Hello everybody and welcome to this session called Becoming a Data-Driven Organization. My name's Mandy Chessel. I'm the leader of an open-source project called ODPI Algeria. I'd like to talk a little bit about the background of this project, why we created this open-source project, and the value that can come from using it within an organization. The story starts back in 2013. I was working with the ING Bank, this is a global bank, and they were interested in building a data lake. They had a number of requirements because they're a bank, they have a lot of regulations around how they use data. They were also very concerned that their customer's data wasn't lost, they knew exactly what was happening to it, and it was being used in an ethical way. We came up with this architecture for a data lake that looked at all the different requirements that they needed for data. It became a very successful architecture within the bank, and has been used with many different organizations around the world. I spend a lot of my time working with companies on the data strategy, how they make better use of data, and ensure that it's properly governed. The experience that we had with that data lake architecture resulted in a number of books, and it was very well received because it helped to guide people on all the decisions that they needed to make. However, there was a problem with it in that it was an awful lot of effort to build. This is a cross-section through the different technologies that are used within a data lake. At the base, you can see barely standard commercial products, and you can use open-source products in those spaces as well. But an awful lot of what made the data lake was actually handwritten components that the organization needed to build. There was an awful lot of integration between those components as well. Data lakes became very expensive to build, even when you had a fairly well-defined blueprint to create them. The other thing that we discovered was that as an organization becomes data-driven, everything changes. The way that projects are funded, typically they're funded on application lines. Data-driven organizations need to fund a lateral flow of data between the data silos. Then that creates a completely new way that resources need to be distributed around the organization. It becomes very important that development projects are using real data in order to test and manage the services that they're building. The regulations around data, such as the GDPR, actually start to combine the governance domains between the data privacy people, the data governance people, the IT infrastructure people, the security people. We need to start bringing that metadata together, that they're using the policy metadata. What's happening is that a huge number of tools used by many different professions need to be integrated in order to put that knowledge that's being created by one group of professionals can be shared and used and linked to the knowledge from other professionals. That body of knowledge is what we call metadata. Having gone through this process with ING and a number of other very large companies, we wrote another book that basically said, this is the reason that data lakes are very hard to write, which are to create, and also why it's hard for an organization to become a data-driven organization. One of the things that was in this book was the idea of a maturity model for an organization. Here we are, I'll show that to you. That actually starts from where is my data? That's this very low data awareness. And then knowing how it should be governed, that's governance awareness. Then starting to embed that into all the technologies that are working with the data. That's embedded governance, then building up to allowing the business users to own the settings of governance. So as they make changes to those settings, the data lake and the other processes that are managing data change with it. And then finally, something called data citizenship, which comes from Forrester, is the idea that all employees are enabled with the data that they need, and they work with data as a normal part of their operation. So these different levels had different types of technology integration requirements between them. And when you started to look at any organization, you realized that this was a huge requirement to get all this metadata and tools integrated. And so what we proposed was we need to use an open source project to link together all the different metadata standards and provide a platform to enable an organization to create that data-driven layer, to link together all the tools that they needed. And we sort of started to think, well, what's an example of a good, a way that metadata is working very well? And one of the examples we looked at was photographic metadata. So if you think of a digital camera today, when you take a photograph, an awful lot of information is captured about where you were, the time, date, settings of the camera and things, and that's captured in a standard way and stored with the photo. So when you then load it up into a program, you know, sort of a photograph management program, all of that metadata is available, and then you can add to it and share it. And that's really what we want to enable with all types of data. Since most data, particularly within a business, has no metadata associated with it. So we came up with what we call the metadata and governance manifesto. And this talks about the requirements for managing metadata that's required by a data-driven organization. So automation is key, open standards, open interfaces, making this metadata visible and usable across a wide range of technologies. All of these pieces require both open source projects and different vendor technologies to come together and work together to allow an organization to make better use of their data. We then looked at what types of metadata do we need, and this is a sort of very high-level patchwork quilt of the different standards that we bought together to describe the data assets. And that's a broad definition. That's the thing, the sort of data stores, obviously, feeds and data moving in different feeds and APIs and event type in data sources. So the wide range, there's the infrastructure that sits underneath it, there's the lineage. That's the flow of processing that actually created the dataset. All the different governance requirements from policies and terms and conditions, classifications and different types of procedures that have to happen around data. Glossary describes the meaning of data and you build sort of ontologies of different domains of metadata. The collaboration is the feedback from the people who are actually using the data, so likes and comments and reviews and things on the different data assets. Then we've got the data standards and reference data. So this helps to reduce the cost if things are more consistent. And then finally metadata discovery is where you have automatic processes that are looking into the assets and basically calculating the profile and various other things that are being used. So there's a wide range of metadata. And if I show you the next picture, this is just sort of the next level of detail that seems to have been displaying very well. Oh, I see. So, sorry, I was a different picture I was expecting. So this picture is showing sort of an example of that type of metadata. So at this bottom layer, you have the sort of structural information. So this is what a lot of people think of when they think of metadata. So the database schema is an example of the structural data and it shows you the fields that are in the data. And an idea, there's some sort of symbolic name of what that data means. And then the next thing that we add is links to glossary terms if you remember the glossary. And this starts to give you a much clearer definition of exactly what this means. And there'll be an explanation of sort of its real definition associated with this label. And then we can get really fancy and start linking it together to show how values relate to one another. So we can start to say, well, these are all part of an employee, which means potentially they could be personal data because we're bringing it together. And then finally, we can be very explicit and start to tag the metadata with flags to say which pieces are sensitive. And this picture, which was the one I was expecting earlier, it shows you some of the detail of that metadata structure. And for Agere, we've actually defined nearly 500 types that are part of the metadata requirements and the linkage between them for a data-driven organization. So it's a huge undertaking that we're aiming to support through the Agere project. I mentioned earlier that we're trying to connect together many different tools and there were many different tools involved. So imagine the Fluffy Cloud, that's open metadata and governance, that's what the ODPI Agere project supports. And then it has connection points to all the different types of tools that need to exchange metadata. And it's not just databases, it is reporting tools and security and different developer tools and things like that. So there's a huge range of values. I see a potential question coming in, nope. And so that's really what Agere is doing. But of course, the world is not sort of the place where you could just have one single database that everything is connecting to. In fact, many tools have their own database with metadata in them. So what Agere is trying to do is to create a peer-to-peer protocol between these repositories to allow them to exchange the metadata that they need. So they don't need modifying, basically we create connectors that link them together and exchange the metadata that each repository cares about. The other thing that when you start looking at pictures like that, it looks quite straightforward, but actually the real world is multi-cloud, multi-platform, highly distributed. And so our solution has to work in this environment. And again, a single centralised place that everything is connecting to really doesn't work. So when I said this is a peer-to-peer distributed protocol, the orange here that's gone into the picture is really showing where the metadata is located and the dotted line shows the integration that Agere does under the covers to create the illusion that there is one single virtual view of metadata that each of the repositories are connecting to, but actually they are all part of... They are actually separate, but connected through the Agere protocols. The other thing that makes this a little bit harder is that different capabilities, different technologies have different capabilities when it comes to integration. So for example, a relational database typically is what I would call a passive technology. It has open APIs, but it doesn't send out any notifications when its scheme has changed. So we need to periodically poll it and validate that we've got all the metadata that is all the schema information that's been defined in that repository. So that's a passive technology. Something like Apache Cassandra is an active technology and it creates an event every time a new schema is created in Cassandra in its own format. So all we have to do is to listen and then convert it to our format and bring it through. So we have specialist servers that are sitting, listening or polling different technologies to continuously automate the capture of metadata from different technologies. We also have APIs that UIs and other scripting tools and things can allow more manual capture of metadata as required. And they connect into specialist interfaces for the different types of tools which are then brought into the ecosystem and shared. So when we look at the sort of a connected environment what you see is in the center there's a thing here called cohort A. And that's a set of tools that are sharing metadata. And the cohort is built dynamically it automatically configures itself as new members join or leave. And when a member joins they pass information about themselves and that automatically configures the other members so that they can now issue queries on the new member that's just joined the cohort. And then connected off of those sort of cohort members as we call them are other servers the sort of governance servers that are connecting into different technologies and providing and sort of gathering metadata. We also push metadata. So in this picture you can see at the bottom is metadata being gathered from different data platforms. But then at the top on the left hand side you can see that we're actually pushing metadata to Apache Ranger and a data virtualization tool to dynamically create secured views over the data that's being added to the ecosystem. So even though the metadata is gathered in one tool it can be consumed and used by a different tool even though these tools are surrounding the same data. The other thing that we need to be mindful of is when you think about that distributed environment we've got some technology that's running in a centralized cloud environment needs to be highly scalable needs to be continuously available. We have other places where it may be a small team that has a variety of requirements. So we might need to sort of have lots of different servers sitting on the same platform so that we have a sort of multi-tenant or a sort of consolidated environment for small situations. And then in the IoT space we may need to run on something as small as a Raspberry Pi. And so the Aduria technology has a thing called the Omag server platform that hosts all the integration technology and it can be configured in lots of different ways to allow us to go from the smallest machine up to the largest cloud environment using the same technology and just by altering its configuration. So the aim is that when an organization is using Aduria so in this picture here the light blue is Aduria and you can see that there are lots of different technologies that are connecting and supporting different communities. So there's a sort of community of different professionals connected at each point. And Aduria will gather the metadata that is of value to that community by their interaction. It uses their interaction and their activity and its configuration in order to determine what metadata is gathered at any one of those points. But the result is that one group of users might create information about a data set. That is then shared. Somebody else may add classifications to it to identify where sensitive data is. That might then go on to configure a security tool and may also create reports to the privacy team so that they can see that private data is now being deployed to a new location. So you can start to see how the value of the knowledge is shared and augmented and shared again as we bring this ecosystem together. Now, technology is important but this open source project also focuses on creating a secure and conformant environment so that technologies from different vendors can be connected together safely and they don't corrupt one another. And also we're interested in helping people who are trying to transition their organization to become more data-driven with education examples, suggested best practices that then link down into the Algeria technology and show how it can be used. Because this is an incredibly complicated topic and there's an awful lot of people being given data-oriented roles that they've never done before. And so the aim in the Algeria project is to make sure that we help people as much as possible both in the technology that we provide but also in the advice and the best practices that are linked with it. We are completely open project. Everything we've done has been created through GitHub. We have a number of companies that are working together to create this common technology. And so everything that we show, we use is available through our various GitHub repositories. The technology itself is organized into three layers. There's what we call the developers toolkit at the bottom which is all the libraries and plug points and connector interfaces to allow you to build your own integration environment depending on the technologies that you use. Then above that is what we call the integration platform and these are the pre-built connectors for different technologies. So these are the things you don't have to write and then there are some UIs that make it easier to monitor what's happening in the integration environment. And then finally we have the governance solutions that sit on top and they exploit the fact that we now have this view of metadata, view of the organization and its operations that has never been visible before. And so the solutions start to take advantage of that and allow people to a more powerful use of the metadata that they've created. So that was a bit of a whistle-stop tour on ODP Igeria and what it potentially can do for your organization. I have some time for some questions so we can put the questions slide up. I don't have any questions there now but if anybody would like to leave and anybody got any questions, I'm happy to answer them now. Otherwise, I will move you over to the links page and you can see here we've got a number of press releases and external things but really everything that you need to know is in those two GitHub repositories that I'm showing you. The Denti Governance one is the one that contains all the best practices and then the Igeria one is the source code and all the documentation for the Igeria software. So that's it. So if there are no questions, I think we have finished.


Given a group G and a set S, a group action F from the Cartesian product G by S into S defines two important objects. Given an element of S, we can talk about the orbit of S, which we talked about previously, and also the stabilizer. Let F be our group action for an element of S. The stabilizer is the subset of G, where G applied to S just returns S. If the orbit answers the question, where in our set S can I go, the stabilizer answers the question, what in our group G will keep me in place? So for example, let's consider the multiplicative group of integers mod 31 and S to be the set of cosets of the subgroup generated by the element 2. And let's find the stabilizer of the element 3H. And that means we want to find elements of our group where G applied to the element 3H gives us the element 3H. So to begin with, we note that 3H is the set. And also because this is a coset, our cosets are either disjoint or identical. And so if an element of A applied to 3H, which is to say this set is already in 3H, then A is going to be an element of the stabilizer. So let's consider, maybe 3A is this first element 3, in which case A is 1. And so 1 is an element of our stabilizer. Or maybe this element 3A is 6, and we solve and find. And so 2 is another element of our stabilizer. And similarly, maybe 3A is 12, giving us 4 as an element of the stabilizer. Maybe 3A is this element 24, and so 8 is an element of the stabilizer. Or maybe 3A is 17, and that gives us 16 as an element of our stabilizer. Now if you think about this carefully, you may wonder, do we also need to solve 6A? Is 3, 6, 12, and so on. And it turns out, we don't have to, we just get the same solutions as we did before. Or again, if our set consists of different expressions involving four variables, we might try to find the stabilizer of a particular expression about x, y, plus z, w. And so we note that we're looking for the permutations that leave our expression essentially the same, where we assume that our variables still have the same properties as the real numbers. And so we might do nothing, that's our identity permutation. If we swap the variables x and y, that doesn't change anything. If we swap the variables z and w, that also changes nothing. And if we swap both sets of variables, that changes nothing. And so our stabilizer is going to be the set consisting of the elements, the identity, x, y, z, w, and x, y, z, w. Now by definition, the identity of g acting on an element of s gives us s, so the identity of g is an element of the stabilizer. And since the elements of the stabilizer are elements of g, they're subject to the binary operation of g. And so the question you've got to ask yourself is, self, might they form a group? And in fact, they do let f be a group action. For any element of s, the stabilizer of s is a subgroup of g.


This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Good morning. This is Craig Thomas, your host on Much More on Medicine, part of Think Tech Hawaii's live stream series, and assisted by Cindy and Rich, our engineers, and joining me today is Ray Fidel. He's many things. Today he's here in the role of a concerned citizen. And we're going to do something a little different today, which is we're going to talk about some current medical topics, including, I believe, one, hold off the TV, probably as recently as last night, and look also some 2018 medical literature. And I'm delighted you're here. I'm delighted to be here, Craig. Good. You know, we all have bodies. We all make choices medically or have choices made for us, as the case may be. And far as I can tell in the end, none of us are going to leave this alive. So we're part of the great experiment, and it's honestly pretty uncontrolled because, especially in this country, nobody's keeping track. I misspoke. A politically correct way of saying that would be there is no national data repository for our health interventions, treatments, outcomes, that kind of thing. And that would be fantastic if there were. We should start with some good news. So Hawaii is second in the nation in the rate of percentage of the populace. I should say it's all of us, covered by health insurance. That's fantastic. We have a little bit less than 5% uninsured. And that's stunning. Why is it? Why is it? It's honestly, Hawaii has always been very good in this category because of the health insurance reform of the 70s. It was actually, in my opinion, improved by the ACA, the Affordable Care Act. And this is sort of exemplified by who's number one, which is Massachusetts. Massachusetts also had a comprehensive insurance plan before the ACA was initiated. But that was the model for the ACA. So it works. And as a consequence, Hawaii and Massachusetts are leaders in many categories of health among all the states. And the states didn't expand Medicaid, adopted the ACA kind of grudgingly. They tend to be at the back. And I think the highest uninsured rate is Texas. Is there a correlation between the percentage of people covered by insurance and the quality, you know, the medical quality of their lives, health in general as a quotient? So that's a really interesting question. And we are actually having the opportunity to do this sort of experiment because you can always compare before ACA and after. You can also compare Medicaid adoption or not. And you can even, in some states, and Oregon comes to mind, see different strategies in specific populations based on geographics because if you have insufficient money to expand old mammography services every other year to all. And this is not just the U.S. This experiment has been done in Scandinavia, for example. You can then see what the outcomes are. And interestingly, mammography, assumed to be beneficial, may not decrease overall death. It decreases a little bit, death due to breast cancer, but it comes at a cost.  Sort of in the interest, just as an aside, of gender equality, pretty much the same is true of prostate screening and treatments. You might decrease the death rate due to prostate cancer slightly, one or two out of a thousand, but overall mortality doesn't change because the people you're treating weren't going to die from it. It's not so simple. You can hurt them. No, it's not simple. And I think that's actually one of the lessons of the day. It's not simple. There's some obvious things that we're just learning now. There are clearly some very basic things we don't know. That's exciting. And honestly, we live in interesting times in medicine. We're finding now getting good databases. We're getting the dawn of artificial intelligence, which hopefully will, I think it's going to revolutionize imaging, for example, computers. But not all of medicine. When did I see a piece that said, do not rely, a doctor wrote this piece, do not rely on artificial intelligence to make diagnoses. Well, intelligence is good. Hopefully the human can bring some. Yeah, you don't want to rely on it. In fact, so far it's not been very successful. I think that the early successes are in analysis of images, which makes sense because they're digital. They're tricky and it's learnable. That's where the early waveforms, EKGs, for example, what kind of illness do you have and what should we do next? That's much harder. And in fact, what was it called? It was called the computer that did well at Jeopardy Watson. It was called IBM Watson. Yeah, IBM Watson, a great name. It's not doing very well in medicine right now. Still, I think that in the future, I think it will in time. I don't know about Watson, but when I started medical school, which was in the 70s, I thought computers are going to have me out of a job in no time because the belief then was we can set up an equation. Okay, so you're a male. You have right lower quadrant pain for X hours.  Your probability of appendicitis is 97.2%. Trouble is no one's ever able to figure out what that all means. It didn't work. Yeah, it didn't work. But it's so interesting because the point about keeping records, keeping demographics like they do in Europe using what you learn in demographics about choices made and results obtained, we don't have that so much in this country. And you'd think with all our technology and with the fact that the federal government has so much leverage over how doctors provide information that the federal government could say, look, we want it just like it is in Europe. We want you to report on outcomes. We want you to help us in a national database of outcomes and we'll use that to advise the profession. Yeah. Oh, I think it'd be fantastic. And there's progress. However, we have a pretty fragmented healthcare system. So in some ways we're great. If you need a cutting-edge treatment that works, that would be a first concern, but a cutting-edge treatment that works, there's nowhere better to be in the world. There's some other places there is good to be, but there's nowhere better. If you need access to basic health screening and healthcare, we're not so good. And where we do really badly is what's called coordination of care. And that means if I see you in the emergency department, did I know that you got treated yesterday up the street and these are your meds and your imaging from last month showed this? No, I usually don't know that, unless it was done at my hospital. And that's pretty normal in the U.S. We've got to do better. We've got to do better. And excitingly, there's something called EDIE, which stands for Emergency Department Information Exchange that's coming to Hawaii, that is going to help that in the emergency departments. I don't think it's going to make a big difference outside of the departments for a while, but that's huge. At least I'll know where you were, what got done, and what I should do next. A little chip in my hand somewhere. Just subcutaneous. And it has my whole medical record on there, and I walk around with it. It would work. And you know, the veterinarians are ahead of us in this. So may I may suggest, I actually like our vet very much. And I'll make an appointment for you, get you chipped. I don't think the pet ones are medical records. They're more identification. When I get lost, right? But no, honestly, that could be done. Or even we have appropriately guarded access to medical information. You don't want your medical record on the front page. Neither do I. Yours or mine, for that matter. On the other hand, everything has a cost. And if you sequester the information so securely, it can never be hacked. It'll never be accessed. And then you might as well not have it. It's a balance. It's a balance. And honestly, given that it's potentially life-saving, I'm willing to chance it on. Me too. Can we talk about trust for a minute? Of course. We talked about choices. Patients make choices. And they make the choices with the doctor and upon the doctor's advice. And a part of that is trusting the doctor, trusting the hospital. If I'm worried, for example, about MIRSA, I may not be too happy to go to a hospital that's had a lot of cases of MIRSA. At the same time, I want to trust my doctor on a field that what he advises me is something I can and must and should do do the right thing. There was a piece on Hawaii Public Radio a day or two ago about African American doctors. There's an initiative to have more of them. And the study was so interesting. The study was that African American patients are more likely to listen and follow the advice of an African American doctor rather than a non-African American doctor. Do you know why that is? No, I don't. I do. Well, I can't tell you I know why it is, but I can tell you that's probably a good strategy. The embarrassingly in medicine, there is evidence that the gender and the race of the doctor treating you, depending on who you are, particularly, impacts what gets done, what gets done, how affected the communication is. And this is, I think, an example of all of us have internal biases we're not even aware of. Implicit bias. Implicit bias is the word. And do I wish it wasn't so? Oh, I do, honestly. As an enriched doctor, I treat whoever comes in the door. Some of them look like me, not too many, but some of them look like me, but obviously some are very different from me. And on the side of the patient, the patient has to look deeply in the eyes of the doctor just to see how the doctor moves. He has to actually think about what kind of an individual the doctor is and define his level of trust based on the human experience. It's true. And so our job is, every specialty is different. In my job, odds are very high. We've never counted each other before. And somehow I have to get you to share with me important private stuff you may not have told anybody else. Or even if you have, it's private. You're in an exquisite situation, though, because the patient in an emergency room said he's very vulnerable, or she. And he doesn't want to resist. He doesn't want to do game-playing with you. He needs you to life. And so he is going to do pretty much, I would say, all the time what you have to offer. Well, the question isn't so much what I have to offer, although now we're talking about shared decision-making and things, which is a very interesting topic. But the real question, the real issue is, some things, you know, you've got to nail through your forearm. I can probably make the diagnosis. But if you have, I don't know, a fever and a few other things, a weird rash and stuff like that, the more we can connect early. And you can share with me things that you're concerned about may seem inconsequential. The better chance I have of figuring it out and helping you. Right. And once I understand that, I'm going to be willing to share everything with you for what you call it shared decision-making. Right. And we can talk a little about shared decision-making, which is sounds fantastic, just like many other words in medicine, evidence-based medicine, sounds fantastic. It is. Shared decision-making is too, they're not easy. I'll tell you, I'll pick those up after the break and that has been fun so far. I look forward to more. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I'm Ethan Allen, host on Think Tech Hawaii of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Every other Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m., I hope you'll join us as we explore the value, the accomplishments and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Islands. I love this discussion. Welcome back. I'm with Jay Fidel, a curious citizen and owner of a body, like all of us, therefore interested in medicine. Yeah, sometimes I wonder about being the owner of the body. Sounds more like the body owns me. In the end, they always do. It does what it wants. Yeah, no, it's really true. In fact, the interaction of mind and body is a topic for a different, well, not entirely, mostly for a different subject, but we were talking about evidence, shared decisions and how complicated that is. And, well, raise the question. Okay, I need to make decisions. I recognize, and our body feels this way, but I recognize that I'm the guy in the world who cares most about my body, just the way it works. It seems like that's healthy. So I have to make decisions. And if I choose not to make them, if I choose not to inform myself, I will probably pay a price. So a random approach doesn't really work very well on medicine. So I have to be aware of the doctor. I have to be aware of at least what's available in the press on the new medical research. I have to follow advice, which is a matter of trust. And I have to deal with the information that comes to me. For example, sitting in front of the television on any given evening on cable or otherwise on every channel I can think of, there's the wars. I call them the warfarin wars, warfarin versus zirelto versus two or three others. And they're all blood thinners, and they reduce the risk of stroke if you have factors that might otherwise give you a stroke or a heart attack. This will help you. I say, gee, you know, that sounds really interesting. But which one do I look at the flash he had? They're romantic sometimes. The doctors are very good looking. They're very well produced. And they are repeated over and over and over again.  Am I going to make this decision? Do I go to my doctor and say, Craig, you know, I know you wanted me to use baby aspirin, but forget that. I need warfarin, right? Well, the ad actually is for the new high price spread against warfarin. So I might have you on warfarin and you want to be in Xeralto or whatever.  They're anything but worldwide. Mostly that's not allowed. And you might say, well, this is good. Empowers knowledge and all that stuff. I don't think it's good. And yes, the goal is for you to come to me to change your prescription. Now, by the way, we're all human. I have my own pressures. I get detailed by drug graphs. We ban them from the hospitals. And that's a good thing. They still take pizzas to a lot of doctor's offices and there's evidence that it works, which is very... Food and prescription. You know what's so interesting about it? Doctors are so cheap. Just a couple pizzas and you can impact prescribed and practiced.  Anyway, back to your thing. None of us should be making decisions based on advertising. Surely we do. We shouldn't be. Why is it permitted? It just seems so inappropriate, so offensive really to tell me and I'm really ignorant about this which drug I should use. And then, of course, the sequence is often, they're going to tell you how beautiful the drug is in beautiful people, romantic scene, idyllic, idyllic. And then at the same time, they're repeating all the warnings. You can take this drug and it can save you from a stroke, but it can also kill you from some horrible, horrible disease. Well, it's true. And here's a list of all the deadly, fatal kinds of things. But we have the best drug.  And he's on it. Anyone who has taken Zeralto or their loved one who is now... Call me. Call me. That's right. What? So this is a fascinating topic. And I'll stick with you shouldn't use advertising. I shouldn't, you shouldn't, who decide the best course of action almost ever, including particularly in medicine. The next thing is benefit is always assumed. Harm is delegated. So if I put you on Zeralto, all of the advantages, you don't get your blood drawn to get checked and it'd be easier to stay in range, etc. That's all nice. The fact that some of those new anticoagulates have a higher risk factor for cardiac disease, and it's a risk down there, but it's not mentioned. Overall, I do think in that particular arena, we're mostly talking market share. Overall, I think warfarin is going to be used less and less. Perfectly fine, but difficult to use drug. And probably the other three or four new ones, hopefully the right one will surf, it will swim to the top. That's what this fight is about. Is it important, you know, is it important in the process of deploying new technology? I mean, there is new technology. These drugs are new technology. They are. They can improve my prospects. On the other hand, is it necessary to advertise in order to roll them out and make them available and make the public accept them? No, I don't believe so. Or at least the rest of the world certainly doesn't use that practice. And you asked before, why is this allowed? You didn't ask many other questions like, why are drug prices so high? Why is it not competitive? Why is lack of inferiority, the bar to putting in something new? Well, that's a pretty low bar. It should be, like, better. And the answer is the same for all those questions. Big Pharma is very powerful and supports many people in our government. And the rules are good for them and they're less good for us. So that kind of technology, which costs billions to get it all approved and trials and all that and then roll it out and advertise it and whatever you've got to do to make it acceptable to the public. That's different, isn't it, than medical research. Research that's funded by the National Institutes of Health, any number of charitable organizations that fund medical research. Well, and the drug companies. Ah, yes. Thank you, yes. And so, yes, pure medical research is funded differently. But more and more, it's actually being funded by the drug companies. And the problem with that is clearly you're under tremendous pressure. Even whoever's funding it, you want to have a positive result. Okay, well, we all work to get positive results. Turns out we work a little too hard. Honestly, there are some crooked researchers, but also it's just, it's hard to do right. The real question is, can you replicate the result? Or can someone else? That's the real question.  Relief is good. Relief from pain is good. Yes. But then you habituate them and you know it and you keep doing it. I mean, that's real trouble. Talk about credibility. Well, the opioid story is probably worth a whole session. But in short, a well-organized, pharma-driven research and PR campaign was performed. Research can definitely be inappropriate. There's inappropriate research. Many examples. Inappropriate. Inappropriate. The tobacco research years ago, oh yeah, was wrong. The sugar research much more recently was wrong. The opioid research about the danger of addiction after acute pain was wrong. There was a big market.  How much is your pain? Actually, it's 0 to 10. And you pick a number. Well, this was part of a campaign with the rollout of OxyContin. And it's universal. Any ER is going to ask you that question. There was a 15 or 20-year push to do that. It's completely subjective. Well, of course it's subjective and it's not measurable. It's not measurable. OxyContin, I give you a high number. Yeah, go for 12. Top is 10.  The best predictor is picking a number greater than 10. You weren't offered a number greater than 10, but you took it anyway. No, the opioid epidemic is a case in point of the corrupting power of money in big pharma on everyone. And there are some doctors who are just criminal in this. But all of us were influenced. Pain's a vital sign. You're scored on satisfaction. Your patients don't want to hurt. I'm all in with that. Potential for harm is not usually at the front of those decisions. Then it needs to be balanced. This is why shared decision-making is tough. Yes, I can make your pain better. I can't take it away, but you won't care about it very much. I'll also make you constipated for sure. And there's some chance you'll get hooked. That's terrible. Not very high, but it's not zero either. And you'll be habituated. Yeah, well, that's right. Even, well, they go together, but habituated, of course, sort of means you develop tolerance. So not only, in the end, you're in the worst of all worlds. You have to take the pill to keep from going into withdrawal. So it doesn't even mean like you're doing that well. You just stand out of withdrawal. So it's a mess. And in the bigger picture, it's why shared decision-making is tough. How do you weigh it? What's important to each individual? What do we know? And what don't we know? We don't know some really basic things, or at least we haven't recognized some really basic things. The public still doesn't know, really. I suppose in the red states where they kind of live on this stuff and there's really millions and millions of bills are being floated out there to the community in lieu of real medicine, I think, you know? It's easier than solving a problem. It's easier than solving a problem. But, you know, does the public really understand about opioids? Does the public say, no, don't suggest that to me, doctor. I don't want any part of that. There is some work, yeah. It's starting to happen. So, and of course, there's also a significant subset who come to see us for just that reason. So, because they want them. So, it's not solved. Interestingly, opioids in Hawaii aren't that big a deal. They're real. It's an issue. And there are some providers who honestly go into jail. They really have, because they prescribe too many. The drugs here that matter the most are alcohol and methamphetamine.  You'll be bad to people sitting near you. But overall, it doesn't affect most others. Alcohol, you can run over me.  I don't like that. There's been some interesting literature research about the other health impacts of alcohol, which are much greater than anyone wanted to recognize. To your own self. To your own self. Long term. Long term.  It does, yeah. And it's long been sort of touted. Here's probably an example of some industry-associated research that, oh, it's good for your heart. You'll, a little wine is good. Isn't that, isn't it been debunked lately? Yes. All alcohol is bad for you? The, yes. I think that's a fair summary. And whatever possible beneficial effects there are, they're very small if they exist at all and they're vastly outweighed by all the deleterious ones. And it's dose-related. It's interesting, too, that the individual person, the patient, a curious member of the community, has to watch for the changing of the ideas, the changing of the medical ideas.  Perfect, yeah. Even for small children. Mendes France. Remember him? Yeah. Premier of France. Yes. And now, you know, it's different. So you have to watch out. And the whole thing about prostate screening, should you have it? Shouldn't you have it? I mean, it changes. Well, it does. And as we learn more, things evolve. But I guess my advice would be, be skeptical of any source of information that has a bottom line associated with what they're telling you. So if, in the recent scandal, the alcohol research was, the spirits industry was subsidizing the research. Oh, no. They blew up the study. Oh, yeah. It should have. Oh, just like the tobacco thing. It's like, yes, or the sugar thing. So, and the screening, don't forget there's the medical industrial complex. There's big money in screening. And it's not just the testing. It's what comes after. Which overall, you're optimistic. Overall, you're optimistic because you read the journals, you get the journals every day or every hour, all those journals, and they have very interesting, important advances in medical science. So overall, I'm excited. I think we're at the threshold of new opportunities with data and other kinds of interventions. And hopefully we'll have a way of sharing information so people can make informed decisions, which is how we all get healthier. Tell us about some of the remarkable results in medical research these days. Well, you know, I think we're going to have to do another whole talk about this. Sorry. No, we had it. No. Well, the, well, I'll tell you what, we'll touch on a couple and then we'll have to go for next time. Okay. We're just learning about the microbiome. We are more bacteria and viruses than we are cells. This is an astonishing thought. We're appreciating sometimes at very basic levels things like importance of sleep or cardiovascular fitness or lean body mass versus overall weight. All these things matter. And so we're part of the great experiment. And to me that's exciting because it's a chance to be healthier and happier. And so, Jay, we'll have to do this again. I hope so. I want that. I'll look forward to it. Thanks for joining us. This is much more on medicine with host Jay Fidel, part of the Kauai's live stream series. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Craig. Thank you. And thanks for joining us.


You all taught me more in the last year I've been with CEV about uncommon valor than I have ever read or learned in my entire life. You're professionals, you know exactly what you're doing, and you're going to go out here tomorrow and you're going to do it. And that's exactly what they did. Marines from Second Combat Engineer Battalion embarked on Operation Black Sand. An operation that would see Second CEV clear the Ladar Bazaar in Shikabani, Afghanistan. Basically the first stage was the movement to Shikabani. Once we were prepped here we pushed to the Ladar Bazaar. However the entrance to the staging area was a tight squeeze. Luckily assault breaching vehicles or ABVs were able to make a usable path into the Bazaar. We had to build a farp, obviously to stage everything and hasty LZ, in case of a meta-back. From there we commenced to destroying the Bazaar via explosives. The explosives, M58 mine clearing line charges for Miklix give CEV more than enough firepower to accomplish the mission. Basically a Miklix is 1750 pounds of C4 that's fired out with a rocket. It clears quite an area explosively. Through five days of Bazaar clearing CEV launched off 35 Miklix totaling in more than 61,000 pounds of C4 while destroying numerous IEDs and weapon caches in the process. As far as the local people go, obviously we took out the bad and we're going to put in the good so it'll give them a better way of living in the area. Bazaar free of IEDs that people at Shikbani have a clear path to building a better future.


Okay, okay, yeah, why don't we pray and then we'll get started, right? We'll just pray. We'll thank the Lord, we'll thank the Lord for who He is. We'll thank the Lord because He's our Heavenly Father. Thank the Lord because He loves us, He cares for us, He's concerned about us, right? Let's thank the Lord. Father, we thank You. Thank You Lord for this beautiful day that You've given us, Lord. We thank You that every day is full of so much of potential, but Lord, You pack it with good things for each one of us to discover and to walk in. Lord, we thank You for this day. And Lord, we thank You, God, that You are so mindful of us, Master. You know, God, everything that is going on in our lives and yet, Lord, You've drawn here to us, Lord. And You take care of all our needs according to Your riches and glory. And Father God, we just want to thank You for Your love, for Your grace and Your mercy today, Master. We thank You, Lord, as Your Word declares, the blessing of the Lord makes one rich and adds no sorrow to it. And we thank You for the every blessing that we have received today, God. Till today, Master, every blessing, Lord, everything in all realms, whether it be in the Spirit, whether it be in the Lord, in our emotions, whether it be in our bodies or Lord. All aspects, Father God, we thank You for every blessing and the amazing ways in which You've blessed us, Lord. We thank You. And so, God, we today, we give You all the praise and all the glory. In Jesus' matchless name, we pray. Amen, amen. Okay. Okay, at the start, I just want us to write down any three blessings that You received. Okay, three blessings that You are thankful for, thankful to the Lord for. Okay, just write down quickly. Three blessings that You are thankful to the Lord for. Okay, all my students as well. Three things, three blessings that You have received from the Lord, and You are thankful to Him for these things, right? Okay, yeah. If you want to post it online, students, if you want to post it on the chat, that's fine. I think Sam has gone ahead and done it. So, Sam, is it in that order or order of priority? What do you post it? Yeah, it's that date also, so I have to put that. Today is Valentine's Day. I think you're muted. Can we on the monitor one second? We're not able to hear one second. Yeah, can you say something, Sam? Yeah, can you hear me first? No, one second. So on, check. For some reason, we're not able to hear, Sam. Sorry. Okay, no problem. Is it connected? No, it's not okay. Okay, everyone written down? Check. Okay, and I think bring it down. Did somebody raise their hands? Yeah, yes, Gertrude. Go ahead. Pastor, I want to thank God for the gift of life that He has given me, and gift of healing, and gift of tongues. Okay, life, healing, and tongues. Sam, it's wife, home, and ministry. Anyone else you want to list down? When we list down and we write down, it makes it even more real. Maybe it's in our mind, maybe it's there in our hearts, but then when you actually write it down or put it, text it, or enter it somewhere, and you see it for yourself, then you realize there's something that's real. It makes it so much more real. So, yeah. Anybody else wants to share? Whatever you've written down? What are those blessings? You've written down, right? Okay. Anyone else? Yeah, Kaila. I'm thankful for His good fellowship. For? Good fellowship. Thank you for good fellowship. God's thankful for His favor and love. For good talent. For talent, okay. Talent and ability. Right. Okay. See, good health, peace of mind, Bible college. That's Sanjay. Lucy Samuel, thank God for blessing me to study the word of God. I thank God for my family. Being blessed at all times with His riches, love, and good health, right? Awesome. Yeah. So, why do you think, okay, all those blessings are there, why do you think God has blessed you? Are you being a good boy, a good girl, a good person? Why do you think He has blessed you? Sorry? It's His nature. It's His nature to bless. Okay. Does that mean that you are not a good person? He saw you and it was good, and He said, okay, this is a good boy, so I want to bless the talent and fellowship. And that's true. Yeah. Anyone else? He desires to see his children prosper and be happy. I think Lucy is, but he's mindful of us, right?   This is how He is that He wants to bless His people. Okay. So, sometimes we go through maybe bad experience, maybe lack, maybe some kind of, you know, difficult circumstances. And when we go through that, we are not able to connect the fact that God is a God whose nature is to bless. Yes or no?  But the thing is we need to get back to who God says He is, or what God says about Himself, right? And the best place is, of course, the Word of God, where He describes about Himself, where people testify about God, about who He is, right, and what He has done. And the pages of scripture testify to the fact that He is a good God, that He is a faithful God, right? And so we understand that it is in His very innate nature to bless people. Okay. So that is why we can go and pray. See, if you look at the covenant names of God, right, what are some covenant names of God? Jehovah, Jaira, Rafa, Shalom, Nisi, Sidkenu, right?  But they are packed with meaning and it is, you know, these are covenant names because God is actually making a covenant. He's introducing Himself and He's saying, this is who I am. Okay, so He's saying, okay, Jehovah Nisi. So He's saying, I am the banner of victory for you. You know, there's a meaning behind that name, right? So whenever He introduces Himself, He says, this is who I am. This is what I can do and this is what I will do, right? Whenever He introduces Himself. We see that, you know, not only is it in His nature, but the way He introduces Himself, He describes Himself as this, okay? So He's one who brings blessing. He's one who guarantees this. He introduces Himself as this. So therefore, we can be confident, right? We can have faith in the fact that God is a God who wants to bring this into my life, who wants to bring victory into my life, who wants to bring success or prosperity into my life. See, otherwise, what's the point in praying, right? If God is not a God who will bless, if God is not a God who will heal, you know, what is the point in praying? Because we are not praying, in that case, we are not praying according to God's will. We cannot stand in faith, right? We can't be sure of, you know, like what faith is, right? It is the evidence of things not yet seen. It's a substance of things that are hoped for, right? So what is the point in praying at all? So we can pray in faith. We can pray fully believing, because when we understand that this is who God is, right? So also when it comes to blessings and what God does for us and what God wants to bring into our lives, we can be fully confident because it is His nature to bless. So we're just going to look at a few things and to answer that question, right? How can we be confident? We need to be confident, right? We need to be sure. Otherwise, you know, we will never be, we will always be in two minds, right? We will waver in unbelief, right? We will not be in one mind, single-minded about these things, right? Maybe sometimes when difficulties come, God, are you there or not? Do you want to bless or not bless? Do you want to heal or not heal? We'll be in two minds when we see some circumstances, which are difficult, right? But when we know for sure this is who God is, we can be, you know, fully trust Him. We can fully, you know, depend on Him, okay? So we looked at a kind of couple of scriptures. We saw Genesis 1 last time, Genesis 127, where He created man in His own image, and He blessed, right? That's the thing, He blessed them. It says, He created Him male and female. Verse 28, then God blessed them and said to them, okay, do this, right? Be fruitful and multiply and so on, okay? So we see several scriptures like that, right? James 1, 17 in the New Testament. God, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, okay? So He's talking about God, the Father, that the perfect gift, the good gift, comes from Him, right? Which means He's the giver of good gifts. He's the giver of good things in our lives, right? It comes from Him. So we can be absolutely, you know, confident and sure. My God wants to give me good things, right? He wants to bless me with good things. Why? Because that's who He is, right? That is His nature. Okay, so we look at, you know, the Lord Jesus, okay? Isaiah 9 and verse 6. Now this is what it says about the Lord, right? The prophetic verses, scriptures, right? For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. Isaiah 9 verse 6. And the government will be upon His shoulder and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Okay, Prince of Peace. Which means Shalom. Okay, that word peace used there, Shalom. And it doesn't mean just something, a quiet place. The word peace used there is Shalom. It goes beyond some place quiet. You know, sometimes when we look at some forest or some, you know, maybe some green grass is there and some trees are there and everything is very quiet. You know, they're out there. You say, oh wow, such a peaceful place, right? Such a peaceful place. So it's not just absence of noise that we are talking about. He's the Prince of Peace. It's not that God will just, you know, create that ambience or all that the environment where there is no noise or conflict. It's more than that. It goes beyond that, right? So that word Shalom, it means total well-being. Okay, which means peace of mind. It also means there is goodwill. There is deliverance. There is prosperity, safety, so on. So that's the word Shalom. Okay, so who is Jesus? He's the Prince of Shalom, right? He's the author. He's a Prince. He's from which Shalom originates. So you see that he's the Prince of Shalom, right?  Okay, one more verse that you see in verse Isaiah 48 and verse 17 and 18. Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.   So saying your Shalom, your peace would have been like a river. So a river is not stationary, it is moving. So sometimes we wonder, okay, after 10 minutes will the river stop flowing? What do you think? It does not, right? It just keeps flowing. There's a never ending supply of water and because of which it's called a river and it is flowing.  So what do we understand? The Prince of Shalom, his intention is to bring Shalom into our lives and here it says, if you had heeded the commandments, if you had heeded the instructions of the Lord, your Shalom would have been like a river, never ending without limit flowing like a river. Okay, and we know that God is not a partial God wanting Shalom only for some people but whoever approaches, whoever seeks him, this is something that is available. Okay, so that's one thing that we can say that, okay, the very nature of God is to bless. Okay, this is internal nature to bless people. Okay, the second thing we can, why we can be confident that God wants to bless people. Second thing is that when you look at the general promises that are there in scripture. Okay, so we need to understand, you know, the difference between what is Logos and what is Reema. Okay, I think we would have studied it last semester also. You know, what is Logos and these two Greek words, Logos and Reema. Okay, Logos is the general instruction of God's Word, the general teaching of God's Word. And Reema is something that is quickened or highlighted specifically for a personal need, which is something that is highlighted or quickened from the Logos from the general instruction. So simply put, we can say, okay, I'm reading my Bible and I've read, I'm reading it and the Holy Spirit is highlighting something, like making something real is like taking this real and say, okay, this need for you today is met through this word. Like we understand, right?  So the Reema is like the quickened Word of God. You know, when we read Ephesians chapter 6, we read about the sword of the Spirit. Okay, and the word that is used there is Reema. Okay, the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. The Word used there is Reema, which means that the quickened Word of God is a weapon as we use it, as we speak it, that is the sword of the Spirit. It's a weapon we use, right? Against discouragements, against lies, against deception. When we release that word, that is the Reema Word of God that has been put in our hearts, right? Okay, so we know what is the Logos, what is the Reema. Okay, so you read this through the scriptures, we read through some of the promises and the Holy Spirit highlights this to us and says, okay, you know, this is your Word for today, right? Or this is the meaning and so we are very deeply convicted in our hearts, right? But apart from that, when we look at the general principles, okay? It's not, you know, it is there. It is there as a Logos, the general principles of God's Word. You know, when we see that, there is enough and more, which talks about the fact that when we take these principles, when we take these promises, these are to bring a blessing into a person's life. For example, Psalm 1. Psalm 1, 1, 2, 3, you all, maybe we have read this verse, right? Several times. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. It starts like this. You are blessed if you're not living a life according to the wisdom or instruction of the ungodly people, which means, you know, if you're not walking according to ungodly wisdom, something that's against God, right? Saying blessed is that person. Blessed is the man, right? Blessed is the man. And then let's just read through the whole thing. Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. So this is a promise. This is a general promise to everyone, right? You, me, everyone. And it comes with certain conditions. It's a conditional promise. What is the condition? Blessed is the man who does not walk like this, who does not live like this. That's how it starts. And then it also says, but he does this. He or she, you know, does this. What does he or she do? Delight is in the law of the Lord. So delighting in the Lord, meditating in the law in the word of God day and night. And then goes on to 3, say in verse 3, this is how the person shall be, like a tree planted by the rivers of water. So what does that mean? That means that the tree is actually getting enough and more nutrition. There's a never ending supply, right? So by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in season, right? So the tree brings forth its fruit in season. It means fruitful, productive, right? Whose leaf also shall not wither. So this means that irrespective of what's happening in the environment, the tree is still thriving, flourishing. And whatever he does shall prosper. So he's saying, this is how this person who's delighting in the word of God, who meditates day and night in the word of God, this is how this person shall be. So that's a general promise for anyone, for any believer who can actually take it and do this and say, okay, God, you know, I'll do this. I'm not going to walk in the council of the ungodly. I'm not going to sit in the seat of the scornful, right? But I'm going to do this. So this is the promise, Psalm 23 again, where Psalm 23 starts with saying, the Lord is my shepherd. And what is the second part of it? I shall not. Yeah, what does that mean? It means lack. Yeah. So which means that there won't be any insufficiency in my life, right? I will always have sufficiency because the Lord is my shepherd. And it goes on today, you know, talk about how he's my shepherd. But he leads me. He guides me. It makes me to lie down. He provides for my needs. He protects me, right? He's there as my constant companion, even though I walk through the valley of shadow of death.  He, you know, provides for my needs and all that. And then so that the Psalmist declares and says, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. You know, that's just testimony. So these are, again, something that is general for everybody, applicable for everybody. And so on, you know, we see all these things. So we see that the general promises of God also point to the fact that God is a good God and he's the one who brings blessing, good things into our lives. Okay. So we should not, when we look at the struggles of the world, when we look at things of the world, sometimes it's like, you know, you don't have to look around much.  What is happening in the world? What is happening in the world? All these, all the negative things are just as if it's captured and put there in one place. You watch, you know, news, that's it. It's nothing good that is reported. There could be 101 things happening that are good things, but those are not, you know, reported. And sometimes we think, what is happening? You know, there's nothing good that is happening. You know, God, what is God doing? The fact is that this is his nature. He has given his promises.  This is a blessing. And I need to thank God for it.  Okay, third thing, how can we be confident that God is someone who wants to bless me is when we look at the blessings of Abraham. You know, you and I are living on the other side of the cross, right? And because we live in this new dispensation, okay, now this side of the cross is before the cross. This side is after the cross, okay, after what happened on the cross. So we are people, we are privileged to be living in this dispensation, the side of the cross and because of it something has happened to us, okay. Okay, first let's just look at the blessings of Abraham, okay. This is what it says Genesis 12 and verse 2, right, you have there in all the notes. Okay, 12-2 says, I will make you a great nation.  So, so many scriptures about just blessings, so many scriptures having that word bless, right? I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who curse you, etc. Genesis 13 verse 2, we saw this that Abraham was very rich in livestock in silver and in gold and so on. So we looked at that, you know, earlier when we looked at people who were blessed by God, we looked at Abraham, we looked at the generations Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and so on, okay. But the good thing is this, I'm just coming down to Galatians 3, okay. Galatians 3 verse 13 says, Christ has redeemed us, what is this us referring to all of us as believers in Jesus, right? Christ has redeemed us which means taken as out, taken as out of what we can say as a curse of the law. You know, he is taken as out of that, having become a curse for us on the cross where it is written cursed as everyone who hangs on a tree, verse 14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. Okay, so we look at the blessing of Abraham and we say, okay, he was very rich in livestock, he had, you know, the Lord blessed him, he had favor upon him, he was a, you know, he had communion with God, he was a friend of God, he had faith which God commended and all that we see, all the blessings that he walked in. Now we could say, okay, that is his blessing, what about us, what about me, right? In Galatians chapter 3, we see that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, every curse that you can think of, he has redeemed us, which means he has taken it out, right? In fact, he has taken us from where we had fallen and restored us even higher from where we had fallen. He has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, verse 14, you know by becoming a curse for us, he redeemed us, that's one part of it. The second part is that the blessings of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, which means you and I, right? We are not born as Jews, but that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us, the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, okay? So whatever we can list as the blessing of Abraham, okay? God wants you and I to receive that in Christ Jesus. Do you believe that? So when do you want to experience the blessing in heaven or... See, that's a question, right? We think, okay, some I don't know, maybe 30 years from now, 40 years from now right? God wants us as the Gentile believers in Christ that, you know, that these blessings should come upon us and of course we receive by faith, right? We receive by faith.  No, we take all that out of the way and sometimes people think, okay, I don't know what God's will is, right? I don't know what God's will is, I don't know what's going to happen, right? And we look at the word of God, we see the will of God. What is the will of God? God's desire, the ways of God, God's heart for us. Okay, did somebody raise their hand? Sorry, I heard something, so if you have a question you could ask. So, and also the second part of it, it says that we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit through faith, the promise of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity coming and indwelling and also the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, everything, the Holy Spirit wants to bring into our lives that we receive through faith. When we read this, it's such an awesome promise and awesome position that God wants every believer to walk in. Okay, so when these scriptures become real to us or it becomes a revelation in our spirit then we will never be discouraged. We will never be discouraged, right? No matter what's happening, what challenges, what mountains that we are facing, we will never be discouraged because this is who we are in Christ Jesus. God has made a way in Christ Jesus for us to receive and walk in the blessings of Abraham. Right? That we might receive the spirit, gift of the Spirit, promise of the Spirit through faith. Look at this verse 29, and if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Heirs according to the promise, which means an heir receives an inheritance. Right? So he's saying that you are actually heirs of the seed of Abraham, your heirs and Bible also talks about how we are co heirs with Christ. Right? So all this, all these wonderful things happen because of the cross and we here we are recipients to receive what Christ did for us because of the finished work on the cross. Any questions? Just under the dreamer line on page 13, we cannot take a specific reema to someone else and apply it to oneself. Okay. What if there's a specific reema word, like for example, Philip okay, Philip in the book of Acts, we see that he was there, there's a whole lot of revival happening Samaria and God sends a message saying leave. Right? So can I take that and apply it in my life as a pattern? Something like that, right? Example. No. Because a reema word is something specific for that person, for that environment, for that time. Right? So, well your reema word could might well be similar to that but we cannot take that and say okay, you know, that happened so therefore I'm in the midst of revival and I'm sure God wants me to go unless you're very, very sure that God has indeed spoken through the quick and quickening work of the Holy Spirit. So in line with that, like for example, Jeremiah 29, 11 we often, you know take it for us, yeah. So that's a general promise. That's a general promise that's available for everyone, you know, that the thoughts of God, it talks about the nature of God the thoughts that I have for you, the plans that I have for you is to give you hope and a future not of calamity. So that's talks about the heart of God, the nature of God, who describes who he is and the fact that it's something that is applicable for all of us. The Lord speaks to Jeremiah. What is something that we can we can Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I get what you're saying. So if it's God's heart for someone, let's say the Old Testament sayings or I think, can I appropriate that? Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Just talking about the specific reema word of God, because when we say reema word it goes into great details. It talks about maybe something that is directional, something where it requires some hard decisions maybe. So it's good to just make sure okay, this is something that God wants me to do in this time and this juncture. So that is why I said we can't, okay, God did that, so he wants me to do it as well. But wherever we see scripture pointing to the heart of God, the very nature of God, it's for, because he never changes. He never changes through time. He's the same yesterday, today and forever. So, we can take that. Any other questions? Pasta, I have a question. Pasta, if God has promised you a blessing and you missed on it, would that blessing be available again? Okay, so the question is, I missed it because of the fact that I didn't believe God, maybe I didn't there could be many reasons, right? Yeah. Maybe I just doubted God, I was angry with God my heart was not right with God whatever reason. So the fact is this, sometimes maybe we missed that chaos moment let's say like a job offer maybe like a particular role in a particular organization and we were probably, we said whatever, we just kind of didn't work on it and so that window closed because someone else took up that role that position is not there in that organization anymore, right? So, in that way, yes, but can God restore can God? Financial blessing I'm talking about? Yeah, financially also I'm just saying, you know, so can God, let's say if you're talking specifically about provision and finances, can God provide in some other way? Can God open up some other door? Definitely he can definitely, he can right? So it requires my heart to come aligned I need to recognize that oh yeah, I missed that and then yeah, so definitely God can do that and that's why we call, you know, he's the redeemer, right? He redeems those, even those lost opportunities and makes a way for us right? Thank you Buster No, yeah Okay, any other questions? Okay, so let's look at the fourth one, you know so we are looking at all these things which actually should build faith in us, gives us the confidence that that God is the one who's a giver of blessings right? He's the one who wants to bless he guarantees to prosper okay, one more the new covenant of blessings, okay? So we know covenant is a promise covenant is a promise you know, it's a solemn promise between God and man and we see that God has made a covenant with us and in fact scripture talks about this new covenant that he has with us, right? It made on better promises and so on what we read in Hebrews and 2nd Corinthians 3 so this covenant covers all, you know, blessings, everything and and so we you know, and so we can be sure that okay God has made himself available for us all of him available for us through the covenant right? So that is what he has said that he has made himself available for us saying I'm for you, I'm with you so I can bring this into your life so that's what we see okay so let's look at you know, if you look at Deuteronomy 28 okay from up to verse 14 talks about the blessings for the person who actually obeys the law okay Deuteronomy 28 verses 1 to 14 okay verses 15 on words talks about the curse of disobedience okay so let's not read that right now okay and actually if you read it's you know, we need to read it by saying thank you Jesus that you redeemed me from this right because Galatians 3 talks about the fact that the blessings of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus okay the blessings of obeying everything comes to us because of the Lord right so Deuteronomy 28 talks about the about the covenant sorry about the blessings right so we know that Deuteronomy 28 is something because of the old covenant where it talks about the blessings of a person who walks in obedience and who walks in obedience to the entirety of God's law okay now the verses that we saw Galatians 3 talks about the fact that well he took the curse okay he took the curse Jesus took the curse upon himself so verses 15 on words till the end of the chapter he took that curse upon himself the curse of disobedience of the law he took upon himself okay so that's why you know this whole thing of grace is something which is mind-blowing really he took in this so this new covenant that is why he said it's a better promises built on better promises this new covenant he took upon himself every curse okay and just one second yeah so let's let's look at 2 Corinthians 3 okay let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verses 6 on words maybe we should read from verse 5 says not that we are sufficient of ourselves and or think of anything as being from ourselves our sufficiency is from God okay verse 6 who also made a sufficient as ministers of the new covenant not of the letter but of the spirit for the letter kills but the spirit gives life and then from verse 7 on words he talks about the contrast of the old covenant and the new covenant right for if the ministry of death written and engraved on stones was glorious so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance which glory was passing away how will the ministry of the spirit not be more glorious for if the ministry of condemnation had glory the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory for even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect because the glory that excels verse 11 for if what is passing away was glorious what remains is much more glorious and so on so Paul is just contrasting between you know the Old Testament or what flows out of the Old Testament and he's talking about the old covenant sorry and he's talking about the new covenant how it is much more glorious right in that we are in a new dispensation and so on right so because of this new covenant and new dispensation that we live in right we can be sure we can be confident that as a recipient as someone who's part of this new covenant this is applicable to me God himself has made himself available he's saying that I'm there for you so that's another reason for us to be confident of God's assurance to bless now these are things that should be that needs to be really ingrained in us be part of us because just like the nature of God the general promises of God and so on this needs to be really like a pillar of truth inside of us right because if it is so if it is not so we will waver we will waver in unbelief we will not be able to trust because it talks about the nature of God it talks about what God wants for the New Testament believer or what God has done in Christ through the cross for each one of us right so this really needs to be strong a pillar of truth inside of us where we which we hold on to say God I need more revelation help me to be rooted grounded in this truth okay so having said that we might have questions okay now I understand that I got this truth I understand the nature of God then why are things not happening we might have those questions why is that person not prospering from the outside I see that everything is you know he's picked all the checklists 1 2 3 it's all falling in place why then are things not happening why then we might have some questions now here are some hindrances that we're going to look at to God given what's a hindrance right what blocks like it's a barrier a hindrance is a barrier right something that blocks you know it's like a wall which blocks something from coming across to us right so first thing that we see wrong motivation can be a hindrance hindrance to receive from God hindrance to receive the blessing of God okay now God is making it available okay God is making it available God is you know is given us this wonderful new covenant that we are living in and all these promises the very nature of God is to bless and so on and yet if my motivation is wrong if I have a wrong motive right then that acts as a hindrance okay let's look at this James chapter 4 verses 2 and 3 says you lust and you do not have you murder and covet and cannot obtain you fight and war yet you do not have because you do not ask you ask and do not receive because you ask a miss that you may spend it on your pleasures okay so saying you know you don't have you lust which means that you know intensely desire something and you don't have you murder and covet you know all these things are wrong methods yeah you murder you covet and you do all this you're violent and you do not have and it says at the end you don't have because you do not ask so it is saying showing the difference you know difference in the method by which you can actually receive right chisely like you're saying you're doing this you're doing that because you do not ask you do not have because you do not ask and verse 3 says you ask and you don't receive because you ask a miss what does that mean any other version ask a miss what version is that diksha yours MKJV is it okay any other does anyone have like a any other version asking a miss this is James chapter 4 and verse 3 okay it's like asking out of place and asking maybe with wrong motive wrong intention and sorry because you ask wrongly yeah and the reason is that you may spend it on your pleasures you're so obsessed with yourself and that's the reason why you ask and that's why you do not have and you do not receive okay okay so we'll stop here we're looking at hindrances to God given prosperity but I just really like us to read through the scriptures that we went through right now about the new covenant of God's guarantee to bless how we can be sure how we can be confident with that once through thank you God bless


Umatitians compound. They way for you. How can you do such a thing to the teachers? Pehari one month in office. Unfile niya want to say, don't play with the dwa, deswap and secondly, don't play with the small scale miners. particularly those in run was to us because I know I've been there. Those open feats were mined to have a function. But I'm a pukushika. It's how I'm a pukushika. Noxtile, I want to tell them what to know and I'll tell them what to change. Oh no. The former loemaker has expressed disappointment in government's feather-hoting activities on mine-damping sites, commonly known as Black Mountains. Employee in excess of 70,000 miners. Today, the only miners employed in the mines are roughly about 15,000-20,000 in the entire Kopa belt. Sure, in angumari kwa temi tima, if in angumari fukpanikaba and maisafemu government, you just go to wake up and say, no small-scale miners to Aisara, you can't mine. Those are disused. For instance, in Wansha, let me speak for the people of run. Those open feats where they are going, it is the open feats which have been abandoned by Wansha Kopa mines. They stop mining in there. They don't go there anymore. And then the women and youth start going there to reclaim. They've mined economically and they cannot mine anymore in those feats. And you know what has started happening yesterday I was being told, they've started barring those open feats to avoid the people going there. Sure. Abandunga bale fumiyamwefintu bale idiu. Kwa yam kushika fiobo naush and as minister of mines, waibate tu alesya. Hawe bane. Kwa temi tima yapsakamana abandu.