A Word With You

Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
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Daily A Word With You

  1. 13h ago

    You Can't See, But He Can - #10352

    The other night I saw one of the most adorable scenes I’ve seen in ages. I was coming out of a restaurant, and right ahead of me was a mother and a father. In between them was their little girl who was obviously a rookie at walking. She was just learning, and she had both hands extended upward. Mom had one hand and Dad had the other. She was dressed in this pretty little pink dress. She also had this cute, frilly little pink cap on. You can kind of picture it. I came up behind them and I said, “Hey, she’s thinking this is really a big deal isn’t she folks? She’s kind of going, ‘I can walk! I can walk! Look at me!’” I walked past them and Dad at that point said to me, “Yeah, but she’s got a problem.” So, I looked back to see what he meant, and her little cap had fallen down over her forehead and was completely covering her eyes. So she’s still walking, sort of staggering around, and her Dad spoke for her when he said, “I can walk, but I can’t see!” I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “You Can't See, But He Can.” Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Galatians 5. Verse 16 says, “Live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” Verse 25: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” Now, here’s the description of an exciting lifestyle. The Apostle Paul calls it “keeping in step with the Spirit.” The old King James Version says “walking in the Spirit.” Now, you can walk without the Spirit’s leading. Sure you can go through your day, make your choices, make your schedule, but there’s a problem. Like that little girl, you can walk but you can’t see. We make our plans. We make our schedule. We make our choices based on what looks best or what feels best, based on what we can see. We’ve got our cap over our eyes most of the time. We can’t see the long-range consequences of the choice we’re making today, but the Holy Spirit can. We can’t see what choice would fit best into God’s plans for us, but the Spirit can. We can’t see where the resources will come from or the people, but the Holy Spirit can. The Holy Spirit has been placed by God inside your personality to nudge you to the right place at the right time in today’s schedule. So our job is to learn to recognize and respond to those inner Holy Spirit pushes and pulls and nudges. How do you do it? Well, first you pray that God will sensitize you, “Lord, I want to be able to recognize those Holy Spirit nudges so I don’t disregard them. I want to know when you’re pushing me to do something.” Then frequently ask the Lord through the day, “Spirit, what’s the next step in this situation?” And then practice obeying those Spirit impulses: to make that phone call when He says to do it, to write that note, to go and just suddenly hug that family member, to post that message, to drop everything for a person that He drops into your schedule, to open up to a certain passage of scripture. The disciples had Jesus there and He said, “Follow me.” And it was easy, because He was right there physically. Well, we can do it today because we have His Spirit inside saying, “Come this way.” Don’t just pray in the morning and then go run off for the day with your pre-set course and then check back at bedtime. You need the security, the adventure of following the Spirit’s leading all day long. After all, you can walk but you can’t see.

  2. 1d ago

    Debt-Free in Heaven - #10351

    Our friend, Vicki, is one very happy woman. For many years now, she has carried a heavy load of nagging credit card debt. If you’ve ever been in debt for a while, you know how it always weighs you down like this heavy backpack on your back. Well, Vicki recently came into some money through an inheritance, and you know what she did with it! She had a party—a check writing party! All the debts are paid, and you can tell she feels like she just got out of prison! I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Debt-Free in Heaven.” There is tremendous joy in knowing that your debt is gone and you’ve got a new beginning. Especially when the debt is the one you owe to God - we all owe God - for the wrong things we’ve done. We all have things we’ve done that we’re not proud of, that we’re ashamed of, that we wish we could do over, but we can’t. We’ve hurt the people we love, we’ve said so many things we wish we shouldn’t have said, and we’ve done things we thought we would never do. The weight of all that is a very heavy burden on the human soul. The weight even gets heavier when we read in the Bible what the penalty is for our spiritual debt. It says, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). There is an eternal death penalty for the way that we’ve run our own lives instead of letting God run them. The prospect of a hopeless eternity makes the weight of our sin almost unbearable. But that’s why Jesus is such awesome good news. The prospect of being spiritually debt-free is wrapped up in three words Jesus spoke just before He died on that cross. They’re recorded in our word for today from the Word of God in John 19:30. “Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’” In the original Greek language this was written in, that’s just one word, and it’s used as an accounting word that actually means “paid in full.” Like our friend’s credit card debt—nothing owed any more. So that when you stand before God on Judgment Day, where your sins once appeared in God’s book, it will simply say, “Paid in full!” Which means the only thing that could keep you out of heaven is gone! Wow! But you don’t pay the bill. You can’t! There’s no amount of doing good that can ever pay a death penalty. If you think your religion is going to get you to heaven, there's no way in the world it can pay that death penalty. But God loves you so much that He sent His only Son, Jesus, to that cross to pay for what only He could pay, so you won’t have an eternity without Him. Jesus absorbed all the guilt and all the hell of every wrong thing you have ever done, and then He declared once and for all, “It is finished - paid in full!” This very day you can experience the incredible joy of knowing that you are forever free from the weight of your sin; the joy of a brand new beginning. What Jesus did on His cross removes your sin when you tell Jesus you are putting all your trust in Him to forgive you and to take you to heaven when you die. No one else can. You will never have to face the judgment you deserve because Jesus faced the judgment you deserve. Your new beginning starts the moment you open your heart to Jesus. Would you let that be today? Wherever you are right now, tell Him, “Jesus, I know that what You did on the cross is my only hope of a relationship with God, of going to heaven, and of having my sins erased from God’s Book forever. And I know You walked out of your grave. You are alive! Would you walk into my life today?" There's some wonderful information that I'd love to give you on all of this. It's at our website appropriately named ANewStory.com. Would you check it out as soon as you can? I am praying that you'll be able to go to sleep this very night saying, “I am forgiven. I am free!”

  3. 4d ago

    There When You Fall - #10350

    I happened to be there when my friend, Rick, tried a jet ski for the first time. Now, you may have seen those little water machines that look kind of like a baby snowmobile, and they’re a lot of fun. But it takes some skill to stay balanced on them as they start to take off across the water. Rick actually handled it pretty well for a while; he’s a good water skier, and that didn’t surprise me. But it was inevitable that he would eventually fall off. I expected that when he hit the water, that jet ski was going to take right off without him across the water. I wondered how he’d ever get back! It didn’t happen. That jet ski is designed to start going in a circle near you, and it did, and it circles until you can get back on. Well, that’s exactly what you need when you fall off. I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “There When You Fall.” Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Lamentations 3, and we’re going to begin reading at verse 19. Now, you probably were not discussing Lamentations over breakfast this morning, but Jeremiah wrote it. It follows this long book that’s named after him. Of course, he’s a great man of God, but he’s a great man of God who knew about failure too. In fact, here’s what he says; maybe some things you and I can relate to. I’m sure we can. Beginning with Lamentations 3:19 and then ending with a phrase that you may have sung in church many times. “I remember my affliction in my wandering…” Can you relate to that? He says, “the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them.” See, his mind is playing back failures. “My soul is downcast within me,” he says. “This really gets me depressed,” in other words. “Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope.” Okay, the sun’s coming up now. “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.” Jeremiah is reflecting on times when even the most committed of us believers fall off, so to speak, as my friend fell off that jet ski. And he captures the feelings very well. “When I fail my Lord I feel discouraged, I feel depressed, sometimes like, ‘What’s the use?’ But every new day, every morning His compassions do not fail, His mercies are new every morning. Every new day I find my Lord circling near me to pick me up even though I fell off.” The prophet Zephaniah says, “Every new day, He does not fail.” Yes, when I looked at how that jet ski operated, I couldn’t help but think of how our Lord deals with us. It could be that even now you’re feeling crushed by a feeling of failure; you’ve let your Lord down, you’ve let yourself down, and you’ve let other people down. And maybe you feel like you’re just going to stay down. In fact, at times like these your feelings are telling you, “Hey, you fell off! And you know what? The Lord’s going on without you, buddy!” Wrong. “His mercies are new every morning.” Jeremiah said, “My hope is every new day is a new start. Great," he says of God, "is Your faithfulness.” Not great is our faithfulness; great is His faithfulness. So, no failure needs to last more than 24 hours. Because there’s a new day, and there’s new mercies. Today your Lord is there, circling faithfully. See, He stopped when you fell off, and He’s been lovingly waiting to pick you up and to get you off to a fresh new start.

  4. 5d ago

    The High Price of Neglect - #10349

    It was the house Grandma and Granddad built with a little help from their granddaughter, who happened to turn out to be my wife. That was many years ago. Grandma and Granddad are gone, and the house was in the hands of renters for a number of years. And the landlord, my wife's dad, lived hours away, and his age and his health prevented him from keeping up with what was happening. And man, I'll tell you, the house and the land around it, not good stuff was happening. When he deeded that house to the rest of the family, they weren’t really pleased with what had happened over the years. The house was run down; the carpet was infested with bugs; fences had been moved. And nobody in the family had to do anything to accumulate this mess. All we had to do was do nothing. I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The High Price of Neglect.” And who is that silent thief? He has a name. His name is neglect. He doesn't make much noise, but he sure steals a lot from you. Since the family began to own the house, they've been working very hard to recover what that silent thief stole. Our word for today from the Word of God is a warning against this silent thief. Proverbs 27:23-24 say, "Be sure you know the condition of your flocks; give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations." So God's saying, "Take good care of what's important to you. What you don't take care of, you may very well lose." People end up with major health problems; not always because they do terrible things to their body, but because they just let their body go. But neglect is even more damaging in your important relationships. It may be that in that spinning gerbil wheel of your busy life, someone you love is suffering from neglect. You haven't done anything bad to your mate or child, or maybe your parents. You just haven't done much. Remember, neglect is the silent thief. Slowly, but very surely, intimacy is lost, trust is lost, communication, closeness. Believe me, we saw what neglect did to a house. The longer you let things go, the harder it's going to be to get it fixed. It may be time for a priority check; time to bring those that you love and those you need the most back from the margins and back into the center. Tragically, the most important relationship in your life can atrophy through neglect - your relationship with God. You may not have done something awful. You're just slowly pushing Jesus to the edges of your schedule and your life. And on that day when you go into eternity, as we all will, if you miss heaven will it be because of the silent thief? He will have stolen from you the greatest treasure of all—eternal life. By getting you to miss a personal relationship with Jesus just by never getting around to beginning that relationship. That's why God's book says, "How shall we escape if we neglect such great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3). Many people will spend eternity away from God, not because they rejected what Jesus did on the cross, but because they simply neglected it. They put it off, they made excuses. They postponed God. This "great salvation" is what Jesus did by loving you so much He died to pay your death penalty for your sin. But that salvation isn't your salvation until you tell Jesus you’re putting your total trust in Him like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard as their only hope. So, let me ask you, "When did you do that with Jesus?" If you never have, and you don't want to risk losing the heaven that Jesus died to give you, would you give yourself to Him today? Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours." This would be the day to go to our website and get that information that will help you secure that relationship with Him. It's ANewStory.com. I’ve known too many people who waited one day too long to get to Jesus, and that neglect stole their eternity. Don't walk by Jesus any more. No, run into His waiting arms.

  5. 6d ago

    The Healing Power of Making a Difference - #10348

    Bob was one senior who was a tremendous blessing to our ministry. He’d been the kind of volunteer who had been there for every kind of project you could imagine. His whole life—it seems like he’s been a warrior for the Lord. But then, he had some illnesses and an accident that slowed him down—even to the point of walking with a cane and honestly looking a little more stooped than usual. We asked him if he could help oversee this important remodeling project at our Headquarters. Before we could finish the tour of the area that needed work, Bob was spouting out ideas about how it could be done. Later I actually saw Bob in the hallway—walking tall, walking fast, without his cane, like a man half his age! I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Healing Power of Making a Difference.” A new spark, a new spring in his step–what made this almost overnight difference in our friend? At least in part, I think it was the prospect of making a difference again! He was re-energized by having a mission. You know what? That might be just what the doctor—I mean, The Doctor—ordered for someone who’s listening right now. In Proverbs 11:24-25, our word for today from the Word of God, the Bible spells out this healing power of making a difference for other people. Here’s what it says. “One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” When you’re all focused on yourself, your world is small, your hurts are big, you’re claustrophobic, you’re sometimes bitter and self-pitying. But when you’re focused on people who need you, on things you can do to make a difference, it’s literally life-giving. Jesus described this strange but ever-true equation: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it” (Luke 9:24). Hold onto your life, you lose it. Give your life away, you find it. I’ve seen that proven true from teenagers to people way up in years. We all need a mission. It begins by looking around your world and asking this great question, “Who needs me around here? Who can I help with what I know? Who can I help with what I’ve been through?” Often we’re looking for someone to help us instead of someone to help. We’re focused on who could meet our needs instead of whose needs we could help meet. And we’re miserable. Nobody wants to come to our pity parties, and life looks ugly because we keep looking through a dirty window, and that window is called “It’s all about me.” Maybe it’s time for you to think more about “giving your life away”—about a mission you could become involved in. You might have some very real limitations, some hurts, some handicaps. But there is someone you can help with what you know; whether it’s in person, or letters, or emails, or texts, or with the phone. At least you can tell them about your Jesus and help them be in heaven with you. A young man once wrote to Mother Teresa, and he was asking how he could have the kind of significance with his life that she was experiencing as she ministered to dying people in Calcutta’s worst slums. She wrote back just a four-word reply: “Find your own Calcutta.” That’s the answer. Find a place where you are needed, where you can pour yourself into someone other than yourself, into something bigger than yourself. And, when you do, prepare to experience the awesome healing power of making a difference!

  6. Sep 8

    You, God, and the Wall - #10347

    I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but there were a lot of rumors in college that I was behind some practical jokes and pranks that happened while I was there. That’s hard to imagine, huh? I mean, it probably wouldn’t come as a total surprise to some of those folks if finally I ended up in the penitentiary. Fortunately, my sentence was only about four hours, because I did end up at Alcatraz. Yep! Now, we had taken some young people out to that famous prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay to do a special radio program. Of course, it’s been some years since any prisoners were held there on what they called The Rock, but it is still quite a place to see. While we were there, we experienced this awful claustrophobia of being locked in one of those little cells; the isolation of being in solitary confinement. For the closing segment of the program, we walked out of one of the prison gates and down to the rocks outside that overlook the bay. One of the young people with us was walking out with me, and he made quite an observation, because it was really a tremendously commanding view. He said, “Just think, there was only a wall between them and all this beauty.” I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “You, God, and the Wall.” Our word for today from the Word of God is about just such a wall; one which may be keeping you from the beauty you were made for. Our word for today from the Word of God is Isaiah 59:2. It says, “Your iniquities" - that’s all the times that we’ve done things our way instead of God’s way. "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you.” Separation—that was the feeling we felt so strongly at Alcatraz. A person there was, in simple words, cut off from love, from freedom, from a beautiful world. In a sense, God is saying here that we are all prisoners in our own personal Alcatraz—cut off from Him, from His love, from His peace, His heaven, which may account for an incurable loneliness you’ve experienced over the years. It turns out we’re lonely for God, because our sin has built a wall between us and our Creator. In fact, you may very well have not needed me to realize that there’s a wall between you and God. You knew that. You can feel it. You’ve felt it for a long time. Well, if that wall doesn’t come down in time, it becomes a death sentence; separation from God that is irreversible and eternal. The wall that separates you from the beauty that God wants you to have can come down, but not because of anything you or I can do about it. Somehow, our sins have to be removed and forgiven, and the death penalty has to be paid by someone who takes our place. In 1 Peter 3:18, the Bible says “Christ died for our sins…the righteous" - that’s Him - "for the unrighteous" - that’s you and me - "to bring you to God.” What Jesus did on the cross was to take your rap. You did the sinning, Jesus did the dying. Which means the wall can come down the moment you put your total trust in Jesus to erase your sins from God’s book and give you eternal life in place of eternal death. When the door opened that day in the prison we were in, we were so anxious to leave behind that darkness and that loneliness and to finally step out to where we could breathe free and enjoy the beauty just beyond the wall. That’s exactly what God wants you to experience today. He wants the wall between you and Him to come down, and it can upon your invitation. This could be the day when you say, “Lord, I believe that some of those sins you were dying for on that cross were mine. I turn from the running of my own life. You were meant to run it, and you will from now on. You came back from the dead, You are alive, and Jesus, because you died on the cross for me, I am Yours.” That’s the moment the wall will come down and you will experience all God has for you. Our website is here and it is prepared for you to go to right now and be sure you belong to Jesus Christ. Would you check it out? It's ANewStory.com. Today you’re at the door. Jesus is on the other side waiting to lead you out. Follow Him, because it is really beautiful on the other side of the wall.

  7. Sep 7

    Getting Things Ready for God to Come - #10346

    God blessed the Hutchcraft home with three very unique children. Anybody who knows them, nod your head now. Good…okay. I realize that’s three more than a number of families, some of whom would love to just have one child. We’ve had some friends tell us, “Ron, we’ve been trying to have children for three years,” or five years, or ten years. And today doctors do all they can to increase those possibilities. They’ll suggest times of the month when the baby would be most likely conceived; sometimes they’ll give you fertility drugs. And many a childless couple does all that they can to conceive a new life, and the way that they do that is just to create the conditions, to the best of their ability, in which the miracle could happen. Even though they can’t make it happen, they do their best to prepare for a life to begin. I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Getting Things Ready for God to Come.” Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 2:1-2, and it records for us the most dramatic visit - Holy Spirit visit - in history. “When the day of Pentecost came,” it says, “they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.” And you know from there it became even more exciting as the Holy Spirit changed the city of Jerusalem and launched a movement that has reached you and me today. Maybe today you have a longing deep inside to have a special, personal touch from the Holy Spirit. You know you need one; maybe a touch of what they call revival. You don’t even know what the word means, but you’d love to experience some. You know you need a reviving work for the Holy Spirit, something new and fresh and more powerful than you’ve had before. Maybe it’s a supernatural provision for a God-sized need right now. It’s a healing touch, or a restoring touch. Well, if you need a little personal Pentecost right now, you’re in the same situation in a way as the couple who wants a child. You can’t make the miracle happen; that’s up to God. But you can create the conditions that the Holy Spirit can respond to, and that’s exactly what these people did when this great Spirit visit happened at Pentecost. In Acts 1:12 it says, “They returned to Jerusalem from a hill called The Mount of Olives and waited there.” And that’s exactly what Jesus had commanded them to do - to wait in Jerusalem. Verse 14: “They all joined together constantly in prayer.” See, the way you create the conditions for the baby to come, for the baby of revival to come, of healing, of God’s restoring touch, is first to obey: to do what the Lord told you to do, to wait patiently, to be in the place God has placed you. Be sure you are where He wants you to be. Second step, you’ve got to pray. You obey and then you pray. And you notice it says, “They prayed constantly.” That means through the day, dialoging with God, and often saying to Him as you ride, as you walk, and as you’re in the middle of your responsibilities, “Lord, please give me that special touch.” Cry out to Him often, pray constantly for it. “Seek the Lord continually,” David said. And thirdly it says, “They stayed together.” You obey, you pray, and you stay together. And you eliminate any walls between you and any other believers. Usually these kinds of Spirit-touches come from praying together. God comes to places where His kids are all together, persistently asking Him to come. It’s not a microwave revival. It’s from people who will wait, who will pray, who will stick together, who will pursue Him together passionately. Who will pay the price. Pentecost doesn’t begin at a public meeting; it doesn’t begin at a planning meeting. It usually begins in a prayer meeting. So if you’re hungry for a new spiritual life to be conceived, create the conditions in which it happens and expect God to respond with the visit you sought. Only you can create the conditions. Only God can send the revival.

  8. Sep 4

    Orphan in Your Heart - #10345

    As your parents get older, they love to tell those stories again, and again, and again. We’ve enjoyed hearing some of the family stories that my wife’s dad had to tell. And, you know what? It filled in a lot of blanks, as we tried to put together the history of the last couple of generations. We asked him once about that little girl named Ada. My wife’s grandfather, Granddad Glenn, had one child – her dad. And he wanted a sister! So, Granddad Glenn traveled from their small town to a major city to check out the adoption possibilities at an orphanage there. I don’t know if he was prepared for the reception he got there. Everywhere he went, children asked him if they could go home with him. But there was this one dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl who just would not leave his side. Her name was Ada. She wouldn’t let go of Granddad’s hand, and she kept looking up at him with her big brown eyes and begging him, “Please let me go home with you. Please take me.” He did. And my wife’s dad got his sister. I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Orphan in Your Heart.” The heart of an orphan desperately reaching for someone to love and take care of her. Maybe that’s a feeling you know even though you’re not physically an orphan. But life can get pretty lonely; relationships that were supposed to bring you love and happiness ended up bringing disappointment and hurt. You live enough years, there’s a good chance you end up feeling abandoned at some point, left out, rejected, alone – even with a lot of people around you. And the biggest mistakes we make in our life are often mistakes we make for love. We keep reaching for a hand that might offer love and saying, “Take me. If you do, I’ll be OK.” But we’ve never really been totally OK. No love has ever been enough love, and sometimes we’ve paid too high a price to get someone to take us. It’s this orphan feeling in the human heart that Jesus Christ speaks to in our word for today from the Word of God, recorded in John 14:18. He says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus says, “I can give you the ‘never leave you’ love that your heart's always been hungry for.’” Actually, He’s the only one who can finally bring us spiritual orphans home. The loneliness we just keep feeling is ultimately cosmic loneliness. We’re lonely for God. Why? Well, He made us for His love and we’ve left Him. It isn’t that we don’t have a Father. We feel like emotional and spiritual orphans because we’ve never begun a relationship with this Father who loves us so very much. In Isaiah 53:6, God describes how we have missed His love. It says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” Our sin – our "my way" living has cut us off from the love we were made for, and only Jesus could bring us back. The rest of that verse says, “The Lord laid on him (that’s Jesus) the wrongdoing of us all.” In other words, Jesus died on the cross, carrying all the guilt and all the hell of all your sin and mine. That’s why He cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) Reason: He was cut off from His Father so you would never have to be cut off from Him again. And now He’s reaching out His hand for you to offer you the relationship – the love you were made for. The question is, “Are you going to reach back?” Won't you grab the hand of Jesus and tell Him, “Lord, take me. You’re this orphan’s only hope. You died for me. I am yours. I want to be a child of the Heavenly Father, born into His family this day because of what You did on the cross for me.” Listen, if that’s where your heart is, go to our website. It has all the information you need to confirm that you belong to God through Jesus. That website is ANewStory.com. Your Heavenly Father has come to where you are today to bring you into His family, to bring you home to His love. Like a little orphan many years ago, reach up and say, “Take me.” Oh He will. And you will be an orphan no more.

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Daily A Word With You

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  • Creator
    Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
  • Years Active
    2009 - 2026
  • Episodes
    587
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © 2026 Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.
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