So welcome, my friends, to the gem start your journey to cloud native session with SUSE manager. I am Stacy Miller. I'm based in the U.S. out of Austin, Texas. And with me is Miguel Perez Seyer Calino. Who is the director of SUSE manager out of Madrid. So we're gonna cover today real briefly. I'm gonna tell you what SUSE manager is and why you should be using it. How you can containerize your apps. And then we're gonna take you on, Miguel will take you on Suma's own journey to containerization starting with the proxy and ending with the server. So what is SUSE manager and why should you care? So question I get asked often is the product marketing manager. So SUSE manager is really true open source infrastructure management. And it's a solution that manages not just SUSE's own sluzz, SUSE Linux enterprise server, but it also manages more than 16 Linux distributions all from a single console. And it doesn't matter where those distributions are. Those distributions can be in the cloud. They can be on premises. They can be in multi-clouds. They can be a combination. You can see it, you can see your entire environment from a single console with SUSE manager. And we kind of bucket the reasons why you need SUSE manager into three different buckets. The first one being security, which we know is really a big, it's a big pain point for many companies. The cost of security is enormous and 60% of cyber attacks occur because a system is unpatched. So SUSE manager handles security by providing CB patches for all those distributions and allowing you to schedule those CB patches through the internal calendaring tool. You can set up SCAP profiles for your different systems. And then you can monitor those systems using open SCAP to make sure that your systems are the same configuration as you want them to be. We also integrate really well with Prometheus and Grafana for real-time monitoring and dashboarding. And then if you're in a situation where you really cannot afford downtime due to servers being down, we integrate with live patching, which can give you really up to a year of patching without taking down your servers. The next reason is really simplicity. We know that patching is really the bane of every administrator's existence. They don't like to patch. Manual patching is dangerous. It can cause you manure. So we use automation with salt and we also allow you to import your Ansible Playbooks into SUSE manager. You can schedule those patches out using internal scheduling. And then we have something within SUSE manager called Content Lifecycle Management, which means that you don't ever have to put a patch into production without testing it first. And then finally, we talk about scalability. People are scaling, you guys are scaling your systems up, you're scaling them out. SUSE manager works with all of the slides variations from slave micro to IBM Z systems. And with the hub architecture, SUSE manager allows you to manage what we say in marketing more than a million, up to a million instances, but we do have a customer who's managing 90,000 endpoints in production today. So really the scalability problem is solved with SUSE manager. And then I talked a little bit about content staging, but content staging is really important because you don't wanna grab a patch and put it directly into production. So SUSE manager allows you to take that patch, put it into your dev environment. You can do some testing on it. You can take it through QA, make sure your applications work, your workloads are working and then move it into production. It's a very easy way, a very nice way of making sure that the patches that you're applying to your systems will not inadvertently bring down your systems for some inexpressible reason. And we talked about managing anywhere with SUSE manager. In fact, we like to say, so SUSE manager manages any Linux anywhere at any scale. That means if you have workloads on premises, in the cloud, if you have hybrid clouds, multi-clouds, private clouds, SUSE manager works the same way everywhere. If SUSE manager can see the workload, SUSE manager can manage the workload. And finally, again, I wanna say that SUSE manager does not just manage slots. It manages the micro, it manages all the relevant variations from seven to nine and all the variations of rel, so Oracle Linux, CentOS, Liberty, Alma Linux, Rocky Linux.  You don't even need to have slots. So that, I think, brings me to the end of the marketing section. I'm gonna turn it over to Miguel now. Miguel's gonna talk about how you can containerize your apps and what we're doing within the SUSE manager team on our journey to containerization. Thank you, Stacey. Okay, so you may be wondering, what does this have to do with cloud native? Okay, it has to do a lot with cloud native, but first we have to put it in context, okay? We talked about SUSE manager. Let me introduce you to Ujuni. Ujuni is the project, you know, in truly open source fashion. We have an open source project with this open source governance that is open to contributions. It's open to external inputs, patches, fixes, et cetera. Let me, you see Astralinux? This was one, not even a customer. It was someone who was using Astralinux and they needed someone to manage it. This was an open source contribution to the product. It went, I mean, to the project, and then from the project went into the product. So we're really open to contributions. That's one of the reasons we are managing so many distributions, okay? Let me remind you of this sentence by Linus Tobos. The Linus philosophy is laugh in the face of danger. Oops, wrong one. Do it yourself, okay? So in this case it's do it yourself. How do we modernize this project to Ujuni? How do we modernize SUSE manager? So we're doing it ourselves and we went inside of our own company, SUSE. It's like, what do we have to modernize? And then we realized we have plenty of tools to modernize, okay? From the SLEE micro-operating system with Bodman to run containers, to K3S to run small Kubernetes clusters, very lightweight, to RKI2 that runs large Kubernetes clusters, to Rancher to manage all these clusters, to all of that. So it's like, okay, let's do it ourselves.  We rather think that we are drinking our own champagne. So what is this strategy here? So the strategy here is like first, you're running applications on a Linux host, traditional Linux hosts. Let's say this is, for example, DBN11, okay? Let's say this is SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 or 15. And you have this summa agent that keeps the system up to date, that updates the configuration, keeps it what you want, and you're running the application on top of that. What would be the first step, okay? And that is something that many people think, what do I do now with this application? Okay, so our suggestion is first, put the application in a container, a big, chunky container, okay? Running on your traditional operating system, you can still SSH into the operating system, see the container, you can still use system, need to start the container, stop the container, you can connect all the folders to the container, running inside the operating system, and you can connect the ports that need to go into it. So you're using it in a mixed way. It's not completely containerized, but it's not, of course, cloud native, but it's almost there. You start learning how to build your container images, you start learning about Podman, you start learning about all the basics that you're going to need to be completely cloud native. Second stage, of course, you can have your SSH manager agent to keep the system up to date and to update whatever is in there. Next stage, let's change the operating system, which is a huge overhead, to reduce that overhead to the minimum. Think about reducing three, 10% overhead in every workload that you have on cloud. That is a lot of money in savings. So right now we have a micro OS in SUSE called SLEE Micro. You have the open SUSE Micro, of course, version of it, if you want to go to the project. So both of them are completely compatible. You can go with one or the other, you're good with it. So you find this micro OS that is completely thought to run containers. And then you start putting the containers there. You reduce the footprint, you reduce the addressable, the attack surface, and you make it a lot easier to update. Of course, you can keep using SUSE Manager there. Then you add Kubernetes. How do you add Kubernetes? K3S is the best way to start with it. So you can deploy K3S from SUSE Manager, maintain K3S from SUSE Manager, maintain the operating system from SUSE Manager, and start moving those containers into cloud native containers. This is the end container. Okay, so I'm dividing the application into chunks and those chunks can run nicely on Kubernetes. So I'm starting to move those containers. And then you go all in with cloud native with Kubernetes of a micro OS with all the cloud native containers running on top of Kubernetes. This is the path that we are following and we are more or less here. Okay, so what was your journey? Our journey, we're sharing it with you so you can say, okay, let's follow it. Let's go ahead with you. Let's engage on the upstream community with the Juni and let's follow it. So first, where do we come from? Does this apply to me?  Maybe your application was so ready to be cloud native. Let me tell you, this application started in 2008. Okay, this was the upstream for satellite 5 and for SUSE Manager before 3.2. Okay, and the project sat down already in 2020. This is, and this code from it, still there. Okay, so it's not a new application. This is Brownfield transformation, okay? So what is the difference between a Juni and a spacewalk? At some point in time, SUSE wanted to put salt, which is an automation mechanism or automation tool together with the patching tool. And this is where Juni appeared, okay? We added salt to spacewalk, we put it together, we merged them very nicely and this is what Juni is, okay? What is salt? Salt is an automation tool that is assisted to use as Ansible, if I may, but it has many of the good features of Puppet. Like for example, an agent certificates to understand the scalability due to having an agent, you know? Some people think, oh, I don't want to have agents, but then when you want to scale, it's more difficult. Some other people want to say, no, I have an agent, I have my inventory completely up to date every single day. And then of course, if I need to run something, everything can run in a more scalable way, okay? So salt is built with React, it has a way of writing React and Python 3, very common, okay? So again, why does it matter? This is the typical implication, Java, Tomcat, PostgreSQL database, Python, JavaScript. Okay, so this is a typical application you can find, I mean, even, I've been working with finance a lot in banks and the applications, of course, are a lot larger than this one, but if you go X-ray with it, these are the components in there. So we are doing something that you can do on your own with these same tools, okay? So the challenge, first, what are our goals? Our goal, of course, is to put these tools into containers and then to make it into components as it makes sense. What is underneath the covers in Uduni and Sousa Manager? We have these components. You see Apache, Cobbler, Saltmaster, Scripps, Tomcat, Tascomatic, PostgreSQL. So Apache, right now, we still need it, okay? But if we think about a Kubernetes environment, we will not need Apache because it's just to redirect connections to Tomcat and to manage the certificates. Kubernetes can do that. So at some point in time, we may get rid of Apache whenever we go Kubernetes, but meanwhile, we can keep it for the environments that do not have Kubernetes. Have Cobbler, which is really in Python that manages operating system images and pixie booting, okay? We have the Saltmaster, which is the component that all the systems are going to connect to, okay? And it's really in Python. Then Tomcat with the Java application, Tascomatic is a kind of cron written in Java that has an API that you can inject tasks and then it will run it and schedule them. And of course, PostgreSQL. So at some point in time, several of these components, okay, are going to be its own container. But the starting point is putting everything into one large big container that Kubernetes normally complains about. So we're going to run that container directly on the operating system, okay? So our goals, make it easy for users that are not used to containers. Most of our customers, most of our users, SSH into the system and start doing things. So we have to make it easy for them, okay? We have to be independent from the host operating system. Right now, Ujuni only runs on open SUSE, or it's less, of course, you know? But we want customers who are running Debian.  If you're running, I don't know, Rocky Linux, we want you to be able to run this. We want to make it more modular. This is like phase two. And we want easier dependency management. Of course, when you have containers, all the dependencies are in the container. So you can manage the dependencies independently of the operating system. We want to make it easier to maintain. You download a new image, you stop the previous image, start the next image, and then it starts, you're good to go, roll back, do it the other way around, unless you have made changes to the database in which you have to take it into account and have some script to take care of that. We want to do faster innovation, modernize everything in the applications and align with DevOps strategies that we have in the company, okay? So know your weaknesses. First, what is in friendly to containers? I mean, there's this project that is open source that I know quite a lot, which is called bindup. And this is a tool that you can scan Java code and it will find some things that are not container friendly. Like for example, if you are using to store the session of our users, you're putting it in a file on the operating system. That is not container friendly. If you have fixed IPs or fixed URLs, put in your code. It will detect them and it will raise things. So some of our pain points, file shared by components, called to external tools, not done properly, like going to a file, you know? We need to have a full qualified name for the tool to run correctly and we need to have a specific time zone for the tool to run correctly. So we are fixing these ones and we are starting the journey with this. So first step, as I said, create a single container. We are there. In SUSE we have the SLES operating system, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and the open SUSE LEAP operating system. And both of them, you can get what we call the base container image. Base container image is a container image that you can use to create your own Docker profiles. There's one base container image that comes with system D inside of the container image. This is perfect for this case, okay? You put everything in there, system D starts all the services within the container, okay? So you don't have to change things. So whenever you have components that you can get outside of it, you have another container image, which is a minimal container image, that you can put this component outside and then start connecting to it. So we have all the tools, as you see, operating system-wise, Kubernetes-wise, to be able to do this. So next step, components destruct. So probably, it's very likely that our first component destruct will be the database, Postgres SQL. Why? Because there are already a lot of images with Postgres SQL that we can consume and we do not have to maintain. We just consume them, we put the data in them, we check for them, we check for the, of course, we have to do our duties to check that everything is okay with that image, that we know the sources and so on, but we will not have to maintain it. So that's something we want to add.  Of course, we need to know when to stop, okay? If you put everything into too many small pieces, then you start losing all the benefits of putting things into container. So you have to be very careful and check, does this make sense before that? So we started with a small project and we did it with the proxy. The proxy for Ujuni and SUSE Manager is a squid proxy with some add-ons to manage the squid proxy remotely and it's done with, I mean, and it can connect to SUSE Manager to be managed, okay? So this was a small, very tiny, so we put it in container, now you have the proxy completely supported in container form to be able to be used by you. So we started first with a small project to learn the basics and then we moved to larger projects. Again, SUSE Manager proxy can be used in containers, okay? So as I said, when you cut in the pieces, first find a DC1, then are you already container, is the piece already container ready? This was not, we have to adapt it. Are you going to use only configuration? Are you going to add other things to it? Because, I mean, if you need to inject some files into it, it's going to be more difficult. How many changes does it require? What value does it bring, okay? Can I scale with this? I mean, in this container image, we are taking the steps to be able to scale it out with Kubernetes, okay? We're not there yet, but we're doing that. One of the beauties of Kubernetes is that if you have a container image that can do something, you can create new instances with the workload, okay? So can we do better modularization? Okay, can we make the modules in a better way? And will it be easier to maintain this way? I mean, if the answer to that one is no, it's like, stop. Okay? We don't want to add this. What are we using? Initial two, we're using Podman, of course. Podman comes with open SUSE Linux leap, comes with open SUSE Linux tumbleweed, comes with SUSE Linux Enterprise, and comes with almost any distribution nowadays. So Podman is very, is pervasive. You know, it's everywhere. So you can use it very easily. Then of course, we are trying to use RKE2. We did it, we did a prototype. We have to use NGINX ingress controller instead of Apache. We realized it was a lot easier to use in RKE2 to manage all the certificates than what we're doing right now with Apache, okay? And then we tried the lighter version with K3S and we used traffic to redirect the network traffic to the container and it worked really well. It was very lightweight. It added very little overhead and it made the application run very nice. So right now we have very large container that even it is supposed to not be handled nicely by Kubernetes when we run it with RKE2 and K3S, it runs and it runs quite well, okay? However, it cannot scale out, okay? That's the drawback. We still need to improve that container to make it horizontally scalable, okay? So again, one step at a time, base container image with system D. You have it right there. Please, if you want to try it, take a picture of it, mount volumes. Of course, we're am I storing data to mount the volumes correctly. Tune the setup, start trying things. SSL, if you can let others do it, it's a lot better, especially in Kubernetes that part is super well implemented. And you can do the termination at the ingress level, which means the ingress component of Kubernetes can take care of the certificates and then have an encrypted traffic between the ingress layer and the container. And we are working on the initial home chart, still not available. The image is still not available. So stay tuned, go to Juni project from time to time and check because whenever we have a public image and it's going to take weeks, it's going to be there for you to try it and test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, and then test, okay? So we also thought, what about the people who are already using Juni also as a manager? Do we do the migration in place? How do we do it? So the idea is that no, we're not going to do the in place migration. We're going to have a new machine and we're going to provide the tools to go Juni ADM migrate. It will get the information from the first machine, we'll inject it in the new machine. You'll power down the first one, you change the DNS and then all the systems will start connecting there. Something went wrong, you'll power down this VM to power up the previous VM. All good, okay? So we are going to include that. How are we doing it? We learned from Kubernetes. Kubernetes is a wonderful tool. So you have the Kube-Cuttle to connect to Kubernetes and do things with containers and the Kube-ADM to deploy it. We have created Juni ADM to deploy and manage and migrate and whatever, an upgrade, the Juni and social manager and we created Juni CTL. This is completely an early stages so if you want to hack it, it's a very good moment now, okay? To connect to the API, get information, to be able to get yourself into the container and be able to run scripts there, okay? So these are the utility tools and of course documentation that we need to update. This is it. Questions, come on. Go, should. What did you do with Postgres in your implementation? So the question is, what did you do with Postgres? Right now Postgres is part of the big, large container. I know it sounds like, oh my God, really? Yes, really, okay? It's like taking no risks, putting everything into one container so people understand this is exactly the same as I had before in a container and then we will start splitting it out. We already started the initial test to do that but first we want to finish phase one which is having one large container that runs nicely when put in production and then we'll go to phase two. Thanks for the question, by the way. More questions? If you don't ask questions, I will do a demo. I'm warning you. Go. Okay, so the question is, what do we say to a user that doesn't want to use Kubernetes?  It's like boxing. You have to be ready to get in a ring. You have to train first and then you get in the ring. If not, you can end up injured badly, okay? So you have to train to get in the ring first and for users who don't want to run Kubernetes, we still can manage containers, okay? You can run a container in the operating system and for that, we have two things. One, right now, today, SLEE Micro, Susan Linux Enterprise Micro, that you can run containers on top of it with system D, you start the container, you manage it as it is, you need to patch it, you create an image to change the image. Pretty straightforward. In the future, we're going with Alp, the adaptable Linux platform. This is going to go even deeper with the containerization of the operating system. So we will try to make it, I mean, we have the product manager here, but so if I say anything wrong, please correct me. So we will try to make it as containerized as possible so you can handle the whole software lifecycle with containers, okay? So that will be the first deliverables of Alp. So you can run a operating system containers in a way that will be container native, not cloud native without Kubernetes and very lightweight. So for people who are just getting adopted or they want something very, very extremely lightweight for very heavy containers, that could be the option, okay? So of course, we want you to be cloud native and make the most of being able to scale out and being able to standardize everything with Kubernetes. I mean, the interfaces of Kubernetes are super good, are very standard to help you use it anywhere almost the same way. So this is really a good benefit, but we understand that some people or some workloads are not ready for that. So we offer this stage in which you can run containers on top of the operating system and you go with it, okay? However, the plan is please become cloud native. It has so many benefits that it's very interesting. Moving on to the Kubernetes connection, that also means that you want to run it? Well, I mean, you can go runcher or you can use any other tool. Of course, if you ask me, I will tell you, try runcher.  What are you just talking about and runcher? This, is there an overlap between what I've been talking about and runcher? I mean, runcher is a Kubernetes cluster manager, correct? Okay, so if you're going to put a workload on top of Kubernetes, I suggest you to use runcher, okay? Underneath, I mean, you can use K3S, you can use RKE2 that we provide, but you can use any other Kubernetes provider, like for example, AKS from Azure, Azure Kubernetes servers, or the Elastic Kubernetes server from AWS, or the Google Kubernetes server from Google, and then connect with runcher and be able to go multi-cloud very easily. So, but that's your choice. I mean, to say, we want you to have choice. We want you to be able to choose what you want to use to run your workloads, and we try to offer the best ones. Did I reply to your question? Okay, so that's it, yes. More questions? I'm warning, I will do a demo if you don't ask questions. Yes. If you're going to be in the direction of running the machine, we have about 12 minutes for the levels that we need, but the single thing there is this technique that may be useful to everyone. If you will, I'll show that to everyone here. Okay, so the question is why not going the VM way instead of going the one before the containers way, going the VM way? I mean, that is a tricky question, okay? It's a difficult one. So, many customers that are on-prem already using VMs. Okay, many customers that are on, all the customers, well, not all, because there are also very metal instances, but many customers that are on-cloud, are using VMs already, okay? So, I think we are already there in the virtualization part. If you have a component that is not, and let me go back to this slide. If you have a component that is not easy to containerize, of course, you can put it in a VM. You have QBIRT that can run VMs on top of Kubernetes and use all the Kubernetes native. So, using a VM could be used, okay? But the thing is that this is keeping you back in your way to containers. So, if you put everything in VMs, of course, you will have some benefits, but then you are not starting to use container images.  You're not starting to automate all of that, and then you're getting stuck in the previews per dime. You're not moving. So, you're telling me if it is a way to instruct customers to go the... Yeah, I think that's okay. You can start to work and then... Well, I think customers normally instruct us. So, in some way, I think customers will get here on their own. I don't think we have to instruct them. They're all every day working with it, and that provides you a point of view that is very valuable. And therefore, we listen to customers, and we arrived to this point because of listening to customers saying, hey, if you go into a VM, this is going to take even longer to get it outside of there. So, going there one big container way could really unlock your situation. More questions? Okay, let me give you... I was saying it, so let me show you this, okay? So, this is my laptop, of course, OpenSuselip 15.5. I'm SSH'ing in another VM, you know? You know this VM manager? This is so cool, you know? You can create VMs. You don't have to install anything weird on your laptop. It comes with the operating system. So nice, so clean. Okay, so we have this machine, okay? You see here we have Uduni ADM, Uduni CTL. This comes from a repository that is Uduni Tools. Oh my God. Uduni Tools, okay? Okay, this is a pull request. This is Uduni Tools, okay? So, you download this and it has a bash.sh to run it. You need to have Potman there and it will compile everything for you and it will create the Uduni ADM, Uduni CTL binaries. It's very, very easy, very straightforward. Let me show you. You need tools. So, I have the code here. It will download the image, it will just compile it, it will create the binaries in the bind folder, bin folder. Okay, maybe I'm asking for too much for the laptop. Okay, alas, bin. So, you see? Right, created right now, fresh out of the oven, okay? So, you copy these two to your operating system here. I have it here. I copy to user bin to make it easier to use.  On any system that has Potman, but we recommend OpenSUSE 15.5 LEAP version, it will install, configure all the ports and configure all the mount points for your container, okay? And it will create the system, the unit image and so on. What is inside this Uduni ADM Jamel? It's a very long Jamel file, okay? So, I created this file. You add your password for the database, you add your password for the certificate, that's going to be great on the image. I mean, you can take a picture of this. This URL is valid, you can use it, okay? So, if you want to give Uduni a go, the latest version, I mean, it's not completely published, but it's available, so go and try it, okay? So, running this will take me to this situation in which I can go system CTL, as any admin, status, Uduni, server, service. And it will say, oh, everything is running, you know? You have this container running. If I run Potman PS, it will show me the container image that is running, and of course, all the ports that have been redirected. Taking into account that we're doing TFTP for PixiBurin, taking into account that we need to have ports 4505 and 4506 for Salt, 443 and 80 and 8080 for Proxine and so on. So, if I go here, this is what I get, okay? First, the first time you log in, it will go, please create an organization and give me your user and password, okay? But then, you will get it here, it will be immediate, and then you can go admin, and the password I provided, and here you are. This is Uduni running on a container on top of OpenSusseLeap 15.5, okay? I really encourage you to go to the Uduni project, try it, contribute to it, and if you want to manage tens of thousands of systems that are Linux, I really recommend you to check on SUSE Manager. And I think that's it for me. One more point, about one million clients, we tried with fake clients, hammering servers, and we managed to get one million without breaking it, so that's the theoretical limit that we have tested, but with real production servers, we have managed to have more than one server, more than one proxy, we are managing to run, as of today, 90,000 devices in production. So, one last question, going once, going twice, gone, thank you very much for coming, and it's a pleasure being here. Thank you.


way and then we will get started. Okay, turn on the recording. Let's just pray together and then we will get started. I know people are still joining. Okay, Alan Sheldon, Alan Sheldon, would you like to pray for us please? Yes, Pastor. Please go ahead. Thank you for another amazing day and amazing week that we had of learning and growing. Thank you for gathering us here today to learn and grow in your word in wisdom and in knowledge. We pray that our understanding and knowledge is increased and that we are able to retain everything we learn today to memorize your word, to grow in sanctification, in love and sympathizing for each other, to grow in prayer, to ask the right questions and to move forward together as a group. We thank you for our pastors, our teachers and all those who you've put in charge of us. Bless them Lord and guide them. Give them the understanding, the wisdom and the leadership required to guide us closer to you. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Thank you. Thank you everyone and good morning. Welcome to the class. So we are studying fate. Fridays and two lectures and last week we looked at fate in the Old Testament. We went through Hebrews chapter 11 so we spent time in Hebrews 11 and highlighted different aspects of fate from the Old Testament saints just as it is given to us in Hebrews 11. So Hebrews chapter 11, although it's a New Testament, it's a chapter in the New Testament, it's highlighting how people in the Old Testament walked with faith in God and how they followed God with amazing faith and they saw God do many things in their day, in their generation. So today we are going to get into lesson number six and I've put out the lecture notes for six and seven in the coursework so you could take it from there. Today we're going to look at the faith of Abraham and Abraham very interestingly in the New Testament as we will see is called the father of faith. So usually the word father means the full runner, the front runner. He's like the originator, the beginner, the one who starts it off. Now of course Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith but in an earthly sense that God points to Abraham and says, you follow the faith of that man. See the example of his faith and follow his faith. So we see in Romans 4, Abraham is called the father of faith. We also see, we will see later on in James 2, that by the scriptures say, talk about Abraham, says he was a friend of God and the Bible tells us to be an imitator of Abraham and his faith in Hebrews chapter six. So we're going to look at Abraham. We're going to take some time to do a look at his life very closely from the aspect of how to de-exercise faith in God so that you and I will learn how to exercise faith in God. So that's our objective today and I hope that in these two hours today you and I will get a clear picture, a clear understanding of this is how I have to exercise faith in God. That you know, see God gives us a promise but we have to receive it by faith. So God may speak promises, God will speak promises to you and me from his word. So the Bible is accessible for all of us.  So there's both the promise of the word of God which is available for all of us equally and there is specific promise for your life that God puts into your heart by his spirit. Now we have to receive those promises by faith and that's exactly what happened in Abraham's life and we are going to learn from examining his example for us. They're going to learn how to exercise faith in God so that we can receive the promises. So I want you to really if you ask me what is the most important thing in this course other than the two chapters that we did on the Jesus teaching on faith it would be this. I say if you get this you know if you get this lesson here on Abraham's faith and how we should exercise faith in God then this is it because you and I are going to use this over and over and over again in our lives that this is how we are going to exercise faith in God. This is what we do when we say have faith in God. So I want us to follow this lesson very closely. I'm going to go ahead and share the PDF which has been put out for us. So this is lesson number six Abraham the father of faith. So in Romans chapter 4 verses 11 and 12 and I'll just do the introduction first and then we will zero in on the main passage. In Romans chapter 4 verse 11 to 11 as Paul is speaking or writing about Abraham he says Abraham that he might be the father of all who believe. So Abraham is the father of all who believe. Not just the Jews now the Jewish people consider Abraham and King David as the two patriarchs so they look at look up to Abraham and King David and that's wonderful. But here the Romans chapter 4 verse 11 says Abraham is the father of all who believe whether Jews or Gentiles all of us he's the father of all who have faith and and he's the father it says here of all who walk in the steps of the faith of Abraham. So we have to walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had. So we want to follow Abraham's faith. The Bible is saying you're walking in his steps that means follow his footsteps. Do it the way he did it. Walk the way he walked. Follow his example. So we walk in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham. So we want to understand what happened in the life of Abraham. So just a quick overview of Abraham's life. Some of us may be familiar with his life recorded in the book of Genesis chapter 11 on to chapter 25. So what do we see? Just a highlight of Abraham's journey. God called him to fulfill a divine plan. So God said Abraham I've got a plan for you. Got an assignment on your life but I want you to follow me.  So read about that in Genesis 12, 1, 2, 3. God said Abraham you are going to be the father of a nation.  So it meant that he had to have at least a son, a child through whom he could have, you know, further descendants but Abraham and Sarah and when God called Abraham at that time, Abraham was about 75 years of age and they had, they still had no children because Sarah was barren and now they were quite old but God is coming to him at that point in his life and saying, you know, I'm gonna have a plan for you.  Now Abraham and I have a land for you. I have a place that I want to take you to. Right? So Abraham went out in faith and obedience and as he turned even God, you know, Abraham didn't have a perfect life. Along the way we see Abraham doubts about the promise of God.  He made mistakes along the way. So Abraham didn't have a perfect flawless life. Now he was just like us. He made mistakes. God even encouraged him, you know, along the way but giving him a clear picture of the promise. In Genesis 15 there's a time when, you know, Abraham has been waiting to have Abraham and Sarah have been waiting to have a child and you know it's about 10 years since they began this journey of faith and no child yet. So in Genesis 15, you know, God comes to Abraham and then Abraham complains to God. He says, God, you know, we are still childless. You know, where is your promise? 10 years. Where is the promise? We're still childless and then he begins to reason with God and say, well, did you mean somebody else was born in my house?  You know, and so God had to say, Abraham, no, I meant you and Sarah. From both of you, I'm going to raise up a big nation. And so God tells Abraham, I want you to look at the stars in the sky. Of course, this was in the night time. Abraham looks up in the sky and he sees the stars and God says, that's how many descendants you're going to have.  And Abraham, the Bible says Abraham believed God and God said, that's it. That puts you in the right standing before me. When you believe, you're positioned to receive. When you believe, you are in a place of righteousness that is in a right standing before me. When you're in that place of right standing, you're ready to receive. So Abraham believed God. Genesis 15 verse 6. Abraham believed God and God counted it to him for righteousness and says, that's it, you're in a right standing before me. The other thing we see in Abraham's journey is that God changes his identity and his speech. So, you know, God does things intentionally. He doesn't do it at random or at women fancy.  So, you're going to change your name from Abraham, Abraham, which means exalted father, to Abraham, father of a multitude. And you're going to change your wife's name from Sarai, which means princess or princely, to Sarah, you're the princess of a multitude. So he said, change your name.  So, you know, you could imagine Abraham now starting to call his wife Sarah, princess of a multitude and Sarah now calling her husband, Abraham, father of a multitude. And you can imagine them calling each other by this new name. And the people all around them saying, whoa, what's going on here? They're calling themselves as, you know, parents of a huge multitude.  But here they are, they're calling each other by this name which speaks of, you know, having many descendants. But God did it intentionally. So it's not only changing their identity, it's changing their speech there. They're beginning to speak aligned to the word of God, to the promise of God. And this is the way that God told them, okay, you need to start speaking aligned to the promise.  Right. So he changed their name. And then eventually we see after 25 years, they have Isaac, Abraham and Sarah have Isaac. So God works a miracle. He fulfills the promise. And they have their son, Isaac.  So this is Abraham's test of faith. And you read about that in Genesis 22. And the Bible says Abraham took Isaac and up the mountain was ready to offer him as a sacrifice. And that the New Testament looking back says Abraham did it because he believed that even if he offered Isaac as a sacrifice, God will raise him up, because God had said, through Isaac, you will have descendants. Now, Abraham was completely convinced. This is what God said he will do it even if I have to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. So Abraham's eyes were still focused on God and his promise, not on the fulfillment. And and when we come into the New Testament, New Testament calls Abraham, both a friend of God and the father of faith. Right. So this is a quick overview of Abraham's life. But what our goal is our objective today is, we want to learn the steps of the faith of Abraham. This man, God said, you follow his life, you follow his example of faith to all of us, he's saying, follow that man, follow his example, walk in his steps, the steps of faith. So we want to understand the steps that Abraham took in his journey of faith. Right. Now, we know he didn't have a perfect life. He had doubts. He battled doubts. He made mistakes along the way. We know all of that. But let's look at the steps he took. Right. So I request somebody to please read for us. Romans chapter four, verses 17 to 21, Romans four, 17 to 21, please. Romans four, 17 to 21. As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations in the presence of him whom he believed, God who gives life to the death and call those things which do not exist as though they did, who contrary to hope in hope believed so that he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken. So shall your descendants be and not being weak in faith. He did not consider his own body, already dead, since he was about a hundred years old. And the deadness of Sarah's womb, he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was able to perform. Emma, thank you. So this passage, Romans four, 17 to 21, is really the Holy Spirit summarizing for us through Paul, the Apostle Paul is writing this, the Holy Spirit is summarizing for us Abraham's walk of faith in these five verses. So you can imagine now Abraham's entire life is recorded for us in the Old Testament, Genesis, chapters 11 to 25. And here the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is summarizing in a very concise way for us in these five verses. This is how Abraham walked in faith, in order to receive the promise of God, and follow his and you and I must follow the steps of his faith. Right. So we're going to try to understand the steps of Abraham's faith. And I've just, you know, for the benefit of our learning, I've put it down in these simple points as number one, number two, number three, and so on, just for us to learn so that we can do the same thing in our lives. Right. But let's begin by just looking at verse 17, to understand something about God, it says here, God gives life to the dead and calls things which don't exist as though they did. So it's talking about God, right. What about our God? Well, God gives life to the dead. So when God, so this is both with the respect to Abraham, and also with the way God works in your life in mind. Right. So when God came to Abraham and said, Abraham, I'm going to make you the father of a big nation. You know, Abraham probably had stopped thinking of even having a child a long time ago may have stopped.  And here comes God and says, I'm going to make you the father of a great nation. So God gives life to the dead. What seems hopeless? God resurrects hope. God, you know, what is dead?  So that's our God. And that's the way he works.  They seem impossible. There's nothing impossible with God. And the way God works is he gives life to the dead. And not only that, but he calls things that do not exist as though they did. That means things that don't exist in your life and mine, you know, we say, okay, it's not there right now. It doesn't exist. There's no chance of it even coming into existence in my life.  Come when God calls it, they come, they come into being. He calls things that do not exist as though they did. So you and I are children of God, we are therefore imitators of God. And if you and I must, you know, walk this walk, where we expect God to give life to things that are dead, that we call things that do not exist as though they did the way God does it. So we are imitators of God. We follow, we do what God does. Right? So we believe God gives life to the dead. We believe God calls things that do not exist as they did. So we also do the same in our lives. Okay, that's something as we co work with God in order to receive his promises. Now let's look at the steps of Abraham's faith. The first thing, very simple. Abraham believed God. So it says in verse 17. When God said, I have made you a father of many nations. So in the presence of him that is before God, it says, he whom he believed. So Abraham believed he believed, he believed. What did Abraham believe? He believed the promise of God. Right? So Abraham believed, he believed God. He believed that God gives life to the dead. He believed God calls things that don't exist. He calls them into being. Abraham believed. So the first step is that you and I believe. So we believe what God has promised. We believe our God. We believe that the God whom we follow is the God who gives life to the dead. For him, nothing is impossible. For him, if things don't exist today, you'll get them in. Abraham believed God. So you and I, we believe God and the God we believe in is the God who gives life to the dead.  He brings them into being. He causes them to come into being. So in your life in mind, things may not exist. It's like impossible. It's dead. But hey, we believe God, the God we believe in is a he bring it in. He will cause it to come into being. So our first step is to believe God, put complete trust, put your faith completely in God, in his ability, in his faithfulness to fulfill his word, in his power to fulfill his word. We believe God. Second is this, against all hope, in hope, he's still believed. So that's next verse Romans 4 verse 18. It says, who contrary to hope, that means contrary to hope, that means against all hope, when there is no reason to hope, when there's no reason to even have any hope, it is hopeless. It is without hope. Who contrary to hope, in hope, believe, I mean, he still chose to have hope. And he coupled hope with believing with faith. So he chose to have hope in hope he still believed. So when there's no reason to hope, you and I must still hope. When there's no reason to have any kind of expectation, any kind of desire, you and I must still choose to pee people who will have an expectation will have a desire for whatever God has promised. If it's in the Bible, you can have it. If it's a promise that God made for his people, you can have it. Even when there is no reason to have hope, you can have hope, you can have an expectation, you can have a longing, a desire, even when things seem hopeless.  I'm gonna believe God for this. Right. It says here, in hope he believed so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken. So that's key. He in hope believed according to what was spoken. That means there's a promise of God, God had spoken something. So against all hope, in hope we believe because God has spoken. God has given us a promise. So first, we believe God, we believe in who God is, we believe his power, we believe his faithfulness. Second step is this look, even if there's no reason to hope, you still hope and you still believe because God has given you his word, according to what God has spoken, according to what God has spoken. And in Abraham's case, God said, you're going to have many descendants. In your case, in my case, we will go with the word of God here, this Bible, the promise is here. And so what's in it, he will take a hold of and we will believe. Okay. And then number three, what was the third thing he did? Verse 19, and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead. Since he was about 100 years old. And the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not consider not being weak in faith. He did not consider. That means he knew he knew he recognized that his body was pretty old. He was 100 years old. Sarah was barren. But he didn't let the circumstances weaken his faith. How? He chose not to consider those things. That means his focus was not on these facts. These were facts. Of course, his body, he was pretty old, Abraham was old. Of course, Sarah was barren. But he didn't focus on that. Instead, of course, he focused on the promise of God. So that's our third step. We don't let our faith weaken by looking at the circumstances. We take our eyes off the circumstances, the situations, the facts, and put our eyes on the promise of God. So keep your eyes on the promise of God. You're not denying the facts. You're not denying, you know, the situation. Yeah, it is like this. Yeah, things are tough for things are rough, whatever the situations are there. But you're not looking at those things. Because if you keep looking at it, what'll happen? It's only going to weaken our faith. But instead of looking at those circumstances, we choose not to consider those circumstances. Instead, we choose to intentionally consider the promise of God. Keep your eyes on the promise so that your faith is not weakened.  Okay, let's take an example. Let's say, here's a person who's seen a lot of failure in his life, one after the other after the other. And he started his hand at this, it didn't work out. Try his hand at that, it didn't work out. He tried his hand at another thing, it didn't work out.  And he's at this point where saying, look, you know, I don't think I'm ever going to succeed at anything. And so let's say this person gets saved. He believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's a child of God. Now, he starts reading his Bible. And he comes to this place in Psalm, Psalm one, it says, you know, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. He does not walk in the way of sinners. He doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. And then it says in Psalm one, verse three, he will be like a tree, planted by the reverse of water. His leaf will not wither. He will bring forth his fruit in its season. His leaf will not wither. And whatever he does will prosper. He says, hey, that applies for every person who believes in the Lord. So it's a place for me. I could take that promise. It's there in the Bible. And this verse is saying, Psalm one, verse three says, I will be fruitful. And whatever I do will prosper. So he takes a hold of that. So step one, he believes God. What about this God? What about God? God gives life to the dead and calls things that do not exist as they did. Okay, look, in my life, I've been a failure. Everything I tried has ended up in failure. But God can turn my failure into a success. Right now, there is no success. There is no success in my life. But God can bring into existence what doesn't exist. God can make me a success. So he believes God. Step two, against all hope, he still believes. So is there any reason for him to believe that he would become a success in life? No. Because up until that point, life has been a series of failures. Everything has just failed. So he's totally hopeless, speaking naturally. But against all hope, he still believes. Because God has spoken in his word that you will be like a tree, planted by rivers of water. You will bring forth your fruit in its season. Your leaf will not wither and whatever you do will prosper. So I believe that. That's for me. I'm going to do what someone says. I'm going to delight myself in God in his word and I will be like that tree. Flourishing, prospering. So against all hope, he believes and then he he starts doing something. Whatever he has, whatever he has skills in, whatever he... So he puts his hand to the work to work. But this time, he's doing it differently. This time, he's doing it believing God. That God will bring into existence what does not exist. That God will give life to what is dead. That against all hope he believes. So this time I will be a success because God said it in his word. So against all hope he believes. Now of course, when he starts doing that, his mind starts playing games, right?  Why is it going to be different this time? What makes you think you're going to be a success now? How is it going to change? So his mind might play games. But then he chooses not to consider history. He chooses not to consider his past failures. Instead he says, I'm going to keep my eyes on the promise. The promise says, I will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. I will bring forth my fruit in its season. My leaf will not wither and whatever I do will prosper. I keep my eyes on that promise. So he refuses to let his faith be weakened by the history. He may have had a series of failures and that keeps coming up. But he says, I'm not going to let that dictate my faith. I'm not going to consider the past failures. I'm going to look at the promise of God. I will not let my faith be weakened. So that's step three as we are journeying, right? So what must be there to keep your faith strong? Focus on God and his promise, not on the circumstances. Pay attention to God's word. Keep your eyes focused on the word. Keep looking at the promise of God over and over and over again. Right? Step four, what else do we see in Abraham's journey or journey of faith or steps of faith? It says that in Romans 4 verse 20, he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief. That means he didn't let unbelief come in and cause them to waver at the promise of God. Now, unbelief, if you just look at it in the Greek, it is epistia. So the word pistia means faith. Epistia means the absence of faith. So unbelief is simply the absence of faith. So he refused to let go of his faith. When we let go of faith or the absence of faith, that is faithlessness or that is unbelief. And what will it cause us to do? It'll cause us to waver at the promise of God. So you choose not to let go of the promise of God. You choose to hold on to the promise of God with your faith. So your faith is locked into the promise. Nothing is going to take that grip off. So think of our example. So here's this man. He's at work and you know, he's believing God to succeed and you know, and maybe the first few weeks, nothing seems to be very different. So thoughts come to his mind, hey, what's going on? It's been a couple of weeks and things don't look any different from previous times. Sure, it looks like you're going to fail again. Maybe his old friends come by and they ask him, what are you doing now? And he says, you know, look, I've started a new business and they start laughing. He said, man, we've heard you, you know, you started 10 different businesses in the past and they've all failed. And why are you trying again? Now that's not going to help his faith in any way. It's going to, you know, cause him to doubt things, but he makes a choice. I'm not going to waver at the promise of God through unbelief. I'm not going to let them anything rob me of my faith. I'm not going to let anything cause me to become faithless. Instead, I'm going to tighten my hold on the promise of God by faith. See, locks in by faith on the promise of God. So he, so we can, you know, rephrase this sentence here. He did not be able to promise of God through unbelief. We can restate it like this. He held on tightly to the promise of God through faith. He held on tightly to the promise of God through faith. So what's step four? He held on tightly to the promise of God through faith. Even when doubts and all kinds of things were coming and hitting against his mind is holding on tightly to the promise of God through faith. Situations may not change immediately. People may come and say all kinds of things and all those things that can cause us to be doubtful, they're coming at us but you're holding on tightly to the promise of God through faith or your faith has locked in to the promise of God. Step four, you're not going to quit. He keeps looking at the promise. God said, I will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. I will bring forth my fruit in its season. My leaf will not wither. Whatever I do will prosper. That's it. Well, God said it. I believe it. I'm not going to let go of my promise. It doesn't matter if three weeks have gone and I haven't seen a result yet. Four weeks have gone and I haven't seen any changes yet. It doesn't matter if my friends come and make fun of me that, you know, past and businesses I tried failed. Whatever, you know, doesn't matter. I'm not letting go of the promise. I'm holding on tightly to the promise of God through faith. Number four, Stan. What else did Abraham do? He was strengthened in faith giving glory to God. He was strengthened in faith. How? Giving glory to God. That means giving praise, honor, worship to God. So instead of being weakened in his faith through unbelief, he chose to do this. He chose to become stronger in his faith by giving praise to God. Now, how exactly he did it, you know, doesn't matter. He would have done it in his way. You know, however he knew to praise God and thank God. But, you know, I can just imagine Abraham must have come to this place and he said, Father, thank you that you are God. You are faithful.   I praise you, Father, and you're the God who gives me descendants like the stars in the sky and like sand on the sea shore. Oh God, I thank you. God, I praise you. As far as I'm concerned, God, your promise is done.  You know, he could have just done it that way or he could, I don't know, he could sing songs or however, but he gave glory to God. He praised God. So, of course, he was praising God in the context of being strengthened in faith and so here's the key. That even before you see the promise fulfilled, you start giving glory to God. You start thanking him. You start praising him. You start worshiping him for fulfilling the promise. So, Father, thank you for doing this. Thank you. You are in the fulfillment of the promise even before you receive the fulfillment of the promise. That means you are by faith. You're stepped into it. You've come into this place. You say, God, for me it's done. I thank you for it. I praise you for it. Why? Because you're God, you're faithful. You will not fail.  You're God who calls things that don't exist as though they did God. So, I thank you. This is done. I praise you that it is done. I worship you that it is done. So, what's happening? While he's giving glory to God, his faith is being strengthened. He's becoming stronger and stronger in faith. So, you can imagine in our example, this young, this man, as he started his 11th business, so to speak, this example, he starts praising God. It's maybe three months into the business. Things may not have changed much yet, but he's beginning to praise God. Father, I thank you that according to your word, I am like a tree, planted by rivers of water. I thank you that I bring forth my fruit in its season, that my leaf does not wither and whatever I do prospers. I thank you, Heavenly Father, for doing this. Thank you that you fulfill it. Thank you that this is done for me, God. I thank you it is done. So, he begins to thank God. He begins to praise God. And while he praises God, while he worships God for the fulfillment of the promise, he's being strengthened in faith. He may come morning after morning, opening up his, you know, shop or his business and doesn't seem to be very different from the previous months, but he's still thanking God. Lord, I thank you for business flowing in. God, I thank you for causing my business to be profitable. God, I thank you for causing my business to be a success. God, thank you that you are faithful to your word. Thank you that you make everything I do prosper. He's giving glory to God. And as he gives glory to God, he's being strengthened in his faith. So, Abraham was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. So, we thank him in advance, right? So, it's not, you know, we thank him even before we see the fulfillment of the promise. He started praising him. He started thanking him for it. And what happens? Last step, he came into this place, number six, where he was fully convinced, Romans 421, I'm being fully convinced, fully convinced that what he had promised, he was also able to perform. So, as Abraham took these steps, what happened? He came to this place, he was fully convinced. I mean, like, there is no doubt now that I'm just all settled, fully convinced. What God promised, he'll perform. What God promised, he will perform. What God promised, he will perform. What God said, he will do. It's done, fully convinced. Nothing could shake.  Let me take time. That's okay. We may make some mistakes along the way. It's okay, you get back on your feet, go along, keep going. We may have some doubts along the way, Abraham did, but you get up, shake your doubts off, keep going. Until you and I come to that place where we are fully convinced, God promised, he will do. And at that moment, when he was in that place where he was fully convinced, the promise came forth. The fulfillment of the word came forth. Right. So, what we've seen is, from Romans 4, chapter 4, verses 17 to 21, we've just broken down this passage to highlight Abraham's steps of faith. This is what, this is the journey Abraham made in his faith in God. And this is how you and I are going to take a hold of the promise, every promise. This is how we're going to do it. Okay. So, we'll take a break and we're going to come back and I want to go over this again and just show you, this is how you apply your faith to receiving the promise of God for your life. Okay. And this is very simple, but it's so important. And this is how we're going to use these are steps we're going to take to see the promise of God fulfilled. Okay. Any questions before we go for break? Okay. I think everyone's fine. Okay. All right. So, let's take a quick break, 10-minute break and we will be back and we continue this. Thank you.