Hope in the Wilderness
Genesis chapter 21. The whole chapter. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children, yet I have born him a son in his old age. And the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham laughing. So she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring. So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder along with the child and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bow shot, for she said, let me not look on the death of the child. And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy. And the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Up, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. Why don't we first begin in prayer? Father, we know that you have brought us to this very moment. And Lord, now you are prepared to give us everything. Lord, you are prepared to give us yourself and so we pray that we might have you as we read your word, That you would reveal yourself to us, that you would show yourself, that you would open our ears and open our hearts to receive you and to be changed by you. And we pray all of this in the power of your spirit, in Jesus' name, amen. Now. Genesis 21 is what we've been going through. Now, if you flip 21 around, you get Genesis 12. And that was the chapter where Abraham and Sarah were promised a land, many offspring, and that they would be very famous. Now, they're still living in tents, and it has now been 25 years, and they still haven't had the kid yet. But now here we are finally, and they give birth to the promised son, Isaac. Now... what we're gonna be looking at today is the wilderness. We're gonna be looking at one literal wilderness and one metaphorically, metaphorically, metaphorical wilderness. Because you see, you witness one, Sarah's barren worm for 25 years. They wandered through the wilderness literally for 25 years, but also were sitting there, dry, desperate, unable to do anything for themselves, helpless. waiting for God to come. And then because of these events, because Isaac is born, Hagar and Ishmael are then cast out into a literal wilderness. And so today we're gonna be looking at fundamental truths that as Christians we need to know, because all of us are gonna walk through the wilderness. No, not all of us are gonna go out bush and try and live off, I don't know, bare grills trying to drink your own pee for a week or something like that. We're not gonna do that, but... As Christians, we do have times where we walk through periods in our life where we feel alone, where we feel helpless, and that we have no one else to rely on. That is what it's like to be alone without any help whatsoever. Some of us will walk through these times that will last days, maybe weeks, for some of us months, years, even decades, possibly. You will feel as though God is gone. And so, like I already said, Abraham and Sarah have walked through their wilderness and now they have come to their promised land in a way. They've been given their promised offspring, Isaac. But now, because of this, just looking at the context of Genesis 21, Isaac has grown up and now he's being weaned, right? So, putting him on solids, he's finally there, and so they have a big feast. I think instead of having baby dedications or something like that, we should have feasts whenever babies go on solids. That'd be awesome. As a whole church, we'd have a big lunch. Wouldn't that be great? But then in the process of this feast, Sarah sees Ishmael, Abraham's oldest son, to the slave woman Hagar. It says, laughing at him. Now the same idea is back, if you go back to Genesis 19 with Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot, when he went to tell his son-in-laws that, need to get out of Sodom and Gomorrah, you need to come, and they thought he was joking. They said it was jesting. They were essentially, they thought he was teasing them in a way. And so, You have that same kind of idea here. It's not like they're laughing with each other here. Ishmael is making fun of Isaac. And so, in that moment, Sarah feels threatened. She's like, this cannot happen. I will not have this. She felt for her own son's future well-being and safety. And so she said, you must cast out the slave woman and her son because she cannot inherit, he cannot inherit. alongside Isaac. So Abraham resists, but God says, do not worry. I will be with them, but you must cast them out. So they get sent into a wilderness, they run out of water, they think they're gonna die. The boy cries out to God as does Hagar, and then he opens her eyes to see a well of water. They're at the point of death, right? But then God comes through. And so... Can you imagine what it's been like for Hagar and Ishmael? So Ishmael is probably about 13, 14 years of age at this point, maybe a little bit older, 18. He's been living in his father's household. He's the firstborn son by right. It was even Sarah's idea for Hagar to become Abraham's wife. But now that she has received this new son, Abraham must now force his firstborn son to go out into the wilderness. Can you imagine spending 18 years in that house and then being cast out? just literally been given a skin of water, a little bit of food and just saying, go out in the desert, you'll figure it out, you'll be all right. So you've got to imagine at this point, they feel very alone, helpless, they've been cast away. And so here comes the most important, one of the most fundamental truths that we have to remember, that as Christians, as we're gonna walk through times in life where it's just, there's no one, no one cares about me, no one's doing anything. Am I all alone? We have to remember this. Point one, He has not cast you out. You see, even as Christians, we are sometimes referred to as, Peter calls us a lot, Nez Peter's, and one and two Peter, we're sojourners. You know, we're foreigners, or we are exiles. So like the Israelites in the Exodus, they went out and they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Like the Israelites who also were taken into Babylon and Assyria for 70 years in exile. We're not home. We're walking in the wilderness at the moment. And so that is like this world. That's what Peter compares this world to. We're walking in the wilderness. As Christians, we have a home and that place is heaven. It's the new heavens and the new earth. This place is broken. And because we've been given eyes to see, we said that this world just sucks. There is nothing good here. All right. There are a few good things, but ultimately all the bad things bring all the good things to an end. And so just like going camping, life here is hard. All right, yes, many of us probably love going camping, but have you ever tried to do a load of washing while you've been camping? Yeah, there's a reason you just stack it up in the caravan until you get back home. I don't know how you guys are gonna figure it out while you go for the next six weeks, but you know, laundromats, I guess. but inevitably living on the road is harder than living at home. And so in life, we will have these moments and especially we will get to points where we think, is God even on my side? Surely if God were on my side, life would be easier. But then as we walk through these hard times, this thought slips in, right? Has God left me? Surely if He were with me, He would deliver me out of this. I wouldn't be here in this very moment. If you're a Christian, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Because you've been in these moments where you've wondered, why am I here? I have an all-powerful God and yet He has put me in this valley. And yet in these moments, we must remember, we must look at Hagar and Ishmael as they were cast out on the point of death, that Hagar has left her son a bow shot away, it says, because she cannot dare to watch him die. She is so left, she has nothing else she can do. She's given up. So we can be driven to those points where we need, feel like we need to give up. And we must remember this as Christians. From John 6 37, this is Jesus saying this, all the Father gives me will come to me. And then the important part here, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. You see, in these hard moments in life, it's often, most of us know it's easy to believe in God when things are going well. But then when we get to those moments where things become hard, We start to view God like a rope, right? He's this rope that you have to hold on with all your life. And if you let go, He's gonna leave you behind. We think, all right, I've got to keep up my faith. I can't doubt for a second. If I backslide in any way, God won't love me anymore. We think that we have to hold on to God in those moments. I know because when we start to act up and don't do so well, and we feel like God's left us, we say, well, He's obviously left me. He can't be here. We forget that it is not us who is holding on to God. It is Him who is holding on to us. We sit in the hand of God at all times. We make excuses for God. We say, oh, He's left me because, well, I did this or that this week. He's angry with me, upset with me. Or we get angry with Him. We whinge, we complain. Say, how could He do this to us? But you see, both of those options are destroyed when we remember this simple truth. No matter where you are, no matter how dark it is, even if you cannot see your own hand in front of your face because of what you're walking through and you do not know what the next minute will bring, God will never cast you out. You are always in His hands. Hagar and Ishmael were never alone. God made that promise to Abraham, I will make a great nation out of Him. that promise no matter the circumstances, though they may seem on the point of death, a great nation will come from Him and there are promises that are given to us, that oftentimes it'll be so dark around us. Like I said, you will not be able to see your own hand in front of your face and so what do you have left? Your faith. You will not see the evidence of His presence around you but you must trust in faith and the promise that He has said that He has not cast you out. And that is one of the most fundamental truths. That is the number one thing we question when we walk through the wilderness of this life, that God has left us. But now on to two other truths that we must remember in the wilderness. God sustains you and he protects you. So. Obviously we've already covered it a bit. But Ishmael was cast out, sent out into the wilderness and that was God's will for him. Abraham said, no, I want to hold on to him. Don't let my son go out into that wilderness. God said, no, it is my plan. It is part of my will that he go out into the wilderness, but do not worry because I will be with him. You see, they were driven to the point of death, but then as they cry out to God, what happens? In verse 19, then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw the well of water. She went and filled her skin and they lived on. And then it continues on and God was with the boy. He grew up, he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. So the Buddhist Paran is just on the Arabian peninsula. It's just desert, all right? There is not much there. And so why did Ishmael continue to live? Because he was a really good archer? Well, he seemed to get really good with that bow, but it was because as it said in verse 20, God was with him. That was why he continued. That is why he spent and lived on in the wilderness and God continued to watch over him and made a great nation out of him. You see, as people, we can often fall for this dumb idea that as we walk through hard times, we can come to the end of them. We come out, we're delivered and we think we're the ones that did it. Because you see, we tend to forget about the ways in which we were provided for in those times, we come through and we see the things we did and we say, I'm a stronger person. You know, what doesn't make me weaker makes me stronger. What doesn't kill me, sorry, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, right? I am sufficient in my own myself. And there's such a danger because it leads us to thinking that we have no need for God. It's a danger that we can, sometimes we can go through hard times and not be taught by them, not be taught this truth from Colossians 1.17. in Him, in Jesus, all things hold together. You see, this is the thing we must remember as we walk through the wilderness that every breath we draw is because He gives it to us. There is no reason that we survive any day on this world if it were not for Him because He is the one who holds us together, who gives us our every breath. So if we are not to trust in ourselves, what should we do instead? Psalm 55 22. Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. You see, we have this great option here. You can keep trudging it along in the hard moments in life and saying, I've got this, I can do it. And you've been given this promise. Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. When you're worried sitting there, I don't know how I'm gonna make it through this period, how I'm gonna make it through this circumstance. That promise right there deals with every problem. I'm not saying it's gonna give you sight to give you every reason. It's not gonna give you the whole plan, but you have this assurance. Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will provide everything. And so you see these trials that we walk through meant to drive us to what? Not to showing us how strong we are, but to show us that only in God can we make it through and that He is a God that loves to be dependent upon and loves to sustain us. Don't think He doesn't want to. And so then coming around to the second thing that I talked about there, God protects. This is going now from Hagar and looking at Hagar and Ishmael and looking at Isaac. Sarah saw Ishmael and he saw him as a threat, right? Because Isaac was to be the one who would inherit everything from his father. But Ishmael was the firstborn son and Sarah could see the pride that was in Ishmael. said, you cannot keep him. He cannot stay. He must be gone. And God knew this as well. God knew the threat. Ishmael was to the plan of God, the threat that Abraham had introduced by sleeping with Hagar. And God would not allow that to stop his plan for Isaac. And so you see, this is the same thing. Again, that as we walk through the wilderness, there are things that we have promised in this life, right? I just gave you a promise from God, cast your burden on Him and He will sustain you. And you're going to look at and you're going to see the circumstances, you're going to be like, but what's He going to make of this? I've put my burden on him, but I need him to show me the path, the plan, the way forward. And so you see, will feel, we will put it on law, on God, but we were still left feeling vulnerable and unable to protect ourselves. You see, it's really hard because in these moments you feel like, just imagine as a child, you were blindfolded, right? But your parents, the party's out the back of the house and you're at the front door. And they're not going to just lead you around. You've got to walk and your house is just a maze of hallways. They put this blindfold on you and look, you might know your house decently well, there's a good chance you're to run into a wall at some point if left to yourself. So what does any good parent do? They leave the blindfold on, but they guide you and lead you through the house, telling you turn left, turn right, putting their hand on your shoulder so that you don't run into the wall. And so you see this is exactly what God does for us. Sometimes, and well almost all the times, the blindfold stays on. You don't get to see the plan, the turns, the way forward, but he promises that his hand will be on your shoulder and that he will guide you. And so you see, often in life, God will send blow against blow against us. Sometimes in some ways, he kind of lets us run into the wall because we want to so desperately. We say, don't need your hand, I don't want it, I'm just gonna run full bore and you run right into the glass door that they haven't opened yet. but he sends these against us to teach us. Psalm 18 two, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. You see, he wants to teach us and for us to know, you're out in the wilderness, don't run off, you're blindfolded, you don't know where you're going. I am your rock, I am your protection. trust in me. You will feel vulnerable. That doesn't mean you need to build up strength yourself. It means you need to trust in me. So you see, God tells us this, that He does not help those who help themselves. God helps those who are helpless. That is what He does for us. You see, we shouldn't rely upon our own strength in anything, but completely and wholly upon Him. He's your shield, your refuge. Again, why are you trusting in your own strength? Offer up all the things that make you feel weak, all of your insecurities to Him and know that He is your shield. He is the only one. Better yet, you will not make it through this life by yourself. He is the only one who is sufficient to protect you from everything in this life. His promises are what give us assurance. In Him, we can suffer the loss of everything in this world and continue on because when we have Him, we have everything we need. You see, I know that my grandfather needs this promise right now at this very moment. The guy's working, he's lost his wife for 70 years. He's buried two of his own children. What does he have left in this world? He knows he's powerless, he's helpless, he can't stop people dying. But he can put his hope that God is his rock and his refuge and that God has a plan. And so that leads us onto our third point. Trust God and He will deliver you. I might have written it down bit differently there, that God will deliver us. You see, we are looking here at Isaac and Ishmael and God delivered them both. God delivered Isaac from the threat of Ishmael inheriting the inheritance and Ishmael was delivered from the threat of death in the wilderness. God watched over them both. But yet notice something. God let Abraham and Sarah wait for 25 years before Isaac came along. Better yet, Ishmael still stayed in the household for the first three or four years of Isaac's life. As they would have been sitting there thinking, who will inherit the promises? God left them there. Better yet, he let Hagar and Ishmael walk out into the wilderness, get to the point of death where they separated themselves so they didn't have to watch each other die. Why let them get to that point? So they would recognise who was the one who delivered them. Who was it who did it? It was God, not them. You see, if God hadn't just provided wells all the way along the way for Ishmael and Hagar, they never would have cried out to God. They never would have cast their burden on him. And so you see, it's important because this is in our attempt to deliver ourselves, that is where we learn we're not God. This is when I'm talking about trusting in God. You see, Abraham desperately desired to preserve Ishmael's life. He saw himself as Ishmael's God, essentially. Because what do you constantly see him doing? When God promised Isaac, Abraham said, don't be so silly, Lord. I have a perfectly good air right here. He tried to put Ishmael in Isaac's place. When God told him to circumcise all of his offspring, it makes point to say in the Bible that he circumcised Ishmael because he was still holding God. Just so you know, here's the backup plan. I'm still keeping him here for you. But Abraham had to let go of Ishmael. God given him the promise, I will take care of him, but you have to hand him over to me. Alright, I have a plan for your son Isaac. You must hand over Ishmael. He had to learn to trust God. And so you see, this is what we have to learn. For us as Christians, do not, it says in Philippians 4, 6 and 7, do not be anxious about anything. See, easy enough for you guys? You got that? That's my command. Do not be anxious about anything. Anxiety solved? No, right? Obviously there's a reason I left out the rest of that verse. Because how are we to deal with that fact? We're not in control. Like Abraham, he had to relinquish control. Like Hagar. and Ishmael, they had no control, they could not find water. This is what we do. In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. You see again, the response isn't, I'm looking around me, what can I do? It is exactly what Hagar and Ishmael did. They cried out to God. They said, Lord, will you deliver us? That is exactly why God said to Hagar when he said, when he opened her eyes, he said, I've done this because I heard the cries of the boy. I heard him crying out that he did not want him and his mother to die. And so God delivered them. And you see the wilderness ripped everything from them, ripped every essence and part, little bit of control they could desperately want. And so God will lead us into wilderness at times to show us we're weak, we're helpless. when things are going well in life, we can build up this kind of, what do you call it, illusion that we have some form of strength. We don't see that those strengths come from God. We deceive ourselves, but the wilderness is great because it deprives us of everything good. So that we see that all, the only thing that keeps us going is God. It shows us that He is everything we need. And so this is the understanding as Christians, when you walk out into the wilderness, Again, I'm saying the wilderness, right? Just hard times in life, those moments where you need to rely upon God, where you feel you have no one to rely upon, those things aren't punishment. It is being disciplined. It is God leading us through moments in life that we might be made more like Him. You see, I hope that there are moments in life where you can look back on, right? And you can see... God was the one that delivered me through that. Better yet, I can see how through that, He made me the person I am today and is continuing to change me. And for some hard times, you're going to look back on them and not see at all what God was doing in them. It will make no sense and you will see no reason for why God would put you through that. And so it is in those times where again we are called not to trust in what we can see, but trust in our God who has promised us that He has not put us through punishment, but He puts us through discipline for good reason. He never lets anything come against us unless it has a good purpose. And so knowing this as well, God can deliver us. He delivered Hagar and Ishmael, He delivered Isaac, but He always does it in His timing. So every moment that we spend in the wilderness, is a moment that He is doing something good in us and He will deliver us at the right time. And so it comes to our final point then, reminder that we are children of the promise. So this is the point that brings all these three together, the point that helps us to rest in the previous three truths that we have talked about. Comes, I'm going to read a rather lengthy passage of Scripture from Galatians 4, 22 to 26 and 28 to 31. So I'll read it out now. For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman, one by the free woman, that's Isaac and Ishmael. But the son of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically. The two women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery, she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free and she is our mother. Now you, brothers, like Isaac are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him, that's just the passage we're talking about where he was laughing at Isaac, who was born according to the spirit, so also it is now. But what does the scripture say? Cast out the slave woman and her son. For the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman. So brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman. There's a lot of stuff in there, we're not gonna cover all of it. But what I wanna draw out, how was Ishmael conceived? If you don't know the story, you haven't been there. They were given the promise of an offspring. And so they thought, well, we're gonna do it our own way. Sarah's 75 at this point, maybe she was 80, I don't quite remember, when they were given the promise. And so they say, well, we gotta do something about this. So Sarah says, take my maid Hagar. take her as your wife Abraham, sleep with her, conceive a son, and then they had Ishmael. But he was conceived according to their own plan, according to their own wisdom. He was conceived according to the flesh, according to Abraham's own sinful plans. But Isaac was conceived through promise. He was the result not of Abraham's wisdom and his own ingenuity, but rather because of God's faithfulness and God's work. And so you see, that leads us to the point where we remember, we, says at the end, are not children of the slave woman, we are children of the free woman. So what this is saying is that like Isaac, our strength comes from relying upon God. We are not to be like Abraham was with Ishmael, trusting in ourselves, trusting in our own plans. we are to look to Jesus. He was the greatest child of the promise. I want you to take you to a particular point in his life where he was about to sit, he was sitting in the garden of Gethsemane and he said this to God, Matthew 26, 39, my father, if it'd be possible, let this cut pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. The garden of Gethsemane, this is the final moments before he's about to be arrested and crucified on the cross. This is the cup of God's wrath that he is talking about, that he's about to drink from, and he says, Father, if it can, let this pass from me. You see, we are not to think that Jesus in his final moments was sitting there just saying, well, man, I'm proper strong, I'm the son of God, I've got this all together, I've got my ducks in a row, I'm ready for this. He sat there before God, sweating blood and said, I am not sufficient for this God. I am weak. If there is any possible way, let this pass from me, I'm not ready to suffer the loss of our relationship. I'm not ready to drink the cup of your wrath. But what did he draw his strength from? Not that he had all his ducks in a row, not that he was strong in and of himself, but he trusted in his Father's will. He trusted in God. And so you see, as he walked through the greatest wilderness anyone would ever walk through, as he suffered the curse of God's wrath upon the cross, he trusted. in God. And so you see, as we walk through these hard moments in life, we will sit there and just say, I am so weak, I am so helpless. And we will sit and think and go back to thinking like children of the slave woman. You see, Ishmael represented the law. Those things, as in I make myself right with God through obedience. And so as we walk through these moments, We say if things are bad, it's because I've upset God. I've done something. I am being punished for what I've done. If we think this, if we believe that the wilderness moments in our lives are punishment from God, it is a cancerous and lethal belief. and it will lead to our deaths spiritually. We cannot believe such a thing. You see, because these are the seeds, if you remember the parable of the soil, they're the seeds thrown into the rocky soil. If you throw seeds into rocky soil, they don't have enough depth. They can't get their roots down. And so it talks about in that story, the sun comes up, scorches the plant, and it dies. And then Jesus explains it to his disciples and says, those things are when troubles and persecution come, the seed, that person does not have their roots deep enough to be able to withstand the heat. And so you see, we need our roots deep in the truth of who God is. And that is, he does not punish his children. He disciplines them. He puts them through moments so that it might be made more like him. but you never are punished by God because you do bad things. That is not how the gospel works. God will not leave you in the wilderness. What we must do is not continue to work harder to prove to God that we don't deserve to be here. He puts us through the wilderness for a good reason. What we must do is continue to believe Him, to believe in Him and who He is. So this is all I'm offering you today. Every single point we've gone through is about God. It is not about you. It is about what He is doing for you. You guys already know the truth. You can't do anything. You're helpless and weak. You're like Hagar and Ishmael, sitting down just preparing to die. You have nothing you can control. If you don't believe me, give it a couple years. You'll find out. And so the truth is that we must be like Jesus. And we must trust in our Father to provide for us, to protect us, to sustain us, and to be faithful to His promises. I'll invite the worship team up in a sec. But this is what's offered to us. I hope you guys realise now, some of you are walking through the wilderness at this moment. Some of you are maybe going through a good time and praise the Lord for that. God will be the one to deliver you. Don't fall for the thing that says you can do it on your own. We need God. So I'll finish up in prayer and then the worship team come up. Father. You need to break down the walls within us that say, we can do it on our own. You need to break down that truth and those beliefs that say, Father, that you put us here because you hate us, because you're upset with us. Father, you have forgiven us of everything in the cross. The wilderness is for our good. It is to make us more like you. It is prepare us for the promised land, for your return. And so Father, would you please prepare us, but would you keep your promises ever before our eyes? Do not let us walk into the lies of the devil. Let us walk in the truth. Let our light be your word and let us know it deeply. So Father, I pray you would lift the veils from any who are walking in darkness today, that you would help them to see the light they have on your promises in your gospel. and that you would help us to see the way forward, to continue on when all we can do is trust in you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.