It Starts with the Heart

And we're starting this new series kind of heading to Mother's Day because we're talking about relationships, so extraordinary relationships, okay, so that's a play on words, probably not the best play on words, but we want real relationships, so we're going to talk about that in the coming weeks, but get ready for Mother's Day. It's going to be an amazing time together as well, we always have something special that day, there will be family photos, professional family photos that you can take, so moms, get your families to church and take a photo together, we have, it's going to be a really nice, really nice time together. Relationships are really hard, who can agree with me on that, that relationships are really, really, really, really, really hard, I think everybody would say amen, amen to the last five years. We try, you know, it's like marriage and friends and family and co-workers, man, because a lot of people aren't together and, you know, we're working different places and we're doing different things, it's the relationship thing is so important, yet we are missing out on what real relationships are like, and we need some ER, right? We need some emergency room type stuff that's happening, because, you know, God doesn't just want us to get by, okay?

God doesn't just want us to get a little better at our relationships, some of you are like, I just want to get better at my relationship. No, He wants you to have extraordinary relationships. He wants it to be supernaturally extraordinary, and He has a way of doing relationships that isn't like the world. So is the world doing it good? Is the world doing it right?

I mean, just let's be honest, are they figuring it out? Are we going to follow their way? No, we want to follow God's way, because God does have a good, the best way. I mean, look at the world, we see hate, we see division, we see divorces have not gone down, and they're happening even among Christians. Christians are no different.

Identity crisis. All these things happening, and it's rising every day. It's just incredible what's going on, and Christians don't look any different, and we should be different. But the thing is, we have fallen into the world's way. We've followed the world.

We've come well-adjusted to what's going on in culture, which is why I love the message, how it says it in Romans 12, too. It says, don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Is that what we're doing? Are we just not even thinking about the things that are going on around us? Maybe we're accepting them, maybe we're tolerating them, maybe we're doing some things like that, because we've become so well-adjusted, we don't even know what's right or wrong anymore.

But God tells us not to do that through Paul. He says, instead, fix your attention on God, and you'll be changed from what? The inside out. Because if we try to do it from the outside in, if we try to do it externally, it just doesn't work. We need to fix your attention on God, and you'll be changed from what?

Real relationships start when we focus on the inside first. We're looking at the heart today and that's why it says really recognize what He wants for you because God's way is best, not your way, not based on your feelings or what your heart's desire is, but what God's heart, our heart should align with God's desire, God's heart, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. God wants something for you and it's called life. There's a wellspring of life.

Scripture says above all else, guard your heart because it is a wellspring of life. There is life in Jesus. There is life in this thing called the heart. Just like a heart in the physical, if your heart isn't operating right, if you have high cholesterol, if you have heart disease, what happens? The rest of your body malfunctions.

You're not able to live. You can't live. There's no life in that. It's the same thing spiritually. Spiritually, we have to have a heart that is in the right place.

We need to redirect our heart. A heartbeat should be in that wellspring of life that God has for us. His best, His way is best. He has the best for our relationships. No matter what the culture says, He has the best for our relationships.

In fact, Jesus always pointed to the heart. Always pointed to the heart. Every situation that He dealt with, the Pharisees, was about the heart, right? Because their heart wasn't in it. They were legalistic.

They were working from the external to the internal. In fact, He told them, if you even hate your brother, you're as good as committed murder. You're a murderer if you hate somebody. Did you know that? Wow.

Because He looked at the heart. If you have hate in your heart, you might as well just take out a knife and kill that person. I mean, that's exactly what He was saying. I mean, it's almost the same thing. And He said that about adultery.

He says, even if you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery. He always pointed to the heart. And in one particular situation, He was dealing with the Pharisees, and they were talking about marriage and divorce and things like that. You know, these relationship things that were going on here. Because He knew their hearts weren't in the right place.

He says, some Pharisees came and tried to trap Him with this question. Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife for just any reason? They were going to trap Him. Oh, yeah, we're going to get Him at this, you know, because, you know, Moses permitted this. And this is what happened.

Haven't you read the Scripture, Jesus replied? They record that from the beginning, God made them male and female. God created them male and female, not non-binary, not transsexual, whatever. He created them male and female, okay? And then He said this, and He said, They, this explains.

He explained why a man leaves his mother and his father, his father and mother, and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one, since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together. That's right. Hallelujah. And then they said, and then he said, then why did Moses say in the law that man could give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away? He said this, Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to the hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended.

See, God didn't originally intend a lot of the things that we're going through the day. You know why there's so much hurt and so much pain and so much difficulty in life? Because we're all living with hard hearts. Our society, our culture is living with hard hearts. The church is living with hard hearts.

Can you go to heaven with a hard heart? Yeah, but you're going to be a miserable Christian going all the way to heaven, right? And he wants to heal our hearts. He wants to fix our hearts. And we need to address it first internally.

It's a heart condition, okay? And it's interesting in the Old Testament, if you take it to the Old Testament, by the way, I've got a lot of scripture today. And you can go to the events app, Bible.com events, pull up those scripture references. I forgot to mention that at the beginning.

If you've got your Bible, pull that open as well. In Exodus it says this, in chapter 28, verse 29, it says, Whenever Aaron entered the holy place, he will bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on a breastpiece of decision. Let me just stop there for a second. A breastpiece of decision. And on it were names for the idolathe over his heart because of the Lord.

So he had these names on this breastplate of decision that when we come before the Lord, there are names written on us. That we have had names placed on us. What has given us these hard hearts, these difficulties in relationship? Because somebody told you a long time ago that you weren't worth anything. Or somebody told you a long time ago that you were this or that and I'm mean because my granddaddy's mean and I'm Italian and that's how Italians are.

Or I'm Irish and that's how Irish people are. And Irish and Italians don't get along because we're so passionate and we don't like each other and blah, blah, blah. And we're told these things because they've been written on our hearts. A teacher told you a long time ago you'd never amount to anything. And you've been living that out for a long time.

That's been written on your heart. Words have power. And they're placed over our hearts and they harden us and we're not able to have true authentic relationships as a result. And God wants to clean up our hearts. And I want us to get our hearts right first before we even talk about conflict.

As we talk about marriage. As we talk about working with co-workers. As we talk about running into the person at the grocery store that works behind the counter and having good relationships. And they're just. Thank you.

It's with everybody that you you're in contact with. You can't do that if you're running around with a hard heart. You have something else written on your heart. And anytime you come to God, you're bringing your past with you. Everything that you faced up until that point, you work through a filter.

We call it cognitive bias in psychology, where you look through the filter of what you've experienced and you determine what that person is going to be, how that situation is going to happen or whatever it is. That's the way we think. And you look at it from different directions, because you have things placed on your heart. A good example of this, a man named Billy Hornsby. Billy Hornsby is one of the, in my opinion, in this generation, one of the greatest church planters.

He started, founded a church planting movement called ARC. We actually were trained. I was trained. I went to a training under ARC, which Association of Related Churches is what's called. Thousands of churches have been planted through this organization.

And Billy Hornsby started this. Billy, when he was young, he grew up in Louisiana. And he was very brilliant, actually. He knew math really well. He could do math in his head.

And in eighth grade, he was in the classroom and had one of these teachers that, I don't know if you've ever had a teacher in high school that was both a coach and a teacher. I did. And they're very tough guys, you know. They want to, you know, you better get this right. You better do this.

They're kind of hard on the boys, specifically. Well, he had one of these types of teachers, and he wrote a problem on the board, and he says, Hornsby, come up here and answer this question. And he gets up in class. He goes up to the board, and as he's going up to the board, he figures the problem in his head and writes it down. And it's the right answer.

And he starts going back and says, Hornsby, that's wrong. He says, no, that's right, you know, being sassy like an eighth grader would be. He says, no, it's wrong because you didn't work out the problem on the board. Hornsby, you will never amount to anything. You will never amount to anything.

And he said from that day forth, for years he dealt with that statement, how powerful statements are. If you're a teacher or mentor, watch your words because they do affect. If you're a parent, watch your words because it will affect children. Those of you who work with, watch your words because it affects them. Him, he wore that for years.

In fact, he failed out of school. He dropped out of high school. He snuck out at 15 years old to go play at country bars. He could play country music, play everything on the guitar, and he would go to these country bars and make a little extra money. And he would sneak out of the house.

He would, at 17 years old, he got his girlfriend pregnant. Had to marry her to make it right. And because they didn't have any money, he got a job at an oil refining company in Louisiana at Exxon. And it was one of the lowest paying formulas and this and that and he took that test and he walked out of there like, I'm a failure and I'll never amount to anything. I just could not pass that test.

I know I didn't pass that test. It was on his heart. Way back when it was placed on his heart, it was still there. And they called him up a few days later and says, Hornsby, we want you to come in. We want you to come in and we're going to look at this test.

And he's like, but I failed. There's no way I passed this test. Are you just going to call me in to tell me I failed? No, just come in. When they came in, he sat in front of them and they said, this is the highest grade we've ever seen on this test.

And Hornsby, let me tell you this. If you put your mind to it, you will amount to something one day. You can be anything. He said, it reversed the curse that day. That was his exact words.

It reversed the curse. And from then and there, he was successful, went into ministry, planted lots of churches in Europe and around and came back and started Ark and one of the greatest church planning movements, I believe, in our century. And it's just an amazing, amazing story because words are powerful, what's written on our heart. And we need to clean up our hearts. We need to get them right, guys.

God wants to use us. He's got powerful, extraordinary things for us. And many of you are marked by things that have been told to you when you were really young. Maybe it's recent. I don't know.

But you have some things that are connected to you. And you don't want to miss out on Canaan. You don't want to miss out on the promised land. God's got extraordinary things for you. So I take you to, and I know I've got a lot of scripture today.

We're going to go over to Genesis 11. And how many of you know who Terah is? Terah. Oh, we got one because she was in first service. That's why.

No, I'm just playing. You know who Abram is, right? Abraham? Who knows who Abraham is? Yeah, everybody knows Abraham.

Everybody's hands up. Some of you just aren't participators today, are you? My goodness. Some of you are like, I'm just playing. But most of you know who Abraham is, but you don't know who Terah is.

Terah was Abram's dad. And if we look at scripture, we'll see that Terah was perhaps the one to be the founder of the promised land. He perhaps, and a very grave possibility here, that he was the one to be able to lead Israel to the promised land, or lead his family to the promised land. But something happened here. Let's look at chapter 11, verse 27, if you're following along with me.

It says, this is the count of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. So, as you remember Lot in the Old Testament, Haran was his father. While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur.

I think he or her. report to him, man. of the Chaldeans in the land of his birth. So we see Haran died and we don't know why or how or what age it was, but he apparently died, maybe disease, maybe an accident. Whatever happened, he died in an undue time.

So we see there's something there and Terah decides to leave Ur. We don't know why, we don't know the reason why, but he's heading towards Canaan. Here's what verse 31 says, Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, and wife of the son Abram, the wife of the son Abram, and together they set out from Ur. If you'll say this with me, Ur, because it was Ur, they wanted to get out of Ur, of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan, the very place that Abraham was called to, right? But when he came to Haran, well that's interesting, a city named Haran, his son was named Haran, what happened?

But when he got to Haran, he settled there. He settled in Haran and Terah lived for 205 years and he died in Haran. He died in the very place of his son. He never got past the pain of his past. He stayed in Haran and he wasn't able to fulfill what God had called him to do because he couldn't get past Ur.

He kept going back to Ur, what happened to Ur in Ur. So many of you are where Ur is. You keep going back there and you're stuck in Haran. And you can't get past the pain and death of whatever it is. And God's got extraordinary things.

Terah had extraordinary things planned for him by God. But he settled and he died in Haran. And some of you are in Haran right now. And you need to hear me. Let those things go.

Put those things aside. Stop letting your addiction hold you back. Stop letting the pain of what that person said hold you back. Stop letting that, I'm Irish and this is how I am, you know, and I'm never going to change. And I'm just this.

And we walk around proudly. Oh, I'm rough. I'm tough. No, you, God's got more for you. He's got so much more for you.

And imagine a church with healed hearts and what we could do for the kingdom of God. Imagine. God wants to change your name. But the devil wants to place a name on you too. And unfortunately, he's placing names on people all the time, particularly our younger people, the youth.

In fact, in the Old Testament, we see four young people that the devil placed names on. And I want to say something about if you're college age or around that age, maybe you're in high school, maybe you're getting ready to go to college, the devil is after you. He's after our institution. And our institutions are teaching and indoctrinating things that aren't of God. And I'm just telling you, you're going to go to school, you're going to take a Bible class, a textual criticism class, and they're going to tell you that all this stuff is phony, all this stuff is fake, and all you're listening is a biased argument about God, and we're coming out of institutions.

I've watched young people on fire for God go into institutions and come out of institutions not even believing, not even knowing what they believe, because that's what the devil wants to do. He wants to put things on people because he knows how powerful you are. He knows how powerful the church is when you come out of your youth group, when you come out of your home church, and you're excited about what God wants to do in you through his kingdom, in his kingdom. He wants to do amazing things in your life, and the devil's doing everything he can, and what better way to catch an impressionable young person. And I remember being in college, I remember thinking, man, I'm insightful, and I'm open, and I'm, you know, all those things.

And that's great. You want to be. You want to learn about other things, but he's after you. He's after our young people. He's after our adults too, our older adults too.

He's going to do everything because you still have things written back then on your heart that you pulled out from the youth. And he does this with these four individuals in the Old Testament, Daniel. Y'all know Daniel. Daniel 1. And we're going to look at them four real quick here.

And it says, Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of the court officials. Ashpenaz was not a very pleasant person. He was actually a horrible person. But he ordered him to find some youth. Now, let's give some context here.

They were in exile. Israel was in exile. Babylon had come in and just ruined Israel, tore down everything, took them in. So this was a season of exile. They were slaves to Babylon.

And then he goes in to bring in the finest. It says, To bring into the king's service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility. So they were nobles. They were people that were well known, you know, in their nation. Some of the brightest and the youngest.

They were young men. There you go. Young men. Impressionable young men. Let's go ahead and indoctrinate them while they're young.

Bring them up in Babylonian thought. Because these are the people that could overthrow us one day. So let's keep them where they need to be. And they were without physical defect. They were handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning.

Well-informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. And he was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. And the king assigned them daily amounts of food and wine from the king's table. And they were to be trained for three years. And after that, they were to enter the king's service.

And among them, as you all know, they were chosen from Judah. . Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And the chief official gave them new names. Belshazzar, Hananiah, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Y'all know those names if you've grown up in church. And I want to look at these names. The first name, Daniel. What does Daniel mean? God is my judge.

It was changed to Belshazzar, which lady, protect the king. Lady, why lady? His identity was lost. The devil wants to put identities on you. The devil's working in our culture to put identities on our sex.

Identities on our gender. And unfortunately, the world's giving affirming gender care. Gender affirming care. The world is hurting our children. They're mutilating our children.

They're putting things in their minds. They're not even old enough to think about what they are. They're still trying to figure out. They're trying to ride their bikes up and down the road. Trying to figure that out, you know, how to do all those things.

Yet, they're telling them that they can make decisions about their gender. And it's for so many. We live in a world, and I say this with every deep concern and care and love in my heart, when I talk about those of you who have struggled with identity issues, with gender identity issues. I love you so much. And God loves you so much.

He loves you with every unction of love in his heart. And he knows what's best for you. But the world is telling you something that's not true. It's a lie. It's a lie.

God wants the best for you. And he wants to find you where you are and bring you through it. We face an identity, Christ's confused identity. The devil works your failure. Whether you feel like you're outcast.

Whatever it might be. And then the second one, Hananiah means Yahweh has been gracious. He is so gracious. But it was changed to Shadrach. I am fearful of God.

That so many, for ages, I mean, many of you have been there. Some of you have been afraid of God. You've been told that God is standing in heaven with lightning bolts in his hand, getting ready to strike you at any minute if you sin, right? And that's what you're thinking. You can't see the graciousness of God because all you see is this big, big God that judges everybody all the time.

And yes, God is a God. The angry guys, they're no longer there. They're here looking. They want to learn about the graciousness, the goodness of Jesus. They want to know him.

They have this distorted spirituality and he loves. You. Can I say that? He loves you. If you're online, He loves you.

Wherever you are, you haven't come to church today because you didn't feel accepted, you didn't feel wanted. Can I say, He loves you and He wants you here. He wants you in the family. You are welcome and wanted in the family of God. Number three is Michelle, who is what God is, is what that means.

Like, He's bigger than anything, right? But Michelle means I am despised, contemptible, and humiliated. Wombed emotions. Wombed emotions. Some of you have hurt emotions.

You're like Hornsby. Somebody told you when you were really young that you wouldn't amount to anything. Maybe you've been hurt. Maybe you've been physically hurt. I can't even imagine the pain that some of you have gone through.

The abuse that some of you have gone through. And you have, you have, you feel despised. You feel humiliated. You feel like an outcast. Can I tell you, there is a God that doesn't see you that way.

He sees everybody the same. And in Azariah, Yahweh has helped. And He changed that name to Abednego, servant of Nebo or Nebo. What does that mean? Nebo means to prophesy, but not prophesy a future of God.

It's prophesied a future of the devil. A false God. A false God. Yahweh is not involved. I prophesy over you, but Yahweh is not involved.

Because the devil wants to redirect the purpose that God has already given you from the very beginning. Some of you are walking a path, a purpose that's not designed by God. And you've chosen that. And it's been prophesied over you by the devil. Because people can prophesy over you, you know that, that aren't of God.

That's right. It's called false prophecy. There is a such thing as false prophecy. That's right. And it actually hits home a lot more than you think it does.

It's not, it's not just false prophets in churches or whatever. It's false prophets in your community or in your workplace or in your family. And they've spoken things over you. And you've gone like Hornsby. You've gone in that direction.

You've flunked out of school. And you've, you've gone out and tried to figure it out on your own because you think that's who you are. But it's not. You've got to, he wants to redirect your purpose. He wants to redirect the purpose.

You have a purpose on your life. And you know what? It's not over. The story's not over. You think you're way over here.

You know, you can get from here to Richmond by going to Raleigh still. It's a little bit farther, but you know, you go all the way to Raleigh and you circle back around. But you can still get to Richmond. So just pick up where you are. Don't stop and don't live, don't, don't die in Haran.

Pick up and continue to. To the Promised Land. That's what God has for you. So with those four names, let me give you four just real quick applications. Four real quick applications to these names.

Number one, let the one who designed you define you. Don't let the world define you. Don't let culture define you. Because God's right, and frankly you're not. God's right, and they're not.

That's why I go to the Word of God, because I don't care if my feelings dictate whether that's right or wrong. It's right, because it's God. It's not about my feelings. It's not about what I've experienced in the past. My experience determines truth.

No, God determines truth. And that's why you're sitting in a place in Haran right now, and you're miserable. You can't understand. I'm a Christian, but I can't understand why I'm so stinking miserable. Because you have allowed Satan to pull you into an area that you weren't ever designed to be.

That's not who you are. That's not who you are. That's why depression is up. That's why people are right in the church. It's no different in the church.

Because people are not walking out. God knows you better than you do. Did you know that? He knows you better than you do. He knows you better than you do.

Here's why it says, and all of you know this. If you've been to church any amount of time, even if you've walked in the door for the first time, you've probably heard this. You were created. You created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are so wonderful. And I know this full well. Well, you know, the psalmist, he was crying that out. He was speaking that over himself because he knew that God prophesied over him, not the world prophesied over him.

My frame was not hidden from you, and I was made in a secret place. And when I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. You were designed with a specific purpose in mind. Secondly, you've got to see God the right way.

How precious are your thoughts about me? Can you just let that speak to your heart for a second as God speaks over you right now? How precious are your thoughts about me? He has thoughts about you that are precious. And there's no way God could love me.

There's no way God could ever receive me as a son and daughter. Right here, how precious are his thoughts. He sees you. He knows you. And he loves you.

You need to know that he loves you. Somebody here today needs to know that God loves them today. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Three, allow God to heal your heart. You gotta allow God to heal your heart. You can never have a good relationship with a bad heart. I'm just telling you, I don't care how, I don't care how saved you are. If your heart's not in the right place, your marriage will fail, your friendships will fail, your family will fail, your kids will fail.

All of that, all that will fail. But you've got to be open. And some of you have walked in here with hard hearts. Let's just be honest. You're hard, hard, hard hearted and you're not letting God in.

God, you can be right here, but you can't come in here. You can't come in here. You can't see the stuff that's going on in my life. I'm not letting you change this in me. And he says, I open, you know, I'm at the door of your heart and I'm knocking.

And if you let me in, I'll come and I'll make a place and I'll make you so much better. I have place. I have a place for you. There is a, there is something more I have for you. And if you want to live like that, then go live like that because you know what?

God is a gentleman. He's not going to walk into your heart unless you open the door for him. That's how good God is. He's not going to force himself on you. But if you allow him in your heart, if you allow him to change your heart, he will come in and he will change you.

And imagine a church with healed hearts. Imagine a church where everybody in here has healed hearts. Imagine a kingdom that, that, that with, with full, full of healed hearts. And we're going to have that one day, but we can have that now. That's available to you now.

Stop waiting for heaven to be healed. You need to be healed now in your heart. Man, we got a, we got, God's got stuff for you to do. Every one of you in this seat, he's got a specific design for you. He's got, he's got talents and giftings.

He's got spiritual gifts he's placed on you. And they're sitting in Haran right now because you are still living where you were. Okay. And God, and God wants to heal this nation. God wants to heal this land.

God's stirring revival across this land. There's sparks of revival and we're sitting still in Haran and we're not allowing God to heal our land and to bring us to Canaan. And he's taken us there guys. I hope I'm inspiring somebody today to wake up. Let's wake up church.

There's hurting people all around us. There's hurting people right here sitting in seats right now. And we are stuck in Haran as believers and we're not allowing God to use us. Let's, let's let God use us. Let's let God use us.

Let's heal our hearts. Get, get, get, get into our hearts. And finally, invite God into your future. Invite God into your future. The psalmist says this, lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Path of everlasting life. Why do I, why do I emphasize everlasting life? Some of you are like, yeah, I'll have everlasting life in heaven. No, he wants it now, right now. And it starts today with joy, peace, hope, a belonging.

Something inside of you changes when you confess. Your sins to God and you give your life to Jesus. Something happens inside of you. He becomes a part of your future. He knows your past.

He knows where you are right now. But He wants to walk into your future. Allow God to touch your heart so that you can walk into a future of wholeness, of life. A heart that springs up life. And some of you here today need that.

You need that. Wherever you are spiritually, you need that today. And I'm asking you. I'm asking you. And God's asking you.

Are you willing to let me in your heart today? Are you willing to do that? Let's bow our heads. And I want you to make an honest confession wherever you are in your walk. I want you to make an honest confession.

Is my heart hardened? And I want you to invite Him in. Father, I know my heart's been hardened. I know my heart has kept me from the things of you, God. I know my heart has kept me from accomplishing the plans for my life that you have placed before me.

And maybe I've allowed the past to come into my heart. Lord, make me a new creation. I confess everything, Lord. I just open it up. I reveal everything there.

It's all here. Just come into my life. Come into my life, Lord. For those of you who've never given your life to Jesus, just make that confession right now. Maybe you've walked in here today and you're ready to make a decision for Jesus Christ.

And maybe you thought you made a decision a long time ago, but you realized that decision wasn't quite there, right? Because you walked right back into the world. Just make it, just make today, make today the real thing. Make today the real thing that, that you can be changed. Your heart can be changed right now.

Just say this, Lord, I confess my sins. I open up my heart to you. Please come in and make home in my heart. Make me a new creation. I give you my life, my, my world and everything thereof, Lord.

I receive eternity now in the name of Jesus. Amen.