Believing God for the Victory

That was a good song to lead into this. I felt like the Lord wanted me to speak on the ways of God, and as I was studying that out, I was kind of like zeroing in on the inscrutable ways of God, you know, things that are difficult to understand and so on. And as I've spent a few days praying about this and thinking about it, it's kind of changed a little bit in my mind the thrust of what I think He wants me to share with you today.

Come on in, guys. I feel like He wants me to talk about faith, believing God for victory. You know, faith, belief, trust, they're all three sides of the same coin.

You didn't know that coins had three sides, did you? This one does. Believing God for the victory. He's got victory out ahead of you, and you have to believe Him for it.

But there's something that goes behind it, and we're not talking about just whipping up some kind of mental, you know, subduing all doubting thoughts, and, no, I'm going to believe, I'm going to believe. No, that's not, that isn't faith for victory. That is just self-effort.

That's not what you need. You need to come into a trust for the Lord that's very real. Let's talk about the ways of God for a while, and I'm going to handle this differently.

I've preached on faith a number of times over the years. I think I've shared, not that long ago, faith, my definition of faith, or the way I see faith, is kind of a three-pronged thing. Hmm.

Faith is living in the reality of God and the unseen realm around us. We walk by what? Not by what? Sight. So faith is partially where God, who dwells in the unseen realm, is real to us.

That's different than just going to church on Sunday. That's different. It's a completely different mindset.

And the second part of it is believing what the Word of God says about the character of God, that He really is good, that He really is merciful. All the things that it says about the Lord. Believing that.

And the third part is living your life as if you believed that He is real, that He is good. So that's my take on what saving faith looks like. And I say all that because it took me a long time to understand.

When I first came into the church, back in, I guess you could say, in 1982, what was being taught and is still being taught more strongly today, I guess, than even then, is that faith is just believing what the Bible says about Jesus, and just kind of, yeah, I believe there was a Jesus, and you know, yeah, I know the Bible's true. Just kind of this weak, superficial, worthless mindset. No, faith should be life transforming, as my wife was talking about.

Something powerful inside of us. So when we think about the ways of God, that is partly what we're doing, is we're considering this God who is so real. Let me just go over a few verses, just kind of get this in a flow here.

Deuteronomy 10, Moses said, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. That is what He requires of us. That is far more profound, and deeper, and stronger than just going to church on Sunday.

In Psalm 25, David, several hundred years later, he wrote, make me to know your ways, O Lord. Make me to know your ways. Teach me your paths.

The Lord teaches the humble His way. Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose. And in Psalm 81, the Lord said, O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways.

So what does it mean, the ways of the Lord? What exactly does that mean? As far as I can tell, I believe it means his character, what he's like, manner of his life, the way he does things, you know, that we should be trying to emulate him and the way he thinks and acts. And some of that revolves or involves things that are difficult. As I was saying, God's inscrutable ways, His ways that are not easily understood, even mysterious to us, His ways that seem counterintuitive to us.

They don't add up in our logic necessarily. His ways that can even seem unmerciful or unjust at times. And it really, you know, it comes down to trusting him, whether we understand things or not.

Look, Pastor Steve, I'm just interested in overcoming sexual sin. I don't care about all this deep spiritual talk. That's why you're stuck where you're at, because you think that way.

Those deep spiritual truths that we sometimes can tap into here, those are the kinds of things that will bring you into victory. You know, back in the day, I had the same mindset. I just wanted band-aid answers.

I wanted this, just give me the simple, easy things to do so I can get the victory. That's all I cared about. And then that's why I stayed stuck for a while.

I didn't understand how much I had corrupted myself. And I didn't understand that I was spiritually weak almost to the point of death. And I didn't understand that victory over habitual sin comes through spiritual health, or I could say spiritual healthiness.

You know, if you're an athlete, you've got to be healthy to be able to compete in the games, right? Whatever it is, baseball, football, boxing, whatever. You've got to be healthy. You can't just like, let's say baseball, and you're a pitcher.

Okay, so all I'm going to do is I'm going to work on building up my right arm and my right shoulder and make that really strong. And it doesn't matter if the rest of me is pathetic. You know, as long as this is strong, I'll be a great pitcher.

Who's going to believe that nonsense? You have to be healthy. All of you has to be healthy. You can't be smoking cigarettes and whatever else.

You know, you have to be living a healthy lifestyle. And that's what the Lord is trying to establish for you here. This is like a, I don't know, a health spa, let's say.

Talk about putting a positive spin on it. Pure life health spa. All right, let's look at these verses.

Isaiah 55. We'll just read from six to nine. But man, this chapter has so much in it.

Even these, just these four verses, just tremendous profound truth. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near.

You know, we talk a lot about Kairos moments in this place, right? When God draws near, man, you have to seize that opportunity while it's there. Because you don't have any guarantees that He's going to draw near to you in the same way again. Let the wicked forsake His way.

Uh-oh. The Lord is stepping on your toes now because you have a way of doing things and He's telling you to forsake it. And the unrighteous man, his thoughts.

Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on Him. And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

Excuse me. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. You know, one of the main reasons why men stay stuck is because—I talked about this a couple months ago, I think.

Remember when I did the sermon where I'm trying to show you what it's like to be in your own head? You don't remember that. I can see I really powerfully affected you. There is the way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof is the way to death.

We have been thinking the way we think with our attitudes and our mindset, our value system, what we think is important, and so on, for year after year after year. We've been in the same basic mindset that has emerged from your character, your personality, your experiences, and it has become further and more deeply entrenched year after year. Some of that's okay.

You know, it's not like everything we think is wrong, but a lot of it is. And God has got to jumpstart you out of that rut that you've been in for many years. It's not just to deal with sexual sin.

You're thinking wrongly about a lot of things. What are they? I don't know. I don't know what your deal is, you know.

I know what I had to go through to get put in the right place. But you've been thinking that way for a long time, and that thinking has become entrenched in you. Now, if I say that God's ways are higher than your ways, and his thoughts are higher than your thoughts, everyone in here, I'm sure, agrees with that.

We all agree with that. But what you think right now in the middle of listening to a sermon on this subject is not really the important thing. What's important is what you think next Wednesday, or three weeks from now.

What's important is when you're out in daily life, and you're facing struggles, and you're facing temptations, and you're facing all kinds of stuff that comes at you. What are you thinking then? Are you thinking that God's ways are higher than your ways, and his thoughts are higher than your thoughts? Or are you just in your own head? It really amounts to who are you putting your trust in? Who are you putting your trust in? And now, go back. This is what I have to do so often when I'm preaching, because I know a good number of you've had real breakthroughs with the Lord, and you're really progressing spiritually, okay? But go back to before you came here, let's say.

Who were you putting your trust in? Basically, I can almost assure you, you were putting your trust in one of two things, which is kind of the same thing. You were putting your trust in yourself, and you were putting your trust in your understanding, or I could say your religion. Belief in self equals, this is a mathematical formula.

Pastor Ed, you like those things? I do. Get the guy out a spreadsheet, he's in seventh heaven. Belief in self equals unbelief in God.

That is a truism. Believe me, guys, that is true. Let me say it again, so it really sticks.

Belief in self equals unbelief in God, because the more you believe in yourself, the less you're going to believe in God. The more you trust in yourself, the less you're going to trust God. And one of the things he's got to do to help you to get over the hump to where you are actually living in victory, is to learn to trust him in your daily life.

In 1992, Kathy and I, we've talked about this occasionally, we went to the faith homes, and I hope you understand my reasoning for saying this. It's to make a point. But by that point, by that time, 1992, I had been living in victory over sexual sin for seven years.

And by that point, because of that special call in my life to do this, back in those days, there was no one else doing this, okay? I was the guy. I know you probably don't understand that, but I was the guy. I was on all the national TV shows and radio shows and all that stuff.

And I had done all that stuff. I had a name, sort of, and I had preached in some of the biggest churches. Thousands of people were buying my book to get answers, because no one else was talking on this in the church back in the late 80s and early 90s.

So, in other words, I had a lot of reason to trust in myself. Now, I'm going to one specific time in 1992, okay? And I'm trying to make a point. I'm not trying to say I was anything because I went on all that, did all that stuff.

That doesn't mean anything. All I'm saying is, I had a lot of reason to have self-confidence. And Kathy and I went to faith homes.

You guys hear us talk about that occasionally. And after we'd been there for a little bit, we would make visits up there, okay? And it didn't take long before one thing I understood very clearly. These people have a life in God that I do not have.

It was just obvious to me. None of them had done the things I had done, you know? This is the upside-down, contorted way of the American church. I'm supposed to be looked at as something great, because I've been on all these TV shows and radio shows, all this big stuff.

But these guys who had just a small little ministry, you know, they should be considered as nothing. No, it was the opposite. And God's ways are completely different than our ways.

I don't know if I'm making sense here, but I'll tell you what what was real to me is that I trusted them more than I trusted myself. That was a big deal. You know, I was a cop in L.A. I learned to trust in myself.

And then, like I said, all this other stuff just tended to fortify self-trust. But I had the, I don't know if it's common sense, I had the sense enough to know when I saw the way those people lived with God and lived with each other, I just knew these people are light years ahead of me. So how did I respond to that? When they would tell me things, was I going to debate with them? Was I going to argue with them? Was I going to defend myself? No, that's not what I did.

I humbled myself, because in my mind, I knew they know better than I do. And I'm going to trust what they say more than I trust what I think. And that was a major breakthrough for me.

Now, I was already over sexual sin, but I had a lot of self issues that still needed to be dealt with. Psalm 119, one of the things the psalmist talks about in there is the testimonies of the Lord. What is that? What are the testimonies of the Lord? Well, what is a testimony? You know what a testimony is, right? What's a testimony? You go home, you know, you've been through the program, and after a few months, your pastor's looking at the way your life is, and he sees there's something different in your life.

And he says, I want you to come up on Sunday night. Do they even have Sunday night services anymore? I don't know. Sunday morning.

Things are getting better, see? I want you to come up here on Sunday morning, and I want you to share your testimony. What does that mean? It means this is who I am. This is my life.

This is what God has done in me. This is full of testimony of who God is and what he is. This is his testimony.

So, in Psalm 119, one of the things he said was, when I think on my ways, I turn my feet. I'm thinking on my ways. This is how I am.

This is how I see things. This is what I think things are. But when I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.

Because I trust you more than I trust myself. Guys, one of the things the Lord has got to do for you, he's got to get you to the place. I hope this will happen while you're still here.

He's got to get you to the place where you honestly really do believe that his ways are far, far above your ways, and that his thoughts are far, far better than your thoughts. You think you can humble yourself to get to that place? You should try. The problem is we are too big in our own minds.

That's the problem. We are just so big in our own thoughts. We're constantly thinking about ourselves.

On and on and on. All the things I want, all the things I like, and, you know, just my opinions and all that stuff. And self is the great focus of our thinking and our minds.

You know, if you want to change, that's got to change. You've got to come way down, deflate that enormous thing so that there's room for God to fill you. As long as you're full of yourself, you're not going to be full of the Holy Spirit.

You're not going to have a life that has the spiritual health and spiritual power to overcome sexual sin. Is this message making sense to you guys? You know, talking about trusting the Lord, I had this sermon all together, and 20 minutes before I come, I'm ready to come over here, the Lord changes it all up on me. Hey, listen, He's the boss.

He can do whatever He wants. I'm just here to do what He tells me to do. But it is a little convoluted for me this morning.

I'm just trying to give you guys something to think about, that His ways are better and bigger and larger and higher and more wonderful than your ways. They really are. And you'd be a whole lot happier and better off if you would trust Him more than trusting yourself.

And if you would trust His thinking more than you trust your own thinking, you'd be a lot better off. So, getting back to God's inscrutable ways, I want to take a few minutes to look at some questions that I've had posed to me over the years. And, yeah, you'll see what I'm, these are the kinds of things people struggle with, okay? It's just the way, you know, where people are at and so on.

I don't fault anyone for any of it, but it is a trust issue. So, number one question is this. I got a few of them, we'll go through.

God, why did you make me this way? Now, be honest, any of you ever struggle with that question? God, why did you make me this way? This is especially pertinent to guys with same-sex attractions. You know, they can easily feel like they were shortchanged in life, you know, that it was unfair that I have had to deal with this. Or, like, some guys, you know, just have always thought that way or been leaned that direction.

Others, like Jordan, was molested as a little kid. It wasn't his fault. Some filthy, vile, whoever it was that did that to him, and he's had to live with the, um, the consequences of that.

But anyway, I've seen people that are going to respond to this one way or the other. You're either going to focus on the unfairness of it, and if you do that, what's going to typically happen is you're going to go down a spiral, and you're going to get into despair and self-pity, and your reaction is going to end up being to blame God for everything. Why did you let this happen to me? Now, even if you've gone that way, and, um, you know, the better way is to just skip all that, and to just repent of your sin and begin asking God to change you.

You know, I know guys that have spent years and years and years going around and around, especially, like I say, homosexuality. Just why, why, why? You know, reading all the books and trying to understand every little thing about it. If they would have just turned to the Lord in the first place, they could have saved themselves an enormous amount of heartache, and trouble, and all the sin that went with it, and all of it.

But whether or not it's same-sex or opposite-sex is your deal, it doesn't really matter, in a sense. But the bottom line is we all have sin issues. Every single human being who's ever lived has sin issues that they've got to deal with.

We all, they're all particular to each of us. You know, I've talked about how unique every human being is. We're all completely different.

And so, therefore, you merge a fallen nature with a unique personality, temperament, nature, whatever. You merge those together, and you're going to end up with some particular sin issues that you have a propensity towards. And it doesn't, it can be all kinds of things.

For us in here, us men, obviously sexual sin has been the main thing, or at least one of them. But even that, even that, there are so many varieties of sexual sin that we can be involved in or interested in. I've got a list here, I'm not going to go through it, but there's all kinds of different ways.

What's my point? Is just because you're drawn to some particular type of sin does not mean you had to give yourself over to it. But when the temptation presented itself, you threw yourself into it, right? That's what I did. I threw myself into it, never even, never even considered the consequences for it.

God may have formed you in your mother's womb, but He did not create your passion for sin. You did that on your own. Rather than blame the Lord, you know, why did you make me this way? Rather than thinking of it like that, it's better to think of this world as a testing ground.

And it's really going to boil down to, are you going to trust God or not? Are you going to submit to Him, or are you going to go your own way? Are you going to obey the Lord, or are you going to live in rebellion? It's going to be one or the other. Okay, here's another question. God, how long will you ignore my cries for help? And I'm sure you all dealt with that at some point or another, because you cry out to the Lord and it's like nothing happens.

And I said it in, at the altar of sexual idolatry, somewhere in there, and I said that all those trips to the altar and all those times you've cried out to God and it felt like He wasn't hearing you, He wasn't responding. He was responding, it's just that He's very quiet and subtle in His ways of dealing with things. He is working inside you, believe me.

That's what got you here. That is what got you here. But there's, there are reasons that the Lord, as I shared in the book, and that especially in the chapter, freedom comes slowly for a reason.

You know, when you've wallowed in sin for years, you can't expect that God is just going to wave a wand over you and just completely change you in an instant. That's the way we want it to be. We don't want to have to fight.

We want a nice, easy, do-it-all-for-me-God sort of thing. And it isn't like that. You dug yourself into a pit and you are going to have to fight your way out.

He's going to give you the wherewithal, He's going to empower you to do it, and He's going to give you the tools you need, but you've got to fight. It's just part of the deal. And part of that also is He's got to teach you to trust in Him.

You know, you've been an independent spirit, an independent agent, so to speak. You know, you've been very much self-reliant, doing your own thing. You haven't really lived in submission to Him, maybe in some little areas you did, but He is looking for a life of dependence and obedience to Him.

And so that's part of what is happening through this process of coming out of sexual sin. He is going to do a complete overhaul in you before it's over with, if you will follow Him, and if you will continue to obey Him. He's doing a mighty work inside you, and He's not ignoring your cries for help.

He is not. He is answering those cries. It's just not coming as quickly as you want it to come, and in the way that you want it to come.

But it is happening. He's changing you inside. Number three.

This is another question I have heard. God, why are you so hard on me while other Christians never seem to get dealt with? Anybody ever feel that way? Go to Hebrews 12 if you're even thinking that way. The Lord disciplines the one He loves, and it also says, if you are left without discipline, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Now who wants to live without discipline? Because of what that tells you. You know, I would equate what the writer of Hebrews calls them illegitimate children. I would equate that with what I call pseudo-Christians, nominal Christians, in name only.

People, they go to church, they do the Christian thing, but there's no real connection with God. There's no real relationship with God, and so you look at their lives, and you know, it seems like they're not having any problems. They have a nice job, a nice house, a nice car, everything's going great for them, and here you are in a program for sex addicts in Kentucky.

They should be so lucky. Look, the only thing you need to take away from that is that you know that God is involved in your life, and He loves you, and He's changing you. He's doing His work inside you.

What's going on with them? I'm not going to say, yeah, I'll say this. If they're not, if they're not facing discipline from God, they are not sons of God. That's what I'll say, because it says here, if the Lord disciplines the one He loves, that says it all.

Don't be fooled by outward happiness and superficially things going well. Don't be fooled by that. It's only an inch deep.

It doesn't mean anything. You know, Asaph dealt with this. He says, I get nothing but trouble all day long.

Every morning brings me pain. This is in Psalm 73, but he went on to say, Then I went into your sanctuary, O God, and I finally understood the destiny of the wicked. That's when things made sense.

When he got in the presence of God, he could see things for how they, what they really are. You know, the bottom line is that suffering is, how do I say it? God created this world, and suffering, and pain, and death, and evil are all in there. You know, of course, we did it.

We brought it on ourselves in the garden, and that's when the curse hit this earth. And people that question God say, well, why? You know, he's either impotent, or he's not a God of love. No, he's not impotent.

He's all powerful, and he's all love. What they don't see, in their self-centered perspective of it, is that God allowed this world to be created the way it is. Why? What if you extracted all the suffering out of this world? What would you have? Heaven on earth, right? If you took all the suffering out of this, all the evil, you would just have heaven on earth.

But see, that would miss the whole point of it. The point of it is, this is a testing ground. And God has put mankind on this earth, in this situation, to find out who is willing to push back on what their flesh wants, push back on what the mass majority of people want, and go against all that to be on his side.

That's the question. Here's another question that comes up. God, why don't you bless my life like you do others? It's kind of like this other one, a little different.

I'll just say this. The level of your obedience is going to determine the level of your blessing. Now, when I'm talking about blessing, I'm not talking about outward blessing, although he can do that.

If he feels like someone, one of his children, is in a place where they can receive outward blessings without it ruining them, then he will do it. You know, but typically it takes a long time, a lot of his working in their life before they get to that place. And I believe Solomon's life, one of the reasons God blessed him the way that he did was to just put that story in Scripture, just like Job went through what he went through.

So that story would be there for millions of people to read later, just like Solomon. Okay, you want to have all the blessings. Here, let's do that with one man.

Let's make him our guinea pig and see what happens. And he absolutely ruined his life with it because of it. And I know that I believe the Lord came to him at the end and got things squared away for him.

But we can't handle all those outward blessings. But what we can have, and we can have it as much as... And one of the things, one of the most important things that the staff here can do for you guys is to help you to come to see the value of inward blessings. And you get that through the testimonies that are spoken here on Thursday nights and so on, as the staff shares what God has done in their lives and changed the way they think and all that.

You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't know what inward joy is, and inward peace, and inward fulfillment, you would be a miserable person. You would be a person. The reason why that hasn't been a deal for you in the past, and why it's a challenge for you to think in terms of desiring those inward blessings is because you have a track record of living for the now.

I did too. Live for the now. I want pleasure now.

I could only... It's I couldn't see 10 feet out in front of me. All I could see was what I want this moment. And that meant avoid all suffering and embrace all pleasure.

And that's the way I went through life, from one pleasurable experience to the next. And in the book, I have a graph, and you have that kind of a life where you have these high points that last a few minutes or an hour or something. And then you're plunging down into a life of misery and depression the rest of the time, whereas God is trying to get you on a level playing or a level flow in your life where inwardly you're just blessed and happy and so on.

But you can't get that by living for now. You have to have the wisdom to see out ahead and make decisions that are going to, you know, how that's going to affect you in the future. Okay, this is my last question.

This one came to me this week because I was reading Ezekiel 18, and the Jews were questioning God. But God, what would happen to me if you returned right when I was looking at porn? That's an interesting thought. Let me read this, these couple of verses here out of Ezekiel 18.

Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn away from his way and live? Turn from his way and live. Yet you say the way of the Lord is not just. Hear now, O house of Israel, is it not your ways that are not just? When a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it.

And when a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life. Okay, I read this little pulpit commentary quote. This is really what I'm trying to get at on this verse.

This is what it said. God judges men as they are and judges according to present condition. He does not spare the fallen man on account of past goodness, and he does not rake up old charges against the penitent.

We must not suppose, however, that God judges by a man's latest act. This would throw in an element of chance. A man is not condemned because he happens to be doing wrong at the moment of death, or saved because death finds him on his knees in prayer.

But when the whole life is turned around, God judges by its present character and not by its former state. Do you understand that? Okay, you guys got it. And to me, that makes a lot more sense than the arguments I've heard in the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism.

You know, I'm not even going to go there, but it's just like, there's no agenda. It's just like, read what the Bible just says and plainly just take it for what it says. Okay, here's how I want to wrap up.

I want to talk a little bit about the issue of humans questioning God. You know, the Lord welcomes sincere questions. He's happy for you to bring sincere questions to him.

Just make sure they're not veiled accusations, because accusing God is a dangerous path to go down, and that's what the people of Israel were doing. Isaiah said to them, you turn things upside down. Shall the potter be regarded as the clay that the thing made should save its maker? He has no understanding.

You know, in other words, it's amazing how puny little humans can put themselves above the Lord. As I was thinking about this, I started thinking about questions that the Lord asks, and so I have a few questions that God would ask us. Let's turn it around like it should be.

Isaiah 55-2, why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? The Lord's asking that. You guys have all done that, right? Why do you insist on going after empty pleasures, you know, when you know they're not going to pay off? Psalm 2-1, here's another one. Why do the nations rage in the people's plot in vain? Why are people so bent on their schemes, and why do they rage at God when they all fall apart? Why? Here's another one, Psalm 10-13, why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, you will not call to account? Why do people renounce God and get the attitude that they're not going to have to account for themselves? Isaiah 1-5, why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? Here's Jesus in Matthew 9-4, why do you think evil in your thoughts? Why are you blaming me because everything's going wrong for you? Or Luke 6-46, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you? You know, the bottom line is to trust the Lord, to have the kind of faith in God to believe for victory is going to require us to really humble ourselves.

That's really the bottom line. We have got to really humble ourselves. Someone said, there are two things that never cease to amaze me, how incredibly good the Lord is, and how evil men can be.

You know, the next time you start thinking high-minded thoughts, and you need to get your mind back where it should be, that would be a good thing to consider, is how good God is, and how evil we can be. All right, I'm going to just close in prayer. Lord, it is true that your ways, your thoughts are as far above us as heaven is from the earth.

There are times that things don't make sense to us, we don't understand things, and I know that you take us through those dark times to build trust in you, and I know that's what's happened for me over the years. Lord, you have somehow taught me to trust you, at least a whole lot more than I did early on, and Lord, I pray for these men in this program that you will do that for them, help them to come into that place where they can honestly say they trust your thoughts more than their own, and help them to escape any cynicism or lack of trust in this ministry. It feels like it takes months just for many men to even get to the place where they trust us at all, like just come here determined not to trust us.

Lord, only you can do that. We can't try to cajole people to trust us, whatever with that, that's not going anywhere, but you can do it, Lord, and I pray that you would help these men. You know what each one of them struggles with, what their faith issues are, what their sin issues are.

Help them, build them up in the faith, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. You're dismissed.