Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages
BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages.
Find a friend who can study with you
How to Study The Bible | The Navigators. Inductive is one method
Shown below
1) Background
First, do a basic background study on the book: Who is the author? Why was it written? Learn the historical background, dates, key people and so on. Some Bibles have summaries at the beginning of each book that will provide some of this information. A Bible dictionary or online commentaries can also be helpful.
2) Personal Paraphrase
Starting with the first chapter, write out each verse or section of verses in your own words. This will help you understand each verse in wording that makes more sense to you.
Here is an example using 1 Timothy 1:1
Original Verse:
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope . . . ” (1 Timothy 1:1 NIV).
Personal Paraphrase:
Paul, a proclaimer of Jesus Christ, obeying the instructions of God who is the One who saves us, and of Jesus Christ who is our hope…
3) Questions and Answers
Write down some questions you have about the passage, or unfamiliar or confusing terms that you come across.
Example:
Q. What does the word “apostle” mean? What does it mean to be one?
A. The Greek word apostolos comes from the verb apostello, which means “to send forth.” So to be an apostle means to be someone who is sent forth—in this case by Christ to spread His message.
4) Cross References
Make a note of any similar or related passages that come to mind while you’re reading, paraphrasing, and asking questions about the passage. Consult a concordance, other study guides, or footnotes to collect related passages you may not have thought of.
Example:
Apostle: 2 Corinthians 1:1
God my Savior: Luke 1:47; Titus 1:3
Christ our hope: Colossians 1:27
5) Insights
If an observation occurs to you that relates to any part of the passage or its background, be sure to write it down.
Example:
Paul was commanded by God to be an apostle. It wasn’t something he decided to do on his own.
After completing your own analysis, consult a Bible commentary for additional insight. Seeking out other believers’ insights about the passage can provide a broader, more solid understanding of the passage than you might be able to come to on your own. Remember, don’t go to commentaries first; start by making your own observations.
6) Personal Application
Here is a possible application of 1 Timothy 1:1:
Just like Paul, I need to recognize that I am tasked with being Christ’s ambassador, authorized and sent out with a divine message. I can only be effective in my mission if I am aware of my status as a divinely appointed witness.
7) Title and Summarize
After completing this verse-by-verse analysis of the chapter, assign it a title and identify a key verse or verses. This will help solidify the message of the chapter in your mind. Write a summary paragraph outlining the thesis of the chapter. Repeat the process for subsequent chapters. When the book is completed, give it a collective title.
Sadly, mediocrity is a hallmark of our age. Consider breaking that pattern and setting some high goals for your spiritual growth.
For example, you might say that within the next 10 years you will have studied a certain number of the books of the Bible in this manner—spending perhaps three hours a week to study (which is not to be a substitute for your “quiet time”—that is separate).
Motivational writer and speaker Zig Ziglar said, “Aim at nothing and you are sure to hit it.” Let’s aim high in our goal to know God and be transformed by His Word. There is nothing greater.
“What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8 NIV).
1And He was speaking to them a parable about the way it behooves them always to pray and not to lose heart, 2saying, “In a certain city, there was a certain judge, not fearing God, and not respecting man. 3And there was a widow in that city, and she was coming to him, saying, ‘Avenge me of my adversary.’
4And for a time he would not, but afterward he said within himself, ‘Even if I do not fear God, nor respect man, 5yet because this widow causes me trouble, I will avenge her, so that in the end she does not exhaust me, coming to me.’”
After years of inaction on, and even hostility toward, attempts to strengthen and secure Texas’ power grid, lawmakers might finally? take action. Brandon Waltens has the details.
State Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewoood) and State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) have tried for several sessions to get attention to the shortcomings of Texas’ electric infrastructure. They were ignored while lawmakers instead pumped $19 billion into “green” energy subsidies.
“Every time I author this bill, they push back on wanting to secure or protect the power grid and make it stronger,” Tinderholt toldTexas Scorecard. “The power companies need to step up to the plate and participate in the bill.”
FYI: The state’s power grid is managed by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), a semi-private non-profit entity overseen by the Legislature and the Public Utility Commission. The PUC’s members are appointed by the governor and approved by the Texas Senate.
Will the governor and lawmakers push the blame solely onto ERCOT, or accept their measure of responsibility?
As if in response… Gov. Greg Abbott – who earlier this month received accolades for his promotion of green energy subsidies – yesterday named investigating and reforming ERCOT a legislative priority.
I wonder if the trophy those “sustainable” energy people gave the governor is still being displayed in his office? Seems like for the $19 billion Texas taxpayers have been forced to spend on “green” energy subsidies we’d have more to show for it than a cheap trinket given to a politician…
“If Texas were a public company, the CEO would be fired today.” – Former State Rep. Matt Rinaldi (R-Irving)
In the latest edition of his podcast, Luke Macias explains how wealthy government-subsidized oligarchies have been exposed by the massive power outages.
“Power companies, their lobbyists and their PAC’s have worked tirelessly to keep politicians on their side. Now that millions of Texans are without power and lives are literally being lost, the winds have shifted.” – Luke Macias
Texans took to social media to voice their frustrations with what we now know is the state’s highly unreliable electric grid. Robert Montoya finds many are demanding answers and action from their elected officials.
Count Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller among those unimpressed with Texas’ lack of electric preparedness. He is calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to make big changes and immediately hold people accountable. Iris Poole has the story.
“We should never build another wind turbine in Texas. The experiment failed big time. Governor Abbott’s Public Utility Commission appointees need to be fired and more gas, coal, and oil infrastructure built.” – Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller
Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never, which hit #5 on Amazon. His recent article, “On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare,” has been widely shared. Some highlights: * How Shellenberger went from being a renewables activists to championing nuclear. * Why Shellenberger decided to stand up against climate catastrophism after years of silence. * How modern environmentalism is a religion. * The real motives of most of modern environmentalism. * How environmental journalists misrepresent environmental science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq60W2pRk84
https://industrialprogress.com/blog/ The Big Picture in Six Pictures Texas Electricity Crisis, continued Let me start off by saying that I am thinking about all of you in Texas and I hope you are coping with the (very preventable) problems your grid is experiencing right now.As I wrote yesterday, I think we are in the middle of the most teachable energy moment of 2021.Accordingly, I’ve been attempting to create every necessary message (and image) to properly explain what’s going on. “…proponents of fossil fuels are using the current crisis to emphasize why they think fossil fuels need to be part of the overall mix of options to power the grid. ‘The anti-carbon movement has really placed no value on reliability,’ said Alex Epstein, author of ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,’ who expressed his views in a long Twitter thread.”I was just interviewed by Congressman Dan Crenshaw for an hour on his podcast. (It hasn’t been posted as of this writing but I expect it to be up by tomorrow.) The Big Picture in Six Pictures Take a look at electricity use in New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the Southwest, and Texas during this cold spell.
All tell the same story: unreliable wind and solar electricity (green and yellow) completely fail to keep us warm or powered when needed the most. Instead, the media are telling the story that “fossil fuels failed” because certain gas and coal plants went offline in one of these regions–Texas–due to preventable problems. (We know that these problems were preventable because places that are much colder and snowier than Texas use gas and coal with great success.) The Failure of Unreliable Energy in Texas and Around the World with Steve MilloyJust as the devastation in Texas was reaching a peak, Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com, another whistleblower on “unreliables,” joined me to talk about what’s happening in Texas and around the world. I also asked him about his efforts to oppose certain ESG policies, and his views on the “fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 deaths” claim. FYI I addressed that claim in a Twitter thread. Here’s the summary: The widely-publicized claim that fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 deaths is the worst kind of pseudoscience. It ignores fossil fuels’ life-extending benefits and wildly overstates their negative side-effects. In reality, fossil fuels lengthen 5 out of 5 lives. The Future of Oil with Michael Lynch This week I also interviewed Michael Lynch, the oil guru who has been more right about oil economics over the past several decades than anyone I know. Mike was the second person I ever interviewed on Power Hour, and when he talked about long-term oil prices being in the $50/barrel range in 2011 I couldn’t believe it (even though I couldn’t argue with his logic). Now he has a new essay on claims that the post-pandemic world will mean “the end of oil.”I highly recommend this essay and Mike’s energy economics work in general. In this interview we covered: false past predictions of a green future, the real economics of EV batteries, what post-pandemic culture will look like, how much oil exists in the world, and much more. You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts. . To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy,Alexhttps://twitter.com/AlexEpstein/status/1361128716391227394
Popular links:1. Change a mind by sharing my Google talk. Do you have someone you know who needs to learn pro-human thinking about energy issues? A great place to start is by sharing my talk at Google, which is designed to persuade even those immersed in the biased, sloppy, and anti-human energy thinking in our culture. You can find the video here.2. Empower a friend by inviting them to this newsletter. If you know someone who wants to increase their clarity and influence on energy issues, invite them to this newsletter by sharing this link: AlexEpsteinList.com.
Center for Industrial Progress, 302 Washington St., #150-9385, San Diego,, CA
Peacock: Renewable Energy Failed to Keep the Lights on for Texans
Most of the grid was probably about as prepared as could be expected for this record storm. However, one part of the grid was mostly unprepared: renewable energy generators.
By
Bill Peacock
February 18, 2021
With almost hundreds of thousands of Texans still without power—and many without water—everyone is looking for someone to blame.
Monday’s Dallas Morning News ran a Bloomberg Wire story that blamed the blackouts on freedom: “The extreme cold appears to have caught Texas’s highly decentralized electricity market by surprise.”
Not to be left out, State Reps. Chris Paddie and Craig Goldman and House Speaker Dade Phelan have called for a joint meeting of two committees on February 25 to “review the factors” that contributed to this “unacceptable” situation.
The first cause of the blackouts is easy to identify: Texas experienced a winter storm of historic proportions. The 10 inches of snow that hit Midland set an all-time record, easily surpassing the 1951 record of 2.5 inches. Brownsville reported snow for only the third time since 1898. And Austin’s 6.5 inches of snowfall was its most since 1967.
Many details will soon be coming to light, but most of the grid was probably about as prepared as could be expected for this record storm. However, one part of the grid was mostly unprepared: renewable energy generators.
Renewables Were a No-Show
This leads us to the second, and likely primary, cause of the blackouts: renewable energy subsidies.
At 1:25 Tuesday morning, when the Electric Reliability Commission of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator for most of Texas, announced that it would “instruct utilities to begin rotating outages, wind was basically a no-show. During the critical four-hour period from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. when ERCOT was forced to begin rolling blackouts, actual wind output averaged less than 5 percent of the ERCOT load. This was down from about 58 percent during the same period the week before. It would be hard to overstate the damage caused by wind’s unreliability Monday night—or the harm and costs its intermittency causes on a regular basis.
At the same time, solar (the most rapidly growing energy source in Texas) was where it is every night—off the grid, for the simple reason that the sun was not shining. Some might claim this is no big deal because solar is not designed to generate electricity at night. Exactly. Solar’s primary design feature also proved to be its main design flaw Monday night.
Of course, supporters of wind energy are already out defending it, trying to deflect the blame elsewhere. Ross Ramsey at The Texas Tribune claimed “frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power-generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans across the state during a major winter storm.”
Reliable Generation Forced Off the Grid
ERCOT’s numbers above do a better job than anything else in refuting the claims of the wind defenders. Yet they only tell a part of the story of why renewables are the main factor underlying the blackouts. Over the last five years, wind and solar generation have dominated new power plants coming online in Texas. Wind generation’s output has increased by 113 percent, and solar’s by almost 2,000 percent. This growth has crowded out almost all investments in other types of more reliable and affordable generation such as natural gas and coal. Gas-fired generation is up only 3.5 percent during this period. Coal’s output is down 30 percent.
Why would investors build new intermittent sources of generation in Texas like wind and solar that do not show up when needed? And that cannot take advantage of the higher prices during times like these? The sole cause for this is renewable energy subsidies.
From 2006 to 2019, wind and solar generators in Texas received about $19.4 billion in subsidies and benefits from taxpayers and consumers. In 2018, about 28 percent of renewable generators’ income came from subsidies. Investors have flocked to these subsidies. And why shouldn’t they? On the other hand, investors are spurning natural gas and coal because without the massive subsidies offered to wind and solar, new natural gas plants are hard-pressed to compete.
Because of market distortions created by renewable subsidies, when Texas ran low on electricity Monday night, the grid operator had nowhere to turn. Reliable natural gas plants that could have shouldered much—if not all—of the heavy load were nonexistent because they had not been built, thanks to renewables subsidies.
We Had Plenty of Warning
Finally, it is important to understand that Texas did not arrive at this condition overnight. For years, it has been obvious to everyone that renewables have been worsening the stability of the Texas grid.
In 2012, Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) Chairman Donna Nelson explained the problems caused by renewable energy subsidies to the Texas Senate:
Federal incentives for renewable energy … have distorted the competitive wholesale market in ERCOT. … The market distortions caused by renewable energy incentives are one of the primary causes I believe of our current resource adequacy issue… [T]his distortion makes it difficult for other generation types to recover their cost and discourages investment in new generation.
In 2019, Texas state Sen. Kelly Hancock authored a bill that would have required the PUC to study how to deal with the problem caused by renewable energy subsidies. The Texas Senate passed the bill with strong bipartisan backing, but the bill was killed in the Texas House State Affairs Committee, chaired by current Speaker Dade Phelan, when lobbyists for renewable energy companies and environmental groups rose up in opposition.
Even without the bill, however, the PUC could have taken steps to address the harms caused by renewables. Instead, its commissioners caved to the demands of generators for more subsidies to paper over the problem. The Texas Tribune reported in 2018, “Major power generators including Calpine, Exelon and NRG are asking the commission to tweak an existing formula known as the operating reserve demand curve (ORDC) to increase the amount of money they receive when demand for power escalates.”
“Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”Numbers 14:9
When the Israelites were headed into the Promised Land, some demon-possessed giants called Anakim already lived there. When the twelve Israelite spies went to scope out the land, ten came back saying, “Oh, it’s a good land—a land full of milk and honey, corn and wine, oil and pomegranates, figs and grapes. But, hey, we can’t take this land—there are giants in it!”
Psalm 25:12 Who is the man who fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way he should choose.
Matthew 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.
Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
Isaiah 30:21 Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left.
Psalm 32:8-11 I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. • Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, Otherwise they will not come near to you. • Many are the sorrows of the wicked, But he who trusts in the LORD, lovingkindness shall surround him. • Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous ones; And shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.
Jeremiah 10:23 I know, O LORD, that a man’s way is not in himself, Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps.
John Hargrove Seeking Truth and Reality 