rick's tweets iii

Sharing some of Pastor Rick's "tweets of wit" with you:

Anytime you're tempted to criticize your spouse's judgment, remember they picked you!

Leaders who laugh, LAST! It flushes stress from your soul.You'll have plenty of material if you laugh at yourself & troubles.

Pride keeps us from listening. Not listening keeps us ignorant. Ignorance keeps us prideful. This cycle hardens the attitudes.

You can't know God thru intellect alone because your brain isn't big enough. But even a child can know him through love.

Great people make others feel great. Small people make others feel small.

I often find that my attitude, like a diaper, requires changing or I stink up the place.

When you take a personal strength for granted, it becomes a weakness without you realizing it.

Whatever sin you're quickest to judge & criticize in others reveals what you secretly hate most about yourself. Rom 2:1-6

Forgetting yourself isnt the final step of love but the first. See 1 Cor 10:24 

I've noticed that before marriage opposites attract but after marrying opposites attack! What was cute becomes annoying.

No one counterfeits $3 bills since they don’t exist. Phony miracles, churches, and believers indicate the genuine is out there.

Jesus began his Church as a FAMILY. It changed to an institution in Rome, a political view in Europe, and a business in America.

FREEDOM is not the absence of limit. It is the POWER God graciously offers you to say YES to what’s right & NO to wrong.

You can IMPRESS people from a distance but can only IMPACT them up close. That requires letting people see your weakness too.

You can learn from anyone--even hypocrites! "So practice and obey what they say but don't follow their example" Matt 23:3

You don’t grow in humility by trying to be humble. Just shift your focus off yourself & on to God's greatness & other's needs.

Until you passionately feel your own continuous need for God's Grace, you'll never convince anyone else they need it.

What right do I have to be angry at others who resist change when there are changes needed in me that I refuse to make?

NEVER interpret God's Word by your experience or logic. ALWAYS interpret your experiences by God's infallible Revelation.  

Many truths in the Bible I only understand by obeying them in faith. Then later, looking back, I can see God's reasons.

Far more will defend the Gospel than will SHARE it, because sharing it takes COURAGEOUS LOVE. Defending just takes knowledge.

Believing the truths of salvation without daily friendship with Jesus is like marriage without intimacy. Possible but not enjoyable.

The Gospel is distorted when REDUCED to a system of beliefs, set of practices, schedule of activities or show of emotions.  

It takes no courage to preach the truth to those already convinced. Courage is loving your enemies so they might know Christ.

Anytime doctrine & duty replace loving Jesus you’ll lose your joy. "I don't want your sacrifices-I want your LOVE!” Hosea 6:6

You can't love people if you're always in your study (or behind a pulpit). Walk with your people today. Listen. Hug. Pray.  

When you expect others to meet needs in your life only God can meet, it's unfair to them & insures disappointment in you.

It's human nature to lie to ourselves. What are you pretending isn't a problem in you? The truth sets you free but it takes courage.

stuxnet

This is not your grand-pa's computer virus.

Dubbed "Stuxnet," it was discovered in June 2010 by a Belarus-based security company. Unlike ordinary computer virus that hacks consumer PCs or commercial servers, it is written specifically to attack the control of industrial systems made by German electronics conglomerate Siemens that are used in many factory floors, chemical plants, oil refineries, pipelines, and nuclear power plants. Though these industrial control systems themselves don't run on PC, Mac, or Linux operating system, those PCs that supervise them do run Windows. Stuxnet broke into these PCs, found the supervisory control and data acquisition software (SCADA), overrode the execution code with its own malicious one, and caused valves to open, alarms to turn off, safety temperature levels to reset, etc., therefore damaging/sabotaging the targeted operations.

Stuxnet virus had been found mostly in Iran (58.8%), Indonesia (18.2%), India (8.3%), US (1.6%), according to the geotagging of the IP addresses of Stuxnet-infected computers. As a matter of fact, Iran's delay of completion of its Bushehr nuclear power plant was first suspected by the West then confirmed by the Iranian government the result of Stuxnet virus infections. Also, a power glitch in July in the solar panels of India's INSAT-4B satellite causing it to lose half of its transpnding capacity was suspected to be the work of Stuxnet. Both the Iranian power plant and the Indian satellite use Siemens industrial control systems.

Who's behind such an unusual virus? No one knows. But all experts agree a computer virus (or worm) like this requires a broad spectrum of skills and resources to develop and test and spread, and a nation state is the most likely entity with such capacity.

Israeli government has been denying it has anything to do with the Stuxnet virus. But a recent finding of the name referenced by the software (Stuxnet comprises of a 600-kilobyte file and it has not yet been fully analysed) made an interesting twist toward hinting the Jewish state's possible involvement with the virus, with a Biblical clue:

The word in contention is "Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther, or the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them. If you're wondering how you get Myrtus from Esther ... Esther's original Hebrew name was Hadassah, meaning Myrtle (Myrtus). The project string “b:\myrtus\src\objfre_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb” appears in one of Stuxnet's drivers. The guava fruit is part of the Myrtus plant family.

Another nation state named by some as possible origin of Stuxnet is China, for the simple fact that the Chinese government indirectly owns a major share of Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co., which benefited greatly when India's INSAT-4B satellite lost most of its serving capacity and Indian statellite TV service providers had to redirect their customers' statellite dishes toward ASIASAT-5, a Chinese satellite owned and operated by Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co.

No matter who's behind it, Stuxnet is a ground breaking virus not only for its sophistication and scale of operation, but the fact that it is the first computer virus that threatens to cause physical harm through manipulation of infrastructure entities. "Giving an attacker control of industrial systems like a dam, a sewage plant or a power station is extremely unusual and makes this a serious threat with huge real world implications," says Patrick Fitzgerald, senior threat intelligence officer with Symantec. "It has changed everything."

Not necessarily for the good, unfortunately.