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Character and Attitude

Read the full content of the teaching 'Be faithful in small matters!'

Please note that there may be deviations and errors, as the text below has been transcribed and adjusted automatically.

The topic I’ve chosen for today is quite fitting, considering what I’ve heard about words and faith in small things. It’s an incredibly important biblical theme. It’s a crucial subject, and sometimes we completely blind ourselves to it, neglect it, and don’t even think about it. Why? Because what do we do? We chase after these role models in front of us, all these big shots in healing and deliverance and all sorts of God’s men who are just up there, and we think, “Wow, I want that too!”

And so we work hard, striving for this huge, massive thing we want to achieve, and unfortunately, it often ends with people feeling rejected or prideful rejection instead. But there is actually another way in. It’s God’s way, not man’s way, and it’s not the way our minds and brains sometimes desire.

I want to start by reading from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 14 to 30. Jesus tells this story: “It’s like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The one who had received five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. The one with two talents did the same and gained two more. But the man who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.

After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five talents brought the other five and said, ‘Master, you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ The man with two talents also came and said, ‘Master, you entrusted me with two talents. See, I have gained two more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

Then the man who had received one talent came and said, ‘Master, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! You knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'”

This is actually quite intense. It’s really intense because, at the core, this man with a bag of money just wants to bury it, thinking it’s protected and safe. But God, who is this just man, whom the last servant thinks is unjust, has expectations. In the same way, He has expectations of us.

He has given each of us some gifts, some abilities, some qualities that He wants us to use. And what’s so cool is that we’re all in different places. We’re all on different journeys in life. We’ve all been given different talents. I think it’s fantastic that money back then was called talents because we can also use it in Danish with talents. He has given us talents, He has given us abilities, He has given us qualities, and He wants those qualities that He has given us to be used in His kingdom. We need to make use of them. But He also wants us to be faithful in the little things.

Look in Paul’s letter to the Colossians: Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism.

And that’s incredibly tough. Hey slaves, get it together! But this is because these are God’s principles, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a slave or not. It has to do with the fact that when we are entrusted with something, tasks, we must also be faithful. When you’re given a task and entrusted with something, it has to do with faith. It means you’re suddenly responsible. When I entrust someone with something, I give them responsibility for something. When God gives us something, He gives us responsibility.

And if we look at it, one thing is the biblical aspect, but another thing is, let’s say, God sets you to clean for others, just to give an example. You really feel God saying: I want you to clean for that old lady who lives over at number 27 because she can’t do it herself. If you then start thinking to yourself: Ah, come on, I shouldn’t be cleaning, I mean, seriously, look at me. Am I a cleaning lady? I’m a man, so I definitely shouldn’t be cleaning. Two: Ah, I don’t think she’ll be happy when I’m done. And three: I really have other things to spend my time on. And if I were to do something for God, I could go out and tell someone about it, and going over to clean for the neighbor makes absolutely no sense.

But if God has placed it on your heart, He actually wants you to rise up and be faithful in the small things. And when you start cleaning, and this is where it actually starts to get critical: How would you clean? Would you think, and excuse me, this is how I was at the beginning when we got married because I hated cleaning. I could easily, after vacuuming, now close your eyes and ears, go around all the corners and just make a rounded corner because it was faster. I thought, it doesn’t matter, it’ll be cleaned again next week anyway.

And I still couldn’t see that it was dirty because men can’t see when it’s dirty. We can only see it when it’s so dirty that the wife has already been there. That’s just how it is. So I thought, that corner isn’t dirty, so I vacuumed, and that also meant Birte had to leave the living room in the meantime, but I found her annoying to listen to because she was watching what I was doing. I’m really exposing myself here, it’s actually not very fun, but anyway, I went around vacuuming and cleaning up, and then I thought, it’s fine because that corner doesn’t need anything.

And then I had to dust, so I dusted the dresser because that’s where I could see there was dust. The problem was, there was also dust on the lamps, dust on all the baseboards, dust in all sorts of other places. I just hadn’t noticed it because I’m a man, and maybe I wasn’t looking for it. But I actually knew it was sweet of me for Birte, but when you couldn’t see it, it didn’t matter.

Was I responsible? No, because I should have done it as if I were doing it for the Lord himself, and I didn’t. And we can experience so many…

Situations where God calls us to certain things, where God actually, before we can rise to greater tasks, we need to be faithful in the small things. We need to be faithful in terms of, for example, discipline. We need to know what needs to be done and what doesn’t. We need to know, for example – I can say this because it’s a problem for a lot of people – when we start at seven, we start at seven. That’s being faithful in the small things, but people come five, ten, twenty-five minutes late, and it’s a waste of your time, it’s a waste of our time, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

I’m not saying this to scold anyone, because that’s not what it’s about at all. But it’s about understanding what it means to be responsible and what it means to be faithful in the small things. I remember when we were in Africa the first time, I thought the concept of time didn’t work very well, but we never really knew when we were supposed to be at the different places. We just had to be there, so we didn’t really notice – well, one time we were seven hours late, but otherwise, we didn’t really notice how late we were because we didn’t actually know when we were supposed to be there. It was just African time.

But the second time we were there, we were supposed to hold a leadership seminar for all the leaders who came, and leaders were called from all sorts of churches. And they gathered at this place where we were, and we were supposed to teach them about taking leadership in the church and, yes, what the Bible says about leadership and so on. We were late, and we waited, and we waited, and we waited, and we waited, and we wasted our time, and they wasted their time, and it just hit me: Wow, imagine if that time had been freed up to praise God instead. Imagine if we could have had an hour and a half more together where we could have sought God. That’s the peak of frustration with something like that.

But responsibility is just so many things within God’s kingdom, and what’s special is that when we feel God calling us to certain things and we really start to take responsibility – it’s also about taking responsibility within the family, taking responsibility towards our friends. It’s not that we have to live their lives, but take the responsibility we’ve been given. Then we’ll find that God can slowly start to entrust us with more tasks. But the problem is, if God gives us tasks where we don’t want to be responsible, where we just say, “I don’t care, I can show up fifteen minutes late, I don’t care,” then we lack discipline before God.

What if God tells you at another time – I can remember so clearly, some of you might have heard this, it left such deep marks of embarrassment in me – but one of the first months I was out on the street, I experienced a terribly embarrassing situation that was so out of my comfort zone that I can still feel the ripples in my little self, and it’s not fun when you can feel that, let me tell you. See, I had talked to a telemarketer, and she had stopped me on the street and asked if I wanted to buy a subscription, or she asked me, “Which phone company do you have?” So I said, “I’ll answer that if you’ll also answer some questions from me.” Well, she was up for it, so that was fine. Back then, it was Telmore I had, I have Telmore. Now I want to ask you something: Do you have any ailments? Are you sick? Do you have pain anywhere? Yes, she did, she was suffering from something. And then…

My turn to ask something. How much do you pay for your subscription each month? Ah yes, it’s 99 kr. Now it’s my turn to ask you something. May I pray for you? And so we continued this back-and-forth, and it seemed completely crazy, but I got to pray for her, and it was really amazing, and bing bang, I went home again. And that was it.

But the name Anne Louise, which was her name, just kept going around in my head. It was really strange, it usually doesn’t happen when I’ve been out, but it just kept going around. And I think, three weeks later, I’m on the street again, and then I see Anne Louise standing in a completely different spot with a tiny booth and serving a customer.

We were actually done on the street, and we were about to head home, and I tell the guy I was with that I just had this feeling, I needed to go talk to her afterward, I just needed to go there. I sit down and ask: Do you have time? She says: Well, I just need to finish with this customer, then I’ll come. And I sit and wait.

Then Anne Louise and one of her colleagues are fiddling with a phone, and they’ve taken the SIM card out of it and out of the phone, and they were trying to set up a new subscription from Telmore or whoever it was. It was probably the other company. Anyway, they put the SIM card in, and they turn on the phone, and they just can’t get the darn phone to work, simply can’t get it to.

And I feel this urge inside: Go and pray for the phone. I was just like: No, I really shouldn’t. And it just kept on: Go and pray for the phone. And I was just wandering around like an amoeba. You know that feeling when you just glance over and think, I should just… No, not right now, so you get a bit closer, and then no… And it must have really looked like I was doing a tango.

But in the end, after we had taken the SIM card out several times and put it back in, they were like: We don’t know what to do. So they put her own SIM card back in, and the phone just wouldn’t turn on. It was super weird. Finally, I pulled myself together and went over and said: So, do you want to see something amazing? Yeah, what? What is it? Give me the phone.

They handed me the phone. I placed it in my hand, put my hand on top, and said: Phone, I command you in Jesus’ name to work. Totally confident, I placed the phone on the table and said: There you go, now it works. They tried to turn it on, and it wouldn’t turn on. No, I just thought, this can’t be happening.

They tried turning it on again, and nothing happened, and I just felt my color drain away, and I thought, I need to get out of here. I really need to leave. But no, Anne Louise wanted to talk to me afterward. Oh, what should I do? I felt so terribly embarrassed. I didn’t want to be there at all, but I had been faithful in the small things, because I really felt it was what I was supposed to do, but I just wanted to run away.

Anyway, I sat down on the bench and waited, thinking it wouldn’t matter if it took a long time, she could forget about it. But the funny thing was, when I gave them the phone and they tried to turn it on, it was like nothing had ever happened. No one commented on anything, no one mentioned anything I had done. It was as if I wasn’t even there.

And then when I sat on the bench, some time passed, and Anne Louise came over, sat down, and said: Would you please pray for me? What did you say? Would you please pray for me? Sure. And it turned out that just that night, her boyfriend had broken up with her, and they had been together for seven years, and

The boyfriend had an eight-year-old child, so she had pretty much become a mother to this child, but he had written that he had taken the child with him, and she was just devastated. And then she asked: Would you please pray for me? Because I got her name, and I went over there. I didn’t expect anything big. I thought: Now we need to get some money on again, because I just needed to put small drops of Jesus into her.

She was in a completely different place. She had ADHD, and that was what she wanted to be prayed for the first time. But when God calls you into such a situation, he also needs to know. First of all, he sometimes tests us. I’m also sure that this was really to test me to see, for what about the next time he calls me, will I be willing to go, or won’t I be willing to go.

He had never told me: Pray for the phone, and it will be repaired. He had just said: Go and pray for the phone. I was obedient. We need to be faithful when God calls. Being faithful or loyal actually also means that we are honest. It means that we are honest, that people can trust us with things. It means that we don’t go blabbing left and right about what people have told us.

Faithfulness, being honest with finances, and being truthful even with small white lies—these are important. Those little lies shouldn’t pass your lips. It doesn’t work if you think you can stand before God one day, but then let small white lies slip out later, maybe because you didn’t know how to handle a situation. It might have been a bit embarrassing to tell the truth, or maybe you wanted to protect someone, so you thought a little white lie would make everyone happy and no one would know the difference.

But you’re not being faithful, and to God, you’re not being faithful in the small things. Suddenly, you’re doing it to save yourself. If you had been honest, the truth would set you free, while lies can win temporarily, but it can be really, really frustrating. Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew: Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but do not notice the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is a plank in your own eye? Hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

This is exactly about being faithful. You need to be true to God. You need to be authentic in what you do. It doesn’t work to live one way in one place and another way elsewhere. You need to be true. You need to be authentic not only to God but also to people. There’s no other way.

When you look in the Bible regarding faithfulness, how a small action can have a big impact because you’ve been responsible. And when I say responsible, there are so many areas where we need to be responsible. We need to be responsible in raising children. We need to be responsible spouses. We need to be generally responsible among the people we associate with. We need to be role models.

This also means our lives can’t just drift aimlessly. To be a bit blunt: laziness is not from God. If you’re extremely lazy, you need to do something about it. Get up and get moving. If you’re lazy, you’ll lose your momentum, but when you get up and start doing things, you’ll suddenly find that your energy returns.

You’ll experience a boost, suddenly you’ll see how God can send you into new opportunities. If you just lie on your couch all day doing nothing, to put it mildly, God won’t call you because you’re too lazy to get up. It’s a bit harsh, but that’s how it is. We have the story of the feeding of the multitude. Imagine if the boy with the fish and bread had said, “No, you can’t have them, I need them for my family tonight,” what would have happened then? You wouldn’t have witnessed a miracle of feeding.

We didn’t have it described in God’s word because the boy was selfish. But he was obedient, he could feel it was right, and in the little things, he gave and said, “Here you go.” He gave what he had, even though he might have been supposed to be home with his parents giving it. We have another episode in the Bible. It’s from Mark 12. It’s quite short. It says, “And Jesus sat down opposite the temple treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.”

Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Had she not done it, had she not been obedient, this story wouldn’t have been in the Bible. Nothing would have happened, and we wouldn’t have had anything to learn from. But because this widow was obedient and gave everything, Jesus saw it, Jesus rejoiced over it, God saw it, she was noticed because she sacrificed. For her, it was a sacrifice.

It wasn’t just a gift, like, here, take 200 kroner, it’s so easy for us here. “Oh, but I’ll get new money next month, it might be a bit tight right now, but here.” She gave everything she had. That’s a sacrifice. Yes, but it was only a couple of pennies. Exactly, she was faithful in the little things. So for us, it might have been a small thing, but for her, it was a huge thing.

It’s the same when we have to share the gospel with someone. It can seem like an overwhelming mountain we have to climb before we open our mouths, and some people think I find it much easier than others, but I don’t. I also have to give myself a good kick and do it with the will because I want to be faithful in it. I want to talk about Jesus. When God places tasks in our path, we have to speak.

I had a really funny experience yesterday. Sorry, Marie. We were supposed to pray for someone last night, and they come over, and I’m on my way over, they’ve called me, and suddenly there’s a knock on the door, and I open the door, and there they are outside. I was completely disoriented. “Do you have an appointment?” “Yes, yes, yes, we’re supposed to be prayed for tonight.” “Yes, yes, see, we also got a confirmation on it.” I’m also like, “Well, just go over to the living room, sit down, and we’ll figure out what to do because this is so good.”

And I start to go over, and I find out in the meantime that they were supposed to come on March 12th, not yesterday, but both days were Tuesday, so they came yesterday, and they came all the way from Mors, and I really thought it was a shame. But we had another appointment, so I go up to Marie, and I say, “Marie, you know what, now you have to hear, I have a fantastic task for you. We’ve come two, and they would really like to pray for you. Wouldn’t that be something for you?” “No, it’s not,” she says immediately. “Yes, it is,” because the flesh was shouting, but immediately she says, “Yes, yes, just go ahead.”

Let the Holy Spirit lead you. Just let the Holy Spirit lead you. It’s not about me or anyone else. I’m leading. She was a ray of sunshine afterward. God used me, and it’s so great when you’re faithful in the little things, when you’re faithful where God sets things up.

But then you might think, these are big things. Yes, because God sets it up when you are faithful in the small things too. You can’t just close your eyes. I’ve experienced, just to give some examples, I think I’ve mentioned it before. We experienced at the beginning, when we started building here, people came and said: Well, we’re coming, and we’re helping, we’re doing this and that, and we’re setting up a caravan, and we’re setting up a tent, and we… No one came. People were two-faced and said.

We’ve experienced others who have come and said: I’ve really felt God has called me, now I’m here. And then suddenly, something happens. No, I have to leave now. Bye bye. Did you say God called you? We have to be faithful in the small things all the way through. And it’s not about Stensøen, but there were just some examples here.

The bridesmaids, ten bridesmaids, half have oil in their lamps, and the other half couldn’t quite make it. What is responsibility now? We just share, so you can have half of what we have, and then we all have oil. That’s clever. The problem is, it’s a lack of responsibility from the five who didn’t bring any. Should we go beyond the five who made sure to bring some? No, because the problem is, if they share in this situation, there won’t be enough for any of them, and the oil lamps will be out before the bride or groom comes.

So it’s important to remember that responsibility is not compromising God’s word. It’s standing firm on God’s word. It’s following God’s word, even in the small things, and when you know things are right, you have to stand firm on it. And don’t let that humanistic mindset take over. You should do things in love, but when God has told you, you need to have oil in your lamp, you need to have it with you, that’s what you have. And it’s no good if people come and say: Can’t I have some of yours? No, because you’ve been told yourself that you should have oil in your lamp.

It’s the same, people are like, they really want, if they see and hear a lot of our testimonies, they think: No, I need to be like them, and I need to have their gifts, and I need this and that, and they’re the only ones and such. Stop it, seek God yourself. We can’t do anything that others can’t, or that others can. It’s the Holy Spirit doing it because we seek God. It’s God we get everything from.

We shouldn’t seek people the most to become disciples, but we should seek God. In Hebrews, it says: Pursue peace with everyone, the first thing we need to do, that’s where we need to be. Pursue holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. That is, come into holiness. See to it that no one misses out on God’s grace, the third thing, that no bitter root, harmful root, is allowed to shoot up, so many are poisoned.

When God has called you to these things, where you think: Well, these are such small things. It’s not like I have to go out and race through the world, all that God has for me. If you can’t even be faithful in this, how can you be faithful in the big things? If you can’t figure out how to clean and sweep in the corners because no one is watching. Oops.

God desires… I don’t know if you’ve heard, many of those who today have a huge ministry started by cleaning toilets for several weeks, several months, sometimes several years, to serve others.

People, and when you’ve shown that you serve others, not the small stuff. Wow. Paul also writes: Since you have received Christ Jesus as Lord – it says in Colossians 2 – live in him, rooted in him, built up in him, established in the faith as you were taught, overflowing with thankfulness.

These are really simple little things, but where is your overflowing thankfulness to God compared to how much it hurts and how tired you are of all these little things? Look inward, be responsible. It’s crystal clear what we need to do, so do it and bring it into your life. Bring it into your family. Bring it with you when you go to appointments.

Don’t flake on people. You might think discipline is annoying, but hold on. How necessary it is in God’s kingdom. There is order in God’s kingdom. There is order. If you look at many spiritual circles, for example, which are exactly the opposite of God, there is chaos. Look at other religions: chaos and confusion, chaos and confusion, chaos and confusion. But in God’s kingdom, there is order, and it comes from responsibility and being faithful.

It actually also means standing by each other. So when God commands us to be faithful in the small things, it means being faithful to Him too. That means standing by, standing by the agreements you make, standing by each other’s promises, just like when you’re faithful in a marriage, you stand by the promises you’ve made, you stand by carrying each other forward. So when God desires your faithfulness and responsibility, He actually desires a marriage with you, and you are faithful.

Wow, it’s actually wild to think about. He truly, truly desires a solid love relationship with you, where there is mutual responsibility, mutual respect, and that comes from the fear of God. If we don’t have the fear of God, we will never get to the point where this becomes life to us. Then it just becomes, where it’s just ridiculous, and why do we all have to beat ourselves up, and it’s just lame.

But honestly, no, not when we understand what holiness and reverence are. Reverence for God. Wow. It actually says we should fear Him who can send both soul and body to Hell, but we should not fear those who can only kill the body, for they have no power over us. Because God sees a perspective, but we should fear Him. Not in fear as in, but in reverence, in holiness. It’s so wild.

In Mark 10, it says: Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light, and what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftops. It doesn’t say: If you feel like it, you can do it. It says: Must. You must do these things. What I tell you in the dark, in our private chamber, speak in the light. That’s where people are. And what is whispered in your ear, you must preach and speak.

Do not fear those, it says, who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them falls to the ground without your Father knowing? But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not fear. You are worth more than many sparrows. Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before others, I will also deny before my Father in heaven.

This, this is fair. It’s really fair. It might be tough, but wow, it’s fair if we stand by Him. If we have this faithfulness towards Him, we just can’t keep our mouths shut because it says right there that we should go out and shout it from the rooftops. Wow. So, I would say: Be responsible with your…

Actions weave a light wherever you go. Let people see, as it says in the Bible, that you have a kind spirit. Let people see that the fruit of the Spirit is part of you. Let people see that you are different.

We’ve experienced several times when we go to health fairs that those spiritual people often look over and say, “Wow, you guys are so special over here. You have the whitest aura. It’s really strange.” Yes, because He – uh – He lives, and He is here. Many have come over to us: “You guys are really special over here. There’s such a light, or there’s such a strange peace over here.” So come, come now, drop your fortune-telling and nonsense, come over and get the real thing. Just come.

And we must believe that when we walk with Him and for Him and are baptized to belong to Him, we are clothed in Christ, and then it’s us who shine. Then it’s us who light up, and then you can go out and be as crazy as me and pray for that phone or maybe some other things God places on you, where He also needs to see: How far can you really go for Him? And do you take it home to the family?

How are you really when the door closes at home? Are you really angry with your husband or wife, if you have one, or with your kids? Do you scold and yell at them? Then pull yourself together, honestly, because then you’re simply not living as God has called you. But if we are responsible in the small things, then we live to honor the other, and if we can’t figure that out at home, then we can’t figure it out among people either.

And that’s why we need to be responsible in the small things, then we are entrusted with more and more and more and more. And if we think, “Well, I can’t do that, that’s not me, no, I… I want to believe in God, that’s fair enough, but I can do it from my couch at home, and I don’t need to do anything at all, don’t need to tell anyone about it, don’t need to read my Bible. I can believe in God, I know He’s there, I’ve searched all sorts of archaeology, I know it’s true, He’s there, hallelujah.” That doesn’t give you a place in heaven because then you don’t believe in what He has said, you don’t obey what He has said, and you don’t have faith in the small things.

But you just have to remember, in the midst of all this regarding responsibility, you have to start by seeing the plank in your own eye. That means you need to get a root system in Christ, you need to grow up so that the tree gets nourishment. You need to look at: “Okay God, what in my life do you want me to step up in regarding being responsible? Where do I need to change it? Where do I need to do it in my life? Where do I need to do it in my family’s life? Where do I need to do it among Christian brothers and sisters? Where do I need to do it among non-believers?”

Try to be very specific in your prayer to God. Try asking Him directly where He wants you to take responsibility, and then act on it. And remember, there is order in God’s kingdom, there is order, things are under control. There is no confusion, and it’s awesome, and it’s amazing, and fundamentally, it’s about the fact that the more we walk with Him, the more He can bless us, the more we get to experience, the more He can take care of us, and the more it just becomes.

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