Testing, one, two, three, testing, testing, and thank you for joining me today. My name is Harris. I'm a software developer at National Instruments, or simply NI as we're now called. I work on embedded Linux firmware for various industrial products at NI. Today I want to talk about TPM chips, a fairly common peripheral found on many computers these days, and some of the benefits and problems of using it to improve security on Linux systems, which is something that we've recently experimented with for some of our more security-minded customers. So a disclaimer, I'm not a security researcher. Neither I nor NI are part of the TCG nor are we a TPM vendor. I'm coming to you today as a user of the technology to share some of the capabilities and problems that we've explored, and I hope you find this useful in your work. So TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module, sometimes called the Security Chip or a Crypto Chip. It is a kind of hardware security module somewhere on your board or inside your CPU. They're sometimes confused with crypto accelerators, a different kind of hardware security module. I can tell you these chips generally accelerate nothing. They're usually fairly slow devices. They come in various flavors. So the chip variant, sometimes called a discrete TPM, is an independent peripheral connected via LPC or sometimes via SPI or I2C to your CPU. Sometimes they're soldered onto your board. Sometimes they're little removable modules plugged in somewhere. More common these days, though, especially on consumer hardware, is some kind of firmware TPM like Intel's PTT, which runs on top of their management engine or AMD's TPM application on their secure technology system. There are also a variety of user mode simulators out there which can be used in VMs or for prototype and test applications. So TPM is primarily a key manager. It can hide secrets, sometimes called protected objects and use them conditionally based on some authorization policy defined at creation. So these authorizations can be simple passwords supplied with a command or one of many other complicated schemes defined by the object's creator. The other major function is a kind of logging capability. So TPM can track hashes of running binaries and other system configuration contributed by the software running on the CPU. And so this state can be used as one of those authorizations for a protected object. So for example, you can create a key that can only be used or retrieved from the TPM if the system is in a certain predefined state. And this can be done in addition to other authorization constraints like a password. So these two functions are primarily what we're going to be exploring today and they enable a kind of secure boot mechanism for the OS and can also extend to user mode applications for key management functions to some degree. Now, the ascribing functionality can also extend to external actors. So for example, a TPM can produce a signed attestation object to prove the state of the local system to some external actor like a network system, for example. This has some interesting dynamics. So it can be used, for example, as part of an intrusion detection system or kind of state auditing system or a credentialing mechanism to bind a user credential to a specific machine. It can also do some bad things too. Like it can be incorporated into DRM schemes to deny users access to services when they try to run modified software on their systems. Security technology often cuts both ways. It can help users or it can harm them. And my hope is you'll appreciate some of the benefits of the technology today. So we'll be focusing more on the local use cases to protect the local data on systems today. Beyond that, it's just a slow crypto engine with some persistent storage for internal use that's also forwarded to the user and a random number generator for generating keys independently of the CPU. Now, this is also a good point to bring up the differences between TPM1 and TPM2. So TPMs have been around for a while. TPM2 was introduced a few years ago. It's a large rework of the wire protocol to communicate with the chip. So these changes were introduced primarily to modernize the crypto offered by the chips themselves. So TPM1, for example, required SHA1 hash and RSA28 for authentication operations and HVAC operations. And so TPM2 increased that to SHA256 and later to 384 and added a couple of elliptic curves. But more significantly, TPM2 also made the crypto engine much more flexible now. So the individual vendors of the chip can add other algorithms the default ones age or become otherwise untrusted. But in the process, much of the API has also changed. And this is what's most significant to software developers besides the crypto offering because it necessitates a different software stack to drive one chip type versus the other. So the TPM software stack, usually called the TSS for short, is specified by the Trusted Computing Group or TCG, which is a coalition of manufacturers and software vendors that define the behaviors of these chips. You'll find that they also love their acronym jargon. So some confusion is natural here, but I'll hopefully try to demystify some of that today. In a nutshell, the TSS is a collection of CAPIs for interacting with the TPM. It exists largely because a correct use of TPM, which makes some security guarantees, usually involves complex message formatting and validation on the CPU side. So it's more involved than a simple command response device. And TSS tries to abstract away some of this complexity. So the API is layered into different OS abstractions. So the feature and enhanced system APIs provide nice things like heap allocated objects, file-based handle storage like for PCR policies or key handles or what have you. They can bind to a crypto library on the CPU side for computing, HMAX or doing a parameter encryption. They're basically kind of nice, easy to use application interfaces built on top of a libc. The system API provides more primitive message formatting operations. So there's no heap, no file IO or crypto libraries. You sort of bring all of that yourself and it's more amenable to embedding. Now in user mode, the system API and the ones above it are built on top of the TPM command transmission interface or TCTI for short, which is this communication layer for targeting different TPMs on your system. They can, for example, talk to a local broker service or via network socket to a process on your system or even a remote system to talk to like a remote TPM chip. Locally, though, there's usually going to be a resource manager, which sort of marshals the commands and responses from different tasks to the actual hardware. So in Linux 4.12 and higher, this is the TPM RM0 device that the TCTI will talk to by default. Otherwise on older Linuxes, you can talk directly to TPM 0. And if you're using an older version of the chip, you can also set up a broker service, a demon and talk to it over a domain socket. There are a variety of TSS implementations to choose from from various software vendors, like IBM and Microsoft, Intel, Google and others. I'll be using the first one today, the TPM2 software in my examples, mostly because it provides a relatively nice CLI interface from Bash. If you have a TPM1 in your box, which are still around in many systems, you'll need the old Trousers TSS instead. So the tools in this case will be different, but the concepts you see here are generally the same. So you can largely remap the workflows I'll be sharing today in the other tool. Another good application to have is a simulator like SWTPM. This one in particular is compatible with QEMU, and it's great for prototyping on a VM. You can also run it standalone and talk to it over a socket. So now that we've kind of looked at a high level view of the hardware and the driver stacks, I want to use the rest of the presentation to explore a few interesting use cases to kind of illustrate what can be done with all of this. So one popular application of TPMs is measured boot. This can be used in conjunction with block or file system encryption to realize a kind of secure boot scheme which can obfuscate data when something in the system's boot path is altered. So this is sometimes conflated with UEFI secure boot, which can be incorporated into this scheme, but is somewhat orthogonal. UEFI secure boot is a bootloader signing mechanism that checks the signature of the bootloader file, the EFI program that's run against some certificate database in the firmware before letting it continue.  They leverage the scribing functionality of the TPM to track changes as the system boots up and then defer enforcement to the operating system or the user, which makes it a little more flexible. So for Windows users, this is what, if you're familiar with BitLocker's pastoral disc encryption, this is what it's based on, and you can do the same thing in Linux as well, which is what we'll explore here. So that scribing functionality is realized by platform configuration registers or PCRs for short, which are a collection of hash banks in the TPM. So each bank is a checksum of some subset of software and configuration running on your box. So on the right is kind of a suggested breakdown from the TCG spec, and they typically alternate between code and configuration. So PCR0 contains the EFI firmware binaries, PCR1 is the firmware configuration, the hardware configuration that you're booting into. PCR2 is the option ROM code and the option ROM config and then the EFI bootloader binary and then the partition table that it came from and so on and so forth. Past PCR7 is operating system specific, so it's based on what's installed on your system. So in this example, we're using Grub, a modified version of Grub, that measures the running commands into PCR8 and hashes all the files that it reads into PCR9. So PCR11 is used by our init system. And I don't recall why we skipped PCR10, but we did. So all of these measurements are made by the CPU, by whatever software is running on it. And the idea is that each program can measure the next thing to run before it yields control over. And then if everything is measured, a change can then be observed later on in the boot flow to enforce something. So this model relies heavily on the irrevocability of hashes, of these PCR hashes. So the first 16 banks can only be extended. They are rolling hashes, right? So the CPU can only add a concatenate new data to the existing hash and update the PCR as kind of an atomic operation and they can't reset it. It only resets to zero on startup. And so these first 16 PCRs measure what's sometimes called the static chain of trust, the chain of software involved in system bring up. The registers above that, 17 to 22, are wholly managed by the operating system or the hypervisor on the CPU. So these measures, what's sometimes called the dynamic chain of trust, which can go into different processes or different VMs. And so these banks are resettable on a context switch, for example, and can extend a single TPM's functions deeper into the software stack like deeper into user mode applications. So most UEFI firmwares will automatically make these static measurements throughout the normal course of booting. So at early boot, the pre-EFI phase will initialize the TPMs with zero PCR values, followed by measurements of all the loaded software like drivers or option ROMs and the installed bootloader. And then from there, the bootloader can measure the kernel, the init system, other configuration files involved in boot, so on and so forth. You can continue this indefinitely. Up until some point where there's an enforcement action, where the software, which hopefully has been measured at this point, requests some secret to be released from the TPM to continue booting. So for example, this can be the release of a key for an encrypted file system. And at this point, you can do just CPU-side file system encryption into that partition. So this depicts kind of a software-only approach to hold this encryption. Another popular approach is the use of self-encrypting drives, which are governed largely by the TCG's OPAL standard. So this is where the key is released to a drive's firmware. And so in this kind of system, you can transparently encrypt and decrypt the entire disk, independent of the OS, so long as your firmware knows how to drive it correctly. But it largely works the same way. I don't personally use them. I can see where it's appealing on systems with slower CPUs, but I found that the software encryption is usually pretty good and pretty fast. Now, the security guarantees of PCR is largely hinge on where they're initialized. Because from a zero value, you can mimic any PCR state and therefore authorize any action that is just solely based on PCR values. So this makes the very early phases of UEFI boot, the so-called security and pre-EFI phase is very critical. Ideally, you want this code to run from ROM, otherwise it'd be very difficult to change without intrusive physical access to the system. And how secure this is is really up to your hardware vendor. This also means that plugging a TPM into a system whose firmware doesn't understand it can't really do this kind of secure boot. So for example, using the TPM add-on board for Raspberry Pis is not really going to get you that much boot security like this anyway. So PCRs are only as trustworthy as the code initializing the TPM itself. And there have been security challenges in this area in the past, and there are still some today, and we will definitely look at this a little bit later on in the presentation. But for now, let's stay in our idealistic world for a moment and just look at an example of this simple key management scheme with TPM tools. So in the first block, we'll set up our TPM by creating a primary key. So this is a TPM resident object used to protect other secrets later on like our disk key. So that second command, evict control, will persist this key into TPM's NV RAM. So persisting is totally optional. This is merely done for performance. The TPMs derive primaries deterministically from a fixed seed random number generator and a combination of that and the parameters passed to the create function. So multiple runs of the same create will yield the same key. So you can basically remake it after boot. And this also allows you to make more primaries than you can store necessarily in NV RAM at any one time. So you can sort of make a key and use it and flush it out. So the RNG seed is referenced by that hierarchy parameter in the create primary command. So we're creating this one under the owner hierarchy, which is what the equals O stands for. And this is for the operator of the system. So that seed will remain constant so long as the owner doesn't reset the hierarchy, at which point it randomly changes in validating all of the objects underneath it. This is something that's called taking ownership of the TPM or taking ownership of the hierarchy. And there are several hierarchies in the TPM that kind of operate independently of each other for different slices of the system. And you can read about these in the TCG spec. These examples will just use the owner hierarchy. So in the next block we'll generate a secret. Hopefully you'll use something a little better than that, but we'll go with it for now. And then we'll seal it under our primary key and authorize it by the UEFI firmware binaries. So PCR 0, 2, and 4. So sealing here just means encrypting the key, the private data, and a hash of the PCR values by the primary that we just made. And the result of this is a set of data blobs that we need to stash somewhere for use on next boot. So SPUB contains the metadata about the sealed object and SPRIV is the actual encrypted key. And so after boot we can reverse this process by loading that object back into the TPM and then running the unsealed function, which will check the policy and if everything matches the TPM will release the key back to you. Now I'm showing you the TPM commands as an example to illustrate some of the chip's operations, but there are better ways to do this now. So Linux's key manager has these trusted key types, which can basically do exactly this kind of object sealing on your behalf in the kernel. And that code will probably age better than anything you homebrew. Now software updates are generally considered good practice too for security reasons and other reasons. And you'll find this scheme works really well until something changes. Supporting updates usually necessitates some kind of resealing operation to accommodate changes. There are various strategies to go about this. So one solution is to do simple offline backups of the raw key and then manually reseal when changes happen on the system. This works really well on personal systems where there's a user involved like a laptop. This is also just generally a good idea because if the software changes in a way that you can't restore it back, then you really have no way of extracting the key from the TPM. So this is just generally good practice. For headless systems though you have to get a little crafty. And so we've experimented with a few schemes at NI. So one is this kind of boot time resealing where the plain key is temporarily unsealed into TPM's NVRAM after a successful update operation. And then the init system reseals it next boot to new PCR values. And this can be integrated nicely into a package manager for various kinds of kernel or firmware updates on the system. But the downside is it obviously creates a momentary lapse in the key confidentiality across one boot. The good thing is the user can know about it and it can probably do that safely, hopefully can do that safely. And it's fairly easy to implement and generically applies across many different systems. But a far better way of doing it is to pre-compute PCRs and reseal to future values on an update. So the create policy tool can actually accept arbitrary PCR values. And so you can sort of seal to the next state before you actually enter it. And this can be tricky for different reasons, particularly if you have many different hardware models to deal with with model specific firmware or if the user can customize different software on the system. It can kind of lead to a combinatorial explosion. Not to mention that if you compute the wrong values and you have no way of restoring the old ones, obviously leads to some problems. Now user applications can also use the TPM to manage their keys beyond initial boot. So I'm going to explore some of that in this section. So user applications are typically built on software crypto systems like OpenSSL, which usually don't know anything about TPMs, but there are some clever ways around this. So this is where PKCS-11's crypto token interface, or cryptalky, if I'm pronouncing that right, can help. So this is a relatively standard interface to removable hardware security modules like smart cards where it originated, or the more modern flavors like the USB UB key. So TPMs are not generally removable, but they're largely similar in terms of functions. They're also a kind of crypto coprocessor plugged into the computer. And the really nice thing about PKCS-11 is its API is more wisely adopted in the TSS, which can bridge TPM functions into other crypto libraries, which can then in turn be bridged into applications. And so the TPM to PKCS-11 project implements this kind of cryptalky API using the TPM as the backing token. So continuing our example from before, let's see how to set up this library for our TPM chip. So the PKCS-11 API is rooted in the smart card world, which exposes this notion of tokens and slots to the caller. So token is a crypto device that is plugged into a slot, so like a smart card reader plugged into a smart card reader. And so these APIs are kind of slightly funged to accommodate TPMs. So this example is basically constructing that adaptation layer. So the first block uses P-tool to create a virtual slot. So this is simply a mapping of slot ID 1 to a persistent TPM primary key, and we get that persistent handle from the previous example. The next thing we do is we create a token, which in our TPM world is just a sealed random number, which will be used to authorize the keys that we're about to create. And so this token is really a kind of key ring, right? The user has to unlock the token first and then use its value to authorize the use of actual keys. And so this sort of simulates plugging a slot into your computer and then plugging in a token into the slot, if you will. And then finally, the last block, we create a key pair from our token on our virtual token. So this would be a TPM resident key capable of encrypt decrypt functions through the chip. And so once we do all this, we can now treat the TPM like a smart card. And from this point on, we have many options. But for this example, let's use OpenSSL. So the OpenSmartCard project provides the libp11 library, which is an OpenSSL engine for smart cards, for PKCS11 style smart cards. And so we can do something like create an X509 cert and load it into Apache or some other application. So we'll call OpenSSL request to generate a self-signed X509 certificate, and we use that engine parameter to direct it to the PKCS11 engine. And then this will use the private key reference by that URL to create a self-signed cert, which will prompt you for a bunch of different parameters too. And then we can configure Apache to use it. So we point the public cert to this new file, and then again reuse the same PKCS11 key file URL to redirect Apache to the TPM as well. And for convenience, you can also add this certificate file into the token and just reference both using the same URL. Now, why do this? Aside from creating a slow web server, this places a requirement on Apache to have continuous access to the TPM in order to service new clients, in order to establish new TLS connections. And the idea is that it makes it more difficult to duplicate the identity of the server without continuous access to the one TPM holding the private key. It can also provide a single point of disabling or revoking in the event that some security policy is violated on the system. So you can shut down the TPM and then no clients can connect to the server anymore. And so depending on the value of the data going over the wire, this performance trade-off might be useful to you. Although I'll admit there are definitely some diminishing returns involved as you add more layers of security on top of things like file system encryption. But nevertheless, it can make managing network identities easier in certain situations. And the TPM2 PKCS11 documentation also has numerous readmeans on integrating this into various applications like SSH, VPN, Radius, Wi-Fi authentication, and others. And I'll leave those to you to explore. They all basically follow the same pattern just with different tools. I mentioned earlier that TPMs are no magic bullet and indeed no security technology really is. So in this section, let's explore how to break everything we just talked about and then talk about some ways to improve the aforementioned examples in some circumstances anyway. So the TCG specifies TPM's security model in terms of API behaviors and some internal state. It doesn't really mandate any particular hardware security. That's largely left up to vendors and integrators putting these chips into boards or into CPUs. So one common attack point particularly with the discrete TPMs is the bus. So they're usually connected to relatively simple buses that can be decoded with cheap tools and therefore exploited with man-in-the-middle style attacks. And indeed, passwordless disk encryption schemes like the ones I described have been broken or not flying attacks before. For example, there are some pretty simple tools to sniff bitlockers, master key during power-up with a $50 FPGA board. And that project also includes software to decrypt the disk plus quite a pleasant video demonstrating how it all works in about 10 minutes. And this can be easily adapted to Linux as well. The only difference really is just metadata. There are tools for older TPM12 as well that can do exactly the same thing. Now, even with a shortcoming, TPM is not entirely useless. It makes transient attacks more difficult. So for example, somebody with momentary access can't boot malware from USB to steal confidential data or manipulate something without notice. But somebody with prolonged access to your system will not be stopped by TPM, perhaps deterred at best. But we can improve this situation with some trade-offs. So we can mitigate offline attacks by adding another authorization requirement to releasing or using secrets within the TPM. So almost every layer of the object hierarchy can be configured with an access password, including the hierarchy itself, that seed which derives the primitives and objects underneath it. So to use any element of the hierarchy, the password needs to be supplied with the creation command. So we can amend the examples from before to include an externally supplied password saved by the user. Of course, this is not very amenable to headless systems, but if there is a user or other device involved in these systems, this can mitigate many of the shortcomings we discussed earlier. So TPM also provides several ways to authenticate to prove you have the password. So the simplest method is to transmit it in the clear. So this is what's happening on the left with TPM tools. And this is vulnerable to online man-in-the-middle attacks. So somebody monitoring the bus in real time as you enter your password. But there are more sophisticated options so they can prevent this as well. So for example, the TPM will accept a nonced HMAC of the command messages that are keyed to the password, instead of sending the password in the clear. And then it will also reply with an HMAC, similarly keyed to the same password that was agreed upon earlier, so you can verify the TPM's response. So basically the user and the TPM can use this scheme to mutually authenticate each other without sending the actual token across the wire. There's an even more complicated auth session approach, which can actually chain together multiple factors of authentication together to authorize something that happens. You can connect your fingerprint reader and your retinal scanner and whatever other security device you want into a complex policy to authorize some action. You can also do encryption of in-flight data with certain commands to prevent eavesdropping on the bus. And there are some limitations with this. But this is what the PKCS11 library on the right is using. And I believe the Linux key ring uses the HMAC option. Now one challenge with multi-factor, particularly in the context of secure boot, is where do you enter the password? So if you can't trust the UI until you talk to the TPM until you enter the password, where do you enter the password? So you can do this from a second trusted authentication device communicating through the system to the TPM. That would work, but it's kind of clunky. There's a human involved though, at least one point during boot. There is a software solution. So TOTP is a clever little tool that can generate those six-digit one-time password codes inside the TPM using an HMAC key authorized by a PCR policy. So you can use this, for example, to give the human operator an opportunity to visually inspect the hardware for alterations and then using their phone to inspect the software, so to speak, before entering credentials to continue. This also enables other security mechanisms that are sort of orthogonal to the TPM. So for example, you can use the TPM to verify the firmware in the init system with a one-time password and then use a simple password for the file system, completely orthogonal to the TPM thereafter. So this is a great approach for personal laptops, obviously a little more difficult on headless systems. It's also not without its own limitations. An attacker, for example, could precalculate OTP values into the future with one of the offline bus attacks and then present those fake values to a user as part of an online attack to get their password. It's just another layer that makes things more difficult. And this kind of brings me to my final thought. Secrets inside the TPM are just blobs of data encrypted by keys derived from some seed stored on flash underneath some plastic and silicone. And many TPMs, this can be removed with a good laser or some potent acid. And some manufacturers have decap countermeasures, but these aren't mandated by the spec. And certainly no countermeasure is ever going to be perfect. So if you break the root of trust on the TPM, you can then use that information to slowly break things above it, whether it's fake OTP values or fake PCR measurements to do something else or something else. How hard this is to exploit largely depends on how well other security systems are designed around the TPM. No security technology is perfect. The TPM's job is just to make the attack more costly in a relatively standard way that's easy or easier for us to implement than homebrewed solution. And I hope you can see some of these benefits for your systems after today's presentation. So once again, thank you for attending. And I will yield the remainder of my time for your questions. Okay. Hello everyone. So this will be the Q&A portion of the session. So feel free to ask some questions in the Q&A window. I see that some of you already have. So I'll just go down the list kind of in order. So Thomas asked if there are any affordable TPMs available for Raspberry Pi. So the Infineon actually produces a few boards, like the $50, $60 range and connect to the Pi. There's also something similar for like D-Word. I will just plug into the IO bin on the device. But I'll caution you with those add-on TPM boards on things like the firmware on the Raspberry Pi because I don't understand TPM and the new boot measuring. So if you're hoping to use like a whole description, it's not really going to be that effective as it were on a board with the TPM being built in. Oh, and someone also asked if there will be a video recording available. My slide back is already posted on the abstract page and the video will be available after the show, as well as posted to YouTube I think in a few months. So someone asked if considering bus attacks should a firmware TPM implementation that relies on FSC integrated blocks be preferred to a discrete TPM? Yes, in certain cases, really I should say there are some trade-offs with it. The problem with firmware TPM is oftentimes they rely on memory isolation. So like the Intel PPP runs in a memory enclave on the chip and so it can be vulnerable to like the Spectre class attack to extract secrets from it. Yeah, on the flip side of it, there are no leads that you can probe with a hardware stack. The AMD secure technology, I think on some of their chips, that actually is a coprocessor embedded inside the FSC. So that actually provides a little more security guarantee. You don't want to have like the benefit of a discrete TPM and with that without some limitation of it running within the CPU and memory. So it sort of depends. Thomas also mentioned that the Monday server is an example of user-free two-factor off. So I've never heard of that, but it's interesting. Certainly a legitimate strategy for headless systems with TPM is to have a remote system provide the authorization value to release the disk encryption key. So that's definitely one way to go about it. I think that the most common implementation is either user-interactive or just kind of one-factor, in this case, like the Vista Locker. Let's see. Oh, yes. Has somebody just responded that there's a link to a TPM for Raspberry Pi from a company called Let's Trust. Okay. Well, if there are no more questions, you can feel free to email me. After the show, where I will also be on the Linux track on Slack. We'll be in chat after this. So thank you all again for attending the session.


So hello everyone, and it's wonderful to have you here today at Entrepreneur Media APAC watching us for the Entrepreneur Life as we talked today with Jamil Qureshi and also with Caroline Breeze at and they're going to sort of Jamil in has a very interesting line of work where he's leading the performance he's a performance psychologist for a profession and helps businesses to achieve high performance and he's been doing a lot of work with its leads across the world with the names like Sergio Garcia from Manchester United to achieve the maximum potential and to become world number one in their respective arenas. And he also works extensively with big enterprises like Microsoft, American Express and lots of others to help them achieve better potential alongside their teams. And also we have the wonderful Caroline Breeze here today. She's the managing director of Australia and New Zealand for GoCon Flactus, the unicorn, the payment unicorn, which is doing some excellent work and in COVID times where we're all trying to cope. They're both going to give us some wonderful ideas as to how do you, when, when you're working remotely and your teams are working remotely, how do you sort of garner the best and do the best that you can. So thank you very much for joining us Jamil and Caroline and I look forward to wonderful next 30 minutes of discussion with you as we get to learn here at Entrepreneur. What is it that you're doing in order to help maximize the kind of agility or bring the best in the organization together. So let me start with you Jamil. You know, I understand that sports is a very competitive arena and you know, there are lots of lessons we can learn from the field that can be brought into the boardroom so to say, and you're doing some wonderful work over there where in your helping to, for people to learn about agility to learn about how to be flexible and at the same time be firm in terms of what you're trying to achieve. So particularly in today's work from home kind of environment and the culture of the organizations is changing so drastically. It's not as if we were born to, you know, work from home. It's not something we knew at all. So it's something we're learning as we work and at the same time we're trying to give our best to our work. So how is it, what kind of performance psychology are you working on and during these times when things are not the way they used to be. Hi, Rita. Thank you for inviting us along today. It's an interesting time for everyone and I'm doing a lot of work in regard to leadership in a new context. And everyone's talking about strong leadership at the moment. We want it from our governments. We want it from our organizations. We want it from brands. We want it from our leaders in business, but it's also about self leadership to making sure that we accept the current context and truly own our own progress attempt towards something which is bigger and better than what we had before. So I seem to be spending a lot of time talking about how we can change our thinking to change our doing. So I always believe the only way in which we can change our actions or behaviors is to change our mindset. And I think the future demands us to be different. So I often will say to companies leadership boards that we can't trust the future to anyone who champions the past.  I think the only way in which we can make sense and then make progress is to understand our current situation. So it's very difficult to know which way is forward if we don't know which way we're facing. So I guess what I do is I help people create a perspective. I seem to be spending a lot of time working with people at the moment in regard to gaining a current context, gaining a perspective. Looking at possibilities and opportunities and then creating a mindset to success in a disrupted and changing world. Sure. And, you know, I'll just come back to you in a bit Jamil, but let me start with Caroline in terms of asking her that Caroline today at Go Contactless, you know, you probably overnight had to put your teams on remote working and how difficult or how challenging was it for you personally and for the organization to be able to achieve. You know, I'm sure in January 2020 everybody had sort of put all targets to what they were looking to do this year and then by March everything sort of was looking as if it's going to unassemble what we had thought and, you know, so what what kind of challenges were you facing with the work from our facing. In fact, you know, at least the lockdowns are not there currently, but the work from home sort of continues and what what is it that you are sort of facing in one side or we're facing and how are you getting over it. I mean, how is it that you're working and particularly how you work with Jamil in these last few months to get the organization going and to keep them on the feet and to help achieve your goals. Yeah, so that's a great, that's a very broad question. That's a big one. It's interesting. So at Go Cardless, we were founded in the UK, many years ago, so we've got great brand presence there we've got a great customer base, you know, over 50,000 merchants users globally but in in A&Z in Australia, New Zealand and APAC where we're growing a brand and presence where we're very young. So we've only been on the ground for about a year. And, you know, one part of that is building a building a brand. The other part is you're building a team and a culture that feeds into the culture of the UK business. And that's quite hard when kind of halfway through the year the breaks are pulled on and everybody's working from home and getting to know each other and a great example of that is, you know, I'm based in Sydney, and the rest of the Go Cardless team is based in Melbourne. And, you know, it's it's hard because you're not only building rapport with your new colleagues and you're trying to build a business so you're bringing in new people into the organization to help you grow. And they're then having to navigate their way through a new role in a new company in a new market building a new brand where they can't have these face to face interactions and, you know, we've all adapted. It does take, I think, a little bit longer to build the same level of rapport and to build the same level of camaraderie and culture that you would normally do face to face. And so I'm really proud of the team because the way we've adapted and managed to build that, you know, with the help of Jamil and also the broader organization, it's been quite amazing. And I think I sometimes have this analogy that I play when I try and make myself feel like everything's alright where I imagine if I tried to move to this remote working world for my team and I, where we had to do everything from home without any face to face. But I'd done it in a world where no one else was experiencing the same thing as us. And that's not the case. And so I think everyone entered this thinking, oh my God, how am I going to do this working from home? How am I going to build relationships? How am I going to reach out to people for the first time and get them to spend time with me? And how am I going to build and maintain a culture? But I think one of the things that I have learned in the last few months is that everybody's going through the same thing. And there's commonalities in everybody's human. We've got the same things happening at home. And so, you know, it's been a little bit easier and it's definitely opened my book in interaction, how much business can actually get done in this type of environment.  So instead of going out for drinks once a month, you know, we're catching up once a week for breakfast online, those types of things. But it's definitely been a challenging period for everybody. And I am sure Jamil will attest to this. There's no right or wrong way. But as a leader, I've definitely had to adopt and Jamil's helped go Carlos with this to no end, but adopt new ways to understand how your people are feeling. So how they present themselves in a Zoom may not represent how they're actually feeling and what they're actually going through as individuals and coaching and mentoring and guiding someone through this period is very, very different. I totally agree. How big is the team here in Australia and New Zealand? So we're, this is very eye-opening, but the start of COVID we were more than we are now. We've had unfortunately a couple of people leave us, but, you know, it's, we're a small team. So we're growing from 10.  I was one of the first people on the ground. So everybody's new. Sure. I can imagine even with 10 people, it must be hard to get everybody on the same page. So, you know, you have your work cut out over there. Jamil, you know, I read about that you always talk about a very bottom-up diverse collaboration at workplaces. And, you know, so what exactly, I mean, is it that you expect or how do you work with leaders to be able to build that agility in the organization and to have more open-minded teams. And you also talk about the power of community, which comes to help the organization when everybody is trying to sort of be together on the goal that we are trying to achieve. So what, what, how exactly do you work towards it? Yeah, so I always say that communities outperform hierarchies and bureaucracies when it comes to maximizing human talent at the moment. And many organizations will still organize themselves as a bureaucracy or hierarchy. But I think now is probably the best time to make the most of the wisdom of crowds. And I think Carolyn hit it on the head really in regard to cultures that is a difficult one at the moment, because people have been geographically displaced, remote working, not coming together in the same way. And what GoCardless have done particularly well, you know, is nurture the culture that they have built their success upon and look to maintain that level of connectivity and community. And I think a lesson to all organizations is that, you know, once we start to play into community more and see ourselves not necessarily as an organization, but a community with a purpose. Well, I always say that purpose maximization will always drive profit maximization. So we see ourselves as a community with a purpose getting great clarity on what we're seeking to achieve and create as we come out of the levels of disruption that we've experienced, then we could be more successful. So I think the lesson for organizations is the word that you've already used, which is open mindedness. So it's not so much about trying to predict the future. No one can predict the future, but we can be ready for it. And the way we should be ready for it is to make sure that we are forming teams which have a level of fluidity. So the more agile and open minded we can be, the more we can deploy resource to opportunity as we gain clarity on it. So I think for organizations now to question and challenge the assumptions that their business was structured on is probably the way forwards. So you can almost argue now that the issues that a company will face in the future aren't necessarily important. But what's essential is that we form communities in our organization who can deal with those issues no matter what they are. And I think that it's particularly hard for larger organizations, particularly those who suffer from what I call the curse of incumbency. Those ones have been around for a long time, organized in the same way, banks, utilities, a good example, pharmaceutical companies. But I think that as an entrepreneur, if you've got a nimble business already, and if you've got a business which is not fat, then you've got the opportunity I guess to become more agile and more open minded and more fleet of foot where you can deploy your resource to opportunity as it makes sense. So I think let's wait for clarity rather than seek the plan and strategize too definitely. And let's just make sure that we work on our team members at the moment to make sure that they're in a good space in regard to mindset, attitude and culture, but also fluidity of roles and responsibilities to achieve what's purposeful to our organization. Absolutely. I do believe that from profit driven, we have to be more purpose driven during these times and you know, take everybody along, so to say, to help them grow in the organization grow. Yeah, I think that many people have had so many different experiences that, you know, to make sure that we now understand how people are feeling and make sure that it's a time for human leadership more than business leadership. Let's realize the resource that we have, the capability that we have to hand within our teams already. Let's regroup and reorganize and assess our strengths. So I see many organizations who often are trying to fix weaknesses and trying to have a look at where the gaps are, particularly as they become exposed in a time like this. What I actually think is probably better to understand our strengths in a time like this and see how they can be a springboard towards future success. So, you know, many organizations will sometimes weaken a strength by trying to strengthen a weakness. And I think it's a time that we need to be careful that we're not doing that. I'm very much like the work that we've been doing at GoCardless, to be understanding the strengths of the business culturally, as well as within the processes and technologies, but understanding the people strategies which have enabled success to take place so far. And then realizing how they can be an accelerant moving into a world which will be abundant with opportunity as we come through the initial short-term crisis. Sure. Caroline, you know, what kind of growth has GoCardless seen during the pandemic times? I mean, fintech companies and particularly payment fintech companies and your name says it all GoCardless, you know, it's sort of so in the times. So what kind of growth have you seen? And you know, I also understand that today in this walk from home or remote working culture, everybody is pretty much working all the time. I mean, we were supposed to be in our homes, we're supposed to be more relaxed, but you know, it's sort of things have become more contrary. We're working, I mean, I'm working in the evening in the morning pretty much all hours now. So there is no sort of breakaway time for work. So, you know, it depletes your energy and I think Jamil has very well spoken about energy management versus time management. So how is it that you are trying to sort of bring that across in the organization today? And particularly Jamil, after Caroline has answered, I would love for you to say that how did you help Caroline to take this help her make this pivot? You know, that this kind of growth and the kind of objectives that they had now and people obviously working more from home rather than less. How could this all come together in the right way? So let's start on you. Yeah, thank you. So at GoCardless, because we do we do payments, we do ultimately bank direct debit in a very digital way. We've obviously noticed and seen the shift from traditional payment methods into digital. We've seen people move away from cash and check into more digital. But in addition, in these types of times, particularly for small to medium business or businesses that are starting, there's a real focus on cash flow and process and adopting a pool mechanism for payments like GoCardless where we pull money out of your bank account to pay has meant that it's given a lot of small businesses security around when they're going to get money. So instead of waiting for someone to pay them, waiting for a check to arrive or waiting for someone to deposit money into their bank account, they've got the ability to actually pull money under agreement from that bank account. So cash flow has been a huge focus for a lot of business. So we've seen a huge adoption. We've also seen a lot of businesses that are more large and traditional that maybe use direct debit today and other payment methods. Take this time to really turn around and have a look at their internal processes, their operational efficiencies and the way they handle payment operations today more generally. And that's given us an opportunity to bring more efficiencies to their business and to work with them on a deeper level, whereas normally we wouldn't have had that opportunity. So it's been a little bit of a blessing in disguise in that way. I think if we look towards the future and where we're headed with open banking, NPP in Australia and other types of payment methods and more real time efficiencies around bank to bank payments globally. You know, we've seen a real adoption for consumers to move into more digital payment methods, whether it be a Neobank or to move to more digital banking or move into more subscription type lifestyle to remove that friction.  We've seen them adopt technologies that may have taken them years under different circumstances. So that's only, you know, propelling kind of where we're heading with our technical roadmap as well. So we've seen some real positives at the same time. You know, we support a lot of businesses that have really struggled through these times and we've supported them, you know, where we can. And when you handle payments across a broad base of different industries and verticals in any country, you definitely start to see, you know, industries that are affected and they're really filling the stress of these times. And out of that, we've seen some amazing pivots as well, where business, what's happening, change the way they're going to market or change their product even in some cases to suit more of this online kind of remote type market. And that's been really impressive to see. And so, yeah, it's a really, it's a great place for it. It's like being at the top of the hill, being able to see kind of the direction we're going in and the adoption that's being taken up based on the circumstances we're under, but also the businesses that have been able to adopt. And to your point around, you know, longer working days and the intensity of this period, you know, I'm a victim of that. I started my morning this morning at 7am. It's now almost 7pm. And I've left this room to get a wine, go to the toilet, have my husband move a plant in to make me look more professional for this exact recording. And I'm still, I've still got my pajama pants on.  I haven't got out of here. I haven't gone for a walk. I haven't seen my children today. And I think there are a lot of people in that situation. I know firsthand, you know, I've tried to condense my interactions with people to half an hour. I'm pretty sure everyone I know embraced COVID with one hour Zoom meetings back to back, like their face to faces. And didn't kind of have gaps in between, which in normal business life would happen. You'd be going to a meeting and then you'd have time to do things for yourself before the next one or plan. And I think many people embraced it like I did and just went into meeting to meeting to meeting. And now that's got to half hour meetings for me today that we're back to back. And it's, it's a different level of draining. And to Jamil's point, it's a different mindset.  It's today and I've had lots of great meetings and I'll block some time out tomorrow and I'll, you know, get to those things then. But it is challenging. And I think a lot of people that I speak to are struggling with the same thing around a how to be motivated and be how to structure their day in a way where they're still feeling like they're moving ahead. They're not in this, you know, zoom but meet a triangle and they still feel like they're completing things and getting things done and still having some time for themselves and and it's hard. It's hard. Sure. So Jamil, how have you sort of worked with the, you know, Caroline to ensure that there was some sort of normalcy in our lives. And you know, as she said, not going from one zoom screen to another.  I mean, Caroline is more in an entrepreneurial role. She's sitting on the top. She has to manage a team. But imagine, you know, the youngest worker who just doesn't know what's hit him or her over here.  They want to go out. They want to go to the park, movie, whatever.  Yeah, I think that what's really important and the work that I've been doing at GoCardless is to simply put on sessions. The people, which take them away from the, the immediacy of the to-do list and into a space of creating some time to think about not what they're doing, but how they're doing it. So a number of companies that I've been working with, my programs and content has been very similar. And it's really just giving people that time and space to think about what they're seeking to create rather than what they're seeking to do. And there's a really big difference between both of those premises that most of us will define success by the immediacy of our to-do list. And we'll write out lots of to-do lists and we'll plow through them. And it's a particularly busy people, a busy time for people. And I think there's a really big difference between productivity and activity and how we're productive now is quite different to how we were productive in the office. And if we try and replicate what we were doing in the office, in the home environment or remote working, we become active, but not necessarily productive. So for us to think about the value that we're creating for others, for us to think about being purposeful, for us to think about what we're seeking to create and achieve, it's probably the starting point. And I always talk about some energy management more than time management, time management is a bit of a red herring. And we need to be more mindful of our energy and then define our tasks in accordance to how we're feeling. Some days we're motivated and some days we're not. And that's becoming more and more pronounced for people. So more and more people are realizing that their energy levels are different to what they were in the real world. So what we need to do is to be more mindful of the context in which we're working now. And there's some nice tips and hints and tricks that will allow us to contextualize and frame and tell what we're seeking to achieve in this new environment. And it is a new now. It's not a new normal. There's nothing normal about it. It's a new now and things evolve all the time. And I think that our strategies must be based upon where we are in the present, knowing that things will change for the better, you know, at some stage and then we can modify our strategies again. So I try and provide sessions with people where they can come, engage, talk, share, learn from each other. No one has the answers at the moment. It's more about trying to ask the right questions. They're more than trying to give the right answers. Allow people to argue, debate and create outcomes which are bigger and better than what they would have created if they were simply sat on their own. I'm a great believer in connectivity and a big believer in shared experience. And so the more that we can come together and share more, the more we can look at our networks and partnerships and see ourselves as part of something bigger than the isolation in which many of us have been existed. We have a chance to understand things from new perspectives. And as new perspectives create new possibilities and new opportunities. So I always say that blame looks backwards and responsibility looks forwards. It's a universal law by the way for sport and business that blame looks backwards and responsibility looks forwards. I think it's really important to take responsibility for becoming more connected than what we and then what we could do at a very easy to work in isolation is very easy to drive our own parts of the business or to do our own to do list and take it off. We've got to take responsibility for for for still trying to make the connections and ensuring that we have the serendipity that we have in the office yet to make sure that we're getting a rounded perspective from many different voices and diverse opinions. And when we do that, not only do we feel stronger as a partnership and the team, but we also started to see things differently and hopefully better. Sure. Caroline, I mean, you know, delegation at any point of time for a leader is very important. And I mean now that, you know, in a work from home environment, how is it that you're really delegating and giving more ownership to your team members so that they can sort of be more in control? You know, as Jamil says, you have to give up control to gain control. So what is it? What is it that you're really delegating? What areas are you delegating the team to where you feel that, you know, sitting in their own homes, they should be able to take lead and be able to therefore do more? It's interesting because we're not in the office together or talking as much as we were before. You know, I'm not able to swing around in my chair and load someone up with something and they're not able to swing around and ask me a question and vice versa. And so I think the premise or the thing that underpins success of how we've been working together is that, one, you have to show empathy of what they may be feeling or going through as well. And so they're feeling exactly like you. They're feeling overwhelmed. They're not really worked out how to structure their day yet. They're being swamped by zooms. They're having the same kind of pressure than waking up with the to-do list, you know, that was as of yesterday and the day before. And so one is showing empathy and letting them know that sharing vulnerability and your own circumstances and saying, you know, this is how I'm feeling and letting them share with you how they're feeling as well. Because I think if you were just constantly delegating and weren't really understanding how they were coping and understanding their individual circumstances, I think you'd probably burn them out. And I think the second thing is, you know, a lot of people went into COVID because it's new to all of us, obviously, thinking there are things that personally they'd like to get out of this period. So, you know, organizations at an organizational level, there are some that are thinking we want to turn around and look at our processes and how we support remote working, for example. But at an individual level, people had their own goals that may be, you know, I want to make sure that I'm more organized now that I'm working remotely. I want to have a better at home environment for working or I want to, you know, incorporate more work-life balance into that. And so I think before delegating, showing empathy and understanding how they're coping. The second thing is understanding what their goals are for that period and how they're feeling and what their personal goals are for that period. And giving them the flexibility to allow that through this time. And then the third one is, you know, it takes a little bit more empowerment and trust when you're not connecting with someone daily or hourly or half daily. And it might be, you know, once a week or once a fortnight that you're connecting, you need to empower them to make decisions. You need to trust that they're going to do things without being in the office environment and having you around to question all the time or to having, you know, just bounce off. And so it's giving them the guidelines and the free license to make those decisions and know that you've got their back and that you're empowering them to do that. And that's been a really big part of GoCardless and how we work remotely. We've always had that culture anyway. But it's definitely been amplified during this period in that, you know, that's that project is yours. And I'm comfortable with the decisions that you make because I know that you understand the why and I know that you understand, you know, the outcome that we all desire. And I empower you because you're the right person for the role. That's why you're here. I empower you to make those decisions. But at the same time, I understand it's a hard time. I'm going to make all the allowances I can to help you get there and remove all the barriers that I can see them.  How is it that you're rewarding people who are doing good work?  Oh, yeah. But it's a hard time. So we're doing it in different ways. So we're celebrating as a team together. We get together often. So we've had trivia nights. We've celebrated birthdays together. We've had team breakfasts and lunches. We have a WhatsApp group, which we don't talk too much shopping. We try not to unless it's an exciting piece of news, but we just check in on each other and see how we're going. And we share personal pics like someone walking their new puppy or, you know, something crazy happened with a kid during a Zoom meeting, that kind of thing. So we stay connected that way. But we make sure that other parts of the business hear about the great things we're doing as well. And we share that through multitude of channels. But, you know, we've just tried to connect in other ways. And I can definitely recommend a trivia night. It was a lot of fun. And the team breakfasts are a lot of fun, but you just have to find other ways. And I've definitely upped the ante on how often I check in with them as individuals and have one of ones with them and not to make it about work. It's not an activity check in. It's not, you know, how you're going and how sales, it's more about how you're feeling, you know, let's go for a walk and talk together. That type of thing that's more personal, which I think is really important at the moment. Sure. You know, I mean, so as we conclude this, I would want you to give me the top three sort of takeaways to young executives today who who should and how do you think or what do you think they should learn from the sports arena and bring it to the boardroom or bring it to their office cubicle virtual as it may be so that they are able to today achieve what they want to and they're able to balance themselves out.  So, you know, what, what are you going to tell these young executives that, you know, why they should be patient and what is it that they should be learning today from the world of sports? I'm 20, I'm older than 25 and I have the same thought why am I working every day. And so, yeah, I mean, there's lots of things that we can learn from sports. What three takeaways? You know, I would say that it's really important to be motivated by what we're seeking to achieve rather than what we're seeking to avoid. It's a very easy time for people to think about what they don't want to lose. So I don't want to lose his client, don't lose his account, don't lose this pitch, don't lose my position in the team. And many people are looking at maintaining a position or protectionism, and it's totally understandable. But I'm not sure whether some people will be held back by having that as a motivation when they could just be having it as a consideration. So let's be motivated by what we're seeking to achieve and create rather than what we're seeking to avoid. Let's think about things which, you know, are possible. Let's think about the new perspectives which we need in our business and our cultures to create something meaningful and sustainable in a world which is changing. And I think that companies who are trying to go back to normal have really been struggling. The companies who I've been working with who are seeing this as an opportunity to reimagine and reinvent have created a different type of business energy. Adam, so, you know, I always say if you have a rickety old house which burns down, there's no point in building another rickety old house. You know, and I feel that that's where we are at the moment in regard to our systems and structures that we've been living by. It's exactly the same for our businesses, no matter how small or how big. I mean, we've all been affected and impacted in some way. So, you know, let's think about what we're seeking to achieve and create rather than what we're seeking to avoid. And sports people do that brilliantly. Most of them are motivated by not wanting to lose. They're motivated by wanting to win. And there's a really big difference. It makes you think differently. It makes you feel differently. And ultimately, if you think and feel differently, you will act differently. The second thing that I would give you, I would say that being purposeful. So, ensuring there's a clarity on your purpose. So, purpose is never achieved. It's attained on a daily basis. So, so people think of purpose as objectives, targets as a vision is not. It's a reason for being. It's a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And this is why Tiger Woods keeps working. It's why Warren Buffett keeps working. It's why Richard Branson keeps working. It's because purpose is never achieved. It's attained on a daily basis. So, let's find the stuff where we can chase our passion rather than our penchant. The stuff that we're truly motivated, energizing, enthused to do, and guide our business towards it. So, I say purposeful probably the second one. And the third, I would say, oh, I'm trying to mix three and four together, to be honest, really. This is important. I'll try and do it.


I hope you'll call someone right now. Tell them to tune in. This is going to be a night where the Word of God is going to be extremely valuable for you. Usually, I take the first portion of this program to bring you news articles that I believe are relevant to the imminent return of Jesus Christ. And if you've been with us on prophecy files before, you've heard me say that the purpose of this program is to keep believers aware and alert, not just with information, but with preparation. For the next great event on the calendar of God, the rapture of the church, that's what we're getting ready for. And the hope of this program is to bring those who are not ready, those who do not know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, to the saving knowledge of the good news that Jesus came to save, to heal, and to deliver the lost, the broken, and the captive from their sin. To be able to help people understand how important that it is that Jesus Christ is truly about to return, and they must be ready. Now, we never know what news may happen from day to day. Some days, I can bring you the report of the news of the Kingdom of God advancing around the world, and the encouragement that comes from seeing people come to Christ around the world. And that's happening in massive numbers. There's no doubt. But most of the time, the news and the information, the articles that I bring to you is quite shocking and alarming. As day by day, we see our world and our nation turning away from God, largely ignoring most of the information that is coming that could change their life in a moment. And some, even Christians, casting their thoughts aside about the return of Jesus Christ and preoccupied with the cares of life. Each week, the news that you hear on television and the Internet, so forth, is increasing the signs that are more obvious of the economic crisis that looms, the wars and rumors of wars. All of the things that are happening that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 24, changes that are happening in our nation and in our world, that many people are ignoring the clear warnings and the Word of God. And some people may already be getting weary of hearing of the signs of the times, the economic implosions, evil turning to good and good to evil, and are saying, don't tell me anymore. I don't want to hear anymore about that. I'm afraid. But my friend, that will not stop the reality of the events that are unfolding day by day that are going to affect your life. But I believe God is concerned with how we as His people will respond in these times and to the things that are coming upon our nation and in our world. God knows that our lifestyle is going to be changed in a moment and in a way that we could never imagine. God wants us to be prepared. The overwhelming majority of Americans are consumed with the things of this world and God is not even in their thoughts. It was predicted that way that it would be like that in the days of Noah in the end times. And here we are now. I believe God never hides any important matter from His children. The book of Amos 3.7 says, Surely the Lord God will do nothing but He revealeth His secrets unto His servants the prophets. As God is warning us about a coming storm, we can be sure He will not leave us or forsake us to leave us in a constant state of fear and dread. That's not the way our Heavenly Father treats His children. The Word of God proves to us over and over again that God is ready and He's willing to take care of His children no matter what the circumstances and no matter what the conditions of this world. The problem is we become so attached to the things of this world so much that we want secular solutions instead of spiritual solutions to the problems. Now listen to what the Word of God has to say. When God was telling Israel and Judah that there was going to become a shaking on the earth and that they were going to go into a Syrian and Babylonian captivity, they didn't want to believe that. And you can know that when God said there's going to be a shaking of this earth, it will come to pass. Listen to what Isaiah 2 says in verse 19. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks and into the caves of the earth for fear of the Lord. And for the glory of His Majesty when He arises to shake terribly the earth. Verse 20. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver and idols of gold which they had made one for himself to worship to the moles and to the bats. What's the Word of God saying right there? He's saying that when God begins to shake this earth that the people in the earth are going to suddenly realize that their idols of silver and gold and the things that they've held on to are going to become worthless and they'll throw them to the side. They'll be worthless to them to try to escape the shaking that is taking place. Now this is so important because again when God tells us that He's going to shake the earth, then He will do exactly what He said. As I bring you this program tonight, many of you can see and hear and know something is about to break. Something is about to happen. God is going to shake things. This is what it says in Hebrews 12. Verse number 27. And this Word yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore we receive a kingdom which cannot be moved. Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire. I find God saying to believers to us today while things are going to shake all around you, hear the Word of the Lord in 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 1 and 2. Now we beseech you brethren by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together that's the rapture unto Him. And here's the admonition in verse 2 that you be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter as from us as that the day of Christ is at hand. As we can see and hear of more and more the Christians must learn where our help comes from and not trust in any other than Jesus Christ. David gives us a portrait of a prosperous believer for the last days and here's what he says in Psalm 1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord in the Word of God and in his law doth he meditate day and night. The Word of God will constantly be on your mind. And he now note this, this is for the blessed believer and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Now on the opposite side of that verse 5 he says this, verse 4, the ungodly are not so, but they are like the chaff which the wind driveeth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. Now this is about where we get our advice from, where we are influenced from. This scripture is all about who we're listening to, who we're associating with. This is the key, ladies and gentlemen, to having a sound mind in the days that are ahead. This is important for the believer. Blessed is the believer who refuses to make decisions or invest or be influenced by the counsel of the ungodly experts who do not believe in God's Word. Now ladies and gentlemen, if you want to prosper in the times we're in and God said it will happen and can happen for those that are trusting in the Lord, you can understand that when you trust in God according to Psalm 1, he will never fail you. God will not allow his people to trust in anything other than him. No counsel or confidence can be placed in the ungodly ways of this world because God said he considers that wicked according to Psalm 1 and multiple other scriptures. The source of our strength in these days and in the days ahead is the hope that we have in Christ in these perilous times to abide in him. The Bible says that we would be illustrated in Psalm 1 like a tree planted by the rivers of water. That is God's supply to the blessed and prosperous believer. In spite of all of the ungodliness and wickedness that's going on, God delights to show how he can bless his people and keep his hand upon those that are committed to him in the middle of all the shaking that is going on now and in the future. Apostle Paul said, in the face of adversities and trials up ahead, when he was seeing and hearing all the things that were going on, this is what he said in Acts 20 verse 24, But none of these things move me. Neither count I, my life, dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received to the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. In the following verses after that in Acts 20, Paul said, I'm not moved by the potential hardships or of the wealth of the world or its possessions. I've not coveted man's silver or the gold or his apparel. I've labored in what I need to do. I'm preaching the gospel and everything about what I'm doing is to help others because he concludes it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. Now my friends, the ministry of the Watchman in the Bible was to see what was coming and warn the people. That's what I'm doing tonight and to sound the alarm for their preparation. The Watchman was to supply the people with any and all the information necessary for them to get ready. And then it's up to the people to respond to the warning and prepare accordingly. If you're looking and listening to the news of this world, you will want to throw your hands up sometimes and say like many people are, what's the use? But God has not left us as Christians as believers without hope and comfort in these days. And I want to give you a key to your peace of mind, soul and spirit for these last days. God says that the abiding presence of God through the power of the Holy Spirit is the answer for the believers in these last days. The promise of the Father is in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And he would come to be able to bring us strength and comfort in this time. The promise of the Father is you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. Jesus said, I will send you, John 16, a comforter that will come and especially come alongside you in these days to help you to understand the value of the presence of God that will keep your heart, soul, mind and strength in your life and in your mind. It requires a daily communion with the Lord because God's people get powerless when we stay away from the presence of God. And we're just like Jonah who couldn't face the demand of the presence of God made on him because many times when we are avoiding the presence of God it's because we know a change must take place inside of our life. It was not the sins of the Ninevites that caused Jonah to be scared. It was the sin in his own heart that he couldn't face. And he had a controversy between him and God so he would rather stay away from the presence of God. Now there's two things that's important for you that God's wanting me to give to you tonight. It is that God's presence in God's presence sin is exposed in our life and that's a good thing. Conviction is a good thing of the Holy Spirit. Condemnation comes from the devil and that's a bad thing. The second part which is probably the most valued in our life in the time that we're living for the believer is to commune and abide in God's presence because it's there that we find strength and comfort and the transformation of God's power comes into our life. Let me make it clear. I believe we are about to see and experience the reason why we will need the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives personally. Because of the descriptive name of the Holy Spirit I think is really key. Jesus called him the Comforter. Think about it. Jesus is speaking in John 14 to his disciples and he was talking about his departure and the condition of the world that they were in. And he says this in John 14, And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of Truth. Think about it. In the time we're in right now with all the lies that are going on the Spirit of Truth is abiding with you and in you. And the world he says in verse 17 cannot receive that Spirit of Truth because it seeth him not and neither knoweth him but ye know him believer. For he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless. Jesus said I will come to you. Now how does he do that? He comes through the power of the Holy Spirit into the life of the believer. In John 15 verse 26, Because ye have been with me from the beginning. Jesus was speaking to his disciples.   Because the Comforter in the coming storm will remind us, John 14 says, of the things we need to know. John 14, But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. And verse 27, What is he reminding us of? What is the Holy Spirit's job in this world? He's preparing a bride for the coming of the groom, Jesus Christ. And what does he remind us of? He reminds us that God loves us. He reminds us of God's promises. He reminds us of God's provision and God's peace inside of our life. And listen to the Word of God in Colossians 3 verse 15. And let the peace of God rule your hearts to which also you are called in one body and be thankful. Consider Philippians 4-7. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Isaiah 26-3 says that will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusted in thee. The Holy Spirit will not only remind us but he will reprove us. And we need that. It's the sanctifying process. The separating from the things of the world and separating unto God. John 16, listen to the Word of God in verse 8. And when he is come, the Holy Spirit, he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. Now he explains in verse 9. Of sin because they believe not on me. Of righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more. Of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. Now let me break it down for you just a moment. He says of sin, he will reprove us of sin. That is he will, the Holy Spirit will convict us, expose sin in our life and convince us what is right and what is wrong. He says he will reprove us in righteousness. That is he will reveal God's greatness in our life in the picture and in the standing of Jesus Christ's righteousness in our life. Not ours. The fact that we don't have Jesus walking on this earth in the person of Jesus Christ right now requires that the Holy Spirit reveals through the Word of God, through the teaching and the preaching of God's Word, who Jesus is and what his character is, what his righteousness is. And he will reprove us of judgment. That is to say to remind us and reprove us in the fact that the prince of this world will be judged and everyone is going to have an encounter with God. All the ungodly influences that cause you to sin, God says the Holy Spirit will help you to be able to know what truth is. He will guide us into all truth. So he's going to remind us and he's going to reprove us and the Holy Spirit is going to renew us daily. Now this is important. This is what the Holy Spirit wants me to get to you tonight. The abiding presence of God, the daily awareness of the presence of Jesus Christ coming alongside you is going to be so critical for the days ahead. You must crave the presence of God. And I'm not just talking about going to church. While that is a valued thing in Hebrews 10, the Bible reminds us to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. But you must have such an abiding presence of God that there's not one moment that you're not aware of His presence with you and in you. John 14 says this, And whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. And if you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, Jesus says. And He will give you another comforter that He may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him. You should know him because he's dwelling with you and shall be in you. And Jesus gives us the greatest promise of all. I won't leave you comfortless. I will come to you. For me, that's the greatest promise that can be given. Jesus said, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.  That's what Romans 8, 26, 27, and 28 says, that He will help us in our weaknesses, our infirmities. The Holy Spirit's been sent to come alongside. The secret to the strength in these perilous times is to stir the gift of God that is within you. Second Timothy 1, verse 6 says, Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting of my hands. Now listen, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but power and love and a sound mind. That comes through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit daily. We should be filled with the fullness of God every day, daily communion in our prayer life, in our study of the Word of God, in our fellowship with other believers. Listen to what Ephesians says. Ephesians 3, verse 17 says this, That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, and that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height. And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that ye ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the measure of the amount of God's presence that you allow unto your life is the measure of the comfort and the strength that can come into your life. The comforter, as he is called, will not, cannot be offended. We can't offend the Holy Spirit or drive him away. We must commune in prayer and welcome the presence of God into our life in order to keep our minds and hearts in Christ Jesus. The comforter, who is the Holy Spirit? Jesus Christ Spirit dwelling in you is needed now more than ever before. He will keep you in all of your ways. Trusting God happens because I've learned to abide in his presence. I've learned to abide in prayer and not just getting together in prayer meetings or praying at church but daily. It's praying without ceasing. That's communing with the Holy Spirit. Fellowship with other godly individuals. You're going to have to be careful the relationships you have in the days ahead and what comes into your spirit through social media. You need to let the preeminence of the Word of God abide with you and the Holy Spirit will reveal the Word of God in truth and in understanding and help you to see the things that are coming ahead. Craving the presence of God is a critical thing today, my friends. When I say crave, that is a desire in your heart to be able to fellowship with Jesus Christ. I know you have that as a believer. Some of you today are sensing, even you believers that are watching, Christians that should be without fear and should not be filled with dread and worry. God said, I don't want you to worry. In fact, worry is a sin. In fact, the Bible says in Revelation that the fearful will be thrown into the pit of hell. That's the reason why we can't be afraid. We must have the mind of Christ to be steady in the days that are ahead. Because the truth is Jesus Christ is about to return and he's going to come for those who have been in such fellowship that their ear is tuned to the trumpet of God. Are you ready? Some of you tonight that are watching are not ready to meet Jesus Christ. Maybe you've back slid on God, drifted away from the presence of God. I want to tell you, you need to get close to the house, close to God's house, close to the communion of His presence. And say, Lord, forgive me a sinner. Come into my heart.  I want to be ready when you come again. And for those of you that are drifting, you Christians, believers that are drifting away, you've let the Holy Spirit just move away and you've not communed with Him. It's time for you to get back where you belong. Jesus is about to return. I'd love to hear from you. Those of you that have just given your life to Jesus, you're sensing the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. I want to hear from you. Email me. Call the number that's on the screen. If you need a Bible, if you need some information, we can send back to you to help you in your walk with the Lord. We'll be glad to do that. And for every believer, every Christian, stay rooted and grounded in Christ and in the presence of God and He will keep you until the day of the Lord. Thanks for joining us for Prophecy Files. I look forward to being back with you again. And until the next time, remember Jesus Christ is coming soon.


Two hundred children's voices. Children learn best if they're engaged in their own learning and their independent thinkers and they're able to construct reality and meaning from the world around them. From the moment they're born they know what they want and so originally there's this primal instinct but as they get older they make decisions, they're independent, they're curious and they're really keen to explore what's around them and so it's important to listen to children speak about what motivates and engages them in their learning and continually refer back to how they would like to learn so that teachers can focus on that motivation and engagement. So this study involved kindergarten right through to year two asking two hundred children what it is that motivates them and how they like to learn, how children think and how they learn and what excites them about being involved in formal education. We spoke to children in five state school classrooms in three early childhood education centres and in the state library about the way they like to learn. In order to get the children's ideas flowing we asked them to draw pictures of themselves engaged in the act of learning and especially learning that they saw as being particularly exciting. We asked them to tell us about who they like to learn with and from, how they like to learn what and where they like to learn. We needed people to see that even very young children are confident and capable and able to articulate their ideas and the only way to capture that is to video record them in action. So these videos reconnect us with young people and make sure that we instill the value in learning of that curiosity and that excitement and positivity that young people bring. It's in all of our best interest to engage children and help them to develop into the future leaders in society. So from a teacher's point of view it's essential that they focus on what it is that motivates children and how they like to learn. It's important for us to make sure that we're focusing on the learner and for teachers to take that into account and to build learning experiences that increases capability through that engagement is fundamental to learning.