in the bush, planting row after row of black spruces, precisely spaced at six-foot intervals:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/wildfires-treeplanting-timebomb.html

Cameron's summer job was funded by the logging industry, whose self-pegulated, self-assigned "penalty" for clearcutting diverse forests of spruce, pine and aspen was to pay teenagers to create a tree farm, at nine cents per sapling (minus camp costs).

Black spruces are made to burn, filled with flammable sap and equipped with resin-filled cones that rely on fire, only opening and dropping seeds when they're heated. They're so flammable that firefighters call them "gas on a stick."

Cameron and her friends planted under brutal conditions: working long hours in blowlamp heat and dripping wet bulb humidity, amidst clouds of stinging insects, fingers blistered and muscles aching. But when they hit rock bottom and were ready to quit, they'd encourage one another with a rallying cry: "Let's go make a forest!"

Planting neat rows of black spruces was great for the logging industry: the even spacing guaranteed that when the trees matured, they could be easily reaped, with ample space between each near-identical tree for massive shears to operate. But that same monocropped, evenly spaced "forest" was also optimized to burn.

It burned.

The climate emergency's frequent droughts turn black spruces into "something closer to a blowtorch." The "pines in lines" approach to reforesting was an act of sabotage, not remediation. Black spruces are thirsty, and they absorb the water that moss needs to thrive, producing "kindling in the place of fire retardant."

Cameron's column concludes with this heartbreaking line: "Now when I think of that summer, I don’t think that I was planting trees at all. I was planting thousands of blowtorches a day."

The logging industry committed a triple crime. First, they stole our old-growth forests. Next, they (literally) planted a time-bomb across Ontario's north. Finally, they stole the idealism of people who genuinely cared about the environment. They taught a generation that resistance is futile, that anything you do to make a better future is a scam, and you're a sucker for falling for it. They planted nihilism with every tree.

That scam never ended. Today, we're sold carbon offsets, a modern Papal indulgence. We are told that if we pay the finance sector, they can absolve us for our climate sins. Carbon offsets are a scam, a market for lemons. The "offset" you buy might be a generated by a fake charity like the Nature Conservancy, who use well-intentioned donations to buy up wildlife reserves that can't be logged, which are then converted into carbon credits by promising not to log them:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#greenwashing

The credit-card company that promises to plant trees every time you use your card? They combine false promises, deceptive advertising, and legal threats against critics to convince you that you're saving the planet by shopping:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/17/do-well-do-good-do-nothing/#greenwashing

The carbon offset world is full of scams. The carbon offset that made the thing you bought into a "net zero" product? It might be a forest that already burned:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/11/a-market-for-flaming-lemons/#money-for-nothing

The only reason we have carbon offsets is that market cultists have spent forty years convincing us that actual regulation is impossible. In the neoliberal learned helplessness mind-palace, there's no way to simply say, "You may not log old-growth forests." Rather, we have to say, "We will 'align your incentives' by making you replace those forests."

The Climate Ad Project's "Murder Offsets" video deftly punctures this bubble. In it, a detective points his finger at the man who committed the locked-room murder in the isolated mansion. The murderer cheerfully admits that he did it, but produces a "murder offset," which allowed him to pay someone else not to commit a murder, using market-based price-discovery mechanisms to put a dollar-figure on the true worth of a murder, which he duly paid, making his kill absolutely fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

What's the alternative to murder offsets/carbon credits? We could ask our expert regulators to decide which carbon intensive activities are necessary and which ones aren't, and ban the unnecessary ones. We could ask those regulators to devise remediation programs that actually work. After all, there are plenty of forests that have already been clearcut, plenty that have burned. It would be nice to know how we can plant new forests there that aren't "thousands of blowtorches."

If that sounds implausible to you, then you've gotten trapped in the neoliberal mind-palace.

The term "regulatory capture" was popularized by far-right Chicago School economists who were promoting "public choice theory." In their telling, regulatory capture is inevitable, because companies will spend whatever it takes to get the government to pass laws making what they do legal, and making competing with them into a crime:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/13/public-choice/#ajit-pai-still-terrible

This is true, as far as it goes. Capitalists hate capitalism, and if an "entrepreneur" can make it illegal to compete with him, he will. But while this is a reasonable starting-point, the place that Public Choice Theory weirdos get to next is bonkers. They say that since corporations will always seek to capture their regulators, we should abolish regulators.

They say that it's impossible for good regulations to exist, and therefore the only regulation that is even possible is to let businesses do whatever they want and wait for the invisible hand to sweep away the bad companies. Rather than creating hand-washing rules for restaurant kitchens, we should let restaurateurs decide whether it's economically rational to make us shit ourselves to death. The ones that choose poorly will get bad online reviews and people will "vote with their dollars" for the good restaurants.

And if the online review site decides to sell "reputation management" to restaurants that get bad reviews? Well, soon the public will learn that the review site can't be trusted and they'll take their business elsewhere. No regulation needed! Unleash the innovators! Set the job-creators free!

This is the Ur-nihilism from which all the other nihilism springs. It contends that the regulations we have – the ones that keep our buildings from falling down on our heads, that keep our groceries from poisoning us, that keep our cars from exploding on impact – are either illusory, or perhaps the forgotten art of a lost civilization. Making good regulations is like embalming Pharaohs, something the ancients practiced in mist-shrouded, unrecoverable antiquity – and that may not have happened at all.

Regulation is corruptible, but it need not be corrupt. Regulation, like science, is a process of neutrally adjudicated, adversarial peer-review. In a robust regulatory process, multiple parties respond to a fact-intensive question – "what alloys and other properties make a reinforced steel joist structurally sound?" – with a mix of robust evidence and self-serving bullshit and then proceed to sort the two by pantsing each other, pointing out one another's lies.

The regulator, an independent expert with no conflicts of interest, sorts through the claims and counterclaims and makes a rule, showing their workings and leaving the door open to revisiting the rule based on new evidence or challenges to the evidence presented.

But when an industry becomes concentrated, it becomes unregulatable. 100 small and medium-sized companies will squabble. They'll struggle to come up with a common lie. There will always be defectors in their midst. Their conduct will be legible to external experts, who will be able to spot the self-serving BS.

But let that industry dwindle to a handful of giant companies, let them shrink to a number that will fit around a boardroom table, and they will sit down at a table and agree on a cozy arrangement that fucks us all over to their benefit. They will become so inbred that the only people who understand how they work will be their own insiders, and so top regulators will be drawn from their own number and be hopelessly conflicted.

When the corporate sector takes over, regulatory capture is inevitable. But corporate takeover isn't inevitable. We can – and have, and will again – fight corporate power, with antitrust law, with unions, and with consumer rights groups. Knowing things is possible. It simply requires that we keep the entities that profit by our confusion poor and thus weak.

The thing is, corporations don't always lie about regulations. Take the fight over working encryption, which – once again – the UK government is trying to ban:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/24/signal-app-warns-it-will-quit-uk-if-law-weakens-end-to-end-encryption

Advocates for criminalising working encryption insist that the claims that this is impossible are the same kind of self-serving nonsense as claims that banning clearcutting of old-growth forests is impossible:

https://twitter.com/JimBethell/status/1699339739042599276

They say that when technologists say, "We can't make an encryption system that keeps bad guys out but lets good guys in," that they are being lazy and unimaginative. "I have faith in you geeks," they said. "Go nerd harder! You'll figure it out."

Google and Apple and Meta say that selectively breakable encryption is impossible. But they also claim that a bunch of eminently possible things are impossible. Apple claims that it's impossible to have a secure device where you get to decide which software you want to use and where publishers aren't deprive of 30 cents on every dollar you spend. Google says it's impossible to search the web without being comprehensively, nonconsensually spied upon from asshole to appetite. Meta insists that it's impossible to have digital social relationship without having your friendships surveilled and commodified.

While they're not lying about encryption, they are lying about these other things, and sorting out the lies from the truth is the job of regulators, but that job is nearly impossible thanks to the fact that everyone who runs a large online service tells the same lies – and the regulators themselves are alumni of the industry's upper eschelons.

Logging companies know a lot about forests. When we ask, "What is the best way to remediate our forests," the companies may well have useful things to say. But those useful things will be mixed with actively harmful lies. The carefully cultivated incompetence of our regulators means that they can't tell the difference.

Conspiratorialism is characterized as a problem of what people believe, but the true roots of conspiracy belief isn't what we believe, it's how we decide what to believe. It's not beliefs, it's epistemology.

Because most of us aren't qualified to sort good reforesting programs from bad ones. And even if we are, we're probably not also well-versed enough in cryptography to sort credible claims about encryption from wishful thinking. And even if we're capable of making that determination, we're not experts in food hygiene or structural engineering.

Daily life in the 21st century means resolving a thousand life-or-death technical questions every day. Our regulators – corrupted by literally out-of-control corporations – are no longer reliable sources of ground truth on these questions. The resulting epistemological chaos is a cancer that gnaws away at our resolve to do anything about it. It is a festering pool where nihilism outbreaks are incubated.

The liberal response to conspiratorialism is mockery. In her new book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein tells of how right-wing surveillance fearmongering about QR-code "vaccine passports" was dismissed with a glib, "Wait until they hear about cellphones!"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

But as Klein points out, it's not good that our cellphones invade our privacy in the way that right-wing conspiracists thought that vaccine passports might. The nihilism of liberalism – which insists that things can't be changed except through market "solutions" – leads us to despair.

By contrast, leftism – a muscular belief in democratic, publicly run planning and action – offers a tonic to nihilism. We don't have to let logging companies decide whether a forest can be cut, or what should be planted when it is. We can have nice things. The art of finding out what's true or prudent didn't die with the Reagan Revolution (or the discount Canadian version, the Mulroney Malaise). The truth is knowable. Doing stuff is possible. Things don't have to be on fire.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-and-papered

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rjzimmerman · 4 years ago

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Excerpt from this story from The Atlantic:

To understand the ravenous wildfire season in the American West this year, boil some ravioli. Put the heat on high. After about 10 minutes, the pasta will go limp and start to break apart. Keep boiling. When the pot holds a shallow puddle of water and a pile of soggy debris, keep going. Don’t turn down the heat until the last bubbles of water sizzle and vanish. Then—and only then—the lump of ravioli will start to singe and burn and smoke.

Water, when heated, “wants” to evaporate; it will turn to gas before allowing most solids suspended in it to heat beyond the boiling point. This principle, readily observable in the kitchen, has recently doomed forests stretching from California to Washington State. One of the hottest, driest summers on record has led to a barrage of “megafires” that have killed at least 35 people, burned nearly 5 million acres, and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings.

The expansive forests of the West, in other words, spent months boiling off. Now they are burning.

In the past few months, one in every 33 acres of California has burned. This year is already the most destructive wildfire season, in terms of acreage affected, in state history. In 2018, during California’s last annus horribilis, I noted that six of the 10 largest wildfires in state history had happened since 2008. That list has since been completely rewritten. Today, six of California’s 10 largest wildfires have happened since 2018—and five of them have happened this year.

If you’re having trouble following this year’s western fire season, you are not alone: The fire scientists are too. “There are two dozen fires burning right now that singularly would have been the top story on the national news 10 or 20 years ago,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told me. A few days ago, he said, he learned of the Slater Fire, which has killed two people. The Slater Fire is burning near the site of the Happy Camp Complex Fire, which was itself one of the worst blazes in state history when it raged in 2014. Yet though the Slater Fire, having merged with another blaze, is larger than the Happy Camp fire ever was, the Slater Fire does not rank among the five biggest fires raging today in the state.

“There’s almost no importance in talking about record-breaking events anymore, when talking about fires in California,” Swain said, “because we’ve broken all the records so many times that … what do they even mean anymore?”

It is the same story in the Northwest. More than 1 million acres have burned in Oregon, where tens of thousands of residents are under an evacuation order and officials have warned of a “mass fatality incident.” And across the West, those not living in the path of fires have had to contend with a cloud of toxic fog that stretches from the Inland Empire to Idaho.

California and the West have always burned. Their plants and ecosystems are evolved to endure and thrive in seasonal fires. But this regional chaos is something different, Swain said, caused by a “perfect firestorm” of elements. A windstorm whipped California and Oregon earlier this month, turning valleys into blowtorches. Many western forests are crowded with fuel after a century in which authorities fought every fire, no matter how remote. And a rare lightning storm last month provided an enthusiastic source of ignition for fires. All of those factors may explain aspects of why there are so many fires right now.

#wildfires #climate change

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newtarpchronicles · 5 years ago

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I don’t just like my little old Subaru survivor, I love it in ways that are illegal in many states and a couple providences too.

what is it about this funky slice of ‘80′s pseudo future fi that floats it to the top of “Rich’s favorite car” list ? considering the list’s bevy of damn cool cars that’s not faint praise.

driving across the deserted highway of our newly minted, post apocalyptic world, I took advantage of the surplus neurons usually reserved for predicting which way RAV 4′s will unexpectedly turn, and damn if I didn’t formulate a theory explaining the XT’s allure.

boiled to its bare essence - the XT does something it in no way should be expected to... i.e. it lives, drives, works. this, a car that sat for two decades in a Spokane barn while rodents tunneled in and out of the cabin and trunk. by all rights said critters should’ve destroyed the wiring, insulation, and upholstery.

the complete absence of proper storage protocol should’ve filled every reservoir with the varnish of thousands of bitter cold winters. hot Spokane summers should’ve sucked weatherstripping and gaskets dryer than an unlucky gambler’s wallet after a weekend in Vegas.

yet here it is, driving and pleasing. mostly working as designed. responding to my touch and wrenching.

so there’s that. but why so fun ? boom ! pick me pick me... like a ton of bricks I realized the Subaru is a hell of a lot like old Cessna’s, or any other light plane I suppose. there’s the same “just enough” structure to hold together yet still be light vibe. the flat four engine mimics just about any light aircraft power plant - layout, sound... well yeah, there’s no propellor. duh.

and to really torture the metaphor, it drives the way many small planes fly. hang on, let me explain, you see I did the airplane thing back in the day.

if you’ve only ever flown commercial jets, you might be surprised to find not all aircraft bound down the runway with the force of two or more ejaculating blowtorches. in a small plane you tiptoe to the threshold, check a few things on a dogeared list, then feed it the oats. if all goes as planned, the little engine gathers its skirt, winds up to a small roar - akin to a pissed VW, and if you’ve danced on the rudder pedals just right you’re rewarded with a fairly straight roll down the strip. once you’ve managed, with speed and physics, to lure air molecules from the couch to a magical lift orgy you’ll unstick from mother earth... at which point you hope Mother Nature ain’t gonna be a mother on this flight.

that, my friends, is like driving an old Subaru. engine sounds rumbly, barely enough power to merge. by the time you’re flying down the interstate only Eric Clapton and the drone of wind and tires to keep you company. not the most relaxing or easiest transportation. in my case the most satisfying.

#subaru #subaru xt #subaru alcyone

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darinb · 7 years ago

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Success 2- Steps to Spiritual Success

Spiritual success doesn't just happen, but today we want to look at the first step to reaching it.

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

-- Colin Powell

youtube

Spiritual success is something we all want, but strangely it seems to elude most of us. I have discovered some massive secrets to attaining spiritual success, and over the next few weeks I want to share them with you.

Last week we agreed that the world’s measure of success is different to God’s. Spiritual success is independent of money, fame or prestige.

Why is it that some people come to Christ and grow like crazy, while others have been Christians for years or even decades and seem to have barely grown at all? Why do some seem to do lots of incredible things for the Lord while others spend years sitting in a pew doing and being involved in very little?

CHOOSE SPIRITUAL SUCCESS NOW!

Why does it seem Christianity works for some people but not others? I’ve had many people say to me, “Tried Christianity, and it didn’t work for me.” Listen, Christianity is not a product, and we are not just consumers. Christianity is a person, and every, and I mean every, single person who truly invests in Christ will find He will work for them. The thing is, we concentrate more of what we can get from church than what we can give. We tend not to invest, we tend to consume!

To achieve spiritual success, the first requirement is that you choose to invest in it!

Deuteronomy 30:19

(ESV) I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,

You may be visiting Church today, or you may be a regular attender, but if you know me at all as a pastor, I want to see you grow strong and powerful in the Lord. I’ve asked God for a church of leaders. My passion is to see you became all you could possibly be in the Lord. But to do this, we have to start somewhere.

Some of you may be content to just float along and never achieve any spiritual success, but I believe most of you want to achieve something great for God, right? Wouldn’t you love to know that you’ve brought people to Jesus, spoken into people’s lives and seen amazing change, prayed and seen God move mountains?

Age doesn’t hold you back, education isn’t stopping you. Where you live, how you speak, none of that is holding you back from spiritual greatness. All that is required for your breakthrough to become a spiritual giant is your making the choice to pursue God, and following through to actually do it!

EMBRACE DISCIPLINE

We live in an instant society. More than ever before, we want everything right away, no delays, no waiting. Open up the internet and you will read about how you can make $10,461 in7 days or less doing basically nothing! On TV you see how you can stand on a vibrating board and lose 10kg while you watch TV. I heard they just invented a microwave TV, so you can watch 60 Minutes in just 2 Minutes! In 21st century Australia, we want a pill or magic bullet to solve every problem.

Remember once upon a time we used to write a letter, fold it up, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it , go to the post office and mail it, and some days later your friend would get the letter, open it and finally read it? Today we call that “snail mail”.

Then came the fax, which could send said letter down a phone line in maybe 2 Minutes. But that wasn’t fast enough, so we got email, which send said letter in seconds. But even now that’s not fast enough (and a fax seems like a dinosaur), now we have instant messaging, where we can send said letter in real time and get an instant reply!

No success in life is achieved without discipline. In sport, business, ministry and even family, if we are to be truly successful, it takes effort and discipline. And so it is spiritually.

We always want the fast, easy, no nonsense way to achieve success. But to know spiritual success as a follower of Jesus Christ, there are some things that need to be part of your life on a regular, and yes even daily, basis. These are nonnegotiable. They are not optional, not for some and not for others. They are for everyone. They are the disciplines of the Christian life, and yes, they take, time and effort. Yet within the spiritual realm, they are the fast track to spiritual success.

SOW WHAT?

Mark 4:5-8

And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

Jesus goes on to explain the metaphors later in the chapter. The first seed is people who hear about Jesus and the devil snatches it away, and they never make a commitment to Christ. The second accept Christ, but it is a shallow, possibly emotional response. As soon as things get tough, they turn away, often saying things like, “Tried Christianity, but it doesn’t t work.”

The third is where so many believers are today… The Word grows in them, but gets choked out by life, pressures, the drive to succeed in a worldly way. How does this happen? It starts when Christians ignore the basics of the faith. They let their discipline go, and stop praying, stop reading the Word and stop attending church, or simply attend but never commit to anything.

The fourth seed is shown into good ground, and it is fruitful, yielding far in excess of what was shown, 30, 60 and 100 fold. Does it magically produce this? Nope, the Lord bestows the growth. And what is the main difference between the third and fourth seed? Effort, discipline, the pulling of weeds!

I’m not much of a gardener. I don’t invest enough time into my garden. I’ve grown some plants and some trees, but if I neglect my garden, I grow a whole stack of weeds without even trying!

And that’s the thing… if you do not get serious about your walk with the Lord and obtaining spiritual success, you will grow fruit by default, but it will mostly be weeds. Do you want to be fruitful or weedy in your life?

READ THE DIRECTIONS!

If you want to become a big fat zero for Christ, if you are happy and content with all of your life, if you can’t really be bothered stepping out in faith, just stay where you are. You’re welcome to fellowship here, come and sit and get what you want to get you through the next week. Next year, more of the same. Year after that, same old same old.

But I believe most of you have higher aspirations than that. You want to grow and achieve spiritual success in your life, and you want God to use you in an amazing way to impact and change the world, right? If that is you, then it all starts here… it all starts with personal discipline, and God’s Word…

2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV Strong's)

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

The Bible is God’s directions for life. Like any man, I have trouble reading directions. I usually try and fix something or assemble something, and if I run into difficulties, I finally read directions. But honestly, some directions these days are ridiculous… take these for example…

On packaging for an iron: Do not iron clothes while on body.

On Children's Cough Medicine: Do not drive a car or operate machinery after taking this medication.

On a child's Superman costume: Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.

On a bottle of laundry detergent: Remove clothing before distributing in washing machine.

On a muffin packet: Remove wrapper, open mouth, insert muffin, eat.

On a can of air freshener: For use by trained personnel only.

On a toilet cleaning brush: Do not use orally.

On a can of Spray paint: Do not spray in your face.

On a blowtorch: Not used for drying hair.

On a box of fireworks: Do not put in mouth.

On a Swedish chain saw: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals.

In a microwave oven manual: Do not use for drying pets.

On a Japanese food processor: Not to be used for the other use.

The directions given by God are to be obeyed for maximum results. So how do you do this?

1. GOD’S WORD IS TO BE STUDIED

Reading the Bible is fine, but God’s Word is not like some novel. It is God’s instruction manual for life, and if we are wise we will not just read but study it. You can do this anywhere, any time. You could join a connect group and study with others.

Ezra 7:10 (ESV Strong's)

For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

The thing is, the Bible is not just a book, it’s life in the Spirit. This book is not passive, it is active. There are thousands of testimonies of people who opened a bible in their hour of need and God spoke to the, through it. And this same Scripture can speak to you if you listen…

Hebrews 4:12 (ESV Strong's)

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

2. GOD’S WORD IS TO BE CONSUMED DAILY

We all want the fast, easy track to spiritual greatness and success, so here it is… read the Bible every day! Wait a minute, that’s not so easy! Well, it’s a lot easier that spending years wasting your life, isn’t it?

Matthew 4:4 (ESV Strong's)

But he answered, “It is written,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Let me ask you, how often do you eat? Do you eat once a week? Once a month maybe? No, you eat every day, often several times a day. In the same way, nothing substitutes reading the Word of God every day. Nothing. If you want to be spiritually successful, this is the fast track! As you eat every day to live, so you need to eat of God’s Word daily to live and be successful spirituality.

That’s why God sent manna in Exodus 16 and it was to be consumed daily. Ever wonder why He did that? So that the people learned to live daily on the provision of the Lord. It wasn’t enough to save up old experiences, He wanted them to experience Him and His love every day.

Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV Strong's)

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I was talking to someone in our church last week who told me that God is speaking every day to her from her daily readings. This really works folks, so if you’re not reading the Word every day, you are missing out!

3. GOD’S WORD IS TO BE MEDITATED ON

Joshua 1:8 (ESV Strong's)

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Successful? God says you need to meditate, or think about His Word day and night to be successful. So we do not just read it and put it down, we think back on it every day. Our team that went to the Philippines often discussed what the daily bible passage was all day, and that’s meditating. Like a cow with multiple stomachs we regurgitate and chew over what we have eaten again and again.

Then what happens is that in many situations of life you face, the Word of God hidden in your heart pops out and is exactly what you need at the time.

Psalms 119:9-11 (ESV Strong's)

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.

With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!

I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

As you think about and even memorise the Word of God, you will be amazed at how often these verses spring to mind, just when you need it. Try it, I challenge you to try it. It really is true!

4. GOD’S WORD IS TO BE OBEYED FOR SPIRITUAL SUCCESS

We do not read just to tick off a box on the Bible reading plan. We do not read out of interest or curiosity or to gain knowledge. We read to live, and to live God’s Word means obedience!

James 1:21-25 (ESV Strong's)

Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

If you want to be a spiritual success, obedience is mandatory. As I said last week, why should God roll out His perfect plan for your life if you want even obey step 1? So many Christians cry out for God to lead and guide them, yet when He reveals what they need to do, they don’t even obey!

If you’re not being obedient, don’t expect God to lead you, it’s that simple! And if you’re not reading God Word, how can you expect Him to lead you anyway! When the Psalmist writes,

Psalms 119:105 (ESV Strong's)

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

He is working on the assumption that you read the word and let it shine.

THREE WORDS FOR SPIRITUAL SUCCESS

Let me give you 3 words that will give you the spiritual success I hope you are craving… READ YOUR BIBLE

Psalms 19:7-8 (ESV Strong's)

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving (Gk: transforming) the soul;

the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;

the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;

If you are someone who is not really interested in changing or being transformed, then you probably aren’t interested in the Bible or in spiritual success. The Word of God is for people who have some sense of desperation about where they are in life. It is for people who don’t have the purpose in their lives they wish they had. It is for those who aren’t content to be controlled by their passions, who don’t want to be victims of circumstance, and who want their relationships with those they love to become even better.

The Bible is for people who want direction in life, who want to know how to live, and who want to go to heaven. It is for people who want to know God. The Bible is for people who don’t have all the answers and want something better. It’s for those who want to change the world around them for God.

SPIRITUAL SUCCESS REVOLVES AROUND READING GOD’S WORD

Honestly, if you say you’re serious about your relationship with God, if you say you’re serious about changing and about impact the world for Jesus, then daily Bible reading isn’t just desirable, it is mandatory!

That’s why I wrote the Bible Reading program. If you’re not reading the Bible daily, come and join us in this reading plan. It covers the whole Bible only reading 2 chapters a day, usually less than 7 Minutes. The plan has all of the highlights of the Bible without the less exciting bits, and if you follow it it will transform your life!

People complain that they have no time to read the Bible. Well, turn off TV, there’s a couple of hours, get off Facebook, there’s another hour or two, or ten! You make time for what is important, and if you show God that His Word is important, you will see results.

And if you’re really desperate… put the Bible on your phone and when you go to the toilet, sit and read. The Lord will not be turned off by the smell, trust me!

If you don’t read much, download the Gideon’s Bible app. It’s free, and you can do the entire ESV Bible as audio.

I use to have a computer with very limited hard drive space. When I tried to add a program, a little message would pop up saying, “No more memory available,” and before I could load the program I would have to remove some other program.

Wouldn’t it be great if, when the devil comes with his temptations to attack your life, a little sign appeared saying “Memory full. Heart and mind are filled to capacity with the things of God.”

That’s why I am so pumped about you reading God’s Word daily! Not because I’m sadistic, not because I want to clutter or control your life. I tell you this because I want to protect and empower you, and fill your hard drive with God things. As Philippians says,

Philippians 4:8 (ESV Strong's)

8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

“Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely,

After all, the best defense is a good offense. So instead of being open and vulnerable to the attacks of the devil through our minds, let’s fill our minds with thoughts of God, thoughts of heaven, and meditation on His life-changing Word.

We need to commit ourselves to reading His Word, then patiently wait for the harvest that it surely will bring…

James 5:7-8 (ESV Strong's)

7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Christian, I’m sorry but there is no excuse for us. Either we get serious about reading God’s Word, or explain to Him why we cannot be bothered. I love You, Lord, I desire You with all my heart, but don’t ask me to put any effort into the relationship.

Actually, try this excuse with your wife or husband and see what type of response you get.

Today’s challenge is this… will you commit to reading God’s Word every day for the next month?

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago