Okay, welcome back. We are talking about intercession in prayer and will continue from where we just stopped. As I see here, there is a question in the chat. It says, if it's God's nature, why should we appeal to God to act upon His nature? So, okay, very good question. Is it God? You know, He provides a space for man to engage. Okay, this is also a question you can ask with regard to faith. God is a good God and He blesses His people. For example, Abraham. Okay, for Abraham to have a child. Do you think it was God's will for Abraham to have a child? We know because Abraham had that desire and God also told him that he would bless him with a child. Now, why should Abraham believe and have faith if God intends to give him a child? Okay, we can ask the same question. In a sense, you know, we're saying if God is all able, you know, He is sovereign, He is omnipotent, He can. Why can't He just do it? But somehow we see that, you know, God is a God. He wants man to co-work with Him and which is why faith is important. Okay, in the case of Abraham, that's what we learn. So, God required faith on the part of Abraham to be able to release that promise and blessing into his life. Similarly, when it comes to other situations, our prayer, our intercession has a role to play. Can God not do it on His own? He can. But He has chosen to co-work with us. I hope it makes sense. Is that Rin asking the question? I think 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 9, let me quickly pull it out for you. Okay, it just reveals God's method while working with us. So, I've posted in the chat 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 9, it says, for we are God's fellow workers, some translations say co-workers. So, we are God's fellow workers, co-workers, which is why though it is in the nature of God to bring justice, though it is in the nature of God to pour out mercy, He does require some people to step in and co-work with Him to make it happen. Like Elijah, we saw that in the last class, persistent prayer. And God already said, why should Elijah pray? He prayed seven times. So, you see that we are God's fellow workers. So, there are things in the kingdom of God which will not happen if you and I don't step in. The Gospel must be preached to all the nations of the world. Then the end shall come. So, we have a responsibility. Can people not know the Gospel without us? Can God not send angels? Can God not send a voice from heaven to tell all the people that He is the Savior? He can but He won't because Scripture has already revealed to us. We have to go, go He to all the world and preach the Gospel, make disciples, baptizing them with the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, behold, I am with you always. So, God wants man to co-labor. That is the reason why He wants intercessors because we are co-laborers. Let's proceed from where we had stopped. We said Abraham became an intercessor and God actually was listening to him, responding to his prayers. That's very encouraging. Similarly, you would find in the case of Moses, the people who Moses was leading, they were not the easiest of people to lead because they were caught up in their own things that they thought were important, things of the past. Some preachers put it, they left Egypt but Egypt did not leave them. So, they still wanted the luxuries of the land of Egypt but they forgot all about the miracles that God had done. So, what kind of people are these people who can forget the glory of God so easily and remember the worldly things which are not great compared to what God did in their lives. Parting the Red Sea and bringing like a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, God did amazing wonders in their lives but it just shows us that they were very hard-hearted. So, you would see the conversations of Moses and God. There are some passages given in the notes. I won't be reading it out for us but in these passages you would see, you know, God say that, oh, I am going to punish these people because they have such a hard heart, they have such a wandering heart. It goes away from who I am and what I have done into their own worldly desires.  So, in those moments you would find that Moses begins to intercede and he says, you know, God have mercy on these people.  If you destroy these people, what will the nations say about you? So, he begins to intercede just the way Abraham interceded to what God, you know, there is a provision in God for mercy, isn't it? So, Moses also was aware of that and so he begins to intercede for mercy, for forgiveness, for redemption and he says, God, you know, give them another chance. Please don't destroy them and God always relents. So, you see, God will respond when it is part of his nature. Now, if we try to intercede for something which is not given in the word of God or which is not in the nature of God, like, you know, I have already, we began these classes about prayer and intercession.  Such prayers, such intercessions are not valid because in the nature of God, we don't see that. Know that in scripture it doesn't say, I want to curse. But the nature of God, you see that God is always wanting to be gracious. He's always wanting to forgive. But it's the people that they don't respond or they become hard-hearted that, you know, that mercy doesn't come upon them, isn't it? So, when we appeal to what is already there in the word or in other words, sorry. So, we're saying when we, in other words, when we have faith in who God is and what he has already spoken, we can pray in light with it, okay? And when we are doing that for others, that is called as intercession. So, Moses knew that God is a God of great mercy. He wanted to reveal his glory through the children of Israel. And so, you would also see in the conversations that Moses has with God, he would say things like, God, you had promised to Abraham. You had promised to Isaac, you know. So, he's reminding God. Why is he reminding God? Has God forgotten what he spoke?  But this is the role of an intercessor to stand on the word of God, right? To stand on the word of God and to say, God, you have spoken in your word and you will bring it to pass. So, Abraham interceded, so did Moses. So, there's a question in the chat it says, so we can change God's will through intercession. Okay. So, I was actually looking forward to this question. I knew it would come. So, the way you put it written is, change God's will through intercession. So, can we do that? The answer is, no. We cannot change God's will through intercession. And which is why I've been saying, we can appeal to what is in the nature of God or in other words, we can have faith in what God has already spoken or revealed. Okay. So, intercession is what? Intercession is, you're not going outside the word of God. So, you're not going outside the will of God. You're asking for things which are in the will of God. Does it make sense?  And that was his will, what he was going to do. But when Abraham interceded, God changed it, right? Yeah. So, you know, I see where you are coming from, but see, justice is in the nature of God. Okay. So, when he sees unrighteousness, he responds with, you know, his nature where he wants to bring justice and says, hey, this is wrong. This should be punished because he's a holy God. Otherwise, he would be unfair. Okay. Now, that we understand. Moses and Abraham also knew that there is mercy in God. So, they begin to pray and say, God, no, forgive, forgive, don't destroy. Okay. So, both of these are not outside of God. Kim wanting to punish is part of his nature. Kim relenting or him giving into the requests of Abraham and Moses is also part of his nature. So, it's very much in the will of God. He wanted someone to ask though, which thankfully, Abraham and Moses did. Did you get that? Yes. All right. Thank you. Okay. So, I see another question here in the chat. It is God's will to forgive sins that have been confessed. It is God's will to forgive sins that have been confessed. Yes, Nina. So, going by, you know, one John chapter one versus seven through nine and see if I can pull it out for you. Yes. So, here I just post the scripture or maybe just verse nine. I will post it for us. One John chapter one and verse nine. Yeah. So, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's right. So, when we confess, God can forgive us. Okay. And there's a follow up question to that earlier question where Nina, you're saying Abraham and Moses were appealing to. Yeah, you could say so.  Unfortunately, you don't see the people repenting in the situation. No, Nina. At least the Sodom and Gomera people. But, you know, we noticed that Moses, in the case of Moses, because he was the leader of the people, he was in a sense repenting on behalf of the people. Okay. So, yeah, you could say that he was confessing the sins of the people. If I may say, he was doing the intercession. We were talking about intercession. So, Abraham, and I mean, I was also keeping in mind what Rin was asking with the God's will could be changed. So, I mean, yeah, we understood that obviously not. But then, if it was God's nature to forgive, and Moses and Abraham were appealing to that nature of God and saying, you know, standing in the gap and saying, please don't hold this sin against them and forgive them, isn't that what they were doing in this particular, whether it is Sodom and Gomera and the other sins of the people that Moses was praying to God for? I mean, on behalf of the people. Is it that way? Okay. So, could you please come again, that conclusion, that point of conclusion? No, I was saying that since, I mean, since we're talking about the role of intercession that Abraham and Moses played. So, they were doing it appealing to the nature of God because it says will to forgive also, isn't it? So, they were repenting of, like you said, the people didn't repent. Yes. But since they were interceding, were they praying for the sins of the people that God would not hold that against the people? And that is why asking God to have mercy. So, in that way, it is God's nature to forgive and to have mercy. And so, they were appealing to that. Is that it? Yes, you are right, Nina. That is correct. Yeah. Okay. So, they were in a sense confessing on behalf of the people. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Thank you. Thank you. No problem. So, here we, in these two situations, of course, we see that in the case of Abraham, the people don't get forgiven. Sodom and Gomorrah is destroyed because they're just so sinful.  It was just beyond that. But in the case of Moses, there is another dynamic that comes into play. Moses is the leader of these Israelites. So, another thought that I want to bring to us is that, you know, when there is, when there is leadership, okay, there is an influence which the leadership has on the people who have been entrusted to the leadership. So, intercession becomes very, very crucial when we are leading people. You know, we can't just say that, okay, I will follow all the leadership principles. I will do this and that and, you know, other stuff and that that will be enough. But sorry, there is a role that prayer and intercession also plays when we lead people. So, we cover people with our prayers, in other words. There is a passage here in our notes itself. It's Hosea 12 and verse 13. Could somebody please read it? Hosea 12 and verse 13. By a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt and by a prophet he was preserved. Yeah, thank you. So, you see there, by a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt. Very clear. Who was that prophet? Moses, okay. And it also adds, by a prophet he was preserved. So, this preservation is what we talked about in our prophetic intercession. Remember that word preserved is Shamar, which protects, which covers the people. So, how did Moses cover the people? The people would have been destroyed by God if he were not to intercede. But as a leader, he knew a very, very important truth. What is that truth? The truth is, a leader must pray for his people. So, when we pray for the people, you know, that is when, you know, the people are able to see the work of God on their life. So, it's a role of a leader to stand before God on behalf of his or her people. Okay, let's move on. So, we're talking about intercession and we've seen the roles of Abraham, we've seen the role of Moses. And we were saying that intercession is very important and it also is necessary and especially at times when, you know, you say that someone's going through a very hard time. Now, many of us, you know, could have gone through periods of sickness or periods of, you know, great trials or periods of great perseverance where we needed to wait, you know, for a breakthrough to come. So, these are all times when we feel that we are under tremendous pressure. And, you know, when we have somebody praying for us, it makes it so much more easier and, you know, it's nice to know that we have support. If not physically people being there with us, helping us, at least in prayer, we know that they are standing with us in prayer. So, in the Bible Job is a person who went through many difficulties and trials. And in the midst of his difficulties, he says this, so Job 9 was 32 and was 33. Could I request someone to please read it? It's in our notes too. Job 9 was 32 and 33. For he is not a man as I am, that I may answer him and that we should go to court together, nor is there any mediator between us who may lay his hand on us both. Yes. Thank you, Krisha. So, you know, here there is a request that Job has and that is, you know, he wants somebody to go before God for him. And verse 33, you know, he says, nor is there any mediator between us. So, between God and him, he's asking for a go between. We discussed that earlier. He's asking for a reconciler. He's asking for an intercessor. So, if he had a person who could go and pray on behalf of Job, that is, you know, something that, you know, we know would have comforted Job in his trials and difficulties. Once again, in the passage of Job 16, we see a desire which Job has for somebody to pray for him. So, Job 16 and verse 21, he says, oh, that one might plead for a man with God as a man pleads for his neighbor. So, he's asking for an intercessor. So, in difficulties and or in times of, you know, trials, we all have experience that need that, oh, I wish there was somebody, you know, I wish there was a person praying on behalf of me.   You know, that is such a great strength. So, we see that in the life of Job, that he was really wanting for somebody to pray for him. Okay. And so, there is a need for intercessors. And we should recognize that. So, when we see other people going through tough situations, we must know that, hey, I can, you know, we say ministry, ministry, oh, I want to do ministry. You know, when we pray for somebody, we hear that somebody is going through a challenging time. Even just praying for them is ministry, isn't it? So, they are in need of our prayers. And we see in scripture that God has given provision for that, that someone can pray for another person. So, the way Job desired an intercessor in his troubles, we today can pray for others when they are in times of need. Okay. And it is possible that, you know, people in their challenges are so, you know, bogged down that they are even unable to pray.  So, it's possible that that individual is not able to pray also, which is another reason why God might encourage others and say, hey, why don't you pray for that person? Who is in difficulty? Okay. So, there is a need for intercessors. I'm just looking at the chat here. It says, if we have more people interceding for us, the prayer would be more powerful. Okay. So, when it comes to, we'll talk about, you know, group prayer, corporate prayer, a little bit later. But here is my understanding. Yes. The more the number of people praying, the prayer does become powerful. Sorry about my throat, everyone. Yeah. However, all the other foundations for prayer that we studied earlier, you know, die has to be in place. So, when, let's say two or three people, they are praying in faith, as compared to 50 people who are not praying in faith, which is more effective, two, three people praying in faith is more effective than lots of people praying without faith. Okay. So, the point is, numbers help provided we go by, you know, the principles of effective prayer or the right foundations. All right. So, coming to the next question here, in Job's situation, did he have Jesus as his intercessor? Okay. Nice question. In Job's case, did he have Jesus as his intercessor? I would say, I would say no, because Jesus had not yet come. And what did we say? Him dying on the cross was an act of intercession, isn't it? So, he never performed that act. And after he ascended up into heaven, he continues to be our intercessor. He makes intercession for us and he's our advocate on the basis of the work which he did. So, when Job, Job is one of the early books of the Bible. And at that point, Jesus had not yet come. So, we cannot say that, you know, Jesus was his intercessor. We can't say that. Okay. Yeah. Any follow-up questions to that? Or is that okay? All right. Good questions there. So, so far, we've understood that we are in need of prayers, you know, when we go through tough times. Similarly, whenever we hear that somebody else is going through something, it's a good thing for us to pray for others. Pray for others. Even if they don't ask us, if the Holy Spirit impresses it on our hearts, we must pray for others. Okay. Let's move on. So, we've understood that intercession is a need and also that God Himself looks for intercessors. Okay. It's like the conversation we had where we said, can God not provide mercy? Why does God, you know, want someone to come and intercede? But that's how it is. He is a God of justice. But He wants someone, a human person to come and pray for mercy or forgiveness. And therefore, we conclude that God looks for intercessors. Can we all quickly turn to two passages of Scripture or two verses? Isaiah 59 and verse 16. One person can please read that. And the other one is Ezekiel 22 and verse 30. So, Isaiah 59 and verse 16. Ezekiel 22 and verse 30. Isaiah 59 and verse 16. He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So, he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm and he just sustained him. Okay. Can we proceed with the next verse please? So, I thought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land that I should not destroy it, but I found no one. All right. So, this basically talks about, you know, God looking for an intercessor. Okay. So, God wants a co-worker. That's when, you know, we will see him move in a certain way. Okay. So, so far we've understood that. So, God is looking for one intercessor. In fact, Ezekiel, can you please read that again, Rin? So, I thought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land that I should not destroy it, but I found no one. Yeah. Thank you so much.  He's looking for a person. So, it sounds, you know, like, God, why do you need a human being to help you? But that's how it is in the dynamics of the kingdom of God. We saw that scripture, isn't it? 1st Corinthians 3, 9, where we are co-workers with Christ. So, God has chosen to need us. When he created the earth, what did we see? Genesis 1, 26, 27.  So, there is a task or a job that we need to do and we must always remember that, that's where intercession comes into play. So, it's a role which God has assigned man and said, if you pray, these things will happen. And which is why here in Ezekiel, the scripture is saying, he is looking or he sought, he sought for how many people? How many people does it say? How many people is God looking for to pray? One. Exactly. So, that's amazing that even one person pray. Sometimes we say, oh, if I pray, I don't think God can answer or it has got to be a crowd. No, we do understand that in certain situations, especially when you pray for a nation or pray for a region or pray for a city, it's good to have the strength of numbers. However, even one person, you see, even one person, if God had only one person, he says, I wouldn't destroy the people. He's looking for how many people? Is there at least one person who will intercede? If there is one person who will intercede, then I will not destroy the people. So, God is looking for co-workers, co-labourers, intercessors to see his will released here on the earth. Though God is sovereign, he chooses to work with intercessors. That's how we understand these passages of scripture. Let's proceed.  In the case of Ezekiel, we saw God is looking for an intercessor. So, when these intercessors pray, God's mercy is extended on the people. So, usually, usually when it comes to people moving away from God or people, we would say, going astray or wandering from God, there's always a need for somebody to intercede for them. So, we, as God's people, we can begin to pray for those who have fallen away from God, those who don't understand God's love, those who are living their own worldly lives, unsurrendered to God or they are not confessing their sins. What can we do? We can pray for them.  Lord, you grant repentance of heart to such people. You draw them into the kingdom of God. Lord, you remove the blindness. The Bible says, those who are not saved, is it an unbelievers? Why are they in that state? Because there is another reason.  In the book of Corinthians Paul writes to the church, he says, look, Satan has blinded the eyes of these unbelievers. So, when we pray, what are we doing?  We are pleading before God for him to extend grace, extend mercy. So, there is a great need, especially when it comes to bringing people into the kingdom of God or for people to be saved or for people who have been saved and maybe for whatever reason, they have gone away from the things of the kingdom. When we intercede for them, they can come back. Let's look at a verse here. Let's turn to James chapter 5 and verse 16. If someone is already there, you can read it. James 5 and verse 16. Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Okay. So, confess your thanks for it. Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for what we're not going to it says. So, confess your trespasses. If we have gone away from God and we have gone away from God, what do we do? We confess, we come back and we pray for each other. Then what happens? The result is we will be healed and it continues to say the effective or fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. So, that portion, the effective, fervent prayer. Fervent prayer is earnest prayer. It's consistent prayer. It's persevering prayer. That means that there's got to be prayer made regularly and constantly before God. When such prayers are made, they are very effective. That one reaps a lot of benefits when there is this kind of earnest prayer, you know, persistent prayer that goes before God. And especially when it comes to people who are not saved or who have gone away in some manner from, you know, the ways of God, others praying for them regularly constantly really makes a huge difference. So, we should make sure that we pray in such scenarios. Okay. So, when we talk about intercession, one of us mentioned that the Holy Spirit is there to help us. So, in intercession, you know, it's a great encouragement to know that I don't have to do this alone. I have the enabling of the Holy Spirit. Okay.  Who is this another helper? This another helper of the same kind is the Holy Spirit. So, right now, the Holy Spirit is with us and he helps us in different things and various ways. One of the aspects in which he helps us is our intercession. You know, we may feel that it's so hard to keep praying for an unbelieving, you know, a parent or an unbelieving sibling or an unbelieving friend that sometimes we become so tired, like, oh, when are these people going to understand about the love of God? But you know, perseverance and prayer as it discusses for all these people whom we love, we can take the help or the support of the Holy Spirit. We don't have to do it in our own strength because Zechariah chapter 12 and verse 10, it addresses the Holy Spirit as the spirit of grace and supplication. He is the spirit of grace and supplication. So, remember when we studied about the kinds of prayers, we said supplication and earnest plea before God. So, who is the Holy Spirit? He has a role to play in intercession. He's called as the spirit of supplication so that earnest plea before God can come through the empowering of the Holy Spirit. He's the spirit of grace and supplication. So, when I'm praying for somebody, what do I do? I say, Holy Spirit, help me, help me because you know how to do it. So, we do the praying, I already clarified that to us. We do the praying but the Holy Spirit becomes our helper in intercession. So, He helps us bring the supplications before God and Romans 8 very beautifully pointed out earlier on. Even there we see the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. So, help means what help is like, you know when we are not able to let's say there is a box, it's very heavy and one of us is carrying that box. Somebody else comes and they lend their support and they also hold the box with us. It becomes easier, isn't it? So, we are holding it but there is another person supporting it. So, you can look at it in that way. The help of the Holy Spirit is to aid us or support us when He comes and He strengthens. When I'm not able to hold up those prayers, He comes and He puts His hands under our hands and says, hey, I'm giving you the strength you need to hold on to these prayers to keep interceding and not stop till you see the results. So, we have the help of the Holy Spirit. He helps us in our weaknesses and enables us to continue praying so that we are able to receive the answers for our prayers. So, I'm just going to touch upon a few things that are so necessary when we intercede for others and that will make our intercession effective. So far, we understood what intercession is and that we need to pray for others and when we feel weak to pray for others, the Holy Spirit will help us. But how should we intercede for others? That is what I'm going to share with us now quickly. So, a couple of things that we must remember when we intercede for others is we must have God's love and compassion for people. So, obviously, when we don't care, it's very hard to pray, isn't it? Because in our hearts, we don't think it's important enough if someone comes and shares with us, hey, I'm going through this problem in my relationship with my spouse or going through this problem in my relationship with my parents or my workplace, my colleagues or my siblings, my children. If we are not touched by it or moved by it, if we feel so what? I don't mind, I don't care. So, when we carry a heart which is indifferent, it's that much harder to pray for them. But when we flow with the heart of love and compassion, intercession comes easier because it's almost like you can feel what they are going through or you are in their shoes and you can have that empathy for them. You can have that compassion for them. So, having a heart of love and compassion for people is so important for intercession. Without that, we will not be able to intercede effectively. So, that is something we can ask God for and say, God, touch my heart, change my heart, soften my heart, give me a heart that feels for people, that can move with your love for people, then it would be easier for us to intercede. We should also have a desire to see a change in people's situation or change in circumstances. So, when we see that somebody is sick, if we don't desire to see them healed, we will not persevere and pray for them. So, I must have a desire to see the healing or see the person saved or see that person get a job or see that somebody come out of their difficulty. So, that desire is a motivator and one must have such a desire in order to pray for others. Next, it is identification. Identification is, it's like how Romans 12-15, it says, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. So, in other words, it's like you're feeling for those people. If somebody is happy, we pray, prayers of thanksgiving and say, Lord, you're so grateful that this person has a breakthrough. I am an intercessor after all. I'm not that person but on behalf of that person, I'm able to rejoice in my prayers for them or it can be the other way around. Weep with those who weep. They may have lost something or they may have made a mistake or they may have sinned but an intercessor on behalf of the people to when they pray, it's almost like they lost something or they have sinned or they have committed that mistake. So, they go and they pray before God like God, please have mercy as if they are experiencing what that actual person is going through. So, to be able to identify with the people who we are praying for is also very important and two more very necessary things is to pray with boldness because we should have confidence in the word of God. We should come with faith before God. That's when our prayers are effective. You know, we don't pray hoping, yeah, if God does it, that will be great. That will not be an effective intercession.  So, you cannot destroy these people. They are your people. So, speak God's word back to him and say, God, you said and therefore I believe you are going to do this in the life of so-and-so or if you don't suffer. And finally, perseverance, we talked about that in the last class and we said, you know, the way Elijah did not give up till he saw the result. We don't give up till we see the unsafe person saved or the sick person healed or the person caught in financial difficulties blessed, you know. So, persevere till you see the results. So, I'm just quickly looking at the chat here. We're running out of time. We are interceding. Jesus also intercedes and then God hears our prayers. Okay. For us, we can't pray directly to God like how choked it. Okay. I think I have answered that question already. So, I will not dwell on that. The next one is people in critical situations, they make a promise to God and does not intercede but God directly answers their prayer. Why is this? It's simply because God is gracious. Okay. God is gracious and that's why there are times when there are, there is no prayer, there's no intercession but even in those times, you know, God goes ahead and he works his miracles in people's lives. I hope I have answered your question. If not, please post on the stream page. No, I will take up anything more than this, you know, for you on the stream page. I don't want you to get late for your next class. Okay. So, that's fine. Can we pray, class? We'll wrap up. I want to request one of us to please lead in prayer and then we will end this class for today. Can somebody please pray? Yes, Surya, please go ahead. Father, thank you a lot. Thank you Jesus for being with us till the end of the class and thank you for delivering your word of God through Nancy Ramayam and thank you for giving strength to go and to move forward in your word and thank you for leading the class and thank you for providing everything what we are needed till now and bless the people who are this online and ma'am, bless the people who are in need. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for being everything for you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Surya. Thank you, everyone. Really appreciate you joining in today. All the best for your assignments, exams and we shall connect next week. Okay. Any questions, thoughts, please feel free to post on the stream page. God bless you. Bye for now.


Did you know that doing a get-to-know-you survey with your students can dramatically improve their grades? Researchers at Harvard University surveyed 315 year-9 students and 25 of their teachers at the start of a school year They did a 30-item get-to-know-you survey and this wasn't about personal information But it was actually preferred preferences and interests so things like preferred sporting events to engage with or the most important quality in a friend the researchers then Cherry picked that information to create a summary of those similarities to give to each teacher and student and Then they came back five weeks later and did a second more in-depth survey to find out about how their relationships had changed What they found was that when the teachers and students know that they have at least five things in common their Relationships and educational outcomes both improve so The differences was that teachers reported they had more frequent conversations with the students about things outside of the classwork They teachers knew about the similarities rated their relationships with their students better and the students grades actually improved So for some students within this program, they actually experienced a 65 percent increase to their grades Just over this one term that this survey was conducted So when you're thinking about trying this in your classroom if you haven't already do I get to know activity Understand the backgrounds of your students so that you can have conversations outside of the classroom work This is particularly important to be able to engage your students right at the class when you're trialing a flipped classroom approach Because they're going to come in and probably be a little bit uncertain with the new structure So having a conversation about the sporting match on the weekend that they're interested in Or many other aspects can dramatically improve the relationships you have with their students and ease in to that classroom


Thank you everyone for joining me today. I'm Natalie, the CEO and co-founder of Sternum. And we are here to talk about security, especially in the context of embedded devices and how hackers perceive embedded devices, vulnerabilities and opportunities to exploitations. So it's going to be interesting and we are going to also do a bit of a deep dive into the technical aspects of exploitations and also integrating security solutions. While the talk will be focused on Zypher operating system, it is relevant to all of the embedded Linux and real-time operating systems in general. So I just like this quote, especially the beginning. The challenge for connected device manufacturers is to strike a delicate balance between security, reliability, scalability. And I think more importantly, performance and being deterministic in the way they operate, right? They cannot fail. A little bit about myself. So I grew up studying computer engineering, started when I was 14, which paved the way to unit a 200, the Israeli intelligence unit. This is where I actually got my cybersecurity education and I was an expert in finding zero-day vulnerabilities in Linux kernel, especially, but also Wi-Fi drivers, bootloaders and Android operating systems. Finding the vulnerabilities is the part that most people focus on, but actually the exploitation was the most interesting part of the job because taking a vulnerability and then creating an exploit chain where you can actually get a remote access to devices or assets and then gain intelligence is really challenging, even more than finding the vulnerable piece of code. So this was really what I did, was then leading research and development teams until co-found in Sternum in a mission to actually secure and bring visibility into the most embedded resource-constrained mission-critical systems. I'm talking about PLCs, medical devices and gateways, everything you can think of. And here I am talking to you today. We are walking with leaders across the globe, raised $40 million to date and we're happy to be one of the sponsors of the Zeifer Foundation. So I want to start with just an overview of how we protect applications and the different security layers used in the industry, not in the embedded industry. And we need to take a look at three main layers, the operating system and infrastructure, the user space where we actually deploy applications and the application itself, our code, our program. So in the infrastructure itself, we see techniques like memory isolation, segmentations, stack enemies. We see secure API with the user space, secure boot and over there, updates, hardware security in some places. That's really the infrastructure that we are provided with to secure our systems. Then comes user space security. In the user space, we also have stack enemies and other compiler flags to make our code more secure. We also usually have continuous monitoring in modern systems, endpoints, servers. We monitor them continuously to see what's going on with the user space in real time. We have permissions and policies to manage processes and we have endpoint protection that is protecting the entire user space. Then there is application security and I'm talking about what we are doing during development of application and what we are doing post-production. So usually during development, we will see static analysis tool, software composition tool, dynamic analysis, best practices from engineering perspective, like implementing encryption, data protection, user management and post-production once the devices beats endpoint, cloud and so on, we usually see some endpoint protection, something running on the asset, preventing attacks in real time. We usually see some zero day attack prevention and detection, not only focusing on preventing known vulnerabilities, but also the next threat, what's called zero day, a vulnerability that is not yet known. We have usually real time alerts, something is going on, we immediately get alerts. Actually the situation today is that we have too many alerts in the traditional industry and that's a problem as well. And we have application performance monitoring and other tools to just monitor our own application. So that's the standard layers used today in the industry, but let's take a look in the embedded industry status for a second. So from an infrastructure perspective, and especially if we're talking about safe autos or safer, then some of the capabilities exist, trust zone, OTA, secure booth, memory isolation, when we go a step higher to the user space security. Sometimes we have permission and policies, usually depending on how much the engineers invested in it, stack entries, if you compile your code with it and if the third party is provided to you, comes with that security mechanism, then you have it. Continuous monitoring and endpoint protection is usually absent. In the application security stage, dynamic analysis is missing during development, which means that we miss complex bugs, memory leaks and so on. And in post-production, we're actually missing most of the capabilities. We're missing zero-day prevention and endpoint protection, continuous monitoring, real-time alerting. So we're really left blind in the post-production scenario on our own application. The meaning of that means that vulnerabilities that attack the application, the user space, zero-day vulnerabilities or advanced rats cannot be handled during the existing tools. So what happened to real-time monitoring and protection? Why is it so difficult to take these standard tools from the industry and embed them into our own applications? So of course, IoT and embedded security is very different. From various perspectives, one is the deterministic nature. Endpoint servers, they have user interface. You can surf the web, you can download applications. You can get phishing emails. So the attack surface is really different. In the IoT and embedded space, the nature of the system is deterministic. It's predictable. There is minimum input channels, which actually means that most of the threats are software vulnerabilities, not phishing attempts and things that antiviruses are aimed to handle with. The different attack landscape means we need different solutions. Third, limited available resources. Compute, memory, battery. So when you hear about integrating a new solution, usually the first thing someone asks, especially an engineer, is what is the overhead? How difficult it is to integrate and how much CPU and memory is it going to take? And those resources are so limited in some of the systems that imagining, integrating something so advanced, seem very difficult. The diversification is also difficult. If you build an endpoint protection, usually you protect Windows or Linux devices or servers. If you want to protect embedded devices, you need to support more than 100 different operating systems. How do you do that? When most solutions use the kernel and the operating system mechanisms to protect? So that's very difficult when the operating systems are changing and diversified. So what do we see today in terms of security? So we see that OS security features covers the first layer. I mentioned that Zephyr has some great security features that give you the infrastructure to build secure applications. We see some best practices used in the industry, static analysis, software build of materials, encryption, vulnerability management, a lot of passive or post-attack tools that help us patch or understand the software that is within our devices. But what are the gaps? So first, static analysis tool misses around 50% of the vulnerabilities. So instead of going out with 50 bugs per 1,000 lines of code, you're going out with seven. This is still a lot when you have a major code base. S-boned vulnerability management takes care of public well-known vulnerabilities. They do not handle zero days. So it means that around 50% of the exploitations are exploiting zero days. None of those tools can really handle it. Patching takes time and money. Patching is not easy in the embedded space. It's not like updating your iPhone or mobile device. In some cases, if you are regulated, it can take six months. Six months is a lot of time to be exposed to a one-day vulnerability. Encryption. Sometimes people think if they encrypt the data, they are secure. So when an endpoint gets attacks, the data on the endpoint is decrypted. If someone is hacking your mobile, it can read your texts because you can read your texts. So encryption really secures the data during transit. It cannot prevent software vulnerability exploitation and it cannot protect your data if you're exploited. No real-time application security and monitoring, in most cases. OS memory protection does not prevent memory vulnerabilities in user space and in your own application. What I mean by that is sometimes I hear people think that if Zephyr has stuck protection or memory separation, they are not vulnerable to, let's say, heap overflow. That's not true. If you have an heap overflow in your own code, Zephyr cannot prevent it. And we see a lot of those. The result is that embedded endpoints are far behind and blind when they go to production. So we have no monitoring and protection in real-time and that leads to everything that we all saw in the past few years. The reason security is such a topic right now is that we are seeing more and more attacks. And not just attacks. When we're not monitoring our application in real-time, in the real environment when they operate, we also see recalls, problems, battery issues, communication issues, customers' calls and complaints. It's hard to debug when you don't have real-time visibility and logs into what's going on. So the blindness leads not only to security issues but also to performance and quality issues. This is a nice video. I wanna take a few seconds to take a look at it. Exploiting a device that is actually implementing all of best practices in the market. It's hard to hear. So what you're seeing on the screen because it's hard to hear is two people from, I think Germany exploiting a Cisco business router remotely via a buffer overflow vulnerability and actually gets root access to the device. This exploit is actually available publicly. There might be some business routers that are still unpatched and the router uses encryption and all of the best practices and actually still simple programming bug enable them to exploit the device. The reason I am showing that is that actually vulnerabilities are inevitable and endless. We can't really release products without vulnerabilities. And it's not me saying so. It's just the numbers and the statistics. 70% of patched Tuesdays. Patched Tuesday is Microsoft patch that happened every Tuesday, every week is due to memory vulnerabilities. So if Microsoft have memory vulnerabilities every week, how can we produce products without vulnerabilities? We have 2,000 CVEs, new CVEs each month. 50 vulnerabilities per thousand lines of code, as I mentioned, and third parties, for example, they scanned Origin 11, Blueburn, Amnesia, Ripple 20, all of them are publicly available open source libraries that was scanned by multiple static analysis tools and all of them missed those vulnerabilities. And if you have a third party with a vulnerability, static analysis misses it, you need to go out and release a patch. So the only reasonable conclusion from a hacker's perspective is that every device I'm gonna look at, every library I'm gonna look at, TCPIP, Bluetooth, I'm going to find a vulnerability. And honestly, this is how we felt when we looked for vulnerabilities. There is no way we're not going to find one. And this is why I personally don't believe that we should target vulnerability-less devices because that's just not possible. And there are also many attack vectors. So how actually hackers get into a device? So I wanna show you this simple draft that shows really how many components can be part of the entry point for the hacker. So first, inside the devices, all of them, doesn't matter if you are a medical device or a smart plug. You have chips and modules within the device. Those have software within them, passing packets, Wi-Fi packets, Bluetooth packets. This software can contain bugs and issues. You have third party code. So a medical device and a gateway can use the same third party, the Bluetooth library, the TCPIP library. This is how hackers can actually gain access to multiple different devices and attack in scale instead of just investigating or researching just one device. Then your device communicates outside. So there are protocol vulnerabilities, Bluetooth, unparsing user input properly, connecting to a mobile application, network vulnerabilities, and so on. So every input that the hacker can control, a packet that is coming from the outside to the inside, a USB connection to the device, everything like that is an attack vector. If you are completely not connected and you don't have any physical connections as well, then nobody can hack you, even if you have vulnerabilities. So a vulnerability, in order to be exploited, has to be exposed and triggered remotely. So the situation is put it simply. As defenders, we have to stop all of the vulnerabilities. And as attackers, we only need to find one. So usually hackers are the messy in the game and they usually score, even if you stop 99% of the problems. So let's take a look at actually the video that we've seen and break down the attack very simply. There is a hacker on the internet. There is a CVE memory corruption exploit publicly available. He downloads the exploits, finds an exposed router and take over the router VPN gateway completely. From that point on, even if the router itself is not interesting, he has a way to full enterprise network exposed behind the router. So he can perform lateral movement, change control, disturb service, perform ransomware and so on. At this point, after we are already attacked, we have limited options. React, patch, try to stop, try to detect as fast as possible, and we don't have data. Another example, Sternum actually disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in the past few months. In xyxel devices, in belkin devices, in a QNAP devices. And this is actually a critical vulnerability we discovered in WEMO smart plug. And the company actually said that they are not going to patch because the device was three years old. So that was a problem to some consumers and now belkin decided that they are going to patch. But the vulnerability itself was again memory corruption. So belkin is using all best practices, static analysis, encryption, but still finding a memory corruption was very much possible. And it enabled us to exploit remotely and gain a complete takeover on the device. You can read the full research on our website. It's actually very interesting, including firmware extraction and how you go into researching a device. So the current approaches, as we already understood, is reactive. Patching is reactive and costly. Encryption, and this is a quote that I like by Adish Amir, the S in RSA, actually the inventor of the most used encryption algorithms. Usually there are much simpler ways of penetrating the security system than cracking the crypto. So nobody is going to crack the cryptographic algorithm if they can just find a buffer overflow and take over the device. That's the easiest way to do it. And we already discussed that. So what can we do to protect against zero days and unpatched vulnerabilities? So as you already understood by now, I'm not a big believer in preventing vulnerabilities, but the way of exploiting vulnerabilities actually has a unique fingerprint. When we come to exploit a buffer overflow, there are some things that we have to do. So exploitation has, or the attack chain, has four main steps. The first step is the vulnerability. The second step is weaponizing code, taking advantage of the vulnerabilities to manipulate the system behavior. So this is from Wikipedia. To exploit a vulnerability, an attacker must have at least one applicable tool or technique that can connect to a system weakness. So exploitation is a piece of software, sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug of vulnerability to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior. What can we infer from it? First, exploitation is software. It has a chain of commands to execute something on the system. Second, it connects to a specific system weakness. The way to exploit buffer overflow isn't like exploiting a command injection. The vulnerability actually is enforcing a specific exploitation technique. I need different techniques for different vulnerability types. Third, it must cause an unanticipated or unintended behavior. So if you remember, embedded devices are very deterministic, so if they are not behaving as intended, we can assume that there is something interrupting the legitimate behavior of the device. So what does it mean to prevent exploitation? How really zero day prevention works? So we at Sternum call it the exploitation fingerprint. We have four patents on that, and it's really about bringing the benefits of endpoint protection and RASP runtime application self-protection into the embedded space. And some of this fingerprint includes, for example, preventing memory overflows, command injections, information leaks, manipulation of execution flow. Why are we focusing on those things? Because manipulation of execution flow means that someone is trying to manipulate the deterministic execution flow that can be calculated on each software to cause unintended behaviors. If we can calculate the expected behavior, we can know in real time that there are deviations from the legitimate behavior. Memory corruptions. In order to exploit a memory corruption, you have to corrupt the memory. You have to overflow buffers, for example. So what if we monitor in real time on the memory to make sure there are no overflows and no corruptions in real time? So during development, we would be able to find memory leaks and overflows, and in post-production, we would be able to prevent exploitations, and so on and so forth. So it really means the power of flips, because now the hacker actually needs to find an exploitation technique and a vulnerability that is not protected, type of a vulnerability, not a specific one, that he can exploit while bypassing all the continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, and deterministic protection embedded on the system. That could be really tricky. So when I used to find stack overflows, for example, and the system used stack canneries, it will go to waste. I just couldn't exploit it, because the cannery would prevent me from doing so. So I had to look for something else, more sophisticated. So if you have stack protection and heap protection and command injection protection, and you also have continuous monitoring and anomaly detection, it becomes really hard to do something to your system without you noticing or preventing. So for example, we deployed our solution on some of the devices that we found to be vulnerable, and actually we were able to stop the exploitation. So now, using this exploitation fingerprint technique, instead of a complete takeover, notification was sent to the customer that his device is under attack, including the line of code, memory addresses that was attacked, visibility into the bigger picture, and device integrity and real-time operation is actually maintained. Uptime and all the mission critical, WEMO is not mission critical device, but other devices, it could be very significant. And more importantly, no reaction required. Everything happens automatically. So now really the question at this point is, sounds interesting, but integrating anti-protection and monitoring to an embedded device, this must be an nightmare and will take me a few months. So let me just walk you through the Zephyr integration with Sternum, and how easy it is. It is as easy to integrate to embedded Linux and free autos and other systems. So first, you just add our directory and a few lines to the CMake list of Zephyr. No other changes are necessary. Sternum runtime security will immediately auto-activated and can be controlled directly from K config. Lastly, you can define your own traces. We didn't really discuss the Sternum solution, but Sternum allows you to collect any kind of logs, events, and data from your embedded system. You can really easily define that on our system, collecting button presses, battery status, error codes, logs, crash logs, and then you can monitor those events in real time. So it really takes a few minutes, maybe 10 minutes to activate and maybe three days to decide to monitor some things. And then you get really four layers of security. Memory protection, control flow integrity, anti-exploitation on the operating system itself, like command injections, monitoring for file operations, and so on. And lastly, based on the data that we collect and you decide to collect, we apply automatic anomaly detection that is learning from your specific customized data to detect specific anomalies, including what was the expected range, what is the legitimate pattern, and what is actually going on in real time. The Sternum platform in general includes three components, embedded security, which we already discussed, thanks. Continuous monitoring, which is about live remote monitoring and analysis, powered by anomaly detection and AI. And business and operational insights that give you a complete view of many analytics and trends happening on your post-production fleets. How it really looks like, so some simple examples. Our system is divided to security, business intelligence, continuous monitoring and compliance, and some elements or workspace that helps you to find events, monitors, traces, and manage the fleet of devices. The kind of things that you can view is really up to you, but here are a few examples. Attack types, data sent by female version, reported errors, devices affected by recent CVEs. You can see zero days or attack attempts, you can see here it was prevented, you can respond, you can click on the alert and view the exact details, including the IP addresses, the line of code that has the vulnerability. You can see correlations between different events, you can see security anomalies, you can actually get crash reasons and crash reports from the devices. And really so on and so forth, including downtime per customer, some users want to monitor batteries because they cause a lot of pain to the organization. And what you don't see on the screen is really our device view and debugging capabilities, where you're going to issue those events and anomaly, a crash, an attack, you really get a complete view of what's going on in real time and it can reduce solving issues from five months process to 15 minutes. So security and monitoring are actually tied together and this is why we're doing that. Being able to collect any kind of data and learn the specific data from devices, not predefined values like CPU or memory, combined with on-device proactive protection, very similar to endpoint protection in other industries, only brought with less than 3% overhead and around 7% increase in code size, you are able to really do a lot in terms of operations, security and scalability. Stelnum is the device-centric security and data platform with the three layers I mentioned before. We are already embedded in millions of medical, industrial and consumer devices and you can read some of the recent case studies on our website. Thank you very much. Time for questions. Memory corruption, stock overflows, things like that, right? So I'd love to hear your opinion on going forth. If you believe like the promise of rusts of avoiding those vulnerabilities, if you believe that's kind of true, if people should pivot to those kind of memory-safe languages. To pivot to rusts, memory-safe languages. Yeah, so no, I don't believe that. So first, there are a few types of vulnerabilities, software vulnerabilities, logical vulnerabilities, design vulnerabilities, and I think deterministic protection or runtime protection that prevents your days can be applied only to software vulnerabilities, software mistakes like overflows and command injections. For the other types, you really need continuous monitoring and anti-malware techniques, and this is why we provide the cloud platform that continuously monitor the overall behavior because we can't prevent everything. We can prevent specific set of vulnerabilities that are very common, but it's not enough. Then you are talking and asking about secure languages. Unfortunately, I've been to places where we exploited applications, like, you know, WhatsApp and others. Usually they're written in Java or Python. Those still have those types of issues. Moreover, they are based on libraries that are eventually using memory allocations, if it's Lipsy or the kernel. So it's, of course, it helps. It's not like coding in C and C++, but if it was really preventing memory vulnerabilities, we wouldn't have so many of them. Like 70% of the vulnerabilities are eventually memory vulnerabilities in applications, in mobile applications, and so on. So the SOCs I regularly work with usually combine a processor system and an FPGA. Have you ever looked into, or do you see any potential in memory security concepts where, you know, for example, critical data is in a block room within the FPGA and it's continuously monitored by a state machine so that basically the FPGA bit stream is a second source of security because you would have to tamper with that as well. Are such concepts suitable for mitigation of memory leakage issues? Yeah, so shall I repeat the question, or? We're good, okay. So it's, of course, every layer that you had, and I even had the hardware security as part of the infrastructure layers, and I'm talking about trust zones and what you just mentioned, it helps. It helps secure the data, but it just means there is another hope that the attacker needs to do. So for example, there is always APIs between trust zone or FPGA to the application processor. If someone is controlling your application processor because they found a memory issue, of course it's not protected just because you have hardware security. Then now, if there is also a problem in the API, it can exploit it and go into the trust zone or secure environment, and then, yes, leak the data and tamper with other state machines and tools. It's harder because you need two vulnerabilities now and not one, and this is why those tools are great. But one question to be asked is, are you okay with your application processor to be hacked? And second, can we be sure that there are zero vulnerabilities between the secure environment and the application? And usually, that's a tough question. Thanks. Sure. Yeah. Quick question. What are the system resources required to run your monitoring system in terms of memory and CPU cycles? Yeah. So around 3% of CPU overhead or latency, and it can be reduced to around 1.5% in really mission critical systems. There is code increase of around 7% of the existing code size. So we protect the entire code, including third-party libraries, which means as you have more code, we need more space to protect it. And third, memory consumption is really close to zero in real-time systems and in embedded Linux is around bigger than that, but around five kilobytes from. Just to bounce on that, so it will be possible, so you say 3%, but does that mean the worst case execution time? No, this is the average. This is the average. And the reason it's an average is if you have a function, let's say for each three lines of code, it performs a mem copy, then we protect each mem copy. And that means a lot of protections on these specific functions. So there is a specific op codes that are being executed for each protected line of code, and the average is between one to 3%. But if you have a function that is very critical, you can put it on a blacklist and it will just remain untouched. Thank you, everyone. If you wanna see a live demo, step over to our booth.


Okay, ready everyone? Fine. Good morning. Let's pray and begin today. So, anyone from the on-campus batch to pray? Thank you for this opportunity. We will learn, we will be faster, we will tell, we will teach, and you guide us and give your knowledge so that you could understand your word properly. I give you all honor, all glory and submitter in your hands. And this prayer in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you. So, we were talking about intercession and deep form of intercession, which is known as travailing in prayer. And today we will continue to pray, continue to speak about praying for others. But we look at different categories, you know, like praying for others. How do you actually pray for your family? How do you pray for the church? How do you pray for other believers? There are certain scriptures that we can look at in the word of God and we can pray on the basis of those scriptures. But in the beginning, I just want us to understand that God has given us this opportunity to serve with prayer. We've seen prayer as a way to commune with God or to speak to God, to ask God for what we need. We've also talked about the fact that prayer is a way in which we can exercise our spiritual authority. But another aspect of prayer is that prayer is a ministry. We can pray for others and we can serve others through our prayer. And when we talk about praying for others, we can consider a particular individual in the Bible. His name is Epaphrys. Epaphrys was one of the leaders whom Paul trained up and this training happened during the third missionary journey of Apostle Paul. And this man Epaphrys was from a city known as Colosse. So if you know the book of Colossians. So Epaphrys is from that city of Colosse. He had come to Ephesus where Paul was teaching and that's where he trained up this man Epaphrys. But one of the things about Epaphrys that we study is that he was a man of prayer. He was a man who prayed for his own people in Colosse or the Colossian people. But there are two more cities which are listed whom he prayed for. Herapolis and Laudacia. These are two more cities that are close to Colosse and we find that Epaphrys was a man who prayed for these places. Now think about this. When it comes to prayer, right? Epaphrys praying for Colosse or Paul praying for the cities whom he established. Now Apostle Paul, he could have planted something like 20 churches when we read his journey and his ministry and he always says that I'm praying for the churches. I'm praying for the churches. Now these churches were far away from wherever Paul was Paul was still traveling and he was traveling a lot. But the beauty of prayer is that there is no distance in prayer. So Paul was somewhere but he was praying for cities which are somewhere far away. Epaphrys was praying for certain cities and it's possible to be anywhere but to touch a particular place or group of people or people whom we care for through prayer. And that is the privilege or the advantage which we have. So we can pray, we can pray for anyone. We can pray for people who are far away and there is no limitation as far as prayer ministry is concerned through distance. And so today I just want us to consider this ministry of praying for others. Now we all pray for other people but what we are talking about is to go to the next level. So praying for others a little bit here and there in our daily prayers or when somebody asks us to pray for them that's good. But we can go to another level. What is that level? To intentionally pray for others. It becomes a ministry, right? It becomes our service. So I remember I was just trying to learn about one particular subject about the subject of fasting. So I was looking at different resources. I was reading different articles and listening to some people. So there was one lady whose interview I was listening to one very elderly lady and she was talking about how she practices fasting and prayer. And I was so amazed to learn that in her daily lifestyle for maybe about a year or something like that it's a little extreme, okay? I don't recommend it to anyone. But God put a burden in her heart for a certain place. These are people that she does not even know. But because she had a burden for those people she was sharing about how she was skipping a meal every day for one year to pray for those people. Now she does not even know those people. They are not even her relatives or nobody to her. But I was so blessed to see that there are people like that who have a burden to pray for others whom they don't even know. They have no benefit by praying for such people. But she was sharing about how she has been doing it for about a year because she felt God wants her to pray for those people. So she's fasting and she's praying. So you see that sometimes God calls us to pray, to stand in the gap in prayer. So when we read about all the missionaries, we read about men and women of God who have been part of the awakening, the great awakening or the revivals. You'll find that there were a lot of people who invested time in prayer because prayer is very key to see the move of God. Without prayer nothing happens. So we'll read later on. I've been telling you about this person called John Hyde. He's known as Praying Hyde.  So he spent a good amount of time his life in prayer and he also invited people to come join him for prayer meetings.  So why all this? Not that this is his city or his country, nothing like that, isn't it? But there is a ministry in prayer which we can pursue. So when God puts something on our hearts, maybe he can put a region, he can put a place or he can put a group of people, we may feel like we want to pray for ministers of God, we may feel like we want to pray for the poor or something else. You can just consider the women, the children. So some burden which is on our hearts, we can go from just praying normally during our prayer times into something known as a prayer ministry where we invest time in prayer and we touch them through our prayers. So prayer ministry is at another level. Are you all understanding what I'm saying? Okay, normally we all pray, but that's not what I'm speaking about. I'm speaking about practicing it like a ministry prayer. So it is possible to pray that way and have a ministry in prayer and bless people. So it's a great ministry to pray because we are partnering with God to see God's power released. We are overthrowing the powers of darkness through our prayer. All these things are happening, but it's also a very challenging ministry. Why? Anyone? Why is it challenging? Let's say God calls us for ministry in prayer. Why is it challenging? What can be some of the difficulties or, you know, like it's a, how do you say? It's not easy. What makes it difficult? Prayer ministry. Sister, because Satan hinders it. Okay, yes, Satan hinders it. That's true. Anything else? Weaknesses. Weaknesses meaning? Yes, the weakness of our flesh. It's not easy to push in prayer. Somewhere we feel like, okay, I'm tired or I'm not able to focus. So our flesh, it hinders us. That's a reality. Yeah. So we have to push past that to engage in prayer ministry. Okay. Anything else? Anything else? We don't see it in the natural. We don't see it in the natural. Okay, fine. We have to trust God. We have to, we need faith, right? To continue in prayer. That's true. We don't see it in the natural. We need to wait to see the results. All this can be very tough. Anything else? Anything else? Which makes prayer ministry hard or tough. Main thing is flesh. So our flesh doesn't like it. You remember Jesus' disciples? They slept off, right? And Jesus had to tell them, what is this? You know, you can't even pray for one hour. You can't even help me in prayer for one hour. Okay, so overcoming the flesh is one of the biggest challenges over and above anything else. What, okay, compare it with other ministries. Something like preaching, teaching. Compare it with that prayer ministry. Yeah, yeah.   No, you have to put that kind of time into prayer. So does it make sense? Yeah, so the same thing, because it's important. God is calling us for that. Okay, it looks like you can't think of any other hindrance.  So there is a sense of whether you like it or not, some sense of reward. Like, oh, people know my name. They think I preach well, I teach well. So people's appreciation, you know, people's recognition, it's kind of there in other ministries. Like, let's say we sing or we do some social work. People will know, oh, this brother is doing such a good work. There'll be some appreciation. But when it comes to prayer ministry, it's hard because nobody may know how much you're praying. You're praying inside, okay? Only before the Lord. So when it comes to recognition, we may lack recognition in prayer ministry. That makes it even more hard. We should have a lot of, what can I say, strength of character, where it doesn't matter. If somebody knows I'm praying and they appreciate me, or if they don't know at all, let's say that I'm praying so much, I've set aside time for intercession. It's fine. So when we are in that place, we have very strong spiritual, you know, like that inner person is very strong, very mature. So that is required. Otherwise, what happens is, we feel bad. I'm praying so much, nobody is appreciating me. Whereas you get that in other ministries where people see you. But in prayer ministry, nobody sees you. Got it? So that makes it even more hard. For a person to engage in prayer ministry. But we need to be obedient to God. If God is saying, no, I want you in the prayer ministry, you will be obscure, cut away from the view of people, but you still got to do it. Because that's what God is calling us to do. So that is another challenge. Even though it's a great ministry, recognition by men is something that we may not get. But what should make us happy? No recognition from men. But recognition from God. So God is watching us all the time. God is hearing us all the time. That is what we are happy about. That should make us very happy. So that is something about prayer ministry. Now when we are talking about ministering in prayer, Sister Gertrude has a question You have a question, sister. I can see your hand raised. Yes, sister. Not a question. I just want to testify. I used to have a ministry for children. And I used to get funds and I used to provide for their education books like the early piece for the poor children. But somehow this ministry was there for six, seven years. But many people discouraged me and they said, No, you can't do this and the government authorities will check and all that. But the other day and I stopped it and the other day when I was online with prayer group one pastor prophesied he said, you had a ministry and you did so much and Jesus liked your ministry though people did not like your ministry. So it was a confirmation from God that at least he liked my ministry. So this is I just wanted to say, sister. Sure, sure. Thank you. Thank you, sister Gertrude. So the same point that we were making God must recognize. Imagine if people say everything is good but God says I don't like your ministry what's the point? Thanks for sharing. So whatever we do must be pleasing to God. And brother Sanjay says here about prayer ministry it calls for discipline and sacrifice like top performing athletes. So true. So it requires that kind of focus. Now let's think a little bit more about the prayer ministry engaging in prayer as a ministry and we will look at this man Epiphras Paul writes to the church of the Colossians he hasn't gone there but he writes a letter okay. So in Colossians chapter 4 verses 12 and 13 he mentions Epiphras. He says Epiphras who is one of you a born servant of Christ greets you always laboring fervently for you in prayers understand perfect and complete in all the will of God for I bear him witness that he has a great zeal for you and those who are in Laudecia and those in Herapolis I'll read one more scripture which is also given in our notes Colossians 1.7 where he says as you also learn from Epiphras our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. So at this point what is happening is that Epiphras has come to visit Paul he's with Paul when Paul writes a letter to the Colossians and then he will sort of send the message with these men so he's writing about Epiphras and what does he describe this man as look at that he says Epiphras who is one of you he uses the word born servant of Christ okay that is the description for a man who is in prayer ministry we don't read about Epiphras as a preacher teacher nothing like that prayer ministry but he's using the term born servant of Christ what else does he use to describe this man he says he's laboring fervently for you in prayers that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God then what else so he's laboring fervently the third one is he has a great zeal he has a great zeal for you and for the people of Laudacia and Hierapolis so he has a great zeal and later he says fellow servant faithful minister of Christ on your behalf so the reason why I am reading all this is see usually when you see the writings of Paul he he'll say an apostle and a born servant of Christ so born servant of Christ is generally used for somebody who is in you know some kind of notable ministry like an apostle okay but why is it that Paul is using born servant of Christ for a person who is in prayer ministry because in our minds prayer ministry is kind of secondary you know what I mean we feel like apostle is great prophet is great teacher pastor evangelist these are all mighty men and women of God they have the anointing the calling somebody who is in prayer ministry yeah it's okay you're not part of the 5-fold ministry but the respect that Paul gives epiphrase he says epiphrase born servant of Christ meaning he's giving equal respect the respect that he may have given to somebody in the 5-fold ministry offices okay so the point is those whom God calls for prayer ministry it's a very special ministry okay it's not something low something not important no then why is Paul saying born servant of Christ you got it so it is a very important ministry if God calls us for prayer it's a very very important ministry then what else does he say he says laboring fervently we think people who are teaching the word people who are pastoring people who are apostles they are the ones who are working very hard they are the ones who are laboring right but he says this man epiphrase born servant of Christ laboring fervently so is it possible to work hard in prayer is it possible what do you think yes laboring fervently so here is a man who is working hard in prayer can you all recall I told you a story about Father Nash how he went to pray for many weeks and months they used to pray pray pray and then Charles Finney he saw a great number of people come to Christ because of the laboring fervently in prayer so it's possible to work hard in prayer also you got it so this is what we understand from prayer ministry and what else does Paul say he says laboring fervently for what laboring fervently for you in prayers so that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God so if we compare it with let's say teaching ministry or pastoral ministry what is our responsibility teaching pastoral ministry anyone yeah yeah preaching God's word but what should be the result of preaching the word okay we may preach you know Sundays we may preach one hour one and a half hours depending on where you are right some places they like long sermons some places they like short sermons so yeah someone's preaching regularly teaching regularly but what should be the result of preaching and teaching I am not able to hear you very clearly Nelson it's echoing whatever preacher is teaching to the believers so he will hope for from them to they will they must means whatever he teach they will walk on that or they will catch those things okay they'll catch those things I agree with you what should be the final outcome let's imagine there's a preacher is preaching for whatever 20 years and he has a congregation they're listening to him for 20 years what should happen at the end of those 20 years just must come out from the believers okay leaders must come out okay then what is the ultimate goal to preach a lot of sermons to write a lot of books okay but what should be the result I'm asking you what should be the outcome okay people's heart should change share the word of God with others all correct answers I'm saying ultimate ultimate result people should be saved for the kingdom of God that's correct people should be saved come into the kingdom of God lots of answers here discipling the people equipping the saints spiritual growth drawing clothes to God prepare for heaven okay yeah very true fine all correct answers but you see ultimately what we want is we'll see that scripture in Galatians 419 Paul says that Christ may be formed in you understood so the result of everything is to become more like Jesus Romans 829 ultimately to be conformed into the image of Christ so the labor teaching preaching what is what is that labor to produce it should produce a people who are like Jesus in character and in power everyone got it so that is the reason why let's say the teacher of the word so how should we teach we should teach in such a way that people can understand they can learn they can grow they can move closer and closer to becoming more like Jesus so how should we pastor same way we guide the people we counsel the people we nurture the people so that they can go closer and closer to becoming more like Jesus then of course there are many other things like for them to identify God's purpose for their lives each one has a purpose isn't it so we need to help each one recognize what is God calling us to do and then we help them to grow to mature then they should become people who will disciple others so this whole process continues so all this labor in other words what is labor hard work hard work when it comes to say your pastoral ministry or teaching ministry or apostolic ministry it's all towards this discipling people raising them up in their full potential in the calling that God has given them so that each of us all of us together can be more like Jesus in our character in the power through our lives okay but notice Paul says that epiphrase is laboring fervently so that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God so the same way that we expect 5 fold ministry offices to serve us to become more like Jesus even through prayer ministry it is possible understood that's what it means the labor of one man in prayer is leading people to become more like Christ so the point that we are trying to make is prayer ministry is not second class ministry got it this is also very important and that is why Paul is saying same labor laboring fervently so that you may be perfect in the will of God even someone who is praying prayer can affect us in that way got it so that is why we should not look at prayer ministry as something weak or you know sad oh why is God calling me for prayer if he would have called me to be something else right if you would have called me to be an apostle great he is telling me you do prayer ministry what is this ministry you shouldn't think like that it's a very important ministry values it there is great impact and influence through prayer ministry and another thing we see is great zeal it talks about the zeal that Epipharus had to pray for people not just in Colosse but also in other cities now zeal means enthusiasm so hopefully people who are in various ministries let's say 5 4 ministry take for example a prophet he is enthusiastic about his ministry he or she they are very enthusiastic about their ministry about hearing from God prophesying you know making a difference in people's lives even somebody who is given prayer ministry can be very enthusiastic they are very excited about praying for people so as in when you hear needs as in when you hear prophetically revelation remember we said sometimes God will put things in our hearts why to pray so that enthusiasm is required even when it comes to prayer ministry so these are all requirements and we see that Paul speaks very respectfully of someone who is in prayer ministry so let's continue to look at a few more things about prayer ministry do you remember when we talked about Jesus Jesus's teachings on prayer we said in Matthew 6 I will read ok maybe somebody can read Matthew 6 verses 5 and 6 we have already seen this passage but we will do it again Matthew 6 verses 5 and 6 yes and when you pray you shall not be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men I certainly I say to you they have their reward but you when you pray go into your room and when you have shut your door pray to your father who is in the secret place and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly ok so when it comes to prayer ministry again God invites us to the secret place ok so we spend a lot of time in the secret place speaking to God hearing from God, laboring for people but we should always remember whether it is personal prayer or it is ministry we are praying for others prayer ministry God will reward us openly ok so that is the privilege of prayer we spend time in secret but what is God's promise he will reward us openly ok so this must be a motivation for us that ok no problem nobody knows me I am doing this ministry but one day God will reward me openly that is a great motivation for us when it comes to prayer ministry right you can trust in God that he will give us the results now we will learn a lot about prayer there are so many more chapters and a lot of depth when you know we consider prayer for now I will just touch on some of these truths about prayer we find that prayer is like an incense incense I don't know what you call it in Hindi anyone like a fragrant smoke kind of a thing when you look at the temple that is how they used to keep the incense in the temple in the presence of God where they will light it and it used to go up in the presence of God so it is a fragrant sort of a smoke it would go up in the presence of God so you see the psalmist he says in Psalm 141 verse 2 let my prayer be said before you as incense the lifting up of my hands so it is somewhat like this when we pray to God it is very pleasing or it makes God happy whenever we pray our prayers are pleasing to God it goes before him like an incense so in the tabernacle in the temple what did God say let the incense burn you shouldn't stop it let it keep rising up so our prayers today are the incense that go before God so every time we pray every time we intercede we can imagine all our prayers are like incense it is going up before the Lord okay there are other passages from the book of Revelation would somebody please read Revelation 5 and verse 8 can I read sister yes yes sister get room Revelation 5 verse 8 now when he had taken the scroll the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the saints hmm so this is a picture in heaven sister can you read again please if you don't mind now when he had taken the scroll the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the saints okay thank you so it paints a picture in the presence of God and it shows us that in heaven there are golden bowls full of incense in God's presence okay so there are golden bowls full of incense what is that incense what is that incense answer is there only prayers of the saints correct so it's right there the answer is just in the continuing statement there golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the saints so it's almost like our prayers are getting collected in the presence of God and it is like incense before him it makes him happy okay so that's how God looks at our prayer and our intercession now let's read one more passage Revelation 8 verses 3 and 4 who would like to read this one ma'am Revelation 8 verses 3 and 4 then another angel having a golden censor came and stood at the altar he was given much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar altar which was before the throne and the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saint ascendant before God from the angels hand thank you so same thing no there's a golden bowl the prayers of the saints are collected as incense and the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints ascend before God from the angels hands so the point that we want to make is our prayers are not unnoticed because we cannot see our physical eyes immediate results through prayer sometimes it can be very tough for our flesh because what does our flesh wants it wants to see it wants to feel but when we are engaged in prayer ministry we need to have faith that the prayers that we are praying God is listening to them our prayers are going up as incense intercession it is going up before the Lord as incense and that God is watching God is listening God is hearing so can you imagine if you close your eyes and see a picture of heaven and the smoke right going up from the golden bowl before God it's going up those are all your prayers those are all my prayers okay and God keeps the intercession before his eyes is happy about it it's very pleasing to him so these are all encouragements for an intercessor when we pray behind closed doors the God who sees us in secret will reward us openly that is a motivation second our prayers are like incense they go up before God that again is a motivation so we can go ahead and keep praying now there are a couple things that we want to also touch on and that is when we are engaged in prayer ministry there can be some attitudes or some behaviors which may not be correct okay so we will touch on that what do you think is there anything that a person who is in prayer ministry could do wrong you can think of something you can share okay I think it's similar to all other yeah Nelson you have a point suppose I prayed for someone and he received the answer then I may feel like because of me he got the answer so I think that is there in all ministries that sense of pride we want to take pride we want to have feel proud for any results whereas we should actually give God the glory okay so yeah we may feel that way that you know we take the glory God's glory for what has happened in someone's life so that we should not do even I've heard many times you know people say something like even to some political things they'll say oh I prayed I prayed for this man that's why he became prime minister I feel like only your prayers is it? only because of your prayers he became the prime minister it's not like that now we don't know who how many people are praying we don't know right because prayer ministry is done in secret so for us to try to take credit oh I prayed this person got a job I prayed they got married I prayed they had children that's not very nice to you know show off or brag about our prayer ministry that is something we can avoid because it's not very Christ like to you know brag about ourselves in prayer ministry in any ministry because whatever we do we do by the grace of God right and we thank God for the opportunity that we got the opportunity to pray or to minister or to serve so in a humble way God expects us to serve so never go around you know proudly stating I prayed so this happened I prayed that happened so that is something we can avoid anything else good good thought good answer anything else to avoid it comes to prayer ministry wrong prayer sister okay yeah to pray right prayers aligned to the word of God sure yeah that's also something to note Sonia says to be judgmental Sonia could you please elaborate how to be judgmental yes maybe when one receives a request for prayer may not be something in our opinions that is right you know I mean it could be something that could be judged and so maybe perhaps we should not judge that person's situation for why they are requesting prayer in that particular situation sure sure that makes sense to just be open right so they have a need to share it with us we'll just go before God and pray that whatever is the right thing God will do it in their lives okay sure to not be judgmental about people thanks Sonia thank you for that point anything else that comes to your mind that we should not do when we are in prayer ministry okay sometimes along the lines of you know being proud or bragging about ourselves we can we can use that identity to promote ourselves for example you know we go somewhere we meet someone we may like to say hey I'm a pastor so that people will look at us oh pastor and then they'll give you the respect right but actually there's no need you can just mention your name you can just be like a normal person because there's no need to mention where it's not required similarly when it comes to intercession to promote ourselves we could tell everybody you know I'm an intercessor God has called me for intercessory ministry I'm an intercessor I'm an intercessor so when we do that what are we trying to do yes there is a right place to mention that but if we are mentioning it everywhere it's just promotion like we are trying to promote ourselves we are trying to get people's attention that you know I God has called me for intercession and you need to respect me because of what God has called me to do so promoting ourselves like any other ministry you know let people decide if truly through our lives let's say prophecy prophetic right when we are prophesying we don't have to tell that we have a prophetic gift people will recognize oh this person very accurate they have a prophetic anointing that people tell you got it that's the right way of growing in our calling instead of making people tell that I am an intercessor I am a pastor I am a prophet right so we avoid that we don't self promote ourselves just do the praying if God wants people to recognize that you are an intercessor they will because they will see the impact of your prayer life like today we are talking about you know John Hyde father Nash they did not go around saying I am an intercessor I am an intercessor but through their lives we have seen the impact that is why today we recognize them as intercessors so the self promotion is a problem in every ministry and we must avoid that even in prayer yeah and the bible says that when we pray for others we receive a blessing on our own lives so that again is an encouragement yes I can hardly hear you yes yes yeah reach out to people for what hmm yeah see inform yeah fair enough fair enough see information and promotion there is a very thin line so we just have to be very discrete and judicious okay to know when to share and how to share so I you will figure that out yeah so I am not saying don't tell anyone at all I am just saying stay away from self promotion does it make sense or doesn't okay great so the last point that I was making was when we pray for others God blesses us so in Job 42 and verse 10 it says and the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as had before so when Job prayed for others what did God do God bless Job twice got it so again this is a motivation because it's a tough job intercessory ministry is very tough there is no recognition in it but when you think of the rewards or the benefits it motivates us okay it's not a waste of time somebody is being impacted plus God will bless me right we will receive blessings when we pray for others okay so with that I am going to stop but if you have anything to ask maybe after the break okay so we will stop right here can go ahead take a break please come back at 11 o'clock and we will proceed from there thank you