A Word of Encouragement — Hebrews 12

0:00 All right, as we're making this transition, I thought it might be a good idea that, we start off with little bit of exercise, and we are going to exercise our smile muscles. Okay? So everybody just go ahead and give us a smile there, you know, like a real smile. All right? I'm evaluating.

0:22 Laura, can you mess her one up? Yes, yes, I'm seeing them. All right, good, good, yes. Oh, good. Man, what's your name?

0:32 Liam, you demonstrate your smile for us? Would that be too embarrassing or not? All right, it'd be all right. Just look at you. Liam's got a great smile up here.

0:42 So, Fred, you, Fred's got a good one too. Good. Alright, great. It's good to smile. Good to smile.

0:50 I would like you to turn to Psalm 31. You could smile while you're doing it if you want to. You could totally smile while you're going there. Psalm 31 and what we're going to do, we're going to read two verses and then we're going to pray to kick off our our time together and we'll see what the lord has in store for us this morning as we gather this today on this beautiful fall day. Psalm 31 and we're going right to the last two verses.

1:18 Maybe it's kind of like reading the back of the book. I don't know, but we're going to the last two verses of the chapter. Psalm 31 verses twenty three and twenty four. Listen to the word of God as it says this. Verse 23, o love the Lord all you his saints for the Lord preserveth the faithful and the plentiful, he rewards...

1:44 He is a rewarder of the proud doer. Verse 24, be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. Let's pray. Our heavenly father, we wanna give thanks for this day. We're thankful for the time that we can be here together.

2:02 Father, we understand that you've given us a scripture with intention. We understand that it is good for us. Father, we we are attempting to live a Christian life. We're attempting to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. We are...

2:23 Well, we we do look forward to spending eternity with you if we know Christ as our savior. Father, we we wanna pray for help this morning. We we know that even amid life circumstances, sometimes things can be difficult, some things can be challenging, some things can be hard, and yet we we have this tool, this resource, the scripture. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit. We have a relationship with a holy God.

3:02 And so, Father, we we commit ourselves to you this morning, and we we pray this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. I have two life experiences I'd like to share with you briefly. One of them happened about twenty days ago. The other one happened about twenty years ago And we'll we'll talk about those.

3:27 Maybe, hey, Philip, what what do think we should talk about first? The twenty days ago or the twenty years ago experience? Twenty days ago. Okay. So about twenty days ago, there was...

3:41 Well, my oldest son, Will, had finally decided to get engaged. Alright? Yeah. So, I mean, we were getting worried there for a little while. Wonder if the guy was ever going to get off ground zero but finally, met somewhat, got up enough courage to talk to someone, you know, and now he's making this decision to get married and wants to get engaged.

4:10 Well, so this girl happens to be from Maine, right, which is a far piece from here. That's what we'd say, down south, far piece from here. You know? And so... But being that I currently live in a household with my wife and and two daughters that are of Marian age, by the way.

4:38 Well, they all got excited about this fact that Will is getting engaged and they said, we want to be there. Thought it never crossed my mind. Like like, I was just gonna say like, hey, good job. Way to go. You know, like, they wanted to be there.

4:55 Well, it... But it it it... You know, it's a good idea. I I entered into that. And we decided, we worked it out to to be able to travel on the day that he was getting engaged so we could be there the night of, you know, to kind of welcome them in from there providing that she said yes, you know.

5:15 But so here we set off on this trip. Well, we're traveling. We get just beyond Albany, New York, about an hour beyond Albany, New York, heading out on 90, you know, you take 90 the whole whole way out there almost to the coast before you start turning up north into into Maine, and we broke down. Our van threw a spark plug and, you know, so it's hanging on by the coil wire, so it's flapping all around there in the engine. And of course, in a big 15 passenger van, the engine actually comes up into the console, right?

5:56 So when that thing's flopping around in there, it's right at my feet and Kim's right in the passenger seat, it's flopping around. Sounds terrible. And of course, you know what happens, all the things start to fail. Here we are on this highway and let me see if I remember the town. It was Chatham, New York.

6:16 Look it up sometime, not right now, but look it up on your phone. There's nothing around it, okay? There's hardly anything around. And so to make a long I mean, there's a lot of details I could give. But essentially, we were left stranded on this highway in Chatham, New York.

6:37 To make matters worse, I'm calling tow companies. Sorry, can't get anybody to work. Got a tow truck here sitting, can't get a driver. We're backed up. Wanna see a mechanic shop, we're backed up.

6:49 Two... Everybody's telling me two weeks. One guy laughed at me. I said, hey, I'm broke down on the interstate here. I wonder if you get a tow and somebody look at a vehicle.

6:58 You know, he laughed at me. Because sir, I don't mean to laugh at you, but I'm telling everybody two to three weeks tops. So here we are, literally, it's the first time I've ever literally been stranded because I talked to one lady, says, Well, there's one hotel or one motel. She says, Sir, it's not a hotel, it's a motel, and I don't think they have any rooms available, you know? And so here we are in this situation, stranded.

7:27 We took what we could out of the vehicle and there we sat with our luggage. We finally got a tow truck. Tow truck's being pulled away, we're there stranded, figuring out what we're going to do. But you can understand that, well, everybody's kind of disappointed, right? Because we're not making it to the engagement thing, right?

7:51 It's not happening. Hopes are dashed and you know, here's Kim. She's crying, sitting on the cooler, crying in a parking lot and my kids are like, dad, why can't you fix this? And so, yeah, so it's just it was a it was a it was a pretty challenging, tough experience. We can relate to that, right?

8:44 There was a rapid heartbeat called tachycardia. And the pediatrician says, Look, you are going to Toledo Children's Hospital. We whisked off to there. And so here is Benjamin, two weeks old. Some of you know that we had a year ish prior to that, we had lost a baby at full term stillbirth.

9:08 And so here we're like thinking, what in the world is going on here? And so we get to the children's hospital. They rush us right in. They're all ready for us before we get there. And they start working on Ben.

9:24 And they do all the normal procedures for getting the heart to go back into rhythm. Nothing works. And so after several I think it was about three hours or so of this nothing is working. And the doctor calls us into one of these little conference rooms where it's just a... It's a room, almost like a closet.

9:45 Got a table, a desk, I think it was three or four chairs there. And here's Kim and I sitting in this Conference Room. Meanwhile, Benjamin's on the emergency room with all these, you know, stuff going on, two week old little baby. And the doctor begins to explain, look, we've tried everything that we know to do and nothing's working. The next procedure is to take the the paddles to the baby.

10:15 And they don't have baby sized paddles. Right? I mean, so they're like... And they're they're asking us our permission to do this, and they've got this legal document in front of us and saying, look, you have to sign because there's a there's a chance that the baby will die if we do this. Wow.

10:37 Tough decision. Tough decision. So there's a reason I gave you these two life experiences, okay? And maybe you would look at these and you would say like if I had asked the question, which one was more serious? Which one is weightier?

11:01 Which one is a heavier matter? What conclusion would you come up with? Ben. Yeah, Ben. Yeah, your baby is sitting on an operating table and saying, having asked to sign like this procedure could result in death.

11:18 Pretty weighty. I mean, to be broke down out in Chatham, New York, not not quite as weighty, right? So if we could think about this, there is there are... That was still a disappointment. Right?

11:33 That was a disappointment, and there there are definitely things in our life, our daily experience that are disappointments. And then there's things that are like huge and you're like wondering, am I even gonna get through this? This is more than a disappointment. This is like a... This is a setback.

11:53 This is a is a tragic experience. So we've got this spectrum. Does that make sense? We've got this spectrum of things that are insignificant disappointments, things not going my way to life altering tragic events. And then we've got everything in between.

12:12 And you know, if we look at ourselves and consider our even our group here this morning, guess what? Everything from one point, one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum and everything in between is represented right here. In fact, some of our lives, we all... We get to experience both ends of the spectrum. And so I've asked you to turn to this psalm, Psalm 31, and to look at this this particular couple of verses here.

13:12 Guess what? We need encouragement. We need encouragement in the everyday life. Like, if you're going... You know, Sunday, the alarm is gonna go off tomorrow morning and and and so Monday's gonna happen.

13:30 And you're gonna go through... Perhaps you have a routine. I don't know if your routine is mundane or exciting to you, but all of us are in life. We're gonna do Monday. We're gonna do Tuesday.

13:40 We're gonna do Wednesday. And guess what? We all need encouragement to live life. Whether we're just living everyday life, whether we're hitting up on a hard day, whether we're facing a huge decision, whether we're going through a very traumatic experience, you and I need encouragement. And so we look...

14:06 We think about David. David is the one that's given the credit for writing this. In fact, thought, as I was thinking about how how can I encourage the saints at WBF? How can how can we look to god and be encouraged? I started thinking about all the folks in scripture that kinda hit up on hard times.

14:29 In fact, let's just do this for a minute. Think about... If there's one that comes to your mind, maybe raise your hand, let's let's share a few. Who who had... Who can you think about in scripture that had a hard time, who hit up on difficult days?

14:43 Bob, I thought you were raising your hand but that was just an itch. David. David, okay. We're there at David. We're going to talk about that a little bit.

14:50 Zach? Joseph. Joseph, good. Does he have hand... Wayne?

14:56 Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Joey? Job. Job? Yeah.

15:02 Man, that's a good one. I didn't even think about Job. Andy? Hannah. Hannah?

15:08 Yeah. Crying before the prophet. Devin? The widow and his son. Okay.

15:14 Yeah. The shooter... Yep. The prophet coming. She...

15:20 He dies. Kabri. Esther. Esther. Yeah.

15:24 She has some hard things to face, difficult circumstances. Debbie? Naomi? Wow. Call me Mara.

15:33 Yeah. Trevor? Daniel. Daniel. Hey, you all are good at this.

15:38 Ethan, do you have one too? You are itching too. Oh, okay. Got you. Yeah.

15:45 But listen, yeah, we do. It doesn't take much to think about folks that had a difficult experience in the scripture. Bob mentioned David, and I like trying to figure out where the Psalms are connected with David's life, but it's pretty hard. And I've come to this conclusion that maybe it's a better thing that we don't know exactly what it tied into, but just the fact that it relates to life in general. You know, think about this.

16:17 Remember when David... Well, first of all, he didn't get called to the feast when the prophet Samuel is coming to town and he says to Jesse, Call all your sons. I'm gonna name a king among your sons. And so Jesse doesn't even call David. I gotta figure, like the guy felt a little left out, wouldn't you?

16:41 Like he probably was like wondering, well, I'm a son too. So here he gets left out, gets overlooked, gets neglected, whatever word you want to put on it, by his father Jesse. And then soon after that, when there's a war, the the captains come through to select the recruiters. They come through, and and they select the three oldest brothers. Again, David's overlooked.

17:09 Right? David's overlooked. Three oldest brothers go out to to war. Then Jesse sends them on an errand, and we can all relate to the fact that that younger men, young boys even, look up to to the guys that are in their in their in their or early twenties. It's just naturally looked up to them.

17:31 I know I looked up to guys like that. I can see my children looking up to the older, right? But guess what David encountered? When he goes, he's faithful to the task that his father had asked him to do to take those... The bread and cheese to to his brothers and to see how they fare.

17:49 He takes he takes that mission seriously, gets there, and what does he encounter from his oldest brother whom he probably looks up to? Scram, kid. What are you doing coming up here? Come on. You just came up here to see some excitement in the battle.

18:06 Get on. Go go back. Who did you leave those sheep with? You you belong with the sheep. And so we're hearing these things that David experienced in his own life, right?

18:19 Now, are those major deals? I mean, there disappointments. There's discouragement there. There were hard, hard circumstances. We think about his life, and then we can move from the if this side represents that not so serious situation to this side of the room representing that big serious situation, David's got the gamut, doesn't he?

18:44 He's got both ends of the spectrums covered. But here he is, and he's the guy that writes this, oh, love the Lord. So if we if we need encouragement as a group of believers, as an individual person living the Christian life, one of the one of the instructions here, one of the action items is that we can we can remind ourselves, love the Lord. The scripture's full of this instruction. Right?

19:45 She's tucking her in for the night and the mom... It comes time, you know, the mom leaves, turned off turns off the light, walks down the stairs. The little girl is like, mom, can you come back? Mom, can you stay with me? The mother replies, no, honey.

20:03 It's time to go to bed. Do you close your eyes? You go to sleep. But mom, I want somebody to be with me. Mother responds and says, well, honey, you know God's always with you, and you go to sleep now.

20:15 And a few minutes later, goes, Mom, can you come up? She says, Look, we've already talked about this. Now go to sleep. I told you God's always with you. You've got somebody with you.

20:26 Mom, could I have somebody with a face? And we we kind of get that, don't we? We like to say, if I I come here today and say, hey, be encouraged, love God. And you might say, hey, I I need I need somebody with a face. I need I need something that I can grab ahold of.

20:49 And this is challenging, especially for us. I'm gonna say this, it's probably challenging for us that grew up in Christian homes. We have this concept of loving God, of cultivating a love relationship with God. It's a bit of a challenge. You say it shouldn't be a challenge, it should be automatic.

21:08 No, man. Remember these letters that John would be inspired to write to the church of Laodicea? You lost your first love. And sometimes we think about love being an emotion or being a feeling, and and we can... It can go up and down.

21:27 Right? I can feel in love with God or I can feel not in love with God. I mean, but he... David's saying, love the Lord. And so what would that be?

21:39 What would the encouragement be to us this morning if we could think about this? If we could say, I want recall to mind or think about my relationship with God when I knew I loved God, when I experienced his love toward me, when I knew that I was in love with God. I wanna I wanna remember about that. I wanna think about that. I want to go back to that point.

22:13 Love the Lord. We... Well, we'll move on, but there's a lot we could talk about for loving, right? We love Him because He first loved us. We are created with the capacity to love, we are created with the capacity to receive love, and God created us to have a love relationship with Him.

22:40 We're all designed for that. Love the Lord. David's saying this, love the Lord. Love him. And David would sit and he would spend time with God.

22:54 He would he would write to him. We have some of his writings. He would consider his handiworks. He would consider the stars, consider all that was around him. And so he cultivated, he energized, he experienced, he enjoyed his love for God.

23:21 And you and I have that same opportunity. Love God. The next little phrase, notice it's for all of us. It's not just for the young, not just for the old. It's not just...

23:34 It is for all the saints. Love the Lord, all ye His saints, for the Lord preserves the faithful. And so we gotta we gotta remember this too, don't we? I wanna be encouraged. I wanna live life.

23:49 I want to make it through this next week. God preserves the faithful. God God is there. God is... He brings this preserving quality.

24:31 The Lord will plentifully reward the proud doer. I'm like, yeah, I can be a proud doer. I can do this. But then I thought like, wait, that doesn't make sense. How how how am I...

24:47 I wanna be rewarded, but I don't wanna be rewarded for proud doings. And so it's a reference back to verse 18. Look at verse 18. Let lying lips be put to silence. Right?

25:01 Lying, bad, evil, silence that. Those which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. It's those that are doing their... The proud God is gonna deal with. And so here's the thing that's encouraging for you and I that a lot of us get derailed or or stuck on is that this verse is telling us that love the Lord God.

25:28 Yes. I can do that. Be reminded that the Lord's gonna preserve you, the faithful. I can I can be? I can remain faithful and know the Lord's gonna preserve me.

25:38 But God's gonna take care of the proud doer. If the guy's speaking lie... Like if if someone's speaking lies against you or... And that's what the context of the of the chapter is here, God's gonna take care of that. You don't have to take care of that.

25:53 The Lord's gonna reward or deal with or give the one who's in error. They're they're gonna be taken care of. So you take that off your plate because a lot of times that is discouraging to us. Right? We're dealing with an adversary.

26:08 We're dealing with somebody that's that's doing something we don't like. Let God take care of it. Take that off your plate. So it is an action item that I can do. I can love, I can be faithful, and I can let God take care of who's the proud doer, so to speak, here in this term.

26:27 Then it says, be of good courage. I can do that. God will strengthen your heart. I can be strengthened. I can let God work on my heart and strengthen me.

26:39 All ye that hope in the Lord. That's keeping the God's hope... Our our hope in God in the right place. Now go back. We're in chapter 31.

26:48 Go back to the verse one. Okay? Let me just give you a flavor of some of the things that that David's dealing with here. Chapter 31 verse one. In thee, o Lord, do I put my trust.

27:01 Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in thy righteousness. Bow down your ear. Speaking to God, God, will you hear me? Deliver me speedily.

27:12 Be my strong rock for a house of defense to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress, therefore for thy name's sake lead me, guide me. And so as we start to go through this chapter, David's got this experience that he's relaying to us. So here's what I would ask us to do. Are you in the minor disappointments of life or you're having the bad day, just need a little dose of encouragement?

28:01 Are you somewhere in the middle? Are you over here in the deeper waters like, Hey, I could really use some help here? Read this chapter in the context of your situation. Oh, in thee, Lord, do I put my trust. Let me not be ashamed.

28:22 Deliver me with your righteousness. Bow down your ear. God, I'm ready to talk to You. I know You're ready to talk to me whenever I come to You. You're my rock.

28:34 You're my fortress. Therefore, lead me, guide me. Would you let God guide you? Would you let Him encourage you? Would you let Him give you the next steps no matter what situation you're in?

29:28 Look at this little place here. This is Hebrews chapter 12, and look at verse three. In fact, I'm going for the last phrase in verse three. Look at what it says. Here's what my Bible says, Lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.

29:49 Hebrews chapter 12 verse three, the second half of verse three, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. So here's the conclusion that I draw. He says, Lest, meaning there's a possibility you and I could become wearied and faint in our minds. Now, can I get a witness for anybody that's tired? Alright.

30:18 Yeah. We can relate to being tired, to being exhausted, to being what what the scripture is calling wearied. We can wear down and we know that those are situations that really occur in life. And so there's a solution to that. There is there's times of refreshment, there's times of rest, but there's wearied.

30:37 Wearied. And then it says, lest you be wearied and faint. What what do we think about that faint? You know what? That means to me?

30:49 Give up. I'm ready to throw in the towel. I'm ready to be done. I've experienced that in my life, gotten to my end point like saying, it's just not worth it. I'm done.

31:05 And so look, what the writer of Hebrews, we can't... God gets the credit for this, but he's saying, look, so that you don't be wearied and faint and just give up. Well, what's the key to this? What's the key to not being wearied, to not being faint, to not coming to the end of your rope? What's a reason for getting up tomorrow?

31:39 Well, we go back to the first part of the chapter, and we see there's four action items here that we can do. There was several action items that we looked at in Psalm 31, but look at... Look here in chapter 12. I'm gonna read this, then we'll talk about... We'll identify the four action items.

31:56 Hebrews chapter 12 and verse one. Very familiar passage to us, but let's read what it says. Wherefore, seeing we are all compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. For who the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.

32:42 You know, I I have to tell you this. Every time I've come to a point in my life, and I would say that probably these these experiences in my life had just happened like in the last five years, where I've I've come to the point where I say, I give up. I can't do it anymore. I'm done. That's all been in my mind.

33:06 I didn't really give up. I mean, I did. But it was the battle of my mind. That was... That...

33:14 Those thoughts were going on in my mind. Give up. Be done. You don't have to put up with this. Get out.

33:23 It'll be easier. Leave it behind. Those kind of... That was in my mind. Lest you become weary or faint in your mind.

33:33 And so look what preventative measures are so that we don't give up, okay, so that we don't tap out. Here it is. The first action item, we find it, Well, if you were a rabbit looking for this, you would latch right onto it. Did anybody see the lettuce in the page... In the verse?

33:55 Alright. There's there's some lettuce here laying around. It says, let us let us. Alright. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us.

34:08 I'm gonna kinda go through these rapidly, okay, since we're winding down on our time. There was a missionary who had been in the field for like twenty years. And while he was on the field, this back, you know, maybe a couple of decades, so travel wasn't as convenient to go back and forth. He had been on the field for twenty years. Well, grandson had been born, had lived, and now he is like 18, 19 years old and he is a runner.

34:38 And so his granddad comes home on a furlough and he is going to be able to see his grandson, meet him for the first time in person, was an exciting thing. But he gets to go to one of his races and see him run. Now, granddad was no athletic guy, but maybe he had seen Chariots of Fire or something. He knew what running was all about. But remember, he's engrossed in this African culture culture for these last twenty years, and so he had become very distant with the American traditions, customs, culture, etcetera.

35:10 Well, he's in the stands with his daughter and son-in-law, and they're looking maybe what we'll call it I can't remember the guy's name Johnny maybe. Here comes Johnny, grandson Johnny, walking into the track arena where he's getting ready to run. And he's got sweatpants on and his coat on, and maybe it's like a temperature like today, kind of 50 ish, and he's got a hat on, he's carrying a bag, here the missionary is sitting, he's like, catching his daughter saying, Hey, Johnny can't run with all that stuff. What he doing? Like he's got it.

35:54 And so, he didn't understand, you know, that they had designed these fancy sweatpants that have zips all the way down, you know, and so, they're finally, he's getting worried about this and she's trying, oh dad, it'd be alright. He'll get, he's not ready for the race yet, you know, and and so, of course, when it comes time to the race, grandson walks up there and pulls off sweatpants has got his gear on, takes the jacket off, takes his hat off, sets it aside, gets his bag off, and then he's set, ready to run. And it's like this relief that comes over the granddad like, Whew, alright, I'm glad he's laid aside all those things, right? The first action item for us is to lay aside the weight and the sin that easily besets us. Sometimes we don't even know we're carrying it.

36:45 But you know, here you've got this experienced granddad who just knew something was not right. He needed to lay aside these things, you and I. We don't wanna be weary and faint. The first thing we do is we need to lay aside the weight and the sin. The second thing we see there is that we are to we're to let us run with patience the rates that are set before us.

37:30 Yes, the trivial disappointments are gonna happen. Run with patience. Yes, the tragic things are going to happen. Run with patience, the race that is set before us. God's got a course.

37:42 God's got a plan. We're just to run it. He's going to strengthen us, remember? He's given us the strength. He's given us the hope.

37:49 And so the next item, next action item we can take, we can lay aside sin and the weight. We can we can run with patience. Then look at it. We can look. Look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

38:04 Look to Jesus. And and you know, right here, this this little verse encapsulates so much. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, for the joy that was set before him, he endured cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God. What does this verse do? It takes us from Jesus on the cross, He endured the cross and it takes us all the way to the throne.

38:30 Right? Looking unto Jesus who endured the suffering. He endured the hardship. He endured the trivial. He endured the mundane.

38:39 You know, I wonder if if Jesus ever... You know, in the times where he's he's getting along with the god the father, we read about it several times that Jesus went to a solitary place and there he prayed. He's talking with god the father and I wonder if there was ever a conversation like this. Like, god, father, do you want me to tell him that story again? I've already told them like three times, and they didn't understand it.

39:01 You mean tell them again? And we see more serious things where, like, not this cup, if there's any other way. And so looking unto Jesus, the one who endured the cross, was buried in the tomb and now sat on the right hand of God. Look look to him. Look to him.

39:25 You don't want to faint? Look to Christ. And and look, the next one's similar. The next one's similar to it. The next action item, we we first lay aside every weight and sin that that that would trip us up or hold us back.

39:40 We wanna make sure we're running with patience, the course that God has for us. We want to look to Jesus Christ as our example, but then look at verse three. It says, for consider him. This is the fourth action item. Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.

40:01 And, you know, a lot of the life circumstances that we hit up on is at the hand of other people, family that we get in a fight with, broken relationships. He he endured the contradiction of the sinners against himself. Consider Christ. We have this opportunity every week to do this in remembrance of me. Consider Christ.

40:36 So we could take these action items. There's some action items in Psalm 31 verses twenty twenty three and twenty four. There's about six action items there. There's four action items right here. We could do these things and all with this in mind to prevent us being wearied in our Christian life and coming to the point in our mind where we say, I give up.

41:48 Heavenly Father, we pray for each of us. We pray that you would encourage our hearts. And so we ask this now in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.