OK, echo, echo, echo, echo, echo. Oh, OK. OK, that's much better. OK, so I'm R.V. Tuch, and hey, I'm going to be providing you a tour through the Next Generation Envoy Service Discovery APIs. This is sort of collaborative work between Google, my employer, and Lyft, the famous McFlyne. And hopefully, I'll be able to present the work of these folks in a good light as we go on a tour through, as I guide you through these APIs. So a good sort of starting point for the Envoy APIs is what does the Envoy configuration look like today? Cherie talked a little bit about this. In terms of where configuration comes from, there's really three main sources of configuration for an Envoy instance. There's the static JSON file, which is read at startup via Envoy via the command line. There's a hierarchical runtime feature flags tree on the file system, which is monitored via iNotify for dynamic updates. And this provides feature flags for Envoy, as well as the ability to override some of the parts of the static configuration. In addition to this, there's dynamic discovery of resources via these XDS APIs, things like LDS, RDS, and CDS, and so on. This comes via REST polling from one or more management servers. So to just give you a feel, I think actually Cherie did a great job of describing what goes into configuration. We can actually just look at a simple example of a concretely. And this is actually probably the smallest example of what an Envoy config looks like. And this is just a simple file, a config which tells Envoy to forward all requests on port 10,000 to Google.com. And the config is a JSON file consisting of a number of resources. It's the idea of listeners, which describe which IPs and ports Envoy listens on. Not in this example, but in general, this would also include TLS certificate information. It includes route configurations, which provide mappings from domains and paths to services of clusters in Envoy parlance. And then from these clusters, it provides a mapping to the actual endpoints, which we want to forward traffic to. Many of these resources are discoverable by the RESTful APIs which exist today. And there are five of these. Well, the four key discovery APIs and the rate limit service. And I include that because that's also part of the V2 work that we're doing. But I'm not going to actually dwell too long on this slide, but I think that we've already had a really good introduction to what each of these different kinds of XDS services does. So jumping into the V2 APIs, we had a number of design goals when we went into this exercise. This is an opportunity to add things to the Envoy APIs to address new use cases, some limitations in the existing APIs. One of these was, and in particular Google, is we're interested in supporting a variety of deployments for Envoy. So today, Envoy Istio is used, let's say, as a sidecar. It can be used as a middle proxy. There are some things that need to be done to make it a better proxy to use on the edge. So we tried to address some of these in V2. We were interested in looking at some, and I'll touch more on this later, different aspects of consistency for API delivery and this efficiency of API delivery. This polling rest methodology has additional latency due to the polling delay and to use a necessary load on the management server. We were interested in providing a migration path from the V1 APIs forward. But the key principle I think that we're working with today is that once the V2 APIs are in place, the V1 APIs will be essentially frozen in time. And we're not going to do any further work on enhancing the V1 APIs. V2 is essentially, once we've switched these out in production, will be when new features get added. In addition to basic resource discovery, which is what the V1 APIs are largely about, we're also interested in adding ways in which Envoy can communicate back to the management server to allow it to make more intelligent decisions when it comes to things like endpoint discovery. These include providing more useful information that provides statistics and resource utilization for load balancing and also for health checks, providing the ability to have scalable health checking. And this is what this problem was also touched on just before. Finally, the V2 APIs are a great way for us to go in and clean up the technical debt that existed in the previous APIs. So why GRPC? Well, GRPC actually maps really nicely to many of the things we want to do in our APIs. All the sort of core APIs which exist in V1 today and still exist in V2 are essentially subscriptions. You declare each of the management server. I'm interested in this set of routes, route configurations, this set of clusters. I'm interested in all the listeners I'm supposed to consume. And please push me updates when they arrive. The rest, you do this by rest as additional overheads in terms of load, latency, you do sort of, you generate the request to ensure you don't storm the management servers in a synchronized way. It's, yes, you basically sort of avoid any of this by sort of switching to a streaming API. In addition, the current sort of pole-based rest API is essentially a one-way communication. The management server is saying to Envoy, here's an update, do with it what you will. In order to be able to do things like, for example, have Envoy say, I'm interested in the resources for cluster X, please send them to me. And then I will acknowledge whether or not I actually accept them, perhaps due to, you know, say a configuration mismatch between the management server and the Envoy instance. You kind of need this sort of two-way communication to happen between Envoy and the management server. In addition to communicate back things like loads of balancing and sort of help check information from Envoy to the management server, we need this sort of two-way stream to happen. And that's very hard to map on to rest API semantics. Things like X and PP have done this, but it's very tricky to actually get rights and GRPC is a natural fit here. The V2 APIs largely follow on from this sort of trend in the V1 APIs towards making things more dynamic. In fact, most of the resources that you're interested in discovering today with the recent introduction of LDS can be discovered dynamically. You don't need to write a static JSON config file. It can really be quite minimal. There's still those significant overlap between things that can be specified in the static JSON config, which is read at boot time, at initialization time, and what's delivered by APIs. The V2 API, we're planning on making all this essentially dynamic. We have a very minimal static Bootstrap configuration. And even if you want to specify and configure Envoy by the file system, this will be consumed from a separate set of files which are monitored via iNotify in a similar manner to the runtime feature flags. And these can be actually just dynamically written to and updated. In addition to that, we will have, as I mentioned before, streaming APIs via GAPC and Proto to Management Servers. And for a subset of the APIs, we'll also offer a V2 REST API, which will also work with JSON, although a different fragment of JSON than the one that's used in V1. This will essentially be the Proto's in JSON form. So the configuration story looks kind of like what it did with V1 with a few differences. We have GAPC between the Management Server and Envoy. And we also have iNotify sort of watches of these configuration files and the ability to specify them via the JSON or Proto. There's a bunch of neat features we're trying to also add in V2. We would like to have versioning of all of these API updates. And that plays a role in how updates are provided by the Management Server. Envoy will announce the version that it's currently running to the Management Server. Management Server will deliver what it believes is the next version that belongs to that Envoy instance. And Envoy is then able to actually act or knack by essentially reflecting which version was applied in its next message. We have added the ability to add metadata to various objects in the configuration, which they can then be combined as a request match occurs as you pass through the listener selection, then route a match, and so on to be able to actually provide rich information in log messages and statistics and so on. We have canaries of first-class concepts for configurations, not just RAM points. So we could actually have Envoy treat separately in terms of its behavior, in terms of what it's putting out in stats, what's going on when a configuration is being canaryed. And Proto 3 has become the single source of truth for the API. Previously, we had a JSON schema and documentation written in natural language. We're now moving towards a world in which we just have everything written in Proto 3. And that will essentially describe the GIPC APIs. It will also provide JSON equivalents of all of these objects, because Proto 3 is a canonical JSON representation. And we also plan on generating documentation from these Proto's. These are all available on the GitHub, which I linked to in my first slide in a little bit. So in terms of how the APIs have changed, the most interesting ones, I think, to pay attention to are LDS and EDS. For LDS, and this sort of speaks to our interest in using this sort of flexible and diverse configurations. We've made PLS context significantly more powerful. You can specify multiple certificates per listener. If each port that you bind to, you could provide a bunch and use SNI or certificate type to select between them. We've added a bunch of TLS features to improve security there and make them more useful. We've added the ability to sort of listen on, actually, a large swath of IP space. The destination IPs that you bind to and listen on can now be described using a very flexible scheme using CIDR prefixes and suffixes. And each listener can actually have distinct filter chains associated with it. And these are selectable using these IP ranges, things like source port, as well as SNI. RDS hasn't changed a ton. RDS is actually similar to what it was in V1, with the ability to do some additional hash-based affinity using cookies and a few cleanups. EDS is probably where things are actually most interesting. And EDS is actually a rename of SDS, the service discovery service. This largely reflects some ambiguity and confusion in that name that presented. EDS is pretty clear what's actually going on here, where learning about the end points for a given cluster. The basic EDS API looks very similar to EDS in V1 of Envoy. But when you get into the more advanced features that can be opted into, it allows, for example, and I think it was a question about this earlier, the ability to load balance not just equally across all endpoints in a particular cluster, but based on either some weighting or also to take into account their locality, for example, using their zone or region, or even like a subzone specifier to influence how traffic is weighted. There's actually a hierarchical weighting when load balancing takes place. We also support something similar to the label-based routes as the first class. Label-based routes from ISCO is the first class concept in V2. We are able to essentially specify labels on end points that are delivered by EDS and have the route configuration specify which endpoints you're actually interested in load balancing between. For example, you could say, 10% of my endpoints version B, while the rest are version A, and specify AMB in the weighted clusters as provided in RDS or in the route configuration. Finally, we support this stats reporting, which I'll talk a little bit about in the Advanced API section. CDS and the written meaning service barely changed. They basically just changed from JSON to Proto. So that's the end of the core APIs. These are all available, as I mentioned before, by three mechanisms, file system, REST, and GRPC. The Advanced APIs are GRPC only because they require two-way communication between Envoy and the management servers. First of these, and the three of these, is EDS, multidimensional load balancing. The idea here is the management server might want to not just use, for example, the QPS, which you can grab from the stats today to make a load balancing decision when assigning end points or weighting these end points. They actually want to use things like CPU utilization and memory of the end points themselves, as well as stats that Envoy itself is able to report. With the stats reporting for multidimensional load balancing, Envoy, and this is sort of an opt-in thing, listens for HTTP response headers that are provided by end points, which actually include essentially some of these metrics. And it's able to then aggregate them for all end points, and periodically report back to the management server, both the stats that it can gather without the involvement of the end points, as well as the endpoint stats. And then the management server is able to make some intelligent load balancing decision using this information and supply this via EDS. So that's pretty much what it looks like. OK, help discovery service. So as you scale up the number of Envoy instances and end points, you're going to do today sort of an n squared problem of in terms of a number of health checks that are taking place, because Envoy is performing these health checks locally and actually sharing this information. And this presents a scalability problem. HDS is an API by which the management server can communicate with Envoy instances and assign them specific end points to health check, have the Envoy report back the health status, and then share this information with other Envoy's largely through the form of EDS by actually through the actual endpoint assignment, only healthy end points are assigned. And the final of these sort of advanced APIs is ADS, the aggregated discovery service. So a couple of times today, it's come up this idea that Envoy is eventually consistent. So what that means is, for example, if we receive an RDS update mentioning a cluster transition for some particular route, that cluster information hasn't been delivered yet by DDS or EDS. We'll have a period, pretty small today, which we're essentially going to drop traffic on the floor. By careful orchestration of these updates, it's possible for the management server to avoid this. And this becomes much easier if all of the APIs that are actually being delivered are coming down from a single management server, i.e., we have hard stickiness with single management server, and these are delivered on a single GRPC stream. That's essentially what ADS is about. It's about muxing the various core APIs across a single GRPC by-dice stream and allowing a management server to then carefully sequence API updates to actually get something a little stronger than this eventual consistency which we live with today. This is kind of important in scenarios where it's not acceptable to drop traffic on the floor. So this is pretty much what Envoy looks like today. You may actually be speaking with one or more management servers. I mean, in the Istio configuration and so on that we've seen before, this has actually been a single pilot, single management server. But in general, this is something which we're going to see in arbitrary Envoy deployments. With ADS, we essentially have the ability to multiplex each of these individual APIs on that one spin. So in terms of status, we're actually it's a feature completeness now. We've basically locked down the major points in the API, and these are up on GitHub. And we're actually working on implementing this in Envoy. And this isn't a complete freeze in the API. There's likely to be small changes as we discover bugs during implementation, things that are necessary for V1 backwards compatibility. V1 itself still continues to evolve since V2 is not in production yet. And so we actually have to chase a moving target there. We're working on adding support for the base infrastructure to actually consume these APIs. And most of that's there. We have the EDS V1 subset implemented with CDS in flight of V2. And Matt recently implemented an LDS V1, which is actually a necessary precursor to LDS V2. This is what the roadmap looks like. And it's quite a bit actually involved here. This will probably play out over at least a year. We're initially aiming to reach parity with V1 with the basic APIs, add the ability to generate documentation, achieve things similar to what we do with the JSON schema today, add it in the Bootstrap configuration. And at that point, we should actually be able to run Envoy with the V2 APIs with the same set of functionality as V1. Following from this, because we have an interest in this at Google, we'll probably add ADS as the next step. And then fill in some of these additional features in LDS, RDS, and EDS, which are actually the defining features of V2. And then way down the track, we think like HDS is probably where we want to go. I mean, obviously, if someone's interested in HDS before and is willing to actually go in and implement HDS, we would love that. So with that said, yeah, any questions? Yeah. No, at Google, we're building internal cloud product. Well, we're building cloud products based on this. So yeah, we're not using Envoy in a side cast scenario. So it's closer to, let's say, the middle proxy example that we've provided. Oh, I mean, for Microsoft's developers, absolutely. You need an additional level of abstraction there. This is really for folks who are building, I guess, of interest, like sequencing API updates and so on, is the audience who are developing tools like Istio, or actually, for example, using Envoy as an edge proxy in the cloud offering or something like that. Yeah? Right. So today, Envoy produces a number of different logs and stats. So it provides HTTP access logs. It also provides sort of debug logs, telling you what's going on when warnings are triggered and things like that on Envoy itself, which are nothing necessary to do with the request, but have to do with the actual behavior of the Envoy process. It also exports out statistics via stats D, which are pretty flexible. And on V2, we're actually planning on adding in support for pluggable stats and logging providers. The idea is you may actually want to send logs, not, let's say, by plain text to a text file, but instead, by a proto, or be able to send out stats also by a proto and GIPC to some arbitrary server. So instead of having to rely on stats D. In addition, the idea is to provide the ability. And this is what this metadata point I touched on before is, maybe by annotating things like your routes and your listeners with arbitrary labels and things like that, this provides a lot of insight into exactly what happened during the request match. So if you log, for example, you're producing HTTP access log and you're able to produce some label which was assigned during listener match and during route match, maybe even that was used during the endpoint sub-setting, that actually also provides an additional insight. Let's just say that stuff's all in flight right now. I probably can't talk too much about it. I'm not sure what we're saying publicly about that, but we talk to each other, yes. I would say we should have this parity with V1 within a couple of months. Do you actually reach the point where, so maybe we will hit three or four within a couple of months. Hitting six is probably quite a bit further out and seven is off on the horizon. We don't have anyone actively looking at seven today. Right, so the idea is we'll continue to allow V1 to be consumed by Envoy. We don't actually have a translation tool. What we have is code in Envoy which takes JSON objects and turns them into proto's suitable to pass into the code path where V2 is consumed. The idea is that as we, once we switch V2 into production, we feature freeze V1, folks would be expected to transition towards V2 by updating their configs. This should be largely seamless to many folks who are using Istio or other abstraction layers where they don't actually need to manage these configurations themselves. Just in some Istio updates, you will start producing V2 configs. Well, if you're building your own controller, essentially, no, you'll have to go off and implement the V2 APIs there. Yeah, I mean, that won't happen until we essentially reach step three here. But at that point, I don't think, let's say someone comes along with a new feature or wants to add a new configuration item. I don't think at that point we will add it to the V1 API. So there'll be a period which they live alongside each other and it's essentially frozen in time. That's correct. Yeah, I mean, the key thing I think varies that the endpoint itself will also participate in providing that information via these HTTP response headers where it's able to say, hey, I'm at 80% CPU and 5% memory utilization, that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, I think that that would be a natural thing to do would be to factor that out, yeah, into a filter. Yeah, okay, thanks.


Let me say how very honored I am to have been invited to speak at this 25th annual convention of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the Americas. I must begin by rejoicing with Daddy and Mommy, our father in the Lord and mother in the Lord on this landmark celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the Americas, and also to thank you, Daddy, for the privilege of serving as a pastor in this great work. I thank the Continental Overseer, the Americas, and Chairman of the Executive Council of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Gene Fadel and his wife, Pastor Manita Fadel. Pastor Fadel is a man of God for whom I have the greatest admiration. Aside from his personal encouragement and Godly counsel, he has made it his business to contribute both in terms of policy advice and practically to Nigeria's economic development. I especially also extend my appreciation to all members of the RCCG, the Americas Executive Council. I bring you all warm, anniversary felicitations from the federal government of Nigeria. I also bring you warm greetings from your brethren in Lagos province 48, the best province in Nigeria, maybe the best province in the world, where I have the privilege of serving as pastor in charge of province. Men and brethren, good morning, although it's afternoon here in Abuja, Nigeria. I'll be speaking for a few minutes on an aspect of the theme of the Convention, a new beginning. The defining feature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the notion of new beginnings. Let me put that differently. The feature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that separates it from any other message or religion is the notion or the idea that God is always prepared to start all over again with us, forgetting the past, ignoring our past failures, and just beginning again. And every important part of the Christian faith is about new beginnings. Every part of the Christian faith is about new beginnings. For example, the resurrection marked a new beginning of God's relationship with man. Salvation, being reborn or born again, is a new beginning. Scripture describes this phenomenon in Second Corinthians 5 or 17, Second Corinthians 5 or 17 in those terms. It says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. All things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Even the enabling law that establishes this new relationship between God and the regenerated man is called the new covenant, the new testament, a new beginning after the old covenant. So our God is a God of new beginnings. And he does everything to make sure that he offers us an opportunity for a new beginning. But the best part is that the new is always better than the old. The new is promotion. The new is glory. The new is greater achievement. The glory of the latter temple is greater than the former. And so it shall be for every one of us and every one of you in Jesus mighty name. So how does one become a beneficiary of this new beginning? How does one become one who benefits from a new beginning? How do you benefit from a more glorious beginning? I'd like us to take a quick look at the story of one man who got a more, who got a more glorious and a more glorious, a more glorious and a much better beginning. I'm going to ask us to turn quickly to Judges 6 verse 11 to 16. Judges 6 verse 11 to 16 to look at the story of a man who got a more glorious, a more victorious beginning. Of course we know the story of Gideon, but we'll just read a few of the verses. Judges 6, 11 to 16. Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the Terebranth tree, which was in Ophera, which belonged to George the Abbey's right, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, you mighty man of Valor. Gideon said to him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his miracles, which our fathers told us about, saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us under the hands of the Midianites. Then the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you? Verse 15, so he said to him, Oh my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And in verse 16, and the Lord said to him, surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man. Then he said to him, if now I have found favor in your sight, then show me a sign that it is you who talk with me. Let's look at Gideon's profile so we can better understand the characteristics of those who God describes as someone who God describes as a mighty man of valor and who God promises in new beginning, and in fact gave a new beginning. The first characteristic, first in that profile, is that he was a man who was the least in his family. So the characteristics of people who can in fact benefit from a new beginning is that they may well be the least in their families. Verse 15 of Judges 6 there, he was the least in his family. The second, he was the weakest tribe. He belonged to the weakest tribe. He said, my clan is the weakest. He was the least in his father's house, the least in his father's house, coming from the weakest tribe. The third is that he was even full of fear, hiding away from the enemy. The fourth is that he didn't even seem to have that much faith. He just didn't seem to have that much faith. If you look for example at Judges 6 verse 36 to 40, Judges 6 verse 36 to 40, and I'll just read that very quickly also. So Gideon said to God, Judges 6, 36 to 40. So Gideon said to God, if you will save Israel by my hand as you have said, look I shall put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there's dew on the fleece only and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand as you have said. And it was so. When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece together, he wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water. 39. Then Gideon said to God, do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more. Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece. Let it now be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground, let there be dew. Verse 40. And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on all the ground. So here was the man God described as a mighty man of value. Even his faith, as you can see, was slightly shaky. I mean to put it to put it as complimentary as possible for Gideon. He had to test and test and test and ask God to prove himself and prove himself over and over again. Look at other mighty men, men who are mighty, mighty men of value also. Look at Genesis 17 verse 15 to 17, Abraham, God Abraham, Genesis 17 verse 15. Then God said to Abraham, as for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name, Sarah, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her.  Kings of peoples shall be from her. And here is Abraham several years old, so old in verse 17. He says, then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, shall a child be born to a man who is 100 years old and shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child. Even Sarah herself in Genesis 18 laughed when God told her she was going to have a child. Genesis 18 verse 12 to 15, Genesis 18 verse 12 to 15, she laughed. And if you look at Genesis 18 verse 12, if you say, when God said she would have a child, she also laughed. She just, I mean, and even after God had said that, even after God had said, was she laughing? She said, no, no, no, I didn't even laugh. She even lied again. We must also forget that after waiting for a while for God's promise for an air, and he didn't come, he made his own plans. Abraham made his own plans, agreed his wife to sleep with his maid Harga, and she bought a son. How about David, a man after God's heart, a man who got several new and increasingly more glorious beginnings with God, but he was an adulterer and a mudra. You know, sometimes I ask myself, think of what social media would have made of him when news of his adultery with Bathsheba became known. You'd have seen headlines like Man of God caught, falls to pretty Bathsheba, another man's wife. How about Samson in Judges 16? I'm sure, I mean, we're all very familiar with all these stories.  But he ended up going from one woman to another and ended up in the hands of the hallowed Delilah, who finally handed him over to the enemies of Israel. But how about John the Baptist? John the Baptist, while in prison, became so discouraged and disillusioned that he sent people to Jesus to ask him, are you the one, or should we look for another? This was the same John the Baptist, who in Luke chapter 1 verse 41, in even while in the womb had left for joy when his mother Elizabeth, who was pregnant at the time with him, heard the greeting of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus at the time. The same John, who in Matthew 3 verse 13 to 17, Matthew 3, 13 to 17, after baptizing Jesus, heard a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The same John, who in John 1 verse 33, after confirming that he saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove upon Jesus, said that although I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And in verse 34 of the same John chapter 1, John chapter 1, he says, and I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God. But this is the same John, in John 11, 3, who now sends to Jesus when he was in prison. And he says, are you the coming one or should we look for another? Think of how this would have sounded today again on social media. They would have said something like, John, once a faithful disciple of Jesus, they alleged Christ, the Messiah, now says that he may not be the Messiah after all. That's how social media would have carried it today. Gideon said in George 6 verse 13, Gideon, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us and where all his miracles, which our fathers told us about, all of these great men of battle who God did a new thing in their lives were not special. They were not special in any way. They were not people who are necessarily people whose faith you would, without being told, would chair and say, yes, they were really men of great faith. And as you can see, they sometimes even doubted God spectacularly. But here is what God says concerning them. They are listed with honors in the Hall of Faith. In Hebrews 11, Abraham were told, in Hebrews 11, was a man of great faith despite the fact that he laughed even when God repeated the promise that he had made to him before. How about Sarah? Sarah in Hebrews 11 verse 11, Hebrews 11 verse 11, we are told that Sarah, and just listen to this description that God gives Sarah, Hebrews 11 verse 11, this same woman who laughed when she was told that she was going to have a child in her old age. The scripture says, by faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age because she judged him faithful who had promised. Haber Gideon and Samson, the same Samson, and David, how does God describe them? In Hebrews 11 verse 32, all the way to verse 34, Hebrews 11 verse 32, all the way to verse 34. In verse 32, the scripture says, and what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and also of David, and Samuel, and the prophets in the same breath. The likes of Gideon, the likes of Samson are mentioned with Samuel and all the prophets, and scripture says in verse 33, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness, were made strong, became valiant in battle, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens. If you notice, not a mention of their past misdeeds, not one mention of their past misdeeds, not a mention of their past failures, and their spectacular doubting. In God's eyes, there were great men and women of faith. Why? Because they received the mercy of God, they received the gift of salvation by being deemed righteous. God, God himself, by the great sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by causing these people to be whole, did something spectacular in their lives. He began something new in their lives, so that even in the records of scripture, they are regarded as men and women of great faith. Nothing is to be remembered about their past. The awesome gift of salvation, the awesome gift of the love of God. So are you afraid of the future? Do you feel small and inadequate?  And there are many challenges that men confront today. Many. The challenges of being able to be the breadwinner. The challenges of being able to meet all of the demands that life makes upon you. The challenges of being able to be the best professional that you can be. The challenges of being able to keep a job, to get promoted, to get elevated, even within our secular occupations. The challenges of proving ourselves. I have good news for you. You are qualified for a great new beginning. So how does this work? God's man for new beginnings is one who is weak or has many witnesses, so that God's strength can show clearly and can be demonstrated poignantly. God did not create us to be independent of him. He did not end ours with the strength to succeed without him. He didn't give us that strength. We cannot succeed without him. The reason why we are often afraid is because, like Gideon, we think the battle is our own to fight. So we see how hopeless the fight is because we are so weak. In Judges 6 verse 15, he says, Oh my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest manasseh. I'm the least in my father's house. So Gideon thought it was all about himself. He thought he was the one to want to live Israel. But God corrected him. In Judges 6 verse 16, God corrected him. He said, Surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites. Surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites. So while Gideon kept thinking about the battle and thinking that the battle will depend on his personal strength, on his family influence or the power of his tribe, God kept saying, No, it's not about you, it's about me. In verse 16 where he says, Surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man to demonstrate to Gideon that his victory will not depend on himself. In this new beginning that God was giving him, in this new beginning, God asked him to reduce the size of his army just to prove the point to him. He asked him to reduce the size of the army that he was even going to take to the battle to a ridiculously low number. Reduce your men from 3,000 to 300. Reduce your contacts. Reduce all of these people who are around you and all of the people you think are going to exercise something, some influence on your behalf. And God told him in Judges 7 verse 2, Judges 7 verse 2, God told him, he said, And the Lord said to Gideon, The people who are with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against me, saying my own hand has saved me. God told him the reason why you cannot depend on your own strength, you cannot depend on what you have or those you know or the contacts you have. God told him, take your hope away from what you have or who you have and all these contacts and connections. And I think God is also saying the same to us, that we cannot depend on those we know and all of the flesh and our power. It is up to him, this thing is about God. In the new beginning that God gives us, it is about God and we have to depend on him. The second point I like to like us to note is that the God of new beginnings does not expect you to even change physically or materially before your victory comes. He says in verse 14 to Gideon, he says, Go in this might of yours and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites, in this same small might of yours. With this little faith of yours, with these failings, go ahead and you will win because I, the Creator of all things, they all powerful, will give you the victory. Your own strength is irrelevant. The third point to note is that the man who will have these new glorious beginnings and who would enjoy these glorious beginnings should not expect, of course, that he will not have troubles or problems. As we noted in verse 13 of Judges 6, Gideon said, Oh my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? Were all his miracles, which our fathers told us about, saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? There are those who will ask, why am I sick after all my prayers and fasting? Why am I sick? Why did my wife die? Why did my brother die? Why do I not have a good job? Why did my business fail? Why am I going through all these problems in my business? Despite everything that I have done, paid my thanks, gave general's offerings, I have done everything, prayed, fasted. In the midst of your current reveals, the God of new beginnings is about to change your story. It's about to do something new. Scripture says that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. The morning is a new beginning. After the sorrow, God begins again with joy. Of course, Isaiah 43 verse 19, where God says, Behold, I will do a new thing, and it shall spring forth. You shall not know it. Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. So often, you know, and it's so incredible what God is able to do, and how he can just so reassures, because it's all about him. It's nothing to do with us. Who else can make rivers in the desert? Who else can make rivers in the desert? Who else? You know, sometimes often we, even we men of God, pastors, ministers are the ones who, like Nathaniel, make some of history's most faithless statements. I want to repeat that. I'm saying that sometimes we pastors, ministers, men of God, are the ones who sometimes make some of history's most faithless lack of faith statements, like Nathaniel, the classic, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Nazareth was southwest of the Sea of Galilee, very small community. We're told it was probably less than about 500 people, during, especially during the lifetime of Jesus. It was well beyond Samaria, far away from Jerusalem, in many ways, not near any major cities. It was the last place that one would expect anything significant to happen. So Nathaniel asked, can anything good come out of Nazareth with all his problems or sorts of problems? Today, many men are saying the same about our nation, Nigeria, even some men of God. But this is the textbook case of how God works. I'm saying to you, especially the Nigerians who are listening, this is the textbook case of what God will do. He's said to give Nigeria a new beginning. I shared at an event last Sunday what God is showing us and what God will do. And we are as confident that God will do so. In Genesis 1 verse 1, Genesis 1 verse 1 to 4, we are told that there was a beginning. Scripture says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There was a beginning. But when He created the heavens and the earth, in that beginning, verse 2 goes on to say that in that beginning, the earth was without form and void. And darkness was on the face of the deep. In other words, there was in that beginning confusion, darkness, crisis, problems all around. But He reminds us in that verse 2 that even then, in that crisis, in that confusion, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then it says in verse 3, then God said, let there be light and there was light. A new beginning, just by this spoken word. A new beginning that was so good, God said so himself. And God said, and God saw the light. The Scripture says in verse 4, it says, and God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God is going to divide the light from the darkness in our own country, in this country in Nigeria, in the name of the Lord Jesus, in our various nations, in the mighty name of the Lord Jesus. So can anything good come out of Nazareth? We answer like Philip, come and see what Jesus can do. God is about to do something new in our country. Now let me reiterate a point I made earlier. The God of new beginnings did not create us to be self-sufficient. We need him. We need him. Paul shares his own experience in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 7 to 10. 2 Corinthians 12, verse 7 to 10. And I'll just read that very quickly. 2 Corinthians 12, verse 7 to 10. Paul shares his own experience here in verse 7. Unless I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. In 8, concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And in 9 it says, and he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. Therefore I most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Paul was just simply saying that despite all our problems, despite all the weaknesses, despite everything that challenges us, even physically, telling us that we cannot achieve, we cannot achieve. God is saying to us, it is in that weakness, it is in your weakness that my strength is going to show. It is in your weakness. So let us rejoice, even where we have weaknesses and problems. Hebrews 4, verse 13. Hebrews 4, verse 13 says, I can do all three things through Christ who strengthens me. Here Paul again, Paul again in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 8 to 9, 2 Corinthians 1, verse 8 to 9. He says, for we do not want to be ignorant brethren of our trouble, which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the death. So that we look onto Jesus, not to ourselves, not to our giftings, not to our talents. We look onto Jesus. Jesus is the one who wrote the script. He is the one who wrote the script. That's why we look up to him. And he is the finisher. He is the one who will make sure that you and I finish strong. So we look onto Jesus. He is the author and finisher of our faith. He is the one who is going to make sure that at the end of the day, in this new beginning, we're going to have, we're going to experience the greatest victories of all. And every one of us, every one of us, just by depending on the Lord Jesus, by knowing that is not by our strength or by our flesh, by looking up to him and relying on him, I am sure that we're going to experience a new beginning, an awesome new beginning in every aspect of our lives, in Jesus' mighty name. Shall we just bow our heads for a word of prayer? Look and live, my brother live. Look to Jesus now and live. It is recorded in his word, hallelujah. It is only that we look and live. Look and live, look and live. My brother live. Look to Jesus now and live. It is recorded in his word, hallelujah. It is only that we look and live. Almighty God, the God of new beginnings, behold your children who are here today. They've listened to your word and all over the places where they sit, everywhere where they've heard your voice, O Lord. I ask that you come and lay your hands upon each and every one of us. Lay your hands upon each and every one of us, O God. And come and separate us, O God, for your great mercies and for your great favour. We have no strength of our own. Everything that we have is from you. Everything that we own comes from you. You are the giver of all good and perfect gifts. And Father, we ask that you come and give each and every one of us a new beginning, a new beginning of victory, a new beginning of joy, a new beginning of success, such that indeed heirs would not have heard. Neither would eyes have seen, neither would it even have entered into the hearts or imaginations of men. What you, the Almighty God, is going to do for us. Let it be, O God, that when people even hear of the wonders that we have done in our lives and in our nation and in our nations, that they will say, surely this could only have been God. Blessed be your name, O God. In Jesus' mighty name we have prayed. Amen.


There are so many facets to the nature and power of the Holy Spirit. And as we go through the scripture, I pray that you see new sides to the Holy Spirit that you've never seen before. We're going to go through the Old Testament and look at the nature, the power, and the person of the Holy Spirit. I'll cover as many as I can and I want you right now just to ask the Lord to speak to you, to teach you about His precious Holy Spirit that you might be drawn closer to the Holy Spirit, empowered and transformed. Now I want to first look at how we see the Holy Spirit in scripture. We see Him specifically mentioned. We see Him subtly mentioned and we see Him symbolically mentioned. By that I mean, for example in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, He is specifically mentioned, but you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. So there it's very obvious that the Holy Spirit is being mentioned. And then sometimes He's subtly mentioned, like for example in Isaiah 6. We wouldn't know that it was the Holy Spirit specifically speaking to the prophet Isaiah unless we took that particular portion of scripture and then compared it or cross referenced it with Acts chapter 28 where it is then revealed that it was the Holy Spirit Himself who was speaking to Isaiah the prophet. So that is a subtle mention. And then there are symbolic mentions of the Holy Spirit. Now I may take another time to specifically go through as to why these are all symbols of the Holy Spirit. Before the time being for the sake of this message, I'll just mention right now the nine symbols of the Holy Spirit throughout scripture, fire, water, wind, the dove, the seal, wine, light, the cloud, oil, do me a favor, help the community, leave that in the comment section for me. Now these particular manifestations or I should say symbols of the Holy Spirit's presence aren't necessarily always referenced to Him. So for example in the scripture sometimes fire is just fire, sometimes water is just water, sometimes wind is just wind. But as you look at the context of the scripture that you're reading, you'll actually be able to see with careful study if one of these are actually a symbol for the presence of the Holy Spirit. So with that being said, let's go through the Old Testament here and look at the presence of the Holy Spirit. Let's start with Genesis chapter 1. You know you can't even get to verse 2 without seeing the precious Holy Spirit in scripture. Genesis chapter 1 verse 2, the earth was formless and empty and darkness covered deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Verse 3, then God said, let there be light and there was light. I want you to picture this. The person of the Holy Spirit hovering over that darkness, hovering over that void. And the word here for hovered can be translated to brooded. In other words brooded as in a bird that incubates its eggs, brooding over. So there we get a picture of a bird-like creature or the dove, the Holy Spirit hovering over the emptiness, hovering over the darkness. And then God speaks a word and creation manifests. Here we see from the very beginning the partnership between word and spirit. Now we have to be careful because often we imagine that the word contradicts the move of the Spirit and the Spirit contradicts the word. Now we don't say that outright do we? We don't say, well the Holy Spirit can't work with the word and the word can't work with the Holy Spirit. But even though we don't say that outright, we actually reveal that we believe this in a subtle way. When we say things like this, that service was so powerful. He didn't even preach a sermon. God just moved. Or the revival meeting was great. She just tore up her notes, didn't say a scripture, and went right into the miracles. Now granted, there are times when the Lord will lead you to just move right into the prophetic or right into praying for the sick. It's not always going to follow a specific order that you expect. But for the most part, you have to understand that the word is not an obstacle to the Holy Spirit moving. The word is the foundation to the move of the Holy Spirit. You can actually see this in services. There are sometimes maybe you'll go to a service and there are demonstrations of power, miracles, the prophetic healing deliverance. But you know something's missing. There's a substance that's not quite there. There's not a weight of the glory and the beauty of the Lord on that meeting. And you can't really quite put your finger on it often. It's because the word was neglected. So here we see the Holy Spirit hovers. The Father speaks, and creation comes into existence. When the word and spirit come together, that's when you have creation. When the word and the spirit come together, that's when there is substance. When the word and the spirit come together, that's when you have transformation. There are some believers who neglect the word of God and think that all they need is the Holy Spirit. And because they neglect the written word of God, which by the way, the Holy Spirit inspired, they get really weird. They get really strange. They start to embrace some doctrines that are not even in scripture that even contradict the nature of God. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we get some believers who are all theology, all intellect, and there's nothing wrong with theology. In fact, I believe that revelation is knowledge set on fire by the Holy Spirit.  You ought to know the word in great detail. But sometimes we rely so much on intellect that we neglect moves of the Spirit because we kind of snub our nose at it, or we look down upon it, or we condescend to it because we think that we've arrived at some place where we don't need encounters with God. No, you need both. You need both the word and the spirit moving together. And we see that partnership there with the Holy Spirit hovering. Genesis 1, 2, we hovered over the face of the deep. I want you to leave in the comment section right now these, the simple phrase, right? Word and spirit.  You're not just going to be all study, and you're not just going to be all spontaneous, but that you're going to embrace both the power and person of the Holy Spirit, as well as the written word of God. And in that, you will see true substance, true power, true transformation. So write that in the comment section right now, whether you're watching live or replay, Word and Spirit. In Genesis 17.5, some of these, by the way, we're not going to go to. I'll just reference briefly. This is one of those. In Genesis 17.5, we see that the name Abraham was changed to Abraham. Now, if you study the name Abraham, and you study the name Abraham and the difference between the two, you will find that there is a breath sound that's created there. So Abraham, Abraham, that's the breath of God. So that ha, that, that breathy sound, that's a representative of the Ruach, which is the breath of God, the wind of heaven, the spirit of the Lord. So in that breath, there was a transformation in name that right there alone is a whole message unto itself in the breath of the Spirit. There's a transformation in his name. There's a transformation in his nature. There's a transformation in his spiritual position. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He is the name changer. In Genesis 41.38, go there now. Genesis 41.38, we see that he was the same spirit who was in Joseph. And this, by the way, was a statement made by Pharaoh after Joseph had interpreted his dreams. Verse 38. So Pharaoh asked his officials, can we find anyone else like this man? So obviously, filled with the Spirit of God. Now, here we see this is the spirit of the dreamer. So the Holy Spirit was present in the Old Testament. Many times, believers imagine that the Holy Spirit showed up in Acts chapter two, or that that's when he started his work. But as we're about to see, he is found all throughout the Old Testament, his presence, his power, his nature, even the implication of his presence in some instances. And so this is the spirit of the dreamer within Joseph. The Holy Spirit gave to Joseph the power to interpret those dreams. That was a prophetic gifting on his life. And Pharaoh recognizes that. He's the fire of evangelism in Exodus chapter three, verse two.  Now, when you've come into contact with the presence of the Holy Spirit, within you is kindled a passion for lost souls.  Think about this. After Moses has his encounter with the Holy Spirit, now he has a burden for God's people. And in the same way, when you and I have an encounter with the Holy Spirit today, we have a burden for the lost. He's the precious oil in Exodus chapter 30, verses 22 through 25. He's the expert spirit. I love this one. Let's go, let's go look at this one. Exodus 31. Exodus 31. And I'm going to read verses, let's go one through six. Then the Lord said to Moses, look, I have specifically chosen Bezalau, son of Uri, grandson of her of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with the Spirit of God, giving him great wisdom, ability, and expertise in all kinds of crafts. He is a master craftsman, expert in working with gold, silver, and bronze. He is skilled in engraving and mounting gemstones in carving wood and in carving wood. He is a master at every craft. Moreover, I have given special skill to all the gifted craftsmen so they can make all the things I have commanded you to make. So here, as they're receiving instructions, where Moses is receiving instructions to have the tabernacle and its various items constructed and created, God says to him, I've given to you for this purpose craftsmen. Now this is interesting to me because this revealed something about the nature of the Holy Spirit that many believers often overlook. You see, we understand that the Holy Spirit can empower us for the prophetic or can empower us for discernment or can empower us for healing or can empower us to practice deliverance ministry, and these are all wonderful attributes of the Holy Spirit's nature. But think about the fact that not only does the Holy Spirit empower us unto the supernatural, he also empowers us unto the practical. Who would have thought that the Holy Spirit's power upon someone would give them the ability to craft and to create and to work with wood and to work with metals and to work with materials. That right there is a demonstration to us that the Holy Spirit is available to help us in our everyday lives. The Holy Spirit didn't only come upon the church to empower pastors, evangelists, teachers, apostles, and prophets. The Holy Spirit came upon the church to empower parents and children and students and teachers and business people and workers. He empowers you unto the practical. There's no task so big that the Holy Spirit cannot do it through you. And there's no task so small that the Holy Spirit won't make himself available to help you. He will help you in every detail of your life. Doesn't the scripture say that? He delights in every detail of your life. May we welcome him in our lives to empower us unto the practical. In Leviticus 9.24 we see that he is the sovereign fire. Remember fire is one of the symbols of the Holy Spirit. What's interesting here is that the priests were told to sustain the fire. They were told to never allow the fire to go out. Keep it burning. But notice that they did not start the fire. So picture this.  It must never go out. Do what you must to maintain that flame. But then the fire came from a heavenly place. The fire came from a divine source. The fire came from God Himself. So this represents to us the partnership that we have with the Holy Spirit. We cannot start moves of the Holy Spirit. We can steward them. We cannot begin a work of God. But we can surrender to a work of God. We can't force God to do what he does not want to do. But once he does move, we do have the opportunity to partner with him in those moves. Now God doesn't need us, but he chooses to partner with us here in the earth. God can work without us, but he chooses to involve us in what he does on this side of eternity. And so may we honor that partnership with the Holy Spirit in our lives. For example, the Holy Spirit will give you the desire to pray. You must choose to enact the discipline to pray. Partner with the Holy Spirit. He's the sovereign fire. Leviticus 24-2, we see that he's the pure oil. In Numbers chapter 11 verse 17, he's the spirit of impartation. And I will put my spirit upon them also. You know, impartation doesn't come from man. It comes through man, but it comes from God. Now some have suggested, strangely so, that the concept of impartation is not a biblical one. Whenever we talk about impartation, all we're talking about is the influence of God that comes through a human being touching the life of another. Authority can be imparted by God's will. Power can be imparted by God's will. Teachings can be imparted by God's will. Wisdom can be imparted by God's will. He uses individuals to give to us these things, not from those individuals, but through those individuals. And looking at that simple definition of impartation, we see clearly that that is a biblical concept. And this is one of the things we see here, that the spirit of God comes upon them also. He's the spirit of impartation. He is the one who gives mantles and positions and gifts and authority and assignments and so forth. He's the different spirit. Go to Numbers 14. This is another one of my favorites. We could do a sermon on each one of these, but as I said, we'll do as many as we can here. Numbers, let me know, are you enjoying this so far? Tell me so far what your favorite one is in the comments. Numbers 14. 24. Numbers 14. 24. But my servant Caleb has a different spirit than the others have. He has remained loyal to me, so I will bring him into the land he explored. His descendants will possess their full share of the land. Twelve spies, ten gave a bad report, two gave a good one. And Caleb gave that good report, why there was a different spirit in him.  Here's what I love about Caleb, is that when others saw impossibility, he saw opportunity. When others looked and dismayed, he looked at God and believed. When others saw the problem, he saw God's power. May we have that different spirit within us. Now, of course, this is not a direct reference to the Holy Spirit, but it is a reference to the spirit in which he was operating. And we understand that the Holy Spirit is the one who influences our spirits to obey and do as God desires. So here we see a subtle work of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit was producing faith even in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit was producing that hope, that ember, that fire that brings one to belief in God's power. May we have that different spirit when we approach the seemingly impossible. May we have that different spirit when we want to quit, when we want to give up, when we get so frustrated because we just don't see things working out the way we want them to work out, or in the timing we want to see them work out. May we have that different spirit. He was the spirit in Joshua, Numbers 27, 18. He was the fire by night in the cloud by day, Deuteronomy 133. The oil of prosperity, Deuteronomy 33, 24. The spirit of breakthrough, Joshua 6, 3-5. Remember I talked about that word Ruach, that can mean spirit, wind, or breath. Notice then that when the children of Israel had marched around the walls of Jericho, they were told to shout or breathe, to release that breath of the Spirit. Think about the fact that it was the power of God that caused the walls of Jericho to fall like water, and also that same power that caused the waters to stand up like walls. It was the breath of God. The scripture says the breath of his nostril. He released that breath and the sea stood at attention, that it parted ways so that the children of Israel could walk through. So that breath makes the walls fall like water, and the water rise like walls, the spirit of breakthrough. He makes a way where there seems to be no way. He clears a path where there looks like there's no path. The spirit of discernment, Joshua 7, 16-19. We know the story of Achan's tent. They found sin in the camp. How did they find that sin in the camp? It was through the direction of the Holy Spirit. He's the spirit of leadership, Judges 3-10. The Holy Spirit would come upon them so that they could lead. The fire from the rock, Judges 6-21. The spirit of conquest, Judges 11-29. The Spirit came on him and he led an army against the Ammonites. The fire of heaven, Judges 13-20. The spirit of supernatural strength. I love this, Judges 14-6, just as he gave supernatural physical strength to Samson. So he gives supernatural strength of all sorts to you.  Just when you think you've given all that you had, the Holy Spirit comes to strengthen you and help you keep moving forward. The gentle spirit, Judges 16-20, he didn't realize that the Lord had left him. Now I want to be careful with the way I describe this, because especially when looking at Old Testament instances, we have to be careful to filter them through properly new covenant perspective. We understand that the Holy Spirit does not leave a genuine born-again believer just because they make a mistake. And so here, I believe this is speaking more to the manifestation of that power or the intensity of his influence. He didn't realize that he didn't have the ability to do what he did before. So he's that gentle spirit.  But here in Judges 16-20, he leaves as a whispered breath. The Holy Spirit has an announced arrival, but a quiet leaving.  I say that in the sense that he removes his influence from certain aspects of our lives when we walk in compromise. And of course, he'll convict us. He'll still speak to us and try to help us correct that, and eventually God will bring correction and judgment upon disobedience. But he is patient with us. So often we miss that though. He arrives as a mighty rushing wind, but his influence is minimized as a whispered breath. And we don't even recognize it sometimes. We don't even recognize sometimes when the Holy Spirit has decreased his influence in our lives. We don't even recognize it when the Holy Spirit removes his hand from something that we're in. Here's the thing about the Holy Spirit is he will sometimes allow you to continue on the path where you're stubbornly walking so that that can ultimately bring correction. He's humble like that. He'll whisper, he'll convict, he'll correct, of course. But many people don't even realize when he's not in something anymore. And here's the sad truth. We are so self-reliant these days. We are so reliant upon programs. We are so reliant upon intellect. We are so reliant upon skill that often we don't even recognize the Holy Spirit having lifted his influence. In fact, we're the Holy Spirit to remove himself from churches in America or around the world. Many churches wouldn't even realize that he left because they're so self-reliant. He's the kind spirit of adoption, Ruth 2.21. Boaz is a type of Christ, and wherever you see a type of Christ, you can see a type of the spirit. The appointing spirit, 1 Samuel 10.1, 16.1, and 16.13. He's the spirit who speaks through you, 2 Samuel 23.2. I like this. Let's go to 1 Kings chapter 19. First Kings chapter 19. I want to show you something. Watch this here. 1 Kings 19. I'm going to read beginning at verse 11. Go and stand before me on the mountain, the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. On a side note, that's another example of where wind is just wind, because here clearly outright says, the Lord was not in the wind. And the earthquake, and after the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And a voice said, what are you doing here, Elijah? So the voice of the Holy Spirit here wasn't in the wind, wasn't in the earthquake, wasn't in the fire. It was a still, small voice. This again speaks to the gentle nature of the Holy Spirit. Yes, there is a facet to his being where he's firm, where he's direct, where he's stern with us sometimes, but there's also this gentle side to him. And what I found interesting about this is that if God was in the wind, if the Holy Spirit was in the wind, Elijah would have had no choice but to be moved by the wind. If the Holy Spirit was in the earthquake, Elijah would have had no choice but to be moved, to be shaken by the earthquake. If the Holy Spirit was in the fire, Elijah would have had no choice but to be warmed or burned by that fire. The Holy Spirit was not in the wind, was not in the earthquake, he was not in the fire. He was in the still, small voice. Because he was in the still, small voice, Elijah had a choice to listen and obey.  The Holy Spirit will speak, thus giving you a choice. He's the pervasive oil, second kings, four, one through seven. The heavenly wind, second kings to 11. A kindred spirit, 1 Chronicles 12, 18. When David was running from Saul, and his camp was approached by men he did not recognize, David did know whether or not he should allow those men to enter the camp. But then the Holy Spirit comes upon them, they begin to prophesy, and he knows that he should allow them in his camp. You know the Holy Spirit will reveal to you who you should and should not have around you. Think of what great advantage you and I have in being friends of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit hears conversations you do not hear. The Holy Spirit sees motives you do not see. The Holy Spirit sees thoughts you do not see. The Holy Spirit knows the hearts and the intents of the people around you. And he can tell you in your spirit whether or not someone should be connected to you. Listen to that voice. I can't tell you how many times when I was meeting someone or working with someone the Holy Spirit would give me a check in my spirit as many say. There was this inner knowing and inner witness that something was off there. And in responding to the voice of the Holy Spirit, I was spared of many troubles because it would turn out that these people were really not for me or for the Lord even. And so the Holy Spirit is that kindred spirit. You'll recognize it. I've been out sometimes, for example, I'll be at the grocery store, maybe at the gas station, and maybe I'll strike up a conversation with someone. And every so often I can tell and I'll say, you're a Christian, aren't you? And they'll say, yes, how did you know? I said, I don't know. There's just a kindred spirit. Maybe that's happened to you before. Let me know if it did. Where you're talking with someone. Maybe you meet someone on the street or in a classroom or whatever setting it is. And you just know in your spirit, this person is a Christian. You can sense it. That's the kindred spirit. Maybe even you can sense that connection here where there's this kindred spirit that you and I have because we're both of the Holy Spirit. The fortifying spirit, 2 Chronicles 15, 1-4, he was reminded to rid the land of idols. That's what the Holy Spirit will do. Even when you're walking as you should walk, even when you are where you should be spiritually, the Holy Spirit will still nudge you along and say, hey, let's keep things in order here. Let's not just grow comfortable. He'll nudge you to remove any compromise remaining. He's the convicting spirit, Ezra 10-1. The comforter. Just take a look at the meaning of Nehemiah's name. He's the good spirit in Nehemiah 9-20. You sense your good spirit to instruct them. What is good? It's talking about moral excellence, uprightness. He's the voice of destiny in Esther chapter 4, verses 13-14. Also, I believe he's symbolized in the King's signant that seal for the salvation of God's people is prophetic in the book of Esther. He's the life-giving spirit in Job 33-4. He's the spirit of worship in Psalm 51-11. The oil of honor, the oil of joy, the oil of favor in Psalm 23-5, 45-7 and 84-9. He's the spirit of wisdom. I can sense an anointing even as I'm talking right now. He's the spirit of wisdom in Proverbs 1, 20-23. He's the spirit of purpose, eternity in our hearts. Ecclesiastes 3-11. He's the hidden dove, song of Solomon 2-14. The generational spirit, Isaiah 44-3. The spirit upon Jesus, Isaiah 61-1.  He's the one who grieves over sin, lamentations 2-11. He's the life of the heavenly beings, Ezekiel 1-20-21. He, I believe, is the fiery being in Ezekiel chapter 1, excuse me, chapter 8, verses 1-4. Notice that the scripture describes this being of fire there. And then it says, the spirit took me by the hair after describing that being. He's the man of fire in the book of Ezekiel. He's the giver of spiritual visions, Ezekiel 11-24. The spirit of oneness, Ezekiel 36-25-27.  The excellent spirit in Daniel 5-12. The patient spirit in Hosea 2-14. The promise of the Father in Joel chapter 2, verses 28-31. The consuming fire, Amos 5-4-6. The vindicating fire, Obadiah 1-18. The protector of the call, Jonah 1-4. The unchanging spirit, Micah 2-7. The spirit of warning, Nahum 1-6. The spirit of indignation, Habakkuk 1-13. The spirit of hope, Zephaniah 3-14-15. He's the enemy of fear in Haggai 2-5. The spirit of grace in Zechariah 12-10. And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication.  It says it outright in the scripture. Finally, in Malachi 3, and this is where I really want to spend just a little more time with you here. Malachi 3, I'm going to read verses 1 and 2. Look, I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant whom you look for so eagerly is surely coming, says the Lord of Heaven's armies. But who will be able to endure it when he comes? Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes. There we see again that symbol of fire, the Holy Spirit is the refiner's fire. Think about the fact that John, when describing Jesus, he talked about Jesus baptizing you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He's the refiner's fire puts you on that threshing floor and removes the chaff and burns it away. He purifies you and removes those things from you that are not like Jesus, that need to be removed. That's who the Holy Spirit is. Now, I cover all of these in great detail in a book I wrote called Encountering the Holy Spirit in every book of the Bible. And I actually go through Genesis all the way to Revelation. And I give great detail on each one of these and more that I mentioned. But I want you to take what you've just received. And I know you were given a lot here, but I want you to take maybe one or two revelations and hold it close just for the next few days. I'm serious. I want you to do this. I know just ignore the flesh right now. The flesh wants to click on something else, maybe watch something entertaining. This is edifying. This is for your spirit. I want you to make a commitment to take one or two of those truths and just hold them close to you. You say, David, what do you mean by that?  Maybe you see them as the refiner's fire. Maybe you see them as the spirit of excellence, the spirit of the dreamer. Maybe you see them as the one who works with the Word. Whatever it may be, just hold that revelation close. Appreciate that aspect of the Holy Spirit's nature and ask Him to give you encounters with Him that reflect that aspect of His nature. I believe He's caused certain things in this message to stand out to you for a reason. So, Father, I pray you help him do it. Be our constant reminder. Let us sense you in the room with us now. Thank you for your presence in power, precious Holy Spirit. In the mighty name of Jesus, we pray I want you to say because you believe it, say and type. Amen. If you enjoyed that, leave a like so others can see it. Subscribe to my channel so that we can stay connected and you can continue to receive my teachings on the Holy Spirit. And now, before you close out this video, I want to ask you to become a monthly ministry supporter of this ministry if your life has been impacted. I know you're generous. I know you love the gospel. I know you love Jesus. So I'm asking you to go with me to the nations. What do you mean go with you to the nations? Well, you as someone who prays for this ministry, as someone who gives to this ministry, everywhere I go in the spirit, you're going with me. Everything I do in the spirit, you're doing it with me. We are co-laborers in the gospel. And so if you have a passion to see people saved, healed, delivered and empowered, join this movement. Get behind what God is doing. That's what we have really. We have a Holy Spirit movement that's very unique and God is doing something quite special through His ministry. It's not my ministry, it's His. And I'm just a steward of this ministry. And I want you to partner with this ministry so that you can be involved with what God is doing.  You've been blessed to this ministry in some way. I'm going to ask you now, will you pay that forward? Will you take that step of faith? Look, I know it's challenging for many to take a step of faith and to give. But I want you to say no to fear. I know there's that grip, right? Sometimes that we feel. Let go. Step out in faith and watch what the Lord will do as you obey the Holy Spirit. Do not ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit. You step out in faith. Just watch what the Lord will do for you. He's going to take care of you. And I believe He will increase you, that He might produce a harvest of generosity in you. So partner today for a monthly partnership. Go to David Hernandez Ministries dot com slash partner. Think of all of the things that we spend our money on. And even in some instances, if we're being honest, things we waste our money on. Think about what we pay on monthly subscriptions and entertainment and going out and having fun. I'm not saying you can't do those things. But won't you also consider doing that for the Gospel? Consider becoming a partner with this ministry for $10 a month, $25 a month, $50 a month. Some can do $100 a month. But go right now. Ask the Holy Spirit, what do you want me to do? 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Puts and calls provide a building block for developing complex option contracts and at this situation we may have two types of payoffs like payoffs from buying a put option and simultaneously buying the underlying asset. How such type of payoffs are there? We have two types of strategies. The first is buying a put option on a stock and simultaneously buying the underlying stock. If you see that the stock is greater than the exercise price, the put option will be worthless. This means that the value of the combined position is now just equal to the value of the stock at the expiration date. And if the exercise price is greater than the stock price, then the decline in the value of the share will be exactly offset by the rise in the value of the put option contract. So there is a protection in this combined contract which is termed as a protective put means that we are buying a put and the underlying stock together. In other words, we are buying an insurance on the stock. The stock in this case can always be sold at a higher at the exercise price regardless of the decline in the price of the stock itself. In second strategy, we are buying a call and a risk free zero coupon bond with a face value of $50. So how the payoff payoffs in this contract will will behave buying a zero coupon bond will be guaranteed to receive $50 as per the face value of this particular bond. Now it is immaterial that how much the price of the stock will be at the date of expiry. The same payoff patron from buying a put and the underlying stock and a call a zero coupon bond we are seeing in these two strategies. Now both these strategies have same payoffs and that is the reason these two types of strategies are now believed to have same patron of the cost. In other words, in these particular situations may not choose the low cost strategy avoiding the high cost strategy because the strategy first have the cost just like equal to the cost of the second strategy. In other words, in strategy one the we have a stock and the put option. So the price of the stock and the price of the put option under strategy one is equal to the price of the call and the present value of the exercise price under strategy two. This relationship between put and call is termed as a put call parity relationship and it is a two way of buying protective put in the manner that at first phase we are buying a put and the underlying stock simultaneously in which the total cost if this of this strategy is equal to the price of the stock plus the price of the put. And in strategy two we are buying a call and a zero coupon bond in which the total cost is equal to the price of the call plus the present value of the exercise price and the present value exercise price is basically the power value of the underlying zero coupon bond. In free leg strategy we can replicate the purchase of a stock by buying a call and selling a put and then buying a zero coupon bond. This means that the price of stock is now equal to the price of a call and the price of the present value of the exercise price and from these two prices we will detect the price of the put in order to determine the price of the stock. Now in this free leg strategy the investors are said to have purchased a synthetic stock which means that we may have one more transformation of this strategy in the way that if we deduct price of the call from the price of the stock then the resulting value will be equal to the negative value of the put plus the present value of the exercise price. So this is our conservative strategy because as it is also known as selling a covered call. Now the beauty of a put call parity relationship is that it shows that how any strategy in the option contract can be achieved in two different ways. To understand this put call parity relationship we have an example where the price of a share of a stock is $80 and a three month call option with the strike price of $85 goes for $6. This free rate is 5% and the value of a three month put option with an exercise price of $85 would be what? So we are to determine the value of the put option in using this data. If we rearrange the put call parity relationship equation to solve for the price of the put then the equation says like the price of the put is equal to the value minus value of the stock plus the price of the call and the present value of the exercise price and for a stock price we have an $80 the price of the call is equal to $6 and to determine the present value of the exercise price we need to discount the value of $85 using the discount factor of 5% for a three month period the resulting figure of this equation is equal to $9.74 and that is the value of the put under this contract.


Namaskaram! As a part of the earth hour, we will be turning off lights in the yoga center for an hour. Can you believe this? We have an earth hour, an earth day, because we have forgotten that we are part of the earth. Our very body is an outcrop of this planet. Right now, you are an outcrop of this planet that has the capacity to prance around a bit. After some time, you will be back into the earth, maybe a small mount. We need to understand that if we want to live well, the planet has to be well. So as a part of this, please join us in turning off your lights and your automobiles from 8.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. on 24th March, wherever you are on this planet. Spend this hour outside if you can. Try and be in touch with nature. The air that you breathe, the land that you work upon, the water that you drink and the food that you eat, see how you can connect with this. And on a daily basis, create ways for yourself to be in touch with the planet. If you bare hands and feet, particularly the palms and soles, come in touch with the earth on a daily basis, it will enhance your experience of life and will lead to much health and well-being. Whatever you do, make it as conscious as possible. I don't want to tell you how much water to use, how much food to eat. No, I will not put you through this, but please do everything that you do. Because everything that you do in some way, you consume a part of this earth, everything that you do, please do it consciously. And I'm sure once you are conscious, you will definitely do the best that you can do and that will make a big difference to this world.