Hello, and welcome back to SuperCloud 3, where we're discussing and dissecting the future of AI and enabled security in the cloud. And I'm pleased to welcome to the program, Alvina Antar, who's the CIO of Okta. Alvina, welcome, it's good to see you. Thank you, thank you, Dave, for having me. You're very welcome. I want to first review your role. You know, a lot of tech CIOs, they're pulled into sales calls by the sales people. They want to help them improve their customers' internal security and use the examples that you've set. In your case specifically, how do you spend most of your time? Is it on making Okta better, or is it helping customers do better or a combination? Well, yeah, thanks for asking that. I would say what, in August, I'm hitting three years at Okta, and that has evolved. And when I first joined, it was really focused on internal structure. You know, really looking at the level of organizational structure that I needed, and building an enterprise product, enterprise engineering, enterprise data, infrastructure and operations organization that has evolved dramatically in building almost a tech ops organization within infrastructure and operations and enterprise security, in a strategy organization that helps us think of what is needed to be able to evolve the business and drive our growth and scale of our business exponentially. And so that has been the first three years of my run at Okta. And within our organization, we have an Okta on Okta function, and that function has transformed the way we work, not only within product and engineering and in building deep expertise within our product and not just Okta and all the capabilities within our workforce identity and customer identity capabilities, but also Okta in the ecosystem, the actual integration across the ecosystem that is required to be able to transform our employee experience as well as our customer experience. And that effort, that initiative, the Okta on Okta initiative, has now shifted and taken a ton of focus organically to customer engagements. And so I spend a ton of time with customers and partners and prospects who are really wanting to understand what we do, how we run our business, how we evolve our employee experience and what we're doing with our password list journey, which I know we'll talk about, what we're doing with governance and how are we really looking at our customer, our end-to-end customer experience and driving the most seamless and secure customer experience. And so actually, I just last week, I was in Australia in Sydney and Melbourne and had the most beautiful time there. It was my first time visiting and the level of engagement from our customers and partners and interest in what we're doing internally across all industries at all sizes was so meaningful and so valuable. And so that's actually one of the best parts of my gig now. So thank you for that. So what's the relationship between your office and the SecOps team at Okta? I mean, a lot of tech CIOs do double duty as the CISO. So how has that relationship evolved? What's your particular point of view on the ideal regime for this so-called AI-powered world? Does that change over time? But I'm interested in the sort of, are you the CISO? Is there a CISO? Is that individual counterpart? Does that individual work for you? Do you work for that individual? Where do you report that whole regime if you could give us your view? Yeah, I mean, so every organization is different. I actually am working closely with our Chief Security Officer, David Bradbury and his organization and our structure is distributed, right? So and what we've done in the evolution of our security structure is that, security ultimately is driven through our Chief Security Officer in a distributed model across the organization with my organization responsible and accountable for enterprise security. We have a product security focus within our product and engineering focus. And so it's a distributed model and really wanting to ensure that we've got a mindset where security is everyone's priority across the entire organization, not just mine from an enterprise perspective, not just the product infrastructure security team, but everyone's responsibility and building a security first culture is our joint responsibility and accountability. And so that's the way that our structure is set up and what I've realized and what we've talked a lot about David and myself, two customers, is how identity is actually driving the most incredible and strengthened relationship and partnership across security and IT. And the reason for that is that in the past, it was security makes strategic decisions around what we need to do to be able to drive our overall strategy and IT is in a position to execute without questioning the strategy. And that doesn't fly, especially if you're thinking about how to operate with an identity first mindset and ensuring that what you're enabling is this balance between security as well as the experience and that they're not mutually exclusive. And the importance of having the joint accountability for all the initiatives that we have tied to security across both the CIO and CSO's responsibility. And that is what allows us to shift our mindset that driving a hardened security posture doesn't necessarily mean that you're now creating a frictioned experience. But you're actually, all that we're talking about with our password list journey is actually hardening security while creating the most seamless, most least disrupted experience for our employees. And so they go hand in hand. And so your peers with the CISO, CISO correct or the CSO, I guess you call it. So it's interesting because we've seen over the years, security was just the domain of the security people. Nobody else cared about it. And then it went up to the board and of course then it was sort of pushed down throughout the organization. And now it's sort of middle out and everybody's as you just described. I wonder, you were talking earlier about sort of your role with the ecosystem and it struck me that, you are a super cloud enabler in that sense that I'm sure you're dealing with many different clouds and many companies that run on different clouds. I'm talking about the ecosystem now. So I wonder if you could talk about what's different with regard to multicloud security versus say just on-prem or hybrid or just in the cloud, are there opportunities to enhance security across multiple clouds or does multicloud just bring more complexity from a security standpoint, just a more complicated set of opticals? What's your experience been Elvina? I think it's an opportunity. I mean, I see multi-cloud is where everyone is focused not just from increasing reliability and redundancy but also from an efficiency, from driving efficiency, which is top of mind for all of us. And so, and it does add complexity from a security perspective. And that's the opportunity that we all have to ensure that we're now balancing our tools and methods and capabilities that may be different across multiple platforms. And so making sure that we think about the configurations and how we align configurations across the multiple platforms, thinking about data residency and where you're storing your data and how you're making sure that it's secured across all the distributed platforms, thinking about compliance and how to maintain controls from an audit perspective across multiple platforms. And then logging and monitoring is obviously top of mind as we need to ensure that the learning and triaging is consistent and spans across the multi-cloud environments. And so, the reality is what multi-cloud presents and reinforces is that the boundary is limitless. We need to think about our environment as boundary-less whether it's through multi-infrastructure, whether it's through multiple devices, whether the perimeter, we talk about how the security perimeter has expanded not just across your employees but think about your contractors and your extended workforce. And so needing to be able to have a centralized identity model across this expanded perimeter is critical in a multi-cloud and multi-everything environment. So thinking about what you just said about multi-cloud and security specifically, I'm interested as it relates to AI, where do you think, and your colleagues think and the technologists and Okta and the broader industry, where's the low-hanging fruit for attackers and the same question for defenders? I mean, normally the attackers are a little bit ahead, sometimes a lot ahead. Is that the case with AI? What are you seeing in that regard? Yeah, well, I mean, we all know, right? I mean, AI, it's not just a trend, right? We've been talking about AI for years and now the level of focus, we know that the full potential is yet to be realized with AI. I mean, it comes with the advancements in algorithms and the computational capabilities that exist. And most importantly, data, right? The rise of AI, it truly signifies a platform shift, paving the way for new applications, right? And with chat GPT and open AI, that is one of many new applications that will emerge, that we are excited to see the level of innovation that will come with new applications. And we know that each of those applications requires a login and requires a zero-trust model across all the applications. And we see ourselves from an identity perspective as the most equipped, right? To be able to offer solutions to all the new applications that emerge. And it's exciting, just even within our own products, within workforce identity and customer identity, we have capabilities that we continue to further evolve as it relates to AI across our security center and across threat insights that are areas that allow us to be able to understand what is happening and provide signals and insights to our customers around risks to prevent attacks. And so this is something that will continue to emerge and we are focused both within our products and within our organization to further take advantage of AI.  With AI, with AI, with feeding tools, with proprietary data that you had not intended. And, you know, from my perspective, you know, really thinking about controls, well, we don't want to limit the innovation across the organization. And we want to continue to empower the organization to innovate. We need to be able to also have the level of controls and guardrails and policies around, you know, what is required to have the appropriate use of AI. And so that is a focus from an attacker, you know, perspective. And then from a defender, I mean, I would say, it really helps us, you know, AI helps us get quicker access to information, right? We can prevent and limit the impact of security attacks because these insights exist. I mentioned threat insights, I mentioned security center within customer identity cloud. These are all insights that allow us to have quicker access to information for those that are, you know, taking advantage of our identity capabilities across both our employee experience and our workforce experience. And then, you know, just improved analytics, right? The data has to be trained, but, you know, we need to continue to focus on training the data to allow us to have analytics and insights that allow us to make data-driven decisions. So we're now not just focused on accumulating the data from disparate cloud environments. Now we have access to the data, we have access to intelligent data that allows us to make decisions, you know, and it gives us more and more thoughtful learning, you know, because we train the data. And so now we can spot, you know, generated attacks, whether they're AI generated, which will create even more complexity for us as organizations, right? How do we attack malicious events that no longer are generated by humans, right? They're generated by AI. And how can we, you know, really look at what is needed to be able to safeguard and take advantage of AI to understand those attacks and be able to have more automated ways and triggers to prevent the attacks? So I wonder if you could give us your CIO perspective on the following. So one of the themes, I don't know if you're at RSA conference this year, earlier this year, Rohit Guy had a talk and he talked about security's identity crisis, very clever. And so my question is, is identity across clouds? I mean, you seemed like you're pretty optimistic before us that's an abler. We've talked about in the past, like the last super cloud, a lot of the customers that we talked to said, well, our way of dealing with multicloud complexities, we go monocloud. Now the reality is when you talk to their colleagues in the organization, they've got multiple monocloud. So they're multicloud. The problem is those clouds don't necessarily talk to each other. So how do you see that in terms of adoption of identity? Because, you know, somebody might be in Azure with one identity on prem with another and using octa for a third, et cetera. Do you see that the industry is going to be able to get to the point, whether it's cross cloud standards or maybe it's a de facto standard where they can actually accelerate adoption for this notion of cross cloud, multicloud services, what we call super cloud. Your thoughts. Yeah, thanks for asking, Dave. What I would say is, you know, what we continue to see and actually even in this environment, in the macroeconomic environment that we're under, you know, we see an increased focus around our customers thinking about transformation, you know, because the reality is in this environment, unless you're thinking about transformation and you're thinking about cloud adoption, you may not survive in this environment. And so multicloud is here to stay and we continue to see increased cloud adoption in this environment.  What is needed to be able to adopt the cloud? You need that level of neutrality, right? You need to be able to ensure neutrality. You mentioned multiple identities across different platforms. I mean, that's not going to allow you to have a single pane of glass. And so, you know, cloud adoption and the emergence and continuation of increased cloud adoption will reinforce the importance of identity being neutral, the importance of identity, ensuring that it spans all devices, all infrastructure, all environments. And so, you know, we see this as a huge opportunity to continue to drive an increased adoption for our customers and, you know, in terms of like standards, we have, you know, obviously the security standards, you know, that is something that has been key, right? From an identity perspective, we have a robust suite of opportunities for us to continue to think about the overall standards. And like, if you think of FIDO2 and SAML2, like those are standards that will continue to be embraced, right? Whether it's FIDO for Fishing Resistance or SAML2 and the OpenID Connect for Federation. Those are areas that will continue to be relied on and we will continue to focus on adopting and embracing those standards. All right, I got a two-part question for you. It deals with culture, but I'll tell you a quick story. Last month we were at Cisco Live and they had Jim Gaffigan come in. And he was telling jokes, he's hilarious. And he says to the audience, you've been a great audience. I look around and I see a bunch of old guys and which was so true. The whole audience was just, you know, older men. You're not the prototypical picture of a CIO. It's changing somewhat, but so my question is two-part. One is sort of the woman in tech, the CIO women in tech angle, but also it relates to what your approach is to build a strong, sustainable security culture. Well, yeah, thank you for highlighting that because the reality is we've gone backwards, right?   I may not look like a standard, you know, you're a typical CIO, but I've spent 25, 26 years in IT from when I started as an engineer at Dell. And that shouldn't be you and far between.  You know, the CIO females in the Bay Area, we have a Silicon Valley women's network. We have a T200 organization that are women globally across all the C-suite. These are organizations that I'm, and networks that I'm proud, and thriving networks that I'm proud to be a part of and the entire intent of those networks are to be able to lift the next generation of females in technology. And what, and I feel accountable and committed to be able to really look at, you know, what is needed to be able to drive this change and accelerate, you know, the number of women sitting in my seat. And so that's something that I'm extremely passionate about. And then in terms of, you know, the security culture, you know, I, what I touched on, I mean, we are really, you know, looking at how to transform the culture and not thinking of security as the CISO's job or even my responsibility from an enterprise security perspective. But how do we, you know, shift that focus and shift that mindset in creating a culture where every single employee, regardless of industry, I mean, obviously from us as an identity, you know, company that focuses on making sure that everyone is safely to use any technology.  But every company across every industry and every employee across every industry should evolve and that culture should, something that I see will continue to evolve. And it's, and it can't just be driven by the CISO. It needs to be driven by, you know, every leader within the organization. And so, you know, I continue to take an active role and I feel like our partnership across, across Okta is showcasing that. And those are a lot of the conversations that we actually have with our customers is how is our partnership, you know, really changing the game for the security culture in the industry.  We can't continue to react to attacks and then think about security. It needs to be top of mind. It needs to be foundational. It needs to be, you know, you know, we talk about security by design. Like that should be embedded in all that we do where we think security first and security by design. And that's what you'll see, you know, every organization look to evolve. And it has to start from the top. Yeah, congratulations on both those fronts. I appreciate that answer. Last question is a topic that you brought up before and I saved it for last because I think everybody can relate to password less, right?  It's just, it's the scourge of passwords. I mean, it reminds me of, you know, the old days of email where you had to like archive all your emails. It's just, it's a terrible experience. So it sounds like there's hope. So can we ever get to a world where there are no passwords? Yes, there's definite hope. And that is something that I'm excited about in terms of our journey.   And we're, this is something that's top of mind for us, you know, in our octa and octa efforts.  And we are sharing our journey.  And it's an expectation that every organization should have. Yeah, 90 percent is amazing. I mean, I'm probably at about 12 percent and can't wait to get to 50 percent. But Alvina, thanks so much for coming on the program. Really appreciate your time and your insights and love to have you back sometime. Yeah, I'd love to join you back. They, thank you so much for all that you're doing with this incredible program. You bet. All right, keep it right there. We got more discussions. We have fire-tired chats. We've got power panels and conversations with tech athletes like Alvina and much more. You're watching SuperCloud 3. I'm Dave Vellante, the future of AI-enabled cloud security.


ADIKTIGE MUZIEK Well, addiction is one of the oldest themes we have in the scientific centre of Tronzo. That's logical because everyone during lifetime is in contact with someone in his family or has some own problems of his own with substance abuse and dependence of substances. In The Netherlands we have, for instance, 80% of the people who are drinking alcohol and moreover 10% of them are going to be dependent or are having problems with the use of alcohol. I'm working at the Academic Collaborative Centre of Addiction as a Junior Researcher on the Theme of Problematic Alcohol Consumption. Many professionals in The Netherlands find it difficult to implement preventive interventions regarding this theme and also feel uncomfortable talking about the theme. This is also the case in hospitals and mental health care organisations, whereas it could actually be a really good site to find people and problem drinkers to intervene at the place. We do research with several organisations in the region, but also on a national level. And these organisations are organisations working in practice on care and prevention for addicts. I work at the Academic Collaborative Centre on Addiction as a PhD student. My research involves investigating age-limit policy for harmful products such as alcohol or tobacco. These age-limit policy measures help to reduce the availability of harmful products such as alcohol and tobacco for young adolescents in society. Zoals een senior researcher, ben ik ervaring in verschillende projecten in de Academic Collaborative Centre of Addiction. Mijn expertise ligt meerdere in tobacco-control en de reductie van problematische alcohol gebruik tussen de adulten. Bijvoorbeeld een project waar ik ervaring in ben, is het over welke factoren belangrijk zijn voor de intervention om problematische alcohol gebruik van de adulten te reduken. En het is een groot societal problem. Bijvoorbeeld, alle adulten drinken veel, omdat ze getuurd zijn of feelend of lonelijk, of gevaarlijk zijn en de alcohol reducteert deze veld. Dus we bevormden de systematische refu en ook een focus-group study om te bekijken of de ontdekkingen beperkt worden door health care professionals. De resultaat showed that there are several factors important when treating all the adults. For example, a slower, softer, less directive approach is really important, but also personal treatment. Focusing on bereavement, grief, loss or isolation. But also social network is really important as all the adults, having a partner or having friends or family. And motivational interviewing was also called, also founded as an important factor. And doing research in co-creation with societal partners is really inspiring, because in this way we can generate impacts. And that's what we do at TANSO. The first project is part of the National Prevention Agreement of the Ministry of Health, well-furnanced sports in the Netherlands. And one of their aims in this agreement was to preventive interventions in hospitals and mental health care organizations should play a bigger role. And for this project I just conducted several interviews to study what potential barriers and facilitators are perceived when implementing these types of interventions. And based on this information and these interviews we wrote an action plan for the ministry. And we also are writing an academic paper on the results of it. The second project I'm working on is part of a hospital that already implemented their preventive interventions themselves, which is already really nice. They saw that many patients of their department were hospitalized frequently due to their problem drinking and they wanted to do something with that. Because in the past they used to only treat the somatic health complaints and not look to the alcohol use or abuse. En now they are. So they asked TANSO to evaluate this project on what is going well and what is going not so well. So they can eventually improve the project further. So I'm now doing a process evaluation for the hospital as well. Altogether I really like that I'm combining science with practice and that I really can translate things that I learned in school and from science academic journals into real life hospital situations basically. In the Netherlands we have age limit policy measures for alcohol and tobacco and these measures are set at 18 years of age. The problem is we don't know if vendors and sellers of these products, if they comply to these age limits. And this is a problem because this could mean that young adolescents or people who are under age are still able to obtain these products. That's a problem because it's harmful for their health on the long term but also in the short term. One of the most effective measures to explore compliance is mystery shopping research in which we deploy 17 year old mystery shoppers. We train these people, we assist them into doing a purchase attempt of alcohol or tobacco products. Mystery shopping is effective because it's a way of measuring real behaviour of alcohol sellers or tobacco sellers. So what we do with our research is we monitor or we explore actual behaviour of these sellers. What you can do on the problem of frequently drinking is people are going to get conscious when they have a soberness period. A certain period of 30 or 40 days they do not drink. In The Netherlands we have a positive lifestyle foundation and this foundation organizes every year two campaigns. One campaign is in January, like Dry January in the UK. And one campaign is before Easter and lasts 40 days. Well there are many organizations in The Netherlands who are carrying out this campaign. We are working together with public health organizations and prevention organizations in addiction. The campaign is called ICPAS. You can translate it as No Thanks. In the last year we had about 50.000 participants in these campaigns. Every year the academic collaborative centre of addiction in Tronzo does big research directly before the campaign en six months after the campaign. The main topics are the benefits the participants experience by quitting their alcohol use during 30 or 40 days. And what we see is that after six months there is a very much improvement in healthy behaviour and in habitual behaviour. Afterwards we can use these results of the research to improve also the campaign. For instance last year the radio commercials of the campaign used figures of the research we did in Tronzo.


They guilt you. Does your partner use guilt to coerce you into doing what they want? Do they blame you for small things that have very little consequence? Utilizing guilt is a common form of emotional manipulation. It can make you believe that their controlling behavior is due to something you did. For example, they may shame you merely for speaking to another coworker or a friend or spending extra time at work rather than with them. 2. They want to isolate you. Does your partner frequently complain about your loved ones or try to turn you against them? Isolation is another tactic used for gaining control and power in this type of unhealthy relationship. According to psychologist Andrea Bonnoir from Psychology Today, it's common for this attempted isolation to begin more subtly but then pick up in intensity as time goes on with more object comments and criticisms of your loved ones. 3. They frequently criticize you. When someone criticizes you, do you notice your confidence break? Just a little? Even if it's short-lived, criticism is powerful because it takes a hit on your self-esteem. Over time, frequent, unnecessary criticism from your partner can make you feel worthless or like a failure. Keep in mind that these criticisms don't always have to be necessarily deep. It can be as superficial as your appearance, the shows you enjoy watching or your hobbies.  4. They're superficially charming. Why are controlling relationships so hard to recognize and so hard to leave? It's because controlling partners know how to charm you. It's another tactical form of manipulation that disguises itself easily as love, care, and affection to lure you in and keep you close. For example, the controlling partner might periodically buy you fancy gifts, shower you with attention, or exude a zealous amount of passion into the relationship. 5. There are cycles in the relationship. Are cyclical periods of ups and downs in your relationship? After an abusive incident, there is something that happens called the honeymoon period where things seem promising. This honeymoon period can come with big apologies, gifts, and attention. It's important to remember to take a step back and see all the gestures for what they really are, a phase in the cycle of control. The controlling partner rotates between these phases in order to soften the impact of each abusive event, distract you from it, and get you back into their good graces. 6.  Does your partner threaten you with violence or ultimatums? According to psychologist Andrea Bonoir, the overarching purpose of making threats is for the controlling partner to pressure you to comply with them. They use fear as the ultimate tool for control. These threats can range from I'll break up with you if you talk to him again, to if you leave me, I'll hurt myself. 7. Their love has conditions. Oftentimes, a controlling partner will increase the intensity of their love based on things like compliance or material accomplishments. Your partner might say, you'd be hot only if you spent time on your hair. In order to place a certain value on their love for you. 8. They try to brainwash you. Your values, ideas, and beliefs shape so much of who you are and give you a strong sense of individuality. However, in a controlling relationship, the controlling partner will try to undermine or discredit your beliefs in order to impose theirs on you. They might make you feel like your beliefs are wrong or faulty, causing doubt and ill-confidence, making you less sure of who you are. Ignoring your self-esteem is a way for them to come in and force their own values and beliefs onto you. Do you recognize any of these signs?


So welcome to this week's Mentringer. My name is Smita Narona. I think most of you here should have already been introduced to me either in class or in a previous Mentringer. So today we're going to be looking at the topic Keep the Fire Burning. I think last week there were some questions on suffering that we didn't address. So we'll talk a little bit about that later. Can we just open with a word of prayer with someone be willing to pray for us before we begin? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this hour of mentoring. Father, we pray that as you minister to us through your word, Lord, we will be able to retain what we have learned, Father, and apply the same in our lives, Father. Yes, Father. We also pray, Father, for a blessing upon all our teachers and all the students of our Biblical College and pray, Father, that we will continue to live and work in a manner that will be honorable in the eyes, Father. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. So we did have a few questions that were not addressed from last week on suffering. Maybe we can address those questions before we go into today's topic. So the first one was how do we teach non-believers about suffering? I'm not sure who asked this question. We just have the questions here. How do we teach non-believers about suffering? Is there anyone from our faculty who would like to respond to that question? Hi, Smita. Hi, everyone. So with regards to teaching non-believers about suffering, well, it's actually a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel. One thing is we don't have to prove to anyone that there is suffering in the world. They already know that there are various kinds of suffering. So one can actually take that opportunity to share the Biblical perspective of why there is suffering, the source of suffering that we have a good God and this is the source of all suffering and take it from there. And I think that's a wonderful opportunity to build bridges and share the gospel. Thank you, Pastor Jakes. I'll just add and then if there's any other faculty member who would like to share, you can share. So I think, like Pastor said, it is a really great opportunity to share the gospel, especially because there are such a few answers and such a few answers that really satisfy the heart when it comes to questions about suffering apart from the cross, right? Because in the cross, we see that Christ has taken on our suffering that he is born so much of the pain that we don't have to bear. And now while there is suffering that we still experience, we have the comfort of knowing that Christ is with us in that suffering, that we have the Holy Spirit with us in that suffering. And to know that there is hope beyond our suffering also. There's very little outside of the cross that answers that question when we look at different faiths, we see that there is either this thing of overcoming all desires so that you don't suffer or there's the other answer of this is a consequence of your own mistakes of your own past sins or the other thing is suffering is just there. We can't escape it. So those are the kinds of answers that people are getting. And obviously it doesn't minister to people who are hurting those answers. And so to offer them Christ to offer the hope that we have in Christ is something that can really be something that ministers to them. So yeah, that's just one thought. Would anyone else like to share any other faculty member? And if that question was asked by someone who's here on the call, let us know if your question got answered satisfactorily or if you have any further questions. I just like to share something Smitha. I think the best example would be our own testimonies. We've all gone through a suffering. So what did we do at that time? How we trusted in Jesus and of course the suffering may not have gone away immediately but the strength, the courage, the peace, the joy, the assurance that we have, the confidence that we have that enabled us to go through that suffering is something that other religions don't have an answer to or offer. So I think that can be a good thing like how you went through the suffering and how God really enabled you, strengthened you, helped you and how you came out refined in that process, how it built your perseverance, your endurance, your perspective to life and your relationship with God and I think all that can really help a person and also that the grace and the strength that God gives us and ultimately how he saw us through, carried us through or walked us through that entire process can also be a great encouragement and help others to put their trust in Jesus. Thank you. We'll go on to the next question. If you had a question that was not answered last week, we have three questions here so we'll go through these three but if there was some other question feel free to post on the chat. So the other question was in the story of Saul and then there's a quotation from Scripture. Now the spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul and an evil spirit from Yahweh tormented him. So the servants of Saul said to him, look please an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. The question is how can we see this because God won't take delight in seeing his people suffer or being tormented. Would someone be willing to answer that question? Let me know if I need to repeat the question as well. Hi everyone. Hi, Smitha. Thank you for reading out that question. I'll just try to answer it. So in the passage that we just read, it seems like the evil spirit was sent by God. So it seems that way but we would need to interpret Scripture through Scripture and when we look at the rest of Scripture, we see that God is not a God who sends evil to torment and cause people to suffer and that's pretty clear. And therefore when we interpret this passage, then we would know that though it seems like that, that's not what it means. And I just want to make reference to Scripture in the Book of John, John 14 and verse 30 where the latter part of that verse says, for the Prince of this world comes and he has nothing in me. So Jesus is very clearly stating that he is separate from Satan and that nothing of Satan is a part of him and therefore when it comes to demons being sent out to torment people, obviously it's not God who is doing that and so God doesn't cause people to suffer and we've already addressed this question in the last mentoring arm in Pastor Jake's, Jack Omar had taught about suffering that there are many reasons why there is suffering but definitely it's not God who causes it. So I just want to share that but if any other faculty want to add to this, please feel free to. Thank you. Thank you Pastor Nancy. Would anyone else like to add? Anyone else from the faculty? Thanks a lot. I'm from Kolkata, I just joined just now. Actually God allows suffering so that we can realize our mistakes and we can come back to him and correct ourselves because he allows sufferings only because for us to correct ourselves and to come to him and obey him and worship him. I just wanted to share this. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think Pastor Jake's did cover some of the reasons for suffering in last week's session so if you missed that you can go back and watch the video that's available on our YouTube page or on Google Classroom or the learning platform. And yeah, Pastor Jake's would you like to add anything? Answer to this question. Yeah, I just want to quickly add that especially about Saul, I think Saul and the spirit that commented and we see very clearly that the spirit of God departed and of course we're talking about the old dispensation that the spirit of God would come for a purpose and would leave and so spirit of God had departed so the divine protection, the hedge of protection which was around Saul was not there and therefore whenever somebody steps out of that they make themselves vulnerable for the attack of the evil one for evil spirit. So that's the thing. So like we had this earlier, God is not the source of suffering. God is not the author. But and like this sister, Sharma, mentioned, so God is not the author of it. I just wanted to clarify but in the event of that happening, in the event of rebellion, in the event of us stepping away intentionally from God's divine protection well God still uses that for sure but it's not God's perfect, God's not will that one should suffer because we see in the original design that God did not design with suffering but if I design the world with suffering in it and we see the end also in Revelation that he's wiping away every tear and there's no sorrow, there's no pain. So we should be very clear that that our God is a good God. He is not the author of suffering but in the event of this, in the event of us stepping out of divine protection well God still uses that for our good. Thank you. Thank you. So we have one last question. So how to handle when suffering comes and we have to go through maybe year after year and people from other beliefs ask where is your God? What should our stand be on that? I've posted the question here on chat as well. Would one of our faculty like to address that please? Yeah, so it can be a, it can be a challenging season and to go through and also for us to make sense of it first of all and then if there are questions from others who do not know Christ to actually answer them also. So one thing is well we cannot answer and satisfy everybody's questions but we can just share. This is the hope that we have and whatever we are going through on this side of eternity is we can share whatever we have learned. We can share that aspect, the source of suffering and why it happens and so on. So if year after year it's a difficult season, it's a challenging season and that's why we are called to run the race with endurance and through faith and patience inherit the promises. So definitely I'm not, like you said earlier also it can be challenging. We're not downplaying it but this is the hope that we have. So that's the only answer. Others might still have questions, what about your God, why is he not doing this, that and so on but we can use that opportunity to share the hope that we have, the reason for the hope that we have in Christ and keep going and I think the first question that we shared about the hope that we have in Christ nothing can actually satisfy no worldview can satisfactorily answer that and this tangible hope and comfort that we have in Christ is something that we can share. Thank you. Thank you Pastor. Would anyone else like to add to that? Anyone on staff? I think Pastor Jekumar has answered it quite adequately. Okay, sure. So I think that was all the questions that we had last week. If you had a question that was not answered feel free to add that to the chat but we can go into today's topic. So I had given us the topic Keep the Fire Burning and I intended to talk about how we can stay strong in ministry so that we continue to serve God till the end. We don't lose focus. We don't lose our steam and burn out before we get to the end of fulfilling all that God has for us but as I was preparing God kind of redirected what I was going to share about but it still falls under this theme of keeping the fire burning from the perspective of keeping our passion for God and our love for God in a place of going strong. So where we don't lose our love for God in the process of serving Him or in the process of following Him. Why is this important? Because this is the biggest key to us serving God faithfully to serving God fully till the end but also it is the only kind of work that would be pleasing and acceptable to God where we are serving from this place of love for God where we continue to have a passion that is so fervent for God that that fuels all that we are doing all the work that we are doing for His kingdom. So we'll read a few passages of scripture and I may just ask one of us to read. We begin with Mark 12, 28 to 34 if someone could read that for us please. Mark 12, 28 to 34 Okay, shall I read? Mark 12, 28 then one of the scribes came and having heard them reasoning together perceiving that he had answered them well asked him which is the first commandment of all, Jesus answered him and the first of all commandment is the Lord our God, the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength this is the first commandment and the second like it is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself there is no other commandment greater than these so the scribe said to him, well said teacher you have spoken the truth but there is one God to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding with all the soul and with all the strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself is more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God but after that no one dared question him Thank you pastor so we see here and we see this in all the Mark, Matthew and Luke that this commandment is repeated as the greatest commandment or the most important commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength right, why is that given to us as the most important commandment because from our heart is where all the issues of life come out everything that we do, all of the good things, all of the bad things flow from within as our heart, soul, mind and strength and so this is the place where we need to be making sure that all of our energies are focused in love, in submission and surrender and worship to God we see here also that it's more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices that we can offer so as people who many of us are serving in different ways, we are either serving in churches or in full-time ministry, often those ministries, the work that we are doing for God can take over our lives right, because there are such great demands on our time on our energy, on everything that we have to give that the time that we are spending actually with God in his presence is what gets sacrificed for the sake of the ministry but in Revelation 2-6 we see that Jesus calls the Ephesian church back to his, back to its first love or to the love that it had at first it doesn't say for God or for people but it just says come back to the love you had at first if somebody could read that for us Revelation 2-6 can I read? yes go ahead in Revelation 2-2 I know your works, your labour, your patience and that you cannot bear those who are evil and you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars and you have persevered and have patience and have laboured for my name's sake and have not become weary nevertheless I have this against you I have left your first love remember therefore from where you have fallen repent and do the first works or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place unless you repent but this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate thank you see here that Jesus is commending the church in Ephesus saying I know your deeds your hard work, your perseverance you cannot tolerate wicked people you have tested those who claim to be apostles and have found them to be false and then right at the end verse 6 you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans so they are being commended for their hard work they have continued to serve God they have held on to truth not letting false teaching come into the church and the Nicolaitans were a cult that had kind of allowed idolatry and worship of the imperial so the Roman leaders all of those things they were kind of allowing that with also worshiping Jesus these were the kinds of things that the church had not accepted they had made sure that they stayed pure and they continued to serve God even in the face of opposition that was coming their way but still this is not satisfactory in Jesus' eyes so he says yet I hold this against you you have left your first love you have forsaken the love you had at first and so it's important for us to realize that the work we are doing is not the end that God is looking for it is definitely good the love that we have for God should result in us serving him and serving his people but if we are letting go of love but continuing to serve God that is not satisfactory in God's eyes so let's just take a quick look at the Ephesian church they came from the city of Ephesus Ephesus was known for worship of the God Artemis who is a fertility goddess so they had one of the most renowned temples that had been built in Ephesus and it had thousands of priests and priestesses and many of them served as sacred prostitutes in the temple coming from the religious background many of them were coming from apart from that there was also the imperial cult so the Roman emperors who demanded worship so there was that political pressure that came in with the religious side of things and then we see from the history that we have in scripture about how the church had been established by Paul so Paul visited Ephesus during his second missionary journey and he spent a very short time there although the people there responded positively to the gospel he had other places that he had to visit and so he didn't spend a lot of time there but he did go back in his third missionary journey and he spent over two years in Ephesus teaching and from Ephesus also teaching in the rest of Asia but between those two visits that he had those two journeys Paul was had gone to Ephesus and had talked to them about the baptism of John which people had received positively so when Paul went back they had not heard about the baptism in the name of Jesus and so Paul taught them about it he prayed for them and they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and immediately began to manifest gifts of the Spirit we also see that there was open confession of sins we see that they they actually rejected some of their cultural practices openly so we have an account in Acts 19 where they brought their scrolls they usually used to wear scrolls with magical incantations so these were tied around their neck to keep them safe from all evil they brought all of these scrolls and burned it in public and the value of the scrolls we have recorded as 50,000 days wages for an average worker so it was not small sacrifice that they had made and Paul himself testifies in 1 Corinthians 16 19 he says that a great door for effective work has opened up in Ephesus and so he continued to stay there and minister because of the the way the church was responding and the opportunity that he had from Ephesus to minister in the rest of Asia so we see this is how the gospel impacted the church at first they also had opposition from Jews and Gentiles alike they were not allowed to continue to meet in the synagogue so they had to leave and meet elsewhere where Paul was teaching them then we also see that the Gentiles started to come against them because they were abandoning worship of the cultural goddess who was Artemis so they had all of this political pressure they had pressure from the culture around them from the religion that was prevalent in their culture and from the Jews as well because the Jews didn't want to associate with them because they were causing trouble for the Jews being people who were viewed as a sect of the Jews the Christians were initially viewed in that way with all of this the church continued strong but somewhere along the way they had forgotten that initial love that they had for God that had made them forsake all other things and follow him instead they had gotten caught up with the work that they were doing for God so the things that they were the ways in which they were serving him holding on to doctrine all of those things became important to them and those things became the end goal that they were working for those things became the things that they were passionate about that were consuming their thoughts through the point that they had neglected God himself right so they were not falling into the idolatrous practices of the culture but in their hearts they had allowed these things to become idols instead of having God be the only one who they were worshipping the only one that they were giving their whole heart to so as as students here as faculty here as alumni from the Bible college we're all people who definitely love God people who are serving God and people who love the truth that's why we're in Bible college because we want to pursue a deeper knowledge of who God is we want to know discern what is right from wrong but how can we keep ourselves from falling into the same trap that the Ephesian church fell into we'll just look at the example of Mary we have the story of Mary and Martha in Luke chapter 10 verses 38 to 42 and we see a contrast between Mary and Martha whereas Martha is said to have opened her home to Jesus it also records for us that Martha was distracted by all the preparations and she was worried and upset about many things and this is what Jesus cares about her you are worried and upset about many things but Mary on the other hand she sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said and Martha testifies she's left me to do the work by myself but Jesus testifies and Mary has chosen what is better so this is the one thing that Jesus comments and Jesus says this is the better thing to choose it is to be in communion with me to be in my presence to delight in me to listen to me to learn from me that's what he desires Psalm 27.4 David says one thing I ask from the Lord this only do I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord that I may be in His presence all the days of my life to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple so David also talks about the same things of being in the presence of God, of communing with Him, of delighting in Him of seeking Him, of trying to know Him more, hungering for more of God that is where we should make sure we don't compromise right? No matter how how much we're growing in ministry no matter how how much our other responsibilities may be growing outside of ministry with family or with our work whatever it may be to never compromise on that dwelling in the presence of the Lord, of delighting in Him, of seeking Him because this is where that fire that we have in our hearts for God will be rekindled this is where that fire will keep staying strong if we look at examples of our relationships in marriage or our relationships with our parents, relationships with our children often times we get so busy just taking care of the people around us we have to serve them, we have to take care of our homes take care of the needs of the people around us that we lose we lose sight of the fact that people were supposed to be in relationship with people we should just enjoy spending time with getting to know them delighting in who they are, delighting in this gift of relationship that God has given us in the same way we forget that with God as well where we get so busy just doing what we're supposed to do following all the rules and taking off all the things that that seem good to us or seem good to the people around us that we just forget to delight in this gift of relationship which is such a beautiful, beautiful thing to have a relationship with our Creator our God who rescued us saved us, who restored us to be called into relationship with Him what else can offer that to us that kind of relationship that kind of friendship of a place of safety a place of acceptance a place of knowing who we are who we truly are created to be so my reminder to us today is to come back to that place of just delighting in God to make sure that we don't let other things take us away from God himself however good those things may seem and especially because those are the outside things that everyone else gauges our spirituality based on what they see on the outside so everyone thinks that we are doing really well based on how our ministries are how we are serving and what is the fruit of the work that we are doing but only we can stop in the presence of God and examine our hearts to see whether truly what we are doing is coming from a place of love and so I want to encourage us to to do that to stop and examine our hearts in God's presence to allow God to show us whether he really has that first place in our lives and if we find that we have fallen away from God as our first love this same passage in Revelation 2 tells us how we can come back so the first is to remember from where you fall in remember means not only to recall but to return to that is to go back to that first place you were in and when Revelation when Revelation talks about fall in there are three ways in which it talks about it it actually uses this word a lot there are 23 times in Revelation that the word fall is used and in the New Testament as a whole it's 91 times that it's used but 23 of those times are in the book of Revelation so it talks about falling down in worship before God that's one way fall is used the other way is falling from a place of glory to a place of destruction and the third way is judgment falling on people so what is interesting here is that the church the Ephesian church used to be the church that was falling down in worship in utter reverence for God but it's falling from that place of glory and God is warning them of judgment falling on them if they stay in that place falling from a place of glory into a place of destruction and so he's calling them back to this place of just falling before God in complete awe of who God is being lost in worship being caught up in his love for them that is the kind of worship we see described in Revelation and how do we do that it's by remembering remembering what God has done for us we see constantly in the Old Testament God calling the people of Israel back to remember what he has done for them how he has been faithful to them how he has saved them how he has walked with them the miracles that he has done in their midst and he says in different ways they are called to remember so to set up altars to pass it on to their children and their children's children those are the ways we can make sure that we don't forget what God has done by sharing our testimonies by having physical reminders of how God has worked in our lives so one thing for me is I have a little art it's like a little it's not a painting but it's something that a friend of mine made for me she once asked me what was the most important attribute of God to me personally and one that had really really drawn me to God was friendship and so she made a little this thing for me that I have up in my bedroom but every time I look at that I'm reminded of how God has worked in my life of how he has been a faithful friend when I felt like I had nobody else so having those kinds of reminders around us verses that remind us of what God has done in our lives or words or pictures that remind us of ways in which God has worked in our lives the other way is to repent so repentance here is changing our heart changing our minds turning away from sin and turning to God and then the last is to do the first works so interestingly here as well we see that God is calling them back to work he's not saying stop working he's saying work but do the work like you did it before the grace of love from place that is motivated by love like we see in first Corinthians 13 the true value and meaningfulness of what we are doing for God is found when it is coming from a place of love the other ways we show true love for God as scripture talks about is by obeying God John 14 talks about obedience to God by obeying evidence of our love for him and one John 4 20 and 21 talks about loving our brothers and sisters that if we claim to love God we must love our brothers and sisters so these are the the first works of love that must be evidenced in our lives and they should all come from a place of truly loving God so we've come very very close to the end so I'm just going to stop here we just have a few minutes if you'll have any questions any thoughts you would like to share please go ahead and anything that you would like to share or questions with regard to this topic or any other topic thanks Mitha for sharing I was just thinking as you mentioned you know like some reminders around you they really help you to keep that focus alive you know even you know like prayer or coming until study time and worship so many of these things that God has already called us to I think when we have that as part of our daily routine it's so very helpful to to continue to keep us in that place of love so that we can receive from God and from that outflow comes out ministry and everything else that we do for the Lord so I was just thinking that it's so sorry that it's so important to guard it and to make time for these things thank you that's Nancy so one question that I okay I think brother Kofi you have a question yeah sister can you please through a little light on how their first love was like how the church's first love was like okay so where we covered a little bit of the history of the church we see that they completely turned away from other things right we see how all of the challenges that they were facing all of that didn't stop them from publicly confessing their sins from publicly giving sacrificing financially so those were evidences of what they felt we don't have any other account of what exactly what else the church did we see the manifestation of the spiritual gifts so these are all the external things that we can see like we talked about there are external things that we can see and we can judge by those external things but God knew their hearts so that's where it comes to our personal standing before God examining our hearts before God and looking at are we truly delighting in God so if anyone else was looking at the Ephesian church they probably thought that they were still very they were still doing very well spiritually because they were still holding onto the truth they were still persevering in spite of the challenges and the opposition the persecution that they were facing but God says they've let go of that love that they had at first and so that is something that God only can reveal to us and for this church God was able to expose that for them that they had forgotten that initial devotion and delight that they had in God I hope that answers your question thank you any other questions so I'll ask a question for our faculty how do y'all make sure when things obviously get very very busy there's a lot of pressure there's a lot to be done like past Nancy mentioned having this as part of your daily routine how do you make sure that you don't let go of it when you feel the pleasure of so many other things on you and the second part is even in those times how do you make sure that you're really worshipping rather than just worrying about all the things you have to do with any of our faculty for me personally I think it's pressing in more and also kind of pulling away I mean that just to get into a personal time with God to get away from the activities around but also not to cool down but to press in more that always is there and I'm just reminded of the scripture Mark chapter 4 where it talks about the measure that we use is what will be measured to us and understanding that we get it's Mark chapter 4 and verse 24 take heed with what you hear I just find that refreshing in the sense okay I go with a big measure with a big level of hunger and God always pours out into my life and I'm refreshed and renewed again thank you we've come to the end of our time if anybody had any questions you can feel free to post in Google Classroom in I think past Nancy they can do that right in the main audience yes they can okay so you can feel free to post there and we'll have your questions answered thank you all for joining us today see you next week


Hurricane Harvey is continuing to make an impact even all the way in Minnesota. The hurricane has caused gas prices to take a large jump over the last week. Sarah Winkelman has more. Many locals have noticed the price at the pump has been continuing to rise after Harvey made landfall. There's an understanding of when you have these refineries that you had down in Texas, 600,000 barrels a day go offline. There's gonna be a consequence According to the Department of Energy, the peak of Harvey shut down 27% of the country's processing capability. However, the major factor for the price increase in this region is due to supply distribution. The reality up here is a lot of our product is getting shipped down to Texas. They still need fuel. According to gasbuddy.com, the state of Minnesota has seen gas prices rise 18 cents just within the last week, bringing the average across the state of Minnesota to $2 and 52 cents a gallon. You know, if this is the least we have to put up with compared to what they're going through, it's gonna be okay. Although AAA estimates gasoline could increase an additional 5 to 10 cents over the next week. Matthew believes prices will return to normal in the near future. We've been around 224, 225, and I think that would be, I don't have a crystal ball, but I think that'd be realistic to see if not by the end of the month, you know, going into October. Keeping in mind that more trouble could be on the way if Hurricane Irma makes landfall on the U.S. mainland. Reporting in Brainerd, Sarah Winkleman, Lakeland News. The current national average cost of gasoline is $2 and 66 cents per gallon. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota, produced by Lakeland PBS with host Bethany Wesley. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for information available at memidjiairport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by NISWA Tax Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals, online at NISWATACS.com. The Minnesota Legislature will convene for its regular session on Tuesday. Legislators will come together in St. Paul as the state faces a projected deficit of $188 million based on a November economic forecast. An updated forecast is expected later this month. Tonight, I welcome to our table two area legislators to discuss some of the issues and topics expected to be debated and perhaps acted upon before the May 21st deadline. Representative Matt Bliss, a Republican from Pennington, represents District 5A. He is a small business owner serving his first term and will be up for re-election this fall. Bliss is the vice chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee and also serves on the Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee, the Government Operations and Elections Policy Committee, and a subcommittee on mining, forestry, and tourism. Senator Justin Eichhorn, a Republican from Grand Rapids, represents District 5. He also is a small business owner who served in his first term but as senator will not be up for re-election until 2020. Eichhorn is the vice chair of the E-12 Policy Committee and also serves on the following committees, Capital Investment, E-12 Finance, Environment and Natural Resources Finance, and Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Legacy Finance. Welcome, thank you for coming. Thanks for having us, this is a great opportunity. Our intention today is to kind of look forward to the session that is coming, what people can expect to hear about and hear kind of debated, but then also as a part of that we'll probably touch on some of the things that were done last year. So, first things first, I'm sure in your eyes is you guys need a budget. Absolutely, if we don't, at least on the Senate side, if we don't get funded by the end of February, the Senate's gonna pretty much be out of money. We borrowed some money from the legislative coordinating committee in order to get to this point, but we do need Governor Dayton to approve the legislative budget in order to continue on, otherwise the session will probably end up having to stop, but I think there's a pretty favorable chance that we do get a budget signed. That'll be the first order of business though. Were you worried or were you surprised when he vetoed the budget last year? I was surprised, he had agreed to all the items that were in the budgets, and at the last minute he decided to veto our numbers, which really kind of put our staff, our full-time staff, both partisan and nonpartisan, kind of an awkward situation, didn't know how long their jobs were gonna be there, and as a result, we had quite a bit of turnover in the House, I don't know how the Senate did, but we had a large turnover of people. But you guys were able to keep going, right? Because you found other funds to kind of keep you afloat until you can pass hopefully the budget then. Yeah, that's correct, correct. It's kind of a skeleton cruise, so to speak, and that's why the Senate didn't do their bonding, capital investment tours throughout the summer. We are working on those now, serving on that committee, and I'm actually doing that next week. We're on our last little day of our tour, so we are able to see some of those projects that are important to the state, and we were able to come through, put midgy here a couple weeks ago, and we had a really great capital investment tour here. Cool, all right, so let's start moving to some of these topics. The first one we'll talk about is probably a big one, taxes. Last year, your tax bill, if I remember correctly, was almost 650 million, right, in different savings over the next two years. But this year, there's going to be some discussion in terms of how to manage the code in response to the federal. Correct, a tax conformity bill. Okay, so tell me, what are you hearing? What are you expecting to kind of be the main points down at the Capitol? Well, I would say that a lot of people were saying Minnesota was kind of a leader in some tax reform. It was a couple decades since we had done tax reform in the state of Minnesota, and we made a lot of big gains last year. I mean, we got, for social security income, for tax credits for students, money, and payment and move taxes, and Indian Child Welfare Act to help the counties. Small business owners. Small business owners. So we did a lot of really good things. So the state of Minnesota really led, and from what I've been hearing, they would like us to continue to be a leader. We need to, at the bare minimum, conform with the federal government. Otherwise, we're going to see some tax increases. Most likely, considering that Governor Dayton doesn't like tax bills, that was part of the reason our funding was vetoed is he didn't like the tax bill. I don't think we get any farther than that personally, but I think there is some desire from members of both sides of the aisle to try to maybe push it a little farther and put that money back in Minnesota's pockets so that way we can continue to grow our economy, because even though we see the economy growing a little bit nationally, it hasn't jump-started as much as it has in other states, and I think there's probably some things we can do to help that along. One of the numbers that we've heard is the Minnesota Department of Revenue says that tax collections will grow by nearly $850 million in two years if no change is made to the policy, correct? Yes. So your goal is to change it so that that decreases? We want to make sure that the people in Minnesota aren't negatively impacted by the federal cuts. One of the things that the federal government has done is make the tax credits or your withholdings, your personal exemptions. They've doubled them, but they've taken away a lot of the deductions to make up for it. And unfortunately, I heard yesterday from a farmer, if he trades in a combine, he gets a $100,000 trade-in, he has to now record that as income, which isn't a big deal because under the new federal policy, he can take 100% of that back off of his income, but on the state level, that doesn't come off of that. So that could negatively impact him. And that's what we have to look at, is to make sure that the good tax cuts that we're putting in place in Washington don't negatively impact us. And we don't need the extra $800 million right now, so we should make sure that it impacts Minnesota as least as possible. You say that, well, I mean, at this time, I know we're expecting a new forecast soon, but you do have a deficit. I mean, you are looking at a deficit. Do you worry about cutting them back to the point where that will increase? I don't. The last two months have come back over projections. I think we'll be just fine. I think that the tax cuts that we made last year and the President's tax cuts are starting to take effect and I think we'll be just fine. And I think you're gonna be surprised pleasantly at the next forecast. Similar feelings? I completely agree with that. I do think we're probably gonna be in a surplus, maybe not a lot, but I do think we're gonna have a much better forecast. I agree with the points that Representative Bliss made. We had some strong indications that it is gonna be better and I'm hopeful for that, but we'll see when the numbers come out. One of the things I wanna kind of pull out from last year is there was an increase to local government aid. You had an increase of about 15 million. You are hearing from some cities and some lobbyists that they would like to revisit that and have that go up again this year. What are your feelings on that and are you hearing from that? Is that something you're open to? I can tell you that that's something I worked on last year and that's something that went through our tax bill. That's a thing that a lot of people don't realize that tax bills aren't just about tax cuts. It's sold as, oh, it's tax cuts for rich people or whatever, but there's a lot of other pieces at least in the Minnesota tax bill that go into that. There's the local government aid went in there, the county program aid was in there, the Indian Child Welfare Act money was in there and on and on. There were several things that helped fund local governments. I think there is some desire to continue to help local governments, especially in greater Minnesota. There's some disparities between what greater Minnesota communities get and the Metro communities. So there is some desire in both chambers, I think, to continue to further that. It's just how much can we do, again, going into this tax bill that we're gonna try to put together this year. If we go much beyond that conformity, we run into the point where Governor Dayton's not willing to sign it just because he has a distaste for tax bill. So it's hard to say for sure, but I do think there is possibly an opportunity, it's just a little smaller this year than in years coming forward. Because I think what we've heard, or what some of you've been reading, coalitions asking to try to go back to those 2002 numbers and other, I think it's 30 and a half million, something like that. But you're saying you think it's probably a non-starter for this coming session. I don't know about a non-starter, the appetite for that kind of a bill is probably not there right now. And if you look at the history, 2002 was the absolute peak. Of course we wanna get back to the absolute peak, but it has been growing over the past few years. And I think we're gonna make steady progress on it. Whether or not it's the 2002 levels, we'll wait and see. The discussion, either way, the discussion will certainly be there. It's just how far we can actually take it, yeah. I wanna talk about bonding. It's an even numbered year, which usually is your big bonding year. Last year was an odd year in that you still had a bonding bill, but that was because it didn't get done the previous year. So you're back to a bonding year. So last year you had about nearly a billion dollars in roads and bridges and some local projects, wastewater drinking systems. What are you hearing this year? We just had the bonding group up here to look at BSU specifically. A couple weeks ago, we did the Veterans Home here as well. A lot of excitement around that project. And then we did the other side of the district about a week ago, and I mean, throughout Senate District Five, there's a lot of priorities, and we saw a lot of those. There's a lot of needs around Heaper, which is like asset preservation for the colleges. There's a large desire to help smaller communities in Greater Minnesota with wastewater treatment needs, as you mentioned. The city of Deer River has that. So we'd be looking forward to help them with that. But on the bonding, it's really interesting to actually be on the committee. I've kind of referred to it sometimes as the wants and needs tour. We've seen a lot of swimming pools and civic centers and gymnasiums, which don't not have merit, but there's a lot of projects like the Veterans Home that we should really be looking at that really serve a regional and a statewide significance that really matter to a larger portion of the state. And I think that's some of the intention of the bonding bills, because ultimately, our kids are gonna end up paying that debt that we're taking out to build some of these projects. So we need to be mindful of that. And the price take the governor came out with with one and a half billion, I think is a little bit high. In order to get some of the Republican members to go along with it, it's gonna need to be under that billion dollar figure again. But sitting on that committee again, I think there's a large desire to do some things in higher ed and to help smaller Minnesota communities out with the wastewater treatment type stuff. So Dayton's bill, from what I understand, had a lot of emphasis on college and investments in that way, and less so on local projects. So how do you feel about that? Well, you know, my main focus obviously is the Bemidji Walker area. And I know part of the projects that we have proposed up here is the Hague Sour Building and BSU. And I think, I believe that's number two on the men's states priority list. And I think that's really gonna go through. You know, last year we tried to make it geographically balanced and heavy on infrastructure. And I think that's kind of what we're gonna focus on again this year, and like Justin said, you know, try to keep it at a billion or under. You know, if you look closely at the governor's numbers, there's a lot of just numbers, 100 million for this. And it's just kind of a gray area that he just threw a number at. So I think we can whittle away at that quite a lot. And I don't think there's a lot of difference in the numbers really.  So I think I really have a good feeling that we'll come through with something this year. But you have a good feeling about getting some of those local projects in as well as the statewide. Both Matt and I are advocating heavily for those projects. So I think we have a very good chance to get those in our bonding bill, especially the veterans home. I wanna mention, because we've talked about Hague Sour, which is 22 and a half million for Hague Sour and then some other buildings. But then also you have Red Lake, right? Red Lake is looking for some money for a school improvement. And that would be Matt Grosl's district. So that would be a project he's been pushing. So I don't know a whole lot about that project. Okay, sounds good. All right, then let's move on toward transportation. So last year you had 300 million per road and bridge projects. Last year in your hearing, of course, people always want more. So what do you expect for transportation in terms of, do you think there'll be anything to even discuss or no, you said maybe just sticking to that conformity for tax issues? Well, on tax issues, it's gonna stick to conformity. I don't think we're gonna, we're not gonna raise any taxes. That's definitely a non-starter, at least in the Senate, I assume it is in the house as well. But we do need to make sure we continue to dedicate those funds. Like last year we dedicated some, the sales tax from like auto parts and stuff like that to make sure that went towards transportation. I think we need to make sure some of that is permanent. We need to make sure some of the additional like auto, tax you pay when you buy your vehicle, that kind of stuff is always dedicated towards roads and bridges. We see that in different agencies like in the DNR where you buy your fishing license, it goes to fishing, you buy your deer hunting license, it goes to deer management and stuff like that. I think the intention of a lot of the taxpayers in Minnesota is that we use that money to go towards our roads and bridges and we've unfortunately rated those funds for many other things. So I think we need to get back to that as a starter. I know a lot of people would like to talk about additional gas taxes and stuff like that. It's a non-starter for now. I think that disproportionately affects lower income individuals and you know, being that our economy hasn't fully recovered yet, I don't think that's a place we want to go at this point, not a place I'm interested in going. So yeah, we need to dedicate some more funds. There may be some funding in the bonding bill for transportation. I don't know what that number looks like because there's a lot of competing projects but there will definitely be something in the realm of transportation. Okay. And I think we really want to have the Department of Transportation focus more on congestion and not, you know, maybe put bike paths along an artery. You know, let's focus on the congestion. Those are the people that pay the taxes for the roads. Let's make sure that goes for roads and congestion relief. Do you believe it's hard to kind of get that balance between metro and rural projects when it comes to transportation? Do you feel like that's something that, you know, is always kind of an uphill battle?  And up here, probably not gonna affect us much. So how do you go about having those conversations? Well, I was looking at an interesting thing. I was actually looking at this earlier today at what light rail costs compared for a mile compared to like what a mile of four lane highway costs appear. Light rail is about a hundred million a mile. Up here, it's about 225 to 250,000 a mile if you're gonna build in Beltrami or Cass or Itasca County. So we could put in over a hundred miles of four lane road in Greater Minnesota for one mile of light rail. So I'm glad this last year we kind of peeled back on the light rail stuff. Greater Minnesota is not gonna be paying for that anymore. But to get back to your question more, there is definitely a fight between what the Metro gets and what Greater Minnesota gets. And Matt and I are definitely fighting to get some more money up here. With the way the leadership is now in the house in the Senate, you've got Senator Gizalka who's a Greater Minnesota Senator, who's the majority leader now. You have Kurt Daut, who's a Greater Minnesota representative. So they do have that greater focus on Greater Minnesota, which greatly benefits Bemidji, Grand Rapids, all of our communities up here. So it is getting better, but there's more work to be done. One of the other things that we've seen in recent weeks is the possible revisiting of toll roads and kind of looking into that a little bit further. Right last year there was an order that MnDOT kind of study those toll road systems. And now that first report's out and now he's kind of turned it over to you guys to decide if it should be investigated further. Is that something that you've heard a lot of discussion about yet or probably not? I haven't heard a whole lot of discussion about it. You know, I lived for a while when I was in the military in Virginia Beach and they had toll roads down there. You know, I can see some benefit to them, you know, especially on the main thoroughfares through the city where don't take up the main arteries, but if you're gonna build more lanes, have them toll roads and have them pay for them that way. So I'd be open to the discussion. I'd have to look at the finances and the numbers and just, you know, I'm open to the discussion. And that's something I haven't heard anything additional yet. Maybe when we get into session they'll talk about it, but it's not something that's really come up in our realm yet. Yeah. Let's move forward to education. Last year there was a lot of movement on education. So were you pretty proud of what was accomplished? I mean, do you think that's kind of what you wanted? I was very proud of what was accomplished. I was very proud as well. The teacher licensure reform was absolutely huge. Again, for Greater Minnesota, now it's a tiered system. There's gonna be a new teacher licensure board that's, people are getting appointed for that now and we're gonna go through a confirmation process for some of that. But it's really gonna allow schools in Greater Minnesota that have a hard time recruiting teachers to have some other options. It's gonna allow people that maybe they went to school in North Dakota and didn't get their degree in Minnesota. Now it's gonna give that person an opportunity to come back to Bemidji, come back to Grand Rapids and have an easier time getting into a school here. It should help solve some of our teacher shortages. So I was actually really excited about the final product of that bill. It started being worked on before Representative Bliss and I even got elected. But we got to be able to be involved in some of the discussions throughout session a little bit last year to help tweak it. And I think it was a really good product that came out. And the additional funding that we got for the schools, the two and two, that helps out a lot. It was 2% over two years of 2%. Correct. So it ends up being like, what is it? 245 a student, I think, at the most or something. Yeah, I think I saw numbers, Bemidji got 3 million. 2.7 million for Bemidji. Castley, I think got 670 plus, 670,000 plus. Walker, Hackensack, Akely was 360,000. That helps a lot. And even the Transportation Sparsity Bill that we fought for in the House and Senate, that helps out Bemidji a lot. It was a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop and it's starting and it's a permanent part of the calculation now. So it'll always be added to or could always be added. I wanna talk, just make sure that we said what it was. Okay, so that's like where these school districts, Bemidji in particular, so large that they actually lose money transporting their kids versus the money that they get from the state. Right, the way the old calculation worked is that Bemidji, I believe it was Roseville, the school district they used. Same number of students, much smaller, more compact area and Roseville was actually taking money from their transportation budget and using it in their general fund where Bemidji had to take money from their general fund because they have such a large area to transport. So what we did is I believe there was 80 schools in Minnesota that that was affecting and we went through and we tried to get the whole number in there, but of course as time went on it got whittled down. I believe we were at 18% it was the final number. So that's where we started. But you're saying that because it's an actual line item in the budget that it's not a one-time funding. In the past they've gotten a one-time funding bump but then the next year it was gone. What we've done is it's there permanently and according to the people that I've talked with in the school district that's something they've been working on for 10 years or more and we were able to, and it was a fight. It was a fight to get it in there. Was it uphill? Yeah, it was. It got, it was in and out and in and out and it finally ended up in in the last minute but yeah that's something we both fought hard for being on education. I was able to be in the room for some of those discussions to make sure that that stayed in there because that was, I think the two and two was probably one of the biggest things we heard from school districts overall but in Bemidji it was the transportation was probably just barely above that. Is that one of the topics though that kind of highlights kind of, I don't want to say gridlocked down at the state capitol but some of the problems. Like you have this, it's pretty obvious, right? You have winners and losers from the transportation budget system and yet you have legislators that don't necessarily want to give up the money because it impacts their district. So how do you kind of navigate that? How do you cross those hurdles? You gotta be bullheaded and you can't take no for an answer and that's one thing I learned. I'm a nice guy and I went down there generally trying to be a nice guy and sometimes you have to stick your head into a room even though they don't want to see you and you have to repeat what you've already told them through four times. I would agree with that sentiment and it's just that that entire job is about building relationships and in an education being on both of those committees I spent a lot of time outside of our committees going to have lunch with the chair of the committee that kind of thing to continue to let them know what's important to us up here and those little things go a long way and so those are areas we tried to work hard on to make sure that we could get things like this transportation to stay in there. All right, we touched on this a little bit earlier in the bonding bill but I kind of want to pull it out because it's such a big issue out here and that's the veteran's home. We've actually done a full show on it so you made some progress. Do you feel like you made progress? I think we made a lot of progress. The governor's now addressing it when he puts out his budget for the bonding bill he specifically mentions the reason there was no veteran's homes in there. Because it wasn't funded by it but he had kind of pointed to it. Well, we had initially put it in the last state finance bill and it was removed at his request and it had been in versions of bonding bills in the past but it's actually got both leadership's full attention and it's gotten attention from the governor now as well. Okay. I think the governor's comment was they didn't have a location yet which is a little bit offensive to people in this community and I completely agree with it because they've been working hard on this project for about 10 years. They're ready to put shovels in the ground as soon as they get their money. I mean, this project is ready to go and it's a great project of great regional and state significance. I think we've probably made more progress and I hope Matt agrees with me in the last year than probably the previous eight years. I think there's probably a better chance than ever to actually see that veteran's home be included in a final bill. There's a desire from both bonding chairs to see that there's a veteran's home in the bill. So it's probably gonna end up being just like the transportation we just talked about. It's gonna be a fight till the end but you know, I would say it's probably a number one issue. They say, oh, the veteran's home, yeah, we know. And that's good. We're gonna keep that pressure on because it's, I would say it's number one issue for me and I believe it is for Representative Bliss as well. Absolutely. Let's move on to MINLARS which stands for the Minnesota Licensing and Registration System. Kinda turned out to be a little bit of a rocky launch for that. So it started off, it was gonna cost 93 million and now it's going to cost an additional 43 million. So what do you do with that? Well, that's what they're requesting is another 43 million. We're actually requesting, that's another one of those swag numbers. I believe that the government comes up with once in a while. Once we actually start asking for details, the numbers magically goes down. You know, first before I get into any of the details, I wanna shout out to those county registrars over there that put up with it and have been doing it for a while now. For us as a state to put them in that situation is just incomprehensible and unforgivable. This project's been going on for about nine or 10 years now and they said, the project manager for that project said it was green, it was gold, let's throw it out there and it fell flat. And one of the comments I heard just recently and it kinda stuck with me is we didn't think there could be another project in the state that made Minsher roll out look good. And this is, I have an IT background. I'm a certified project manager in IT so this just kills me to watch what's happening with this. And the lack of response that we're getting from certain people, they put in a website now for comments that is actually the registrars can load particular problems and they do get addressed. So they're working on it. There's some people down there that are actually working on it. Do you feel like though that there's a path to fixing it? The path needs to be more than just money, that's for sure and I know I'm not on transportation as you mentioned but I think they are really drilling down. The Senate actually set up a website for people to go and actually put in their comments about it. I think there's a larger issue here and I think there's probably a leadership issue at that state agency. And you had mentioned the shout out to the deputy registrars, but I would say the dealers as well. I mean, there's a lot of dealers that are having a very, very tough time and it falls back on their hands because the consumer assumes that it's their fault when it's really not and we've created this terrible issue in Menlar's as a state and I think there is a pathway forward and we're definitely working on it but there's gonna be a lot of discussion around that this year. So as we get to our final minutes here, I do wanna just ask, what did you learn last year that's really going to help you? Do you think moving forward in the weeks and months to come here? Well, I can tell you just for myself, one of the things I learned is you have to advocate yourself for your priorities and people down there have different priorities. It's not that they're bad people or trying to take stuff away from you but their priorities are different than yours. So if something's important, you have to go, like I said, stick your head in the door where you're not wanted and you have to become that squeaky wheel and that's what I've learned. Making relationships down there, like you said, going to lunch with different legislators, even on the other side, it's really powerful if you can get a bill with bipartisan support and it's just making relationships and becoming a lobbyist for your area. I can certainly agree with Matt's sentiment and I think the same thing and for me, one thing that was really surprising when I got elected, I always thought it was going to be Democrat versus Republican butting head and it's not that at all, it's rural versus metro. Of course, I work great with Representative Bliss and Senator Rutke and Representative Grossel over here were all on the same side but on the other side of my district, it's the edge of the Iron Range. So I'm the farthest northeast Republican so on that side of the district, I'm working with Senator Tomasoni and Representative Metzah and some of those guys and it's been important to build relationships with them being part of the range delegation and understanding their issues. There's a lot of areas we're able to come together on because our areas are so similar in so many ways that again, it's back to relationship building. That's really what this job is, is building relationships and I've been working very hard on that throughout the last year just to make sure that keep building and fostering those so we can get stuff done that truly is good for the area and not what is good for partisanship. So. Well listen, I want to thank you guys for coming on and talking with us, let us know what's coming up in the weeks and months to come. I want to thank you for tuning in and I also would encourage you to take advantage of using these email addresses on the bottom of the screen because these two men represent you and they'd like to hear from you. So thank you for tuning in. Please join me next time.