So I've talked about this on this channel before, but whenever I do videos on how to do a Spotify editorial pitch, or look at the ones in my Discord channel where we literally workshop those, I gotta say I see you all missing out on what these pitches should be like 99% of the time. And this is obviously important, since editorial playlists are the number one mover of nobody to somebody in music today, up to TikTok, of course. But while many musicians know how to make a great song, they're absolutely clueless on how to talk about themselves in a way that would excite anyone about their music. So this video, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know to write a Spotify playlist pitch that does your song justice. The saddest thing that could happen to an early thriving musician's career today is to write an amazing song and then pitch it to Spotify with I was delivering pizzas and then it came to me to write a song about the girl I delivered to. And let me tell you, my dude, they should slaps. So I explicitly want to give you a few avenues to go down that can lead you to a successful Spotify pitch. So let's first go over what we have to work with here, since so many of you messed this up from the jump. Before we even get started, Spotify value is promoting people who make them look good. So they want to make sure that you do all the right things to your profile that keep users engaged instead of heading here to YouTube. So they want you to do all the best practices like updating your profile and artist playlists. Since if you start to get popular, people can see all the neat features of Spotify and subscribe and pay so they keep growing. Make sense, right? We have some more to do before you pitch. First, let's remember you have a window of 28 to seven days to get considered for Spotify editorial playlists. Since you have a little chance as it is with all the competition out there, I would take the longer end of that and try to submit it four weeks in advance, if possible. But let's go over why this is important. I should say if any of this isn't making sense, it may be helpful to watch my annual Spotify strategy video that I put out a few weeks ago. First, as I cover everything in here in much greater detail, a lot of what helps you get on a Spotify editorial playlist and be considered for it is that your past material is doing well on the platform. This means having a popularity score of somewhere around 25% or above on your track and getting on some user playlists along with getting organic streams. Now, if that's not happening yet, you don't need to get too depressed. This really just helps you get more consideration, but Spotify claims they listen to the tracks that get pitched to them and consider them. And I've seen a few artists I consult with go from zero traction to an editorial playlist that really helps them without ever having released a song or having their past material get very little attention. But if you have all that going for you, let's get to work on what you need to make a great pitch. And the first element is knowing what makes you special or how to get people curious to listen to your music. Since if you don't have that, well, where are you going to fail at this? So let's talk about the first element of a pitch, which is how we get the playlist curator excited to listen to you, which we do in one of two ways. So the first of the three elements of a great pitch is to describe what makes you exciting. We want this to be about one sentence, but can use up as many as 250 characters of the 500 characters that you get to make your pitch, since this is one of the most important parts of it. And yes, you only have 500 characters and that's characters, not words. So this needs to be short and sweet, since that's about two tweets worth of time to get this playlist or excited about you. And the thing about knowing what makes you exciting to people is you need to know that since everyone from managers or labels is going to need to know this. Let me explain. When I was younger and a not so wise lad in the music business, I can remember my friend Ben Wyman from the band, The Dillinger Escape Plan, told me the reason he managed his own band, even though they were huge and tons of people would want to manage them, is no one knew how to sell his band as well as him. I'll be honest, despite respecting Ben immensely, I thought he was out of his mind and maybe he hit his head one time when he jumped off something high on a stage. But one of the many lessons I've learned over the years is he was right. Knowing what makes you special and how to sell it to other people is what opens doors for musicians. I would even argue a lesson I've learned is when I wonder why a mediocre band gets bigger than another band that's just as mediocre. More times than not, the band that's better at getting opportunities is better at selling themselves. While many people perceive this as connections, there's some truth to that, but the sell I think has become more and more important in recent years. And like I said, Ben has been proven right that the crucial skill of your manager or whoever handles your music is knowing how to spin this sell and tell a story about why you're so exceptional. This goes tenfold for what we're about to do here in pitching your music. So before you even pass go here, I need you to figure out what is exciting about you because this is where these pitches fail, even when the music's good. More often than not, the pitches Spotify gets are But some of you are like, well, there's not much exciting about me. And to that I say, all hope is not lost. There's another route we can go, which is to get people curious to listen to you. And when you take this route, we try to write something that will make the reader be like, wow, I'd like to hear that. Or, ooh, what's that sound like? So finding a way to describe your sound that's intriguing and will make the reader click because their brain is spinning at the thought of what you just said is one of the ways that we can get people to be excited about hearing your song. Here's some ideas of templates that I would do that would kind of make this work happen. If periphery had the pop vocal courses of Taylor Swift, you know the first time you heard 100 gecks and you wondered how could anyone combine those sounds? Well, incel hypes takes out at those one step further. You've heard of math rocks complex rhythms while ayahuasca edge break go to the opposite way by making the simplest minimal songs that still entertain listeners. Now the biggest problem with this one is music is highly emotional and specific. So if the person you're pitching isn't necessarily intrigued by the curiosity you've peaked because they don't really care what it would sound like if you mixed the cure with ska, then they aren't going to actually be curious. This is why I prefer trying to get excitement from the gatekeeper since even if the music is not for them, they will give more of a chance to something that just sounds exciting since they want to make sure they aren't missing out on something they should know about or an opportunity that you may still have questions about how to figure out what's exciting or how to peak people's curiosity. And luckily for you, I have a video I made last year that expands on this that is linked to the description. And if you really need some more help getting this done, it will answer all of your questions. So head over there or wait till the end of the video where it's linked on the end screen. But if you really feel like this task is never going to get you anywhere, I have kind of a cheat code. Let me give you some great advice. There's no one better at telling stories when there isn't much there than music writers. It's literally their job. Fun fact, many of the great music bios you may have seen on Spotify are written by one a label person or a manager or two a music writer since no one has read more of these bios and they know the game inside and out and they can write a great one oftentimes. There's many a music writer who needs more money because it doesn't pay very well and they do this on the side and they don't take credit for it because it kind of goes against their contract employer. But they take that check to their bank discreetly and this does have the added benefit that it could often be how you get an influential person in your music community to hear you since that's what music writers are. And if they are into it, well those are often the people who tell everyone else what to listen to so you're killing two birds with one stone. I will take you straight up. As some of you know, I freelance for Rolling Stone aka the biggest music publication in the world. And you know who often hangs out with music writers, managers, A&R and other music biz types. Since these writers are often hip to new artists on the rise, which the managers in A&R want to find out about. So hiring one of these writers who regularly writes about your style of music to help figure out how to describe your sound, write a pitch or bio can be great for more doors opening for you and getting you heard by the right people in your community. And while we're talking about the music business, let's also take a quick diversion to talk about why these pitches are so important. Remember when you are pitching you're up against placements for the bigger players of this game, like each of the three major labels and then indie distributors like Red Eye, The Orchard, STEM, United Masters and Cobalt, who all have employees pitching individually through account reps that are buying drinks for the playlist curators and dinners for favors to get features on these playlists. How do I know this? Well, I'm out there getting these drinks with these people and getting drunk with them because I'm in the music business in Brooklyn and that's what we do. I dated someone who part of their job was to buy drinks for playlist curators to help increase their relationship to secure playlist placements. But then you're probably wondering with all these free drinks going around, the curators are obviously bought and need to be paid back at the form of placements. How are you ever going to get one when you can't do that?  It's through those playlists as well that we have to remember that they're in competition with Apple Music and they're trying to be hipper than them, which is basically a given, but if people are finding their new favorite artists before anyone else because these curators found them early on, well that keeps their job safe and it keeps DIY artists still getting placements since that's what they need to keep people subscribing to Spotify. But Spotify knows that subscribers will keep using them if they keep showing you all the hip new great music you want to hear. Since every other streaming service has the exact same songs, well the one thing they can offer is curating great playlists. So that's why you have a chance because they might see you as an opportunity to be that hip artist that keeps somebody subscribing to their service. So they want to give DIY unknown artist spots, but there's so much competition since tens of thousands of songs are uploaded to Spotify daily. So the idea is that they are going to be impressed by you and want to listen to your song if your pitch is exciting. But if your pitch is, We're four dudes from Kalamazoo who love hanging and banging. You feel me dog? It's not going to get past all the other submissions. You feel me dog? Okay, so let's say we figured out what's exciting about you or something that will breed curiosity. We need to move on to the next element of a pitch, which is to use cosigns to get them excited. If you have an amazing quote about you from someone influential in the genre, use it. Whether that's another musician you know who has fans in the genre or a review you've gotten or whatever. Have you been featured in prominent blogs, magazines, radio or DJs, or most of all other Spotify playlists of the genre? Let's make sure those are in this pitch. Let's always remember big playlists pick up artists from small playlists and those cosigns are important. Let's also remember X members of bands, labeled names you're affiliated with. If you work with a big producer who has big credits, all these help curators know that you're in the genre and that you know the genre's keywords. Speaking of that, you need to know your community in niche. This is why I stress knowing your community so much. And yes, there's a video link to the description about why knowing your community is important and how you could figure it out. But here's what I mean by that. Look through all the playlists in your genre and type in every keyword around your genre so you know what's going on on them. Is there microgenres you fall into? Make sure to use those community genre buzzwords in your pitch. For example, I'm really into hyperpop. It has its own editorial playlist on Spotify, but the artists on this playlist are also known as being in other genres like bubblegum bass, PC music, or even lo-fi pop. If you know to use these identifiers in your pitch, you show the creator you know the scene and speak the lingo, which goes shockingly far in your pitch. If there's particular playlist terms in your genre, you could also mention it to show them that you get the community.  You can't just write, this belongs a rap cat you are yo. That's not going to work.  And what I mean by that is playlist journeys show you the smaller playlists that have smaller artists on them before they get on the big playlist. So you could learn which ones feed the big playlist so you could climb up the ladder to get there. But if you have no cosigns or space from not having that next element of our pitch, well, adding a quick sentence like this song is perfect for indie fresh finds or new indie spotlight or some other small playlist you belong is a perfect addition to your pitch. I know a lot of you are thinking you don't have any connections or names to drop, but seriously, one of the reoccurring things in this channel is when you don't have those, you're an island boy and then algorithms have no idea what to do with you and you lose so many benefits. So you really need to do your community work, which brings me to the last third element of this. Our last pitch element is to list how you're going to promote the song. Something like we have a music video and full press pitch launching is great. Even radio campaign music video and 45 date summer tour are also great, but a lot of you are like, I'm not doing any of that. Well, the trick here is the player lister can't ever tell what you're going to do in the future before they give you this playlist placement. But it does seem like you get it and you're actually working with that said, this part is recommended by Spotify. But if you have enough to say the other two parts, well, this is the definitely the part that could get skipped, especially if you have a great cosine or two and a small playlist placement suggestion ready to go. This really is the least important part. They just want you to feel like you're going to break people to them and they won't be doing all the work. So now that we have this picture written, there's still some work to do. And what I want you to do here is to show it to other people and then rewrite it five different ways.  I'm beyond that dog dog. The reason you need to do this is because every one of those distributors and major labels, those artists have a team. They have a manager, an A&R person, a marketing person, it's somewhat the label and the publicist. We're going to go through this pitch and make sure it's solid. Let's also remember oftentimes the hardest part of this is getting it below 500 characters. And that often takes work. So not only are you going to write in five different ways, you're also then going to show it to a couple of trusted people and they're going to push back at you and tell you other ways you could say these things. Just remember also a tiny bit of exaggeration and selling is good. Don't let the outside eyes convince you to be modest. Be excited and slightly oversell yourself and even bluster a little bit. And remember the curator is not assuming you wrote it and are used to managers and A&R overselling the artist. Remember just like we talked about that's why Ben from Dillinger Escape Plan managed himself is because it's good to be bold here and really sell it. But you probably want to see some of these pitches to hammer home these ideas. So here's some actual pitches I've written with musicians lately. The first comes from a band my buddy Matt Molnar works with, which is called High, period. I want to point out a few things with this pitch. First, we start out trying to create some curiosity and use some of the micro genre terms that show we are familiar with the community that this belongs in. Like I said, you want to show the playlist curator you get the genre. In the second sentence, we are basically name dropping a whole lot of cosigns to show they are part of this community. The third sentence as you see, we identify some traits and what target playlists Matt found that have similar playlists that give artists who are starting off placements. And we made sure that these were all playlists where the artists were in the early part of their artist playlist journey. Then in the last sentence, as you could see, we do a laundry list of promotion they are doing, including dropping the name of the label they're on, since it shows they're part of a community. Then we have one from the one and only artist in Cell Hype Beast. Since I want to show you some examples here of a route you can go if you have no cosigns, since I know it's the case for many of you. Here's a few notes on what I did here. In the first sentence, I try to create curiosity with a strange proposition. In the second sentence, as you can see, I abbreviated the song title to make sure I get below the 500 character limit. And since the song title is Bud Chasing the Woke Mind Virus, that takes up 7% of the characters in the pitch, so I got a nice shortcut here. While I don't love describing the song as much as I try to keep stimulating curiosity to listen, since that's all I got since I can't use cosigns here. And then lastly, we have one from a band that decided they didn't want to be in this video after I produced this, so in this one, I had such a strong curiosity and cosigns pitch, I skipped the promotions part since, like I said, it's the least important part of the pitch. Now that we have that pitch in your back pocket, let's open Spotify for artists, and I want you to click that upcoming tab and submit it for consideration. So the first thing you need to do is choose a genre, and it may be helpful to look around at some of the playlists that you may want to be on and consider genres if you border on some of the different ones. And really think about this strategically. After this, the different choices you will have will be genre specific. You next need to choose a style, and going for what's popular is not always the move. There's a lot of different moves, so you should yet again know your playlist landscape. And since you can choose up to two, I would always do so. But if it's a total lie for the second one, don't waste the curators time and click on something that's not appropriate for the music, because they're just going to skip you. So choose two moods and two song styles. Don't always need to choose a culture if you don't feel comfortable with it. And location is also important since Spotify is really going in on location-based playlists right now, and there's tons of them all around the world and in different cities and regions. I see them popping up more and more in fact. So if you have a choice of where to identify as an artist by location, whether it's your hometown or a city you border, make sure you do some research and see if they're going hard on the playlists around your local area, and if you'd fit better on one. Last week we paced your pitch and submitted, so let's say you fail. You don't get any playlists. You're now wondering if all that work was for not. It wasn't. You now know so much more about yourself and how to pitch yourself for tons of other things. You should also keep pushing yourself and putting out singles so you build momentum for your next release because each song sets up the next song for success. Keep in mind you could use a nearly identical pitch each time, but I would tweak something small each time specific to the song. Do everything you can to get more follows and build up your streams so the next pitch goes through well, and especially do pitches to independent curators who are not Spotify. Since the more independent playlists you get on, the more likely you are to get an editorial playlist placement the next time. Okay, so on the screen now is a video that goes into the greater detail on how to write a playlist pitch that gets you playlist curators or managers or A&R excited about you. You really need to know this to get anywhere in this business, so you should click on it and watch now.


After a night of rain, by Madison Cowine, read for Libbybox.org, by Algypug. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looked from the hopeless east with eyes forlorn, as from her attic looks a dull-eyed maid. The choreopsis drips. The sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks, September comes, heavy of heart and head, while, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's drip all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Here a Night of Rain by Madison Cowine, read for Libbybox.org, by Bruce Gachuk. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east with eyes forlorn, as from her attic looks a dull-eyed maid. The choreopsis drips. The sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks, September comes, heavy of heart and head, while, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's drip all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a Night of Rain by Madison Cowine, read for Libbybox.org, by Caitlin Buckley. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east with eyes forlorn, as from her attic looks a dull-eyed maid. The choreopsis drips. The sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling her sad beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks, September comes, heavy of heart and head, while, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's drip all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a Night of Rain by Madison Cowine, read for Libbybox.org, by Chad Horner, from Balli Clare, in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, situated in the northeast of the province of Ulster. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn, as from her attic looks a dull-eyed maid. The choreopsis drips. The sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses, gunt and grayed, like some peal-none, impenitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads. A rosary of pods of hollyhocks, September comes, heavy of heart and head, while, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's drip all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Cawine, read for LibriVox.org, by Cornel Namesh, in a Reno, Nevada. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn, as from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopses drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grayed. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads. Her rosary of pods of hollyhocks, September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Cawine, read for LibriVox.org, by David Lawrence. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopses drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes. The grasses gaunt in grade, like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads. Her rosary of pods of hollyhocks. September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Cawine, read for LibriVox.org, by Eva Davis. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes. The grasses gaunt in grade, like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks. September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Cawine, read for LibriVox.org, by Newgate Novelist. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. A garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes. The grasses gaunt in grade, like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with dropping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks. September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org, by Garth Burton. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses, gaunt in grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her misery of pods of hollyhocks September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org, by Graham Scott, England. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the morn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses, gaunt in grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks September comes, heavy of heart and head. While in her path the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org, by Ian King. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the mourn looks from the hopeless east, with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses, gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org, by Ian Howlett. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the mourn looks from the hopeless east with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org, by Michael Knowles. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the mourn looks from the hopeless east with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks. September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, Summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org, by Robin Ann Rappaport. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the mourn looks from the hopeless east with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks. September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, summer's dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. After a night of rain, by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org, by Tavares. The rain made ruin of the rose, and frayed the lily into tatters. Now the mourn looks from the hopeless east with eyes forlorn. As from her attic looks a dull-eyed maid. The choreopsis drips, the sunflowers fade. The garden reeks with rain. Beneath the thorn the toadstools crowd their rims, where, dim of horn, the slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and grade. Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds, weary with weeping, telling sad her beads, her rosary of pods of hollyhocks. September comes, heavy of heart and head. While, in her path, the draggled four o'clock's droop all their flowers, saying, summer's dead. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain.


A legislative high court seating in Nicaragua has frozen the assets and funds to a tune of over 19 billion dollars allegedly kept in 24 banks by a convicted former managing director of the de Fonte Bank PHB, Francis Atouche, Justice Latifar Okuno, made the order secured to an August 17 application by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions Council, Kemi Pihero, between the federal government on the one hand and Atouche and Ugo Anyao as force and second defendant. Anyao, a former chief financial officer of the bank, is seven times in jail for laying his conviction and sentenced into six years imprisonment last June the 16th for 25.7 billion naira fraud alongside Atouche, Justice Okuno, while sentenced in the draw last June, or that they should make restitution of the sum of 25.7 billion naira to the federal government to replace the funds stolen from the public to bail out the bank. In another order, she restrained the banks from honoring any such instruction from Atouche and his previous.


Cody, and I'm from Spokane, Washington. Now Cody, we just saw a testimony of you receiving a freedom deliverance. And we're going to get to it in a minute.  Well, I grew up in a loving, normal, average family, Christian family. And they raised me the best that they could. It was a middle class family. Went to church regularly, but it was mostly just attendance for me because I had a secret. And that was, I was a homosexual. I was in, you know, I had those desires. I had those thoughts. And I knew it was wrong because of what the word taught me when I was in church, but I never, for some reason, took it seriously. I always thought of it as kind of a game that everybody kind of just, it was all just this fantasy that everybody shared. So I never even tried to take it seriously. And when I reached the age of about 17, I decided that I didn't want to hide it anymore because it was painful to hold it. And I told my family and my family didn't react the way that I would have hoped then. And it caused me to rebel and I left and I found some people who I thought would accept me and that was the gay community. I jumped into that lifestyle. I started going to gay bars. I went to gay pride parades. I went to drag shows. I was very, very involved in the gay community for quite some time and I did what they did. The things they did were drugs and I did that so that they could accept me. When was the turning point? When did you begin to seek help in the area of drugs and homosexuality? A couple of years ago, I went to Teen Challenge by the request of my grandfather. There, I decided to just kind of see what would happen if I just let go and gave it 110%, just really apply the word to my life and a seed was planted then. There wasn't a real devotion on my part. It was mostly just me taking in knowledge, the knowledge that I kind of ignored all the way up to that point. Okay, now that first forward to August of last year, what made you come to receive prayer and what happened during, we saw on the screen what happened but we want you to describe from your perspective how you felt at the moment as you were receiving prayer. Well, it was a staff member at Teen Challenge that said maybe there's something bigger going on with you and there's this place called Hunger Generation and they have a deliverance service and maybe something will happen there. So I came and I didn't really know what to expect. I just prayed and I said, God, I don't know what you have for me here. I don't know if you have anything for me here. Whatever it is, if it's nothing, if it's something, I'm just ready, I'm ready to receive it. And when they prayed over me, immediately I felt like I was taken out of my body and I could feel my hands and I could feel my stomach and they were tingling but I could hear myself talking too and I knew it was me because I recognized my voice but it wasn't really me talking I kept trying to push in and get a word in and every once in a while I could. I could get a word in but then I would get pulled right back out and my voice just kept going. It was a very lethargic, dream-like experience. How did you feel afterwards after you received prayer? Sorry? How did you feel upon receiving prayer? I felt euphoric, kind of like when you work out and there's a euphoric feeling after you work out. So you felt good? Yes, I did. For those of you that work out, you don't know what that means. But now it's been over six months that you've received your deliverance. Please share with us, how has your life been different? What changes taking place in your life since then? Well, the enemy still tries to push those thoughts on me, they still show up unannounced but I know who I am now, the desire is gone. I have no desire whatsoever. So you say the clear difference for you before is that you had the desire, the drive, the want but now it's gone even though the thoughts occasionally pop in your mind. Yes, exactly and I credit it all to him. I know that I'm only able to do that because it's his spirit living in me and I just live off of that. Come on, let's put our hands together. Now Cody, before we let you go, we know that in our society this has become mainstream, this has become accepted and if you think otherwise, you know, you're called many different names and intolerable and things like that but the word of God defines our standard, the word of God defines who we are in Jesus Christ and who we're meant to be, our original position but I want you to give an advice to those maybe that are watching, maybe that are here that are struggling with those, that kind of lifestyle, those kind of thoughts. What would you tell them, what would you recommend now that you've been set free in Jesus' name?  I also know that's an identity issue.


Amen. So keep your place in Exodus chapter 2. We'll get to the story in Exodus chapter 2 in just a few minutes. But before we begin, let me just give you a little bit of introduction this morning. I don't know if you know it, if you've looked at the invitation lately, but we are an independent, the description of our church, whole fast Baptist church, is that we are an independent, fundamental Baptist church. You say, what does that mean? It means that we're independent, meaning we're not part of a denomination. You know, we're an independent church. Yes, we have friends, and we have pastor friends that we know, and we feel we hold same doctrines with certain churches, but we're not in any denomination. We're an independent Baptist church. But the second word is really what I want to focus on this morning. We are a fundamental Baptist church, and fundamental, like people can get really complicated about what that word means, but basically what fundamental means is that we follow the tenets of the Bible, no matter what. I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is changing very quickly today. The world is changing, but what it means that we are fundamental is that we are unchanging. We are unchanging. We stand by the words and the doctrines of the Bible, and we do not change. Sometimes, you know, you yourselves or other people that come here and visit or whatever, they may hear the preaching at this church, and they may be like, oh, what's that? It's because the world is changing. The world is changing, and people are being influenced by the world, so when they hear the fundamentals of the Bible today, it surprises them, because you go to other churches and they don't preach certain things, because they want to change with the world to not offend certain people. In the morning, I want to talk about mothers. It's Mother's Day. Let's talk about mothers. Now, what is changing very quickly is the definition of what a mother is today, very quickly.    She's maybe married. She's maybe not married.  You know, I usually check certain news websites every day or every other day, and I've kind of gotten to the point where I don't really have to read too many news articles anymore. I just check headlines and just see, like, has the world been nuked or are we at nuclear war? Basically, what's going on in the world? You can just read headlines. I've just read some headlines this morning, and this is a perfect example of what I want to talk about this morning. Here's two headlines that I read this morning. A headline on Motherhood for Mother's Day. Quote, this is the headline title.  Isn't this the message of churches today? That no matter what you're doing as a mother, God is cheering you.  Here's another one. I believe every mother is an unsung hero. You know, this is a title of a news article on Mother's Day. Look, it's just a feel-good thing. They're trying to make everyone feel good no matter what is going on.  So this morning I want to look at a different type of mother this morning.  What I'm trying to do is show you the fundamentals of the Bible so the young ladies in this room and the young mothers in this room can do things the right way. And that's why we always preach the Bible.  Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6. So let's look at the fundamental mom this morning.  The Bible is very clear on the fundamentals of motherhood and it's very different from what we will hear today.  Let's look at the fundamentals this morning since we're a fundamental Baptist church. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 6 and just look at verse number 1. Look what the Bible says here.  So we're talking in Deuteronomy chapter 6. We're talking about the law. We're talking about the Bible. We're talking about the commands of God. Now look down a few verses where the Bible says in verse number 7. It says, and now shall teach them. Them meaning the commandments, the judgments, the law. And now shall teach them unto who? Now shall teach them unto thy children. And it gets much more specific about this. It says, now shall teach them diligently unto thy children. That means persistently not stopping constantly. It's just persistence over time this teaching. It's just never ending. Now shall teach them the laws diligently unto thy children and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. That sounds like all the time. That sounds very diligent to me. That sounds like all day, every day. Turn to Titus chapter 2. So the Bible here is commanding. It says when you're in the house all day, every day, you're supposed to be teaching God's law to the children. Teach it to the children. Who should do this is the question. Who's there? Look at Titus chapter 2. The Bible answers this for us as well. Look at Titus chapter 2 in verse number 3. Titus chapter 2 in verse number 3. So we see there's a very strong command in Deuteronomy chapter 6 that the people are not to forget the law of God. The people are not to forget the law of God, otherwise God's going to throw them out of the land. He's going to throw them out of the land. It was always a conditional promise for the land. And he's saying, look, you want to stay in the land? You better keep the laws. How are you going to keep the laws? Then God gave them actual direction how to do it. He didn't just say, hey, keep my law. He tells them specifically how to do it. Which is a good way of teaching, by the way. You don't just say, hey, do this. You give specific directions on how to do something and how to be successful at something. Look at Titus chapter 2. So we're going to teach them diligently to our children these laws and we're going to teach them all day, every day, day in, day out, in the morning, to the night. Look at Titus chapter 2 and verse number 3. In thy house it said, the aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as become holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. So this is talking about the roles of men and women in the church. And here in verse number 3 it's talking about it gets into the women. We just talked about the men. Now we're talking about the women in the church which we're discussing this morning. It says so the women are to be teachers of good things. Who are these older, elderly women in the church supposed to teach? That they may teach the young women. So the older women in the church are to show the examples for the young women. That's a great model. Teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home. Good, obedient to their own husbands that the word of God be not blasphemed. So the Bible is saying here, look the fundamentals of the Bible are saying that the woman, the wife, the young woman is to be at home keeping the home. Well you won't hear that too much anymore today. This is one of the things that's changing very quickly in our country today. The fundamentalist mom is at home teaching God's never changing law to her children. That's what the Bible is telling us. Day in, day out. Turn to Proverbs chapter one. Day in, day out. Rise up and lie down. She's just teaching this law. She's there to keep the home, take care of the home and part of that is to fulfill Deuteronomy chapter six and verse number seven. To diligently teach the children. Look at Proverbs chapter one. Look at Proverbs chapter one. Look what the Bible says in Proverbs chapter one. The Bible says my son, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. You see that? You see that in Proverbs chapter one in verse number eight. The mother is the law giver of the home. It says the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. The mother is the one who gives God's law to the children. Look at verse number nine.  The fundamentalist mom is the law giver. We see an example of this also in Proverbs chapter 31. Proverbs chapter 31, go ahead and turn there and then keep your place in Proverbs chapter 31. We're going to be going back there later in the sermon. But we see another example of the mom being this law giver in the home in Proverbs chapter 31. Proverbs chapter 31, of course, is the greatest chapter in the Bible for just a summary of a woman and what she's supposed to be. But the context of Proverbs chapter 31, it's the famous chapter of the virtuous woman. What is a virtuous woman supposed to look like? Proverbs chapter 31. But the context is a mother teaching her son of who to look for in a future wife. Look at Proverbs chapter 31 and look at verse number one. The king Lemuel. Now I believe this is a nickname for King Solomon that his mother gave him. His mother is speaking to the king here. The words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him. The prophecy meaning these are the words of the Lord that the Lord wants you to hear and who's teaching him? His mother is teaching him. And then look at verse number two. She says, what my son? This is his mother speaking. What my son? And what the son of my womb? And what, look at this. The son of my vows. You know what that means? That this mother, King Solomon's mother in this case, she's talking to her son. She says, the son of my prayers.  She's giving the prophecy to her children. She's giving the law of God to her children. And then she's praying for her children. She is, she is just intimately attached to the success of her children. Go back to Proverbs 29.  She's invested. She's teaching him. She's teaching him the law. She's giving him the law or her the law. And then she is beseeching the Lord for this child. Turn to Proverbs 21. This is the fundamentalist mom right here that we're reading about. Look, other moms today, they're going another way. There's many different reasons for that. We'll talk about it later. But this morning we're talking about the fundamental mom. The fundamental mom. I'm sorry, go back to Exodus 2. We'll talk about it in a few minutes. But we're talking this morning about the fundamentalist mom.  Let's look at the story of Moses' mother for just a few minutes. Look at Exodus 2. So of course the Hebrews were under this command. The midwives were under this command. They knew quickly and Pharaoh said that all the male children that are born must be killed. So here this Hebrew woman, this Levite woman, she has a child and she doesn't want this child to be killed. So she hides him. Look at Exodus 2 in verse number 3. This is an order from Pharaoh. If it's not followed, harm will come to you. Okay, look at Exodus 2 in verse number 3. And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bullrushes and dobbed it with slime and with pitch and put the child there in and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to wit that he would be done to him to see what would happen to make sure somebody would get him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river and her maidens walked along the river's side and when they saw the ark coming in the flags she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she opened it, she became passionate on him and said this is one of the Hebrew's children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said go to her or said to her go and the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said on her take this child away and nurse it for me and I will give thee thy wages. And the women took the child and nursed it. And the child grew and she brought him onto Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She became Moses and she said because I drew him out of the water.  So we're looking at the sacrifices of the fundamental mom this morning. The first sacrifice is that a mom is willing to sacrifice her physical life for her children. Moses' mother risked her literal life for Moses. She defied Pharaoh's order and she hid him under penalty of probably death in this case. But today is that what mothers are being taught today? What about today? I mean this is a fundamental thing that a mother should be able to be willing to sacrifice her physical life for her child. But look today women are told that they come first over their children. Isn't that the whole problem?  Isn't that what we're seeing today? To the extreme they're even encouraged to kill their children today. It's like we've seen so many other times in the Bible studies that we've done in this church what the world is teaching is not a little different from what the Bible says. It's the opposite! Moses' mother risked her literal life for her child. But guess what? Turn to Isaiah chapter 49. Guess what? It's bizarre.  That's why by the way organizations like Planned Parenthood and all these abortion providers that's why they don't want mothers to know that it's a child. They play down the life that's inside the mother. They don't want, because many times pro-life groups, you know all they have to do to get someone to choose to not have an abortion show them an ultrasound. That's it. They don't have to do anything. They just show an ultrasound and guess what takes over? The conscience that God gave and takes over.  Look at Isaiah 49. Look at verse 15. This is part of a woman's conscience. It needs to be undone. It needs to be undone. Look at Isaiah 49 and verse 15. Look what the Bible says. It says, can a woman forget her suckling child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yeah, they may forget. Yet I will not forget thee. Forget like we will forget or like mothers can forget. But the point I'm trying to make here is that it's something that needs to be forgotten.  Because God has written that in our hearts. In the hearts of women, specifically in this case. Look at Isaiah 66. It's something, and look, this is a hope of mankind right here. This is a hope of mankind that all these wicked people, they have to undo everyone's conscience. They have to undo this. As we change motherhood, as we change motherhood from the fundamentals of the Bible, this is something that people have to undo. It's automatically there already. God has given it there already. It's something that must be untaught. It must be forgotten as the Bible says in Isaiah 49. Look at Isaiah 66, verse 13.  Again, God comparing his love to that comfort, his comfort to that comfort that a mother gives. But the point I'm trying to make is that it is a default in a woman's conscience to want to be with her child. It is a default in a woman's conscience for a woman to comfort her child. Those things need to be undone. But they can be undone and that's what women today are being taught. They are being taught to forget their children. They are being taught to not have to sacrifice for their children. But the fundamental mom, her life will be about sacrifice. That's the difference. Today's definition, it's all about living, you know, the today's definition of mother today is all about living your personal life to the fullest. You know, maybe this is the whole problem with people in general, that the world is teaching everybody to live their life to the fullest. Their personal life to the fullest. Hey, go live your life to the fullest. Go live your individual life to the fullest and let me know how that works out for you.   I mean, it's just, it's it's wrong. And it's wrong to teach women this to teach that this is what motherhood is supposed to be.  It's being taught to these girls when they're in public school. It's being taught to these girls in the university system and look, even when the baby when women have a baby and the baby is born, look, they continue to try to sear their conscience to tell them that this child is now somebody else's responsibility. There's entire industries built around this from day care to all these early childhood schools pretty soon they're going to be putting children in school after they're out of the hospital in two weeks. You wait. But the fundamental mom the fundamental mom her life her whole life is defined in the Bible as being about sacrifice. Not about this pursuit for personal pleasure in her life for every moment.   She should be willing to sacrifice her actual life but she should sacrifice the time in her life. Look at Proverbs chapter 31.  In 2 Samuel chapter 14 it says our life the time that we have in our life is like water spilled on the ground. In James chapter 4 it says it's like a vapor that's here one minute and it's gone the next. But the fundamental mom is to give that vapor to her children is to give that water that can't be gathered up again by the way to her children. Look at Proverbs chapter 31. Look at this woman. We already see this as she's the law giver when she's to give the law all the time. She's to be there when the children rise up when they go down diligently. Look at Proverbs 31 15. Look at this woman and how she spends her time. Look at Proverbs 31 15. The Bible says this is the virtuous woman here. She rises also while it is yet night and gives meat to her household and a portion to her maidens. Look at all the things she's doing. So she gets up while it's dark. This is not a lazy woman. She gets up while it's dark to take care of this household. She considers the field verse 16 with the fruit of her hand she planted a vineyard. She's providing food for her family. She girders her lines with strength. This is not a weak woman and strengtheneth her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good and her candle goeth not out by what? By night. This woman gets up when it's dark and she goes to sleep when it's dark.  She layeth her hands to the spindle and holdeth her hands to the disc staff. She's making clothing. She stretches out her hand to the poor yet she reaches forth her hands to the needy. She's not afraid. She's courageous. She's not afraid of the snow for her household. Why? Because she's just not afraid of snow? No, because for all her household are clothed with scarlet. Because no, she's got things taken care of. This woman has gotten up early and she's got things handled. This is a woman that spends her time for the worthy cause her family right here. She gives the water of her life to the care and comfort of her family, this woman. So look, the fundamental moment will sacrifice her time. You say how much of it? It seems like all of it right here. You say, but what about her? I mean, people would listen to this sermon. They say, what about me time? What about me? This woman is working day in and day out carrying at home for her family, for her household. What about me time? I came home Friday afternoon and Jacob and I came back from fishing and we went to Applebee's to get something to eat. And it was in the afternoon 3-4 o'clock on Friday and there was a group of ladies there. Middle-aged ladies, you could tell they were in business suits and all this, they were working ladies and they were leaving the restaurant as we were eating and they were drunk as you could be and they were laughing and giggling. Look, they were having a lot of fun. They were having a lot of fun. They were having some happiness. You could tell. And I'm sitting there going, where are your kids?  It's like, where are your kids right now? But you know, that's me time. That's me time. That's immediate satisfaction of the pleasures that I want. You know what you call that? That's the iniquity. That's the reward of iniquity right there that we talked about a couple weeks ago. They're engaging in that reward of iniquity. But the fundamental mom sacrifices her immediate happiness for her children, for her family, for her household. Here's another thing. On this top, she sacrifices her immediate happiness. Moses' mother, go back to Exodus chapter 2. Or I could, you know, you don't have to go back there. But Moses' mother, she was literally think about this for a second.  Why? Not because she wanted to, but because she couldn't hide him anymore. She couldn't hide him anymore. It wasn't something she could cover up anymore. She was literally willing to have somebody else raise the child and have him live. How happy do you think that made her? Now, obviously it worked out in this case. Turn to 1 Kings, turn to 1 Kings chapter 3. There's another story about this in the Bible as well. Turn to 1 Kings chapter 3. She was literally willing to sacrifice her happiness raising her own child just so that child could live and somebody else could raise that child. She was willing to sacrifice that. Today, here's what her mother's taught today. I'm sick of hearing polls like this and articles like this, but let me read this while you're turning to 1 Kings chapter 3. A recent Gallup survey found that stay-at-home moms in the United States are likely then working moms to experience sadness and anger. 28% reported depression when they asked how they were feeling the previous day compared with 17% of the employed mothers. You see what they're trying to do here? You want to stay at home with your kids? You're just going to be depressed. You want to experience sadness and anger all the time? Look, I don't know if this poll is true, but the point is what does it matter? What does it matter if you're more sad or more? The point is, what the Bible says about the fundamentalist mom is that it's not about her immediate happiness. It's not about what makes you happy right now. It's about doing what the Bible says. It's not relevant whether or not this poll is correct or not. I don't believe it is and I'll get to that at the end of the sermon. But look, this woman, Moses' mother, literally gave up her own child. Just save him.  There's another story like this. Look at 1 Kings 3, look at verse 25. These are two women. These are two women that come to the king. Two women come to the king.  She stole the other woman's baby. And they're both saying the child is mine. And the king needs to know which one is telling the truth. Look at 1 Kings 3 in verse 25. So the king says, divide the living child in two. So this mom is saying the child's mine. This mom's saying the child is mine. And he says, all right, take the child, divide it in half and give it, give half to each mother. And one woman immediately just freaks out.  And then no wise slay it. But the other said, let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. So one woman is like, no! And the other one's like, cut it in half, we'll each take half.  Because she was willing that somebody else would have the child to sacrifice her own happiness that her child would live. And that's how the king knew. Why? Because it was written in her heart. That's why. Because God gave her that and the other mother didn't have it. So the king knew whose mother it was. So today a fundamental mother will sacrifice for her child.  She will sacrifice her own happiness. She will sacrifice her own pleasure. Some days for the fundamental mom that we're talking about here some days for the fundamental mom may be difficult. It may not be all meadows and flowers skipping through the meadows with your children during the day while your husband's out at work. Look, there may be days filled with turmoil. After all, think about it. Because what are you doing? The things that we're talking about that the fundamental mother is supposed to be doing it doesn't say skip through the meadows with your children. It says give them the law. It says correct them. Give them the law. Correct them. Repeat. I mean that could cause stress. The fundamental mom's day might be full of spankings. It might be full of stress. It may be full of anxiety as you spank them for the seventh time and one day and you're like am I doing this right? Like is this working? I think he likes spankings. Is this working? Look, there's going to be anxiety there. There's going to be more teaching. More spankings. More stress. Why aren't these kids getting it? There's going to be days like that. Is this working? Am I a good teacher? Am I meant to give the law? They don't want the law. But if this resonates with you this morning, you know you're doing it right. Fundamental mom. Because the fundamental mom, you say why? You say how do I know that? Because the fundamental mom, your life is about sacrifice. What is sacrifice? Sacrifice is love. That's the love God showed us when he sent Jesus to literally sacrifice for us. That's love. Love isn't the feeling of butterflies you get in your stomach. Love is action and it is sacrifice. And that is what the fundamental mom will have to give. You'll have to sacrifice your happiness. You might have to sacrifice your sanity at times. You might have to sacrifice the immediate pleasure that you could have in your life. But wait, you say this sounds terrible. But wait, there's more. There's more. Because guess what? Fundamental, as I said at the beginning of the sermon, fundamental means unchanging. And the fastest thing changing today that I see is motherhood. The fastest thing that I see changing. Look, it's really the fundamental mom that is under the most attack today. Because all other mothers are changing so fast out there. For the men, I mean for the men being fundamental, I mean to be honest, let's be honest. Being a fundamental man, it's not too big of a status quo change. I go to work, like other men go to work. I go to work and I speak different than other men. I'm not really persecuted for that. I'm not really persecuted for that. How I look is not really different than how other men look. You know, I'm not really I mean, it's different than how some men look. Don't get me wrong. I'm not really under pressure to wear skinny jeans though. I'm not really under a lot of persecution because I'm up here standing here in a coat and a tie. But look, the fundamental mom should look different. The fundamental mom is going to have children that look different, that dress different. With the fundamental mom, many more things stand out with the fundamental mom. How you spend your life is much different. I go to work other men who aren't fundamental, they don't even believe the Bible have no idea what it says. They also go to work. But the fundamental mom is completely different than today's mom. How she spends her time, how she spends her actual water, how she spends her vapor is completely different today. And look, it's getting worse and worse every year. In 1975, it was like one in ten women in married households were the breadwinner. It was a rare thing. Now it's like half. It's like 50-50.  They don't like seeing the fundamental mom. Those types of moms don't like the fundamental mom. You know why? Because it attacks the conscience that they've been trying to cover up. It reminds them of things that they've been trying to what do they have to do to forget as the Bible tells us in Isaiah 49. The fundamental mom, what she teaches, completely different than today's mom. It's completely different. Homeschooling, she's teaching her children the Bible, she's the law giver. Oh boy, that's going to make people mad. When you start teaching your kids and spending your life teaching giving the law to your children that's going to upset people because they're trying to forget that. They're trying to cover that up. It's going to upset people. Where you go, where you don't go, what you do, standards you follow this is all completely different for the fundamental mom. It's not so different for the fundamental dad. But my point is I'm trying to make is this, it's really the moms who are going to be under the heaviest attack today. They're the ones that are going to come under the heaviest fire because what she does it attacks the conscience that so many others are trying to cover. That's why so many people, so many women in general especially other women will give the fundamental mom a hard time. And really here's what it is turn to 1 Peter chapter 3. Really here's the crux of it right here. Here's the true cause. We have an entire society today that has turned against the fundamental mom. And here's why. Here's why. You say why is that? Look there's nothing new under the sun. Here's why it is. Right here. Look at 1 Peter chapter 3. 1 Peter chapter 3 and look at verse number 7. The Bible says, likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge giving honor unto the wife. Underline that word honor by the way. We'll get to that in a few minutes. Giving honor unto the wife as unto the what? The weaker vessel. And as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers be not hindered. This is talking about how your husband should treat your wife. Treat her with honor. But the Bible says here it says she's weaker than he is. And this is why this is why men and if you want to know why women it is this way you say it doesn't seem fair. This is why it is. Because Satan will always attack the women and children. That's why. Because it's the it's the easiest way into the family. It's the easiest way to break those walls of the family. Now the father the fundamental dad for father's day there's going to be some fire and brimstone there. Even though it won't be preached here but I'll table that one for now but the point is it's the easiest way in. It's the easiest way to destroy the family.  So all that to say this ladies. You will bear the brunt of the attacks. You will bear the brunt of the attacks. It's always been this way it always will. But here's the paradox. Here's the paradox. You say I mean you say this is depressing. Thanks for a good Mother's Day sermon.   Thanks a lot pastor. But guess what here's the paradox. Here's the paradox. You say I'm going to give all my time to my family. I'm going to give everything and attacks and everything go to Proverbs 29. I'm sorry. But here's here's the silver lining for you. Look at Proverbs chapter 29 Proverbs chapter 29 for the changing mom for the mom of today for the worldly mom for the mom that is not a fundamental mom. Look at Proverbs 29 and verse 15 Proverbs 29 the Bible says the rod and reproof give wisdom but you know how Proverbs is always they always say one way and then they say but if you don't do that on the other side it's like two sides of a coin and many of the verses and Proverbs. Look at the rod and reproof give wisdom that's the fundamental mom but a child left to himself bringeth who to shame bringeth his mother to shame the worldly moms the not fundamental moms the ones that have rejected this those moms at Applebee's they will still feel the shame because guess what you don't have to believe the Bible for it to be true you don't have to believe what the Bible says for it to play out in your life because it will they will still feel the shame many of you are not old enough many of you are not old enough to see kids that grow up with your kids and see this happen to their parents to see this actually play out and see who bears the shame but it is the mother trust me no matter what they teach women to shut off in their conscience the Bible is always true what awaits the mom especially saved mom that changes the fundamentals is shame that's what awaits her this is why as a society we are trying to remove shame because shame is a huge problem today because everybody is ashamed you know when I was growing up this is why we are trying to remove shame from things like fornication things like unnatural perversion we are trying to just say everything is great it doesn't matter you will still feel the shame no matter what TV tells you you will still feel the shame it used to be when I was in high school and into college if somebody's daughter or son was like living with a boyfriend or girlfriend it was like a hugely shameful thing their parents wouldn't even admit it their parents wouldn't even tell people we have removed shame from that we have removed shame from fornication we have removed shame from all sorts of different sin it's not going to work because the shame will still be there the parents all of a sudden become accepting of everything I can't tell you how many times I've seen this and look you will see it in your life you will see it as your kids grow up and you see people with kids your age and you see this happen you will see it you will see it but for the fundamental mom back to my point let's look at the paradox here the fundamental mom she's not changing she's not changing she has withstood all this I mean it takes some fortitude you're back at Proverbs 31 we're at Proverbs 31 it takes some fortitude that's why 1 Peter chapter 3 says she's the weaker vessel she's not a weak vessel a weak vessel is not going to work here because the attacks are coming through your wall it takes some fortitude but say she does have that fortitude and she does have the strength look this is why so many people fail too because it's not easy but for the fundamental mom who sacrificed her life over that immediate the reward of iniquity of that immediate happiness that immediate pleasure for herself for that fundamental mom look at Proverbs 31 and verse 25 Proverbs 31 and look at verse 25 the bible says this about the virtuous woman for that fundamental mom who did it and made the sacrifice and did not change the bible says strength and honor for her clothing and she shall rejoice look at this in time to come look because she had that strength because as every woman around her and every woman in the society that she's being in is changing and she said I am not changing I will be the law giver to my children I will correct them I will not let them go the way that they want to go I will correct them how they're supposed to go and I will sacrifice the entire spilled out water of my life to do so that takes strength but honor follows and in time to come time to come means after a long time in the future you know what she will do she will rejoice she will rejoice as you know enough people in your life who have raised up children you will see these two results of shame and rejoicing some in shame will try to erase the shame but you can't because it's here it's here but then you will see the woman who sacrificed all that who went through the stress and the days where she's like I'm depressed this isn't working this isn't working I'm not good at this I can't teach this give the law but look she had the strength to do that not for one day not for one month but for the lives of those in her household she will rejoice she will rejoice and she will be living a joyful life and those in her household her children and her husband will honor her because of that sacrifice that she made right there kids let me explain this to you I've had to explain this to my kids several times over the last few years kids not many kids have a fundamental mom you have to understand that and kids that grow up with a fundamental mom they will think all kids have this all kids have moms all kids have this look kids most kids don't have this most kids are going to be fending for their own way and look we're going to try to go out and be a ministry to people that didn't have this and give the gospel to people who didn't have this but kids please understand if you have a fundamental mom as poverty chapter 31 says she's more valuable than rubies it doesn't say she's as good as rubies it says she's more valuable than rubies that's one of the things that makes me the most angry about this society today is that this fundamental mom is more valuable than rubies and this world today says that it's a degrading thing it's a lie straight from satan himself to get you to believe that staying home and teaching your children the bible and the law and helping build your children and build your household through all the attacks and the garbage that you have to go through to believe that that's a lower thing that is more valuable than all the riches in the world this mother nothing makes me angrier I go to work and get a paycheck it is my wife your fundamental mom that stays home and delivers this law and does this the next generation is in her hands and most kids most kids don't have it so you appreciate your fundamental mom today you appreciate the sacrifice that she gives to you every single day that when those days when maybe the house is like chaos and she's sacrificing for you she's sacrificing that immediate happiness that the world is telling her she should go pursue and she's doing it because she's not changing and she's trying to teach you not to change to be fundamental so appreciate your fundamental mom today because it's a rare thing and rare things are super valuable happy mother's day


Well hello everybody. My name is Ashley Ward. I work for a company called Twistlock. I've been lucky enough to come along here to talk to all of you about shift-left security and how that can actually benefit everything there. So my background, I'm an infrastructure guy where I was. I started out as a Unix admin before a utilities company before moving and working for Sky TV actually as an infrastructure architect and then more recently into financial services and now I find myself as a vendor. Now, I do a lot of talks but for some reason I'm particularly nervous about this one and I was trying to think why that was and I think it's because this is Cloud Foundry and as an X open shift, a recovering open shift chat, maybe that's where I'm getting my nerves from. But anyway, we're going to talk about shift-left security. Let's see what we've going to cover today. So what is shift-left security? We're going to go through some of that. I mean it's an overused term in my opinion but it's actually something that's very important and it's actually something that if done properly will enhances everybody's security. So yes, I'm a security vendor. Yes, I want you to keep to buy the product so that I get new t-shirts and this kind of thing. But also I have a vested interest in us all doing security better. Now in the Cloud Foundry Summit and all the vendors that you speak to, this is now a core thing. My credit card details got lost with by British Airways just recently. So it is, it's a core thing that impacts all of us. So what is shift-left security? We'll talk about that. We'll talk about why it's important. It's kind of one of those ones I always remember being battered over the head with we want to do test-driven development. We want to have automated tests at every step and it used to be very painful for me as an infrastructure guy to go, right, well I'll write some puppet code or I'll do something like this. But it's quicker for me just to write a shell script rather than do all this automated testing. So we'll talk about why it is important. We'll talk about how you enable it. So how you, as a security person, how you as a platform person, how you as a DevOps team or a developer, how you can actually enable some of this. And then we'll hopefully have some time for some Q&A as well. All right. So where, what's the stage? What are we setting here? Why is this important as we said? A lovely marketing term. Software is eating the world. I mean it is marketing term but it is true. If you think about it, every org is becoming a software organization and I don't just mean disruptors. I don't just mean Uber coming in and saying that this is now how we all order taxis. I mean things like, well my British Airways example, I certainly never book any of my flights for coming here. It's all done online. It's how we order groceries or it's how I order groceries. It's how we order birthday presents and Christmas presents. It's how we do all these different things. And of course, software organizations, they need modern tooling. Something I'll go into a few times and I want to be very clear. There's nothing wrong with how we've done stuff. It's just we have an opportunity to make things better. Okay. Then DevOps, containers, cloud native, all these kind of cool new toolings that are coming in place. Well, what are they all for? They're all to speed up that delivery that we're doing. And I know, you know, I usually get to give these talks at maybe people who are just starting out with containers. I get to these talks to people who are just entering. They see Docker coming into their enterprise or they see platforms as a service and I'm fully conscious that here I'm probably preaching to the choir on a lot of these things. We'll go through those anyway. The world is dangerous. Well, yeah, the world has always been a dangerous place. But the world, the danger and the risks are changing. We see the democratization of attacks. So what does that mean? Well, you can very easily get a hacking toolkit online. The actual way that attacks are happening now are changing as well. So we've got companies where you would be afraid before of intellectual property theft, someone trying to steal your actual hard-earned money or your user's data, customer data. And actually, we've got other risks. We've got people who are just looking to steal your CPU cycles. Tesla, it was a wonderful example.  And then your own software is the softest target. Well, I mean, is that fair? Probably not. But it certainly is something where if you're developing your own software, as you are as a software company, then nobody else is policing that software for you. That is something that you would need to do. Another lovely little quote here. Only 20% of organizations following DevOps practices consistently integrate security into the development process. This was a survey. It was about last year. But there's that big shift of developments. We are developing faster. We are trying to meet those needs of our business customers, our external customers who have a stronger desire to see new software and new features coming out on all that business benefit. But we're not necessarily integrating security into that. Another lovely quote for you, you see? I've done all the legwork. Only 15% of organizations can remediate security vulnerabilities or address compliance violations as they arise. And that was a survey that Chef did. That was tail end of 2017. So what this is talking about is that we're delivering software faster because we have to, for all that business benefit, software eating the world, all that kind of good thing. We're sometimes embedding some security into that. And she's doing that bit of shift-lifting. But we're not actually able to respond to those threats in production. And that's a big deal. So shift-left security. Testing before you deploy. Compliance requirements when you build. So we've taken, if you think about all the agile delivery methodologies that we've got, and it is all about delivering that exact minimum viable product, that exact information that the business needs and the business wants, no longer assuming as IT that the business will want all the different bells and whistles, but actually delivering iteratively what they need. We've done a lot of work in that regard. So grooming backlogs. We've been looking at building, bringing the business into scrum teams or into development teams to try and get that actual value that's coming. But we're not necessarily doing that with security. So moving security practices left into the software development life cycle with the goal of shifting from a reactive to a proactive security posture. It is just the same as we've been doing with the business, but this time bringing security in. All right. Really great hearing me talk about it, but it's quite difficult to do. What's the reason for this? Well, if you look at traditional security, in my experience and in some of the stuff we see from a lot of our customers, security is almost a separate group. They're on a pedestal in a company. They're perhaps only being involved in that production realm and not seeing stuff that are coming through dev. And this isn't the fault. I'm not saying security is bad as security with an S for the team. They're not bad guys. This is driven by necessity. We had to be very secretive about our security. Security was hidden away and it was a separate team. So those people who are doing security, they've got a very different deliverable to those who are developing applications. So as we've got there in the second point, developers in security have very different domain expertise. And in fact, there was a cloud passage and I'm going to go and check my notes so I get the actual thing right on this one. There was a cloud passage report that came out and it was the tail end of 2016. So a little bit out. And it was talking about how of the top 50 cybersecurity graduate programs in the US, only three of them had a requirement for a cybersecurity pass rate. So sorry, computer science programs in the US. Top 50. Computer science graduate programs. Only three had a requirement to have any cybersecurity module in there. So we're actually teaching developers and DevOps people that security is a secondary thing. You've got security teams who are looking at this as a very important thing and keeping that all separate. So it's almost as if security's part of a club, whereas development's part of bringing business value in. Security by design, established criteria up front. Now if that means that you follow a methodology when you're delivering software where you have very rigid requirements that are spelled out in the beginning, and I know a lot of the industry were moving away from that because it's very difficult to know all those requirements up front, but you might still be in an industry where that's necessary. Great. In which case security should be coming into that. You might be in an industry where actually you're very iterative. You're actually looking at these things and bringing people in. Well, security should be part of that as well. And whether that's part of the compliance requirements that we all have now, or whether it's part of what the application is going to be doing. Automate, automate, automate. We've got to be automating now. We've got to bring security requirements that we've established in the beginning, and we've got to have that as part of the delivery process. Why? Well, we're no longer just having these dead projects, so it's no longer a case of define my requirements, build my project, throw out the door, and it's now operations that need to deal with it, and operational security and everybody else. We've got this ownership of the product, of the service. So without that automation for security, then we actually have a major gate problem. And talking about gates, control gates are actually your friend. So from a development point of view, and from a DevOps point of view, control gates are a pain. They've always been a pain. So I always like telling my story of a 20-year-old laddie in Scotland and getting root access and having full ownership of those big nasty Solaris servers that I worked with, Oracle servers now, I suppose not some. But having that root power and then being able to say when application developers came along and said, right, we've got this wonderful new thing that's going to make the company lots of money, and I'd look at it and say, well, there are vulnerabilities, there are compliance issues, so no. They would go away, they would do some more coding, they would make some more wonderful things, they would come back, and then they would say, right, we're going to go live with this, and I would go, no, because of these vulnerabilities and compliance. Now, more often than not, the business would win and say, well, we're just getting an exception put in place. This needs to be put out because it's going to make us lots of money. So that control gate is at the very end of the process and is delaying everything. And if you're delaying the business, the business is going to push past. But control gates can be your friend if they're brought right back up here and right to that shift left, because then you're actually fixing something before it hits prod and because the DevOps teams now own that production service as well, that control gate is their friend, sharing tooling, not siloing information. This ties back to that idea of you have a security team, you have developers, and neither the two shall talk to each other. And that obviously can't be happening. But if you come from a world where they are separate, so we're going back to those bad old days where I've got this separate security with a capital S team that's there, their requirements are very different to what a DevOps team or someone who wants to fix things is. So going back to that UNIX admin that I was, I recall often getting emails from security that would say, this CVE, tell us what it's on. What servers is this on? Well, I'll go up, right, fine. I'll go and have a look. I'd probably look up Sun's website or Red Hat's website, find out what on Earth this CVE is, then go around the whole estate, probably with an SSH and a for loop, to try and find out what is it that's out there. And then I'd come back and say, yes, I've found what it's on. It's on all these different things. They say, well, you need to resolve it. Well, I don't know how to do that. What is this? I'll try and patch it, but that's about it. But if you're sending an email in our new world to our DevOps teams to say you have CVE, blah, blah, blah, please fix it, that's helping nobody. There's no information there. There's no context. There's no risk. So if we share tooling and don't silo information, so at the time of finding a CVE, the DevOps teams get all the information that the security team would have, we're in a much better place. And then this is something that's going to come up again and again from the security and shifting left. It's not just about going right. Here are the vulnerability and compliance checks you have to do. Once that goes green, then you can deploy.  It's actually about going, no, all the learning that happens in those DevOps teams about the application, the software that we're building, that can be fed right into security. Security can actually have a better visibility of what the company is doing with that software. And doing that all the way through from dev, having that visibility, as soon as code's written, as soon as that thing gets produced, right the way through to prod. And that is better for everybody. All right. Nice white screen for everybody here, just to show you how nice white is. Containers and power security teams to shift left more successfully than traditional architectures. So where does twist up come from? This is what we believe. We believe containers do improve security. And we also believe that there's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt around containers. Now we can see with some of the announcements in Cloud Foundry about how the Kubernetes support those two lovely projects. I loved hearing this kind of thing. One of the things that could be causing concern is that if you go away from that platform as a service model and towards this container model, then you might be implicitly allowing, they're saying, yes, run other platforms, run other things across the estate. And you could actually be introducing that risk. Well, we believe that containers improve security such that you don't need to worry about that. Why? Just like your Cloud Foundry stuff, just that minimal single process entities. So this ties back into that. Well, what are those requirements? If we want to put security requirements in place, it's a lot easier if we've got small articles and we've got minimal things where we can say, this is what makes up our application, this part of the application. The declarative. We can do all this testing up front. We can say, this is what an image should do. This is what an image looks like. And we can police that image all the way along. And then predictability. Again, and I think this comes back to my nerves at the start of the talk. I do know that this is, you know, as a platform as a service thing, the Cloud Foundry starting out as, this is probably, you're going, yeah, of course. Well, this is actually quite new for a lot of people. And it's new for a lot of people if you think about it from a VM side of things, right? You would have a server. You would have a server that had the operating system on it. It would have any libraries that were needed for there. You would typically, especially when it was bare metal, have multiple services running in a single server. And that ties back to why I had access. I could say no to everyone because the server was more important than the service, individual service running on there. If you take that and transfer it now to containers, well, actually, the service is more important than the container itself. Because we're able to say that this is just a small unit inside it, it's got all the different DevOps teams, their libraries that they need, it's got the application code, it's so minimal, declarative and predictable that we can do better security all around that. Each artifact, security requirements for them. The conversation is easier when we go back to this idea of having, we've got this application, we want to put some testing in place, we want to have security requirements brought to the front. It's easier said than done while having these minimal artifacts really enables that. The declarative nature, automatic analysis of it for vulnerabilities and compliance, so it's easy to push those vulnerabilities and compliance scanning to the beginning. And the predictable nature, well, we can automate policy creation. Because we can say that every time something is spawned, it's the same as what that base image was. We can automate that security around there. And that's tying into that automate, automate, automate. So security by design, established criteria up front. Automate, automate, automate. Control gates are your friend. Share tooling. Don't style information. It's the same slide as before. But what is it that we're seeing here? Well, what we're trying to show you is that, yes, containers will help with much of this. So number one, number two, probably not the control gates, although you'd be able to build them in quite easily. Share tooling, well, containers themselves don't actually do that really. They're not helping us there for a security talking to DevOps thing. But they do allow us to do more learning with what's going on inside the container. So we could say that we meet kind of three out of those five. I'm sorry. They give me a t-shirt. I have to do a little bit of salesy stuff. I will keep it very light. Twistlock enables all of this and you should definitely give us lots of money so that we can keep doing that. Actually, what we're doing is even if you weren't to go for a platform like Twistlock, what we're saying is that you can, through the use of containers, get all that protection right up front and then actually onwards into what's actually running in your estate. And I was going to take out the little open shift logo that's there, but I thought I'll leave it and you guys will love that. Okay. Shift left, protection right. This is the dream. This is what we're all aiming for. This is what we want. Static analysis, vulnerability and compliance stuff there at the beginning. Machine learning, what is it that that's meant to do? We can automate what that container is doing so that regardless of what happens, if it's a bad actor, if it's something, an unknown exploit happens, what you know from that container, everything that's meant to run inside the container, all the ports that are meant to be open inside the container, you can and obviously Twistlock makes all this very easy and you should buy Twistlock, but you can actually also look and say, well, what activity should happen inside that container? So now regardless of where that container goes, regardless of how that container runs, whether it's on your lovely Cloud Foundry platform that's running Kubernetes over here, whether it's actually gone straight into AWS and their managed Kubernetes service or your own little docker machine that's running there, each container is going to do the exact same thing it was meant to do and you can automate all that learning and that gives you then this predictive model because we can predict what that container is going to do. We can take that threat intelligence information, we can combine that together and then we know not only what is the container going to do, but in running containers, if something comes out, a vulnerability is found, there's no point in just having an image scan and say, oh, my image is over here or these ones are green, these ones are red, but actually being able to have that immediate feedback back to development and this shift left thing here where we're saying this vulnerability is impacting production, it's now straight into that pipeline to come back through and be fixed. It's no longer a case of, well, this CVE is here, but I don't think it impacts us. In fact, a nice one there was going back to my being told to look at CVEs. I do remember looking at a service when I was doing stuff with a company, in fact that's all I'll say, looking at the different services that were running on our Red Hat machines and then going, I don't know why I've got this Bluetooth driver that's running. What's this for? Why is that there? That would be this information about what's in prod and easily feeding that back into dev. I keep carpet on about this, but really if we can build this in as early as possible, I genuinely think the tools are there now to do this. It's not like before where you would be saying, well, yeah, sure, by the time we have a six-week release cycle into prod, so actually if something comes up here, it will go into a different environment and then bundle through and by that point, actually patching a server as somebody else's job and they'll do it every 30 days after a scan and all this kind of stuff, we can really bring this through and automate that entire process. Questions. I've got this telling me I've got nine minutes left, so if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer any. Or you can take the advice of the nice lady before me and get more coffee. Are there any questions? Can I help anybody out with anything? Final chance? All right. Well, thank you very much for listening. If there are any questions or anything comes up, then my details are there, please send me emails, anything like this. Send me a tweet, tell me what's going on in your lives. But other than that, thank you very much, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.