Monday, December 24, 2012
Faithful Obedience
The real test of faith comes when we can trust God even in the depths of our trials, even before the victory is realized and even before the promises are fulfilled.
This month we celebrate the “gift of Life”—Jesus Christ. As believers, we have the privilege of not only receiving this Gift, but also of giving this Gift of Life to others. You might ask, “How do we do that?” The answer is: by actually living Christ’s Life and sharing His Love.
There’s a huge difference between asking Christ into our life to be our Savior (receiving that Gift), and intimately knowing Him as our life itself and being a “living example” (giving that Gift). That difference is evidenced by how strong our faith is.
This kind of faith comes in the form of a constant choice. It’s a choice to follow God and do what He asks, regardless of how we feel, what we think, or what we want. (Romans 4:20–21) It means laying aside all our difficult circumstances and getting to the place where we can say and mean, “I won’t let any of these things move me.” (Acts 20:24)
The real test of faith comes when we can trust God even in the depths of our trials, even before the victory is realized and even before the promises are fulfilled. This kind of faith has to pass the test of disappointment and the urge to want to quit. We must not only claim God’s promises, but also have the faith to walk them out even if we never see them fulfilled! This is what makes us “living examples” of what we believe and allows us to produce the “fruit of the Spirit” regardless of what is going on in our lives.
For more than forty years God provided everything the Old Testament saints needed. He provided guidance by the Pillar of Fire. He provided their daily “manna”. He provided the tabernacle for their worship. He provided their daily clothing, their deliverance from their enemies, and even their shoes. But, when the going got really tough and they no longer saw His Hand, the Israelites turned against Him. They forgot His promises and they impugned His faithfulness.
I see a parallel to many believers today. God provides for all of our needs, but sometimes He doesn’t do it in the way we think He should, thus we end up doubting His faithfulness just like the Old Testament saints did. As New Testament believers, it’s imperative that we learn from their example. We must unconditionally trust the Lord, knowing that no matter what we see, think or feel and no matter what He has allowed in our lives, in His timing and in His way, He will be faithful to allHis promises.
God’s reward for this kind of faith and this kind of obedience is not only experiencing more of His Love and His Life here and now, but the promise of a future position of responsibility in the coming kingdom. Our usefulness to the Lord is not determined by how much we suffer or by how much we lose in this world, but by how much faith and obedience we learn through that suffering and loss. Consequently, we must continually examine ourselves and see if we are continuing “in faith” and continuing to produce “fruit,” because it’s very easy to get derailed and sidetracked.
Remember the unfaithful and disobedient servants in Matthew 24 and 25, and how the Lord, when he returned, reprimanded them by saying: “Where was your faith? Where was your obedience? Where was your perseverance?” Because these servants had lost their trust in the Lord and were not producing “fruit,” He shut the door. To the faithful and persevering believers, however, he said: “Well done, good and faithful servants [because you endured by faith and continued to produce “fruit”], I will make you a ruler over many. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”
Hebrews 6:12 validates this: “Be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patienceinherit the promises.”
An Example: Joseph
Even in the worst of circumstances, we must “choose” to have faith and allow the Lord to use us and produce “fruit” in our lives despite everything that is going on. Remember the Old Testament example of Joseph.
The story goes something like this: As a young man, God gave Joseph some incredible dreams that contained mind-boggling promises for the future. Yet as Joseph shared these dreams with his brothers, it left them seething with jealousy. Because of this, they captured Joseph, threw him into a pit and ended up selling him to a caravan of merchants on their way to Egypt. Joseph was then bought by Potiphar, a high-ranking Egyptian official. Joseph continued, however, to have horrific personal problems. Potiphar’s wife repeatedly tried to seduce the devout young Hebrew, and finally accused him of trying to molest her. As a result, Potiphar, understandably, threw Joseph into prison, where he endured another 13 years.
He was finally released as a result of some divinely orchestrated circumstances.
All through his long years of imprisonment, Joseph continued to look to God and continued to minister to those around him. If you carefully read the Scriptures about this time in Joseph’s life, you will see that all who came into contact with him recognized that “God was with him.” (Genesis 39) In other words, even in his most difficult of times, he was still a “living example” that God was real and that God cared.
I don’t believe Joseph could have survived all those years of torment (from his brothers, Potiphar’s wife and prison life) if not for his unwavering faith and belief in the goodness of God. In the end, as we all know, the Lord choose Joseph to become the Prime Minister of all of Egypt, and through him He saved Israel.
Works of the Spirit
Like Joseph, when we make “faith choices” to do God’s will no matter how we feel, what we think or what is going on in our lives, God’s Spirit will be freed to flow from our lives. This is the “Life” that will affect others around us. It’s God’s Life through us that will produce the “fruit of the Spirit” thatEphesians 2:10 says we were all created to bear. “Faith choices” are simply choices to do God’s will, regardless of everything difficult in our lives. They are non-feeling choices, and often choices we don’t want to make at all. As Matthew 26:39 says, we are simply saying “not my will, but Thine.”
God has given us His authority and His power to make these kind of faith choices. It allows us to acknowledge that “yes” we are going through extremely difficult times, but nevertheless, we are still choosing to follow and trust the Lord.
When we make these kind of choices, our actions will be motivated by and performed by God’s Spirit in us, not by our own will or our own strength. These deeds, then, are called “works of the Spirit” and will be classied as “gold, silver, and precious stones” at the Bema Seat of Christ. (1 Corinthians 3)
Chart 28: Works of the Spirit
Chart 28 is what walking by faith, showing forth God’s Life and producing “fruit” might look like (above).
If, however, the source of our works is our own will and the actions are performed through our own power and strength (even though we are believers), it will be a “work of the flesh”. Because God’s Spirit is quenched in our hearts (we have chosen our own will over God’s), we will be unable to show forth God’s Life (His Love, His wisdom and His power) and thus, no real “fruit” will be produced. These “works of the flesh” will be classified as the “wood, hay, and stubble” that will be burned at the Judgment Seat of Christ (1 Corinthians 3:12; Galatians 5:21).
Chart 29: Works of the Flesh
Chart 29 is what this might look like.
Whether we are going through “good times” (where everything in our lives is smooth, easy and calm) or whether we are going through difficult times like Joseph did, God is still checking to see if we produce “works of the Spirit” or “works of the flesh.” The purpose of our lives here on earth—including our trials—is to train us to rule and reign with Christ in the coming kingdom. God is constantly testing us to see if we are worthy of such a great responsibility. Faith, endurance, obedience and trust are major parts of this testing process because they are prerequisites for ruling and reigning. “To him that overcomes and does My will to the very end, I will give power over the nations.” (— Revelation 2:26)
Receiving the “Gift of Life” not only makes the Lord our Savior, but also gives us the ability to know Him as our Life itself and to give his Love and Life to others, no matter what difficulties we are facing.
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the Life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body…
— 2 Corinthians 4:8–10
Khouse
Iran successfully bypassing oil sanctions
Iran’s Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi says the country has successfully bypassed sanctions imposed on its energy sector.
“Following the imposition of these sanctions, we were in bad condition for two months, [but] we’ve managed to weather that dire strait and…today we can export crude oil [again],” Qasemi said on Sunday.
The minister noted that sanctions were imposed by the United States and European countries as a last-resort tool against the Islamic Republic.
He added that the sanctions pursued three objectives, the most important of which was to prevent Iran’s presence in the oil market and disrupt its oil deliveries.
The minister said difficult conditions were created for Iranian oil sector in June 2012, because “no vessel was authorized to sail towards Iran…. Moreover, crude oil tankers were denied insurance coverage at that time.”
At the beginning of 2012, the United States and the European Union (EU) imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors.
On October 15, the EU foreign ministers agreed on another round of sanctions against Iran.
The illegal US-engineered sanctions have been imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, but has never found any evidence showing that Tehran’s nuclear energy program has been diverted toward military objectives.
Press Tv
US warned of diplomatic wars with Russia
Russian lawmakers have warned the United States of the creation of “diplomatic wars” if the two sides continue subjecting each others’ officials to restrictions.
"If this goes to its logic end and we start extending the lists from both sides ad infinitum, this could spark very serious diplomatic wars, which nobody needs," RIA Novosti quoted Vyacheslav Nikonov, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma International Affairs Committee, as saying on Sunday.
The comments were made regarding the prospect of the US enacting a legislation designed to punish Russian officials allegedly involved in human rights violation.
Two petitions, which have been posted on the White House website, are asking for US sanctions against Russian lawmakers who backed a bill banning adoption of Russian children by US citizens.
“If they set limits to the entry of the State Duma or the Federation Council members, the counter measure will be banning the Congress members from entering Russia,” said Dmitry Vyatkin, the deputy head of State Duma’s Constitution and State Affairs Committee.
On December 21, State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, overwhelmingly approved a bill that bans Americans from adopting Russian children.
A vast majority of 400 out of 450 deputies in the lower house supported the Dima Yakovlev Bill, named after a two-year-old, who died of suffocation after his American adoptive father left him in a closed car in sweltering heat in 2008.
Press TV
Woman rescued from floodwaters as Britain braces for more bad weather
A woman spent almost an hour clinging to a tree in the middle of a fast-flowing flooded river before a police helicopter spotted her in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The swollen waters had swept the unnamed woman from her car and she was fighting to stay afloat when the Devon and Cornwall police helicopter saw her.
Rescued by a RNLI lifeboat, she was treated for exposure. The woman was then reunited with a man and a child who had been trapped in the car when the River Taw broke its banks and had been rescued by firefighters.
The dramatic rescue came as forecasters predicted more rain would fall in the next few days: 165 flood warnings were in place across all regions of England – as well as in Wales.
The wet but warm weather has led to dozens of people being moved to emergency shelters, with more warned they too could be forced to leave their homes to escape the rising floodwaters.
The Met Office has issued a yellow alert for rain on Christmas Day, covering Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon and Somerset.
Rail services warned that trains were so badly affected that many of those hoping to travel to see friends and family for Christmas must expect considerable disruption. Those using the First Great Western rail service have been told not to make "non-essential" journeys.
Scotland has had 30 flood warnings, with Perthshire, Tayside, and Angus particularly badly affected. And significant flooding in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen, has led to about 60 people being relocated and a reception centre being set up at Mackie Academy.
There were warnings of high winds on the Forth Road Bridge, while gusts of up to 70mph were expected on Shetland. Ferry services to the Northern Isles were suspended due to strong winds.
In Devon and Cornwall, where one severe warning remains in place, those already struggling against the deluge are braced for further disruption with forecasters predicting wetter weather returning to central and southern parts of the country overnight.
In Cornwall, where 120 properties were flooded when the River Cober broke its banks on Saturday, another band of bad weather is expected from Sunday evening into the early hours of Monday, bringing with it an estimated 10-20mm of rain.
At least 20 residents were moved to safety in Stoke Canon, north of Exeter, after the River Exe burst its banks. The Environment Agency said that although the river level was dropping, it was "keeping a close eye on the situation as more rain is expected later".
Residents in Pilton, north Devon, have been warned they may have to be evacuated if floodwater from the River Yeo reaches their homes. Emergency accommodation is being provided at Pilton Community College.
In nearby Braunton, the River Caen breached its banks for a second night. The Braunton Academy had been opened as an evacuation assembly point.
Floods forced the suspension of rail services between Exeter St Davids and Tiverton Parkway. A plastic dam placed across the railway line at Exeter to control the damage was itself under water.
In Wales there was a limited train service between Cardiff Central and Bridgend after an earlier suspension. The service between Machynlleth and Caersws remained suspended.
The Guardian
The swollen waters had swept the unnamed woman from her car and she was fighting to stay afloat when the Devon and Cornwall police helicopter saw her.
Rescued by a RNLI lifeboat, she was treated for exposure. The woman was then reunited with a man and a child who had been trapped in the car when the River Taw broke its banks and had been rescued by firefighters.
The dramatic rescue came as forecasters predicted more rain would fall in the next few days: 165 flood warnings were in place across all regions of England – as well as in Wales.
The wet but warm weather has led to dozens of people being moved to emergency shelters, with more warned they too could be forced to leave their homes to escape the rising floodwaters.
The Met Office has issued a yellow alert for rain on Christmas Day, covering Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon and Somerset.
Rail services warned that trains were so badly affected that many of those hoping to travel to see friends and family for Christmas must expect considerable disruption. Those using the First Great Western rail service have been told not to make "non-essential" journeys.
Scotland has had 30 flood warnings, with Perthshire, Tayside, and Angus particularly badly affected. And significant flooding in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen, has led to about 60 people being relocated and a reception centre being set up at Mackie Academy.
There were warnings of high winds on the Forth Road Bridge, while gusts of up to 70mph were expected on Shetland. Ferry services to the Northern Isles were suspended due to strong winds.
In Devon and Cornwall, where one severe warning remains in place, those already struggling against the deluge are braced for further disruption with forecasters predicting wetter weather returning to central and southern parts of the country overnight.
In Cornwall, where 120 properties were flooded when the River Cober broke its banks on Saturday, another band of bad weather is expected from Sunday evening into the early hours of Monday, bringing with it an estimated 10-20mm of rain.
At least 20 residents were moved to safety in Stoke Canon, north of Exeter, after the River Exe burst its banks. The Environment Agency said that although the river level was dropping, it was "keeping a close eye on the situation as more rain is expected later".
Residents in Pilton, north Devon, have been warned they may have to be evacuated if floodwater from the River Yeo reaches their homes. Emergency accommodation is being provided at Pilton Community College.
In nearby Braunton, the River Caen breached its banks for a second night. The Braunton Academy had been opened as an evacuation assembly point.
Floods forced the suspension of rail services between Exeter St Davids and Tiverton Parkway. A plastic dam placed across the railway line at Exeter to control the damage was itself under water.
In Wales there was a limited train service between Cardiff Central and Bridgend after an earlier suspension. The service between Machynlleth and Caersws remained suspended.
The Guardian
Netanyahu: Western Wall belongs to Israel despite U.N. pronouncements
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- The Western Wall belongs to Israel, despite what the United Nations says, Israeli Prime Minister said in interviews with Israel's three major networks.
"The Western Wall has always been and always will belong to Israel,” Netanyahu said Saturday in pre-election interviews with Israeli channels 1, 2 and 10. "We have resided in the Jewish nation's capital for 3,000 years. The Western Wall is not occupied territory and I don't care what the U.N. says about that."
Netanyahu said the announcements of plans to build Jewish housing in the E1 area east of Jerusalem and in other Jerusalem neighborhoods had nothing to do with the upcoming Jan. 22 elections; rather, they were a response to the Palestinians' decision to appeal to the United Nations General Assembly for enhanced statehood status.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said over the weekend that the Palestinian Authority would stop Netanyahu from authorizing building in the E1 area, which connects the West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem, an area that the Palestinians say is necessary to create an eventual viable, contiguous Palestinian state.
The housing is still in the planning stages and construction is a long way off, according to reports
JTA
North Korea rocket 'has 10,000km range'
North Korea's recent rocket launch shows it has the ability to fire a rocket more than 10,000km (6,200 miles), South Korean officials say.
The estimate, which would potentially put the Western US in range, was based on an analysis of rocket debris.
However, there was no confirmation that the North had the re-entry technology needed to deliver a missile.
Experts believe North Korea is also years away from gaining the ability to mount a nuclear bomb on a missile.
North Korea launched the Unha-3 rocket on 12 December, in defiance of sanctions and international warnings.
It was the first time the North had made successful use of a three-stage rocket to put a satellite into orbit, and observers said it appeared to mark a step towards fielding an intercontinental range ballistic missile.
"As a result of analysing the material of Unha-3 (North Korea's rocket), we judged North Korea had secured a range of more than 10,000km in case the warhead is 500-600kg," a South Korean defence ministry official told journalists
BBC
China aids Iran's nuke missile programs
China’s government provided goods and expertise for Iran’s nuclear program in the past and also gave Tehran’s Islamist regime missiles and other arms as part of the nations’ anti-United States policies, according to a congressional commission report made public Thursday.
“The authoritarian governments centered in Beijing and Tehran share an animus towards ‘hegemonism’ and a fear of internal instability,” the report prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission states.
“In recent decades the United States, supported by regional allies and security partners, has represented the principal hegemonic threat to Iran and China in two different regional contexts: the Persian Gulf and the Western Pacific.”
Read more:http://times247.com/articles/report-china-aids-iran-s-missile-nuke-programs#ixzz2FvsCdEB8
New Kind of Magnetism Discovered
Following up on earlier theoretical predictions, MIT researchers have now demonstrated experimentally the existence of a fundamentally new kind of magnetic behavior, adding to the two previously known states of magnetism.
Ferromagnetism, the simple magnetism of a bar magnet or compass needle -- has been known for centuries. In a second type of magnetism, antiferromagnetism, the magnetic fields of the ions within a metal or alloy cancel each other out. In both cases, the materials become magnetic only when cooled below a certain critical temperature. The prediction and discovery of antiferromagnetism -- the basis for the read heads in today's computer hard disks -- won Nobel Prizes in physics for Louis Neel in 1970 and for MIT professor emeritus Clifford Shull in 1994.
"We're showing that there is a third fundamental state for magnetism," says MIT professor of physics Young Lee. The experimental work showing the existence of this new state, called a quantum spin liquid (QSL), is reported this week in the journal Nature, with Lee as the senior author and Tianheng Han, who earned his PhD in physics at MIT earlier this year, as lead author.
The QSL is a solid crystal, but its magnetic state is described as liquid: Unlike the other two kinds of magnetism, the magnetic orientations of the individual particles within it fluctuate constantly, resembling the constant motion of molecules within a true liquid.
Finding the evidence
There is no static order to the magnetic orientations, known as magnetic moments, within the material, Lee explains. "But there is a strong interaction between them, and due to quantum effects, they don't lock in place," he says.
Although it is extremely difficult to measure, or prove the existence, of this exotic state, Lee says, "this is one of the strongest experimental data sets out there that [does] this. What used to just be in theorists' models is a real physical system."
Philip Anderson, a leading theorist, first proposed the concept in 1987, saying that this state could be relevant to high-temperature superconductors, Lee says. "Ever since then, physicists have wanted to make such a state," he adds. "It's only in the past few years that we've made progress."
The material itself is a crystal of a mineral called herbertsmithite. Lee and his colleagues first succeeded in making a large, pure crystal of this material last year -- a process that took 10 months -- and have since been studying its properties in detail.
"This was a multidisciplinary collaboration, with physicists and chemists," Lee explains. "You need both … to synthesize the material and study it with advanced physics techniques. Theorists were also crucial to this."
Through its experiments, the team made a significant discovery, Lee says: They found a state with fractionalized excitations, which had been predicted by some theorists but was a highly controversial idea. While most matter has discrete quantum states whose changes are expressed as whole numbers, this QSL material exhibits fractional quantum states. In fact, the researchers found that these excited states, called spinons, form a continuum. This observation, they say in their Nature paper, is "a remarkable first."
Scattering neutrons
To measure this state, the team used a technique called neutron scattering, which is Lee's specialty. To actually carry out the measurements, they used a neutron spectrometer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md.
The results, Lee says, are "really strong evidence of this fractionalization" of the spin states. "That's a fundamental theoretical prediction for spin liquids that we are seeing in a clear and detailed way for the first time."
It may take a long time to translate this "very fundamental research" into practical applications, Lee says. The work could possibly lead to advances in data storage or communications, he says -- perhaps using an exotic quantum phenomenon called long-range entanglement, in which two widely separated particles can instantaneously influence each other's states. The findings could also bear on research into high-temperature superconductors, and could ultimately lead to new developments in that field, he says.
"We have to get a more comprehensive understanding of the big picture," Lee says. "There is no theory that describes everything that we're seeing."
Subir Sachdev, a professor of physics at Harvard University who was not connected with this work, says that these findings, which have been anticipated for decades, "are very significant and open a new chapter in the study of quantum entanglement in many-body systems." The detection of such states, he says, was an "exceptionally difficult task. Young Lee and his group brilliantly overcame these challenges in their beautiful experiment."
In addition to Lee and Han, the work was carried out by J.S. Helton of NIST, research scientist Shaoyan Chu of MIT's Center for Materials Science and Engineering, MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera, Jose Rodriguez-Rivera of NIST and the University of Maryland, and Colin Broholm of Johns Hopkins University. The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
Science Daily
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