Good afternoon, everybody. This is Guillermo Sabati, your host for today on Perspectives on Energy, and today we'll be talking about the Blackout in Pakistan. On my background, of course, I am an electrical engineer, and I worked in the power industry for 30 years, so I have a little bit of background on this. Currently, I'm the Director of International Services for HSI, the Health and Safety Institute, specifically in industrial skills So let's dive right in. Here in the week, Pakistan had a Blackout that pretty much de-energized the majority of its national grid. This is the second time this happened in the last few months, so they definitely had some problems. This time, apparently, they had an issue with voltage swings that eventually led to a frequency collapse, which on its own ends of spiraling into a voltage collapse, and that's usually the causes of most Blackouts, either your collapse in voltage. Frequency often isn't the only cause of a Blackout. Usually, they have under-frequency load shedding schemes that will normally shed the appropriate amount of load automatically, and usually that saves the day. But in this case, if you have a voltage collapse, that tends to be kind of hard to be able to get around that in that case. So one of the things to consider in this event is the fact that this is the second time this happens in the center year in the country, so it is definitely a concern. They were able to restore most of their system back in about three days, had a lot of problems with infrastructure, and of course, nowadays, in a highly connected society, a lot of their, what's a lot of hardship in an economy has already struggled. One of the things that became apparent was the fact that most everybody has backup generation at either every industrial or commercial facility, but the problem was that in a lot of these cell phone towers, the provider was running out of fuel at these gen sets for most of these towers. So after maybe six, seven, eight hours of running on the backup generator, they're running out of fuel, whether it's diesel or gasoline. So that presents another problem. So in this case, we'll talk about some of the general Blackout causes, how system operations personnel usually can either predict, plan ahead, or even as a few minutes away, a few seconds away, take mitigating actions, but in the end of the day, if the system is set up in a way that's very difficult to manage, all their efforts may, especially if they got set up with a bad plan for that day, they could really have problems. So again, there's still investigations going on. We won't know the root cause if we ever do for what happened until maybe a few weeks from now. We've had similar incidents in Europe, similar incidents in the US. A few weeks ago, we had Europe doing some feeder rotation and they were getting ready for rotating Blackouts, but fortunately, they got lucky. It was about whether they did not encounter those challenges. Right now in Pakistan, however, one of the root causes they've been discussing quite a bit is they haven't kept up with their infrastructure, basically moderating the grid, maintaining the grid, sometimes even reconducting equipment, substation maintenance, generator maintenance. For the most part, it's just a matter of maintaining it right now. Of course, the media and everybody else is blaming grid reliability on the fact that it hasn't been maintained. But again, we will discuss that further once we know more information as to what happened. For now, I can definitely say that from my experiences, and I don't mean to speculate, but one of the things that normally puts a utility in peril, meaning reliability for that day, is a long-term planning horizon, mid-term and short-term planning horizon. So what are those? We'll break those down as we discuss it over the next half hour. So one of the long-term planning horizon basically looks at what your load will look like over a span of five, 10, 15 years. Are you seeing a lot of customer growth? Are you seeing a lot of industrial growth in your area? Well, in that case, you'd have to probably plan ahead and start designing, citing and permitting a lot of budgeting for a lot of expanded generation, right? In a lot of cases, as your fleet ages, or you're replacing some of these dirtier fossil fuel fleets with something as cleaner burning, natural gas, or even going with some of the renewables, and so that all requires planning in a five to six-year lifespan. So this planning horizon of five years to a decade usually looks at the expected forecasted load growth. So they will plan ahead with that. If load is growing in an area as of when they're before, then they may require, of course, a construction of new transmission lines and even distribution infrastructure, right? So if that's planned right and planned well, you will meet that load with a new generation mix. You'll have the adequate amount of transmission. You'll have the correct rights of way, and then ultimately, as load grows, you'll have enough of a buffer to be able to manage that those reliability needs, right, on top of your basic generation and economic needs, right? So one of the things that happens is oftentimes these planning cycles don't, they're put off a postpone. They don't go as well. So then they may do what they have, and they continue to absorb all this load with the existing infrastructure. And then as you continue to add more load to that already existing source, you end up making your margins much, much narrower. And as the years go by, eventually your margin is so narrow that you are getting dangerously close to being able to survive a more severe single contingency. So I don't know what happened there yet, but it seems to me that there's a combination of factors on there, right? The long-term planning horizon is where the aspect comes in of maintaining infrastructure and properly developing infrastructure. So that's a long term. Near term, of course, is you're looking over the next few years, right? A lot of that has to do with opacity upgrades on lines, adding reactive devices and support voltage, upgrading, for example, the carrying capability of some of these transformers and some of these substations, right? And a lot of times, most of these components, and not all of them, especially in a system that's already heavily loaded, that usually gives you an extra three to five years to be able to get by, and it's not as expensive as building a new generation and any transmission lines.  In a lot of cases, adding a transmission capacitor banks will help support voltage, but then, of course, the benefit of that is now you have increased the carrying capacity, the transfer capability, right, of that particular path to carry more flow, which means now you can have generations from somewhere else come and supply load at the other end without sacrificing voltages in as much, right? So in this case, they'll plan these particular upgrades, whether it's capacity upgrade, usually on transmission lines, or they'll even adding all of these reactive devices to support voltage, right? That definitely helps with the dangers of a voltage collapse, which, as I said earlier, a voltage collapse can pretty much lead you down into an area of instability and then pretty quickly into a blackout. Frequency collapse, usually there's protection systems in place that will shed load automatically, depending on how badly that rate of decay is or frequency, right? And usually, I save a day. I've seen server utilities have that happen where they were able to by design, please set, it actually saved the day. So they were able to survive their transmission grid, you know, still energized. I mean, they shed a lot of their distribution customers, but their transmission grid was still intact and they were able to restore from that starting point. So now let's look at near term. And here in the US and Canada, when Merck has specific regulatory standards, and they regulate, for example, real-time operations, right?  And one of the things that is particularly important is what they call the next day planning. That's usually governed by nurse standards, TOP 002 for the transmission operators. And then with the reliability coordinators, they have an IRO 008 and IRO 006. So these two different standards, right, have an impact on both sides, right? So they each have responsibilities for reporting and also disseminating information. So what are those standards, right? So those standards, they impose the obligation of actually having to study all of your outages and system conditions for the next day or the next several days, right? So normally, in most utilities, right, usually maintenance has to happen. They have to take out a transmission line, they need to take out a transformer, they need to take out a component out in the system. And it's usually, of course, the one that's the most important is the transmission systems, right? Anything above 100 kV. And for the most part, right, we used to not study the next day, right? So now, for example, you have programs like Siemens's PSSE or Power Factory from the Edgey Silent, for example, that allow you to take a model of your system, meaning all the lines, all the buses, all the stations, all the generators, all the loads, right, all the reactive devices. And you'll have a pretty good mathematical model of your system is you can then study and simulate. So what you'll do is, you know, you'll look at your expected load for that day or that week. For example, you look at your planned equipment outages, whether it's a line, a bus, or a transformer, or reactive devices. And you'll basically get your model and you'll take and you'll set up your system exactly as it would be when, you know, for the time period you're studying.  You'll set up the generation profile. You'll set up what generations are in service, which ones are out of service. You'll even set up, for example, the loading of the generators based on their economic dispatch, right? You'll also set up the expected power transactions, meaning the floor power between utilities, right, who's buying and selling power, who's, for example, wheeling power from one area to the next. You'll also be setting up, for example, and most importantly, you're looking at at the element outages. There's a certain line that's going to be out of service for that day. And that's planned. What part of your part of your plan is to actually study that and see if your system can support it, right? So ideally, once you run this study, right, then you'll, you'll do a what if analysis to see what happens to the next component, you know, goes out of service and accidentally. So in this case, you're already preparing yourself to see if you can withstand the most severe single contingency. So you do like a base case study, where you see what your system will look like and make sure you don't have any real time base case overloads. And then you'll do what they call a contingency analysis, which is looking at a what if scenario. So what, how the way this works is that based on your model, the system's data estimator will go ahead and take a one component out at a time, run a powerful study, and then we'll show you what the result is of that one component being out of service. Then it puts it back, runs it again, and it does it for every single component in your system, every single element in your system until it's done, right? So the worst offenders, for example, will show up first on the list of contingencies, and it says for the loss of this line, you'll have this other element overloading or undervoltage or overvoltage. And then you can make decisions based on that, whether you can proceed with that outrage or not, or you have a mitigation, right, to go and proceed forward. There have been outages in the U.S. with that that resulted in a so some blackouts, right, that have also several areas. And as a result of that, NERC eventually came up with these standards to make sure you have an adequate next day study, meaning that that's what it is, right? It's next day planning, right?  And one of the suspicions we're having is the fact that it them that may not have done adequately in Pakistan. We don't know yet. But usually, for example, if you have, you're saying that there was some switching happening, and that switching caused the voltage instability, which then of course, you know, caused the voltage swing. And then eventually that voltage swing caused the frequency swing. And then, you know, from that point, the whole thing, you know, collapsed and cascaded. So if you're unable to handle that sort of condition, right, where you're switching, and they may have done a proper study of that particular line outage, right? The issue there is that something may not have been modeled correctly when they were trying to switch it back in service. But what's more concerning is that something when it got switched out of service caused that issue, which means that particular outage wasn't properly studied. Or worse, it wasn't properly modeled in the system. So somebody may have studied, they may have looked great on paper, but when they went ahead and tried to execute it in real life, the results were not matching what they had seen on their forecast, which is a concern. So again, this will be something that they will probably look into with much, much greater detail. So how does one, these are the reasons, for example, that you may run into a blackout situation from the planning perspective, right? So what happens if everything's planned right, you're operating, everything's looking like everything in real time is looking pretty close to what you saw on your day ahead study, right, on your day ahead plan. So if you're the operator, you're the grid operator, you're the dispatcher sitting at the desk and you're basically flying this plane, right, that is performing how you predicted or what the engineers predicted was going to happen. All of a sudden, you lose one or two more components beyond that most severe single contingency. So now you're in a double contingency or what they call n minus two, right? So n minus one is the usual, what if, for every one contingency that you lose at a time, n minus two is for two contingencies ahead. And usually they don't plan that far unless it's a defined double contingency. But if you're in a situation right now, it's up to you to go ahead and do studies on your own real time while you're there, right? And that may involve, you know, canceling outages that may involve doing is taking certain actions. And in some cases, up to and including the shedding of for load. May not have a lot of time to do all this, but that's usually what the real time operator is going to be faced with in this time, right? Usually shedding load, usually separating, usually going up in an island of condition, which means you might have an area of load that has its own generation that separated, has no ties with the neighboring areas, but still, you know, running not synchronized, but that's an island, right? So that's another situation they might find themselves in. So one of the things that we do at HSI and industrial skills training is train these system operators on how to go through steps, right? Where it's like there's the planning aspect of it, understanding how that works. And then there's the actual operator real time operations of the system. And one of the ways to prepare them for that is to do simulation training. And we have a simulator, which I'll show at a later date, right now, to do a full demo that gives them an overview of how to run a power system. And one of the things that you understand, right, is what the effects are, for example, of having unplanned outages happen beyond the scope of what you're already, beyond the work that you had already planned, right, and how to react to that. In a lot of cases, usually it involves quick mitigation or running a study, but when you don't have enough time, especially studies reveal, usually you may have maybe minutes or sometimes you may have hours take action. And a lot of times that may lead to, at worst, the shedding of firm customer load, which means opening up. You're going to put some customers in the dark to save the rest of your system. But in most cases, what happens is they have to usually read dispatch generation, or they have to cancel planned outages that either are already in effect, or that they're waiting to actually be executed. So in a lot of cases, if a field crew has a line that they're going to take out of service, and you're noticing problems already, and the thinking of that line based on your studies reveals that it's going to get really, really bad. Well, then it's up to you to go ahead and cancel that outage or postpone it. And for the reasons being that you run a study in this line that's not working based on some other conditions that were not foreseen in the day I had planned, which happens all the time. You can have a generator that came out of service at a trip, or you may have some issue with a solar site. They lost a line that feeds out of the solar site. And that can change your entire plan. And once your whole plan has changed, then now you have to do it on a case-by-case basis, whether that particular outage can be carried out. So these are just examples of how you can get to a blackout. Again, training is a really important aspect for the system operators when it comes to running the grid. But it's not just the actual real-time operator, because if they're stuck with a really bad plan for that day, where they're coming up with a lot of surprises that they weren't expecting, then that's also a bad plan. So there's training that goes on the back end to make sure the next day plan is done correctly as well. And then even the near-term studies. Some of these outages are studied two or three weeks in advance to give them a rough idea whether this can be done this time of the year or season. So in a lot of cases right now, I'm not sure what the seasonal conditions are in Pakistan right now, but I imagine they could be going through a winter. So in a lot of cases, there's a lot of winter load. Usually it's a lot of inductive or heating strips, which places a lot of demand in the system at certain times of the day. More so than the summer, we have a lot of air conditioning load. So that is an example, seasonal things that could be done. And in a lot of places, usually generator outages and transmission outages happen, which is known as the shoulder ones, which is usually at times of mild weather, whether it's spring or it's in the fall. Now every once in a while, you run into a mild winter and then some planners are, they want to take advantage of this opportunity, and they go ahead and schedule an outage. And then all of a sudden this mild season, this mild break in the weather only lasts a one or two weeks, but the outage is a three, four week long outage. So now they find themselves with a lot of high demand and load without enough resources to meet it. So it's another challenge when you see when it comes to different causes of a blockout. Another example as well is usually, the ones I've seen usually stems from either a bad plan. I seen some outages happen from the fact that they had too many outages at the same time. In some cases, you had somebody that was completely unplanned, that somebody was troubleshooting at a station, and they went ahead and disabled some of the protection to be able to troubleshoot something. And then the fault happens. And then you had a sustained fault that was there for a long period of time. And then you ended up with the fault clearing from all of the remote ends at the station, which of course, this utility lasts about 25, 30 different generators all throughout the system. So really, really significant, of course, that led to an underfrequency event. But fortunately, the underfrequency load shedding took effect, and they were able to actually not block out. They saved the system. So the customers felt like a blackout because they were sitting in the dark, but the transmission grid was mostly intact, and they were able to restore everything back in about three to four hours. So it was really, really significant in that case. So again, I'm really anxious to see what, I'm eager to see what happened. I feel really, really bad for that particular the customer. Their customers, I feel bad for the utility. I feel bad for Pakistan in general, for what they went through. Right now, I know that they're having their challenges when it comes to the economy at this time. But they did a great job in restoring. I know for a fact that some of the nuclear plants, some of their coal plants are still going to be out another two or three days at least, because that's normally how long it takes to get those units back online. So hopefully they'll be able to do this rather soon and get back to normal. But again, I mean, this is a problem that is not unique to Pakistan. I think the majority of the world right now is experiencing challenges when it comes to maintaining infrastructure on both building additional lines is not an easy thing, especially since everybody has what they call not in my backyard, Navy, I think, which is not in my backyard attitude. It's like nobody wants to see a brand new power, a brand new transmission line through their area, but everybody knows they need it, right? So as one example, the other one is nobody wants to allow the building of new conventional generation, everybody wants renewables, which is great, but that also causes an issue with reliability sometimes. So a lot of different things are happening. We saw some of the challenges in Europe right now with their issues when it comes to fuel. So again, this would be an interesting year as we're approaching right now in the peak of winter in some places, right? But where I'm at, it's mild weather. But for us, the summers are brutal when it comes to low and heat. So again, I'm really, really interested to see what they find as a root cause and what were the different components that lined up to place them in this blackout condition and what it was that impacted their reliability so severely that they blacked out. All right. Well, again, thank you so much for joining me today and hopefully I'll have a second segment of this particular discussion coming up in a few weeks. Thank you again and have a great afternoon. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Hello everyone. The computation of updated forest data for Cambodia shows that between 2000 and 2019, 27,000 square kilometers of land has been deforested. It's a large area that corresponds to 14 persons of the total area of the country. So the data story that Daniel and I present here is an attempt to unpack this figure. And to pitch the story, let me briefly highlight one of the key findings. 70 persons of the total deforestation has taken place outside area which are delineated as economic land concession, or agro-industrial concession. Deforestation in fact is mainly driven by migration movement of small-holder farmers moving from lowland area of the country to the upland regions. And this migration movement occurs not because the farmers defend sea holiday, of course, but because they need agricultural land. And the underlying process is the very limited and incomplete transition of the national economy towards industries and services so that land and agriculture remains central in the livelihood of the majority of the rural population. These findings validate a study that we released a few years ago presenting scenarios of future land need of small-holder farmers scenarios that were established based on the increase of the active population in the rural areas and based on the actual job creation in the non-farming sector of the economy. So we discuss in the story the implication of this in terms of land use planning but also in terms of land governance in general. So happy reading and do not hesitate to get back in touch with us if the topic is of interest to you. Goodbye.


You've seen this meme and well it sort of pokes fun at CSS. It actually is highlighting one of the features of CSS which is also one of the things that is just a fundamental concept of the web which is by default we should have no data loss. So this overflow that is happening right here is actually very intentional and of course we could just do an overflow hidden and hide that content that is overflowing and as the author of the CSS we do have that choice. And while using overflow hidden can sometimes be useful in situations like this with text it's probably worse than the overflow that we were having. So let's take a look at four different ways that we can fix this problem that are a lot more useful than overflow hidden. Hello there my front-end friends and welcome back to the channel. If you're new here my name is Kevin and well I try and help you realize that yes CSS really is awesome and let's do that by diving into this problem that we have right here and coming up with these different solutions that we can do to solve it and prevent the overflow or deal with the overflow in different ways. The first thing we have to look at that was why is this even happening and this is happening because I have a fixed width there. If I take this fixed width off of here of course it fixes itself and it worked but I'm going to assume that for now at least we need a fixed width on there or the width that you know we're putting something in a sidebar and it has a limited amount of space and the word is too long to fit. Now our overflow hidden was flawed but we could use another type of overflow with an overflow x and introduce scrolling so at least that content is still visible even though it sort of doesn't really fit and of course we could give custom styling to the scroll bar to make it look a little bit nicer. Now if this is to solve an issue with type like we have here another option that we do have is overflow wrap break word. While it works it isn't exactly an ideal solution because it can make things a little bit hard to read especially without any hyphenation in there but it is a quick fix to prevent any overflow issues and side scrolling on a site that might end up running into problems. You could also try and bring in hyphenation as well but hyphenation is one of those hit and miss things when it comes to CSS. If we switch the width to 50% here we can actually just see how this is working and you can tell it's not always the best solution. The word is is dropping down there because it sees that it can fit down there without breaking the word but when it comes to words where it has to break it just breaks it wherever it can but this can prevent big issues and side scrolling from happening so every now and then this might be what you want to reach for. Now moving away from the idea that we are stuck with a width of 260 pixels one option would be to switch this to either use min content or fixed content. Min content will make the width of the element as small as it possibly can so it will match the length of the largest word that is in there and if we make this bigger or smaller it really doesn't matter the width is based on the smallest it can possibly get which is being in this case dictated by the word awesome or if we switch that over to a fit content you can see it's actually stretching the size here but on larger lines if everything can be strung out on a single line it will fit that but if it needs to allow for some wrapping it will and then eventually in these cases it can't get any smaller than that the same as a min width it can't get smaller than the content that is inside of it. Now going back to having a fixed width we get to what is maybe my favorite solution of them all as long as you don't mind throwing browser support out the window and bringing in container queries or more specifically container query units and I said browser support's not perfect it is already over 73% really fast we do have the div of CSS is awesome and inside of there is a paragraph with the text this is important because of how container queries work where we're going to take the parent and we're going to tell it that that is my container and we do that by saying container type inline size now what I can do is select that paragraph in my CSS and then I can give it a font size that is using container query inline so it is looking at the inline size of the parent and now we can see how the text can adapt to the size of its parent we can turn the parent back into a square by using aspect ratio maybe we want to center the text within the parent so we can use grid for that and if we want to be extra safe we could use a max function to prevent the font size from getting too small or we could do a clamp that would prevent the font size from getting too small or too big of course if you're preventing it from getting too small that could potentially cause some overflow issues but if your minimum size is small enough it should never actually be an issue and if you enjoyed this video and you would like to learn more about container queries I have a video right here for your viewing pleasure and with that I would like to thank my enablers of awesome Jen Johnny Michael Mr Dave Patrick Simon and Tim as well as all my other patrons for their monthly support and of course until next time don't forget to make your corner the internet just a little bit more awesome


What we're going to do is we're going to look at the first 15 verses today in 1 Samuel chapter 14. And what we're looking at is the subject of ventures in faith. They're actually going to have an opportunity to see how faith acts and how it acts out in the face of obstacles. And so we're going to be looking today at ventures of faith. Let's begin reading at verse 1 in 1 Samuel chapter 14. I'll read to verse 7 and we'll get into our study. Now it happened one day that Jonathan, the son of Saul, said to the young man who bore his armor, come let us go over to the Philistines garrison that is on the other side. But he did not tell his father. And Saul was sitting in the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree which is in Megron. The people who were with him were about 600 men.  But the people did not know that Jonathan had gone. Between the passes by which Jonathan sought to go over to the Philistines garrison, there was a sharp rock on one side and a sharp rock on the other side. And the name of one was Bozes, the name of the other, Sinai. The front of the one faced northward opposite Micmash, the other southward opposite Gibeah. Then Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, come let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised that may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing restraints the Lord from saving by many or by few. So as armor bearer said to him, do all that is in your heart. Go then, here I am with you according to your heart. Now as we saw last time, the Philistines have gathered an enormous army that they might attack the nation of Israel. Jonathan, who is the son of Saul, had attacked an outpost of Philistine soldiers. And as a result, he had stirred up a hornet's nest and thousands of Philistines have come and they are preparing to attack the nation of Israel. As the thousands have been assembled, Saul could only muster some 600. Now Israel's army was made up of militia, a militia of farmers. None of them had any swords. We're told that only Saul and Jonathan had swords. And the Philistines were so confident that they simply assembled their troops to attack. And they dispatched a garrison, garrison numbering somewhere perhaps around 50 soldiers to the pass of Micmash and there they're waiting. And that's what we're looking at right here in verse one. That's what we're going to be seeing in chapter 14. We're seeing as this is about to take place, as a battle is about to be engaged. In verse one it says it happened one day that Jonathan, the son of Saul, said to the young man who bore his armor, come let us go over to the Philistine garrison that is on the other side. He didn't tell his father. And so what happens within two or three days of all this action taking place? Jonathan has made a decision to see what the enemy is up to. So he crosses a pass that separated his position from the Philistines there in southern Israel. But notice in verse one how it says he doesn't tell his father Saul. Now there's a reason why he didn't inform his father of the plans. It could be a variety of reasons really, but at least three reasons that he didn't let his father know what he was going to do. One, his father would probably have told him you can't do that. He would have forbidden him from doing that. Or second, such a plan requires complete secrecy. But third, it may simply be that the Lord has placed it on his heart to do so. And so as the Lord is laid it on his heart to go and check out what the Philistines are up to, he simply decides to do that. And he's about to go across and see that. It says in verse two Saul was sitting in the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree which is in Migran. The people who were with them were about 600 men. And so as he's about to go he's going to go there with his armor bearer and he's going to check it out. It's interesting how he chose to enter into this operation accompanied only by an armor bearer. An armor bearer is a trusted assistant. It's the one who carries the commander's weapons. He would carry the large shield. He would carry other weapons of war in order that he might free up the commander. An armor bearer was one who was courageous, who was fierce, a man of good character. He was well trained. He was a man who was loyal to the death. All great warriors had personal armor bearers, which gives to us insight into the fact that Jonathan was a great warrior. But there he goes. Now his father is there in the outskirts of Gibeah, which is just a few miles north of Jerusalem. Migran is just north of the area and Saul's sitting under a well-known tree. Migran is a common word for the word cliff. So the area around there is mountainous and that's where he is. Now verse 3 says, Ahia, the son of Ahitub. Well actually Ahitub was a very heavy man. His name was really Ahitub. No, it's not. I'm just saying that. He was a tub. No. What we're looking at is that he is the great grandson of the former priest Eli, and so Ahia is the son of, or great grandson of Eli. But the point is he's wearing the ephod. Now when it says that he was wearing an ephod, he's not wearing a normal priestly robe. He's actually wearing the robe of a high priest. And so it's pointing out here in simple fashion that he was enacting the role of the high priest. And so this is what's taking place. Now as this is going on, notice verses 4 and 5. This is a geographic marker. It speaks of bozez, which means shining. It speaks of senna, which is the acacia. And so they face one another. There are actually two cliffs that face one another north and south. So we have a geographic marker of what's taking place. Now as all of this is taking place, I really want to start looking at verses 6 and 7 and begin moving on into making some applications, because what we're looking at is ventures of faith. We're looking at a venture of faith here. And I want to develop this with you this morning. Notice how it says, Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, come let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised, it may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few. So as armor bearer said to him, do all that is in your heart, go then, here I am with you according to your heart. This gives us insight. This gives us insight into faith and the courage of a man by the name of Jonathan. We already saw him as a courageous man because he had a pose of flistings when he attacked their garrison. But that wasn't enough for him. He wanted to deal them an even harsher defeat. Now it's interesting how it begins or develops here. I want you to see this in verse 6. Notice how it says, Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, first come let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. Now when he says the garrison of these uncircumcised, on the one hand, the Jews would use that phrase the uncircumcised as a degrading term. It's another way of calling them pagans. And so when he says that we ought to go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised, it's a way of saying let's go and see what these pagans are up to. So that phrase is used sometimes in a disparaging way. But it's deeper than that. What he's saying is, because they're uncircumcised, they will have no help that comes from God because as uncircumcised people, they don't have a relationship with God. That's what he's actually saying. He's saying they are uncircumcised, therefore they have no relationship with God. So the uncircumcision was a right of cutting away the male foreskin as an emblem of faith in God. Now we know that circumcision is part of the Jewish religious system. You see it in Leviticus chapter 12 verse 3 where God gives a command to the nation of Israel to circumcise their sons on the eighth day. And we know that circumcision was an outward emblem, but the fact is, is though it's in the Mosaic law or the law that was given to Moses by God, it actually predates the law of Moses and goes all the way back to the time of Abraham. Abraham is spoken of in the book of Genesis. And in chapter 17 of the book of Genesis, we have an interesting thing taking place there. God is telling Abraham that his wife, Sarah, is going to conceive and have a son. And Abraham is really not able to grasp that. And so God is speaking to him about that and making it clear that this is going to take place. But prior to that, he speaks to him concerning his faith. And in Genesis 17 verse 11, he says, you shall be circumcised in the flush of your foreskins. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. This is going to be an emblem. This is going to be an outer symbol of a relationship that you and I have together. A relationship, Abraham, that is based on your faith in me. See it wasn't just a cutting away of the foreskin. It was really the heart. It was a heart that was right with God. It answers to baptism today in the Christian era. Circumcision was an outward demonstration of a covenantal relationship that a man had with God, whereas baptism in the New Testament is a symbol of a saving relationship a person has with God. And when they enter into that water, it demonstrates that their death buried. When they come out of that water, it represents that they're alive in Jesus Christ. But the water doesn't save you, and circumcision didn't save you in the Old Testament. When the men were circumcised or when the children would be circumcised, it was an emblem. It was an outer symbol of a covenant that they were to have with God. But what's interesting is that Abraham already had faith in God prior to him being circumcised. In the book of Romans, Paul speaks about that in chapter 4 verse 11. He said, Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also. You see, when he received circumcision, his heart was already circumcised. He already had a relationship with God. So Moses gave the right of circumcision in the law, but Abraham predated that, and it was all a symbol of a right standing with God. So when Jonathan is saying there, let's go to see what those uncircumcised people are up to. It was deeper than simply saying, these are pagans. He was saying that they are unbelievers, and because they are unbelievers, they cannot have help from God. Circumcision was an emblem of Israel's relationship to God, and as a believer in God, an improper relationship with him, Jonathan expected God to help him. He had hope in God. He had faith that God would be there. You see that in Psalm 146, verses 5 and 6, where it says, happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made the heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps truth forever. So Jonathan was saying he has a relationship with God, and God is going to be with me. These Philistines do not, and therefore they're not going to be protected by God. A second thing he says is, it may be that the Lord will work for us. Now that's not presumption, it's a simple declaration of hope and faith in God. This is one who's trusting in the God of Israel, a God who had promised to deliver them from their enemies. Recently in 1 Samuel chapter 7 verse 3, the Bible says that Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, if you return to the Lord with all your hearts, put away the foreign gods and the asherists from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines. And so he's saying, let's go and see what these people who have no relationship with God are up to. God may work for us because God has promised that he would. And then thirdly, I want you to notice this, he says in verse 6, for nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few. This is a declaration of faith, nothing restrains the Lord from saving. Jonathan knew God is the God of the possible. God can do wonders beyond what any man or woman can conceive, and God can work in a way that is tremendous, in a way that blows your mind back to the time of Abraham, when God had said that Sarah's going to conceive and have a child. It was beyond the imagination of Abraham because Abraham was almost 100 years of age, his wife was 90 years of age. She is well past the ability to have a child. I mean, what 90-year-old woman would like to be nursing at 91? I mean, think about that for a minute. And getting up with that baby crying at the age of 90, are you kidding me? And so when God had said to him that she's going to have a baby, he said, this is beyond me, but God said in Genesis 18, verse 14, is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Is anything too hard for the Lord? You've got to ask yourself that question today. We're talking about ventures of faith. You have to ask yourself, is there anything too hard for God? We're just saying that nothing's impossible with God. We're just saying that. As a church, we're out there saying, Lord, there's nothing too hard for you, and that's what the Bible teaches in Job, chapter 42, verse 2. We read, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you. Jeremiah 32, 27. Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me? In the New Testament, Luke 137, with God, nothing will be impossible. And in Luke 18, 27, Jesus said, the things which are impossible with men are possible with God. Jonathan had this kind of faith. He knew that nothing was impossible with the Lord. He knew that when God is on your side, you are the majority. He knew that he was more than a conqueror through God. He knew that, and because of that, he could speak from that perspective. He could say, there's nothing too hard with the Lord. There's nothing too difficult with God. Sometimes we bring our little problems to the Lord and we say, oh, this is too hard for you, the Lord would say, there's nothing too hard for me. There's nothing too difficult for me. If God could raise his son from the dead, can't he do something in our lives? I believe that he can. And Jonathan did too. Jonathan knew that God could do anything that he chose to do. And so he made that very clear. Perhaps the Lord can save us today. Nothing restrains the Lord from saving, by many or by few. God has the ability, let's see what God wants to do. That's a good way to wake up in the morning and think, by the way, what does God want to do today? What does the Lord want to do in our lives today? What new thing does God want to do in you? What does the Lord want to do in your life today that's unusual? What kind of thing does he want to do this morning with you? What does he want to work inside of you? God has the ability to do that and that's all Jonathan is saying. Nothing restrains the Lord. Well, as he says this, notice verse 7.  Go then, here I am with you according to your heart. When he says, do all that is in your heart, this armor bearer, a man of faith, a courageous man of fidelity says, listen, if you turn around and move, I'll follow, I'll come right behind you. If you lead, I'll follow. It's another way of saying, I've got your back. I'm going to share with you in all of your dangers. If God is moving you, this armor bearer said, then I'm going to move alongside of you.  Psalm 46-7 says, the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge and this man had that understanding. Jonathan's a man willing to take a venture of faith. What's a blessing is he has an armor bearer who supports that. He didn't say anything to undermine what God might have wanted to do. He didn't say, are you kidding me? They've got thousands of soldiers. This is just one garrison representing multiple thousands. Not only do they have soldiers, they have chariots, and they also have horsemen. Are you kidding me? You want to go over there and check that out and you want to pick a fight with these guys? These guys are monsters. He didn't say that at all. His heart was in sync with Jonathan. He trusted in the same God that Jonathan trusted in. I don't know how many of you, as parents perhaps or even as kids, became acquainted with Winnie the Pooh. Very biblical character, Winnie the Pooh. I don't know how many of you were familiar with him, but do you remember Eeyore? Anybody remember Eeyore? He's one of my favorite characters. Oh, and he's always moaning, I can't do that. It's just not going to work. He's a moaner. He's an Eeyore. He is constantly saying, it can't happen. Listen, when you're serving the Lord, you're going to have Eeyores around you. You will always have an Eeyore. There will be two or three. Sometimes there's a whole herd of Eeyores that are around you. It can't happen. It won't happen. It's too much. It's more than you can do. If you're set like Jonathan, nothing's too hard for the Lord. Are you kidding me? What is impossible with God? If God says, let's do it, then let's get on the same page and do it. I've had people in my ministry for years, and sometimes they will say, they're Eeyores. Sometimes they'll say, well, we can't afford it. And you know what, I've already told myself that. I already know that I can't do that. I already know that. That's not news to me. I can't. I'm not eloquent. I understand that. I'm not a man of vision and faith. I understand that. But I have a God who is capable, and that's all I really need is a God who's capable. But you have people who are Eeyores who are saying it can't happen. It won't happen. Well, Jonathan had an armor bearer who said, whatever God is putting in your heart, I want to be part of that. You need men and women like that in your life. People who have counted the costs who are aware that it is dangerous. But listen, if God is moving, on the same page with the Lord, I want to do what God is going to do. I want something new and fresh with Him. I want something vital. I want to move in the things of the Lord. And that's what he had with his armor bearer. Whatever God has placed in your heart, that's what I'll do. Do all that is in your heart. Go then, here I am with you according to your heart. Well, verse 8, Jonathan said, very well, let us cross over to these men and we will show ourselves to them.   For the Lord has delivered them into our hand and this will be a sign to us. So both of them showed themselves to the garrison of the Philistines. The Philistines said, look, the Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they've hidden. Then the men of the garrison called to Jonathan and said, come up to us and we will show you something. Jonathan said to his armor bearer, come up after me, for the Lord has delivered them into the hand of Israel. Jonathan climbed up on his hands and knees with his armor bearer after him and they fell before Jonathan and as he came after him, his armor bearer killed them. The first slaughter which Jonathan and his armor bearer made was about 20 men who also trembled and the earth quaked so that it was very great trembling. Jonathan wasn't going to tempt God. He was trusting in God and therefore asked God to reveal whether or not God was leading him or not and therefore he had a plan. If the Philistines say, we will come to you, they're showing courage. But if they said come to us and showed they were afraid to come to us according to verse 11, to the garrison of the Philistines and as they did so, the Philistines began to mock them. They thought at first that they were deserters who had come out of hiding. We had noted that when the Philistine army had shown up that people were hiding in rocks and caves and so they think they're deserters and it may be that they might want to join them and battle against Israel and so that's why they began to speak with them that way. And so the men of the garrison according to verse 12 following called to Jonathan, come on up to us. Well, Jonathan sees that God's in this and he tells his armor-bearer, let's go. With Jonathan leading the way his friend following, they began to slaughter their enemies in a small area of land. A great victory is won.  Now as they began to flee, they may be thinking these are so ferocious that there must be more than just two and they began to leave and run away. Verse 15 says there's trembling in the camp and there was also an earthquake. So there's great fear that takes place, a terror. It even weakened their raiders which would be equivalent to special ops. On top of this there's an earthquake and it seems that God is even against them and it causes them to fear. Ventures of faith. Ventures of faith. Let's see what God wants to do today. Let's see what the Lord may want to do today. It's a principle that we've been taught that I've been taught by my pastor Chuck Smith. We pastors who pastor in Calvary Chapel Ministries have all been encouraged by our pastor Chuck Smith in this one area, take a venture of faith. When you begin to look around at ministry, when you begin to look around at the Calvary Chapel Ministries, and some of you are familiar with some of the names that I'm about to mention, you will see that God has used ventures of faith as part of what Calvary Chapel Ministry is all about. I can't help but think of men like Mike McIntosh, who's the pastor of Horizon. When he first began it was simply called Calvary Chapel San Diego, but it's now Horizon Ministries. A man with a tremendous mission heart, a man who's traveled the world around, in order that he might preach the gospel. Who happens to be somebody who's very dear to me, a man that I look up to in many ways because of his faith. It's so pure and so real. It's so strong in the things of God. Mike McIntosh. Planted many churches, Bible schools, man who's traveled and done crusades throughout the world. Mike McIntosh was 26 years old. He was doing acid. Some people took him outside, took a revolver and fired it next to his head. He thought it was some freak of nature that he didn't die because he came to believe when he was on that trip that his head had been blown off. As a matter of fact, Pastor Chuck Smith at a Bible study there in Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, and he walked up to Pastor Chuck and he said to him, do you pray for people who need prayer? And Chuck said, yes. He said, could you pray for me? He's 26 years old.  It's been blown off. And Chuck's looking at him and he looks at this poor man who has lost his mind and he lays hands on him and he prays God restore this young man and the rest of his history. Mike McIntosh. You have Steve Mays. Steve Mays who was, you know, just a bad guy got shot, wounded, hadn't had a bath in almost a year, was running. He ended up in a gutter in front of the church. And as they were pulling out, as they were pulling out on their way to church, there's this young man 19 years of age laying in the gutter and they stopped their car and they pulled him out of the gutter there. He literally had slept in the gutter and as they lifted him up, they brought him into the house and they said, son, you need to take a bath. He hadn't had a bath in months. And then they took him to a Calvary chapel house and the young man from Calvary Chapel South Bay, one of the largest Calvary chapels in our movement.   We all know Rawl's story. And what does God do? God saves this angry young man what influence he's had in so many lives. I can go on and on. You all know the names of these guys, all of them are great men of God. God is used in tremendous ways.  Or God said, no, I can do something with them. I've told this story before how my uncle, I had an uncle named Louis, Louis Cannon, married my aunt Tilly. I adored my aunt Tilly. My uncle Louis had gotten injured when he was at work and no longer could work. But he needed to make income for the family and so he would take his little pickup truck and he'd drive through his neighborhood. This was back in the 50s and he would pull over and he would go through trash and find things in the trash. And he would take him to his little shop in the backyard there at his house and he would try and clean things up and he'd try and sell them to make some money so he could feed his kids. I used to be embarrassed of my uncle Louis because my uncle Louis was doing that. And at that time it was nearing Christmas and I had asked my dad for a bicycle. I wanted a Schwinn bicycle. It had to be red and white and it had to have certain things and I used to write notes gee I like my Schwinn bike and I'd put it in my dad's lunch and anywhere my dad would be he'd find notes from David I want a Schwinn bicycle. Well Christmas came and I didn't have a bike under that tree and I was really disappointed but my dad said you know uncle Louis is going to show up and Aunt Tilly they're coming for Christmas they have something for you. So I got kind of excited. So when they showed up my dad said why don't you go outside in the patio and there's something waiting for you and I went walking out into that patio expecting to see a brand new Schwinn and what I found was a bicycle my uncle had pulled out of the trash and by hand had painted red and white and I got mad I said I don't want this piece of junk because that's what it was he didn't even sand the rust off of it I was all bubbled up with red paint on it my dad my dad talked to me about that your uncle loves you your uncle took care of that he went out and got that for you don't be ungrateful and I was ungrateful I was so angry I wanted a Schwinn and not this piece of junk and I went to my room and I was very upset and I said I'll never ride that thing I'm never going to ride that I'm riding around the neighborhood and some kids laughed at me as I knew they would look at that piece of junk and I remember just saying to them this is a bike that was made out of love for me changed my life because the Lord taught me something the Lord taught me then and he's teaching me now that the enemy can take you and use you and dump you but Jesus is like my uncle Louis drives through neighborhoods gets into the trash pulls it out and takes that trash and makes it into a treasure that's what God does God is the God of the possible if you'd have told me forgive me for the emotion I've had at all three services if you'd have told me when I was 23 years old and I started a home Bible study in Norwalk if you'd have told me I wasn't sure that God had for me I would not have believed you would God have opened the windows of heaven could such a thing be so is how I'd have responded are you kidding me I taught a home Bible study in Norwalk a handful of people for years I taught a Bible study in Ontario a handful of people I never saw more than 15 people at a Bible study for years I taught week after week month after month year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year nine solid years I've never seen more than 15 or 20 people come to a Bible study but I did it faithfully because I knew that God wanted to do something I knew that God had a work He wanted to do I knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt I had no doubts that God was beyond me our first Bible study here in this fellowship that became this church was in May of 1981 it was a home in Pomona a handful of people and all we did was we taught the word believed that God could do more than we could ask or think we moved to Ontario started a study there we eventually occupied a small church on Vine Street we went to Central School then on to Ontario Christian Elementary eventually purchased some property on Maple Street in Ontario we rented Ontario High School we then bought this property while here we've torn down we've built up bookstores and classrooms parking lots in the sanctuary our first church services were in about 1300 square feet the whole house was 1300 square feet now we have close to 100,000 square feet if you'd have told me what the Lord wanted to do I'd have said I don't see that but I do know that my God can do anything that he wants and every step of the way one of the things we've learned to say is perhaps God will work for us maybe God wants to do something bigger than we can imagine why limit him you see if we didn't think like Jonathan we'd still be in a front room in Pomona but instead we have churches we have we're on 49 radio stations we've seen God move we've seen God move in tremendous ways over the years and for me I have a great desire and a great burden to see God continue to move I have a desire to see God move in us you see there's a Jonathan there's this heart let's see what God wants to do let's see what he wants to do today but there's also an armor bearer there's also somebody who comes alongside there's somebody else who says you see here what would have happened without armor bearers children's ministers, greeters, ushers parking lot attendants, worship team members we could never have Easter services where we reach thousands of people without that we couldn't have the men's conferences in the retreats the breakfast of small groups we couldn't have hospital visitations there's so much that takes place because you have armor bearers because you have people who say I'm willing to do it let's get out there and see what God wants to do you see Jonathan could simply live stood there alone even questioning himself but for his friend sometimes you can have all the faith in the world but so many times God brings others alongside of you because it's not something you're going to do by yourself you need somebody to work with you sometimes it's a David and Goliath situation where it's just you and God but many times it's you, God and others God calls others alongside of you to serve and they see the task along with you and they say I want to do that I want to be part of that I'm going to move forward with you I thank God for armor bearers I thank God that we have people in this church who do that who say I want to serve the Lord I want to know what God wants to do I want to have an adventure with the Lord I want to be the kind of person who just works for the Lord and serves the Lord and sees God's hand moving we have people in this church who are professionals they're professionals they're lawyers they're doctors they're professionals here in this fellowship but you know what they end up doing they end up being ushers they end up being people who are involved in missions they end up being people on worship teams they end up doing things and for them their job that is so highly regarded by the world is something they do to produce the income to pay their bills but their life is in their ministry they get joy coming to church and caring for our kids and these are people who've got what they have and yet the world could not satisfy them just taking care of the children or leading a worship team or whatever that's where their hearts really are you need to have a heart like a Jonathan or an Armourberry you need to have that where you wake up and you say God what new adventure do you have for me today what do you want to do with me today I'll be faithful whatever it is just help me to do it whatever it may be I learned to speak openly in front of a handful of people I learned to minister to just a handful of people for a year two years three years nine years just doing the faithful thing every week every week going there were times when I was working I was going to school married had children I was teaching three Bible studies a week and it was just because and that's before I was on staff it was just because I wanted to serve the Lord I don't see anything more exciting than serving Jesus Christ I really don't want to have a heart to see young people do the same to be challenged to do the same why not you why not you why can't God use you why can't he use you what's keeping him from using you what is it in front of you and the Lord that keeps you from seeing God do something mighty in your life being faithful in some small thing and watching God bless your hand some day he stands before thousands but you may be someone who leads someone to Christ who will who will be used by God in a marvelous way anybody who reads church history remembers D.L. Moody one of the greatest evangelists the United States ever had but nobody knows who led him to Christ unless you like to read church history and it was his Sunday school teacher who wanted to make sure that people in his Sunday school class who went to where D.L. Moody was working went to a back room with D.L caught him there in the back looking for some shoes for a customer and said I just want to know whether you know Jesus Christ or not D.L. and led him to Christ I don't remember the name of the man who led D.L. Moody to Christ but I remember D.L. Moody everybody knows Billy Graham one of the greatest men of God that we'll ever see in our lifetime but who remembers Mordecai Ham the evangelist that led Billy Graham to Christ when he was 17 years of age who remembers Mordecai? God does who remembers Billy Graham? all the rest who are you and what can God do in your life if you just ask if you have an idea that God is bigger than the now that God wants to do something in you and me the word why not me I've learned to ask that question why not me Lord I want to be used by you you ought to ask the same question why not you what's keeping you from being used in a mighty way dramatic way all you need to do is say Lord perhaps you want to do something today what adventure do you have for me you see Jonathan had an armor bearer the apostle Paul had someone like an armor bearer by the name of Timothy Paul in Philippians 2 19 through 22 said I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly that I also may be encouraged when I know your state for I have no one like minded who will sincerely care for your state for all seek their own not the things which are of Christ Jesus but you know his proven character that as a son with his father he served with me in the gospel like a son with a father I would sit there at Calvary Chapel pastors conferences we have national conferences where all the Calvary chapels are invited and I started going to Calvary Chapel conferences as a pastor back in 1981 and I would sit there amongst the other two three hundred men and they were pastors and assistants and I would listen to teachers of the word the encouragement that they gave and I'd come home to this church and I would put into practice the things that I was learning you can't imagine at one time I sat there listening to the pastors and now I teach the pastors now I speak at the conferences the pastors conferences nationwide, internationally you can't imagine how I feel and last year at the national pastors conference when I was teaching at the conference I turned to my pastor Chuck Smith and I said something like this Chuck at the risk of embarrassing you I said I want to be like Timothy in your life I want to be like a son to his father you see I told Chuck this personally I said God was good to me God gave me my dad Frank, my dad and I loved with all my heart and the Lord took him home and I still hurt I missed my dad God gave me a great dad but Chuck God also gave me you near my dad you've taken the place of my dad and I love you and I told him last year how much he means to me and I've told him many times over the years I want to be a Timothy to my pastor Chuck Paul had a Timothy Jonathan had an armor bear you can have all the vision in the world but if you have no one to hold your hands up or go alongside of you I was willing to say if you die I'll die alongside of you if you don't have that there's not much you can do Jonathan had an armor bear a faithful man who said I've got your back whatever God says I trust you let's see what God wants to do I have to ask how many Jonathan's do we have here today and do we have any armor bearers because if we do we can see the Lord move in some mighty ways and I'm excited to see what God is going to do our Father we ask that you would continue to work in us and I ask that you would raise up an army of men like Jonathan and his armor bearer and women who fit the same kind of criteria Lord who will be used mildly by you our eyes are closed and our heads are bowed perhaps I have some in this room right now you need to get right with the Lord before you can move another step you need to be right with him I want to pray for you if you need to get right with him right now I want to pray for you would you raise your hand and let me pray for you right where you're at Father you see these hands and work within them Lord there may be some healing areas that you need to work in some broken hearts some sadness that you need to bring the joy of salvation to cover them Lord with garments of praise the oil of joy for mourning and awaken in them Lord the joy of your spirit wash and clean and make brand new today Lord fill with your spirit these vessels that are empty anoint them empower them use them may they become mighty weapons in your hand for goodness Lord and may they have eyes to see what your spirit is leading them to see working them tremendously Lord and we receive from you now and we thank you Lord bless you you can put your hands down Jesus I ask that you keep moving in all of us to your glory I pray amen let's all stand forgive the emotion I do get emotional about the things that matter in my heart and I know it's uncomfortable for some it's embarrassing to me but it's real it's what I feel and I want you to know that I really feel that God wants to do a work in all of us and I don't see why not and I hope you have the same attitude why not me why can't God use me and if you have that watch what God's going to do Father I ask that you work in us and through us and use us for your glory again we lift up our mamas to you thank you so much bless them this day Lord Jesus in your name we pray amen God bless you