Sky Links, 10-13-18

(edited 10-15)

What if God interrupted our plans? What if the Holy Spirit took over?

Mike Bickle:

Charismatic conferences have been wonderful and useful for many years, but now risk missing the point entirely if they are not deeply attuned to the whispering voice of the Holy Spirit. When the “cloud and fire” disrupt camp to move us into new territory, we must follow...

...I am convinced that we stand on the precipice of a new era in the prayer, prophetic, and missions movement. I want to say boldly but tenderly: our house is on fire. I mean our nation, the Church, society itself...

...I urge you not to miss the signals that the Holy Spirit is giving the Church in this hour. These are days of high transition. God is speaking, but His whisper demands revelation and unique focus. Voluntarily choose to adjust your life’s signal-to-noise ratio. The global prayer movement is entering its next critical phase, going far beyond the theater of an event into the Father’s deep desire for the total supremacy of His Son to be known among the nations and to raise up a close knit family who deeply values and loves one another.

An open letter to the prayer and prophetic movement

Question about new churches: Are the people who attend just transfers?

Tim Matthews:

The Church Army’s extensive research, over time, on Fresh Expressions found that 25 per cent of the people who join such plants were already Christians, 35 per cent were de-churched, and 40 per cent unchurched. Researchers remarked that, “nothing else, as a whole, in the Church of England has this level of mission impact.”

Our own 2018 annual church survey found that only 13 per cent of respondents regularly attended another C of E church in town before joining us, whereas 14 per cent of our respondents previously had no regular church attendance anywhere. Twenty-eight per cent of respondents did not consider themselves a Christian before joining us; 86 per cent do so now.

Let's dispel some myths about church plants 

Love Church






Write down your goals, to refine, remember, and achieve them

So why does writing your goals help? It’s an important thing to know; after all, it might seem like a lot of extra work to write something down when you can just as easily store it in your brain, right?

Writing things down happens on two levels: external storage and encoding. External storage is easy to explain: you’re storing the information contained in your goal in a location (e.g. a piece of paper) that is very easy to access and review at any time. You could post that paper in your office, on your refrigerator, etc. It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to know you will remember something much better if you’re staring at a visual cue (aka reminder) every single day.

But there’s another deeper phenomenon happening: encoding. Encoding is the biological process by which the things we perceive travel to our brain’s hippocampus where they’re analyzed. From there, decisions are made about what gets stored in our long-term memory and, in turn, what gets discarded. Writing improves that encoding process. In other words, when you write it down it has a much greater chance of being remembered.

Neuroscience Explains Why You Need To Write Down Your Goals If You Actually Want To Achieve Them -Mark Murphy

The news media (about 80%) is the enemy of the American people

The results show that, over the past four months, nearly two-thirds of evening news coverage of the Trump presidency has been focused on just five main topics: the Russia investigation; immigration policy; the Kavanaugh nomination; North Korea diplomacy; and U.S. relations with Russia. The networks’ coverage of all of these topics has been highly negative, while bright spots for the administration such as the booming economy received extremely little coverage (less than one percent of the four-month total).

 

Study: Economic Boom Largely Ignored as TV's Trump Coverage Hits 92% Negative




The real world

As feminists were busy peddling their “War on Women” narrative in the U.S., Yazidi sex slave survivor Nadia Murad was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting a real War on Women in the Middle East.

Nadia was honored for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, together with Dr. Denis Mukwege of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has been a relentless healer and advocate for women.

Their stories serve as an important reminder that as American women debate what constitutes enough evidence to block a nominee from taking a seat on the Supreme Court, corroboration and evidence are abundant in places such as northern Iraq, where hundreds of women and girls are still enslaved and routinely subjected to rape.

A Rape Survivor Just Won the Nobel Peace Prize -Kelsey Harness






Spygate: the bigger picture

Remember, back in August, 2016, when Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were obsessively texting one another? One exchange went something like, well, exactly like this:

"[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Page texted Strzok.
"No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it," Strzok responded.

Fast forward a couple of years and here we are in October, 2018, just about two years after Trump's electoral triumph, and for reasons best known to themselves Ben Rhodes and Jen Psaki have decided to reveal to NYMag that the Russia Hoax was a key part of the Obama Administration's--and presumably the Clinton campaign's--contingency plan to, well, steal an election: Obama Had a Secret Plan in Case Trump Rejected 2016 Election Results. We're all adults--right?--so there's no need to quibble over the meaning of words like "results." Here's what Rhodes and Psaki are saying:

The Russia Hoax As Contingency Plan -Mark Wauck



Spygate outline and overview for newbies

Although the details remain complex, the structure underlying Spygate—the creation of the false narrative that candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia, and the spying on his presidential campaign—remains surprisingly simple:

 1. CIA Director John Brennan, with some assistance from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, gathered foreign intelligence and fed it throughout our domestic Intelligence Community.

2. The FBI became the handler of Brennan’s intelligence and engaged in the more practical elements of surveillance.

3. The Department of Justice facilitated investigations by the FBI and legal maneuverings, while providing a crucial shield of nondisclosure.

4. The Department of State became a mechanism of information dissemination and leaks.

5. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided funding, support, and media collusion.

6. Obama administration officials were complicit, and engaged in unmasking and intelligence gathering and dissemination.

7. The media was the most corrosive element in many respects. None of these events could have transpired without their willing participation. Stories were pushed, facts were ignored, and narratives were promoted....

...Spygate represents the biggest political scandal in our nation’s history. A sitting administration actively colluded with a political campaign to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Government agencies were weaponized and a complicit media spread intelligence community leaks as facts.

Spygate: The True Story of Collusion -Jeff Carlson

It's China

Vice President Pence, China policy speech









Home libraries are good for children

We've known for a while that home libraries are strongly linked to children's academic achievement. What's less certain is whether the benefits they bestow have a long-term impact.

A new large-scale study, featuring data from 31 countries, reports they do indeed. It finds the advantages of growing up in a book-filled home can be measured well into adulthood.

"Adolescent exposure to books is an integral part of social practices that foster long-term cognitive competencies," writes a research team led by Joanna Sikora of Australian National University.

These reading-driven abilities not only "facilitate educational and occupational attainment," the researchers write in the journal Social Science Research. "[They] also lay a foundation for lifelong routine activities that enhance literacy and numeracy."

Home Libraries Confer Long-Term Benefits -Tom Jacobs


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Photo Credit: Spacebridge by longobord C