That's totally portage campus issues, right? Because at Richland, we're like 15 minutes early, right?  If you're five minutes early, you're on time. Anybody like that? Okay, the rest of you, respond to the ultra call at the end of the service. Get right with God. Hey, open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter seven this morning. And while you're turning there, just highlight that tonight, our Team Radiant Night is gonna be really, really special.  You volunteer, you serve in some capacity here at Radiant Church. Your part of Team Radiant in this night is for you. And yes, we're gonna have some great food and get together. And we've also got a, I don't know, what do we call it? A preview of the roll-in for at the movies this year. At the movies is coming, so we're gonna show that tonight. But probably the most important reason you should be here tonight, if you weren't planning on it, is two things. Number one is we're gonna pray together. And there's such power when you get five or 600 people that are committed all in praying together over needs of our city, over our church. And it's really powerful. And the other part of it is there's some things that over this summer, the Lord has been depositing in me, kind of showing me about the direction we're moving in the future, some things that are coming. And I don't always talk about those on Sunday morning, but I do more in a leadership capacity. My staff has heard me talking about it over the last month. And many of them were like, you need to share this with Team Radiant on the team night. And I thought, well, I probably wouldn't do that. And they're just like, no, you need to do that. And so I'm actually gonna do that.  Come on out, it starts at six tonight. And I really believe it's gonna be, it's gonna be really powerful instrumental. How many of you enjoyed Presbytery last weekend? Do you guys enjoy prophetic Presbytery weekend? Thank all of you for staying so focused and coming into all the different services that we had, had Sunday night, Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning. And you know you've crossed the line of fanaticism when you have two or 300 people that show up for church on Monday and Tuesday morning. That is awesome. I love that. And so we're just gonna start, no, I'm kidding. I was gonna announce the new Monday morning service, but you guys would probably not show up. Okay, so, hey, Matthew chapter seven, beginning in verse number seven. I wanna read these words of Jesus this morning. I want you to read along with me, not out loud, but just follow either in your Bible or on the screen. It says this, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you for everyone who asks, receives. And he who seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man is there among you if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask? So this is part, I think it's part four of our series entitled tuned in. And the whole point of this series, why we're talking about the voice of God is because there is nothing more vital and important in the life of a Christian than their ability to identify, understand and relate to God on a personal level. We need that, we need an ongoing relationship with God that's living, that's thriving. We need to be able to hear the voice of God over all the other voices, all the static, all the other opinions, even the internal voices that oftentimes we pay attention to. And some of the primary ways that God speaks to us is through the word, it's through others, it's through supernatural means. But over the next couple of weeks, this week and next week, we're gonna be talking about prayer because prayer is not just a discipline, it's supposed to be a desire and a design of the Christian life. Many of us pray because we know that we should, but we don't often feel confident that we know how to or that our prayers are heard. You know, if you were to just kind of do a survey of just average American people on the street, just ask them, hey, if you were to meet or you were to know a Christian, what do you think are a couple of things that all Christians have in common that they do? And one of those things would obviously be going to church. So you guys check the box because here you are, well done. Another one would be reading the Bible. You know, Christians read their Bibles or at least they should. Probably a third thing is they pray. So, you know, that's maybe true of a lot of people who are Christian, non-Christian that we pray. Part of the reason why we pray is because we've been hardwired as spiritual beings to want to connect with God. So religions have all been shaped around that desire and that longing, but relationship is more important than religion and oftentimes religion gets in the way of our ability to pray effectively because we think that we have to do it in a certain way in order for God to hear us. And if we don't feel qualified to pray or that we don't know how to pray the right way, then we won't even bother doing it because we don't want to do something not well and a lot of us also we don't pray or we don't understand prayer because instead of being clothed in relational righteousness, we feel more garbed up by our own shame and guilt. And so that pushes us away from God.  Raise your hand. That's a normal expectation. All right, most everybody. But if I were to ask you how many of you have struggled in knowing how to when to or if you're qualified to pray, you've struggled in your prayer life, raise your hand. Isn't that crazy? It's the one thing we know we should do, but it's also one of the things that we're the most insecure about in our relationship. I've heard people pray before and thought to myself, man, I wish I could pray like them, eloquent words. I did this wedding one time and I'm a pretty informal person, but I had to do this wedding at a very formal church and so formal that the pastor wore a robe, one of those long robes and he had like vestry, things over his shoulders and he wanted me to wear one. I was like, no. So, but he said, now when we walk in, you've got to, we'll walk out the side stage and you have to look at the cross and you have to bow down and do this thing and I'm like, well, I'm just gonna follow your lead and I had to follow his ceremony. His ceremony was written in the 1700s and so it was this Elizabethan English about wo-gee unto thee betrothed and I mean, words, I didn't even know what they meant. I'm like, I took Latin and I don't know what this means and I was never more uncomfortable than doing that wedding ceremony, but when he did it, man, when he prayed those prayers, he knew every word, he knew the right tone, he knew the inflection, I'm like, wow, this guy, I don't even know what he just said, but it sounds holy and a lot of times what we can view prayer is something that it's an art, that it has to be poetic, it has to be perfect, even doctrinally, it's got to have everything right there. We've got a law and order mindset about prayer that we have to have our proof text and our evidence in order to present it to God, in order to convince him, to get the legal decision on our favor and I get that there's parts of prayer where we claim the promises of God and we call God into remembrance of his promises over our life, but that's not what Jesus taught his disciples about prayer. What Jesus showed and demonstrated in his life about prayer to his disciples was different than anything else his followers had ever seen. They were all good Jewish kids who had grown up in Sabbath school every Saturday of their lives. The custom of young boys was to learn the Torah, the first five books of the Bible almost verbatim. So here they are adults, they know the Bible, they've been to church, they've heard sermons and they've heard the prayers because the prayers in the synagogue had been prayed for thousands of years in Hebrew, out loud. God, creator of the heavens and the earth, Almighty God, all these transcendent statements. So it wasn't that they didn't know what prayer was or didn't know how to pray. It's just when they saw Jesus praying is radically different. Jesus would get away from them. He wouldn't pray with them. I'm sure he prayed with them, but he would get away one-on-one with the father and he would begin his prayer like a child begins their conversation with a father. And when they came to him one day and said to Jesus, teach us to pray, they weren't asking because they didn't know how to pray, they were asking because they wanted to pray like him. And it wasn't the eloquence that drew him, it was the attitude and the posture of their hearts. You see, I don't know exactly what they saw, but we see later on in Jesus' ministry, he goes into the Garden of Gethsemane and he talks to the father. And John chapter five, when people religious leaders were asking Jesus to do certain things their way, he said, I can't do it that way. In fact, the son of man can't do anything on his own, but only that which he sees the father doing is what he does and only that which he hears the father saying is what he says. He says, basically what Jesus said is, I get along with my father, I find out what he's doing and I leave the prayer closet and I go and do that. And whatever he's saying, that's what I do.  And so the disciples saw that and here's what Jesus taught his disciples to pray. It's interesting. Called the Lord's Prayer. Jesus said, if you want to pray, pray in this manner. In the Greek language it says, pray according to this pattern. And the first two words of the Lord's Prayer are? Come on, everybody say it out loud. Isn't that interesting? You say, well, what's so interesting about that? What's interesting is nobody else prayed like that. Everybody else prayed, oh, God, almighty creator of the heavens and creator of the universe.  If you see something in my life that you want to follow, here's how you have to pray. You have to start with understanding that God is almighty God. God did create the heavens on the earth. God is transcendent. He knows every molecule, every chromosome in every DNA strand in a hundred billion galaxies. He controls the speed of light. He knows everything past, present, and future, but that's not going to help you in your prayer life. What's going to happen, what's going to help you in your relationship with God is knowing and relating to him as, and that says it all. And that's where Jesus picks up in Matthew chapter seven. He says, if you ask, it will be given to you. If you seek and keep seeking, you shall receive. And if you knock, the door will be opened unto you, kind of all that. We can break those down into three dimensions, but it's really the second half of what Jesus said that I think stands out.    See, the master key to a relationship with God is understanding him as father, but the master key is desire on the inside of you to relate to God as a father. Because listen, if you relate to God as anything other than a father, then you can believe in his existence, you can even fear him, you might even obey him. But we don't typically draw close to things that we're afraid of, we keep them at a distance. We relate to things, we relate to people that we're intimate with, that we love, that we cherish, that we know love us, that have invested words and equity into our life, and it's a magnetism that draws us to them. You see, I think far too often we have shaped prayer into a Harry Potter mentality instead of a this is us mentality. Now I've never seen Harry Potter, so forgive me if you love those books, great. When I was younger, and our kids were younger, I was convinced by videos that if you watched those, you'll go straight to hell, so obviously my kids never saw them, I never saw them. I did watch Lord of the Rings, however, because that was written by J.R. Tolkien, so that was way better. But Harry Potter, any of those shows that have wizardry, it's all about the incantation, it's all about reading these old, pulling up old wisdom and these incantations and magic spells, formulas, that if we say the right formula, we can manipulate the course of nature and forces and energy to do our bidding for us. That's what I mean by we treat prayer far too often more like Harry Potter than this is us, because it's like we think to ourselves about prayer that God is withholding from us, but if we can find the right formula, we can put the formula as a master key into the door and get what we want on the other side of it. And if we treat God like that, not only is that putting us at the center of the universe and causing God to orbit us, but it's also indicting the very nature and the character of who God is. But if we could see prayer to be more like this is us, how many have seen that show, this is us? There are only two shows that make me cry every single time I watch them. The first one is called Little House on the Prairie. I'm crying even thinking about it, like right now. Inside I can hear Laura going, Paul, Michael Landon, my, okay. I grew up every weekdays, 6 p.m., grandfather clock struck six. One, ba da ba da da da. And I'd watch, I'd watch every episode. When Ashley married Zach, when we brought him into the family, I'm like, Little House on the Prairie is like, oh, I've never seen that. I'm like, son, sit down. I have the whole box at DVDs. And he didn't like them. I almost didn't let him marry my daughter because of that, but every single time by the end of the show, there's like this, even Harriet Olson, I mean, just tears. The other show, I thought I was safe. When I stopped watching, I thought, okay, I'm growing up, I'm matured. Then Jane says, there's a show on NBC we've gotta watch. I'm just like, what's it called? And she goes, this is us. I'm like, I'm not watching that show. It looks dumb. And she goes, just watch it. So I watched it and it's, if you've seen it, I just sat there and by the end of it, I was like looking out the slider so that Jane couldn't see me because I'm just, Jack.  I mean, just, we're both bawling. And you know what I realized about both of those shows? Both of them are centered around a good father. Both of them are centered around not of perfect people, not of people that are going through life without any challenges or difficulties, but the anchor for them is the strength of a father who will go to any extended means to take care of his children. And when we see prayer like Harry Potter, listen, formula, magic incantation, a formula, if we see prayer as being more about a formula than a father, we will never develop a strong prayer life. But if we see prayer as always being about the father, the father who sees us, loves us, and has good things for us, not just things that we can receive, that's part of it, but notice it says, if you seek, you'll find, okay, there's some pathways in life we wanna find. If we ask, we receive, there's some things that we want to receive, questions we wanna ask, directions we need, but doors, there's also gonna be doors that we stand before. And we're trying to figure out whether this is a wall or whether this is a door. If we'll see it through the lens of the father who's for us, it will change our desires. It will instigate something on the inside of us. The question, listen, everything in life really boils down to desire. We started in the garden with an issue of desire, with an issue of our wills, whether we were gonna submit to God's word, his voice, or whether we were going to allow our own desires to take us in another direction. It has everything to do with temptation. Prayer has everything to do with desire. If you desire God's word above all things, then you will be a person of prayer, you'll be a person that it won't be drudgery to, it will actually be delight. But if you see prayer as God being this kind of mean, distant, indifferent God towards you, not a father, then prayer will be something where you don't wanna bother God as much, or maybe I can't trust his good intentions for me. The real question that we have to ask is, what do you wanna hear? What do you want to hear in your life? Do you wanna hear the voice of God? Because here's what I know, if you want or you desire to hear the voice of God, you will. But there are all kinds of competing voices, thoughts, worldviews, opinions that are luring us saying, come on, listen to me. Trying to sell us on their desires. And the real question is what, at the end of the day, what do you want? Because that's what Jesus is saying, if you will ask, you'll receive. If you'll seek, you'll find. If you knock, the door will be opened unto you. You know, I was reading that scripture one time and I was thinking to God, this was kind of my internal conversation. It's like, Lord, if you already know everything that I need, why do I have to ask? And if you already know where I'm going, why do I have to seek? And if you know every opportunity that's gonna come my way and why do I have to knock on doors? Why can't you just open all the doors that need to be opened? Why can't you just, you know, if you're working all things for my good, why do I even have to do these things? Why did you build it in that I have to ask, seek, and knock? And the Lord's answer to me was this. He says, because the process of asking, seeking, and knocking actually reveals and creates desire on the inside of you.  I want you to pursue me. I want to partner with you. I'm not, see, if we see doors in our life as blockades that are keeping us from what we want on the other side of it, then whenever you come up to doors in your life, you'll be tempted to see them as barriers, as walls. So many times we come up to doors and it's like, well, I know what I want's on the other side, but I don't see a door as actually an entry point. I actually see it as a wall that's telling me no. If you think God locked that door to keep you out of something and that you've been denied access, then you'll stop seeking. Or if you're asking, you're seeking for God's wisdom, you've gotta come do a place where you want to hear God's voice, you want God's opinion, you want God's truth, you want God's way more than you want anything else, more than any opinion matters, more than what people think, more than even your own desires.  So I'm asking in the process of asking in the process of seeking, what is revealed is how good God is, but it begins to stir desire for the right things on the inside of us. So the issue is the question we're all asking is what do you want to hear? What do you want to hear?  So it was like a Queen B road trip. And there was way too much estrogen in that car for me to get into, so I said, I'm gonna stay behind, take care of the dogs. But Jane went down there and they're having a great time, but when we'll take road trips often, I drive, there's a lot of times where I get in the car and I just want quiet. Can anybody relate to that? It's like, I just want to get in the car and I just, I don't want anything. I don't want to talk, I don't want conversation. I just, I want to stare out the windshield and look at the road. So still, it's like quiet. I'm not uncomfortable with quiet. It's just like, I can think, I can daydream and time goes fast, but when we get in the car, Jane loves music. So growing up in our house, we always had music on, always had worship music on. 24-7, our computer was never turned off. From the moment we bought our Mac, iMac, until the day it died, it never was powered off. Always playing iTunes music and worship music. So when we get in the car, I like quiet, we'll go on a road trip and Jane will often be like, I know what that sigh means. Like what?  And what that means, she's not really asking me if I want to. She's telling me she wants music. And I'm like, well, what do you want to hear? There's two questions that I often ask in a car. Where do you wanna eat and what do you wanna hear? In both cases, she rarely knows. Where do you wanna eat? I don't know. She knows where she doesn't wanna eat and my job is to guess. My job is to come up with it. It's like, well, hey, we could go to Panera. No, no, no, no Panera. How about some Thai food? Everything in the mood for that. Pizza, pizza's always good. It's what we're gonna eat in heaven for eternity. She's like, I'm like, where do you wanna eat? I don't know. Second question, what do you wanna hear? So I've got a library on my phone. We've got Bluetooth, I've got XM, I've got AM, I've got FM, I've got all these. What do you wanna hear?  Is that what you wanna hear? No, I want you to. No, not cheap trick. Go to the 80s and she loves the 80s. So it's like, oh, the 80s. A lot of times we'll go to the 80s because we both grew up in the 80s. 90s, we'll go there, but we don't know any of the music except the theme song to Veggie Tales because we were raising kids in the 90s. I know Arthur, I know Wishbone, I know the big comfy couch and I know Veggie Tales. I know the theme songs. That was the only music that we listened to in the 90s. But the 80s, we both grew up in the 80s so we flip on the 80s. It's like Death Leopard, Night Ranger, Journey, Foreign, you know, all the Christian bands. So, and still a lot of times we'll tune that in or it's like, do you want comedy or whatever? It's like, what do you want to hear? I don't know until she hears it. I'll know it when I hear it. It's gonna take a while. It's a question we've gotta ask ourselves in life because let me tell you there are a lot of options. There are a lot of options out there. If we're just being real, look, there are a lot of options, a lot of voices and the voices, every voice, every voice, it doesn't matter if it's the voice of media, doesn't matter if it's the voice of our peers, it doesn't matter whether it's the internal voice of our past and our greatest fears and anxieties or whether it's the voice of the enemy or whether it's the voice of God. All voices are doing the same thing. They are offering, they're offering something that they think we want in order to trigger our desires because the hook of your life, the direction of your life will be determined by the desires of your life and the desire of your life is always lured in a certain direction by voices and so when you think about all the different voices that are competing for your affections, you got the voice of peer pressure, you got the voice of social media, you got the voice of the marketplace, you have the voice of the philosophies and the world views of mankind, you've got political voices, you have spiritual voices, the voice of demons, you've got the voice of theology, you've got the voice of philosophy. All of these voices are communicating something and they all have a hook to them and they're saying, look, if you'll turn your attention to me, I will give you what you want and we are all hearers, every single one of us are hearers. We're listening to voices all the time but we just have to determine what we want to hear because oftentimes what we want to hear we're using as a means to get what we want.  For me, it's always tennis shoes or something that pop up and it's like, hey, shop now, swipe up and shop now. It's like, how did they know? We'll be literally talking about it one day, talking about man, I really, I think I want a new pair of sneakers. The next day you're on Instagram and all of a sudden it's like, hey, ooh, sneakers, boom, right there. It's like, how did they know? They know.   And can I tell you that we all experience that every day, we're just used to it. It's true when it comes to buying things and it's also true of spiritual influences and voices in our life. Now, not all voices are equal. The world is trying to offer us all kinds of things. These voices are saying, look what you're really, you're confronted with your own needs, you're confronted with the desires that you have, there's things going on the inside of yours like, I need something or I need a sense of purpose or my life would be better if I had this and you know the enemy is super good at popping up in that moment and going, here's what you need. Or your fears whispering in your ear. Well, if you do it this way, then last time you did it, it went this way, so now do it this way or say this, guard yourself in this relationship or go to this place because if you just had that guy, I mean, I know you've had boyfriends before and it didn't work out, but if you just had this guy, your whole world would change.    We paint all these guys who are young and single as just these studs and as soon as they get married, they become couch potatoes who are indifferent and dumb and that's not reality by the way. That's just the way that the world paints the picture.  There's always something else that's out there that the enemy's going, come on, this is what you really want. What's he trying to do? Get a hold of your desire because the master key to a relationship with God is desire and the enemy knows if he can hijack your desire, he can hijack your relationship with God. Jesus said, I want you to ask, why Jesus?  He's like, I want you to think about it. I want you to become focused in your desire. I want you to ask me because you know that I'm good because you know that I'm your father. I want you to seek and you shall find. Why do I have to seek for these things, God, in your way? Because you're living in a world where there's all these street signs saying, if you want happiness, live this way. If you want wealth, do this. If you wanna feel significant, be this.  I want you to seek me. God's not hiding from you, God's hiding for you. See, there's not a door in the world, not a lock in the world that can keep you from the father's voice. He says, knock and the door will be opened unto you. God, if everything that I need is on the other side, that door, why is the door closed in the first place? Why are you telling me to knock? God's like, because in the process of knocking, I'm refining who you are and the focus of your desire and I'm causing you to exert yourself so that your need becomes desperation. Desperation becomes endurance and as soon as the door opens and you step across the threshold, you see that not only am I there, but I'm good and I'm the holder of everything that you've been longing for. You're powerful. So I have a great friend who has four boys and when his four boys were young, real young, they were all home and he had a home office in the basement. And as you can imagine, trying to get work done with four boys running around.   I wanna play baseball, basketball, all those kinds of things, but dad has a job, dad's working. So when dad gets up in the morning and he goes downstairs in his office, I'm gonna put this do not disturb. He had like a little marker that he made out of construction paper. When you see the red thing on the door and it says dad's working, don't disturb dad because I have important phone calls to make and they said, okay, dad, yeah, we can.  Wakes up and he's walking around us. He's like, where's dad? And the mom's trying to like deviate him. He's like, oh, I'm not sure if he's home or what, he might be working, but you know, don't disturb that. No, where's dad, where's dad? I need dad. No, just leave dad alone. He goes in the other room, finds the other boys. Where's dad? I don't know, I heard him downstairs. So he goes down to the bottom of the stairs and he hears dad in his office talking.  PNL or ARL, spreadsheet, Excel, boring, IBM, oh, what, all that kind of stuff. So he hears dad talking and he goes, runs over to the door and he sees the do not disturb markers on the door. But he hears dad and so he does what any responsible four-year-old kid would do. Dad, dad, I know you're in there, dad. The sign says do not disturb. Dad, and dad keeps talking, he hears pause and you know the dad's in there, right? He's going, I gotta finish this phone call. Dad, dad, dad, daddy, father, papa. Dad, dad, dad, dad, you know what the dad does? Come on, what do you think dad does? Dad answers the door. Hi, dad. I wanted to show you this picture that I drew. I worked really hard on it, it's a picture of a tank. Did you see this, dad? It's so cool. Remember that movie we saw, it has a tank and he's like, son, dad was on a phone call. Yeah, dad, but I just, I had to show you this. He's like, but son, I had the do not disturb marker on the door. He's like, yeah, this is the best part. He says, yeah, I know that's for the other kids, not me. Because I know you love my pictures and you would want to see this. Dad opened the door because he believed the character of his father was towards him and for him in such a way that you and I, maybe we sit back and we hear that story going, all that poor immature child who doesn't get social cues and really thinks that, but maybe we need to become a lot more like my friend's son. That delay doesn't mean denial, doors don't mean walls. That God's not abandoned us. God's actually asking us to knock. God, I'm so desperate, I need you.  I'm gonna find you and when I hear your voice on the other side of that door, I'm not gonna take that as a no. God, I'm getting through the door. I'm getting to you. You've got what I need. You are who I need.  And I'm getting through the door. I don't care the voices that are in the kitchen telling me you're not there. I don't care about the voices of the naysayers that say you're too busy. I don't care about the signs on the door that say do not disturb God. I am gonna knock and ask and seek.  You see, if we are that radical in our belief of how good our fathers. Remember Jesus said if you wanna enter into the kingdom of God, you've gotta become like one of these, like one of these children. What do you wanna hear?  Listen, we live in a world, I get it, where other people's opinions matter. And I think they matter way too much. We're checking how many likes we got on social media or constantly, did we get likes? Somebody liked it. Oh, look at, I got this person's following me. Or you say the wrong thing and then you gotta retract it before there's implications of that. I get that we need to be wise and we need to be cautious and the things that we put there on social media. But at the end of the day, what this world needs is not a bunch of bots and people that are moved and shaped by every wind of other people's group think opinions.  Because I know God is a father and I don't care if the whole world stands against me. All I need is God saying that he's my father. That's all that I need. Unmoved by people's opinions and their criticism.  You're gonna miss out. All of that is trying to recharacterize the integrity of God. But God stands and he says, come on, seek me, ask me. Knock on the door. I want to ask you this question this morning. What do you want to hear? You want to hear over your life because the voice of God is available to you. It just requires you tuning some other things out. Just stand up with me all over this room, please. I want to ask you, please don't move. We're about to dismiss here in a moment but I really believe that the father that Jesus taught us about is in this room this morning. We've been talking about our desire that draws us but before we are finished this morning I want you to know God's desire. The father's desire is for you. The greatest desire in the father's heart is that you and I would be reconciled to him. Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son who said to his father, God, give me everything that you are gonna leave me in your will. Give me everything that belongs to me because I want to go live life my way. And the father brokenhearted gave him his inheritance and the son went off in the world and for a while he listened to all the voices that said, this is what you want, that's what you want. No, this is what you want. And what he ended up with was the very thing he didn't want. And there was a moment where he came to his senses and he realized how good he had it in the father's house, how good his father was even to people that weren't family.  And he went home and Jesus tells a story and he says, and a long ways off the father saw it. He picked up his gown and he ran to his son. Through his arms around his son, he kissed his son and he said, my son who is dead is alive again. The son said, Father, I've sinned. I've made all the wrong decisions. I listened to all the wrong voices. You know what, the father didn't care. The father said, what matters is that you're here right now. The father put a ring of authority on his finger. He put a clean robe of righteousness on him and new sandals that changed the way he walked. And he invited him back into the house where there was a feast prepared for him. And this morning, I believe that in the same way the father has been looking over the service, looking at our hearts in a way that only he can do. We can shape ourselves externally anyway that we want to but God sees through all of that, sees right to the heart of who we are and he sees our brokenness. He sees our shame. He sees our filthy rags. He sees our sin. We would be tempted to run from him because of those things. But the father actually comes running and chasing us to replace those things. And today, the father's here to replace those things. See, there's a lot of prodigals in this room. A lot of us that we know what it's like to be in the father's house. But we chose in other directions. Things that have taken us down the alleys of sin, separation from God, brokenness, some things that people are aware of, some things that nobody's aware of. And it keeps us from God. It keeps us from really serving him. We're afraid if we surrender all that we'll lose all but God says you've already lost all, so surrender all. And today, the father's looking at you not with disgust but he's looking at you with love and he says, if you'll come to me, I'll forgive. If you'll come to me and turn away from all the other voices, I'll speak, I'll lead, I'll guide, I'll clean you. There's a place at the table for you. And I want everyone in this room to buy your heads, close your eyes. And I want you to see in your heart the eyes of the father looking at you with compassion and mercy. Today, if you're here and you know in your heart of hearts you're not right with God. You say, man, I wish I could go home. I wish I could do it all over. I wish I could be forgiven. I've got good news for you today. Today, the father who forgives is here and he'll forgive you. And if you say, I wish I could have a brand new start today. I wish I could go back and redo some things. I've got good news for you. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  I want you to be a son.   I love you intently and deeply.  I'll bring you back into the family of God. Today, you know you're not right with God. You just say, passively pray for me. I want to get right with God. Listen, if you will turn from your darkness, if you'll turn from your sin and you'll ask the father to forgive you, he'll never remind you of your past, but he will speak to you about your future. Today, you can become a son or a daughter of God. You can be born again. You can be a new creation. If you're here and you say, I'm not right with God, but today, I'm the like the prodigal. I want to come home. Father, forgive me. Cleanse me. Come into my heart. I want a new beginning. I want a thriving living relationship with you. I don't have that right now, but I want that right now all over the room.  Today is your day. Your day to come home. Hands all over the room. Come on, raise them. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Raise it all over the room. The father is here today for you. Will you respond? Will you take your eyes off of all the other things and put them on Jesus? Come on, raise it if you've not raised it right now. The father is running towards you. Hands all over the room. Turn from your sin. Turn to Jesus. Raise your hand if you've not already. The father's in this room. Yes, God, yes, God, yes, yes, yes. All the way to the very back. I see your hands. Yes, sir, I see your hand. There's a young lady. You don't have your hand raised right now. There's an internal war of shame going on. And the father says, tell her right now, I came for her.  Today, Jesus is here to save you. Raise your hand if that's you. Can put your hands down. I'm gonna lead us in a prayer before we leave today. I want everyone, everyone in this room to say it out loud, but especially if you just raise your hand. This is us responding to the voice of God. Say this with me. Say, heavenly father, I come in Jesus' name and I repent of listening to every other voice of being shaped by the world and turning my face away from you. Today I'm coming home because I believe that Jesus is Lord. I believe that he died on the cross for me. I believe that he paid my sin's price. And I believe he did it because you're a good father. Today cleanse me, save me, wash me and make me brand new, father. I turn my back on my past.  Today I say I wanna hear your voice above all other voices. Thank you for loving me, saving me and speaking to me in Jesus' name. Amen. And amen, amen, amen, amen, amen. Amen. I wanna invite our prayer partners and care ministers to make their way up to the front and here's what we're gonna do. I'm about to dismiss the service. But there were just so many of us that just raised our hand. There's no way in the world I would wanna make light of that. It's an eternal decision. It just literally, that decision changes your eternity. It's not just like, oh, that was a nice prayer. It changed you from the inside out.  And there's a new way for you to walk, new sandals for you. There's a new authority in your life and God is your father, you're in the house. God wants to speak to you about so many different things. We want to stand with you on that in your journey. It's not just a decision, it's a journey. So here's what I wanna do. Before we dismiss, I don't normally do this but I feel like I'm supposed to do this.    But this is your public statement of coming home to the father. If that's you, thank you, young lady. She's the first, who's gonna be next? Come on, come, be bold, be brave. Come right up to one of these. Come on, would you come? Come this morning. There were tons of hands, you're not alone. Come on, sons and daughters are coming home this morning. Sons and daughters are coming home this morning. Come on, come from every direction, all the way in the back. Come on, step out of your stagnancy and come home this morning. Come on, if you've not come, come right now. There's more, come on, there's more. Love you, buddy.  Come on, Jesus is real, everybody. Who else will come? Come on, I need some more pastors, prayer partners up here. Who else will come this morning? Thank you, God bless you. Come on, just come. This could be the difference, right here. This decision, I feel like maybe there's a couple of people that are like, I raise my hand, I don't really wanna do, I just wanna go, this could be the pivotal decision. Thank you, thank you. So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna pray and dismiss us and then all of you who came down, we love you guys. We are so proud of you. Our prayer partners have been praying for this moment and we're just gonna hang around and pray with you guys as long as we need to. Is that all right? Before we dismiss you.  Can we just pray, let's, Father, thank you for loving us so much that you gave your only begotten son. Thank you for these lives that you've just changed that you've just stepped into and we pray, Lord, that the voice of our father would be the loudest voice in our life. I pray, Father, as we leave radiant tonight, today, we're just not leaving a church service.  Send us into the world overflowing with the joy that we have from being with you. In Jesus' name.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session, we will discuss a question which says that, from the following data, compute price index by using simple average of price relatives. And here, this data is given to us. In the first column, the commodity is all given as A, B, C, D, E and F. In the second column, the prices in the year 1979 in dollars are given as 20, D, D, 25, 15, 4 and 14. And the prices in the year 1918 in dollars are given as 22, 20, 26, 17, 4 and 15. Now, before starting the solution of this question, we should know a result. And that is, by the simple average of price relative method, P01 is equal to summation of P1 over P0 into 100 the whole, upon N, where N is the number of items or commodities. And P01 is the price index number for the current year with reference to the base year. And P1 here denotes the current year prices and P0 denotes the base year prices. And that is, in this method for calculating the price index number, we will compute the price relatives P1 over P0 into 100 of all the commodities under consideration. And then we will find the average of these price relatives by using the arithmetic mean. And P01 is equal to summation of P1 over P0 into 100 the whole, upon N. Now, this result will work out as a key idea for solving out this question. And now, we will start with the solution. First of all, we will draw a table for the given data. So, we have drawn a table. Now, in the first column, we have written the commodities. In the second column, the prices in the year 1979 in dollars. We have written the prices in the year 1980 in dollars. And we have made one more column in which we will calculate the price relatives. Now, the year 1979 will be the base year for the year 1980. So, the prices in the year 1979 that is the prices for the base year will be denoted by P0. And the prices in the current year will be denoted by P1. And for calculating the price relatives, we will use the formula that is P1 over P0 into 100. So, here for the commodity A, the price relative will be equal to P1 over P0. That is 22 over 20 into 100 which is equal to, and for the commodity B, the price relative will be equal to 20 over 18 into 100 which is equal to 111.11. Then for the commodity C, the price relative will be 26 over 25 into 100 which is equal to 104. Then for the commodity D, the price relative will be equal to 17 over 15 into 100 which is equal to 113.33. Then for the commodity E, the price relative will be 4 over 4 into 100 is equal to 100. Then for the commodity F, the price relative will be equal to 15 over 14 into 100 which is equal to 125. Now by using the result which is given in the key idea, we can find out the price in this number on adding all the values of the price relatives. We are getting summation of P1 over P0 into 100 the whole is equal to 63.44. Now here the number of commodities is 6. Therefore, the price index number P1 over year 1980 taking the year 1979 as the base year is equal to summation of P1 over P0 into 100 the whole whole upon N which is equal to 663.44 whole upon N which is equal to 110.57 or 110.6. So we have got the price index for the year 1980 taking 1979 as the base year is equal to 110.6. This shows that as compared to the year 1979, there is an increase in the prices of the commodities included the index to the extent of about 11%. So this is the solution of the given question and that's all for this session. Hope you all have enjoyed the session.


Welcome to the wide world of eSports, the show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today we're taking an inside look at collegiate eSports with me is Guy Kave Loa. Welcome, Skye. Hi, Catherine. Good to be back and talking with you. Yeah, it's been a while and you were an early guest, so I'm really happy that you can be here again. So, since we haven't talked to you for a while, why don't you tell us what your involvement is in eSports? Yeah, so, you know, first of all, number one, you know, I'm doing research in eSports as part of my dissertation work and, you know, that is near completion. I'm also the head of the University of Hawaii eSports academic passports and that was created to see if we can, you know, possibly create a curriculum at the university that deals with the industry, a very large and growing industry that hopefully can centralize Hawaii as being part of that discussion. So we're looking at possibly offering three courses, nine credits, and that has been a very successful endeavor that we are soon going to be finishing off. But besides that, you know, it's just been really wonderful to see discussions, activities around eSports in Hawaii.  All right, yeah, definitely. And I try to have people from Hawaii on at least every quarter because we need to, you know, keep telling people that we are a place that we can do have eSports here. So before we get into that, let's talk about a book chapter that you wrote recently and that kind of put this put you on my radar to have you on my show. So tell us about that. Yeah, so I was invited to contribute to a book chapter on a newly released global eSports collection of research by Dal Yong Jin, who is a well-known professor of communications at Simon Fraser. And so I was very much honored to be asked to discuss or to write the book chapter. And essentially, the chapter itself delves into a partial history of what we kind of consider gaming on campuses or competitive gaming on college campuses, but also the development of eSports as part of college life. And I think the idea here is that I wanted to create a bit of context and history around what we kind of understand college eSports to be today, because it is very easy if you sort of search around and look for discussions around collegiate eSports to kind of think like, oh, this is something that is quite new. In reality, it is not. I mean, in college eSports as a varsity activity is very new and that has a definite period where it began in 2014 at RMU University and it was something that was created to support students in their gaming activities as if they were actual athletes. And that was a really big deal in 2014 for Robert Morris University to be that first campus, that first institution to say, we're going to treat the gamers, the competitive players on our campuses as if they are regular student athletes. But the history of gaming on campuses, playing video games as part of college life stretches much further back. For me, it was a big part of my life as a university student. I remember playing first person shooters, a game that I think a lot of students may not know. It was called Delta Force as part of a way in which I interacted with students in different dorms. And so if you actually go back to the first recorded video game tournament ever, which was the intergalactic space towards that happened in Stanford University in 1972, it's very easy to miss that it was on Stanford University because the whole idea that you have the first tournament, this first competitive gaming tournament taking place that was recorded, that itself is a big idea and big news and it's a big event. But most people kind of gloss over that this was actually a student activity that, of course, was engaged with their associations with being a part of the scientific community, the research community. So they had access to these technologies. So there are, of course, continuities between what happened in the past and what's happening now. But of course, there are some major differences. But I wanted to kind of, in that book chapter, create a bit of history and context around this idea of what's college esports today. Sure. And I think that a lot of people, they just don't realize that it goes back to 1972 Stanford. And I have, we have mentioned that on my show before because there, you know, there's some misconception. So who are the big players in collegiate esports today? Well, you know, it's been quite the evolution. It is, of course, still a very much student-centered activity. But now you have institutional stakeholders who have made claims into the space in which they are sort of taking over a lot of these these community efforts and and and processes in which students were actually at the very beginning, sort of the spearheads of these things. So, you know, if we go back and we look at sort of the really the successful organizations and leagues that were created, we're looking at organizations like CSL and TESPA. But even before then, again, this is a partial history. A lot of what I was digging into my research was the fact that it's very it was very difficult to get my hands on actual recorded discussions, discourses, recordings of these early collegiate competitions because for one case or another, students didn't take what they were doing seriously. They just thought it was an activity like any other activity as if they were going to go and play a basketball game or a football game before this sort of idea of, you know, recording live streaming events and sharing content became a part of the the youth culture today. Back in 2009, that was certainly not the case. It was a case in which students just thought, let's hold an event between two colleges. And again, thank God there was actually recorded a video of this. There is a recorded online forum discussions about this. There was online recorded discussions about universities contacting each other, forming teams, but it was this idea that, you know, it's not so much that we're looking and and and actually capturing the beginnings of this this phenomenon, what we call college esports. But there was a fact that, you know, this the first successful leagues clubs that really had the longevity to go on and to kind of live on today like CSL, TESPA is kind of closed down. I do write about TESPA and its origins as well. But it's still a big part of the culture, the early culture of student led activities and creating college esports communities. And they still they're the legacies, the individuals, the mentorships, the relationships still live on today in sort of the the new iterations of what we see with college esports that have kind of manifested. So what factors do you think are most important in the development and increased. Kind of collegiate involvement in esports. I'm sorry, say that again.  I mean, the technology, of course, is very important. And, you know, that was something that has always been a part of the discussions is, you know, how can we how can we set up, you know, a five v five in a particular room on campus that might not have all the outlets or the power capabilities to support a tournament. But those kind of issues were kind of solved, you know, fairly quickly. Students are very clever in kind of getting things, you know, you know, piecemeal together to create a really fun and entertaining event among friends. But what was really pivotal in creating a community, a collegiate community of competitors, clubs and teams where we're actually in most situations or many situations, the women that were involved. So I know that we have an issue that, you know, and especially in collegiate where women do not take part, right? This is an activity in which, you know, 90 percent or over 90 percent of the players that are participants in varsity college esports are men. And that it has been a fact from the very beginning. Nothing has changed since 2014, and it continues to be the case to today. But it's the fact that you actually have, you know, young women and girls who actually take up the mantle of organizing these clubs and these tournaments and these events. It's the case sometimes where you have a girl or a woman who is actually part of the team. This happened in UBC, University of British Columbia, where one of the players who was, you know, who was a girl decided to step back from her competitive role to actually manage the entire team. It's the fact that you have women that are actually taking the charge and organizing the events themselves. And it's one of these situations where we have to kind of understand, number one, why are women, you know, going into that particular part of collegiate? Of course, it's a situation where it requires a lot of organizing, timekeeping, events, planning. And it continues to be the case that where you see most participation in collegiate esports is still in that organizing aspect of the space itself. Of course, things are getting better.  But it is a situation where if we just concentrate on women being competitors, which is still a very important sort of metric to me, that we do want to have more women feeling comfortable in the space in which they can say, you know, I'm playing along either on all women's team or a team that is co-ed, right? We want to encourage that. But if we use that as the only metric and kind of ignore a lot of the groundwork, a lot of the community work that women have always been a part of, I think we do a sort of a big disservice in that. So that was kind of part of the reason why I wanted to write the chapter. I wasn't able to give full voice to actually really the dozens of young women and young college women who have built up collegiate across all different campuses from Boston to UCLA, even to Hawaii itself, you know, one of the first organizers of our League of Legends club was a woman, a young woman. So it was a fact that I wanted to give voice to the to the idea that at the heart of collegiate, really the reason why it's survived and been sustainable is that we've had these sort of like pivotal personalities that have been supportive of this. Fair. So does title nine factor in at all for collegiate eSports?  They've been very confused by it, to be honest. I think that's one of the reasons why they stepped back in 2017. And again, in the book, I do talk about sort of some of their their thought processes in looking at collegiate. And for them, it was a situation where, you know, they really did not understand how the space was going to evolve. I mean, I think even for Riot very early on in 2014, when they looked at collegiate, they had no idea what to do with it. They just knew that they had to support it. But I think for the NCAA was the fact that it was a very confusing space. You have, you know, potentially a dozen games across multiple competitions in which 90 or closer, more than 90 percent of the participants are men, which a publisher is the ultimate and the final say. That was a very that was a very scary proposition for them to enter into. So they did really say RFP, which is the fact that they wanted to do a study of the collegiate space and so they hired InterSport, which is basically was the group that was required to study the collegiate landscape across the United States. And the director there was actually from RMU. And so they did a study and they just said, OK, let's just put a pause on this. They sort of what we call basically a table of the discussion. And that doesn't mean that they will not come back. You know, this is something that I think the NCAA will have to address into the future. But right now they've let the publishers really take the the front seat. And so Riot did right after they stepped back. Riot came out with the RSA, which is sort of their governing institution or governing body that looks at League of Legends. And in my opinion, that was actually the right choice. OK, and so what does before we move into University of Hawaii eSports, what does college eSports look like today across the country? Right now it's a mishmash of everything, right? Because there is no governing institution or at least one single governing institution. There are multiple governing institutions. It's a mishmash of, again, student clubs. Even before, even under a student club, there are just random teams that are formed, student clubs. There are, of course, governing institutions, there are associations. It's really a situation in which, you know, the term and the the analogy Wild Wild West is thrown around in eSports. I think that it's both Wild Wild West and many respects in collegiate more than actually in professional eSports. I know that people kind of push back at that analogy. I don't think so. I think it's still completely unstructured and continues to be that case for for many universities. But there is a slow and creeping realization that there needs to be more structure into these spaces. And you're seeing third party entities, you know, unfortunately, in my opinion, starting to take over the space and starting to do a lot of the groundwork in which students were actually a big part of that and taking on that work and assuming that responsibility. So, you know, right now, the best way to say this is, yes, it's a mishmash of a variety of organizations, clubs, students, teams in which everybody is trying to figure out what is the best way forward without the NCAA. There and there is a question from a viewer asking whether there are scholarships available for minorities in collegiate eSports? Yeah, I mean, I think there are, I mean, specifically minorities. I'm not entirely sure. I know that there are scholarships that are being targeted towards exceptional students in collegiate and also, you know, scholarships targeted towards particular teams that are can be all women teams. But, you know, that is something that is, I think, slowly becoming a realization where the scholarships themselves are becoming are being crafted specifically around marginalized groups within the space. Because, as we've said before, most of a vast majority of scholarships do go to men and young men in the space. And if we want to be more inclusive and more diverse in our thinking about what collegiate eSports can be, I think targeting scholarships around the idea of people of color, LGBTQ students, marginalized populations around traditional gaming communities would be a very good way to open up that discourse. But I don't think anything right now on my radar points to this, to scholarships necessarily being targeted towards minority students. But I do see hints, especially at the University of Oklahoma, where there are targeting those scholarships to be a little bit more blue skies thinking, not just necessarily around competition. Scholarships are being, of course, offered not just for the competitors, but UCI started the idea of offering scholarships for a range of roles that support the team. So that's shout casting. You know, shout casters can possibly get scholarships. Content creators could possibly get scholarships. And I would eventually hope event organizers, right? So if you target scholarships around the event organizers, which tend to be the women in the space, that would be another way of inserting greater diversity inclusion into this discussion. That makes a lot of sense. OK, so let's shift to University of Hawaii eSports and let's show the video and see what what's going on there. I'm Jason, the manager and varsity lead for our Valor program here at UAG Sports.  I think the big thing that I can say for us is we made a name for UH that they really put our name on the map not only as an organization that is really involved, but is really competitive. We won a bunch of tournaments and participated in a lot of tournaments as well, including the Vanguard Championship Series, the GCI tournament and CSL next semester. I'm hoping to ramp up that level of competition and also try to bring home a win for us. What's up? My name is Noah. I also go by Rod. I'm currently part of the six-man roster on the varsity team at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Valoran. I currently play as a sub or a coaching role on the team. And so I just watch the teams doing their scrims, watch vods with them, kind of go over what I see, what I notice. I really appreciated working with the team this semester. It was super fun just to get to know everybody and, you know, climb rank with them. It's a great experience overall. A memorable moment for me this semester would probably have to be when we beat UCI. That's probably when we realized, like, oh, this team is serious. This team has a lot of game. We have a lot to bring to the table and we can go far. So it was a pretty cool moment. All right. My name is Nika Kazu. My in-game name is Kazu. I am currently a member on the varsity squad for our Valorant at UH. One thing I really like about our team right now is that we have really good chemistry. Everyone gets along really well. A memorable moment from this semester so far is the first couple of games playing on the varsity squad. We crowned ourselves the Pistols King, Pistols Kings, because we went 8-0 and it was just a really great feeling to just be winning all the time, you know. Yeah. Hey, my. All right. So tell us about the video that we just watched. Yeah, so that was our Valorant team. We're super, super proud of them at UH Esports. Valorant is a game that has a lot of potential to become the largest or at least the most vibrant collegiate game for the community itself. For those of you that don't know Valorant, it's Riot's first first-person shooter game. It's attracted a tremendous amount of interest because it taps into, I think, both an aesthetic. The game itself has a very sort of interesting cyber aesthetic, sort of cyber apathetic aesthetic. It taps into several sort of interests with the collegiate space. Number one, it was a game in which people could immediately build upon, right, from Riot. So most of the collegiate community has known Riot as Riot Game, not Riot Games, right, because they've only had one game since 2009. And so when Riot started to think about Valorant and TFT and a host of other games that they planned to release, it was a really exciting time because the collegiate space, or at least for a lot of college students, both now and in the past, Riot has been a very special publisher and developer for them because of League of Legends. So for them to come out with a first-person shooter, everybody wanted to hop onto the game very early. And for us, our team captain, Case and Padilla, who was a recent graduate of UH, was very forward-thinking and convinced me that we needed to do something quick. So the game came out in December of 2020. So Riot, when COVID was kind of in full swing, and he built out the team. He found the players and the players themselves had just really gotten along tremendously well. Just recently, we were voted the top two, among the top two Valorant collegiate teams in the United States. It was a random Twitter poll by GamersEDU, but it was us and San Jose State. And we've kind of created this really wonderful rivalry between us and San Jose State, and we had an excellent, excellent game, in which of course, they did beat us 2-0, but it was a very close 2-0 in each game, very, very close. But still, the Twitch chat went off. It was something that, I think that the students themselves just loved because there was some great sort of back and forth, quote-unquote trash talking, but it was still above par.  It was really great. So do you feel that UH is kind of entering into esports in a bigger way than it had before? Is it growing? Oh yeah, yeah. So one of my concerns early on in building out the program in 2017 and 18 is that we didn't have a dedicated location to do what we wanted to do. And that was kind of the albatross for us, is that, you know, HPU had the arena. When I was at UCI, I was constantly at their arena. And I always wondered, you know, why can't we have a location for the players? A dedicated location, quote-unquote an arena, right? We didn't have an arena, but we had an iLab, and that was good enough. I eventually changed my position and thought, of course, a space is important, but beyond a space, you need a community. And you need a community that engages with other schools. And that's what I decided to pivot from, from the location to the community. And it was worked out really, really well. And finally, we do have, you know, a control over the iLab, that is our location now. And we hope to do more events for that. But yeah, the idea of UH actually forming bonds, connections, you know, partnering with Cloud9, we were one of the affiliate schools that actually made a connection with Cloud9, one of the biggest professional eSports organizations in the United States, kind of fortified that perspective of mine, that relationships are more important right now than location. Sure. And so how has COVID impacted collegiate eSports? Tremendously. Like I said, the idea that you no longer actually have a location became even more of a catalyst for me to form relationships via Discord. So the arenas, the physical locations, you know, have been these spots that we wanted to actually build out and collect in, have become the Discord communities. So no longer are people going to arenas, they're actually forming communities via Discord. And that was very important for us to do. And one last thing, there's a big surprise that I just want to put out there that UH wants to announce very soon. So stay tuned. It's something that you will read about very soon. All right, fantastic. Okay, so there's recent news that I think is interesting in relation to Hawaii, because Hawaii is a very diverse location. We are a state made up of many people from all over Asia and the Pacific Islands and the US mainland. So it's very diverse. And so I understand that there's been some challenges for an Overwatch team, Dallas Fuel, in terms of they voiced some concerns about or at least one player voiced concerns about kind of trash talk against him because he's Asian. What can you tell us about that? Yeah, so, unfortunately an Overwatch player, a Korean Overwatch player on the field, yesterday talked about the discrimination and harassment that he has been experiencing in Texas. And it's a situation where I think these sort of examples should make us think in Hawaii. Where do we fit? Where does Hawaii fit in this global discussion around esports? And it's a discussion that I'm having very seriously. It's a discussion that I think the state has to have very seriously because Hawaii is not on the periphery. We are and should be and should continue to recognize in ourselves. We are a central player in the discussion around global esports, which I tend not to like the word global esports because I think that's too abstract, but at least esports in Asia Pacific. We are right dab in the middle of it. And so for a Korean player on the dash field to feel alienated, harassed, subjected to taunts and even violence is a situation in which we in Hawaii, of course be coming from a location in which multiculturalism and at least a mix of ethnicities is sort of the common background, sort of the environment in which we all kind of grew up and should give us pause to say, we can be a location, we can be a hub, we can be a center. So of course when we think about global esports, we think about Shanghai, Seoul, New York, Paris, Berlin, but where's Hawaii? I think there's a strong case to be made that Hawaii can fit right into there very easily. Sure, and that's a big reason why I have this show is because I strongly feel that we should be an important location for esports. And I think I invited people to come to Hawaii and play and I think you did as well. Yeah, and like I said, very big news. It's very much something that at the university is very happy to be taking part in and it's very much related to what we just discussed about. Sure, and so how can people obtain a book that we talked about earlier and we need to wrap it up so I'll give you the last word on that. Yeah, so actually I can maybe I'll provide the link to the publisher and you can maybe put that into the YouTube description because that's I think where you can actually go and purchase the book is through the publisher of Loomsburg. Sure, and probably just Googling global esports and when has it been released for publication? It's already released, good to go. So it might even be available on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. All right, Skye, it was great to have you on and we learned so much about the background of collegiate esports and what's going on with UH. Yes, thank you, Catherine. I always appreciate talking with you. All right, so thank you to the viewer who sent in the question and thank you for joining us today. Next week, my guest will be author and attorney Justin Jacobsen to talk about esports player representation. See you then.


Welcome to the Endnotes, where I put all the fun facts I can't fit into the main videos. Today, some extra bits of information for my videos about the word average, and the history of insurance. And if you haven't seen those yet, click on the card. In my series on average, I covered the origins of the insurance industry, and along the way I mentioned that the first English stock market started around the same time as the insurance markets in the late 17th century. But that wasn't the world's first stock market. The first stock market was established in Amsterdam in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company. And so in this video, I'm going to look briefly at a couple of the consequences of that market. With all the money coming in from the Dutch East India Company, there was a lot of money to go around in the Netherlands, and when people start getting rich, inevitably, they want to have status symbols. The status symbol in this case was the tulip, which had arrived in Europe by way of Turkey, so another contribution from the Islamic world to Europe. The name itself is also from Turkish, so this time, not Arabic in origin. The word tulip is etymologically related to the word turban, from the notion that the flower's shape resembles a turban. Turkish tulbent, turban, comes in turn from Persian dulband, turban. So the tulip became very popular in the Netherlands in the 1630s, and because the tulip bulbs took a long time to produce, demand outstripped supply, and the price of the tulip shot up. And eventually, this began to happen on paper only, as contracts, what we would now call futures contracts, with tulip bulbs and actual money rarely passing between them. As with all market bubbles, the high prices eventually collapsed, but this in fact seems to be the first example of a market bubble. And then, back in England in the early 18th century, we see the first instance of market manipulation. The South Sea Company was created in a scheme to consolidate and reduce the cost of national debt. The company was granted a trade monopoly with South America, but the founders of the company themselves had no actual belief or intention that anything would come of this monopoly. It was indeed an out-and-out fraud. Nevertheless, people were seduced by the company's promises and the idea of getting rich off trading with the exotic New World and the stock price soared before inevitably crashing. Many were ruined by the collapse, and many were implicated in the scheme, but ultimately the event led to the Bubble Act passed by British Parliament, which forbade the formation of any other joint stock companies unless approved by Royal Charter. As always, you can hear even more etymology and history, as well as interviews with a wide range of fascinating people on the Endless Knot podcast, available on all the major podcast platforms as well as our other YouTube channel. Thanks for watching!


Hey guys, what is up? Welcome to my channel. For today's video, I am going to be talking about the worst eyeshadow palettes of 2021 and let me tell you, there were some disappointing ones.  So today on my face, I have a makeup that I do like. So if you like what you see, check out the description box. I had to compensate for yesterday minus the eyeshadow palette. I'm wearing one of the eyeshadow palettes in this video. But the thing with some of these eyeshadow palettes is that, you know, some of them are not necessarily bad. Some of them I might be able to make work. I can get pretty looks out of. But for whatever reason, they disappointed me. I expected better or they are just bad. So this is in no particular order other than alphabetical order of the brand because there's no point in making them like they're all bad. I mean, if you like these, I'm very happy that it worked out for you. But for me, my expectations and my style of makeup, they just didn't work out with me. So let's get into it. So the first palette that I have is from Chanel. Now, Chanel was a brand that I really started trying this year. It was one of my goals to try more Chanel. I didn't pick up everything, but if I was interested in a collection, I did try it out. So this came in a collection of two eyeshadow palettes. And this is actually my first ever dive into Chanel eyeshadow palettes. And as you can see, it made quite the impression for being in this video. But this is the tenderly healthy glow eyeshadow palette. And there was another shade that had more green tones, but this was extremely underwhelming to me given the price. Nothing about these eyeshadows are original, but I find this shade to be quite chunky. It doesn't necessarily adhere to the lid, it's just a powder. When you put it on, it'll wipe right off. This shade gave me a whole bunch of nothing, honestly. The mattes, they were fine and you can get this to work. But for the price that you pay, these eyeshadows honestly kind of remind me of drugstore palettes. I much preferred the green one, but so far with my very little experience with Chanel, I didn't like the eyeshadow palettes in this collection. And this one in particular was worse to me and it's not even a nice color story. I do quite love this packaging though. I think it is absolutely stunning, but for my expectations, I was definitely let down by this eyeshadow palette, so it had to be in this video. Do you guys want to know low-key the most disappointing brand? Like, I have five palettes from this brand. That is unacceptable given the price. A lot of the eyeshadow palettes, by the way, in today's video are more luxury or more expensive just because I expect more. Dior! And I'm so confused because Dior was also at the same time one of my favorite brands of 2021. I really felt like they stepped it up, but they came out with some eyeshadow palettes that I was not a fan of. So let's get into it. The first one that I have is the Trio Bullique Trios. Now, these were from the beginning not my favorites. These launched in early, early 2021. So every time I've had the opportunity to talk about bad eyeshadow palettes this year, I've talked about these. These two both look the same on the eye. This matte color down here, it's an odd gel formulation, but it's sticky. And none of the color translates onto the eyelid. The shimmers in both are okay. The pinkish shades have a little bit of trouble showing up on the eyelid, but they're not as bad. But anyways, they are much more pretty than they apply. And like I said, for them coming out in the same collection, both pretty much look the same on the eyelids. When you can scrape up the shadow, you can certainly get a pretty soft look, but it's just not good. It's not worth the price. But dang, they are just so beautiful. I saw that they were coming out with some new Trio Bleaks. I hope the formulation on them is improved. These were terrible though. Huge disappointments. Not anything like another Dior eyeshadow formula that I've ever tried before. Very bad. Also, I don't know why, but these two fingers on both hands are super cracking. Just ignore that. You guys know I never have good nails anyways. Okay, so the next one that I have is from the Cruise Look collection. Now, this is a huge step up in quality compared to the Trio Bleaks. It's a little bit better here, but I just don't understand this color story. I was going to reach for a Dior palette today because I haven't reached for them in a while and I wanted to use one. But the fact that I just didn't want to use it, I wanted to play with a little bit more color, something more interesting. That says a lot about the Dior. I didn't want to use them. This, again, quality is better. This is more up to par with the very good formula from Dior. But the color story in here is so weird to me. There is no depth in this palette, but this shade right here is very nice. It's very deep, but it doesn't go with any of the other shades that I feel. I just haven't liked any look that I've come up with with this. It's just, it's so soft and weird. I just don't like this color story. If they had done something as simple as making this a matte brown or even a shimmery brown, I don't care. I think this palette would have felt more complete. I don't think I'd ever be in love with this palette, but when I use these outside shades, this is all I have left for a little bit of depth. And this doesn't go, or if I put this all over the lid, I don't have anything darker to pair with it. It's just an odd, odd quaint, not a fan of this one. The next Dior quaint that I did not like. I was talking so good about Dior this year, but in all reality, oh my gosh. This was a wake-up call, but this is the Mirage eyeshadow palette. So this came out, I believe, in the summer collection. And you can get really pretty peachy, coral look with this one. I actually quite like the quality, but what I do not like is all of these I swear to you are the same shade. All five of these eyeshadows, I would say you probably get two shades in here. They all end up translating on the eyelid the same. Because they are that big chalet formula, which I really do love in luxury makeup, you just need to be aware that they're not going to be as vibrant or as pigmented. That's the nature of the shadow, but it gives you a really soft ethereal finish on the eye. That's why we like these kind of formulations. But given that formulation, I do not know why they put so many shades that were so close to each other. Very little variation in on the eye. Every single look that you do, it's going to turn out with the exact same look. So that was a waste of money. Honestly though, I still kind of like it. You know, when I want a peachy coral look, I would love to grab for this. But in terms of value, terrible, like why? Okay, on the last year, Quint that I have to drag, apparently, is the early bird Quint. Now this one is a little, I think some of you are going to disagree with me. By the way, I did see that this and the Nightbird palette from this collection did restock on Selfridges. I'll have it linked below if you're interested. Nightbird is much better than early bird. And I actually quite like this palette. But again, it's not good and it's not acceptable for a Dior. You pay $65 for these Quints and the top three shades are beautiful. This shade picks up nothing and quite honestly, this is a weird pairing of colors. I find it very difficult to create a look. They just don't go with each other. I think on my anniversary, I wore these three shades and they were stunning. I loved my makeup look. But the eyeshadow quality isn't where it needs to be at altogether. While I did like the looks that I created, Dior has a much better formulation in their line. And I just don't know what happened to this one, especially with this shade. You get absolutely nothing from it. And again, for $65, I'm not going to let that slide, you know? Anyways, if you are interested in Dior, the Quints from the permanent line, you're going to love that formulation is amongst the best on the luxury market, if you ask me. So I don't understand why when it comes to their limited edition collection, these Quints are not good because all of these were limited edition palettes and they all are terrible. But anytime they add a new color to the permanent line, it's like the best of the best. So Dior leaves me very confused because I want to praise them. I want to praise their beautiful collections. I love their embossments. I love the ideas, but then their eyeshadow palettes are so extremely inconsistent. Dior is one of those brands where if I was a consumer and not like a makeup reviewer, I would 1,000% wait for the reviews first before purchasing because you really truly never know. Okay, so the next eyeshadow palette that we have is from this holiday season. This is the Fenty Beauty Bomb Posse Mega Mix and Match Eyeshadow Palette. Ugh, this is just a very underwhelming palette. You know, it's not the most expensive price points here, but these are very basic shades that even a drugstore brand can really master. They're quite easy to formulate from what I've gathered from my experience, but the matt in here are fine. It's the shimmers that are extremely lackluster and disappointing and I'm not saying you can't get a pretty look. I spent a whole week actually forcing myself to play with this palette to really get the ins and outs of it. And I liked the looks that I created, but it was always underwhelming. There was nothing howl about this. And honestly, there's nothing really good about this palette. You can get so many better formulas at this price point. Like, this is one of the last eyeshadow palettes I would recommend to you in Sephora because knowing what you can get at this price point, it's just, it's not good. Okay, the shimmers are so lackluster. Like I said, mattes are fine, very user-friendly, nothing to write home about, but not an issue. But the shimmers is what you want a little bit of vava of room with and they are just not very good. Didn't like this palette at all, was extremely disappointed because I was really excited about this palette. It was the first color story that I saw from Fentine a very, very long time that I was like, ooh, this is exciting. I know it's like a boring color story, but if it's done well, those are the kind of palettes that I reach for. This was not done well. Okay, the next palette that we have simply is because of the price versus the quality that you're going to get. And this is the Gucci eyeshadow palette. And here's the deal with this. I've said this before, I bought this more so for the packaging. I'm not going to lie.  Don't recommend that for everybody. But I actually liked the color story. Everybody talked about how weird it was, but if you break it up into your mind in terms of quads, it really makes sense. You have a mauve cooler look, you have a warm look, and then you have more of a colorful, smoky eye. So the layout I thought was really, really nice.  It's just not there. Generally speaking, I have loved almost everything from the Gucci beauty line. I think after they revamped the brand, it's just scone uphill for them. They've done a fabulous job, but they really dropped the ball on this eyeshadow palette. I find this palette difficult to use and I don't find a lot of palettes difficult to use. Not to like sound like that, but I work with a lot of eyeshadow palettes and some of the shimmers will fall out. They aren't creamy enough to stick to the lid. The mattes in here are decent. It's mostly the shimmers that give me trouble, but I find it really difficult to create a look when you're using more than three or four shades. Most of the times I've tried to create not necessarily intricate, but looks that required a larger number of shades and this palette really struggled with that. The only time that I can use this palette and feel like, okay, this is quick and easy is when I do a very simple two to three eyeshadow look, which for this price point, I shouldn't have to do that. Every single shade should be great and every single shade should work together. So yeah, I feel like they need to go back to the drawing board with this formulation because if they continue to come out with more eyeshadow palettes with this formulation, I don't think it's going to go over well. It's just not worth it. Again, a lot of the formulas in here remind me of a drugstore formulas. And if you're new here, I work with drugstore shadows. They are fine, but there's a powderiness to them that doesn't stick to the lid and that's what I feel like that the Gucci has and it's a lot more expensive than the drugstore. So you can't justify it. Colourpop quality is way better than this. All right, the next palette that we have is from Melt Cosmetics. This was another one of their inconsistent launches. I'm hoping that they're going up though because the last couple of palettes that I've tried, the Brunette and the Amore palette have been awesome. So hopefully this was the last of it, but this is the Mary Jane palette and it's such a shame because this color story, quite honestly, I don't regret picking this up because the color story is that beautiful. I will literally fight with these shadows just to get these colors on my eyes. But with the price point, the formulation is a hot mess. Oh my goodness. So many of these shades are just flaky and chunky and get all over your face. Absolutely do not attempt an eye look with your face makeup on. Eyes need to be first for this. You really have to press those shimmers into the eyelid to really work them in to make sure that they're going to stay. If you don't do that, glare is gonna be all over your face if not when you apply it, but then when it's the end of the day. So yeah, it's really, really bad, you guys. I haven't come across a formula so flaky like that, like ever. And to make the matters worse, there's so much reflex and glitters in these shades and it just makes the biggest mess. So I wish they would reformulate this because I really love the color story and there aren't palettes like this on the market, but uh-huh. Okay, the next palette might be surprising to you. This is the Natasha Denona Zendo Palette. The quality on this is absolutely fine. If this is a color story that you're interested in, I'm not going to discourage you from picking it up, but it was like a kind of moment from Natasha Denona for me. So the main reason I just like this is because of the color story. I find it really difficult to work with. I understand the whole concept behind it. Earth, fire, water, air, whatever. I get that, but it makes it very easy for looks to get muddy. I have a really hard time putting together looks with this other than we're either going to get a warm neutral look or we're going to play with these blues over here because the two sides do not go well together. I get muddiness every single time. So I hate the color story of this, but also this is not like the Natasha Denona formula that I love. These shimmers are definitely more toned down, which some of you might like that. I'm not saying that the shimmers are bad quality, like some of the others that I've talked about today. They're fine. They stick to the lid. Great textures, all of that. But when I go to Natasha Denona, she has a phenomenal metallic and shimmer formula. Even if it's not metallic, her shimmer formula always blows me away. These are just boring shimmers to me. So if you like the color story and you do prefer a more subdued shimmer look, you actually might really like this. But for me, this is not what I'm looking for from Natasha Denona. So I was very disappointed by this palette this year. I really have struggled with it. Okay, let's move on to Tom Ford. I thought Tom Ford would be that super luxe, expensive brand that I ragged on, but it ended up being Dior. But I do have two Tom Ford quads that I tried this year that I was less than impressed with. So we'll start off with the earlier launch. This is Rose Prismay. They did come out with another one at the time that they launched this, but this one is just an underwhelming palette to me. And I think the quality is fine. If you like the Tom Ford wet dry formula, you will like this if you like the color story. But the color story for me is just a little bit too light. And I don't really have too many bad things to say about this palette other than it is $89 and not too much showed up on me. It gave me a pretty glow to the eyelid, which is why I do love the Tom Ford formula. But the color story here just wasn't working for me. There's so many other better Tom Ford quads that you can pick up. If you're very, very fair though, I mean, I know I have a lot of girls here who love a nice shadow palette like this. So I don't think this is a palette that everybody's going to hate. There's definitely a market out there for a quad like this. But for me and for paying $89, I was really disappointed in this one. It just upsets me that Tom Ford is so hit or miss. You never know what you're going to get. And then of course you guys know this one, the Naked Pink. This is actually probably the number one worst palette that I've ever tried, especially at an $89 price point. You can see from the swatches that there is literally almost nothing on my hand. These have no pickup at all. The only decent shade in here is the glitter shade and the rest are just, ugh, mm. And I have had a few people argue with me like it's supposed to be sheer.  I'm saying this is good quality. I just don't like the color story. This is bad quality, like very, very bad quality. It is an abomination that that is $89. Anyways, I'm being extra mean today. What is, what side of the bed did I wake up on? Okay, the next eyeshadow palette I am wearing on my eyes right now. It's a pretty look. I mean, I like this, but I just, I struggled to understand this palette. This is from Urban Decay. This is the Naked Cyber Palette. I definitely was taken by the packaging. I mean, this is so cool. And honestly, the color story, I really liked this when I saw it and when I bought it, I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Here's the thing, to use this palette, you have to create very simple looks. Kind of like that Gucci palette. Today, I think I'm wearing three shadows from the palette on my eyelid. I'm just wearing a little bit of virtual in the outer corner and then I added some depth with bite and then I have not a bot all over my lid. So if you do something along those lines, you'll get a pretty look because these shimmers are really pretty, but I have a lot of complaints about this palette.   And one of them is this red. If you need any sort of definition, it has to be this red shade and I don't always want to put red in the outer corner. Granted, I do know, of course, I can dig into other palettes, but I just hate that. I don't want to have to do that. And then the shimmers themselves while they are absolutely beautiful, they are very crumbly and very, very messy. I had to apply the eyeshadow today with my finger and by wetting my brush or I would recommend using glitter glue. If you put this on your lid, it's just going to fall right off. And again, for a mid-range brand, it shouldn't be that way. It's not that hard to create a shimmer formulation like this, but I do think the shimmers are pretty, but I don't think they did a good job putting the corresponding mattes here. I don't understand why they use such warm matte shades when I think the majority of these colors would better benefit from more cooler mattes. So I just... There's a lot of improvements, in my opinion, that could be made about this palette. I really tried to like it. I did and I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, but I just can't anymore. It's not good quality. Okay, we are officially on to the last palette in this video. This is the Vizier Art Paris Love Letter Palette. You guys know how much I love Vizier Arts, but I do think the quality on this fell a little short. It's a nice, beautiful, soft color story. If you like those soft peachy kind of tones, this is definitely a palette that I think you'd probably be leaning towards, but the quality in this palette, there's just some inconsistencies that Vizier Art oddly enough never really has. So for example, this is the most powdery, loosely packed shade ever. It is a huge mess. I feel like every time I open up this palette, a new part of it is broken and there's a big mess. If you dip your brush in, this turns to dust. It's very, very odd. And then these two shimmers right here, which honestly are kind of the focal point of the palette, they're a little bit messy and more crumbly and they blend away very easily. And it was very important for it in this palette, these two shades to be very good because that's immediately what your eye goes to when you see this palette. So overall, I just noticed a lot of inconsistencies with my palette and I was feeling a little disappointed with Vizier Art in the beginning of the year just because I was bored and I didn't like the color stories that they were coming out with. I felt like it was the same thing over and over again, but you guys know they pulled it together to the end of the year. Like they had a huge comeback. The most recent like seven palettes have been bomb, amazing. They've turned to a direction that I really wanted them to and creative formulations like colors that I really wanted them to. I don't really like this one. This one is very inconsistent in quality. So anyways, that is that. Those are the worst and most disappointing for me eyeshadow palettes in 2021. I got a little mean with it because you guys know I'm very passionate about my eyeshadow palettes.  Hence the reason why I'm wearing all makeup that I like today. And then after that, things on my channel are going to take a positive turn. We're going to get into my yearly favorites. I'm so excited for that. But anyways, make sure you guys are subscribed to my channel and have that notification bell on because we are in the middle of Vlogmas meaning I am posting every single day. Let me know down below what the worst palettes that you tried were this year. I would love to hear it and I will see you guys tomorrow. Bye guys, have a good one.