Father Forgive Them, For They Know Not What They Do - Last Words Of Jesus

Well, good morning.

Hey, good to see everybody here. Hey, if you brought a Bible today, how about opening it with me to the third book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke chapter 23, and we're going to be there in just a couple of minutes, but if you've got your Bible open, you'll be ready. And not too long ago, I had the privilege of speaking at a memorial service for a wonderful godly lady. And as part of the service, they read excerpts of a letter that she had written to her son while she was lying on her deathbed. And it was interesting what she said to her son in this letter. It was interesting she didn't say a thing to him in the letter about keeping his room clean, didn't say a thing in the letter about him, you know, not leaving his towel on the floor, didn't say anything in the letter about him turning out the lights when he left the room or washing his own dish and putting it in the dishwasher.

But no, what she had to say in this letter had substance to it. She talked to him as she was leaving this life about those things that were deepest and most precious in her life, the truth that she valued the most. Now, Jesus said seven things on the cross. And I believe that in doing so as he hung on the cross, he was doing what every dying person does.

He was telling people he loved, people he knew he was leaving behind, about those things that were of the greatest and most significant spiritual importance to their lives. And I think that that means that the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross have profound significance for us today. And so what we're going to do today is begin a little four part series culminating up at Easter, where we're going to look at four of these sayings that Jesus said from the cross. And the one we're going to look at today is this one, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Verse 32 of Luke 23, where I ask you to turn. Two other men, both robbers, were led out with Jesus to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there along with the robbers, one on his right and the other on his left.

Now, I want to talk to you for a moment about crucifixion. I had a friend that sent me an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association. The title of the article was On the Physical Death of Jesus. And it was written by Dr. William Edwards of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. And the thing that's interesting about this article is instead of looking at the death of Jesus from a biblical perspective or theological perspective, he looks at it from a medical perspective.

Very interesting article. But here's part of what he said and I quote. He said, although the Romans did not invent crucifixion, they perfected it as a form of capital punishment that was designed to produce a slow death with maximum pain and suffering. Dr. Edwards went on to say the major physiological effect of crucifixion was a marked interference with normal respiration, particularly exhalation. The weight of the body pulling down on the outstretched arms and shoulders would tend to fix the intercostal muscles in an inhalation state. Now, if you're not a doctor, what that basically means is when you're crucified, you'd have a tendency to hold your breath.

He goes on to say fatigue and increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the blood would hinder normal respiration even further. Exhalation, he writes, required lifting the body by pushing on the feet and flexing the elbows. However, if you're hanging on a cross, this maneuver would produce searing pain. He concludes for what we're going to say today by saying Christ spoke seven times from the cross.

Since speech occurs during exhalation, these short, terse utterances must have been particularly difficult and painful for him. Friends, the point is that these last words that Jesus spoke must have been hugely important to him considering the amount of pain that he was going to have to go through to save him. And the first one today that we're looking at is this one that Jesus went through pain to say, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

It's interesting if you remember back in John chapter 14, Jesus said to Philip, he said, Philip, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. When you look at my words, my actions, my deeds, my reactions to any situation, Jesus said, what you will see is a perfect portrait of God's heart, of God's attitudes, of God's value systems. Now let's bring that truth forward and apply it to the cross. As Jesus hung there on the cross, as people stood around mocking him and taunting him and making fun of him and insulting him, as he went through the excruciating pain he was going through because of their actions down there, Jesus on the cross shows us the heart of God for the human race.

And what is that heart? Well, what did Jesus say? Think about it. Jesus could have prayed for justice. Lord, condemn them. Jesus could have prayed for retribution against the human race. Father, consume them. Jesus could have prayed for vindication against the human race. Father, reject them.

But he didn't. What did Jesus pray? He prayed for pardon for the human race. Father, forgive them. Jesus said, you know, Father, they don't understand what they're doing. They don't realize that they're killing their Messiah. They don't realize that I'm God in human flesh. They don't realize that I'm up here on the cross for them, trying to give them access to eternal life and them access into heaven.

Father, they just don't get it. So here's what I want you to do. I don't want you to condemn them. And I don't want you to consume them. And I don't want you to reject them.

I want you to forgive them. Folks, this is God's heart for the human race, for you, for me, for everybody alive. Above everything else, God wants to grant us not revenge, not hatred, not retaliation, not rejection. Above everything else, God wants to grant us forgiveness. That is the heart of God for the human race. And we see it displayed in the Lord Jesus as he hung on the cross. Now that's as far as we want to go in the passage because it's time to ask our question. And I know it's a little early in the message today, so I probably caught some of you by surprise. But I know you'll recover quickly. So you ready?

One, two, three. So what? Yeah. You say, Lon, so what? Say, you know what?

I've heard this before Father, forgive them, you know. I know that quote. And so when I walk out of my house on Monday morning to go to Capitol Hill to get on the metro to drive on the beltway, so like what difference should this make to my life that we talked about that here today?

Well, that's a good question. Let's answer it. Friends, if I were to ask you what was the most distinctive and unique message that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, I think most of us would get it right, we'd say equality for all people and races and we'd be right. If I were to ask you what was the most unique and distinctive message that Mother Teresa proclaimed, most of us would get that right. We'd say, well, it's that the poor children of the world matter to God. If I were to ask you about Gandhi and his most unique and distinctive message, you'd get that right. You'd say, well, it was that non-violence is the best way to bring about political change and you'd be right.

So here's my question today. Jesus Christ, what was his most distinctive and unique message to the human race? When we look in the Bible and we boil the Bible down to one single declarative sentence as its message, what is the most, what is the core message of the Bible? Friends, I believe it's this, that through Jesus Christ, God is offering to forgive our sins. That's the message that Jesus Christ, through him, God is offering to eradicate our guilt. God is offering to take away our shame.

God is offering to give us a brand new start in life, but this offer is only available through Jesus Christ and what he did for us on the cross. Now friends, I believe that God's forgiveness is the most valuable commodity ounce for ounce anywhere in the universe. Now you and I may not be able to weigh God's forgiveness in a test tube and we may not be able to deposit God's forgiveness in our savings account in the bank and there may not be a line on our 1040 for God's forgiveness, but nonetheless, I believe that God's forgiveness, not money, not fame, not fortune, not power, not possessions, God's forgiveness is the secret more than anything else to our being able to live a healthy functional life. John Stott, in his book Confess Your Sins, quotes the head of a large British psychiatric hospital and that doctor said, and I quote, I could dismiss half of my inpatients tomorrow if they could be assured of forgiveness, end of quote. And let me tell you why God's forgiveness is such a valuable commodity. The reason is because it sets us free.

It liberates us as human beings so that we can become everything that God designed us to be. You know, when my kids were younger, we went to the beach every summer and we always went to the amusement park and my favorite ride at the amusement park are the bumper cars. I love the bumper cars and you know, they put you in his big ring with the bumper cars, but at this particular amusement park, they did one really annoying thing with the bumper cars and that is they had governors on them. So no matter how hard you pressed on the accelerator, the things just wouldn't go very fast. They limited the speed of these cars and like that isn't what I wanted. I wanted to press that thing to the floor and get up ahead of steam and come around the corner and catch somebody from the blind side and just mortify them. I mean, hit them so hard, their teeth rattled.

You know what I'm saying? But you couldn't do that with these bumper cars because they wouldn't go anywhere. These governors kept them from going fast and what you had to do is when you hit somebody, no, you had to give it body English, you know, boom. So you got a little bit of a bump into it.

Otherwise, you just politely bumped into them and they sat there and smiled at you. Well, like what fun is that? That's no fun. Now, the way I look at it and you may not agree with me, but the way I look at it is that these governors crippled these bumper cars and kept them from rising up and being everything they could be. Now, that's how I look at it. And in the same way, what I'm trying to tell you is that unforgiven sin cripples us as followers of Christ. Unforgiven sin is like governors, like a governor in our life that keeps us from going faster and rising higher and being everything that God created us to be. And you say, well, Lon, I don't understand. How does God's forgiveness enable me to go faster and rise higher and be everything God created me to be? Well, I'd like to explain it to you. There are three ways. First of all, number one, God's forgiveness, how does it liberate us and allow us to rise? It liberates us, first of all, from our bondage to the past.

Governor number one in our lives as human beings that keep us from being all that we can be is our bondage to our sins and the guilt and the shame of what we've done in the past. You know, in college, I was 20 years old, I was a student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and I got my girlfriend pregnant. I didn't mean to get her pregnant. I didn't want to get her pregnant. I wasn't happy she was pregnant. She wanted to keep the baby.

I didn't. You know, I was lost spiritually. I was scared of being a parent. I was irresponsible, frankly, as a human being. I was a coward. And so I forced my girlfriend to have an abortion. I gave her no option and said that's what we're doing.

And she did. And you know, after that happened, the guilt of what I had done and the shame of what I had done was more than I could deal with. Added on top of the guilt and the shame everything else I'd done for the first 20 years of my life. Friends, all that guilt and shame was like a big ball and chain around my life. And all I could do was smoke more dope and drink more alcohol and do more dysfunctional sort of things like that to try to drown out the pain. But I was a smart guy.

I was smart enough to understand living life as a prisoner to my past as I was living, I was never going to amount to anything. And so I decided to commit suicide. I did.

I was totally serious about it. And it was at that point in my life that I met Jesus Christ. And I asked him to come into my life. And I asked him to forgive my sin.

Now folks, when I asked Jesus to do that, I had no idea what I was really getting in this deal. Because when Jesus Christ forgave my sins, when Jesus Christ took all of my past sins and all of my past mistakes and put them under the blood and said they're gone. He liberated me. He freed me and allowed me to start over in life, this time to get it right with his help.

And allowed me for the first time in my life to really have some hope that I might amount to something in life. And what you see up front here today, you need to understand, this wouldn't be in front of you today. I wouldn't even be here today if it wasn't for the fact that Jesus Christ forgave my sin and liberated me from my past. And you see, this is the first great way that God's forgiveness sets us free. It takes all our past sins and mistakes and puts them under the blood.

And it takes all our future sins and mistakes and puts them under the blood. They're gone for good. They're forgotten.

They're canceled. In fact, that's the word that Jesus uses here from the cross when he says Father, forgive them. It's the word used throughout the New Testament for forgiveness. It's really a bookkeeping word. It's an accounting word that literally means to dismiss somebody's debt, to remit somebody's debt, to cancel somebody's debt. And friends, when your debt is canceled, when your debt is dismissed, it is gone for good. And that's what God's trying to tell you and me he does with our sin and our shame and our guilt.

They're gone for good. Psalm 103 verse 12, as far as the east is from the west, that's how far the Bible says God removes our transgressions, our wrongdoings from us. Micah chapter seven verse 19, God, the Bible says, has hurled all of our sins into the depths of the sea. And as I love to say at that spot, he puts up a sign, no fishing and says, don't you go down in there and dredge that stuff up. I buried it and you leave it where I put it.

You leave it at the bottom of the sea. Hey, how about Hebrews chapter 10? This is the covenant I will make with you. God says, listen to this deal, your sins and your shameless deeds, I will remember no more. Wow.

What a deal. When the missionaries first went to the Eskimos, American Eskimos, they had a problem. And the problem is there's no word in the Eskimo language for forgiveness.

That's a big problem. Because how in the world are you going to translate the Bible into their language and how in the world are you going to explain the message of the Bible to people if there's no word for forgiveness? Forgiveness is a central theme of the Bible. Well, after a few months, as they learned the language, the missionaries discovered a one word Eskimo phrase that goes like this, is si ma zhi zhu zhong na yi ner muk. How do you like my Eskimo?

Not bad. I know one word. And what this word is si ma zhi zhu zhong na yi ner muk means is it literally means not being able to think about it anymore. And this is the word the missionaries chose to translate forgiveness.

Because folks, this is what God was offering those Eskimos. And this is what God is offering you and me and every human being alive. He's offering to si ma zhi zhu zhong na yi ner muk, our sin. He's offering not to think about it anymore, not to remember it anymore.

He's offering to put it at the bottom of the sea. And listen, if Almighty God doesn't remember our sins anymore, then we're free to put them behind us with the shame and the guilt. And we're free to move on with a new life for Jesus Christ. That's the first way God sets us free to rise and be all we can be.

There's a second way. And that is, second of all, God's forgiveness liberates us from our fear of death. See, governor number two in our lives that keeps us from being all we can be is our fear of dying.

And when we're afraid to die, I believe we're afraid to really live. Now I don't know, any of you guys watch American Idol? Yeah?

Yeah, raise your hand. Watch American Idol. Alright, I'm hooked. I'm hooked.

I didn't watch it at first because I thought it was like a chickie, you know, a chickie type television show and I didn't want to watch this dumb thing and my wife finally convinced me to watch it. And I'm hooked. Every Tuesday night we watch it, every Wednesday night we watch the follow up show. And it's interesting, I believe on American Idol you get an incredible insight into human nature when you watch this program.

And one of the things I've noticed is this. Every contestant on that show knows that tonight could be their last night on television. That if they go on television and they have a bad outing, there could be gone the next week.

And that fear of possibly failing, it affects people in different ways. There are some people who are so terrified of losing and so terrified of failing that what they do is they tend to pick what our good friend Simon Cowell calls safe songs. They pick songs that have no flair, no life, no excitement, no risk, and you know what?

They don't do so good. It's the people I've noticed who aren't afraid of losing and they're not afraid of going down in flames, they tend to pick songs that have excitement and enthusiasm and flair and they do a lot better on the program. I think life's a lot like that.

Because you know friends, when we're afraid of dying, we don't tend to pick safe songs, we tend to live safe lives. Not much risk, not much going for the gusto, not much going for the gold, not much living on the edge, and you know what? You can't become everything God wants you to be, living like that. Look at all the great men and women of God in the Bible and all the great men and women of God down through history who went as missionaries to China and India and Burma and South Seas and all over everywhere who went around and preached on soap boxes and put their lives at risk. These people lived on the edge. These people pushed the envelope for God. These people went out and went for the gold and they didn't worry about living because they weren't afraid of dying.

And that's how they could live like that. And I maintain that when we're afraid of dying, it keeps us back and limits us from being everything we can be for God. We've got to be able to say, God I'm not afraid of dying, you take me wherever you want me and do whatever you want and if they kill me, so what?

No big deal, because I know where I'm going. And that's how you rise to being the best you can be for God. God intended His forgiveness to fix this problem in our life. Hebrews chapter 2 verse 15, Jesus came to free those who all their lives were held in bondage, look at that, by their fear of death.

The fear of death keeps us in bondage and how does God free us from that? He forgives us with a forgiveness that is irrevocable, irreversible, that we can never lose. Romans chapter 8 verse 1, therefore there is now no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ. In a sense, this one verse sums up the entire message of the Bible. That for those of us who are in Jesus Christ, there is no condemnation ever.

Our past sins have been forgiven, our present sins are being forgiven, our future sins are already forgiven, we will never be brought into a position of condemnation before God ever again because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Now folks, when you know that, then you're not afraid to die anymore. And when you're not afraid to die anymore, you're not afraid to live anymore. God asks you to push the envelope? No problem, because I know where I'm going and I know there can never be any way am I losing it?

Sure Lord, what you want? And that's how you rise to be the best you can be. Third and finally, God's forgiveness liberates us third and finally by liberating us from our slavery to our passions. You see, governor number 3 in our life that holds us back from being all we can be is our sinful human nature and all of its self-destructive passions and all of its self-destructive programming. You say, what do you mean self-destructive programming? What are you talking about?

Well, let me give you an example. Years ago when my children were little, we liked, you know, Brendan and I liked every Easter to give them presents. I mean it was just kind of a nice little thing at Easter and you know, we'd give them candy and you know, a little bit of money or stuff just for Easter. But we figured out a very unique way to do it, for us anyway, and that is we'd always hold every Easter Sunday afternoon, we'd hold an Easter egg hunt in our backyard for our boys.

We have three of them. And what we got these little plastic Easter eggs, you know, you pop them open and we'd put, you know, Hershey Kisses in them or quarters in them, you know, money in them or whatever. So this one Easter, we decided we were going to give each of the guys, each of the boys 20 bucks, you know, 60 altogether. But the way we were going to do it is we put them in the Easter eggs and we figured, you know, mathematical probabilities, the money would probably pretty well split out and it'd be okay. Well, as usual, Brendan and I were not really prepared for the afternoon and we didn't have enough dollar bills to do this with, so I said, Brendan, I got a great idea, you know, I'm going to go out in the front street and I'm going to get 12 rocks. Each rock will be worth $5. We'll put the rocks in Easter eggs. Now, we had about 70 Easter eggs, so we picked 12 of them, put a rock in each of the Easter eggs and said every one of the rocks is worth five bucks. We didn't tell the kids what the rocks were in there. We didn't tell them there were any rocks in there. We just thought it'd be a wonderful surprise when they all came in and opened them up and put all these rocks to say, well, the rocks are all $5 each. So we hit them in the backyard and we said, go.

Well, my oldest son, Jamie, was about maybe 14 and my youngest son, John, was about seven, maybe six or seven and we turned them loose. Well, here's what Jamie did. He ran down in the backyard being the older brother, of course, and every time he found an Easter egg, he opened it and peeked in and if it had money in it, he put it, you know, quarters, he put it in his basket. If it had candy in it, he put it in his basket. If it had a rock in it, he called John over and he said, no, that's true. He said, John, John, John, look what I got.

I got an egg for you. Now, little John was only six. He had trouble finding eggs. He was like, Oh, Jamie, thank you so much. And so Jamie was feeding him all the eggs with the rocks in them.

This is true. We came in the house, we're sitting around the table, they're all open in their Easter eggs and Jamie and Justin have both got candy and quarters and money and John's got all these rocks and he sat there at the table started to cry. He's like, I got no rocks.

And I said, John, I got some great news for you, son. Every single he had 11 of the 12 rocks. I said, every one of those rocks is worth $5.

You have $55. I thought my oldest son was gonna have coronary right there at the table. He said what he stood up on that. Forget it. He said that is unfair. I said, Okay, wait a minute, Jamie, let me get this straight. Okay, let's rehearse what happened here. You went out in the yard, and you cheated and opened up the Easter eggs, right? And then when you looked inside and assume that the rocks were worthless, under the guise of being nice to him, you called your little brother over and stiffed him with the rocks. And now that you come inside and found out that you made a mistake, instead of owning your stuff and accepting the responsibility for what you did, you pointed me and say, I'm unfair. Is that right?

He thought for a minute went, Yep, that's basically it. Now, that is the kind of programming I'm talking about right there. Every one of us have that kind of programming inside of us.

Now it looks different for everybody. Some of us have anger problems. Some of us have a bad temper. Some of us have substance abuse problems, alcohol abuse problems, eating problems, depression problems. Some of us have sexual abuse problems or emotional health problems, but it doesn't matter what the problem looks like. The point is, these are all expressions of that programming, those self destructive passions that live inside of us. We are all slaves to them, and they are governors on our lives.

They limit our speed for God. Now the bad news is that you can't fix this inside of you and neither can I. The bad news is no therapist in this world can fix this inside of you and me. But the great news is Jesus Christ can fix this. He said, John chapter 8, verse 34, I tell you the truth, everyone whose sins are unforgiven is a slave to those sins.

Well, gee, Jesus, tell us something we don't know. Ah, but he says, if I set you free, you will be free indeed. You say, well, Lon, I don't understand exactly how does God forgiving me set me free from all this? Okay, watch the progression here. Well, number one, when we embrace Jesus Christ as our Savior, he forgives our sin.

We've seen that. When God forgives our sins and they're gone, we become children of God. John chapter 1, verse 12. When we become children of God, the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of us. And when the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of us, we gain access to his supernatural power in our life. Galatians 5, 16 says, when we live by the power of God's Spirit, we will not gratify the passions of our sinful nature. In other words, the power of the Holy Spirit released inside of us enables us to rise above this human programming, rise above these self-destructive passions, enables us to subjugate them and keep them under control so that they don't throttle us back anymore, but now we're free to be the best we can be for God. And it all starts with God's forgiveness. Because until God forgives us, we can't be children of God.

Until we're children of God, the Holy Spirit's power is not available to us. Let me repeat what Jesus said. Anyone whose sins are unforgiven is a slave to sin. But if I set you free, Jesus said, you will be free indeed.

Let's summarize. What have we learned today? Well, we've learned that God above everything else wants you and me to be forgiven. And the reason is because he wants us to be free. He wants us to be free from our bondage to the past and all of its guilt and shame. Secondly, he wants us to be free from our fear of dying, which means that we're free from our fear of living. And third, he wants us to be free from our slavery to our self-destructive passions, free to achieve the unique individual destiny for which God created every one of us. And you say, well, Lon, you know, I'm here, I'm a follower of Christ today, and I know all of this.

I mean, this is like all old news for me. So you still didn't answer my question. What difference should this make to me when I walk out of my house tomorrow morning? Well, I've got two challenges to give you if you're a follower of Christ today. My first challenge is to leave here, never again taking for granted what God gave you when he forgave you. Hey, David said this, Psalm 32, how blessed is the person whose wrongdoings are forgiven, whose sins are covered. How blessed is the person whose sins the Lord does not count against them again. Do you understand the position God has given you? No condemnation, your sins, my sins, friends, they're covered, they're forgiven.

God will never count them against us ever again for eternity. Do we understand that? The unbelievable position God has given us in Jesus Christ. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm prone to take it for granted because I've known about it for so many years.

But that's not appropriate. Every day, we should wake up and say first thing in the morning, Lord, thank you for giving me this position in Christ. And the second challenge I've got for you is not to misuse this freedom that Jesus gave you, but to use it for the reason he gave it to you. Galatians chapter 5 verse 13, for you were called to be free, only do not use your freedom to indulge your sinful nature. Use it instead, God goes on to say, to serve Christ and honor Christ and make sure he gets the credit and the glory. And folks, my second challenge today as a follower of Christ is to remember God set you free, but he didn't set you free, so you could use that freedom to exalt yourself. And many of us here today, we've risen to positions of power, positions of influence, positions of income, positions of notoriety that years ago we could never ever have dreamed we'd ever be at today. Let me tell you something, don't you ever kid yourself that you got there because of you.

You didn't. Because if Jesus hadn't forgiven you, you'd still be a slave to your past, you'd still be a slave to your fear of death, and you'd still be a slave to the passions that live inside of you. The only reason you and I have gotten where we've gotten is because Jesus forgave us and set us free. Now, for us to use that freedom for any other reason than to exalt him and to give glory to him and to bring credit to him is a misuse of that freedom.

Don't do that. When somebody tries to give you the credit, don't you dare take it. You make sure it goes where it belongs, which is not to you and me, but to the one who forgave us and freed us so we could get to where we are today. Don't misuse that freedom on yourself. It wasn't given to you to use for you.

It was given to you to use to exalt Jesus Christ in our world. If you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, maybe you're here today and you're still in bondage to your past. Maybe you're still in bondage to the fear of death. Maybe you're still in bondage to sinful passions that are destroying your life.

I got great news for you, friends. Jesus can set you free. Only he can set you free, but he can.

And it all starts with you accepting his forgiveness, which is what he wants to do for you, but you've got to be willing to accept it. And this Easter season, we're going to be talking about this every week now for the next several weeks, and I hope before we're done, you're at some point going to bow your head and say, you know what? I'm ready to do that.

I really am. I hope you'll think about that. Next week, we're going to talk about Jesus's statement, I am thirsty. You say, Lon, I do not understand. How in the world are you ever going to speak for 30 minutes on I am thirsty?

Well, you come back next week and I'll show you. How's that? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for talking to us today and reminding us of something we already know most of us, but it sure is good to be reminded. How blessed is the person whose wrongdoings are covered, whose sins are forgiven. How blessed is the person for whom the Lord will not hold their sins against them. An amazing thing, this position you've given us in Christ. Father, my prayer today is that for those of us here who are followers of Christ, that we might leave here appreciating like we never have before, this incredible thing you did for us, and that we might leave here understanding you gave us this freedom, not for us, not to use to exalt us, but you gave it to us to use to bring glory, honor, and credit to Jesus Christ. May we use our freedom properly. And Father, I pray for folks here today who have never experienced that wonderful freedom that comes from being forgiven. We pray that you would work in each of these folks' hearts and get them to the place where they're ready to give you this chance in their life. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.