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Apple continues to play nice with Broadcom despite hoping to drop them someday. The thing people warned about with these bluechecks happened yesterday. HBOMax isn't cool. You know what is cool, according to David Zaslov? Max. And how Shareit became the world's favorite file sharing app.Sponsors:Miro.com/podcastZocDoc.com/techmemeLinks:Apple expands US investment with new multibillion-dollar Broadcom deal for 5G tech (9to5Mac)Verified Twitter Accounts Spread AI-Generated Hoax of Pentagon Explosion (Motherboard)Following UK antitrust order, Meta sells Giphy to Shutterstock for $53M after buying it for $400M (TechCrunch)Max will stream over 1,000 movies and TV episodes in 4K at launch (The Verge)Meta's new AI models can recognize and produce speech for more than 1,000 languages (MIT Technology Review)Adobe is adding AI image generator Firefly to Photoshop (The Verge)Anthropic raises $450M to build next-gen AI assistants (TechCrunch)How China's ShareIt became the world's go-to file-transfer app (Rest of World)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We live in a crazy, mixed-up, broken world. Just look at some of the things that happened in the United States this past year. Men who think they are women demand to participate in women's sports and change clothes in women's locker rooms. And they are celebrated for doing so. Schools and libraries expose children to sexualized drag shows. Teachers allow students to act as the opposite gender while keeping it secret from their parents. Doctors cut off the gender-specific body parts of boys and girls who suffer from gender dysphoria. Many people demand the right to abort a child at any point during pregnancy. OF course, these are the most extreme forms of brokenness we see. We don't even blink any more at people who insist on sexual expression outside of God's design for marriage. Or at the vitriol and hatred people spew on social media. We've even come to expect increasing crime in our streets. Would you call this world loving? Probably not. But the real question is whether we are loving. 1 Corinthians 13:6 says, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” (NIV 1984) It is not enough for us to shun the evil in this world. True love rejoices with the truth. I like the idea of rejoicing, don't you? In the face of a broken world, love others by rejoicing in the truth. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

A couple of days ago, I contrasted the mixed martial arts bouts called Ultimate Fighting Championship with love. Both are extremes. The first seeks to defeat another through aggression and inflicting pain. But love is extreme because it seeks what is best for another, even if it requires self-sacrifice. Sometimes it is good to examine the extremes. But we also can learn more about love by contrasting it with something that is similar, yet not the same. In 2 Peter 1:7 we are told to add “to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” (NIV 1984) Brotherly kindness can also be translated brotherly love. So what is the difference between brotherly love and the word love in this passage? They are different words in the original language. Understanding the differences between them is necessary. Brotherly love is the emotional connection we feel with family or close friends. It can be a powerful emotion. The Greek word phileo describes this type of love. But it differs from the ultimate love. The Greek word agape is used in multiple commands we see to love God and each other. This love chooses to provide what is best for another, but not because the person is winsome or deserving. It is unselfish. Today, choose to do what is best for others, to provide what they need, to bless their lives, even if it requires sacrifice. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

In the business world, good communication skills are vital. CEOs of companies have to review information and reports from across the organization. Internal and external communications flood their email boxes. What every CEO needs is a way to quickly review information. So, other business leaders learn to summarize. One common form is the one-page executive summary. A business unit or person may develop a multipage report filled with text, charts and graphs, but it starts with a summary no more than one page in length. The CEO can then see the gist of the information and choose whether to read further or not. In fact, we all rely on summaries for text messages, advertising slogans and other forms of communication. Even Jesus used a summary. He once summarized the way to live with these words from Matthew 22:37-39, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” (NIV 1984) Love is the standard for every relationship. Husbands are to love their wives, wives their husbands, parents their children and each of us our neighbor. Multiple passages in the New Testament command us to love others as Jesus loved us. Love is so important, it summarizes our duty to God and to each other. Add love to your faith today. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

What comes to mind when you hear the word ultimate? The word means the most extreme or important version of something. Does the word remind you of the Ultimate Fighting Championship? It is an extreme form of mixed martial arts. Opponents punch, kick, wrestle and throw each other about the ring. Thy pin each other, twisting limbs and causing pain. Oh, some things are illegal, like spitting or hair pulling, or kicking someone in the head while they're lying the mat. If they are standing, kick them in the head all you want. You just can't do that while they're lying on the mat. This type of fighting is ultimate because it is extreme. An opposite to ultimate fighting is love. Love seeks what is best for the other. And love can be extreme. God is the ultimate example of love. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (NIV 1984) God sacrificed his son to pay the penalty for our sin. That's extreme love. Jesus also shows ultimate love. He had a choice. Galatians 2:20 says he loved us and gave himself up for us. God is our model for how to treat others. His example is extreme. We must show love like the ultimate example of love, God himself. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Have you ever stepped on a Lego® brand, plastic building block with a bare foot? They hurt! The hard little blocks have sharp edges and corners that painfully poke a foot. But that is not their intended purpose. They were made to snap together to create larger, complex objects. Each little block is attractive in its own right, often white, blue or red in color. But they are even more interesting when assembled into a car, plane, building or animal. I'm sure you have played with Lego® blocks at one time or another. A few weeks ago we started looking at 2 Peter 1:5-7. It reads, “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” (NIV 1984) Did you notice the phrase “add to”? Peter tells us that developing our character starts with faith, but we add other things. It is not quite like snapping Lego® blocks together. But developing the traits Peter mentioned takes our effort and God's spirit. Character is a mosaic of different attitudes and qualities. Assemble them together and our character is more beautiful than each trait by itself. This week, we will examine the last trait Peter tells us to add, love. It is the epitome of godly character, for God is love. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

What does a person filled with brotherly kindness look like? When you think of brotherly kindness, do you picture someone who is loving? Do you see a smile, a gentle manner, someone who is always supportive? Is brotherly kindness displayed by always agreeing with you, or always making you feel good? If this is your picture of brotherly kindness, it is incomplete. Listen to this passage which translates the word for brotherly kindness as “love.” Revelation 3:19-20 says, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” (NIV 1984) Jesus is the perfect example of brotherly kindness or brotherly love. But he doesn't always make us feel good. Those whom he loves, he rebukes and disciplines. Does he do this gently? Of course, but he is firm in calling us to do what is right. Remember the times he told someone to “go and sin no more”? This week, we've learned that developing brotherly kindness involves deepening relationships with others. Weeping with them, rejoicing with them, working and enduring together, as well as greeting each other warmly. But we also need the willingness to correct each other when we stray from the path of righteousness. Add to your faith brotherly kindness. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Funerals are strange events for children. I remember attending a few funerals as a child and trying to understand it all. As a teen, I disliked the grief and sorrow of funerals. Unless it was family, I tried to avoid going with my parents to a funeral. Nobody really likes a funeral. But we go. As an adult, I've attended the funerals of family and friends. I've also attend the funerals of people I had never met. I went not because I like funerals, but because someone I knew was mourning the passing of a loved one. A funeral is a time to show respect and honor for the deceased. But more importantly, it is a time to show love and support for those grieving. Sometimes the best thing about the funeral is greeting each other, hugging family and talking together after the service. Grieving together is a display of love. An example of this is Jesus.  Jesus missed the funeral of a dear friend named Lazarus. But he visited the tomb a couple of days later. As everyone else wept, Jesus wept with them. John 11:36 says, ‘Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”' (NVI 1984) This reminds me of Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” (NIV 1984) This verse gives us a great, short-hand description of brotherly love. We encourage each other in good times as well as in bad. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Have you ever been squeamish? When I've traveled to foreign countries, I've been reluctant to eat everything the locals eat. Sometimes, it was the sea food. I just didn't recognize what it was. It didn't look like fish or shrimp. At other times, I recognized things all too well, like chicken heads and feet cooked with all the other meat. Social customs different from mine also make me squeamish. I grew up in the Great Plains section of the United States. People tend to be stoic. So when I hear some bible verses, I get squeamish. One such verse is 1 Peter 5:14 “Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ.” (NIV 1984) Did you know that five times in the New Testament we are told to greet each other with a holy kiss? Does that make you reluctant? Well, relax. Here's what I've learned. In the culture of that day, men greeted male relatives or friends with a kiss on one or both cheeks. Women greeted women in the same way. It was the socially acceptable way to show affection for family and friends. Today we shake hands and hug. So, why all this focus on the holy kiss? If we are going to develop brotherly kindness, we need to learn to greet each other with warmth and affection. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

I used to love watching the winter Olympics as a youth. One event that fascinated me was downhill skiing. Men and women raced down the mountain tucked tight over their skies. They flew airborne off bumps and careened through sweeping curves, their skies bouncing on the ruts. The speeds were incredible. So were the crashes. If a skier made a mistake, he or she would spin across the snow, arms and legs akimbo until a safety fence caught them. Broken bones and other serious injury could occur. After a crash, the commentators would often replay the run and use slow motion to point out where the skier made the mistake. Sometimes, a negative example is helpful. If we are going to develop brotherly kindness, as 1 Peter urges us, we should listen to warnings about mistakes to avoid.  One warning is in Matthew 10:37, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (NIV 1984) The word love is the one related to brotherly love or kindness. This verse tells us that our affection and devotion for others, even for family, cannot be greater than our affection and devotion for Jesus. As 1 Corinthians 16:22 tells us, “If anyone does not love the Lord–a curse be on him. Come, O Lord!” (NIV 1984) How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Have you ever wanted to take a skill to the next level? Maybe you want to improve your golf swing or pickle ball serve. Maybe you write, paint or pound out computer code. Sometimes people want to improve a skill related to work. At others,  people want to improve a hobby or pastime. Regardless of the skill, one way to improve it is to imitate someone who has mastered the skill. The same is true in our Christian growth. If we want to improve our brotherly kindness or love, we can imitate God. John 5:20 says, “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.” (NIV 1984) The fascinating thing about this passage is the word love. It is not the usual word to describe God's love, which is agape. No, it is the word phileo which means to love as a brother or as a family member.  The Father loves the Son. The word describes affection, emotion. A related word in the original language means to kiss on the cheek. Notice also the close relationship described in the passage between God the Father and Jesus. The Father shows him all he does. If we want to develop brotherly love, we also need to spend time together with each other, modeling how to pray, witness and live a life of faith. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Have you ever learned something by example? I'll bet every one of us has learned how to do something on our cell phones by watching someone else demonstrate it. And whether on a phone or game console, children, teens, even adults will watch each other play video games to pick up techniques and secrets to scoring well. If we are going to develop brotherly love, maybe we need an example. Listen to 1 Thessalonians 4:9, “Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.” (NIV 1984) The Thessalonians were good at brotherly love. If we look through the first seven verses of the book, we see Paul describe them with the following phrases:” work produced by faith”, “labor prompted by love,” “endurance inspired by hope,” “imitators of us and of the Lord,” and “in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with joy.”  This is how they “became a model to all the believers.” The result is the feelings described by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 3:6, “You always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you.” (NIV 1984) Longing to see someone is a sign of brotherly love. To develop it, do what the Thessalonians did. Work together, endure together, listen to God's message together, and imitate the Lord. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is known as the “City of Brotherly Love.” The name Philadelphia is taken from an ancient Greek word meaning “brotherly love” or “brotherly kindness.” It is a great name for a city. But I wonder what the Philly football fans think about the slogan. They are reputed to be the worst fans in the National Football League, not loving or kind. The word philadelphia also appears in 2 Peter 1:5-7, “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” (NIV 1984) In fact, this word is interesting because it is a compound of two words. The first means to love as a brother or family member. It describes affection. That word is never used in the Bible as a command for how we should love God. A different word for love is used. The second word in the compound means “brotherhood.” Together, they carry the idea of loving the brothers like a brother. Hence translations use the phrase “brotherly kindness,” or “brotherly affection.” If we are going to develop maturity in Christ, we must make the effort to develop kindness and affection for each other. We can't be emotionally cold to one another. After all, we are in the same spiritual family. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Several years ago I entered the church auditorium one Sunday morning and received a small envelope about the size of a business card. Everyone who entered received one. We were told not to open them until prompted to do so during the sermon. The speaker talked about the priorities of life and how priorities often change when people have a terminal illness. He challenged us to examine our priorities if we knew we would only live the amount of time on the card in the envelope. I opened mine and it said “one year.” Some people's cards read “one day,” others “one week” and some “one month.” His point was this: we all will die, we just don't know when. So, change your priorities now. The card really made me think. This is a similar point to the one made in 2 Peter 3:10-12, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.” (NIV 1984) Don't waste any more time chasing after things that will burn at the Lord's return. Pursue godliness today. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Electronic communication and entertainment have changed our lives, though not all the changes are good. Several decades ago, people realized that television provided an excellent medium to spread the message about Jesus. Billy Graham and others spoke to large crowds and also broadcast their events. Eventually, preachers developed regular religious programs and a new word entered the vocabulary, televangelist. There have been may famous televangelists over the years. Some have been honorable. Others fell in scandal. Some preached about following Jesus and doing good, but others emphasized the Christian life as a means to financial wealth. How do we sort through all these messages? We should remember the words of 1 Timothy 6:3-5, “If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” (NIV 1984) Paul goes on to tell us that godliness is a means to gain, when it is accompanied by contentment. We should pursue a godly life, not in an attempt to become rich. No, the gain of godliness is knowing God and pleasing him. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Our guest this week is Mert Mumtaz, Co-founder & CEO of Helius, a vertically integrated developer platform offering a suite of tools to help easily build products on Solana. Mert joins Brian Friel to clear up common misconceptions about Solana, shares the latest opportunities for developers, and dives deep into state compression, which reduces the amount of on-chain storage required to store NFTs, resulting in lower costs for creators and buyers by up to 100 times. State compression on Solana is already being leveraged by projects like Dialect, Drip.haus, and Helium to help scale their projects. Show Notes:01:10 - Origin Story and background05:08 - How he started on Solana07:45 - How Helius began11:27 - Misconceptions about Solana      18:01 - What is he most excited about on Solana23:03 - How is Helius working with DePin25:34 - Opportunities for Developers on Solana32:15 - A builder he admires          Full Transcript:Brian (00:06):Hey everyone and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the Web3 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to introduce my guest, the man who in Solana needs no introduction. Mert Montaz, the founder and CEO of Helius. Mert, welcome to the show. Mert (00:25):Thank you for having me, Brian. Brian (00:26):I've been looking forward to having a conversation with you here for a while. I don't know if you remember this, but way back in the day, I was getting my start on Solana by writing articles on Twitter, dev related articles, and you were one of the first people that took my article and said, hey, I'm an engineer at Coinbase. I can actually vouch that this is legitimate. And that actually got me in front of Chase Barker and everything. I don't know if you remember that interaction, but it's been a long time that I've seen you on Twitter. Mert (00:54):I do remember it. Brian (00:55):Thank you for that because that got me my stardom of three. Maybe that'd be an interesting place to start is I'd love to learn a little bit more about you. I know you were, previously before getting involved with Solana, you were at Coinbase. Can you share a little bit about your journey, what your background is and what led you to Solana? Mert (01:10):Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I do remember that interaction. I think it was a medium article about it was either voting or incremental counter, maybe a peanut butter sandwich or something. Brian (01:21):Yeah. It was like a simple app. Mert (01:22):Yeah, it was actually quite good. I was super impressed with it. I wish people kept producing those. I think we need more brine blog posts. Yeah. I guess maybe a brief intro of how I got started. I majored in math and communications engineering, communications engineering being satellites and signals and stuff like that. And I actually got to work at Blackberry as an intern. And so I got to see some pretty interesting engineering challenges at my earlier years about cloud infrastructure. I was on the team that ran the cloud for BBM, for example, which handled a lot of volume until it died, of course. Yeah, I mean after that I worked at the big banks in Canada, Canada's run by five big banks and I worked at three of those in some weird order where I did cybersecurity, I did payment systems, ATM withdrawals and stuff like that. (02:11):And I then joined a startup that got acquired, Shutterstock. It was about digital advertising and stuff like that. I'm sure some people are familiar with Shutterstock. And then I worked at Clear Bank on the treasury team where we were in charge of payment rails and stuff for funding entrepreneurs. And then we had this situation where we needed to send money to Australia and I needed to write the code that would handle doing that. And we met with a bunch of these vendors and stuff and it was all super complex for some reason that I didn't understand, you had to do these hops through various jurisdictions and stuff like that. And I was like, I mean you could probably just use USDC or something. And people just thought that was a scam. And at that point I was like, I wonder what the actual truth is here. (02:55):I did some digging and I was like, this is obviously not a scam, not even close. And in fact, it seems super interesting. I did a brief look into crypto in university where I thought I was maybe too academic and you need a PhD or something to do anything meaningful. Obviously quite wrong, but that was my first intro. And then a few weeks after that I was working at Coinbase. Actually it was interesting because I joined them slightly before they went public. And so they still kind of had the startup ethos and it was super fun working there and got to learn and build and talk with a bunch of really bright people. And that's obviously doing research on different blockchains. Obviously Coinbase is very EVM centric. Some times were good, some times we're bad. And somewhere in that line I found Solana and I just started digging around posting stuff, publishing stuff. And I really liked the approach that Solana had taken to be the pragmatic approach. I'm sure you hear this word a lot, but the practicality of the ecosystem as well as the ethos really resonated with me. (03:52):And the community was also pretty cool. You actually just mentioned Chase talking to you about something you posted. That was also my experience. Whenever I would posted something, Armani or Chase would hype me up and I was like, okay, that's pretty cool. And yeah, I mean it kind of just took off from there. Brian (04:07):Yeah. I love that framing of the pragmatic chain and you actually having that experience at a big bank just saying, why don't we just use USDC? It's settled in 400 milliseconds or whatever. And Solana really, I think, is the best example of that. That's pretty poetic that you found your way there. Mert (04:23):Mm-hmm. Brian (04:23):I remember a time though when you first were posting on Twitter, it was mostly around trying to help others understand what was happening on chain. And you mentioned Coinbase, very EVM centric. I think a lot of us who worked in crypto at the time, it was just EVMs the only game in town. And if you thought differently, that was just weird or a lot of people it didn't make sense. And I think my experience, one of the biggest barriers to getting people familiar with Solana was just wrapping their head around the mental model of just how stuff works on chain. It's just inherently different. Can you talk a little bit about that, how you got your start? What were you doing when you were writing these articles and helping others understand what was going on on chain? What did you have to build, what were you teaching yourself at that time? Mert (05:07):Yeah, that's a good point. Most people actually don't really know that unless they were early like you. At first what I would do, this was kind of during the peak kind of start of NFT season on Solana and basically a lot of influencer types or people who I don't think were very intellectually honest would post some sort of claim about, oh, the price of the NFT is going down because the price of Solana is going up. This is obvious and stuff like that. And I thought to myself, there's no way the markets are that efficient for JPEGs, right. There's other stuff there. If people were botting these NFTs and getting a high concentration on maybe dumping on retail and doing other sketchy stuff. And so I would just write scripts, goal length scripts or JavaScript scripts, whatever, and analyze the data. This is before any data analytics existed, really like Solana FM or I mean, Solana FM was there, but they did regular indexing, Solana floor and stuff. (06:09):Flip side, Nance, none of these actually covered Solana. I would just do it and then I would just write my findings in a Twitter thread with some charts and stuff. And I did that pretty regularly. I did it for a bunch of different stuff, including some upcoming projects in terms of gaming and where the potential is. And somewhere along the line after being armed with that knowledge of just doing it for a consistent amount of time, I came across a lot of people on crypto Twitter just really making unsubstantiated claims about Solana and its architecture and its scaling plan and all this stuff. And I guess I was in somewhat of a unique position where I was actually still at Coinbase at the time and somebody would post something and I had relatively okay knowledge of EVM, but also pretty good knowledge of Solana. (06:56):And so I'd usually be able to tell, okay, this is just not true what this person posted. Why is nobody correcting them? And it's because nobody actually just really knew both ecosystems that well. And sometimes in internal Coinbase chats, this would come up and people would be like, that is wrong. And I'd be like, yeah, that is wrong. Why aren't we doing something about this? And I kind of just started yelling at the people who were just lying or maybe spreading knowledge that was not grounded in truth, let's say. And I just never stopped doing that. And turns out crypto Twitter is full of these people, and so I never- Brian (07:29):Yeah. Your job's never done. Mert (07:30):Exactly. Brian (07:32):Is it fair to say that you arming yourself with this knowledge, you had to actually build the tools you needed just to understand what's going on-chain. Was this the start of Helius and essentially what you guys now offer? And maybe you can talk a little bit about that, how Helius began. Mert (07:45):Yeah, 100%. That's exactly right. The most common problem I ran across was when you're looking at on-chain data, the data is super cryptic, right. The instruction data is bortion coded or something. And unless you knew the schema of how it was encoded or maybe the idea which, especially in NFTs, in DeFi, it's not too bad, but especially in NFTs and other non-DeFi use cases, nobody has any idea what the on chain data looks like. And so I would have to hard code some weird methods, maybe parse logs, but also reverse engineer based on discriminators. Or I would even try to brute force it sometimes, which actually kind of worked. I would go on Magic Eden, and you would know this is before Magic Eden's programs were more readable. This is the first version. I would check the app layer. I would go to magiceden.io and I would see, okay, this NFT is listed for 20 SOL or something. (08:38):And then I would try a bunch of different decodings until I got that answer. And then I would do that with a bunch of different ones and I'd be like, okay, this is clearly the discriminator that I need to use. And so I would do that. I also did a bunch, go to the network tab, inspect source, and then dig through the entire minify JavaScript, unminify it, see the schema and try to use that schema when trying to decode the data and stuff. And I was like, this is bananas. This should not be done. And basically that's kind of where Helius came from and the first iteration of Helius was like, okay, we need to make on chain data read about Solana because it's particularly impossible. And then along the way, once we started doing that and talking to customers, it seemed like quite a few people were having other problems, especially around RPCs, which was surprising 'cause I thought RPCs were kind of okay, but after digging into it, it turns out that wasn't really the case. (09:28):And then you run into all sorts of other issues like streaming data on chain, at least in an inexpensive and reliable way. Solana has this problem with web sockets where you might lose data. Yeah, I mean just talking to customers just found a bunch of problems. And Helius is essentially now there to be this vertically integrated developer platform on Solana to essentially just help developers succeed on Solana. And we're not necessarily bound to Solana, but basically my philosophy on this is that I want crypto to succeed. I mean obviously we're all here because we're interested in crypto and believe in crypto's future. If you start from first principles there, I think given the options out there today, Solana's our essentially best shot at executing that vision. Obviously a lot of people disagree with that, but it's something I believe in. And so then my thought process, okay, how do we get more people to build on Solana so that we can have a better crypto future? Brian (10:19):No, I totally agree with that. I think that's been our ticket on Phantom as well, where it's like most of Phantom came from EVM folks and I think a lot of us independently kind of had this realization of we want crypto to succeed. Pragmatically thinking, what am I going to get my parents or my friend to use today? How are we realistically going to scale this thing in the next couple years? Solana also right now is the most pragmatic approach to doing that. I think before we jump in a little bit more to Helius in particular, what you guys offer and what you guys are up to, I kind want to take a moment just to talk maybe broadly about Solana because I think you are one of the most well known vocal defenders of Solana where there is a lot out there that's just blatantly wrong and you not only technically know how to rebut it, but you take the time and the energy to be out there and educating people. I want to know a little bit for where you sit at Helius, what you see right now, what would you say are some of the biggest misconceptions today about Solana that folks who maybe already know about crypto, maybe are already well versed in EVM, but maybe they just haven't gotten through to actually hear from somebody's boots on the ground. What would you tell them that they're misunderstanding about Solana? Mert (11:27):Maybe I'll take a more broad approach to answering this because it's kind of different segments, but in terms of maybe people from EVM, if you're already familiar with EVM and maybe you want to build on Solana and what are your kind of reservations, right. Some of the ones I've come across are, well, one, Rust is just hard to write. Solana has a diehard kind of fan base of Rust developers, but Rust is not easy. That is just a fact. Solidity, is somebody in high school could learn it easily, but Rust, I mean they'd be able to learn it, but I don't think it'd be easy. The concepts like lifetimes and for example, that stuff is not easy for somebody who wants to just prototype and maybe ship something. And so then you'll say, well, there's Anchor and stuff and Anchor is super helpful and probably my favorite tool on Solana, unless you know Rust, you're still going to be kind of flying blind and you know might need that to build your applications. (12:17):And if you're a determined developer, you'll get over that and then learn Rust anyways. But that friction alone is enough to deter a good amount of people is what I found. That's just one thing, and I know Foundation folks and Dev are working on this and there's some other teams, there's the Python seahorse stuff, there's a new type of Script One coming out. I think maybe there's even a Goaline One. It's also just a result of being early. Solana has really been around for two years, whereas EVM almost nine years now. It's hard to compare these things. That's one. And then two, and this is an interesting one, is developer optionality. As a developer, let's say at an entering focus from Coinbase, let's say you want to build a new product and  you're deciding between EVM and Solana. Well, the obvious kind of elephant in the room is, okay, if Solana has a problem, you are kind of done, right? (13:12):You don't have any other options. You can't port your code base over anywhere else. Whereas if you are the EVM developer and you build on Polygon, you can just use main net Eth, maybe you can, with some effort, use any of the other L2's or maybe another EVM for it, something like that. It's a much easier transition. It's less risky such that on a design doc that you want reviewed by product managers, most engineers are going to take the safe route there. Brian (13:37):It reminds me of that “no one gets fired for hiring IBM” phrase that they used to have back in the day, the safe route to get it approved by somebody. Yeah. Mert (13:45):100%. And it doesn't help that the Solana PR is so bad that everybody's even mistakenly saying, oh, Solana always goes down or Solana's all these different things. You add these up and then as an engineer, if you're at a big firm and you pick Solana, you have to religiously fight or justify your position. And most people just aren't going to do that even if they believe it. That's a big problem. One of the reasons why I think more SVM roll-ups that sell on other chains might be interesting here to give developers more optionality such that if you build on Solana, but Solana has something bad happen, but it's still settling on these other L1's or other data availabilities or whatever it might be. And then three, is of course, there are actual misconceptions about the reliability of the chain. (14:33):People think the chain has gone down 12 times or something, or multiple digits. It's actually gone down four times. People conflate performance degradation with outage. Performance degradation is just when you maybe have, you guys obviously notice at Phantom when you maybe aren't landing transactions on chain or maybe there's latency or something like that, that's the functional equivalent of fees getting higher on EVM. That's performance degradation. But an actual outage is actually relatively rare. In fact, the numbers, I think the last time I looked at them were 99.7% uptime, which isn't perfect, but it's also not bad. It's certainly not as bad as something that would go down every day or regularly. I mean there's a misconception there. Brian (15:15):Or reorgs in that matter too. Mert (15:16):Yeah, exactly. I mean we can kind of talk about that in maybe another part of this, but people don't realize that especially for an indexed company, maybe Coinbase where you're selling funds, those reorgs actually affect your architecture an insane amount because you need to add new systems to communicate, oh actually this block was not correct or something. Whereas on Solana, you don't really need to do that. I mean no block to my knowledge went back after being confirmed. Brian (15:40):Yeah. I was going to say I don't think there ever has been a... It's even, yeah, the optimistic confirmed, not even finalized as there's never been a reorg once it's been that. Yeah. Mert (15:49):Exactly. Some people think you need ridiculous hardware requirements to run these nodes and that's actually not true. You can run a node, depending on if you want an RPC node or a validator node for really anything from $200 to $800 a month. People think you need actual data centers to run it, which I don't know where people get that from. And then there's also light clients coming out now, right. I can talk all day about the misconceptions, but I think the first two are probably the most justified reasons from actual engineers that I've heard. Brian (16:20):Yeah. No, that's a really good take, I think, because one, there's the FUD, which I think is the back half of what you kind of just talked about, which I think that just comes with time and getting people to experiment with Solana and trying it firsthand and understanding there's no better teacher than that, otherwise you're fighting essentially Twitter algorithms. But I think that's a really nuanced take what you had to start, where you're saying the de-risking almost to get this buy-in because you know what it's like to work at these large companies and kind of proliferating Solana there. I also think what Jump is doing with Fired Answer is also just another benefit to that as well. Essentially just reducing the service area potential bugs that occur. Essentially if you have a bug in just one client implementation, adding a second one greatly reduces the chance it'll happen again. (17:09):Maybe one way we can take this is instead of fighting the FUD, because that could take all day, is from where you sit right now in Helius, say that you guys have a really interesting position in the space because one, you're super close to what's actually happening as Solana's roadmap evolves. I'd say part of being the pragmatic change is Solana's not afraid to push the boundaries, take risks, add new token programs, NFT compression, just constantly evolving at a fast pace. You guys are close to that and then you're also close to the developers who are coming into this space for the first time, like you said, the hobby weekend developer who's interested and they don't want to learn Rust and so they need some sort of abstraction layer to this coming in some sort of dead platform that's helping them in some way. What are you personally most excited about right now that's happening on Solana? Mert (18:02):Well, I mean Compression, I think, maybe is one that's gaining some steam in and an obvious one that I think most people are aware of at this point. But back when I was trying to show it, most people weren't aware. I think our job here is maybe done so now it can kind of take off, but Compression is super exciting because most people don't realize that Compression, actually, let me just explain what it is first. Data storage or state storage on Solana is quite costly. I don't know the exact cost, I guess I would need to look at that chart, but there's some articles on this and you can look at the Helius blog "shill" for seeing the comparisons for the numbers, but basically state storage on Solana is expensive and with Compression, essentially what you can do is instead of storing the data in state, you can store it on ledger. And that might sound a little abstract, but basically instead of needing it for consensus, you securely log it in transaction logs. (19:00):Basically it's what an engineer would call a stateless accumulator. I call them L2 because I like doing random marketing stuff, but Toly really doesn't like it. Do not call it an L2. Call it a stateless accumulator, which isn't very beginning friendly, but that is actually what it is. You just store a reference, it's a pointer by reference kind of thing. You store a reference to the data that's on the ledger on the state now instead of storing all the data on the state. And we do that via Merkel Trees, which I'm not going to go into here, but essentially you're able to get a few orders of magnitude and cost reductions. Now that's useful for digital assets and that's the first use case, NFT compression where you can mince thousands, millions, billions of NFTs. People will say like, oh, why do you need to mint a million NFTs, billion NFTs? (19:45):And it's like, that's not the point. The point is that we're not limited by technology anymore, whereas before we were, and we can maximize the design space and explore some things, right. You have Dialect doing sticker packs, Cross Mint using their APIs for all sorts of different cases, including loyalty programs, Helium migrating over to Solana for their hotspots using Compression, driphouse doing airdrops, Render potentially using it for their scene graphs, which is a super cool concepts, high map results even using them. And so it clearly has some use, but the cool thing about it is it's not actually limited to NFTs. Actually you can apply to any account, you can extend it to be fungible tokens and also just general account compression, which I think the guys at Gum are doing for some social graph formatives. It actually has quite a bit of potential there. (20:28):That's one of the big ones I'm excited about since my name is Compression Mert on Twitter right now. And then the Solana mobile, the Saga phone is awesome. I had a test unit and I've been an Android user my whole life after Blackberry Force and it's the best Android phone I've used and it's super snappy, very good build quality and it actually has changed my consumer behavior somewhat where actually, before I would explicitly shy away from mobile first or mobile crypto apps, I wouldn't use crypto at mobile at all. But now I'm like, okay, this is actually pretty cool. I can use leverage my secure seed vaults. We do need to work on that naming, but I can use that and have that confidence and that seamless integration. You have apps like Otter, Finance, Tip Link, Get Code or I guess just Code Wallet, which enables super fast kind of P2P payments, something like Venmo. And actually, I have used all of these to make payments to my family members and friends, so I'm super excited about that. (21:27):The thing I'm most excited about on Solana is this narrative of decentralized physical infrastructure or deepen taking off with not only do you have Helium now and High Mapper, you also have Render Now, Pollen Network, Genesis Go, Teleport and let's see who else we can get over. But I think this kind of intersection of P2P networks and using crypto to actually enable change in the physical world is super interesting and something that wasn't really possible before. Brian (21:56):That's super cool. I should say just for the listeners that we are recording this on April 13th, 2023, which is the official Saga launch day, so it's topical to bring that up. We're super excited about that too. I just think it's awesome that they're not afraid to push the boundaries on that. I mean for us at Phantom to not even have the ability to see a user seed phrase and it's just completely abstracted away at the hardware level, I think is awesome and a glimpse of where this is all heading. Let's talk a little bit about DePin too because I'm not as up to speed on that. I don't know if most of our users are. I think Helius migration is happening soon, TM, like this month in April. What are you guys seeing there? Is there any major changes to what you're doing on the infrastructure layer that's going to have to adapt for this? Do you foresee any major changes to end user behavior? (22:46):Part of what's interesting about Solana is the fee markets can adjust on a per piece of state level as opposed to if it was on Eth, you could see all of a sudden all your gas fees are increasing just like it would on a crazy NFT mint day. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys are working with this new DePin movement and what you guys are seeing? Mert (23:05):Helium particularly is interested in using Compression, or I mean they are using Compression to represent their hotspots and it would cost them just too much money to work with that kind of stuff on any other chain. And so Solana is what makes the most sense. And like you said, the independence of state, which causes individual account based fees as opposed to chain level fees, which doesn't make the UX horrible for one person here either. It's just you might have to pay extra. And so compression is something that they use the most, both High Mapper and Helium and also Render is, I believe, going to use it. They mentioned this in their GitHub migration paper. And so that's kind of the main driver, but also these teams generally have to subscribe to on chain events. And as a larger engineering firm or maybe independent of size, most people prefer getting data pushed to them instead of setting up some polling system to listen for events because there might be issues there. (24:02):They actually use our web hooks and then they kind of configure what events they want to listen to and then they kind of have this ease of mind where, okay, Helius will just stream me these events as they happen and I can just kind of plug, play and then forget. If anything happens, Helius will kind of let me know or maybe I'll get a page or something. The web hooks have actually been, it's interesting. When we first came to Solana, there was no web hook products on Solana and I'm not even sure if there was anything like that on Eth. It was just such an obvious thing and we built it and we shipped it and for example, Discord uses that for their integration into Solana. Their first actually Web3 integration, or actually I don't like the term Web3, their first crypto integration was with Solana and that was enabled with the Web hooks and we have some other big names using them now as well. (24:47):I don't think those are announced yet, but it's such a simple primitive, but just web hooks and listening to on chain data really helps some of these bigger firms who don't want to spend the time writing all this complex infrastructure code and they can just plug and play into some existing solution. Brian (25:02):Yeah. It's future-proofed, essentially. They can build once and they don't have to constantly be readjusting their implementation. Mert (25:08):Exactly. Brian (25:08):That's awesome. Turning this back to a developer who is maybe listening to this, familiar with EVM, looking at Solana, you guys do a lot, not just on the infrastructure side, but also on developer education, getting developers involved. We can talk about some of the specific initiatives there, but at a high level, what would you say are some of the biggest opportunities for a developer today who's looking at Solana? Where would you guide them to get started? Mert (25:35):Well, one thing I'll say is that Solana has maybe two main things that I would mention that might be interesting for folks coming over. One is that it's much earlier than the other ecosystems. And so there's a lot of low hanging fruit and underdeveloped tooling infrastructure, application layer stuff that exists in other chains in some form, but not on Solana. And so as a developer, let's just try to build something and you'll notice what's missing. You'll notice that the deployment workflows aren't great. You'll notice that maybe the monitoring isn't that great either, or maybe it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with certain types of smart contractors and stuff. You'll notice a ton of problems and that's just your opportunity to make something cool and fix those maybe as open source, maybe as a public good, maybe as a company. And so there's a lot of potential there. (26:22):Another thing is that Solana's architecture is, and so this almost kind of contradicts the first point, but not really if you think about it. The architecture of Solana is so different, right. It's functional based where you have actually a lot of modularity within the layer. You have independent state and logic, you have different accounts, localized fee markets, and so it's much more modular than something like ETH where state and logic are coupled. And also obviously the scalability features of Solana are quite different than anything else. And what that means is there's a lot of things that you can actually build that's only possible on Solana. Brian (26:57):I love that catchphrase by the way, only possible on Solana TM. Mert (27:01):Yeah. I've been a big fan of that one, let's just say. And it's totally true, right. Order books, for example, you saw it with Serum, you're seeing it now with Phoenix. This is before Fire Dancer and before 200ms block times, which will happen. This is the slowest it will be, it's only going to get faster from here. And so there's a bunch of things that are only possible on Solana. And I would strongly encourage people to think from first principles as a developer, look around, see what problems there are. They don't have to be Solana specific, they can just be problems, right. I don't know, maybe it's too slow to send your dad money or maybe it's too hard to offramp crypto, I don't know, something like that. And then usually if you are trying to look for a solution there for that problem, Solana will be able to handle it much more comfortably than others. (27:47):And the other important thing is it'll actually scale, right. You want kind of elasticity as a developer such that if your app takes off, you don't want to have to now migrate to another stack or something. With Solana, it's honestly just plug into a cloud provider, just kind of scales with you. But also a third thing I'll actually mention, which this really should have been number one, but I would encourage you very, very strongly to produce content, especially developer related content. Build something, learn from it and then write about it, make a podcast, produce a video, produce a tutorial, just write content. And not only will that obviously help you connect with other people who are in the ecosystem and like-minded and building other cool stuff, but also when you write stuff and produce content, you have to know what you're talking about, otherwise you won't be able to write it, right. It'll make you connect the dots and it'll point out flaws in your thinking. Brian (28:44):Yeah. It's the fastest way to get the right answer on the internet is to publish something that's wrong. Mert (28:49):Exactly. And so I guess maybe to go along with that is just have a high tolerance for looking, I don't want to say stupid, but just have a high tolerance for being wrong. You're going to be wrong a lot, but that's not a bad thing unless you're building the infrastructure for handling, I don't know, some critical payments or something. But you're probably not going to be doing that. Brian (29:10):Yeah. It's like the pursuit of truth. If you're open to that and you're excited to get told what's right, I couldn't agree more that's 100% the best way to build. Mert (29:19):Yeah. Sometimes I'll post something that I think is correct, but it's not apparently actually correct because Toly will comment and he'll gently say something that's slightly unrelated, but it's like, oh, okay, I'm wrong, I guess. I will retract this. And so honestly, it's just a fun way to learn and you do enough cycles of that and you are going to be doing that to other people and that's how we grow. Brian (29:46):Yeah, I totally agree. I think this ties in with what you were saying earlier of Solana being the pragmatic chain. I think part of the benefit, there's a knock, we talked about it, about, hey, Solana's new, it's different and you're essentially fighting network effects at that point. But part of the benefit is you get to build your own genuine kernel of a developer ecosystem and start from first principles and start from new and not be afraid to change things new. And I think that's been pretty eye-opening, even just to me personally. As Phantom enters EVM, we're looking at everything that EVM has inherited over the years. Most obvious one being even just how injected wallets play with each other on EVM is so different than Solana because Solana took a very first principles approach and said, we're going to do this in a way that you have a wallet, you can use it anywhere, it's going to scale forever kind of thing. And it's been pretty eye-opening to see the differences there. (30:36):That would be my only other thing I'd add to you is if you are a dev and you want to make it high impact on, it's probably the best place for it because you can post publicly about why you're doing what you're doing and you'll get people who are interested in listening and will back you on the basis and the merits of your ideas is what I'd say. Mert (30:52):Yeah, absolutely. Me, Chase and other parts of the developer system will help you the best we can. Basically the Helius tagline is actually “Where Solana teams succeed” because our entire goal is to help you succeed. That's essentially why I wake up and that's what I spend my entire day doing. And the Phantom founders, for example, are great example of this, right. They came from EVM and they saw what was possible on Solana and they built the number one wallet in crypto and it had such good UX and such good design and stuff, and you guys absolutely dominated. And then now you're actually transcending the change, right. It's actually becoming a product, it's not just a chain's product, it's just a product that you can use to onboard people onto crypto. I really like that approach from starting from first principles like you guys. You saw Meta Mask and you're like, okay, well we're going to do it differently. And you did it much better in my view. And so I think that's just an example of what's possible. Brian (31:50):Thanks. Yeah, I mean we love hearing that, but obviously love everything that Solana's doing and Solana's always going to be home. There's a lot to do on Solana. I'm excited to roll up the sleeves this year and get started. I guess, Mert, and as we start to wrap this up, one question we always ask all our guests, I'd love to hear this from you. You mentioned a lot of people on this podcast, a lot of teams, but I'd love to know, is there a particular builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem? Mert (32:17):Oh man. I mean, I do admire my co-founders, to be honest. I don't think they got that much credit because I'm kind of the loud one, but Nick and Liam are super, they're actually the driving force behind Helius and they do all of the engineering, and I do essentially nothing other than just larp on Twitter. Them for sure, but also, I'll give you my general approach on this, actually, maybe this is useful for someone, but my general approach to Twitter is whenever I see a founder on somebody's bio or something like that, or maybe a co-founder or something, I'll immediately follow them because those people are super inspiring to me. I pretty much follow all the founders on Solana at this point, I think. For example, the founder of Squat, Stephan Wright. I saw him, I was like, I'm going to follow this guy. (33:01):Turns out amazing dude, we're friends now. That's my general approach. I just respect all the founders in the ecosystem because they're taking big risks and they're trying to build cool stuff, and they're all trying to help the ecosystem. And so I have just huge respect for everyone there. Someones, I would probably point out specifically, would be obviously Armani and Tristan, huge respect for them. The founders of Gito, right, Sec, Fault and Buffaloo, I'll just say their pseudonym names. Co-founders of Squads, right, Margin, Drift, Zeta, for example. All the DeFi protocols. I'm probably just going to end up listing literally every single one. I would say if there's one particular one, it would be, I guess honestly just Toly, right. That's probably a cliche answer, but Toly just always keeps his composure under people just relentlessly slinging mud at his life's work essentially, and in a super unfair way. And he still gets up. And I mean, not only does he engage with the community, but he still builds cool stuff and there's so many different things. I have no idea how he does it, and I have a ton of respect for that. Brian (34:08):Well, I think that's the perfect answer. Having listed all the major founders in Solana, and then you go back to the guy who started it all, he sets the tone for the space and I think he makes it that drama free, practical, pragmatic, how do we build practical that's useful today. That's been my answer secretly too, that no one's asked me, but... Well, Mert, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. We'll have to do this again later once we've shipped all these crazy upgrades to Solana and check in again. But where can folks go to learn more about Helius? Mert (34:42):Yeah. Just helius.xyz. You can just go there or you can just @ me on Twitter. That's honestly how most people get in contact with me. Just tag me on Twitter on something and I'll respond. Brian (34:50):Awesome. Love it. Mert, the founder and CEO of Helius. Thanks so much for coming on. Mert (34:54):Thank you for having me.   

When the weather is cold, my wife and I go to a community center and walk on an indoor track. To reach the track, we cross a large room filled with weight machines, exercise bikes and elliptical trainers. Every time we go, the room holds several people puffing and sweating as they use the exercise machines. They are training hard to stay in shape. Many of these people also follow strict diets. Although I'm not a stickler about my diet, I do watch what I eat and often read nutrition labels to choose healthier options. Changes in my diet over the years has improved the results of my annual blood tests. Diet and physical exercise have several advantages. They help control weight, improve sleep and improve cardio-vascular health. If only people trained themselves to be godly with the same energy they expend on exercise or with the same discipline they have over food. 1 Timothy 4:7-8 says, “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” (NIV 1984) Notice, godliness is not just an advantage for seeking eternal life. Godliness promises benefits for life  today. But you must train yourself to develop it. Remember, you can't gain, if you don't train. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

How would you summarize what you want most in life? Is it to get ahead, to succeed at work, to build a nest egg and retire? Do you want to send your kids to the best schools and give them the best experiences in life? Are you working hard to make ends meet only to be frustrated at the steadily increasing cost of living? Are you fed up? Does it seem like the country is falling apart? Do you roll your eyes and shake your head each time our political leaders say or do another stupid thing? The government is bad today, but it is not as bad as the Roman empire in the first century. The Roman emperor Nero used Christians as lamp posts, literally burning them at night to light the streets. He murdered his mother to gain power and probably murdered his wife to marry another.  Yet it was during Nero's reign that Paul wrote these words in 1 Timothy 2:1-2, “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone– for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” (NIV 1984) Not only does this passage challenge us to pray for the people governing us, but it also indicates what we should want in life. As followers of Jesus, we must live peacefully, quietly, focused on holiness and godliness. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

So much of life is learned by example. I never read a book about how to ride a bicycle. I just watched my siblings and tried it myself. Of course, my mom was close by to tend to any scrapes and bruises. But I learned by example. I learned to use an axe the same way, watching my father. I did read a few books on how to be a good husband and father, but learned most about it again by watching my dad. Examples are important. If we are going to develop godliness, we can learn by studying the meaning of the word. But we still need to see it in action. One person described in Scripture as godly was Ananias of Damascus. He was the man who baptized Saul, who later became the apostle Paul. But at the time, he persecuted and imprisoned Christians. But God appeared to Ananias and told him to carry a message to Saul. Listen to Paul describe Ananias in Acts 22:12, “A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there.” (NIV 1984) What do we see Ananias doing? He observed the law, meaning he studied scripture and lived the way it teaches. Second, he earned the respect of others by living a moral life. Third, he obeyed God. Ananias displays the essence of godliness. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

The professional baseball season has started. Before long, the diamonds at the park near our home will be filled with children learning the game. One of the best ways to learn something is to watch a demonstration. At the baseball field, the coach shows children how to hold the bat, field a ground ball, run the bases and many other skills. Some kids will also watch the pros on television or online and imitate them. Watching an example helps us learn. If we are to develop godliness, as the bible urges us, we should also study an example. One such example is Cornelius, described in Acts 10:1-2, “At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.” (NIV 1984) We discover here traits of a godly  or devout person. First, he was God-fearing. These words describe someone who regularly participated in Jewish religious observances, though he was not a Jew. Second, he gave generously to the poor. Third, he prayed regularly. And fourth, all his family was devout. Let's use this list to check our godliness. Do we participate in a worship service each week?  Do we give generously to those in need? Do we have a daily prayer life? Do we encourage our family to be devout? That's what godliness looks like. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Do you enjoy meeting new people? Some people love it, but others become uneasy. One of the easiest things to understand about someone you've just met is their personality. Spend a few minute talking to them and you'll quickly know if they are shy or outgoing, serious or a jokester, a talker or a listener. What is more difficult to understand when meeting someone for the first time is their character, or lack of it. Character is the attitude we have toward others and our commitment to live in an ethical way. We often need to know someone for a while to understand their character. As followers of Jesus, Peter challenged us to develop our character. He said in 2 Peter 1:5-7, “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” (NIV 1984) As the passage indicates, character has many facets. We should develop all these different traits. This week, we will look at the trait of godliness. The word's background in the ancient world described an ethical person, one who had good conduct. It included respect for God, for government and for others. Godliness includes piety, but results in far more than religious practice. Join me this week as we explore godliness. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Have you seen the battery commercial with the pink bunny marching about, beating a bass drum? Several of them have appeared over the years. The trademarked tagline for the commercial started as “keeps going” and later morphed into “still going.” In fact, you could use those phrases to describe the mascot, not just the batteries. The bunny has been used in ads for nearly 35 years. The company wants you to associate their batteries with long life. It's almost like the battery-powered bunny never fails. The bunny shows us one nuance of the word persevere. Listen to 1 Corinthians 13:8-9, “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.”  We could also translate the first phrase of this passage as “Love perseveres.” We've seen this week that the word perseverance has a geographical nuance. It can mean to stand your ground or remain in place. But it also has a temporal meaning. It refers to something that doesn't stop, that keeps going, that never fails. This is a character trait that we must develop as we mature in Christ. Our faith in Jesus must never fail. Even in the face of persecution and suffering, we must continue to trust and wait patiently for Jesus' return. Like that bunny, our faith must just keep going. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Burny Mattison was the longest-serving employee at the Walt Disney Company before he passed away in February of this year. He spent 70 years at Disney. He started working in the company mailroom when he was 18. Six months later he became an animator and worked on the film Lady and the Tramp. He worked on several other films, including, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the Rescuers and others.* Mattison illustrates one nuance of the word persevere. The word can mean to remain, to stay in place. That meaning is used in Luke 2:43, “After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it.” (NIV 1984) This root meaning of “staying behind” or staying in place colors the word in many instances. You could say Burny Mattison persevered at Disney. He stayed in place for 70 years. Are you staying in place with your faith in Jesus? 2 Peter 1:5-7 says, “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” (NIV 1984) Hang in there. Don't surrender your faith in Jesus. Make every effort to persevere, to remain, to stand your ground, to wait patiently. *Vanessa Serna, "Disney's longest serving employee of 70 YEARS – who started out as a ‘traffic boy' for Walt Disney - dies at age 87: Animator worked on Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book and other classics," Daily Mail, last updated February 28, 2023, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11800639/Disneys-longest-serving-employee-70-YEARS-dies-age-87-Animator-worked-Lady-Tramp.html How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

If the government arrived at your house today and confiscated your car, would you be happy? What about your phone? What if they hauled you to court and took your home because you were a Christian? Would you rejoice? Christians in the first century were persecuted by removal of their property. Listen to Hebrews 10:32-36, “Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” (NIV 1984) We find perseverance in two places within this passage. First, they stood their ground in the face of suffering. Then, at the end, they needed to persevere to receive God's promise. This is why we need to develop perseverance to add to our faith and self-control. We live in a world that will insult us. Christians face persecution in many forms. We must stand our ground in the face of suffering to receive what God has promised. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Listen to a new episode of YNS Live with NFL Thread recorded live on Fireside with hosts Juliet Hahn and Cynthia Zordich, featuring Special Guest Camille Jenkins. Camille Jenkins is a results-oriented, customer experience consultant, keynote speaker, realtor, and servant leader. During the pandemic of 2020, she repeatedly received requests from organizations for her help in ensuring that their customer service and sales teams all demonstrated the proper messaging needed to manage these unprecedented events. While she wanted to help, she was tied to her employer and could not risk a conflict of interest. However, the demand for her services continued to surge, and she realized it was time to take a leap of faith. In 2021, Camille exited the corporate world and founded her own consulting business, Camille's Keys LLC. With decade's worth of industry experience including sales, corporate communications, construction, contract negotiations, warranty and operations knowledge, Camille brings a real-world approach to setting and delivering on expectations. She was honored in 2020 by national nonprofit Operation Homefront with the Cornerstone Award for her tireless work to provide mortgage free homes to military families transitioning from service. Camille assists organizations to both identify keys to a successful service experience and coach leaders through change management, positively influencing  brand reputation., operations and employee performance. Camilles Keys services translate across industries as every organization is in one form or another in the customer service business. Formerly, Camille served as Vice President, National Customer Relations with Meritage Homes Corporation, a publicly traded national homebuilder for over twenty years. During her tenure, the organization delivered upwards of nine-ten thousand new homes on an annual basis across 11 states.  Camille was responsible for several national key performance areas including the organization's customer satisfaction rating, escalations policies, advocacy initiatives, and companywide customer service training programs. Under her leadership, their customer satisfaction rating improved from 70% to well above 90% and was the recipient of multiple Avid Ratings Customer Satisfaction awards including the prestigious Diamond Award. Camille has shared the stage with top keynote speakers as well as fellow members of the National Home Building Association. In 2023 she presented at IBS, the International Builder Show on remodeling and the customer experience.  Download the Fireside App today and follow YNS Live with NFL Thread and PIVOT. We dive deep into NFL stories and reveal the good people inside the game.   You can find Camille on her Website.   Remarkable Quotes   “If you are the person that can walk into the room and in the middle of the chaos, you can find your peace and help others get through it, you're powerful.”   Sponsor   The YNS Live With NFL Thread Super Bowl Experience is sponsored by Shutterstock Editorial.  Wherever you go - Shutterstock is there to capture it!   Contact Shutterstock at assigments@shutterstock.com and take the field with Shutterstock's award-winning photography superstars.   Find Us Online! Fireside: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich Instagram: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich | NFL Thread LinkedIn: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich FB: Juliet Hahn | NFL Thread Clubhouse: Juliet Hahn YouTube: Juliet Hahn Twitter: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich | NFL Thread

Do you enjoy waiting? I can't say that I do. I usually want to get on with it, whatever it is. If I'm stuck in traffic, I'm checking the map for a way around. I also pick the shortest line at the store checkout. And I dread getting boxed into a checkout lane when the person ahead buys something requiring the clerk to call for a price check. However, I can wait patiently for tomatoes to ripen on the vine. The flavor of vine-ripened tomatoes is exquisite. And I can't do anything to make them grow faster. So, I wait. Oh, I'm eager for them the ripen and I check them frequently, but I know the wait will be worth it. The same thing is true of our hope in Christ. Romans 8:24-25 says, “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (NIV 1984) The word patiently in the passage is the same word that can be translated “perseverance.” To persevere requires us to wait on God with confident expectation. We know Christ will return and set right every broken thing in this world. We eagerly want it, but have no control over the timing. We simple continue to hold on to hope. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Spring has sprung in my neighborhood. Flowers are blooming, grass growing and leaves sprouting on the trees. I've already spent some time pulling weeds and planting things in my garden. Plants are amazing things. Cover a seed with good soil and watch it grow. Their roots run deep as the plant gains strength. Have you ever pulled up a plant and examined the network of roots that spread through and clutch the dirt? They are amazing structures that provide water and nutrients to the plant as well as anchor it against the wind. They also anchor weeds against my effort to uproot them. Roots can also be an example of perseverance. In Luke 8:15 Jesus describes the meaning of good soil in his parable. He said, “But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” (NIV 1984) The word persevere carries the nuance of holding fast to something. Plants that hold fast to the soil will produce a crop, whether they be a tomato, okra, zucchini, wheat or corn. Pull up the plant, and no crop develops. In the same way, we must hold fast to God to produce fruit for him. We must entwine our lives with Jesus and abide in him. Don't let go of your trust in God. Hold fast to Jesus. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Homegrown jeweller Habib Jewels has been giving the Gift of Happiness to Malaysians for 65 years and counting. But can Habib keep Malaysian spirits and the fortunes of the overall company buoyed amid global economic headwinds? We discuss the intricacies of the jewellery business with Dato' Sri Meer Sadik Habib, Group Executive Chairman of Habib Group.Image credit: Shutterstock

One of the earliest writings by a woman was penned in 203 A.D. Vibia Perpetua was a young mother living in Carthage. The Roman emperor had forbade any conversion to Christianity. But Perpetua and four others were preparing for baptism in violation of the edict. They were arrested. Perpetua started a diary describing her imprisonment, dreams while in prison and her trial. At her trial, her father pleaded with her to renounce Jesus, but she would not. On the night before her execution, Perpetua gave the diary to another who recorded her death. She bravely faced attack by wild animals in the arena and was finished off by the sword. Her diary was read each year in the churches of Carthage for hundreds of years.* Her story brings to mind Jesus' words in Matthew 10:21-22, “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (NIV 1984) Perpetua is an example of standing firm to the end. She is a picture of perseverance. She refused to renounce her faith in Jesus, though it cost her life. We also must stand firm in our faith. As Peter reminds us, Christian character begins with faith, but continues as different traits are added. One of those traits is perseverance. *Joyce Ellen Salisbury, "Perpetua, Christian martyr," Britannica, Last Updated March 3, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Perpetua-Christian-martyr How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

What would you do if 2,000 enemy soldiers and 40 tanks attacked you? That's where 120 Indian soldiers found themselves in December of 1971. Pakistan attacked India in a war that lasted only a couple of weeks. One focus of the attack was the outpost at Longewala. Even though the Indian soldiers stationed there only possessed one heavy weapon, they stood their ground. They battled against the Pakistani forces through the night. When the battle ended the following day, over 200 enemy soldiers were dead and nearly every tank was destroyed. The Indian force only lost two men.* Sometimes, the best thing to do when attacked is to stand your ground. This is especially true in the Christian life. 2 Peter 1:5-7 says, “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” (NIV 1984) The word perseverance used in this passage describes someone who stands his or her ground, who hangs in there, who doesn't quit. The word describes the Indian soldiers who fought on, even when seriously outnumbered and at a disadvantage. Do you feel like the entire world is against your faith? Hang in there. Add perseverance to your faith in Jesus. *"The 6 best defensive stands in military history," We Are the Mighty, April 22, 2021, https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/the-6-best-defensive-stands/ How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes once said, “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” This week, we have examined the scene at the empty tomb of Jesus. Only three possibilities exist. First, Jesus didn't die and escaped. The evidence refutes this theory with numerous facts. The second possibility is someone took the body from the tomb. However, the enemies of Jesus wanted the body present and placed a guard and a seal on the tomb. Jesus' disciples couldn't steal the body because of the guard. And the sealed tomb kept the guards from stealing the body. Today, we look at a final fact that refutes the theory the disciples took the body. Look at the change in their behavior. They fled at Jesus' arrest and cowered in discouragement after his death. But after Sunday, they boldly proclaimed Jesus in the face of persecution. Hauled before the authorities who forbade their preaching, Acts 5:29-30 says, ‘Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead–whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.' (NIV 1984) These men eventually died for their faith. Would they die for a lie? Would stealing the body cause this change in their behavior? No. We are left with only one possibility. Jesus rose from the dead. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Many plays and stories have three acts. A problem develops. The problem gets worse. And finally, the hero solves the problem. When we examine the empty tomb of Jesus, most things have two states. First, how does the item appeared at the end of the crucifixion? And second, how does it appeared three days later? However, the guards at the tomb display three stages or acts. First, they are the professional soldiers guarding the sealed tomb as Matthew 27:66 says. Then on Sunday, Matthew 28:4 tells us the guards were so afraid “they shook and became like dead men.” (NIV 1984) Finally, the guards reported to the chief priests about the events they witnessed on Sunday. Matthew 28:12-15 tells us ‘When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.' (NIV 1984) What could cause Roman soldiers to go from competent, to scared stiff, to bribed liars?  Only one thing, they witnessed the resurrection of Jesus. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Where do you keep your valuables? Many people rent safe deposit boxes at a bank. The bank guards, security systems and locks make it difficult to steal items in the bank vault. Bank security reminds me of the security at the empty tomb of Jesus. Yes, Jesus' tomb had security. The Jewish leaders were afraid the disciples would steal his body. They knew Jesus promised to rise again. So, they asked Pilate for security measures. Matthew 27:66 says, “They went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.” (NIV 1984) To seal the tomb the Romans stretched a cord from the closed stone to the wall of the tomb and anchored it is place with a large amount of wax or clay. A pattern representing the Roman governor was pressed into the lumps of wax. I know, it doesn't sound very secure, does it? It's certainly not the same as a vault door. But the seal prevented the guards from looting the grave or stealing the body. Breaking the seal violated Roman law. The seal provided the ability to audit the trustworthiness of the guards, as well as, defer others by declaring the tomb closed by the governor. Anyone breaking the seal faced Roman wrath. If Jesus died and no one moved his body, how do we explain the empty tomb? Well, he rose from the dead. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Let's answer your questions with our buddy, William Cronje! Today's questions: What type of jobs and common project tasks match up to each part of the ADDIE process? Your instructional design internship is ending. What do you do next? What should instructional designers know about AI? What are the best recommendations for learning about instructional design? How do you actually start designing and constructing a technology-based learning environment?  YouTube video and transcript: https://youtu.be/A3sEsFRp7A8 Mentioned Links: Shreya Gupta Interview: https://drlukehobson.com/podcast-episodes/ep-48-shreya-gupta-learning-experience-design-lxd-at-amazon-design-thinking-and-landing-an-lxd-job IDPCC: https://www.eduflow.com/academy/instructional-design-principles-for-course-creation?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&utm_campaign=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eduflow.com%2Facademy&utm_medium=utm_append_script ATD Self-Assessment - https://www.td.org/capability-model/access Designing Social Learning Experiences: https://www.eduflow.com/academy/designing-social-learning-experiences?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&utm_campaign=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eduflow.com%2Facademy&utm_medium=utm_append_script Getty Image Lawsuit Over AI: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/06/getty-images-sues-ai-company-over-hideous-frankenphotos/ Shutterstock and Meta: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/Meta-Signs-Content-Access-Deal-with-Shutterstock/640561/ Learning with AI: https://www.eduflow.com/academy/learning-with-ai-exploring-the-potential-of-generative-tech Design for How People Learn: https://www.amazon.com/Design-People-Learn-Voices-Matter/dp/0134211286/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3NZXCZD3VZ277&keywords=instructional+design&qid=1681328067&sprefix=instructional+desig%2Caps%2C128&sr=8-6 100 Learning Influencers: https://www.eduflow.com/blog/learning-influencers Great Minds on Learning by Donald Clark: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/instructionalists-with-donald-clark/id1582598860?i=1000536706712 Khan Academy AI: https://www.khanacademy.org/khan-labs Gagne's 9 Events: https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/gagnes-nine-events-of-instruction.shtml Progressive Enhancement: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/progressive-enhancement-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it/ Graceful Degradation: https://blog.hubspot.com/website/graceful-degradation Dreambox: https://www.dreambox.com Building an Inclusive Quality Assurance Rubric: https://www.eduflow.com/academy/building-an-inclusive-quality-assurance-rubric   Recommendations:

Have you ever seen the carnival game where someone uses a sledge hammer to hit a target on the ground to launch a weight up a rod in an attempt to ring a bell? It takes strength to smack the target hard enough to ring the bell. Strength is also important in our examination of the empty tomb. One detail required great strength. Matthew 27:60 says that after Joseph buried Jesus, “He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away.” (NIV 1984) Tombs often had a rolling cover, like a large stone disc set on edge. It rolled in a track that guided it over the door. The language used in Mark indicates the track led downhill, making closing the tomb easier than opening it. So Joseph's strength was enough to close the tomb. But listen to John 20:1, “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.” (NIV 1984) The word removed used here, and the description in Luke's account, indicate the stone wasn't simply rolled back up the track enough to open the door. The stone had been carried away, removed from the tomb. Here again, this would have been impossible for Jesus to accomplish if he'd simply fainted on the cross and revived in the tomb. The power of the resurrection moved the stone. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

In one of my favorite detective shows, the main character often notices a small detail at the crime scene. The early theories about the crime do not explain that one, nagging fact. He doesn't rest until he understands how the detail occurred, often leading him to a different suspect, the true murderer. As we examine the empty tomb of Jesus, we have to understand a nagging detail, namely, Jesus was prepared for burial. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took Jesus' body from the cross. John 19:40 says, “Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.” (NIV 1984) Earlier verses tell us that they used 75 pounds of spices, not a light dusting. The strips of cloths were probably about a foot wide. They wrapped the body, placing spices between the layers of cloth. Some of the spices probably had a sticky consistency, holding the cloth to the body and each layer of wrapping to the next. Why is this fact important? It proves again that Jesus was dead. He could not have revived in the tomb and escaped the wrappings. But more importantly, all the cloth wrapping lay exactly where Jesus' body had laid, but were empty, flat. Only the face covering was in a different place. How did this happen?  Jesus rose from the dead. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

A common plot device in mysteries is the impossible crime. One of the most used devices is the murder inside a locked room. The detective has to determine how the murderer entered the room and then left it locked, if it can only be locked from the inside. These puzzles stump the detective until he or she has the “aha moment.” When we look at the death and resurrection of Jesus, we must examine the tomb. Luke 23:53 tells us that Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus and “wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid.” (NIV 1984) The tombs of Jesus' day had a low doorway that entered a tiny room. The body would be placed on a shelf, often carved from the rock on one side. After the body decayed, the bones would be place into boxes or in niches in the back or sides of the tomb. Why is the tomb important? Because it is further evidence that Jesus was dead. He would not have been placed in the tomb otherwise. Also, tombs only had one entrance. The body of Jesus could only leave the same way it entered. In fact, when news came to the disciples that Jesus was alive, where did they run? To the tomb. They found it empty, evidence of his resurrection. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Do you like who-done-it stories? I enjoy watching mysteries and police shows. When the detectives arrive at the scene of the crime, they examine the scene for evidence, trying to understand what happened. The forensic team members examine everything in the greatest detail and the coroner examines the body. This week, the podcast will do something similar. We will examine the scene of the resurrection of Jesus. Many doubt it occurred. But what does the evidence say? Is there reason to believe Jesus rose? In order to do this, we must examine seven things as they appeared at the end of the crucifixion, as well as how they changed just a couple of days later. The first item we'll examine is the body of Jesus. It was lowered from the cross and judged dead by his executioners. He had been tortured by scourging, carried the cross, then nailed to it for hours. He even hung an extended time after he stopped breathing. The soldiers rammed a spear into his chest cavity to ensure his death. These facts are known. What must be determined is why did his body disappear. Rather than solving a crime, we need to determine if a miracle occurred. After the cross, we have the dead body of Jesus. But on Sunday, his body is missing from the tomb and people claim he has appeared to them alive. Their witness is the first reason to believe in the resurrection. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Do you find yourself shaking your head when you encounter the news? Whether reading, listening or watching, it can be hard to know if you receive the true account of events or some narrative spun to distort or hide the facts. Today, things people decried in the past few years as conspiracy theories have been proven true. Yet, I'm sure that today's news cycle will include more spin and narrative than actual facts. When we try to understand who Jesus is, we can also encounter narratives. One such narrative is that Jesus' followers elevated his status following his death. Over time, they developed the idea he was God. This idea ignores the fact that Jesus' followers used divine titles for him and worshipped him. It also ignores the fact that Jesus claimed the name of God in John 8:58-59, ‘“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.' (NIV 1984) When God called Moses to serve Him, He gave His name as “I am who I am.” Jesus claimed this name. The Jews clearly understood this, because they picked up stones to kill him. Don't believe the narrative that Jesus never claimed to be God, that his followers invented the idea. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, accepted worship and claimed the name of God. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

“The proof is in the pudding.” Have you heard that saying? It is a shortened version of the saying “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Centuries ago, a pudding was a sausage-like dish of chopped meat, fat, spice and cereal. The only way to know if it was good or spoiled was to eat it. So the saying came to mean you only know something is good when you experience it. To understand what the people who experienced Jesus's teaching and ministry thought of him, we can look at their words and actions. One example is the man born blind who Jesus healed. After healing him, Jesus meets him again in John 9:35-38, ‘Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.' (NIV 1984) Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man. Scripture tells us the Son of Man would come from heaven and return, would heal people and have authority to judge. The man was so convinced Jesus was the Son of Man, he worshipped Jesus. The title and the man's worship point us to the deity of Jesus. That is his identity. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

How Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy (SSTK) is remaking the company with artificial intelligence and partnering with OpenAI. The “mismatch” causing headaches at Dave and Buster's (PLAY). How Simply Good Foods (SMPL) is playing catch up after misjudging inflation. What's behind the RH (RH) blame game. The Drill Down with Cory Johnson offers a daily look at the business stories behind stocks on the move. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a passport issued by the government of the United States of America. It is proof of my identity. But it is useless if I never use it. I must make a claim to my identity and then show the passport as proof of my claim. It is not the only way I can assert a claim to my identity. I can also use my driver's license or birth certificate. When accessing secure websites, I can provide a username as my claimed identity. The password, and any multifactor identification steps are proof of the claim. In ancient Judea, passports, births certificates, usernames and passwords were not issued. But people still made claims about their identity. So when we seek to understand who Jesus truly is, we should look at the claims he made. One such claim is in John 4:25-26, ‘The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”' (NIV 1984) The woman at the well was looking for the Messiah. The word in Greek is “Christ.” It refers to the prophesied king of the Jews who would restore their relationship to God and established an everlasting kingdom. Notice Jesus claimed this title. His preaching also proclaimed the coming kingdom of God. Make no mistake, Jesus clearly claimed to be the Messiah. That is part of his identity. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Listen to a new episode of YNS Live with NFL Thread recorded live on Fireside with hosts Juliet Hahn and Cynthia Zordich, featuring Special Guest Jennifer Archuleta. Listen to a new episode of YNS Live with NFL Thread recorded live on Fireside with hosts Juliet Hahn and Cynthia Zordich, featuring Special Guest Jennifer Archuleta. Growing up in a large family in Ohio, Jennifer was always surrounded by love and support. But at 18, she made the bold decision to leave her family and move out west to chase her dreams of living by the beach and experiencing life in the big city. Arriving in Los Angeles wasn't easy; she faced financial and emotional struggles. But as they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Jennifer eventually found her footing as a freelance makeup artist, working on movie sets. A chance encounter at the Playboy Mansion changed her life. While working as an assistant to a makeup artist, Jennifer caught the eye of Hugh Hefner, which led her to a career in modeling. Although she never imagined herself in that world, she embraced the opportunity. In 2008, Jennifer retired from modeling to focus on her growing family. Now, she's happily married to former NFL safety Adam Archuleta and currently a commentator for CBS. They have been together for over 18 years and have three beautiful children, five dogs, and two tortoises. Over the years, Jennifer has discovered a deep passion for helping others. She has been a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for foster children and volunteered for Childhelp for the last eight years. As a survivor of childhood trauma herself, it's important for her to give back to those in need. In her free time, Jennifer enjoys participating in Spartan races, going to the shooting range, working out, attending church, cooking, and spending quality time with her family. Her life philosophy, inspired by Marilyn Monroe, is: "Nothing lasts forever, so live it up, drink it down, laugh it off, avoid the drama, take chances & never have regrets, because at one point everything you did was exactly what you wanted." Download the Fireside App today and follow YNS Live with NFL Thread and PIVOT. We dive deep into NFL stories and reveal the good people inside the game. Download the Fireside App today and follow YNS Live with NFL Thread and PIVOT. We dive deep into NFL stories and reveal the good people inside the game. You can find Jennifer on her Instagram and check out her charity Childhelp, as well as the Wings Fashion Show Event.  Remarkable Quotes   “Having volunteered most of my life, I've discovered that selflessly helping others is the most profound gift we can grant ourselves; it feeds our souls, deepens our relationships, and establishes an enduring pattern of love and empathy that not only affects my own children but also extends across generations.”   Sponsor   The YNS Live With NFL Thread Super Bowl Experience is sponsored by Shutterstock Editorial.  Wherever you go - Shutterstock is there to capture it!   Contact Shutterstock at assigments@shutterstock.com and take the field with Shutterstock's award-winning photography superstars.   Find Us Online! Fireside: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich Instagram: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich | NFL Thread LinkedIn: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich FB: Juliet Hahn | NFL Thread Clubhouse: Juliet Hahn YouTube: Juliet Hahn Twitter: Juliet Hahn | Cynthia Zordich | NFL Thread

Prove it. Did you ever hear those words issued as a challenge? Prove it. Or, as they say in Missouri, show me. If you make claims about your toughness or ability on the playground, someone will challenge you to prove it, to put your money where your mouth is, to back it up with action. I remember guys in high school bragging about how fast their cars were. Eventually, someone would challenge them and they would line up on the black top road north of town and hold a drag race. Revving engines, squealing tires and the fastest car through the quarter mile proved which claim was true. What about the claims that Jesus is God's Son? Dare we say “prove it”? We really don't need to. Listen to John 3:1-2, ‘Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”' (NIV 1984) Nicodemus didn't ask Jesus to prove who he was. He said that God had already proven who Jesus was. The miracles performed by Jesus proved he came from God. God claimed Jesus was his Son, and he proved it with miracle after miracle. God, backed up his words with action. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

The jury in a trial hears witnesses testify about the facts of a case. The jury must judge whether the witnesses are credible or not. Having served on a jury, I can tell you the credibility and possible incentives for the witnesses are important to consider. So, when we come to claims about who Jesus is, who should we believe? Many declare Jesus to be the Son of God. Others say he was only a good rabbi. Who do you believe? Today, let's consider the witness of God himself about who Jesus is. Matthew 3:13-17 records these words, ‘Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”' (NIV 1984) This voice from heaven was heard by several and mentioned in all of the gospels. God bore direct testimony about the identity of Jesus. He is the Son of God. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

Épisode 956 : On en entend parler de partout, l'outil de génération d'IA Midjourney a sorti sa version V5 et c'est carrément dingue. On a testé et on vous aiguille pour l'utiliser dans votre stratégie social media.MidJourney c'est quoi ?Midjourney est un outil de génération d'images basé sur l'IA. Il utilise un modèle dit texte-to-image. Pour faire simple, il lit le texte que vous lui fournissez et crée une image basée sur celui-ci.On parle de création généré par l'iA.—Mais comment marche vraiment MidJourney ?Midjourney prend votre description textuelle et l'exécute via un algorithme d'apprentissage automatique (ML). Cet algorithme a été formé sur des millions de données provenant d'images diffusées sur Internet.Où, quand, comment, quelles images ? Impossible de savoir. Midjourney n'a jamais communiqué sur l'origine de ces images.—La version 5 de Mid JourneyEn Mars, MidJourney a annoncé le lancement de la Version 5 de MidJourney. Encore plus intelligent, encore plus réaliste. Cette nouvelle version est une avancée technologique majeure. Elle a d'ailleurs fait couler beaucoup d'encre en raison du caractère troublant de ses propositions visuelles. Le pape en doudoune blanche, Emmanuel Macron qui ramasse les poubelles dans les rues de Paris.—Où trouver Mid Journey ?Midjourney ne fonctionne pas comme une application Web. Il n'y a pas non plus de codage requis.Au lieu de cela, vous l'utilisez dans l'application de chat Discord, en "parlant" à un bot. En tant qu'utilisateur gratuit/d'essai, c'est particulièrement chaotique, car vous interagissez avec le bot dans une room public très fréquenté, où tout le monde fait AUSSI la même chose !Si vous utilisez la version payante, (à partir de seulement 10Euros par mois), vous pourrez DM le bot dans votre propre serveur Discord, ce qui rendra l'expérience beaucoup plus calme.—L'art du promptPour commencer à utiliser Midjourney, tapez /imagine dans le chat public, suivi de votre texte. On appelle ça un prompt.Un prompt ça s'écrit en anglais. Soyez aussi descriptif que possible, y compris les styles artistiques que vous souhaitez, l'ambiance, les sujets, etc. Rédiger un prompt efficace nécessite un temps d'adaptation.Il faut beaucoup expérimenter au préalable et apprendre à raconter l'image souhaitée.Notez aussi que MidJourney ne comprend pas la négation.Par exemple si je dis « une maison sans fenêtre » il ne va pas comprendre. Ca oblige à ruser.—Une fois votre texte analysé, Midjourney vous présentera quatre images dans une grille à choisir. Choisissez celui qui vous semble le plus proche de votre description et sélectionnez le bouton U sous la grille pour le mettre à l'échelle. Vous pouvez aussi appuyer sur V pour créer plus de variations de votre image préférée. Vous pouvez également relancer le programme si les options ne sont pas assez bonnes. Notez qu'un utilisateur gratuit sera limité à 25 images—Utiliser midJourney pour illustrer des contenus social mediaC'est son point fort.Avec MidJourney5 vous avez vraiment un outil qui peut très habilement remplacer vos banques d'images en ligne.Vous décrivez votre image et il la génère.Par exemple, si j'ai besoin d'une photo réaliste d'une fourgonnette blanche qui roule sur une route de campagne française. Je peux passer 2 heures sur Shutterstock ou AdobeStock. Avec MidJourney ça ne prend que quelques secondes.Autre exemple, j'ai besoin de créer un post inspirationnel pour Instagram qui met en scène un petit chat tigré lové dans un panier. Bim ! MidJourney5 est ton meilleur ami.A date, MidJourney est vraiment un très bon outil pour illustrer ses posts.—Utiliser midJourney pour nourrir vos montages photoshopIl serait je pense une erreur d'imaginer que MidJourney comme une machine remplaçant vos créatifs. Au contraire je pense que c'est un outil qui vient vraiment nourrir vos workflows.Si par exemple je bosse pour une marque de food, il est illusoire de penser que MidJourney soit plug and play.Par contre, je peux par exemple demander à MidJourney de me générer une image réaliste en top View d'une assiette blanche sur une table en bois noir.Ensuite à charge pour moi de photoshoper mon produit dans la scène.Exemple avec Levis qui va utiliser des modèles générés pas IA pour ajouter plus de diversité—Utiliser midJourney pour expérimenter visuellement > conceptualiser—MidJourney et la question des droitsIl y a des inquiétudes concernant le droit d'auteur.Le fondateur de midJourney a d'ailleurs admis qu'il n'avait pas reçu le consentement des créateurs sur lequel le modèle a été formé.Avec des millions d'images nécessaires pour un modèle de cette taille, cela signifierait des millions de violations du droit d'auteur.Mais quid de l'usage des images générées ?Lorsque l'on souscrit à un abonnement MidJourney, vous disposez d'un droit d'usage commercial. Ce qui veut dire que vous pouvez utiliser l'image générée où et comment vous souhaitez.—MidJourney a ses limites, et elles sont encore nombreusesLa résolution est modeste. Max 1024px.Les mains c'est pas ouf.Dés qu'il ya du texte ça merdouille.…Le Super Daily est le podcast quotidien sur les réseaux sociaux. Il est fabriqué avec une pluie d'amour par les équipes de Supernatifs.Nous sommes une agence social media basée à Lyon : https://supernatifs.com/. Ensemble, nous aidons les entreprises à créer des relations durables et rentables avec leurs audiences. Ensemble, nous inventons, produisons et diffusons des contenus qui engagent vos collaborateurs, vos prospects et vos consommateurs.

Have you ever doubted the claims of someone? Maybe it was the new kid in school bragging about how popular they were in their old school. Or bragging about their athletic abilities. Maybe someone told you an outlandish tale and you doubted whether it really happened. When I've doubted the claims of others, I have sometimes been right. At other times, what I doubted actually happened. I'm sure you have experienced the same thing. At the beginning of Jesus' ministry, multiple people witnessed an event. Listen to John 1:29-33, ‘The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.'”' (NIV 1984) John the Baptist testified that Jesus was sent from God like a lamb for sacrifice. Don't doubt his word. How to leave a review: https://www.sparkingfaith.com/rate-and-review/ Visit Elmer Fuller's author website at: https://www.elmerfuller.com/ Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.

The government is abolishing the mandatory death penalty for 11 offences, and will put a cap on prison sentences between 30 to 40 years. What are the implications of this on the overall prison system, and what other reforms need to be implemented in tandem to improve the rehabilitation chances and welfare of inmates? We discuss this with our panel of experts.Image credit: Shutterstock

Discover the advantages and disadvantages of using artificial intelligence for creating content in today's digital era by listening to this discussion. Key takeaways to listen for 02:32 Innovative AI content generators that might help your business 15:47 Advantages of AI writing tools and image generators for content creation 19:59 Profound effect that AI writing tools will have on jobs 27:31 The rise of AI and it's impact on business, branding, and marketing 37:37 Why you need to have the power of mindset in times of change and opportunity Resources mentioned in this episode 00:02 ChatGPT 02:32 Shutterstock 15:54 Jordan Peterson 16:50 Google 34;19 Amazon 34:19 Paypal 42:13 Peter Thiel 43:02 Blood in the Water - Integrity Holdings Group Do you want to be intentional about giving and making a difference in the lives of others? Go to https://www.investingwithpurpose.org/ to learn more about partnering with Integrity Holdings Group to impact and empower small communities worldwide today! To learn more about real estate investing, visit Integrity Holdings Group to sign up for our 7 Day Passive Real Estate Investing Course (it's free)! Connect with Us Are you interested in joining a community of like-minded individuals who aspire to build true wealth through real estate passive investing? Go to IHG Investor Club to learn more!

➤ Tesla sales are surging in China ahead of quarter end ➤ Contact form: https://forms.gle/FuzXMtUF9swXzj8M6 ➤ CPI comes in higher than expectations ➤ Elon Musk, BYD comment on report ➤ V4 Supercharger update ➤ Tesla releases branding iron ➤ OpenAI releases GPT-4 Shareloft: https://www.shareloft.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/teslapodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tesladailypodcast Tesla Referral: https://ts.la/robert47283 #Tesla #TSLA #Investing Executive producer Jeremy Cooke Executive producer Troy Cherasaro Executive producer Andre/Maria Kent Executive producer Jessie Chimni Executive producer Michael Pastrone Executive producer Richard Del Maestro Executive producer John Beans Editing assistance by Jasem Ashkanani Music by Evan Schaeffer Image(s) and/or footage used under license from Shutterstock.com Disclosure: Rob Maurer is long TSLA stock & derivatives