Monthly Archives: June 2014

Staying Salty

Here we go again. I have been blessed to be a part of multiple missions trips over the past couple of years. Each time I go, I discover more of who God is and who He wants me to be. There’s something special about leaving the normal distractions and pressures of life behind and embracing the opportunities God has available on a mission trip. You experience God is a whole new way when all you are focused on is serving others in His name.

For the next several days, my focus is mainly going to be about experiencing God on a deeper level. I will purposefully look for Him in every conversation, every interaction and in every person I meet. In normal, day to day life, it’s easy to forget to look for God. It’s easy to forget to seek Him because there are so many things on our plates. We live in a fast paced world and it’s necessary to slow things down or to stop so that you can make time for God to move in your life. For me, the best way to do that is on foreign soil. For you, it may be some other way, but it’s imperative that you do it.

God’s design was not for us to live our lives on autopilot. We are to be actively engaged in our relationship with Him. We are to continue experiencing Him beyond our initial conversion. There are multiple warnings in the Bible about becoming complacent. One of the most notable ones is written about in Revelation 3. God says to them, “I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking… You’re stale. You’re stagnant. You make me want to vomit.” Can you imagine God saying that to you? It scares me to think that I can live my life in such a way that it would make God want to throw up.

The only time God speaks that harshly is to those who have let their faith grow stale. When we do nothing with our faith except show it off at church, it makes God sick. He didn’t sacrifice His only Son so we could live comfortably in a church. He did it so that none would perish, but all would have everlasting life. He didn’t die so we could accept the work done on the cross and then keep it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Let me tell you why you are here. You are to be salt seasoning that brings out the God flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve list your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.” I think He was pretty clear about how He feels about it.

The way we keep our saltiness is to keep our relationship with Him fresh. You have to figure out how you can make that happen in your life. Each person is different in how they do it. One way that it is the same though is that it only happens when we sacrifice our time and get away from the distractions that prevent it. Today, make a commitment to God to find time to work on your saltiness. Find a way to keep from getting stale in your relationship with Him. There’s nothing worse than for God to think you’re useless or to make Him want to vomit. Only you can prevent it. Only you can make the time. He won’t force you to do it, but He’ll be waiting with open arms when you’re ready.

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Shifting The Prism

One of my regular prayers is that God would shift the prism through which I see Him and others. I see almost everything in black and white. I was raised in an unbroken home and at the same church my whole life. There hasn’t been a whole lot of shifting where I change my perspective of who He is and how I see Him. Over time and with life experience, I have shifted and changed. I see God differently because of what I’ve seen Him do in my life and in the lives of others. I just don’t want to get complacent with where I am or how I see Him. I don’t want to box Him in to what I think He should be.

The early church went through a lot of shifting. In Acts 10, Peter was praying on the balcony while he was waiting for lunch. God gave him a vision of a blanket being lowered down with religiously unclean animals in it. God told Peter to kill and eat, but he refused because he had never touched food that wasn’t Kosher. God came back and said, “Don’t call unclean what I have called clean.” It was then that he was awakened by his vision from visitors knocking. A man named Cornelius was told by an angel to get Peter so he could hear what he had to say.

Peter traveled the next day to Cornelius’ house with the group that came for him. When he spoke to the people who had gathered, they were filled with Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. Peter was shocked. How could non-Jews have received God’s gift? He turned to the Jews who had traveled with them and said, “Do I hear any objections to baptizing these friends with water? They’ve received the Holy Spirit exactly as we did.” That event created a fundamental shift in how they saw God. They now saw that God’s plan of salvation was for Jews and non-Jews alike. It changed their ministry.

My prayer is that God would radically change me so that I see deeper into His Word than I do now. I pray that He shifts my focus so that I can connect things that I’ve never seen or understood in it. When I understand what He says, then I can know Him more. When I know Him more, my life is forever altered. I cannot accept that I know God as much as I will ever know Him. I cannot believe that I know everything that I will ever know about Scripture. I have to put myself in position to be shifted. I have to spend time in prayer so He can show me. I have to be willing to go with strangers to see what God is doing.

What about you? Are you willing to allow God to reveal more of Himself to you? Are you open to Him showing things that will fundamentally alter how you see Him? What can you do to put yourself in position to be shifted so you see Him in a different light? My prayer is that God would radically change us in the Church who have become complacent with our view of Him. I pray that He would reveal Himself to us like we’ve never seen. We don’t need to fix the Church. It’s not our responsibility. We need to fix our relationship with Him and that will change the Church. We need to change the prism through which we view God and that will change the world.

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Extravagant Love

During my pastor’s Father’s Day sermon, he talked about how kids pick up a lot of their early habits from their parents. After the sermon, he called all the men to the front to pray over them. I had my son back in service with me by this point so I took him down there with me. While my pastor was speaking to us, my son was watching him intently and then said, “Amen!” I laughed and thought about the message. When he prayed over us, I heard my son say, “Yes, Lord.” He’s starting to pick up a lot of habits by watching me. He’s imitating what he sees me do. It’s important that I give him a good example to follow.

When you look at Ephesians 5:1-2 in the Message Bible, it speaks to us as children and how we are to be imitators of Christ. It says, “Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.” It’s pretty clear message what God wants us to do.

The first thing is that we choose who we imitate. The people we spend the most time with are the ones who we become most like. We end up liking the same things, going to the same places and even speaking the same way. It’s part of life. You become like those you run with. Your parents told you that line and you’ve told it to your kids. It’s such an important lesson for every stage of life. If we want to be more like God, then we have to spend more time with Him. If we want to see what God does, we have to be around Him and we have to be paying attention.

Mostly what God does is love. How would our lives be different, if most of what we did was to love others? How would the world be different? God’s message to us over and over is simply to love others. Jesus said that was the greatest commandment. In I John 4:7-8, John said that the person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God. In I Corinthians 13, Paul gave us all the attributes of love including that it was patient, kind and that it didn’t keep score of the sins of others. We typically apply those to romantic love, but they are to be applied to Christian love toward others too.

You and I are called to love and we have been shown the greatest example of it. It’s time we started to imitate our Father and demonstrate the kind of love we’ve been shown. The people around us who need God’s love the most don’t need another person pointing out what’s wrong in their life. They need someone who will love them in spite of it. They need someone who will love the me extravagantly. They need someone to show them what selfless love really is. You have experienced it from your Father. It’s time we started imitating it to those around us. Who in your world needs that kind of love today?

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Five Lessons For Fathers

It’s Free Friday! Today is the day you let go of the things in your life that keep you down or hold you back from all God has for you. To celebrate Father’s Day, I’m giving away two books: “Being a Dad Who Leads” by John MacArthur and “The Worth of a Man” by Dave Dravecky. Keep reading to find out how to enter.

I’m by no means the perfect father. The truth is that no one is. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t aspire to be great fathers. The Bible is full of men who were flawed, but showed us how to be great fathers. Here are five lessons in fatherhood from the Bible:

1. Sacrifice What You Want

When I think of sacrifice, I think of Abraham. He was promised numerous descendants, but was asked to sacrifice his only son. As a father, you are going to have to sacrifice the things you want for the sake of your children. You will have to sacrifice your “me” time, your TV time, places you want to go and things you want to do for your child. I haven’t perfected this, but I’m learning time and effort spent on your kids pays higher dividends than anything else.

2. Bless Your Children

In the Bible, it was common to give blessings to their children. Isaac blessed Jacob to show us the importance of speaking blessing over your kids. Jesus blessed the children who were brought to Him. There is power in your words. Use them to speak into your child the things you want God to do in them. Let them hear what you are saying. The words will sink in and become a part of who they are. It’s never too late to bless them. Isaac did it on his deathbed. Your child, no matter how old, needs to hear the blessings you are giving them.

3. Teach Them Wisdom

Solomon was our prime example here. What good is being wise and learning so many lessons in life if you keep them to yourself. Your child will make their own decisions in life ultimately, but don’t let them make those decisions without knowing what wisdom says. They may not recognize your wisdom early in life, but as they get older, they will see you were offering wisdom. When they’re old, they’ll come asking for your advice. Give them the wisdom they need to make better decisions in life.

4. Pray For Them

Jarius in the New Testament fell at Jesus’ feet and pled with Him to heal his daughter. He knew that Jesus had the power to heal her. He still has the power today to heal your child, protect your child, save your child and to keep them safe. It’s your responsibility to spend time at Jesus’ feet for your child. If you don’t do it, chances are that no one else will. Believe that He hears your prayers and will answer them even in the face of negative news. God isn’t bound by what the doctors, teachers or anyone else says. Your prayers are what makes the difference.

5. Praise Them

Every child needs to be praised by their dad. They need to hear you say that you are proud of them. Twice in Scripture God spoke out for others to hear, “This is my son in whom I am well pleased.” One version puts it, “Who brings me great joy.” Your children should know they are not a bother to you. They need to know they bring you joy and that you are proud of them. Don’t hold back the praise they so desperately need. You are the one who holds the key. Unlock their greatness with your words.

If you would like to win one of the two books I’m giving away this weekend, go to the Devotions By Chris Facebook page here and write on the timeline, “Enter me in your Father’s Day book giveaway.” You can also enter by tweeting, “@DevotionsByMe enter me in your Father’s Day book giveaway.” I will randomly pick two people tomorrow (June 14, 2014) who has done this. If enjoy reading these daily devotionals, please invite your friends to like my page so they can receive encouragement from God’s Word too

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Learning Through Relationships

When is the last time you looked back over your life to see the people God placed in it at just the right time? I’ve been reflecting this week on my entire life as an exercise in faith. I spent time looking back thinking about the people who have mentored me in the faith. I’ve also spent some time thinking about the people who were brought into my life for a brief period and then were gone again. As I’ve done this exercise, I have been able to see God’s hand on the relationships He’s brought to me. It has also built my faith in trusting Him with the relationships He has given me right now.

Sometimes we don’t understand why God has brought certain people into our lives. Some rub us the wrong way. Some push us out of our comfort zone. Some challenge everything we say. Some make us want to run away. As I’ve mentioned those, you’ve probably put some names to those people in your life right now. We all have people in our lives that we are grateful for. At the same time, we also have people in our lives where we wonder what God is thinking! We’d rather that they not be in our lives. In looking back, I’ve found that those people shaped me as well. The ones who rubbed me the wrong way actually acted like sand paper and smoothed out some of my rough edges.

When I look at the story of Joseph in Genesis 37, I see the relationships God put in his life. The first relationships you see are with his dad and brothers. His dad loved him, but his brothers didn’t. When his brothers sold him to the Ishmaelites, God put Potiphar in his life. Potiphar was the captain of the palace guard for Pharaoh. When Joseph did well for him, he made him his personal assistant. Joseph got to see the inner working of Egypt. He got to see how to act in the presence of a king. He learned how to be an effective administrator which he would need later.

After being wrongfully put in prison, Joseph used the skills he learned from Potiphar to run the prison. He leveraged the relationship with the guards and eventually the warden to be put in such a position that he was over all the other prisoners. It was then that he met two prisoners who worked in the Pharaoh’s court. He was able to interpret their dreams putting him in direct relationship with someone who had Pharaoh’s ear. When Pharaoh had a dream no one could interpret, the released prisoner mentioned Joseph. He was then able to be put in a position to save his father and brothers.

You may not understand the relationships you have right now, but God is using them to get you where He needs you. Joseph could have sulked that he was a slave or a prisoner and spent his life being bitter. Instead, he took bad situations and forged relationships he wouldn’t have made any other way. He looked for opportunity instead of excuses. He built relationships instead of resentment. Looking back it’s easy to see what God was doing. I’m sure Joseph didn’t understand why he had those relationships at the time. He accepted the people that God placed in his life, learned from them and moved on.

Who is God trying to use in your life right now?
Have you been building resentment toward them or relationships them?
What do you need to do to learn from each relationship?

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A Servant’s Prayer

Father,

There’s nothing more that I want than to be your servant. I want to do all the things that you have planned for me to do. I want to fulfill the plan you have for my life. The harder I try to do the things you ask me to do, the more I seem to fail. I find that alone, I’m incapable of doing all that you ask. I need your help. I need your hand on my life to guide me, direct me and to open the doors that stand shut in my way. I’ve knocked on them until my hands hurt and no one opens them. I need you supernaturally intervene.

Open my eyes to see what you need me to see. If there are other avenues, other doors or other ways to get where you’re leading me, show them to me. I know you have a greater plan for me, but I just can’t see how to get from here to there. Progress seems to have stopped. I was running full speed towards the goal when all of a sudden everything slowed to the point that I’m at a stand still. I only see closed doors, but you see the path. Open my eyes to see where you want me to go from here.

Open my ears to hear your voice above all the noise in my life. I know that you speak in a still, small voice. Train my ears to listen for it so I can hear it through all the distractions. I know you are always speaking, but I’m not always listening. Help me to turn down the things in my life that block out your voice. Teach me to listen for your instruction as I go throughout my day. Speak to me through the Bible, through others and with your voice. I don’t want to miss what you have to say so give me ears that hear you.

Open my mouth so that I will speak the words you want me to speak. Help me to speak life and not death, to build up and not tear down, to lift others up instead of putting them down. The power of life and death are in the tongue. I want to use mine to speak life. Keep bitter water from coming out of the fountain of my mouth. Give me words of wisdom to speak, words of knowledge that are confirmation for others and words of life to those who are dying. I pray that the words I say and the meditation of my heart are acceptable in your sight.

I know that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So I ask that you would make changes in my heart. Take out the hard, stoney parts that are cynical. Remove the parts where I’ve stored up bitterness against others for things they’ve done to me. Replace them with a heart that loves others the way you love them. Put a heart in me that runs hard after you. In order to be the servant you need me to be, I need a heart that sees servant hood the way you do. I need a heart that is sensitive to the things that you’re sensitive to, that breaks for the things that break your heart, and that has compassion for the lost and broken the way your do.

I thank you for hearing my prayer and I ask that you would answer it in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

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When It Rains

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A friend of mine, Jonas Woods, recently put out an independent CD called “Tales of the Bittersweet”. It chronicles his faith and struggles over the past couple of years as his wife battled cancer. As I’ve listened to it a couple of times now, I find there’s a lot of honesty in the lyrics he’s written. It’s very relatable to anyone who’s walking through difficult times. In the song “Walking The Line,” it starts off, “I’m trying to connect, trying to make sense of all this mess, trying to get back to a sense of harmony.” It’s normal for each of us to try to make sense of a mess when we are in it. I think it gives us hope if we feel we know the purpose, but rarely do we find out the purpose that quickly.

God’s design for our lives is that we walk by faith. If we knew the purpose behind the struggle, it wouldn’t be walking by faith. He expects us to trust Him in the mess and to rely on Him for our strength and hope, but trusting in His plan when we can’t see the outcome is so hard. It’s very much like the way the song “When It Rains” puts it, “When you’re running a million miles straight into nothingness, and you only find out the truth when you arrive.” The journey seems long and pointless. It’s hard to keep running when you won’t find the answers until later. It’s hard to keep your head up when it’s raining and few seem to care.

The chorus of that song is how we should respond. It says, “If you lead me I will follow, you’ve been faithful and true, through all my fear and sorrow, I’ll fight through all the pain, to figure out the reasons that it rains.” God has been faithful throughout each of our lives. When you stop and reflect on the goodness of God, you will see how far He has brought you. You will see that He has never left you in a mess. He has been your sustainer, your provider, your healer and your guide. It’s not in Him to abandon you in a mess. It’s not in Him to allow rain without purpose.

He has given you the tools you need to survive any mess that comes into your life. He has given you the ability to trust Him. When you get more than you can handle (and that happens), it’s your opportunity to rely on His strength. If He only allowed things to come into your life that you could handle, you would never have an opportunity to trust Him. If you had the strength to face each struggle, you would never know what it’s like to fully trust His. God allows each of us to experience more than we can handle and He closes doors without opening windows so that we can grow our faith and trust in Him.

We have to learn to trust in the sufficiency of His grace. The only way we learn that is when we come to the end of our rope and let go. When we give up trying to face struggles and situations in our own strength, we learn how strong He truly is. When we quit relying on our abilities to guide us through problems, we learn what walking by faith is. When you look into the future and can’t see the end to your struggle, you learn to look at it from His perspective. There is a purpose to what you’re going through, but it may take years to get the perspective to see it. In the mean time, learn to trust His strength in your weakness.

If you would like to purchase his CD to help support his family, you can go here. You can also listen to samples.

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Don’t Change Your Clothes

Joel 2 is known for verses 28-29 which Peter used when he preached from the balcony of the Upper Room in Acts 2. While those verses are well known, there are a couple of other ones in there that stand out to me as well. One of which is verse 13 where he is quoting God and He says, “Rend your heart, not your clothes and return to The Lord your God.” When I read that, it jumped out at me. So I began to read it in other translations and interpretations to see what else I could get from it.

The Message Bible says, “Change your life, not just your clothes. Come back to God, your God.” It made me think of a show my wife and I used to watch called “What Not To Wear”. A person could nominate a friend who was a walking wardrobe disaster and the hosts of the program would secretly tape them in every day life wearing ridiculous outfits. The person would be invited to a party which would turn out to be an intervention. They had to agree to go to New York with all of their clothes for a makeover.

Once there, they tried on several of their favorite outfits and were picked apart by the expert hosts. They would be required to throw away their entire wardrobe in most cases. After throwing them away, they were taught how to shop for clothes that fit them and their style. After a day of shopping, many wouldn’t know what to purchase and would return to their former style. At the least they would lament throwing out their favorite clothes. The hosts would join them, encourage them and have a break through with them. They could then change their buying and clothes wearing habits.

That’s what God wants to do with each of us. He wants us to throw out our old wardrobe. He wants to change not just how we look on the outside to other people. He wants to change us from the inside out. We can change our clothes and how we appear to others, but that’s not what God is looking for. God looks at our hearts, not our outward appearance. That why the NLT translates verse 13 as, “Don’t tear your clothing in grief, but tear your hearts instead.” God is more concerned with us changing, tearing or rending our hearts because He knows that when we do, our outside will change as well.

Maybe you’ve tried to change how you appear to others, but haven’t changed on the inside and it’s not very fulfilling. You’ve fooled others, but you haven’t fooled yourself or God. The rest of verse 13 says, “Return to The Lord, your God, for He is merciful and compassionate… and filled with unfailing love.” God is not out to get you when you mess up. He’s merciful and compassionate. He wants to help you change your heart so that you won’t keep making the same mistakes over and over again. If you do, He’s right there to help you make better choices. All you have to do is call out to Him.

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Insecurities

It’s Free Friday! Today is the day you let go of the things in your life that keep you down or hold you back from all God has for you. To celebrate, I’m giving away an autographed copy of “Free To Live: The Utter Relief of Holiness” by John Eldredge. Keep reading to find out how to enter.

I read something from Chip Ingram earlier this week that still has me thinking. He was discussing a book he read where the basic premise was that everyone is insecure and our behavior is a reflection of those insecurities. He said he no longer looks at the boisterous know-it-all the same way. He no longer got upset with the person who has to pay for everything so others will see. Instead, he started to have compassion for them because of the deep struggle that was going on inside of them causing this behavior.

Each of us are insecure in some way. Each of us hide it in different ways. We try to mask those things deep inside us. I think of Nicodemus in John 3. He was worried about what others thought about him. His behavior was that he approached Jesus under the cover of night. He believed what Jesus taught, but was so afraid of what his peers thought about him that he couldn’t publicly profess that. He went to Jesus for one on one time because he wanted to know more, but he did it in secret.

The woman at the well was insecure about who she was. She was looking to find her identity in other people. She had been married 5 times before and was living with a man when she met Jesus. When Jesus spoke to her, he spoke into her. He spoke to the insecure voice inside her and changed who she was. She went back to the town and told the people, “Come and see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out.” Jesus knew her past and her insecurities. Instead of judging her, He had compassion on her.

I think it’s our own insecurities that cause us to judge or look down on someone who isn’t like us. The truth is that they are just as insecure as we are. They express it the only way the know how. Our response shouldn’t be rejection. It should be compassion. We shouldn’t dismiss others because of their behavior. We should accept them and love them. Ultimately that’s what we all need. That’s what we crave. We are all afraid on some level of what others think about us. We all want to be accepted by the crowd around us. Why not act like Jesus and love the person behind the behavior?

I have my own insecurities and my own behaviors that put people off. I reject people because of their behavior. I’m as guilty as anyone. The good news is that Jesus doesn’t leave us where we are. His love changes us from the inside out. We have to admit our insecurities to Him in order for Him to change us. As with any remedy, the change starts with admitting our own problem, our own insecurity, our own sin. When we confess them, Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us. As we are forgiven, we are to forgive others. Look beyond the behavior in the person you least want to see today. See the insecurity that’s causing it and love them through it. Be Jesus to them. They need that more than anything.

If you would like to win an autographed copy of “Free To Live” by John Eldredge, all you have to do is go to my Facebook page here and “like” it. I will randomly pick one person tomorrow (June 7, 2014) who has liked my page. If you have already liked my page and enjoy reading these daily devotionals, you are already entered. Please invite your friends to like my page so they can receive encouragement from God’s Word too

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Transformations And Renovations

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I watch a lot of home improvement shows on the weekends. It seems my tuner is locked on HGTV when Saturday rolls around. I like watching how they transform spaces. Some require major work where they tear everything out and others are mainly painting and getting the right furniture in the right place. Before moving walls though, they always check to see if it is a load bearing wall. Some walls run perpendicular to the boards that hold up your roof and some run in the same line. If you take out the perpendicular ones (load bearing) that section of the roof can cave in.

When I think about my life, I’ve got a lot of walls up. I’ve got some in place to separate portions of my life from the other portions. I’ve got some up because I’ve been hurt and I don’t want that pain again. I’ve got some up where I hide all the junk I have in my life as well. Each of us have walls up in our lives whether we like to admit it or not. We build them to keep people and even God out of portions of our lives. We let them in certain rooms, but we don’t like yo let them into our junk closet.

Just like in a real house, some of those walls are load bearing and some are not. I’ve been thinking about what walls I’ve let God take down when He’s tried to do a remodel. I’ve given Him access to certain things and haven’t given Him permission to do others. I’ve let Him take out some of the non load bearing walls in my life. But like in a renovation, sometimes those walls have to come down in order to do what the master designer wants to do. The more permissions or access they grant the hosts on those TV shows, the greater the outcome of the renovation.

In my own life, I want the amazing transformation that renovation can bring. I want to be stunned when I open my eyes and see what God has done with my life. In order for that to happen, I’ve got to give Him permission to tear down my load bearing walls. I’ve got to give Him access to every part of my house. I can’t keep anything hidden from Him. Our walls really don’t keep God out of those areas of our life and He really doesn’t need our permission to do things in our lives. I’ve learned that it helps my attitude in the renovation when I give those things to Him. It prepares me for the changes that are coming.

What walls have you put up to keep others or God out? Have you only given Him permission to knock down the non load bearing walls? What kind of transformation or renovation would you like? The greater one you want, the greater permission you need to give to Him. Just like at the end of those shows where people drop to their knees in awe of what has been done to their house, God can make that kind of renovation with your life. He can move walls, take out the mold of sin, repurpose your past and create something beautiful out of your life if you let Him.

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