think we'll go to the next paper. So we have Juliet Waterkin from Africa, a very interesting organization that I think has its roots in Zimbabwe and I think some of the the Community Health Club, if you like, the inventive and innovative spirit has come from this organization and they've with very little support compared to some of the other sort of bigger organizations they've managed to actually put together some really interesting results. So this is the reason why we're here today. I think you're very much encouraged to collaborate with Africa ahead after this meeting. If you don't already have that linkage, you're very welcome to make that. Good morning everybody. I thought I'd just bring us down to basics. We're all people, we all have our families and we're here today to talk about family survival and this is a picture of my grandson. I thought it would be very appropriate because here's a little boy who's only about six months an arm. He's an absolutely delightful little boy, healthy, well looked after in a clean environment, but just to focus our minds on child survival. For every child like this, there are 16 in Africa that don't make it and I think that's a very, very, if we remember one fact we should remember that we're here today, not really just to sort of punt our particular methodology or to try and sell our wares. We're actually here to try and save lives and we are mainly concerned with lives in Africa. We're trying to get the maximum we can out of a project and address as much as we can so that you get as much bang for your buck. So when you look at this, our idea is to look at three themes. I know that we're all professionals here and you've given the whole, you know, a lot of thought to how to make things work, but I'd like to concentrate on three main themes which sort of really resonate with the Community Health Lab model of development. The first one is the holistic approach to disease prevention, i.e. not just looking at diarrhea. There is more to life than diarrhea. I think that our sector, the wash sector, tends to get focused incredibly much on diarrhea so I'm going to take you through a few reasons why we should look at other things. Secondly, I want to revisit empowerment of women. It's an idea which has almost deadened us. We've heard it so much, but really it is the basis of good development. And thirdly, positive peer support. We're talking about support. We're not talking about pressure. We're trying to look at behavior change as a form of behavior which comes when the majority want to do something. So these are all sort of social psychology behind the Community Health Club which is what I was built to talk about. But in fact what we're talking about here is the mechanism for change. Why it works. You'll have to believe us it works. If you don't believe us, you'll have to come and see it and Anthony is going to talk to you about that. But I'm going to try and explain why I think it's working just from my own personal perspective. I'll go back to a story. I went to Guinea-Bissau seven years ago. It's one of the poorest countries in Africa. I was on a trip to take photographs of these beautiful children and then I came across Sene. Sene is a one month old baby. I want to focus on Sene because when we look at statistics, we should remember that. This is going very fast. The mortality of under fives, if you look at one child like Sene who died and you're looking at six million that died or six millions that we could have prevented in the last year, there were deaths that were unnecessary and they were due to a number of causes. Again, this is a UNICEF well-known UNICEF table a lot of people use. And if you look at diarrhea, it's only 17% of the cause. There are other causes here which we tend to ignore. Pneumonia, ARIs is a major cause of death amongst small children. We're looking at Neonatal, little Sene who died of Neonatal tetanus because she was actually delivered with a rusty blade and never ever recovered. This is the reality. We're looking at the statistic here, but just that quick glimpse of Sene will remind you that how many children lost their lives through poor delivery methods or not getting to the delivery place and time. The injuries, the pneumonia, the malaria, measles can be prevented and HIV can be prevented from mother to child transmission being controlled. In our work, we can actually reduce so much through good hygiene and sanitation. Neonatal can be reduced by 44% by good birthing practices. Diarrhea can be reduced by 88% and ARI, Pneumonia, over 30%. So if we can do this sort of reduction, we should have interventions which allow this maximum, the spread over all the diseases and not just focus on a few simple diseases that we can tackle. Again, we know that malaria can be reduced by, they say 50%, I'd say more by ITNs. Immunization can practically wipe out, eradicate malaria measles. These differences, if you look at this, this is a slightly rule of thumb kind of difference, but I calculated, for example here, this is the number of cases that were, if you had a community health club, which is this yellow, the first year of training in a community health club, if you go by those previous reductions that I told you, like 88% diarrhea, 40% reduction of other neonatal, if you calculate those, you can actually reduce the number of cases. So here I've taken 100, say this was 100 cases, you could reduce it from 37 to 21. If you went to the next year, which is what the next year in our health clubs become more interested in nutrition and they become called fan clubs, food, agriculture, nutrition clubs. If you go to the second year, you start focusing on nutrition, you can see that most of the diseases can come from the first year, but it can be halved if you've got good nutrition, i.e. if a child has malaria, it can survive, it has 50% more chance of survival if it's well nourished. So if nourishment, good nourishment is one of the key things. So we don't just leave it at, you know, washed diseases, we go into nutrition in the next phase. So if you get down to here, the green side, this is 14 cases as opposed to 37, you go from pneumonia, it could be reduced from 19 to 8, all the way down. This sort of, I mean, it's very, very rough and I wouldn't say it's scientific at all, but this is our inspiration, this is what we're trying to achieve, reduce as much disease as we can. So we would be able to reduce the total amount of deaths we would be able to reduce or save, total saved 62 out of 88. You know, if you actually look at that, we're really addressing the problem of development. And just to encourage you, I mean, you may say that this has been hypothetical, it has, it is in some sense. But we had a program in Zimbabwe, one of the first programs, and this is why the data is, it goes right back to 97, actually up to 2001. This was the duration of the program. And this was the coverage of health clubs here. So you've got 80% coverage of health clubs within a catchment of a clinic. Now, when you've got, our argument is that you've got to have density of coverage, not just one here, one here, one here. You don't see the impact there because public health is something which has to be blanket for it to succeed. And that's why you need a very thorough intervention. Here, we could see that after, when we started, right, these diseases here, this is ARI, pneumonia, et cetera, skin diseases, bilhazia, and I think this is diarrhea, all these are going down, down, down, down. Now, this is an important thing. 2001 is where in other parts of this district, we actually, we stopped in 2001. And in other parts, not this ward, but in other areas, in 2001 where we stopped, it began very slowly to rise again. The pattern changed and went up. Now, in this area where we had been going for one, two, three, four, nearly five years, when we left, and this is the cutoff place in Zimbabwe, as you all know, Zimbabwe went down the tube in 2001 and the funding stopped. So, here was the cutoff point. Now, it didn't sort of start climbing again, it continued straight. More research needs to be done on this, but these are reported cases. A lot of people are skeptical about that, but it does show a pattern, and we could see the pattern comparative to the other control groups. In, in 2008, in Zimbabwe, everything seems to happen in a big sort of, it's always very dramatic in Zimbabwe. We, we had an incredible cholera outbreak, as some of you may remember, there were 10,000 cases of which four and a half thousand died. And we were asked to work in Mutari City, in one of the most high-density areas, Sukubva, where there was a market of people coming across from Mozambique, and the cholera was coming through that border to this big market, and they expected it to be one of the hotspots there. As an emergency program tying up with Oxfam, we started community health clubs here in huge numbers, oh dear, and let me go back. And so this, there were about 50 community health clubs here, and the numbers, about five and a half thousand members, they all, as you say, the green card, this is what they're learning. They're incredibly focused on, on cleaning up the environment, there were huge cleanup campaigns, the marketplace was cleaned up. I went, I had an extraordinary time going with the Environmental Health Department who couldn't believe their eyes, because the, all the solid waste had built up in huge mounds, because the local council was not able to cope with the, with disposing the solid waste. And the community health clubs cleaned it up, burned it, separated it out, non-organic, organic, and it was an amazing process. And you know, what we learned from this was that the council took hard and they said, okay, well, we, we can deal with the rest. And there was some open storage near where the first cases were, they got that cleaned up. So it's really sort of putting government into a position where the people have rarely shown them up for what needs to be done. And it, working together with, with government is, is what we do. We work through the Ministry of Health, which has to be emphasized, we, we're not just a little NGO on our own, all we're doing is really trying to work with government, making government more effective. So, when we, we've, you saw the membership card, I think it's quite amusing here, they actually sort of written it out on their tree, this is their meeting place where they meet, and this is in Shawna, and actually you've seen this, but these are the typically the sort of subjects which we would address. And here you can see the holistic nature, we look at Bilhazia, malaria, worms, skin diseases, HIV, nutrition, sanitation, etc. Sanitation is right down at the end here, because actually by the time we've been through all these sessions, we've stressed sanitation so much that we, we don't have a difficulty getting people to build their latrines. They've heard it from every single source, there's not a big sort of coercive effect, it's just, yeah it's obvious, we need a latrine. And you'll see in, in some of our statistics, as you're welcome to have a look at some of the information there, you'll see the enormous response, it not only creates a demand for sanitation, but people are building their own latrines, if that's your interest. I know that the interest has been on sanitation in the past, but my particular sort of point I want to make is it's not just sanitation. And again, a slide very much like the one that was shown from Miranda. This is our basic, we always produce a bar chart like this, the, the, the baseline is taken through community monitoring. They have a, which is actually the community that health clubs themselves go through and they take records, it's called an inventory of all the facilities in each household, because the households themselves know what they've got and the, the health club, the chairperson of the health club has been given that responsibility to monitor the health club. So they go around to each and every household and they do an inventory of what they've got. At the end they go back and do the inventory again and this is what you see the difference between the before and after. And you know, I won't dwell on that, but the, the details are very, very interesting. There are five and a half thousand members, um, 121 health clubs. So you can see that what we try and do is not approach individually, but move the whole lot up together.  By the end of it, most of it was up to 80% coverage. So, you know, there's some way to go in some of these different places, but basically, um, you can see there's a general uplift of the group and the average of 16 indicators is 23% in six months. Um, oh sorry, the average was, uh, the average of all 16 indicators was 79%. So if you took them all, they were almost 80%. So how do community health clubs work? Um, now just looking a little bit at the social psychology, we want to, we want to understand why, as Arne says, why do we get this buy-in? Why do people come in such numbers and, you know, look at the empowerment of women through group support, because basically we are very sociable people. Um, I'm sure we've all, development practitioners, you have, you refer to community the whole time. Now what do we mean, mean by community? When we actually say we're going to the community, we sort of just take it for granted in a strange sort of way that the community is a formatted group. They're out there, the community. And I really beg to differ. I really think that we should look at it. Is the, what we would say, common unity? That was the word, common unity. Is the common unity in a community? Very, very seldom, very seldom.   We found that really what we need to develop is that common vision, that common unity. Not take it for granted, and this is the trick, is don't take it for granted that they're functional, build that functionality. If they are functional, you'll build it even higher. So the difference is here with women, um, the incredible inspiration, you know, they're so lively, they're so, so excited about what they're doing, they're learning. Um, here they're looking at different food groups. Here they're doing peanut butter making for, for weaning. Um, a simple little, uh, appropriate technology here, what we did with the health clubs, each health club at the end of their, uh, six months training they went on to the next phase. We had a tiny, tiny startup for each club to identify a project that they wanted to do. They grew peanuts, we gave them that little peanut, um, um, masher thing, and you know, this was something which radically transformed the, the intake of, of, um, weaning food for a lot of children. I've got wonderful quotations from many, many women that I've interviewed, and we asked them what's the difference between a non-member and a member? And they said, well, non-members have quite a lot of misunderstanding amongst them. They spend quite a lot of time quarreling, but for us club members we're always doing something constructive. And this is really what we like to do. I mean, everyone likes to be constructive. The ideas, if they're pushed out there, they are taken. It's like they've got a hunger, a hunger for knowledge. And this is why they come in such, uh, quantities. Here you'll see the IDP camps in northern Uganda. This is three clubs met together here. Um, the sense of identity that you get by, um, having a club, it's probably something we've forgotten. You know, we've forgotten how amazing it is to say, I'm a health club member, and the inspiration for this really came from the scout, the Boy Scout movement, where, um, you know, little boys there squeaky clean, getting dressed up in their little suits and everything.  And it was the same sort of ideas to try and get people enthused about completing a whole, um, list of tasks.  And I can tell you, this is really something which turns people on. It's unbelievable how much pleasure a certificate will give to people. Um, we had one little old lady saying, you know, when I was, um, when I was born, I got a certificate, and actually I didn't think I was going to get another certificate till I got my death certificate. Now I've got this, I've got this, and my husband's so proud of me. They frame it, they put it on the wall. These are simple things which motivate, motivate people and, and really gives them the sense of being acknowledged by the community.  These are, these are things that they tell us and it's really, really encouraging. This is inside of a community health club, um, members' kitchen. Beautifully polished. These are made out of, out of clay, polished. Everything's beautifully displayed and she actually won, you know, she was one of the model homes that won one of the, the prizes. So, um, yeah, we're a little bit inspired by, uh, something I once heard, um, some government official said to Mother Teresa, you know, there's such millions there, so many millions, like we're talking about trying to save six million lives in Africa. Where do you start? And, and the government official said to her, you know, how can you be bothered?  And she said, well, actually, how do you count a million? You know, and they said, well, one, two, three, four, that's what we do. And that's what we do. We're counting. And we're counting and we're trying to get there. It's a, it's a, it's a big task and we need a lot of help from bigger organizations and through government. But you can actually make enormous, um, inroads into people. You just start. Um, a little bit of explanation for those who like this kind of thing. Even those who don't. It's just how I see it, how I see what, what, how our thing works is everybody says, you know, oh, well, you know, you know it, but you don't do it, right? That, that was a big argument for, for, for social marketing. Yeah. Everyone knows the things. Everyone knows they shouldn't smoke, but they don't do it, right? And we say, yeah, that's true. You don't, you don't only have to know it. You've got to know also the experience of what happens. For example, you know, if I, um, had a child like Senyi that died, right? I might have had the experience of actually knowing what it was like when a child had diarrhea, got dehydration and died. You know, if I had the experience of seeing my next door neighbors being rehydrated, I would then believe in ORS. So you need that personal experience plus the knowledge. You need the understanding. So the interpretation of facts is very, very often missing. And I think because we're such quick sort of, you know, well educated people, we forget that getting things through takes a lot of time. It needs a lot of reinforcement. It needs coming again and again saying the same very simple things, but always reinforced with good examples. So you've got to understand as well as know. But then you get to the point of can I do it? Actually, can I really build a latrine? It means digging a big hole in the ground. It means lining it.  Can I really do it? My husband's not here. All that sort of stuff. So it's the self efficacy, the doubt. You know, rural women, especially those who've been left behind. You've not been educated very much. They haven't the confidence that we have to make individual decisions. So what I think we've been doing for a lot of time in development is we've been targeting individuals who haven't really got that confidence to make the individual decision. So our theory is, yeah, do the individual thing which they do need to learn. Everyone needs to learn, but then reinforce it by group. So you get the common knowledge. You get the common understanding in these health clubs because they're all looking at things together. And then they have a group consensus. They understand together and they understand as a group what should be done. This group consensus, of course, it's a very sociological sort of aspect. Underneath everything are values. What we value here is, you know, we value good development in this room. This is one of our values. Now, you know, the group, as a health club, will say, okay, what we value is clean living. These are our new values. So you get group values and it's the values which actually dictate behavior. What we've been doing is we've been going to the behavior without addressing the values. And that's why things don't stick.  They just are dictated by the values. This comes from the group, this pressure, this support that comes from a peer group, then goes across to the individual and all of us here are sitting here going, yep, okay, this seems to be the thing to do. Okay, let's do it.  Those people will do it for different reasons. So everybody changes. Some people change fast when they have the knowledge. Other people change just because everyone else is doing it. So you're kind of catching the whole bunch. And just to focus on one woman, Mrs. Terira is amazing. One of many women who rose up through the health clubs, she was just a woman sitting at the back of the health club when I was visiting once and said, you know, what skills do you have here? And they said, well, not much. And I said, well, can any of you make pots? And she said, yeah, I can make pots. So right at the back said, okay, so why don't you teach you other people to make pots and we'll make beehives out of pots? And she went, okay, maybe I can do that. Well, honestly, two years later, she was the trainer for the entire, not only her health club, but the next door health club. She went to become the trainer for the, for the district. She, here she is, here still got the same shirt on you might notice. She now got a wig. She's smart. She's with our other two trainers. This lady was in a similar position at a graduation ceremony.  And that was, this is, this is, this is what I used this for my, to summarize what I think about the health clubs is I'm not nobody now. You know, if you're out in the rural areas, you are nobody. Nobody's interested in you. But if every little person goes, I'm not nobody now. You know, that's changed. That's how you can empower women. So I'm just going to leave you with this nice little song, which goes, I hope, no sound, no sound. Okay. It goes, women are coming around the corner. Women are coming around the corner. Tell your friends that women are coming. Tell your government that women are coming. Women are coming around the corner. And this is where I think the power lies. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, Juliet. That was a great inspiration. We're running a bit late. But I, if there's a burning question, I will never stop on. So I guess we have one from Elizabeth Tilley from Avag. And you'll have to come up to the top here. So I did. My question was just, maybe you can just speak to the timeline. I got a little bit confused in terms of the one year and then the fan and then you said you were in the one district for seven years. Like, how does it continue and is there still intervention or does it run on its own? Just how that kind of works. Yeah. I think it, you know, it's so difficult in a presentation to say everything at the same time. Sorry about that. Probably was a bit confusing. If you look at the membership card, there's 20 to 24 topics. All right. And that card dictates the length of time of the training. And we meet once a week for two hours. So if you've got 20 sessions, it would work for five months or if you've got 24, it would be six months. So basically the actual intervention, the main intervention takes six months.  Then this is, then that's the end of the first phase. It's a graduation. And if you're, if you're only in a wash project and there's absolutely no interest in anything else, very often it ends there. And basically the community on their own. But, you know, what we're looking for is more integrated kind of funding, really. And it's quite hard to come by this that, you know, there's more than, more than just the wash interest. In that case, we can go on to the second, third, fourth year. In the example I showed you with the peanut butter making in that district, we had a three-year program and the first year was health promotion, just the health clubs with the membership card. The second year was water and sanitation. There were a lot of latrines that were built. I think 2000 latrines were built during that year. And there was some water in another district. And then the third year went on to what we call FAN. It was sort of like income-generating projects. So, you know, it's a movable feast and it really is dictated by the funding. Okay, one more question. So there will be a discussion at the end. So I'm sorry. What again? My name is Daniel Diva. I'm a student at KTH. I understand that in many societies in Africa, we have this kind of setup where males dominate the households. So I would like to find out how have you handled that issue within the community health clubs because I say it's mostly women and there could be issues, you know, if I'm going to build a latrine that I don't have the permission of my husband, how do you deal with that issue to have the success that you've demonstrated to us today? Thank you. I think that's an incredibly important question. Thank you for asking that. We, you know, they're called community health clubs, not women's groups. And they're not mothers clubs. We're trying very, very hard to involve men in hygiene. It's a really uphill battle. It isn't something that comes naturally. Women naturally gravitate towards this kind of training. They love it. It's to do with their children. We spend a lot of time trying to encourage couples to come together. And, you know, if they do come as a couple and they get a certificate, we make a huge fuss of them at graduation as a sort of modern, progressive couple working together, etc. But the truth is that 80% or even 90% or even 98% are women in the health clubs. But it doesn't mean to say that the men are not involved. We do entry into the community through the village leader and we very much encourage that if he doesn't want to come along himself, that his wife should come along. And, you know, like all of us, the wives do a lot of talking to their husbands and the husbands actually monitor it through their wives.  It's amazing how the, because they're to do with hygiene, it tends to draw women in, but not exclusively. But I totally agree we are working on trying to get more men involved. But I think that comes with, you know, if there's a good example from the chief that the chief comes along and he tells all his mates to come, then the men come. But it is a bit of a battle.


Hello Paul, Jefina and John Paul. Thank you for joining class. Also welcome to our e-learning students. We'll be listening to this lecture later on. Last class that was on Monday, we began studying chapter 14 of the book of Romans. We read through Romans chapter 14 and I just gave a brief introduction to chapter 14. Now we'll continue our study with each verse on chapter 14. Before we do that, we'll just pause for a word of prayer. So can I ask Paul to lead us in prayer please? Let's pray. Father Almighty Good, we thank you for yet another bright day in our life. I surrender the class to you, I surrender the lecture to you. It is because of your grace and glory that we exist. Father King of glory, as we are going to learn, we call upon the spirit of understanding, the spirit of wisdom to prevail upon us. We cover the internet connection with the blood of Jesus that there will be no interruption. We pray and commit this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Thank you Paul. So in Romans chapter 14, Paul is basically talking about how we relate to one another. He's talking about Christian living here and two points he basically highlights in Romans chapter 14. The first one is don't judge another brother or another believer who is expressing their faith little differently from you. And the second thing is don't become a stumbling block, which means we need to live our lives in such a way that our expression of faith shouldn't cause someone else to stumble in their faith or the way that we live or the way that we do things, what we eat, we drink, the places that we go to should not become a stumbling block to others in their faith walk with God. So he basically puts it in the context of, you know, he's talking in the context of certain things that are relevant for them. So he's saying, you know, in that context, he's saying, don't judge someone in the certain days they observe, which is certain days they're good, certain days they're bad and the food that they eat. Okay. And then he's secondly, he says, how I express myself in the food I eat or what I should drink should not cause someone else to stumble. So he's basically talking about these two specific areas they eat. Okay. Now, is that it's going to be relevant for our day and age today? What do you think? It's what Paul writing in Romans chapter 14. Do you think it is relevant for us in our day and age today? Yes. No. Can I have some answers? Sorry. Somebody said something. Okay. Okay. Jeffyna says it's relevant. Okay. I thought I heard Rosalind. I don't think she's in the class. Okay. It's relevant. How is it relevant? Okay. So even today there can be issues like this among believers about observing certain days, food. It might not be like a major issue like it was in Paul's time and that is why he's writing, but the principle that Paul brings out here in this two specific contexts that he's writing to the church at Rome also apply to other situations, you know, or it can, you know, or we need to apply the same truth in the situations that we face in today's day or age or in the context that we are living in. Okay. So what do you think are some of the areas that we think that people judge us on as believers or some of the areas that we can be a stumbling block to others? What do you think? If you don't want to unmute your mics and speak, you can type in the chat. What do you think some of the challenges are in today's age, the time that we are living in, that people can judge us on? I have few points to share, but I don't know if it goes well everywhere, but back in my place, the way we dress is one of the way people judge us. So if you don't wear a saree, if you don't wear a selvar or if you don't cover our heads, that creates a lot of judgment. So when I go back to my place, being a Bible college student, the judgment increases more. And I am from a village background, my dad is from a village background. So on our vacations, we go there. In there, the food practices, they still follow. They still believe we should not eat blood, take all those things. So I think it depends upon the culture. So obviously when I go back to my village, I don't eat much of these things. And when I go back to where I live, I try changing my dress because we don't want to be a stumbling block, especially when I go and preach somewhere. And I may follow different things here, but when I go back there, I'll change a little. Ultimately, we want the word to reach them. Yes, so true. Thank you, Jafina. Anyone else wants to share? I think culture is very different places, especially for us as women, when we have to go and preach and teach somewhere else, especially if you go on Mission Strip to North India, we are careful what we wear. We have to cover our head when we go up to preach. At APC, when we go up to preach on stage, we can wear shoes or a footwear or whatever. But when we go to these churches, we have to remove our footwear. So it's good to do these things so that we are not a stumbling block to anyone. So let's study Romans chapter 14 so that we can look at what Paul is basically saying and then apply the same truths in today's context or the time that we are living in. So can somebody please read Romans chapter 1 verses 1 to 13, please? So is it Romans chapter 14 verses 1 to 13? Even like Surita, Romans chapter 14 verses 1 to 13 or 1 to 10? We see one who is weak in the faith but not disputes over doubtful things. For one believes that he may eat all things but he who is weak eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats. For God has received him. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed he will be made to stand. For God is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day above another, another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day observes it to the Lord. And he who does not observe the day to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats eats to the Lord for he gives God thanks. And he who does not eat to the Lord he does not eat and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself and no one dies to himself. For if we live we live to the Lord and if we die if we die to the Lord.  To this end Christ died and rose and lived again. That he might be Lord of both dead and the living. But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. I will read till 13 faster. Yes please John. Thank you. For it is written as I live says the Lord every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God. So that each of us shall give account of God, account of himself to God. Therefore let us not judge one another anymore but rather resolve this not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way. Amen. Thank you John Paul. So in this first part of his letter or in chapter 14 or this part of the portion of the letter that he is writing you know Paul is concerned about people who are weak in the faith. So basically someone who is new to the faith or basically someone who's been there a couple of months and is growing. So what Paul is saying is welcome them and when you welcome them receive them. But when you receive them don't go about arguing or disputing with them about which days to observe, what food they're eating, how they're eating, why they're eating and all of these things. So he's saying you know be mindful of these people who are new in the faith who have come newly basically Gentiles are coming into the church and it's the Jews who are you know talking about all of these customs rituals or testament laws and rituals and days and things that they are following continue to follow even though they have accepted Jesus Christ. So he says you know when they do some things in a certain way it's their preference and if it's their preference don't look down on them because of how they are dressing how they are living, what days they observe as more sacred than other days what kind of food they're eating and all of those things it's their preference and in verse 3 he says you know whatever they eat or drink or whatever who are we to judge them you know because God has received them which means God receives all of us equally and so he says don't judge anyone because whatever they do it's between God and them so whatever you are doing as Jews it's between you and God and whatever they are doing the other new believers in the faith basically referring to Gentiles is saying you know it's between them and God it's God who judges okay you are no one to judge so if some people have some days as preference it's between them and God you know for some people all the days are same some people some days are more sacred than other days and you know if they are convinced about some things for themselves you know let them it's their preference it's their choice let them do what they're doing because whatever they're doing is between them and God and God receives all of us and he receives all of us equally okay so he's saying you know let them do don't dispute over those things so in today's world you know in the context of our church today it could be you know when new believers come to our church it's about you know whether they should wear certain kinds of clothes you know whether they should wear certain kind of jewelry whether women should be allowed to preach and teach whether women should be allowed to wear you know come with braided hair and jewelry you know and all of those things you know whether going to the movies is right you know or whether coming to church in jeans or shorts is right or not right just shorts and t-shirt is okay to come you know to church or whether women should cover their heads what else you know baptism whether sprinkling baptism or immersion baptism you know whether they're able to speak in tongues or not you know the gifts of the Spirit and the Holy Spirit so you know if we just push all of these things on these new believers they would not want to come to church so we need to be very very careful even with children you know realize that the ministering to children you know some of these things can be so we need to be so sensitive to children I remember before I took over children's church you know one of the teachers was teaching me told me that you know we were teaching about the Holy Spirit and the baptism the Holy Spirit and so she was saying how she brought her her nephews to church and they are from a very traditional background and that Sunday it was about the Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit baptism and she said the way things were done you know clearly kind of put off these children and really scared them that they did not they said they would not come and attend this children's church again so you know that was a good hearing from this person because after that you know I've been so mindful whenever we do whether we whenever we teach about the Holy Spirit or have Holy Spirit baptism in children's church or do anything that is new some programs anything always educate the children tell them what we are doing what is the intention what is the learning why we are doing what we are doing because if not when we don't do that children are totally lost and they can you know totally get put off and they can even not want to come to children's church or even church and do nothing with have to do anything with God so you know we need to be very careful and sensitive to even how we go about doing this even in adult church even when we do Holy Spirit baptism or even when we are talking about you know water baptism you know specifically at the APC we have a teaching you know we teach about water baptism before people are water baptized just about 20 minutes we take them through walk them through that publication water baptism and even before people go through Holy Spirit baptism we realize they come with different mindsets thoughts and views about how Holy Spirit baptism is what it is and so how important it is for us to teach them and give them the freedom you know whether they want to accept and move and be prayed for and be led and all of those things so you know all of these things are not to be argued about okay all of these things we should be sensitive the doubtful things here what Paul is talking about is what you eat and the days you observe okay so in essence what Paul is saying is in a is he's saying you know don't argue okay about these doubtful things and verse 3 says let not him who eats despise him who does not eat and let him who does not eat judge him who eats for God has received him so the essence of what he's saying is you know don't despise don't judge you know because God has received them God has accepted them and all of them are equal before God okay and verse 5 he says you know let each be fully convinced in his own mind so you'll be convinced in your own mind what you want to do how you want to dress how you want to live you know what days you want to observe what kind of food you want to eat whether you want to eat meat or vegetable what days are more sacred than the other days you know so there is no hard and fast fool in the New Testament about for believers on such things okay so he says you have to make up your mind and once you make up your mind he says there are two things you need to do what do you think are the two things you need to do what do you think Paul is saying are the two things to do I already mentioned it anyone would like to say what are the two things we need to do once we are convinced in our mind what we should be doing what we shouldn't be doing what are the two things that we need to do any answers first one is do not judge okay and the second one is don't be a stumbling block to others okay do not judge someone you know they don't follow what you are doing okay that's what he says in verse 10 can somebody read verse 10 again please verse 10 but why do you judge your brother or why do you show contempt for your brother for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ yes so it says why are you judging or showing contempt you know contempt means why are you looking down as though you are more spiritual than them as though you are more righteous than them because of certain kind of food you eat the way you dress the way you worship God you know the way you do things so you know why do you judge and why do you show contempt because ultimately you know whatever we do we are doing it for God okay and God is the one who would judge us okay and each one is we would each one is going to give an account of the things the deeds the way that we have lived our lives our attitudes our motives we are going to give an account to God ourselves okay so he says you know don't judge and don't show contempt now in the traditional context you know there are certain kinds of clothes that we need to wear to church you know in some churches I've observed it's okay for us to go which in shorts and you know in jeans nobody would you know really kind of think that you are worldly or you know you've lost your salvation kind of thing but some of the churches that we go to we can't think of going in jeans or in shorts you know I mean that's a no-thing okay so you know we think if we go like that we think that you know the people will think that we are backslidden or we've gone away from God so it's we need to be very conscious of you know the context where we are in what we are doing even if you see people dressed like that you know don't judge them and you know also don't show contempt and important that because I come from a certain church where it's okay for us to go in jeans and t-shirt or go in shorts and worship God nobody will judge you but going to another place where this is a big no you know I can't expect people to understand me and you know to know which church I come from and all of those things because they're going to think that the church I come from is not a spiritual church it's a worldly church you know where the word of God is not taught and I'm giving them a wrong impression so you know important for us to adhere to culture and to the context we are in so that we are not a stumbling block to others okay don't judge let each one be persuaded in their own mind which means each one whatever they're doing is they're doing it as unto the Lord and each one of us are going to give an account of what we're doing to God so this should be our whole perspective okay our whole perspective is don't judge because God is a judge and ultimately we are going to give an account to him and in verse 13 he says you know don't be a stumbling block to others how you express your faith should not become a stumbling block to others and then he goes on to talk about how we need to be convinced about what we are doing you know in our own cells and when we are convinced about certain things we need to also be mindful that you know when we do things in the open if another brother looks at us you know it's going to be grieved or heartbroken or they are going to lose their faith or they are going to walk away from God or it's going to be a hindrance for them you know then don't do it if you go back home and you want to eat certain kind of food and meat and all of those things you can do it but you know just because it's going to be a stumbling block to someone else I will not do it for example you know if I go to certain churches and I have to cover their head then you know I do that but if I come to my church and that's not a requisite I don't cover my head I can pray like that I can preach without covering my head or when I go home back home after I preach in this church where I cover my head and I go and pray I read the Bible I don't have to cover my head and I don't have to cover my head and pray or read the word I know God is going to listen to me irrespective of that and I'm convinced about that hey I don't have to cover my head but when I am in a certain situation that requires of me I do that so that I'm not a stumbling block as it is for people in the north part of our country and certain parts in South India where they find it difficult for a woman first of all in a place as a pastor as a preacher to accept us how much more we need to be cognizant of the fact that whatever I'm doing the way I dress the way I conduct my life people are watching me and I need to be very careful so that the truth that I want to share with them the Holy Spirit has laid upon my heart that's not become a stumbling block for them or a mental block for them to receive and they are able to receive it and they are able to be willing for the move of God to work in their lives in the Holy Spirit to work and to receive what the Holy Spirit is you know releasing even as I minister so that is what he is mentioning in verses 1 to verse 13 let's look at verses 14 till verse 23 so can somebody read Romans 14 verses 14 to 23 please anyone reads is there any question on verses 1 to 14 anything you all want to make a comment on anything that you all want to say okay there's no comments if there's nothing you all want to ask there's no question can somebody please read verses 14 to verse 23 please verse 14 oh yeah please go ahead I know and I'm convinced by the law Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself but to him who considers anything to be unclean to him it is unclean yet if your brothers believed because of your food you are no longer walking in love do not destroy do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil for the kingdom of God is not is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit for he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food all things indeed are pure but it is evil for the man who eats with offense it is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak do you have faith have it to yourself before God happy is he who does not condemn himself and what he approves but he who doubts is condemned because he does not eat from faith for whatever is not from faith is sin amen thank you Rosalind so in these verses Paul is talking specifically about eating meat and drinking wine so in essence what Paul is saying is when you are in Christ you are free to eat what you want so if you just have to paraphrase what Paul is saying he is saying hey I want to be careful that I don't grieve my brother because of food if what I am doing is an offense this is he talking about in verse 20 if what I am doing is an offense to another or what I am doing is an offense to a weaker brother somebody who is weak in their faith which means someone who does not understand the freedom we have in Christ to eat certain food then I will be careful because I don't want to grieve my brother so this is paraphrasing what Paul is saying so he is saying we have the freedom in Christ we are free to eat what we want but Paul is saying I will be careful I don't want to grieve my brother I don't want to become an offense to a weaker brother someone who is weak in their faith someone who is not able to understand this freedom that we have in Christ Jesus that we can eat certain kind of food then I will be careful and I will not grieve my brother she says what is the offense the weaker brother does not understand the freedom that we have in Christ basically this is not right this shouldn't be happening this is what he thinks but for me or for Paul he is saying we have this freedom to eat whatever we want so we enjoy that freedom but for weaker brother this is not right so in front of him I will not do it so if what I am doing is going to weaken his faith in Christ then Paul says I won't eat or drink that so that I won't become a stumbling block to his faith verse 21 where he says it's good to eat or drink wine or do anything by which your brother stumbles or offended or is made weak and it's okay Paul saying even if I don't eat certain kind of food in front of my other brothers and sisters in Christ it's okay I don't want to destroy the work of God for the sake of food and he says all things indeed are pure which means we are allowed to eat anything and everything but it's evil for a man who eats without offence offence means like I said the weaker brother does not understand his freedom in Christ for him this is not right it should not be happening so Paul says I have freedom in Christ and my freedom in Christ is the kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking or the clothes you wear or the certain kind of rituals or the certain days you observe festivals that you do but the kingdom of God is all about righteousness peace and joy in the holy spirit which is the bigger and the more important things okay so he says I have the freedom but if I exercise my freedom it's going to cause a new believer to be either offended or be weakened in their faith in Christ then I won't do it in that context okay and also look at what he says in in verse 19 therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another so the whole thought or the whole idea about why God is even asking us to preach and teach or to flow in the gifts of the spirit in the church in the context of the church is for edification okay we also saw this in the 5 ministry offices it is for the edification of the body of Christ okay so everything that we do what we preach how we live our lives you know what we say even when we are serving people flowing in the anointing flowing in the gifts of the spirit should all be for the edification of the body of Christ at the church of God the believers the saints can be edified can be built can be strengthened equipped in their faith in their spiritual work in their understanding about who God is and also verse 19 another very important thing that he says is let us pursue all of these things pursue means what what do you think is pursue let us run behind keep at it persevere endure with these important things these truths and how we live how we relate how we fellowship with another make sure that you know you have peace peace is very very important what is the outcome of peace what is the outcome of peace when you have peace with people peace in the body of Christ what is the outcome edification okay there is unity and oneness right only when there is unity and oneness there is peace so important for us to have peace so if you look at the various scripture passages they talk about pursue peace as long as it's possible with you maintain peace pursue peace so all we need to do is pursue peace why because for God it's not about not just about how well we preach how many ministries we build how many books we wrote and how many sermons we preach it's about doing as well and also about maintaining that peace that unity and oneness and that is what even Jesus in his high priestly prayer in John chapter 17 says Father let them be one as we are one so for God that is unity so important there is that perfect unity in that trinity even though the father son and the holy split three distinct persons with distinct roles and responsibilities but yet just so one and that is what the desire of us so even as we are in the process of building God's kingdom as kingdom builders we are part of God's kingdom it's important for us to pursue peace in any and everything even though sometimes it's giving up our own our right sometimes giving up our own stance whatever it is to say God I'm doing it so that you know I want to see your peace and maintain peace and unity on oneness in the fellowship in the body of Christ and that is what God is looking for and his heart is pleased with and so in verses 22 and 23 he's saying if you are happy with what you are eating and drinking how you are living your life, what you wear days you observe and all of those things it's good continue just doing that between you and God if you don't feel condemned it's okay but if you feel condemned then you know you're not eating from faith and whatever you do which is not based on faith is still so you know when you condemn yourself and you feel condemned you know that you know you are you're feeling guilty about something wrong that you are doing then you're basically knowing that you're doing something that is not according to the faith that you're sinning so he says you know be happy with what you have decided for yourself and if it is right in God's sight go ahead and do it and don't condemn yourselves in what you have decided to do because between you and God but if you condemn yourself and you think you're condemning yourself then be careful because that is not from faith and that is sin okay so very simple chapter just basically two things about judging others and also not being a stumbling block which are two important things which we kind of two important aspects we kind of overlook we miss out you know and we can be so judgmental and critical about various people and we can because of that we have destroyed people's lives their character their ministry because and their whole calling because of the things that we have spoken because of our judgmental attitudes and our criticisms and also sometimes we have been our lives have been a stumbling block to others so important that we check ourselves we ask the grace of God in these areas pray about these areas between things that are a stumbling block to others we need to set our lives right ask the Holy Spirit to lay his finger on those areas and if we are judging others you know be mindful you know be sensitive and ask the Holy Spirit to help us in this area as well any questions and thoughts before we move to chapter 15 we just have two more chapters for the book of Romans any questions okay no questions then we move on to chapter 15 the first half of Romans chapter 15 Paul is teaching us how he continues the same topic or the same theme of how to bear with those who are weak and then you know he shares about his ministry and plans as he begins to you know wrap up his letter and what he's writing to the church at role okay so we'll read Romans chapter 15 verses 1 to 13 one of you read 6 verses and someone else can read 7 verses please so one of you can read Romans chapter 1 to 16 and someone else can read from 7 to 13 Romans chapter 15 verses 1 to 6 bearing others burdens we then who are strong or to bear with the struggles of the weak and not to please ourselves let each of us please his neighbor for his good and he's teaching to edification for even Christ did not please himself but as it is written the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me for whatever things were written before were written for our learning that we through the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be guided toward one another according to Christ Jesus that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in me thank you Rosalind can someone else read from verses 7 to 13 I think your doggy also likes to read is that your doggy Rosalind yes ma'am sorry about that no no no so sweet to hear his voice he is also very excited to read thank you okay verses 6 to 13 someone else can read 7 to 13 sorry should I read ma'am yes continue Rosalind verse 7 therefore receive one another just as Christ also received us to the glory of God now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy as it is written for this reason I will confess to you among the Gentiles and sing to your name and again he says rejoice O Gentiles with his people and again praise the Lord all you Gentiles Lord him all you peoples and again Isaiah says there shall be a root of Jesse and he who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles in him the Gentiles shall hope now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit should I continue miss your muted should I continue sorry you read till 13 right yes that's enough thank you Rosalind so in Roman chapter 15 Paul continues to remind us of how to basically be thoughtful sensitive mindful and respective towards other believers so he is talking about that in the first few verses 15 verses in this chapter and he says to those who are strong in the faith what does he say what does he say to those who are strong in the faith verse 1 they need to bear with troubles of the weak and not to please themselves and what does he say verse 2 he says we need to please our neighbor for his good leading to his edification so here basically Paul is saying that those who are strong in their faith they need to bear with the weaknesses of the weak so the weak here are basically those who are weak in their faith or also those who have been in the faith and they are still growing in their faith he says you ought to bear in verse 1 which means don't do things just to please your faith but also do things to build up those who are weak in their faith so two things please our faith but also do things to build up those who are weak in their faith and the idea here isn't really bearing with because he says bearing with the idea is not really bearing with but it's more bearing up it's bearing up with a weaker brother bearing up means basically supporting him supporting him with your you know with your superior strength with your superior faith with your spiritual maturity your growth your walk with God which is strong you know just supporting them bearing up supporting them so this is what we need to keep in mind when we relate to others that we bear with people who are new in their faith growing in their faith and gently and lovingly tell them from the word what they need to do and how they need to live how they pray and how God wants us to live our lives okay yes they might be doing things in a certain way but you know gently and lovingly you know because we learn that the goodness of God leads to repentance so when we teach and teach and tell them we need to not do it in a judgmental condemning way on a way that we're preaching down on them but we do that in a way that you know with love with gentleness with patience we also learn that you know that God is patient and long suffering not wanting anyone to perish okay we talked about that in Romans so here you know he's saying that we need to be supportive we need to bear and gently and loving you know because the goodness of God leads to repentance so you know when we admonish them and teach them in a loving gentle way you know it's the goodness of God that will lead them to change so we need to gently and lovingly show them from word God's word what they need to do pray how God wants us to live our lives okay and verse 2 he says you know let each of us please his neighbor for his good leading to edification please the Greek word please here means to be agreeable okay and the Greek word for edification means we all know is to be built up as in an architecture or a building up of a structure okay so verse 2 is sounds very simple but it's not very easy right that each of us please his neighbor for his good leading to edification something very difficult for us to do things that pleases our neighbor especially when we are not getting along with them they are irritating us we can't you know go along with them but here it says you know it's challenging to simply put our neighbor first okay but you know Paul wrote about this in his letters Philippians chapter 2 verses 3 to 4 3 and 4 he says let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit but in loneliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself let each of you look not only to your own interest but also to the interest of others okay so let's not do anything out of selfish ambition you know esteem others better than ourselves and each of us look not only for our own interest but also for the interest of others okay it's difficult but Paul is saying we can do this remember going back to what he talks about in Romans chapter 8 that you know we can live a life away from sin you know not giving into the deeds of the flesh when we live according to the spirit when we gratify the things of the spirit he says when we do this it leads to edification which means you know all too often we as Christians find it easy to tear each other down bring each other down instead of building others up and this is basically how Satan operates okay this is his strategy this is something that he does his strategy is to tear down pull us his strategy is to steal kill and destroy so you know we are called as kingdom builders we are called to build so you know we need to be very careful on how we build people with our words with our lifestyle things that we say things that we do how we retaliate how we are attitudes and in our motives okay I'll stop here I won't go into verse 3 we will continue verse 3 from Monday anyone has any questions any doubts anything that you want any comments you want to say okay there is no questions no doubts we lend class here okay thank you all for joining class have a good refreshing weekend have a good blessed weekend and I will see you all on Monday thank you thank you thank you Rosalind


The Federal Executive Council has approved the procurement of 46 units of vehicles for operational and administrative use by the Nigerian Custom Service. Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba, briefs state house correspondence after a virtual FEC meeting presided over by Vice President Yameyoshi Bajo on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa Abuja. The Minister said that the vehicles will buster the operational efficiency of the service and increase revenue generation. He said that as of August 2021, the NCS had over-performed and protracted rate of the target that it was given.


So much of Christian social media is tied up in this idea of becoming a good Christian and I get it because for a long time I was caught up in that mentality too but today I'm going to share with you why I'm done trying to be a good Christian. I grew up in a Christian household. I heard the gospel on many occasions. I grew up with seven siblings and we were all homeschooled. I think a lot of being in a big family, at least for me it was about I need to get attention from my parents or anybody honestly and so for me that consisted of trying to be the best child. I tried to do all my chores. I tried to do all my schoolwork. I tried to get my parents' attention by doing these kind of crazy like cleaning the whole house on a particular day or whatever else just to get their attention to get their love and I didn't realize it at the time but that was so tied up into my personality. As I approached Christianity growing up in a Christian household hearing the gospel I understood that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. That part made sense to me but what I also had in my mind was this idea that I needed to be good in order to get to heaven. For some reason these two things were able to simultaneously coexist in my mind for a long time even though they were kind of at each other and it wasn't until my brother showed me a Living Waters YouTube video with Ray Comfort that I really understood that I wasn't a good guy. In fact I had broken all of God's law and I was deserving of hell and that was where Jesus came in. That's where Jesus' sacrifice actually made sense so it wasn't about me being good or it wasn't about me trying to be this moral good kid or guy or teenager. It was about me surrendering my life and apologizing and repenting for my sin and trusting in Jesus' sacrifice. A lot of people think that when you become a Christian that kind of solves it and all those kind of lies and that baggage that I was once carrying around that's all disposed of because now I have Jesus. Yes when we encounter Jesus that's when healing begins that's when you know justification happens at the moment of salvation that is like a beautiful thing but that doesn't mean all the baggage and all the lies are completely done away with. It's not as if becoming a Christian is the end of your story but rather it's the beginning and that's something I didn't understand. You see when I became a Christian I felt like okay look I've become I've become a Christian I've lived in a Christian household my whole life I've read the Bible my whole life I kind of know what's going on in a way and now this is just the culmination of my story now I should have it all together and this really perpetuated a really negative and just a distorted way of approaching God. Anytime I would come across a sin struggle in my life or some shortcoming that I would have I just kind of bury it. One of my big struggles throughout my life has been with lost and so let's say you know I've watched I watched a social media video that was you know sexually explicit in some way and you know and I kind of let it linger and then I switched off it and I was thinking okay man that was that was wrong I shouldn't have done that it was against what God wanted me to do in that moment and so I would repent I'd apologize right and that's good that's right that's the good response but then what I would do is I would kind of justify it in my mind I'd say hey but you know Isaac it's not that big deal like you're still a good Christian considering the fact that a lot of guys will watch and girls will just watch pornography and you don't do that so you know you're good according to God you know you're all good I was so desperate to cling on to this idea of being a good Christian that I would minimize and justify my own sin in order to stay in that camp I would apologize for it but I never really deal with it because hey I'm better than the next guy now this reminds me of Luke 18 it's a story of a tax collector and a Pharisee who go to pray and the Pharisee says God I thank you that I'm not like other men extortioners unjust adulterers or even like this tax collector and the tax collector prays seven of the most powerful words I believe in all of scripture it says God be merciful to me a sinner even within my own heart I find myself tending towards the mentality of the Pharisee saying God you know I'm sorry for doing this stuff maybe not to the extent of the Pharisee maybe I'm not gonna you know I'm gonna apologize God yeah I got some sins but but God thank you that I'm not as bad as those guys it was my way of protecting myself of holding on to this goodness that I felt like I possessed it was saying I you know God I'm not gonna lose this good Christian title please please don't take it away from me it wasn't that bad but here's what I'm learning God doesn't want good Christians he wants humble repentance submissive Christians who are honest with him about where they're at because that's where growth actually takes place like think about it in my state of saying you know God I'm you know I'm sorry about this but at least I'm not like that guy I'm justifying my own sin if you continually justify your own behavior you're never actually gonna grow isn't that the irony it's like we're always in this mentality oh I'm trying to be a better Christian trying to be a better guy but when we hold on to that identity of good Christian we're so sensitive and insecure about actually letting go of our sin and and acknowledging it and being honest with saying I'm not as far as maybe I should be or as I want to be or as I pretend to be I'm not far along the sanctification that path that as maybe you think I should be but that's okay because my obligation is not to appear as good or you know smart or wise to you that's not my obligation it is to be honest and authentic with God and repent and say God each day mold me and use me and this is where I'm at and this is what I'm struggling with I think many of us have grown accustomed to surface level relationships in our lives now wait for it I'm gonna tie this in many of us grow accustomed have grown accustomed to surface level relationships in our lives we would rather be liked than loved in some ways like because in order to be loved in order to be truly authentically you know real love you have to know somebody but in a lot of ways we don't really want to know a lot of people we just want to be liked by a lot of people and so what do we do we put off a good image and so we never let people into the like the nooks and crannies of our heart and we never really open up because we're scared that they might not actually like us or love us afterwards I think in a lot of ways we do the same thing with God we want to be liked by God we would be content with just being kind of distance from God and God giving us good thumbs up good keep going you good you know do-gooder but we don't really want to let him in to our life because we're scared once he sees all those nooks and crannies all those sin issues all those sin struggles that maybe God won't like us anymore and there's no chance he's gonna love us and it's because we've built our relation with God partially we have this belief that it's a transactional relationship that if I do good if I keep my image up that if I you know appears this good Christian that God will like me but the truth is it's not a transactional relationship in fact if it were we would already be on the streets because because we don't deserve God we don't deserve what he gives us it's all by grace and we also have this distortion that when we become a Christian that we're half we're supposed to have all our stuff dealt with which isn't true either and so when we believe this and we haven't dealt with our stuff yeah of course we want to be distant from God because we're scared of being exposed but the truth is and the beauty is is that to be exposed in in the care of somebody that truly loves us is the most healing experience that can happen here's the deal only when you're honest with God can relational intimacy take place not before that so if you're on the surface if you're distant if you're content with just appearing as a good Christian and doing the rights and wrongs and and say okay don't do this okay do this you're missing out on the true beauty of a relationship with God because despite our brokenness God welcomes us into his household despite our unfaithfulness God welcomes us back with celebration and a party it's not about being so distant so God can't see you you can't fool God you can't fool God with where you're at so why do you keep pretending why do I keep pretending that's a question I'm asking myself like why do I have this such a deep desire to come across as just this you know I never ask questions about you know scripture in bible study because I know it all you know and I don't really truly you know repent of my sin because you know what it's not as bad as the next guy it's like no just be honest just humble yourself just repent just be authentic because look when you realize that God in his grace sees all of that already and he still accepts you and he still welcomes you back like he sees all of that going on in your mind right now he sees all of your struggle all the things you're trying to hide from him all your you know pride and he sees all that already so why wouldn't you just say God I give it to you I'm done I'm done trying to be a good Christian that's not my motivation anymore I don't want you to get the wrong idea from this video it's not wrong to want to honor God that is good to do good works that is great but my problem and my struggle is that I don't want my works to flow out of my insecurity my insecurity that you know I'm not measuring up to what God wants me to be it's not about doing enough to purchase God's love or to purchase his approval it's about praising him that is what we should be striving towards ask yourself what is my highest end like is it to be a good Christian like is that the highest end just to be this great guy or is it to develop a deep relationship with God something that overflows into the rest of your life well you can't help but you know love people and serve people and obey God like that is the goal it's not just to have this kind of exterior posture of being a good guy and like that who's I just want to become the best it's like I want my relationship with God to be primary and then that will overflow into everything else I truly pray that you are helped by this video that God uses it to work in your life thank you so much for watching my videos guys I truly appreciate it and thank you to everyone on patreon that supports my mission of equipping people to follow Jesus daily if you want to support what I'm doing here and help me get to the next kind of goal that I have it would be an amazing blessing you can join and we have discord we have video chats and other stuff which is a lot of fun so thank you guys so much for your support and I'll see you next time God bless


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we are going to discuss the following question and the question says that a man invests $80,000 for two years at 12% per annum compounded annually for the interest he receives. Income tax at 20% is deducted at the end of each year, find the amount received by him at the end of two years. We know that simple interest is equal to P into R into T upon 100 where P is equal to the principal, R is equal to the rate of interest is equal to time. With this key idea we proceed with the solution. We need to calculate the amount received by a man at the end of two years if he invests $80,000 for two years at 12% per annum compounded annually. Also on the interest he receives income tax at 20% is deducted at the end of each year. Here we are given principal P equal to $80,000 the rate of interest R is equal to 12% per annum. So now as we know simple interest is equal to P into R into T upon 100. Therefore for first year interest will be equal to 80,000 into 12 into 1 upon 100 dollars which is equal to 9,600 dollars. Now the tax on 9,600 dollars will be equal to 20% of 9,600 which is equal to 1,920 dollars. So the net amount at the end of first year will be equal to 80,000 which is the principal plus 9,600 which is the interest minus 1,920 which is the tax which is equal to 87,680 dollars. So now for the second year principal will be 87,680 dollars. Therefore interest will be equal to 87,680 into 12 into 1 upon 100 dollars which is equal to 10,521.6 dollars. So now tax on 10,521.6 dollars will be equal to 20% of 10,521.6 dollars which is equal to 2,104.32 dollars. So the net amount after two years will be 87,680 plus 10,521.6 minus 2,104.32 dollars which is equal to 96,097. Hence the amount received by him at the end of two years is equal to 96,097.28 dollars which is our final answer. This completes the session. Hope you have understood it well.


Another week, another kicker, is this just, can you, I mean, is it just, do you laugh at this point, the struggles you're going through with this? Well, I mean, yeah, you'd like to think that, but we obviously got to come up with a way to find a kicker that can come in here and be consistent for us. And, you know, we've got to turn, you know, every leaf over and see what we can get. And, you know, we're going to go with Randy. We thought Randy had a really good practice beforehand and his tryout did really well for us yesterday. And the guys obviously kicked a long time in the NFL and we're excited for him. And hopefully we can get that consistency with him. I know it was a competition at the time the injury happened, but you guys had invested quite a bit of time in Tucker that you kind of looked at him as possibly a long term solution at some point here recently.  And I felt really bad because he was having a great training camp. He made all his kicks in the preseason, brought in Sam and there was a really good competition between the both of them. And obviously Sam was having a great training camp too and made all his kicks in the preseason. And unfortunately that's what happens in the NFL sometimes with injuries. And, you know, we just got to move on and hopefully find that guy. But yeah, we obviously feel bad for both of those guys getting hurt. I guess timing is a little bit more of a challenge too with Morgan and Brett.  Yeah, the best thing about, you know, bringing in a new kicker is he's got a guy with Morgan and Brett that have done it for a long time in the NFL. And Morgan not only is a great long snapper, but he's a really consistent short snapper where Brett doesn't have to move the lace as much. And when you have guys that are pros and understand what's going on, it's usually helping out a young kicker or a veteran kicker that we bring in for a couple days to help those guys out. So, you know, with those guys being, you know, pros and being in there for 10, 15 years, it really helps out the kicker. Badly even get in and, you know, how much time did he get to work with them? So yeah, so he came in on Friday. Obviously we worked him out and then, you know, we didn't want to work him out again afterwards. So we came in here, met with Brett, Morgan, Badgley end up, you know, talking with him, likes his routine. This is what he likes to do. Then Saturday, you know, we did some motion kicks with him and brought him in because we have to obviously get some type of reps, whether he's kicking the ball or not. So we had a little bit of Saturday working with him and then obviously Sunday during pregame. Worked out other guys or received the only? No, we worked out a couple guys there on Friday and just wanted to see who the best guy was. And we felt like Badgley was the guy to go with and, you know, obviously we tried him out and we're moving on. Do you expect to have somebody on the practice squad again, too, going forward now? Yeah, I think that's the thing that I'm sure Jay Robb and Mike will talk about. And, you know, with COVID and all the stuff that could happen. I'm sure they're looking at all possibilities. Chester, do, in your eyes, what's on Sunday? Yeah, I mean, the thing with Chester, you know, we want to be aggressive back there. And, you know, I think he thought he should have had maybe one that he shouldn't have fair caught and try to get some, you know, yardage with him, but that's just us continue to talk to him about being aggressive. No matter where the position that we're in where we can catch the ball and try to gain some positive yards. Nice to see the fake punt that it executed well and how little surprising that Brett goes out to the side and they didn't seem to pick it up. How rare is that maybe to catch a team off guard like that? Yeah, I mean, it's the first game of the year. And, you know, teams are going to have different people in that might not have played special teams in college. So we're looking to do things every week, you know, to try to help our football team win. And, you know, we were putting a good spot where Mike felt really comfortable of running the fake and we executed and helped our team out, get a first down. So we got to continue to do different things each and every week to help our team win. You use one of those. Is it pretty much burn it for the rest of the year? You know, is it something that maybe you could try again later? Is it usually something teams pick up on film? Well, I mean, you know, we're always trying to scheme up different things each and every week.  Or, you know what, maybe we need to be a little bit more reserved in what we do this week. But, you know, who knows, we might use it again. Never know. I guess since I guess the ficking development, I guess it was Friday after we talked to you Thursday. How bad do you feel for him? You know, after he kind of won the job and you hope he's going to be available to kick for you at some point this year? Yeah, I mean, my heart broke for him. You know, a guy who gets injured Friday before, you know, I felt terrible for him. And it was just one of those deals where, you know, he felt something and just looked at me and said, hey, I'm done kicking right now. And, you know, unfortunately, end up happening. And who knows the timeline with him? I know he's taking it one day at a time and trying to recover for it. But hopefully we can get him back and see what he can do. And that, on the fake punt there, at that point in the game, you know, you guys were looking for a spark. So is that, does Mike say at that point we got to have it right now? Or do you suggest, hey, if you want, you know, how does that, how does that work? Well, Mike has the final decision, you know, he's the head coach and we're going to do what he wants to do. And we'll talk during the week of certain things that we might see to try to run a fake. So there's always constant communication between myself, Mike, Matt Edwards, things like that. And, you know, if Mike wants to run it in certain situations, make the call and we go from there. And it was good that the guys executed and, you know, hopefully that continues to provide a spark for us, whether we need it or not, or are we just trying to change field position? Assume you have to have a certain look by them in order to proceed? Yeah, and, you know, that's on the players and the players end up, they're the ones out there. We might call it, but at any point in time, if they see something that they don't like, you know, they can end up calling it off or even last year when we were playing in Jacksonville, where a Monty Hooker end up, you know, running a fake and it was a look that he saw. And, you know, Coach Rable, myself, we have a lot of confidence in our players to put us in the right position. And, you know, we'll continue to do that having confidence in the guys. When you look at Seattle, what kind of, what do you know you have to prepare for? What do they do? Well, special teams? Yeah, they're obviously a really big physical football team that played really hard and fast. They got great specialists. They do an excellent job. Dixon the punter does a really, really good job of flipping the field and he punts a bunch of different ways. He can hit a traditional punt. He can hit a boomerang punt. He can also hit a knuckle. So he does a lot of different things that we have to be ready for. But, you know, it's a core that consistently plays hard and we've got to be able to match that intensity and exceed it. It's like how your cover guys did and as far as physicality they played with. Yeah, I mean, I think we're perfectionists. Not that we have to be perfect, but, you know, we want to continue to raise the expectations and the standards here on special teams. And like the players will always tell you, it's just not good enough sometimes, you know, even though it could be good, we still want it better. But I think it's something to build on each and every week. And we'll continue to try to strive to play even harder every week so we can go down there and make plays.


Nikki Tutorials hasn't been getting as many views lately and she's been hitting a little bit of a creative block but she's also complaining a little bit so today we're gonna kinda unpack that and see if there's some mental health tips that might be able to help you as well. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and what I like to do is pull different topics from the YouTube community, try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. So at the end of that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So a little bit of a fair warning, alright? Tough Love Chris is gonna come out for this video but it is all from a place of compassion and I've been where Nikki Tutorials is, kind of, I'm not a makeup artist but anyways, speaking of Tough Love, did you see this brand new beautiful design that my lovely girlfriend designed? Yeah, and by the way, again, right now if you order a t-shirt or a sweater you get the copy of Rewire Your Anger for Free, baby, so go get that. And with the coupon code Solution you get 10% off. Alright, so anyways, with this Nikki Tutorials video we're gonna be talking about a few different topics, alright? We're gonna be talking about Locus of Control which plays into anxiety and depression a little bit. We're gonna be talking about stubbornness and we're also gonna be talking about creative blocks, alright? So anyways, this was kind of recommended to me by one of my amazing subscribers, Sabi Lu, and she also recommended I check out Rich Lux's video. So I'm gonna talk about Rich Lux's video in a minute but yeah, so those of you who aren't in the makeup beauty guru atmosphere type deal, what happened was Nikki Tutorials, she is one of the old school beauty gurus and she recently did like kind of like Vlogmas but it's like this winter type series and she's not getting that many views. So she recorded a Snapchat story that looked like this. Why is Snapchat so zoomed in on that new iPhone? Like why are you so close to my face anyways? I feel like my last three videos have been flying under the radar. I feel like nobody's getting notifications. I feel like YouTube is keeping like the videos away from my subscribers and honestly it's been the most devastating thing ever. I just want my videos to be seen. You know when I do my videos I pour so much. What is on my eye? Is that my glasses? They're dirty? You know my channel has, you know even when a video isn't doing all that well, it has a standard and I am way below that standard right now for no reason. I feel like all three of them were good videos so I'm like what is going on and it's so, you know it kills your motivation, it kills your mood, it kills wanting to do more. I'm in the middle of Winter Wonder Week and I feel like nobody even knows that I'm doing Winter Wonder Week. Today I wanted to film the Bob Ross following a Bob Ross painting tutorial on my face because that got requested when I did the Grinch look. But at this point I'm like well when I do that I want people to see it and it not flying under the radar again. It's just so devastating and it makes me sad. So yeah while it is true, while it is true that YouTube doesn't have the best notifications, what we're going to talk about right now is Locusts of Control alright. So there's internal Locusts of Control and external Locusts of Control. Some of you have been around for a while and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Those of you who don't. So if external Locusts of Control is the idea that I don't have control over the outcomes in my life right. It all depends on other people. So like Nikki's a great example. She's talking about how she's not getting views because of YouTube okay. I'm not saying that she's wrong.  I never get notifications and I have a lot of notification bells turned on. But what I'll show you as an example of an internal Locusts of Control is what Rich Lux says when talking about this topic. What are some ways you can do to get people to watch your videos if they're not getting notifications. And I was the one to raise my hand and I said well you post your video. If you feel like notifications aren't going out.   You know what I'm saying and it's like you got to hit all the platforms that people know because not everybody's just hanging on YouTube you know they're doing other stuff. All right so study after study has proven that people with an internal Locusts of Control have less anxiety and less depression because in their mind they're in more control of the outcomes that happen in their life. So I can definitely relate to Rich Lux. Like my YouTube channel didn't start growing until I quit complaining about YouTube until I quit complaining about the algorithm until I quit complaining about the viewers until I quit complaining about what they wanted and all these other things. So like what Rich said like all of you like follow me on social media by the way did you know the only Christmas present I want from you is to hit 10,000 followers on Instagram. So go follow me at the rewired Soul. Okay but the other thing is if you want to get notified about my videos because I know that you don't always get notified right.  I share it in our Discord server sometimes I share it in our Facebook group as well but if you're following me on ever other avenues of social media you'll always know when my videos come out. So what Rich is saying is like Nikki should be doing all these other things like as a YouTuber as a creator we have to be our own marketing person as well and we need to push our content out because if the YouTube algorithm isn't doing it for us we need to take back that control and do it. So this then leads into the kind of stubbornness that we're going to talk about. Now this is not this is not unique to Nikki tutorials. I've been noticing it a lot lately and I was actually thinking about talking about it with Lilly Singh but if you know what's going on with Lilly Singh you can relate it to what's going on with Nikki tutorials. So this is something that not only does Nikki tutorials struggle with or Lilly Singh or some of the old school YouTubers this is something I also see in business. I see it in different industries on a regular basis like times are changing times are constantly changing. So what somebody pointed out to Nikki tutorials was that they just weren't interested in some of the videos that she was making like they said like I did get notified but I didn't want to watch and Nikki actually got a little bit of self-awareness and this is why we need to keep people around who tells us what we need to hear and not what we want to hear. So Nikki replied with thank you Jennifer I definitely get what you're saying. It's hard finding a balance to please as many of my followers as possible. I feel like every look has been done and explained but your advice is definitely something I'll remember. So I'm going to talk about that in a minute again with the creative blocks that a lot of people struggle with but here's the thing that YouTubers need to start understanding but also different industries need to start understanding is that it's not about what we want to do it's about what you all want, right? So I need to make videos about what you all want like some of you who have been subscribed since I was like way smaller earlier this year you saw that my channel kind of changed. Something that I realized is that you are not going to YouTube to be entertained by typing in depression. All right, so what I'm doing is I'm pulling in topics that you're already familiar with to teach you about mental health. Now I'm not saying that's what Nikki tutorials should do but we need to realize how the algorithm is changing what the style of YouTube is doing but to put this in more like terms that or like an analogy that you might understand is like think about business owners who are doing their marketing. Like it's 2018, like does anybody want direct mail advertisements? Like do you just love?  No, of course not. Do you like telemarketers?  Of course you're not, all right? So what businesses need to start doing is realizing that times have changed and they need to adjust to do that instead of being stubborn. So many people are stuck in that old way of thinking. I know a lot of people who are holding themselves back because they won't adapt and change to what people want nowadays, right? Like the internet is where everybody is.  You know what I mean? So like if I were to go out, if I was starting a business right now and I went to the Yellow Pages and bought an ad in there, like I know some people still use that, but a way better way of doing that is on social media. So what I'm saying is, is that creators out there need to realize that they're being stubborn because a lot of them, with that external locus of control combined with being stubborn, nothing's gonna change and they're gonna stay in that pit, right? Because a lot of people, what a lot of people do is they romanticize the old days. This is one of the reasons why I love Gary Vaynerchuk, right? Because he talks about how like we have to change with the times. We have to look at where the intention is. Like is the attention in the Yellow Pages right now? Or is it on social media, right? So with the beauty gurus, right? They have to look at what the new trends are, what people are looking at. How are they liking this? You know what I'm saying? So you've gotta look at what's happening on the platform now and what works and kind of gear it towards that way.  Like look at where attention is at today in 2018, not 2012, not 2013, all right? Where's the attention at today? I'm eventually gonna make a video about Shane Dawson because you've seen how Shane has changed his style of video and he's still capturing attention. But lastly, I'm gonna talk about his creative blocks. Like a lot of people ask me, you know, how do I make so many videos? Where do my ideas come from? Well, one of them is because I always remember like what my passion is, right? My passion isn't getting subscribers. My passion isn't making money. My passion is helping people with their mental health, right? And we gotta look at this like when it comes to like teachers or doctors or mental health professionals, everybody got into this for a certain reason, okay? And maybe somebody like Nikki Tutorials, she wanted to be creative and help people with their makeup and all of that. Like the person who tweeted at her originally said they liked when she did like thrift store halls and how to do creative things with that. And like we have to listen to what people want. So this is more creative stuff for like YouTubers real quick, but like something that I do, I'm constantly reading your comments. I'm constantly looking and seeing what you guys are doing on Twitter and everything like that. Like where is your attention? What do you like, right? I look and do research of other channels who are kind of in my realm. What are they doing? What's working? What's not? I analyze my own videos and say, what's working? What's not? So like I know when a video's gonna do well, right? I know for a fact. Then I know when I'm doing other videos that aren't gonna do as well because the algorithm isn't gonna push them out. So like I also try to find different topics that I'm gonna like doing and enjoy doing, right? Like yesterday I made a video just about borderline personality disorder. Didn't know if the algorithm was gonna pick that up but that idea was in my head. I knew a lot of people would enjoy it even if it didn't push it out to new subscribers. And one thing that I know a lot of YouTubers struggle with is they're constantly trying to grow rather than focusing on the audience that they already have. Like what got their audience there in the first place? You know what I mean? But for all of you out there if you are any type of creative, like research, research, research, research, talk to other creators, talk to the fans of the work, right? Like I love when you all like follow me on Instagram and your artist or like if you want to like down in the comments if you're an artist on Instagram put your Instagram in there. Like I love following all of you artists like Tristan's an amazing artist. Like I just love art, right? So like look and see what your audience likes see what styles they like and all of that. So if you're a creative type person like you gotta start thinking out of the box and you gotta start finding things that inspire you, okay? Like you don't have to do what everybody else is doing like find your own way but that'll help you get out of that creative block. All right, but I would love to hear from all of you what helps you get out of creative block? Let me know down in the comments below, okay? Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge, huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon.  All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.


To look at some numbers, a car navigating a bend with a radius of 20 meters and a coefficient of dynamic friction of 0.7 could travel around the bend at a maximum speed of 11.7 meters per second. This is equal to 43.1 kilometers per hour.