 Okay, good morning, everyone. Welcome to a new week. Good to see you all. Let's begin this time with a word of prayer. Prabhakar, can you please lead us in prayer? Sure, Pastor. Yeah. Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you exalt your holy name. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity, Father. Thank you for this morning of joy, Father. Thank you for giving us end of the day. Father, we submit each and every one to unto your throne of praise at this moment, Father. Please lead us into this class, Father, of the marketplace ministry. Bless Pastor Paul, as well, Father, so that we can learn many mighty things from him, our God. And bless each and every classmate, Father, throughout this journey, so that we have enriching knowledge session and enriching knowledge sharing session and gaining a lot of insights, so that it can be helpful in ministry life, Father. Thank you. All things shall be glorified to your name. I ask this prayer in the name of all of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Prabhakar. Okay, so before we go into today's session, let's just do a quick review of what we did last week. Last week, we completed on chapter four, which was corporate vision, mission, values and culture. We looked at how, in this chapter, we looked at how important it is to have a vision. And the Book of Proverbs teaches us about having a vision, having a focus in life. Two, we also looked at how, when we have a vision that needs to be backed up with a mission. How am I going to achieve that vision? What are the manpower I need? What is the material I need? What is the planning that is involved to fulfill that vision? So that is, again, very important. And then we also looked at values and culture. The values and the culture of an organization is really what stands out in an organization. And we looked at a few examples of how, you know, at APC itself, we have certain values. We have certain things that, as a church that we stand for, these are the values that we have. And then there's work culture, work ethics. Now, different organizations will have different kinds of culture, but it's important to remember that values and culture deeply impact an organization. So good values, good culture will have a good impact on the organization. When there are times when we don't stand for our values, when we don't stand for the things of the organization, or the culture, there's a shift in culture, then the organization as a whole can be affected. So the same thing we can apply to ministry as well. Even in ministry, we have a vision, we have a mission, even if it's a small church or a small ministry, or even if you haven't started a ministry, set these things in place. Set your vision, state your vision, state the mission to the church, to the ministry, to those involved in your ministry. Set the values, be an example, be a model, and then people will watch and learn. And it's very important to have this. Even I've heard of many people who are in the ministry, but they're not happy. Why? Because as a church, there was no values, there's no culture, there's no, you know, equality or opportunities. So all these things affect an organization. So it's very important that we have all these set in place, whether it is small. So sometimes we think, okay, we are only 10 people. It's all right, let me grow to 50 or let me grow to 100 people and then I will share the vision, then I will share the mission. No, it's important to set it first in the beginning itself, lay the foundations, be that example. And so even as the church or the ministry grows, the business grows, you know, we know, okay, these are our values, these are our culture, this is how we will work. This is how we will honor the Lord in everything that we do, right? So before we go to chapter five, any questions, any thoughts that you would like to share from what we've been learning? Any questions? Okay, so shall we move on to the next chapter? Okay, so we'll move on to chapter five, competitive advantage and strategy. Chapter five is more about how as an organization, you can differentiate yourself between the people, among the people around you. Now, for example, we have many organizations who are, you know, just an example, right? Who are in medicine, who are helping out in the medical field, you know, doing the back end work, they're doing research. How as an organization, we can stand out compared to another organization doing the same thing, right? How is it, what are the key differentiators? How is it that we can become a profitable organization? And how is it that we can be sustainable as an organization, right? Now, yes, certain, you know, in ministry, we don't want to, you know, look at ministry as an, you know, as a competition, right? It's not like we're saying, okay, that other ministry and my ministry. So how can my ministry be better than their ministry? No. In terms of ministry, remember, there's different essence, right? Calls us, we have different ministries, but each ministry has a different essence. So much so, even in organizations, in business, they have different essence. But the Bible very clearly teaches us that we are to, you know, use certain principles in the scriptures to help us to be advantage, to have a competitive advantage, to have good strategies and to do well in what has been assigned to us, right? So we'll look at a few points this morning, right, from this chapter, and we'll see how we as an organization, whether it's business, whether it's ministry, you know, how can we stand out? How can we be a sustainable ministry? Or how can we be a sustainable organization to, you know, to be effective in what God has called us for? So just a few points, and we'll briefly touch on these points as well. First one, know what you are against, right? Let's read Luke chapter 14, 28 to 23. Luke 14, 28 to 33. Yes, one of us, please go ahead and read that. Luke 14, 28 to 23. If one of you is planning to build a tower, you sit down first and work out what it will cost to see if you have enough money to finish the job. If you don't, you will not be able to finish the tower after laying the foundation, and all who see what happened will laugh at you. This man begun to build but cannot finish the job, they will say. If a king goes out with a 10,000 men to fight another king who comes against him with a 20,000 men, he will sit down first and decide if he is strong enough to face the king. If he is not, he will send messengers to meet the other king to ask the term of peace while he is still a long way off. In the same way, concluded Jesus, none of you can be my disciple unless you give everything to have. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Abidans. So the Lord Jesus is saying something so practical here and it's so wonderful. You see the wisdom of God in this entire passage. If you are planning to build a tower, sit down first, figure out what it's going to cost you, right? You make a budget, you make a plan. This tower, the term that tower can be meant for anything else like an organization or a business, anything. If you're planning to start something, sit down first, figure out what it will cost you, see if you have the resources, see if you have the money, see if you are able to finish what you plan to start off because if you lay the foundation and later on we say, okay, I can't do this. Jesus himself was saying people will look and laugh, meaning people will say, hey, he started off, but he was not able to finish it. Why did he even start it? And Jesus follows up that whole thing with an example. If a king has 10,000 soldiers and another king with 20,000 soldiers comes to attack him, he's not going to just get up and say, okay, let's all go and fight the 20,000 people. No, he has to think, okay, can 10,000 people fight against 20,000? It's like one against two, it's going to be too much, most probably they're going to lose that battle. So before the battle starts, let me make a peace treaty with them and see if this problem can be resolved. So every pursuit in life involves a cost, every pursuit. We've been talking about vision and all of that in the previous chapter. But every pursuit, every, I would say, every vision that God puts in our hearts involves a cost. There is a price to be paid. It's important to understand, to have a clear understanding of what it takes to pursue a vision. God puts a vision. It's not easy for it to, it's not going to be very easy for everything to just unfold just the way that we like it. No, there's a cost involved. There is a price, right? Do we, we need to sit? We need to think. Okay, is this something that we can do now? Yes, God has given a vision to me. This is what God has put in my heart. So let's take this example of God has put in our heart to start a school. So we can't say, okay, I'm going to start a school. So let me stop my work and God has put this in my heart. So I'm going to start immediately. Now that would be the wrong thing to do. Why? Because we haven't planned. We haven't sat. We haven't thought about it. We haven't, you know, processed how we're going to work out the things for the school to begin. So if you're starting a school, there are hundreds of things that we need to look at. You got to go to the government. You got to get permission. You need to see whether you have the appropriate land, whether, you know, the, you know, this, what are the other schools around? What are the, you know, planning that is involved for the school? Now, if you're planning for the school, you need teachers, you need staff, you need rooms, you need to construct the place. There's a lot of things, a lot of administration involved. Now, if I just say, no, I'm going to start a school, quit my job and don't, you know, and don't really think about how I'm going to do it, then I'm going to fail. Right. It is important to determine how the organization is going to grow and how as an organization, we will be able to be good in what we are doing. So if we put it in terms of ministry, you know, I've heard of plenty, plenty of people who have started off in a hurry. They started off, God spoke to them very genuinely. God had spoken to them. They've moved to different states in our nation as well. And they started off, but it was all in a hurry. It was not planned out well. And then they got into financial debts, financial problems. And it came to a time where, you know, they almost had to close down. But by the grace of God, they were able to, you know, God was able to help them and they continued on. So whatever we're trying to say, know what you are against. In the ministry, we are against the enemy. The enemy is going to try to bring us down. He will, he'll come against us in our thoughts, in our plans. He brings doubt, he brings fear. He brings, you know, the sense of failure and then we may fall down. So even before we start anything, know what you are against. Second point is to compete clean and fair. Paul writes to Timothy, second Timothy chapter two verse five. He says, an athlete who runs in a race cannot win the race unless he obeys the rules. So it's not just enough to, you know, in a race, for example, a 200 meter race. It's not just enough to, you know, complete that 200 meters. Okay, I finished. I reached the end line now. It is also important to obey the rules. You can't have an early start. You can't just cross lanes. You know, so there are certain rules. So it's not just about finishing. It's also about rules. And so even in an organization. Now, there's something called as, you know, healthy competition. I'm sure all of us may have heard of this, right? Healthy competition. There's competition which can cause strife, jealousy, anger, hatred. And then there's healthy competition. Right? Now, for example, you have started a business. How can I, as an organization, have a healthy competition with the other, you know, the other organization? It is by, you know, by knowing that, okay, these are certain principles, rules that we will stand by and make sure that, you know, as an organization, we don't collapse due to mismanagement. You know, misuse of funds, cheating customers, fraud. All these things can cause an organization to stumble. I remember I was reading this a couple of months back. A very reputed ministry in the U.S. You know, they were doing really well and they had about 15,000 people in the church. But all of a sudden they had to, you know, do an audit for their organization, for the church. The ministry had to go and show all their papers, audits needed to be done. And during the audits, there was a mismanagement. There was a mismatch. They saw that there was a lot of money going to certain funds which was not even, you know, certain accounts which was not even related to any organization. It was just made up organizations and the money was going there. And they realized that that money was being used by the senior pastor himself. And so financial fraud, all these things, it came to a point where the ministry was put under hold. The entire church, the ministry stopped. Why? Because of mismanagement. So in an organization, even as we serve, even as we are, you know, trying to be good in what we do, have healthy competition. In our ministry, we should not have any competition. But we can learn from others and learn. But one thing that we can do is learn from failures. And, you know, trying to achieve things out of wrong intent will only cause failure, will only cause a downfall in the business downfall of the organization. So third point, develop a winning strategy. This is very interesting. Even as we, you know, plan to start a business or ministry, develop a winning strategy. Have a strategy that will enable us to, you know, impact people's lives. Let's read Proverbs 24, 5 to 6. Proverbs 24, 5 and 6. Yes, any one of us? Proverbs 24. Proverbs 24, 5 to 6. It is better to be wise than strong. Intelligence, outrank muscle any day. Strategic planning is the key to the warfare, to warfare. To win, you need a lot of good counsel. Amen. Thank you, Bangi. Strategic planning is the key to warfare. To win, you need a lot of good counsel. Now, when we, as, let's just take a few examples now. If we start our ministry and we want to do, you know, we want to do an outreach program. Now we need to plan strategically. You need a strategy, right? So to win, to be effective, we need a strategy, right? We can't just say, okay, we're having a, you know, for example, a youth concert. So please come. Now, I don't know how effective that would be. Why? Because there's no strategy. There needs to be planning involved. To win, you need a strategy, a well-thought-out plan is required for us to reach our goals. And one of the best ways of getting good plans, good strategies is to develop, you know, is to, you know, get good counsel from our leaders, from people who are experienced, from people who have, you know, gone through life in many seasons, they've seen life, experienced in maybe ministry or in the business, get inputs, talk to experts in the fields, survey the markets, talk to customers. You know, all these ways will help us to win, to develop a winning strategy. Let me give you this example. 2019, late 2019, we had planned to do a youth concert in the city of Mangalore. Now, Mangalore has a lot of students. Students come from all over the country, different countries as well. They come here to study. So we knew, okay, so students, that's a lot of them. But how do we tap into them? How do we know which, you know, which part of the students are more of the English speaking students, or which, or how much percentage is the rural speaking youth. And so it was very difficult for us to, for me to understand especially. So I thought, you know, the mistake I made was in 2008, I think in the 2016, we just said, okay, we'll have a youth concert. We just went out, gave invites and we, you know, we had the concert. But then we realized that we have to develop a better strategy to reach out to the youth. And so if it's an English concert, you want, you want to target students who are more of the urban crowd who are English speaking. But we know that there are youth from different, you know, colleges in our city who are probably rural speaking. They may not even be comfortable with English. So how do we differentiate? So we had to come up with a strategy. We began to see, okay, what are the English colleges, the good English colleges in the city. So we made a list of them. Then we looked at how many of them are, you know, Facebook users or Instagram users. And we saw, we were surprised that the Instagram usage in the city of Mangalore is almost the highest in India in our nation. Why? Because a lot of students. So I remember we, you know, we were discussing as a team, we realized that, hey, we have never even tried, you know, I'm talking about 2017, 18. We never even tried Instagram, you know, looking at Instagram and promoting our events on Instagram or Facebook as well. And we thought, okay, going forward, we should do this, we should, you know, promote our and target the youth. And so it was a wonderful advice given to me, you know, the IT team and all of them, they gave me the advice. They said, why don't you think about this? You know, going on the streets and giving invites to youth, but have a different strategy as well. Do what you're doing, but also use the strategy. And so we did it. And we had a lot of people coming for our concert and quite a few of them came from ads that they saw on Facebook and Instagram. And even now, every now that we post our material on Instagram or on Facebook, and we have students who come to church, not by personal invite, but, you know, by Instagram or the ads that they've seen. So it's very important to develop winning strategies. Now, I didn't really think about it. Right. For me, I was, for me, it's like old school, you go, you talk to students, you give them an invite, you tell them, you write their name, their number, give them a call, tell them, okay, hey, we'll send you an invite. But this really opened up to different opportunities. Once, you know, we just sending that invite, it's going to about 5000 odd youth. And so all of them get to see that. Okay, there's a youth concert happening in this place at this time. And this is how much the concert ticket costs. And this is what is happening in this concert. It's a Christian concert. Everything is put. Right. And you've got your details, meaning, if you have any questions, call back on this number, be able to help you. So good advice or a good strategic planning is very, very important. Develop a winning strategy. Now, we may be small in the ministry or an organization, or even we may be just working in an organization, we may not even be the boss. But even if you're working in an organization, develop a winning strategy. See what is, what works for you. See what is, you know, which is the best way that can, that you can help, you know, be effective in the team that you're working in. And so Proverbs 20 verse 18 says, get good advice and you will succeed. Don't go charging into battle without a plan. So clear. Get good advice and you will succeed. You know, one of the things I always try to do is I always, always ask people, you know, especially, you know, elder pastors, pastors who've been in the ministry for many years. I always ask them questions. And I keep asking questions, I keep asking them, okay, what happened when you did this? You know, in the, a lot of pastors will say, you know, in 2000, the ministry, in the year 2000, I did ministry this way. And so I asked them, okay, how was it? What was it that you did? What were the things that God did through your ministry? And so you get advice, you get suggestions. And that way, our plans will succeed. Don't go charging into battle without a plan. Set out a strategy. Have plan A, have plan B. Nothing wrong with having plan A, plan B. And sometimes, you know, you heard people say, I had plan A, I stuck to it and I became successful. That's great. But have plan A, plan B, meaning have different strategies. And just stick to one way. And when we do that, we will develop a winning strategy. Fourth one, Goliath is not your real enemy, fear is. First Samuel chapter 17, 10 to 11. Let's read that. First Samuel 17, 10 to 11. First Samuel 17. Sorry, sir. Sorry, pastor, which one? First Samuel 17, 10 to 11 and verse 24 as well. Okay, first, okay, first Samuel 17, 10 to 11 and verse 24. And the Philistines said, I defy the armies of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. When Saul and all the Israel heard this words of the Philistines, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were dreadfully afraid. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Abinas. Now picture this. There's an entire army. Now if you read, even before this whole incident, Israel was winning battles. They were winning battles. They were a strong army. They've come to this place. Now an entire army of trained soldiers were left immobilized when they saw Goliath. Probably previous to this, they would have seen even more scarier things or even more challenging things ahead of them, but they were able to go and fight it. But what happened this time? When they saw Goliath, fear got into them and something stopped them to go and defeat Goliath. Now part of our strategy is, you know, planning a strategy is never to let fear hold you back. Never to let fear hold you back. It's good to, you know, write down your strategies. But as you write it down, don't let the enemy bring fear into our hearts. You know, fear negates faith. Fear will stop us from walking in faith. It just blocks it out. And so that's what happened to the soldiers here. The army could have gone. If you think about it practically, they've already been in so many battles. They were trained people. They could have gone and fought against the Philistines. But the only thing is they saw this bad Goliath. They saw how big he was and fear came into them. The fear of failure. What if we lose the fear of the unknown? What if this big Philistine comes and we go to attack him? What if he just kills all of us? What if he comes and overpowers our place and our territory here? All these things will leave us in a place of inaction. And that is exactly what happened. The army, the trained army personnel were sitting around there. Probably David went there with the food to give his brothers and he was asking them. Aren't you all supposed to be going into battle? Why are you all here just sitting around doing nothing? They were just doing nothing. There was inaction. They were supposed to go ahead, beat the Philistines, go ahead. But no. They were sitting in inaction. Why? Because of fear. David must have thought, this is not who we are. We are the children of God. But fear can bring us to a place of inaction. For example, we think, okay, God, you're calling me to start my own ministry. Or you're calling me to be a worship leader or a preacher. And it's exciting. I'm sure the Israelites felt the same way. Hey, we're going to go and defeat these Philistines. But maybe sometimes the enemy puts a fear in your heart saying, who will come to listen to you preach? You don't know how to preach. You don't know how to prepare a sermon also. And there are so many pastors and so many ministries. How can you? Who will listen to you? Look at your own family. There's so much of trouble. There's so much of challenges. Look at your own self. You have sickness in your body. You're going through this. All these thoughts can bring fear into our lives. Remember, the enemy attacks the mind. He attacked the mind of the Israelites saying, Goliath's too big. You can't defeat him. And they went into a place of inaction. When we are making a strategy, God is calling us to do something. If the enemy is putting thoughts about who's going to do it, how is it going to happen? Who's going to listen to you? Why would people come to you? When all of these things come, your real enemy is fear. So what we have to do is say, God, you have not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and sound mind. Sometimes it's only fear who keeps us from stepping ahead. From the idea that God gives us. God gives us an idea. I don't want to go ahead now. There's too much. It could be fear. Conquer fear. Step out in faith. Now, again, I'm trying to be a little careful. What we are also coming to is, yes, there's a time and a season. But let not fear diminish that vision God has put in your heart. For example, God is telling you, you feel that you have to wait three years to start your ministry. It shouldn't be that in these three years, fear or doubt should come in and the vision becomes smaller. No, it should be the other way. You conquer fear. You step in faith. Okay, three years. In these three years, I'm going to prepare myself. I want to make proper strategy. How will I start the ministry? Who I'm going to reach out to? What are the tools I'm going to use to be effective in ministry? So you strategize well. Don't let fear hold you back. Whether it is in the workplace, whether it is in the ministry, whether it's something really small happening in our personal lives, don't let it hold you back. Fifth one, leverage your experience with lions and bears to face Goliath. This is wonderful. Leverage your experience with the lions and bears to face Goliath. Let's read this passage. It's a wonderful passage. For Samuel 17, 32 to 37. For Samuel 17, 32, verse 32 to verse 37. Yes, go ahead please. Yes, anyone of us can please read. Sir, is it from 22 to 25? No, it's for Samuel 17, 32 to 37. Okay. Okay, sir. 32 to 37. First Samuel 17, 32 to 37. David said to Saul, your Majesty, no one should be afraid of this Philistine. I will go and fight him. No answer, sir. How could you fight him? You're just a boy and he has been a soldier all his life. Your Majesty, David said, I take care of my father's sheep. Whenever a lion or a bear carries off a lamb, I go after it, attack it and rescue the lamb. And if the lion or bear turns on me, I grab it by the throat and beat it to death. I have killed lions and bears. And I will do the same to this heathen Philistine because it defied the army of the living God. The Lord has saved me from lions and bears. You'll save me from this Philistine. All right, Saul answered. Go and the Lord be with you. Amen, amen. Thank you, Rupa. You know, every time I've read this passage many, many times and every time I read it, it just, you know, it just fills you with so much of strength. David in his silent years, looking after his father's sheep, right? Lions have come, bears have come, trying to take the lamb. And David has fought against the lions, against the bears in his silent times. Nobody was there. Nobody was there clapping and saying, oh, wonderful, David, you did a wonderful job. How did you defeat this lion? Probably he just, you know, if you picture it, he defeated the lion and maybe he went home. He never even shared it to his brothers. He just said, okay, it was just a lion. And I killed it. I packed my sheep. I killed it. Now the moment David saw Goliath, he said, hey, he began to leverage, you know, he took advantage of this whole thing. And he said, I have killed. So he's saying King Saul. So King Saul, I have killed a lion and a bear with my own hands. Now a lion is obviously much stronger than Goliath. I remember going to this lion forest, lion reservoir many, many years back, and we were in the car and those lions, you know, you can just pass by and those lions keep walking around. And I really got to see one close by. Now they are ferocious. There's a reason they are the king of the jungle because they are very intimidating. You know, I remember the driver of our vehicle kept saying lock your car, lock your car. He kept saying that because they are able to even, you know, open the doors and he was also saying that we shouldn't be too long near the lions because if they get too intimidated, they are also able to break the windshield of the car. So they're very, very, very strong animals, very intimidating. Now David is leveraging this situation and he's saying, okay, King Saul, I have killed the lion and the bear. Nobody has seen that, but I have. I've broken its jaw. I've killed it with my own hands. I will do the same thing to this Philistine. The odds were heavily against David. Goliath is a, he's in the army. David, you're just a shepherd boy, a shepherd against a soldier doesn't match. No one in their right mind would go against Goliath. But here's what David did. David tapped into what happened in his life. The history I had with God, probably he was sitting alone looking after a sheep. A lion came, probably that came to his mind. Hey, I attacked this lion. I killed a lion. How much more will I not kill this Philistine? And that was something that gave him that courage and that boldness is to say that, if God, you help me kill the lion, I can kill Goliath as well. Every small success that God gives us is an advantage for bigger success ahead. Now a small success, not everyone will be there to clap and to encourage and to appreciate us. It's all right. This usually happens in ministry. We may be doing something very small, and you've been doing it well and it was successful. Not every time will they say, oh, excellent job, you've been successful. Not every time. But there'll come a time when you can leverage those situations when it's really needed in the future. David had a competitive advantage over the others. Why? Probably the others in the army did not kill a lion with their own hands. David had. So he had an advantage over all of them. Of course, he knew who his God was, but there was this advantage that in his mind, hey, God helped me kill the lion. The lion is stronger than Goliath, so I can kill Goliath. End of story. Let me go. David didn't say, oh, no, I'm not trained. No, no, no. So we can have a competitive advantage when we build on small successes. Small success. Don't worry if nobody congratulates you or honors you for it. Just keep moving ahead. In ministry or in your business, just keep moving ahead. Those small successes will come in handy as you progress in your workplace, in your business. Sometimes just one pebble is all it takes. Sixth point. David, he didn't have all the weapons and the artillery that the army usually have. King Saul himself said, you wear this, you wear this, you take the sword, you take the shield and all of those things. He didn't have all of that. All he had was just one pebble. Probably a few pebbles that he took that one pebble destroyed this huge man Goliath. Let's read first Samuel chapter 17 was 40 and then was 49 and 50. First Samuel 17 and was 40, then 49 and 50. Yes. One of us, please go ahead and read that. First Samuel 1740 and 4950. It took his sufferstake and then picked up five smooth stones from the steam and put them in his bag. With his sling ready, he went out to meet Goliath. He reached into his bag and took out a stone with his slung at Goliath. It hit him on the forehead and broke his skull and Goliath fell face downward on the ground and so without a sword, David defeated and killed Goliath with a sling and a stone. Thank you. This is wonderful. Maybe Goliath thought this boy is going to come out with all his sword and maybe he expected somebody to come who had the entire armor on him. Probably Goliath laughed at David looking at him just coming with a small sling and five stones. But that was David's strength. David knew how to use that sling and the stone. That was his strength. And so David used something that he was skilled at and with precision he was able to hit Goliath on the head and he killed Goliath. That was something which was completely unexpected, unconventional. Nobody thought of it. Probably the David's brothers, I can picture them saying oh no, we're going to lose our brother. He's gone with a sling and five pebbles to beat this king. Sorry, to beat Goliath. We've been waiting here for five days trying to figure out who will go. A sling and a stone, very unconventional. What looked like a disadvantage was really David's competitive advantage. He used his strength to fight against the enemy. He didn't use the other person's strength. The others said you wear this armor, you take this sword. If he had gone that way, probably he would have lost his agility. He would have lost his flexibility or his strength to use this sling. But all David did was he used what he was effective in. What he was learned in and he used that to bring victory. So what is it that we learn from this? Very important, leveraging your core competencies, doing something what you really skilled at. When God has given us certain skills, leverage it, use it for God's kingdom. I remember I liked watching English, all these English episodes growing up as school kids. We watched a lot of these cartoons and just more of the American English or the British English. So we grew up as a family listening to that. We would always watch English serials and growing up English cartoons. So one thing I knew is English is not a problem. So everywhere I would go, I knew that for speaking it's no problem. Of course, other part of, I didn't like to read, but I knew I could speak well. I knew that I can get through things just by speaking. So there are many times I've used the speaking ability to overcome situations. It's an advantage and the same way God gives all of us, God has given each one of us a skill. So we have to use that skill for bringing success. Use that area of skill for innovation, for strategies, for something that can help your organization or even your ministry. Sometimes all it takes is just a pebble. You don't have to do too many things sometimes. Just use the strengths that God has given us and that can be more than enough. Get the Lord's counsel. Even as you strategize, very important. I love what David did. David was a perfect example of depending on the Lord. He's now the king of Israel and he does something so wonderful. The Bible teaches us that for every battle, he would go up to God and say, God, should I go against these people? Will you come with me? David didn't have to do that because he had a mighty army by then. He was the king of Israel but he humbled himself and he went up to God and he said, God, should I go? Will you be with me? Will you teach me? God revealed the same thing through Jacob and God is a God who reveals his counsel. So get the Lord's counsel. You should strategize. Get counsel from the Lord. Ask God to speak to us through a vision or dream, through the word of God, a prophetic word. Ask for counsel. If you see Joseph wonderfully, God gave him the counsel. When you see Daniel, God gave him counsel. They received counsel from God. Nehemiah, we looked at how Nehemiah was able to build the walls and build the gate. How is that counsel from God as well? So God can speak and reveal to us what he wants to do for us. Be open to unusual strategies. There will be times that God will give us unusual strategies. Just like the example of the walls of Jericho. It is an unusual strategy. The conventional strategy would be, okay, let's go and physically destroy the wall. The wall of Jericho. But God said, no. Joshua, here's what you do. Very unconventional, but you listen to me. You go around this wall and you do that seven times. Don't scream. Don't sing without a word. Just go around the wall. And then the seventh time on the seventh day, go seven times around the wall. And after you finish it, blow your trumpets and praise the Lord with all your heart. And when you do that, the walls will come tumbling down. When we read that story, the people of Jericho were wondering, what are these Israelites doing? Why are they going around the wall? It's not making sense. They probably laughed and said, okay, they're probably scanning the place around to see whether they can defeat the wall. And once they see it, they're getting discouraged and going back. No, no, no. God gave them a different strategy. Be open to unusual strategy. Okay, we've passed our time. All right. Okay, we'll stop here. Tomorrow we'll continue with the other two points and then we'll pick up from next chapter as well. All right. So any questions, any thoughts? Shall we close in prayer? Okay. All right. Let's close in prayer. You guys have to go back to your next session. Rupa, is it okay if you can close in prayer for us? Prabhakar. So how do you think we can find out what we are good at? What I would do is... Okay. Prabhakar, is it okay if we can answer your question tomorrow? Yes. Yes. Probably you can just keep that question in your mind. You'll probably make a note of it and we'll answer this question tomorrow. Sure. Thank you, Prabhakar. Yes, go ahead, Rupa. Please close in prayer. Thank you, sir. Father, thank you for this morning and thank you for the lessons you have taught us through the word. Even though we have heard them so many times, thank you for the new insights you have given us to build up and continue in the vision you have given us in your strength and the strategies you provide us in the name of Jesus. Father, we thank you. Bless each one of us and our fathers. Faster this morning, Lord. Fill us anew, afresh that we may, Father, reach out to all that you have kept in store for us, Lord, to do all that, Father, according to your will and purpose, to your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Rupa. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day ahead. Have a great day. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye now. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you.