Please turn with me in your Bible to the book of Judges, chapter 3.
Judges 3:1-2, and also verse 4:
Now these are the nations which the Lord left to test Israel by them, that is, all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan;
only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war, those who had not experienced it formerly.And they were for testing Israel, to find out if they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers through Moses.
And also Joshua, chapter 4, verses 19 and 20.
Joshua 4:19-20:
Now the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth of the first month and camped at Gilgal on the eastern edge of Jericho.
And those twelve stones, which they had taken up from the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal.
And chapter 5, verse 9.
Joshua 5:9:
Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.
And also verses 13 through 15.
Joshua 5:13-15:
Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand; and Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”
And He said, “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord.”
And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and bowed down, and said to Him, “What has my Lord to say to His servant?”
The captain of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
And in the New Testament, Ephesians, chapter 6. I think we are all pretty familiar with this. If we are going to share on spiritual warfare, we have to read these verses.
Ephesians 6:10-13:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
Verse 18:
With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.
And then lastly, 1 Timothy 6:12.
Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Let us bow for a further word of prayer.
Lord, we thank You for gathering us here again this afternoon. Lord, we plead with You that You would open up our ears, that we might hear Your voice. Lord, enlighten our eyes, that we might be able to see Your glory.
Lord, You have allowed us to remain in these last days. Lord, indeed, this is a time of spiritual warfare. According to the call that You have given Your people, may we become the soldiers of our Lord—for Your name’s sake, for Your glory, and for Your testimony.
Lord, may we fight the good fight. Lord, we need Your mercy, and we need You to hold fast to us. Lord, may we receive Your mercy. Lord, may You strengthen us in the inner man from the grace which we have received from You.
Allow us to be functional in church service, that each local church will be strengthened and built up. May You prepare Your people, suitable people to receive You when You return.
Lord, we commit this time this afternoon into Your hands. Lord, with Your blood, we ask that You cleanse this place. Lord, anoint us richly.
Lord, may the speaking, the translating, and the hearing be found in Your anointing. We offer You our deepest worship. We pray in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
We want to continue this afternoon to speak of spiritual warfare.
Yesterday afternoon, we spoke on the key to spiritual victory and the focal point of that battle. We know that the enemy today is engaging God’s church.
So, in this spiritual battle, no Christian can be excluded. We are all on the battlefield. But the question is: How do we engage in battle?
Paul encouraged Timothy to fight the good fight. Paul himself said, “I have fought the good fight.” So the Lord allows us to remain on earth today in order that we might fight the good fight for His testimony.
To begin, I would like to pose two questions. The first is: Why do we engage in spiritual warfare? Secondly, why did God not vanquish the enemy all at once?
Our Lord was greatly victorious on Calvary. Why was it that God did not completely destroy Satan at Calvary?
Many years ago, I read a book by T. Austin-Sparks. He gave a little bit of an answer to the second question. Sparks wrote that God wanted Satan to exhaust all his power and energy, because God knew that Satan would otherwise be disgruntled.
So God allows Satan to fully exert all his might. From the Bible, we see that the enemy uses all his power to fight against God.
Even in the millennial kingdom, God will lock Satan in the abyss, and then, after the thousand years, God will release him.
This shows us that God will give Satan every opportunity until Satan has exhausted all of his power. When God finally judges him and casts him into the lake of fire, then the enemy has nothing to say.
This is an explanation that Sparks gave on why God did not vanquish Satan in one instance. But outside of this reason, we can see from Judges, chapter 3, that there is another reason.
This is a positive reason: God allows the enemy to remain in order to train and to test His people.
The book of Joshua records how the nation of Israel was victorious. When Joshua brought the people over, the previous generation had passed on, and the new generation had no experience.
So the Bible records that the nations were left in order to train the nation of Israel, in order that the next generation would know the nature of warfare.
This becomes an important principle to us. With each passing generation, God wants the succeeding generation to know how to engage in warfare.
For the younger ones sitting in the crowd, perhaps a lot of us do not have much experience in battle. So God has allowed the enemy to remain in order to train us.
There are also elderly brothers and sisters. They have fought their entire lives, and we see in their service the glory of God brought in. So God wants to train each generation to fight.
We know that this is also a reason why God allows the enemy to remain. Yesterday we spoke of this: because our Lord was victorious at Calvary, He gave the enemy a mortal wound.
We know that the head of the serpent has been bruised. This tells us that the power of the enemy is not like it was before. At Calvary, he was defeated.
So for us to enter into spiritual warfare, we need faith. We should not fear the dominion of Satan, because our Lord has overcome.
If we can hold fast to that position that Christ has granted us, then we can overcome the enemy as well. So we thank our Lord: He has left us on the battlefield.
My dear brothers and sisters, we need to know the principles of warfare. When the Lord trained His people to enter into spiritual warfare, we know that Judges was a horrifying book.
They did not fully understand how to fight, and so they had many failures. They lost sight of the reason God was training them. Initially, God was training them how to fight, and it was for an important purpose.
There are three things that they needed to obtain in their warfare.
First, through spiritual warfare, they would come to truly know God. This knowledge of God was not something merely in their heads.
For many children of God, perhaps we are also found in such a condition. What we know of God is only an understanding in our minds or a doctrine, but we lack the knowledge of Him in experience.
It is only when we enter into spiritual warfare that we come to know Him by experience. This is an important matter.
We see the children of God in many places. Those who truly know God through experience are few. So we need to learn how to engage in spiritual warfare.
Secondly, we come to know God’s work. Our God is a God who works, and His works are abundant.
We probably do not know God’s work as well as we ought to. It is only when we encounter the enemy, in that battle, that we understand how God is working.
From the experience of Old Testament saints, we see how God is leading them to know Him and to know His works. For example, Jacob.
We know that Jacob experienced much. When he fled, he came to Bethel. Remember the vision, the dream he had, from that sorrowful experience of leaving his family behind.
Today, we know that God was dealing with his flesh. That night, through a dream, he saw, and his understanding of who God was changed overnight.
Previously, God to him was the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac. Now He was the God of Jacob.
So, brothers and sisters, for the young ones in our midst, perhaps our grandparents or our parents believe. Perhaps the God you believe is their God; perhaps He is not yet your God.
God needs to bring you to that day where you can say, “God is my God.” I love the hymns that our sister Fanny Crosby wrote:
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.
Every one of us needs to have this experience, and spiritual warfare can bring us into this experience.
We see that Jacob not only communed directly with God. In Genesis 32, when he finally left Laban’s house, again he was fleeing. He came to Peniel, and there he saw this angel that came to wrestle with him.
We know that from that day Jacob became Israel, and God did His work in Jacob.
Throughout the Bible, we see many people led by the Lord in this way. Today, the Lord leads us in the same way. He wants us to know Him firsthand and to know His work.
This is a training that the Lord wants to give us. But the third thing is that God wants to test us. He leaves these enemies in order to test His children, to see whether they would obey His commandments.
So in spiritual warfare, we come to know the importance of His Word.
Many years ago, I knew of a brother who encountered much trouble in his family. The day I visited them, both husband and wife were in tears.
The brother could not speak spiritual words, so he spoke very worldly. This person felt he was not educated in the Word of God enough. He knew that there were words in Scripture that could help him, but he had misplaced his Bible.
He could not find the right words in the Bible. We know that God’s Word has power. If we can experience God’s Word, then we will obtain that power.
So we ought to read our Bible well. We ought to read our Bible well.
But without the experience of spiritual warfare, these words are not as real to you. The Lord places us on the battlefield in order to test us: at this time, are you willing to trust the Word of God?
So, brothers and sisters, He places us on the battlefield today for His good will. We need to enter into spiritual warfare, and God calls us to enter into spiritual warfare.
We thank our God that He has kept us on the battlefield today, because it is an important training for us and an important test for us.
But of course, if we are to fight the good fight, we need to have some basic understanding of spiritual warfare.
First, we need to know the nature, the properties, of this warfare. If we do not understand the nature of this warfare, then we will make mistakes. So it is important to know the characteristics of this warfare.
I think there are two aspects to this warfare.
First, this warfare is a spiritual warfare. The enemy we are facing is a spiritual enemy.
In Ephesians, chapter 6, it tells us clearly that we are faced against spiritual powers of darkness. The enemy we are facing is not flesh and blood.
If we do not understand this point, then some unbelievable things happen in many churches. They find it hard to cast out the enemy, but they end up wounding many brothers and sisters.
You know, this happens on the battlefield a lot. You shoot, and instead of killing the enemy, you kill your friend. You kill those who are not supposed to die, and you revive those you are not supposed to revive.
So we must recognize that the one we are engaging against is not man and not our brothers and sisters.
One time I was reading the newspaper, and there was this small article. It was written by a missionary. It said, “You do not hate the person; you hate the Satan behind the person.” This is a good word.
But, brothers and sisters, if we do not understand the characteristics of this spiritual warfare, then we do not have a clear understanding of this hidden enemy. Even if you take hold of those words, it is useless.
When you see your adversary, you never see the enemy; you see that person. Truly, brothers and sisters, the enemy uses our flesh against us.
We have to see that the enemy is a spiritual being. As Christians in the church, we need to have a basic understanding: no brother or sister ought to be our enemy. We cannot have man be our enemy.
Paul even tells us that in spiritual warfare, the weapons we use are not against flesh and blood. We need to use spiritual weapons.
Secondly, this battle has to do with life and death. The greatest weapon of our enemy is the power of death.
Today, the enemy assaults man using the power of death. You know that in the Garden of Eden, Satan caused man to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Behind this was a great deception, because he wanted to bring man under the dominion of death.
So God cautioned Adam and Eve that the fruit of that tree should not be eaten.
On the day you eat of that fruit, you shall die.
God knew that the enemy would assault man using the power of death. But tragically, Eve ate. Adam ate. They fell under the dominion of death.
Because of man’s fall, all creation falls under the dominion of death. In all of creation, there is nothing that will not die. This is a terrible thing.
In 1 Corinthians 15, it tells us that Satan uses sin in order to defile man.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
So when we sin, we have violated God’s law, and we have fallen under death. This is the story of man’s fall.
Not only does he bring death into the world, but he uses death to assault God’s church.
We said previously that the church is the vessel that contains God’s testimony. For Christ’s testimony to be manifested in this world, God has to obtain the church. This vessel has to be according to God’s will.
But the work of the enemy is to corrupt the church. He cannot stop us from believing in the Lord, but he can make Christians go from living to dead.
Or he can turn them into half-dead people who are no longer living—like the church in Laodicea, something that is neither hot nor cold.
He can turn a living church into one that is dead. In the Old Testament, we see that the Israelites’ service in the temple ought to be one that is living, but the enemy caused it to become Judaism. Originally it was living, and it became dead.
Brothers and sisters, today the church is the same. The church ought to be seated with Christ in the heavenly places, a place where God can manifest His power.
But we can see so many churches being killed off. We see many cathedrals turned into tourist sites, and this is a tragedy.
Dear brothers and sisters, the work of the enemy is to turn a spiritual church into one that is worldly. Not only does the church become worldly, but he causes a spiritual church to become fleshly.
We know that the world and the flesh are also tools that Satan uses. Whenever we touch these things, the individual becomes dead and the church becomes dead.
Indeed, we need God’s mercy. Some churches ought to be filled with life, but because of the enemy’s work, they have become religion.
We have shared that the church is not a religious organization. We see churches that leave the life that God has given. They become very traditional. They become doctrinal, and they follow forms and rituals.
We know that this is the work of the enemy. The purpose of this work is to corrupt the church. It causes the vessel to be unable to contain the testimony of our Lord.
The vessel has become broken, and the content cannot be held. When we read church history, we see this tragedy throughout the generations.
Dear brothers and sisters, we need to be reminded by the Lord. Today we are found on the spiritual battlefield. The nature of this warfare is not only that it is spiritual; it is a matter of life and death.
When the elder Paul wrote to the young Timothy, we know that Timothy was an elder at the church at Ephesus. At that time, the church in Ephesus had begun to decline.
Paul gave good practical teaching to Timothy, but at the end of 1 Timothy, he reminds Timothy that if you cannot obtain all these outward things, there is something you have to hold fast to.
You have to hold fast to that eternal life, because only when you hold fast to that eternal life can you fight the good fight.
Brothers and sisters, when we are saved, we receive a new life.
John 10:10 gives us important and precious words:
I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.
The purpose of our Lord coming into this world is to give us life. He descended, He suffered, and He died on the cross. He paid a heavy price. The purpose is to give man life.
Dear brothers, when we have obtained this life, then we obtain all of God’s abundance. All of His beauty and all that He possesses are found in this life. All power is in this life.
This life encompasses all things. When God gives us this life, God hopes that from the moment we are saved, all of our walk, our service, and our lives will be according to this life.
Dear brothers, we thank God for His abundant grace. He has given His life to all of us. What an amazing blessing.
But tragically, we see the church today. We see the children of God in the church today holding on to forms, methods, and rituals, and they have cast aside the life that God has given us.
Those who truly hold on to this life and walk according to that life are few.
Because the Lord has given us life, we know that life comes with feeling. If we have life, we ought to feel.
If you cannot sense anything, then you need to come back before the Lord in prayer. Have we really been saved? True salvation is being born again.
If you have life, you ought to be able to feel that life. Our lives and our service have to flow forth from this life. If it comes out of this life, then it is living.
We ought to have good deeds, and we ought to manifest a good character. But we have to know that these things are lived out of that life, not worked out with our own strength.
If we live it out, that is correct. If we work it out, then that is not correct. We have to live out that life, not work it out.
In our service and in our worship, it has to be the same way. It has to be living. We know that there are methods of doing a meeting and there are forms, but the form and the method are not important. We need to have life. That is what is important.
Among God’s people, some pay attention to being silent, and some want to be boisterous. They want to beat on drums. Whether you are silent or loud, you have to have life. Without that life, it does not matter what you do.
So we have to hold fast to that eternal life and that feeling.
Sometimes I sigh within. I am not sure what this generation has become.
I remember when I was first saved. I was baptized when I was sixteen years old.
Miraculously, in those early days of my salvation, I did not have any wisdom from God’s Word. I had no spiritual experience, but I was sensitive to that spiritual feeling.
I think you have heard some of my experiences previously, so I am not going to repeat them. But the instruction of life from the Holy Spirit was very clear to me.
The Lord corrected me when I jaywalked. From that one time, in fifty years, I have never run a red light since.
When I was younger, I littered once. Through that life, the teaching of that life, in the past fifty years, I have never littered again.
When I think back, that feeling is still fresh in my mind.
So when I look at the young people in the church today, I feel like they do not have any feeling. Dear brothers and sisters, you do not need any high doctrine. If you have life, you ought to feel.
If you follow this feeling and walk with the Lord, you know how to live a spiritual life. If you walk according to this spiritual feeling, you know how to serve.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we need God’s mercy. We need to come back to this foundation. In order to fight against the forces of the enemy, you have to abide in that life. There is no other method that can help us.
Today we live in this world. We will be engaged by the power of death, especially spiritual death.
But our Lord tells us there is one other precious experience: life can swallow death, because this life is a victorious life. What does that mean? It is a resurrection life.
So, brothers and sisters, if the enemy engages us with death, come back to this life and you will be renewed and restored from death.
We need to pass from death to life. Because we are weak, we are easily flustered by the enemy. Because of our temperament and our flesh, the enemy easily works in our lives. Sometimes he does a little bit of work, and we die.
But we thank our Lord that in these many years, I have seen a truly overcoming Christian. If he has the life of our Lord in him, even if he is poisoned by the enemy, life remains.
I met a brother who had died thirty years ago. He experienced spiritual death thirty years ago, and thirty years later, he came back to life.
We thank our Lord. Hopefully, we will not wait thirty years before we are revived, and we might not have thirty years, because our Lord will return soon.
So we have to be like Paul:
When I am weak, then I am strong.
This is the experience of resurrection life.
Today, the warfare that we Christians engage in is a battle for life. There is death all around us, but where the children of God are, there is life.
So, brothers and sisters, if you can live, then you are victorious. If you live, that is testifying. This is very important.
Not only do we need to understand the nature of this warfare, there are principles of spiritual warfare that we need to understand.
We know that there are two books in the Bible that speak to us about spiritual warfare: Joshua and Ephesians. In these two books, the Lord gives us some principles for this warfare.
Very quickly, I will share these aspects, because these are important and precious teachings for us.
We know that after Moses died, he passed on the responsibility of those two million people to Joshua. Joshua’s responsibility was to lead these people across the Jordan into Canaan.
Of course, Joshua had much fear in his heart. So in the first chapter of Joshua, the Lord tells Joshua, “Fear not. I am with you.”
Joshua leaned on God for strength, and he led the people across the Jordan. We all know the story.
We know that in the land of Canaan the power of the enemy was strong. There were thirty-one kings, and all thirty-one of these kings were overcome by Joshua. How could he defeat all these enemies?
Dear brothers and sisters, there are some important principles we need to pay attention to.
The first principle is to cross the Jordan and to encamp at Gilgal.
When God performed that miracle and the Jordan dried up so that the Israelites could walk over, they put twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan and took out twelve stones and placed them at Gilgal.
Then they encamped at Gilgal, and there the children of Israel were circumcised a second time.
This experience is the experience of Christ’s cross. Crossing the Jordan is dying with our Lord and resurrecting with our Lord.
This represents what Romans 6 tells us: our old self was crucified with Christ. This is the reality of Calvary.
We thank our Lord. Every believer has crossed the Jordan. But another important point is that they had to be encamped at Gilgal. Gilgal means rolling away the reproach of Egypt, and circumcision represents the removal of the flesh.
So Gilgal represents remaining in the cross and not giving opportunity to the flesh. This is what Romans 8:13 tells us:
By the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body.
We live in a society that is full of evil and temptation. Do not wait until you have committed acts of wickedness.
We are to remove any thought of wickedness as soon as it enters our mind. Many Christians do not know how to protect their thoughts. We sit there and our minds wander; we let them wander. That leads to sin.
As soon as that thought appears, we ought to pray to the Lord and say, “Lord, that is evil and needs to be rid of.” By the Holy Spirit, we put to death the deeds of the body.
This was the first reason why they could overcome.
Secondly, when they came to Jericho, Joshua went out and met a man, and this person had a sword. Joshua asked Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?” He said, “No. I come as captain of the host of the Lord.”
Immediately Joshua bowed down. Then the man told Joshua to remove his sandals because where he was standing was holy ground.
Who was the One holding the sword? This captain speaks of the Holy Spirit. Later we do not see Him reappear. He is a hidden captain.
Among the children of Israel, He was leading them. So we see that the Israelites were able to defeat all the enemies in Canaan. Very quickly, they conquered the land of Canaan as their inheritance.
This reminds us that today, in our spiritual living, we have to let the Holy Spirit be our captain.
Captain means we are the soldiers and He is the general. We have to listen to His Word. We have to be obedient like soldiers, submissive to the leading of the Holy Spirit, that in all things He trains and teaches us.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is important. This is another reason why they could overcome.
Thirdly, we know that this entering into Canaan was a corporate battle. Even though there were two and a half tribes that were not willing to cross the Jordan, their young men were able to go and fight.
This tells us that it is a corporate battle. Every tribe in Israel took part in this battle. This is another important principle.
We know that in the New Testament, our battle is one that is corporate. It is a battle that the church enters into.
Matthew 16:18 tells us:
I will build My church on this rock, and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.
It tells us that in this corporate battle, the gates of Hades cannot prevail.
So, brothers and sisters, from Joshua we see some principles of how they overcame, and these are important reminders to us in our spiritual warfare.
Lastly, we want to look at Ephesians in the New Testament. We thank our Lord.
Paul was an experienced warrior, and so he wrote the book of Ephesians. He speaks of spiritual warfare, and chapter 6 speaks specifically of warfare.
Again, this speaks of a corporate warfare, because the enemy we face today is made up of rulers and principalities in the heavens.
The enemy is organized. The devil does not fight haphazardly, because he is a dark kingdom.
So in the body of Christ, we learn how to fight. Paul tells us a few principles that we have to keep.
First, according to the power of the Lord, the inner man has to be strong.
In America today, many young people, because of the training they have received, are very capable. But what about our inner man? Is he capable?
We might be really great outwardly, but our inner man is small. God wants our inner man to grow and mature. The inner man should have strength.
The inner man relies on God and can take hold of the strength of His might. This is a lesson that every Christian needs to learn.
Secondly, we have to take on the full armor of God. This is something that we remind ourselves of all the time.
But the brothers have shared that this full armor is not only for the individual. It is for the church.
So in the church, you have to have this full armor of God. We have to have the belt of truth.
With truth, we gird our loins so that we can have strength. We have to have the breastplate of righteousness.
The church needs to represent righteousness, and the church cannot allow unrighteousness to enter into it. This protects our heart.
Then our feet need to be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
It also speaks of the shield of faith that is able to protect us from the flaming arrows of the evil one.
We know that the enemy fires upon us with fire. So anything that causes us to heat up, we need to be watchful of.
As a child of God, we cannot let our tempers flare. This is the shield of faith.
Also, the helmet of salvation. Our minds need to be renewed.
The chaos in our thoughts has caused chaos in the church. Some brothers say that our lives are new, but our minds are old. With our old minds, we cannot live the new life.
Even though we are saved, we try to live a new life, but it is old. Our minds and thoughts have to be renewed by the Spirit.
Then there is also the sword of the Spirit, and that is the living Word. It is the Word revealed by the Spirit. It is empowered by the Spirit.
This is how the church is prepared. We need to put on this full armor.
The third thing in Ephesians is that we have to pray at all times. I would argue that we have truly shortchanged our Lord in the area of prayer.
In every church assembly, we find that the prayer meeting is the least attended. A lot of people come to hear messages; those who pray are few.
May the Lord stir up our spirit, that in these end times, we would know how much we need prayer.
This is important for us to be victorious. In the book of Ephesians, Paul tells us these principles of warfare.
If we can understand these principles from these two books, they can aid us in our spiritual warfare.
So, brothers and sisters, in this generation of spiritual war, we have to have a desire to fight the good fight.
Only when we fight the good fight can we allow the testimony of the Lord to shine brightly, and allow the will of God to be accomplished in our midst.
By the strength of God, Joshua brought the people into Canaan. They conquered Canaan as their inheritance, brought in a glorious age, and were a testimony for the Lord.
Today, we need to do the same and enter into the fullness of Christ. The more we enter into His fullness, the more we can live out Christ.
In this way, we become a good testimony for our Lord. The purpose of spiritual warfare is to allow the church to manifest the testimony of Christ.
This is something that is living. It is not a doctrine.
May the Lord touch us in our spirit and show us how to fight the good fight, that before His return, wherever we are, we can have this overcoming experience by the Lamb.
May the testimony of our Lord shine brightly everywhere, that all the lamps would be lit, and that the glorious testimony of Christ would be restored in our generation.
Let us bow for a closing word of prayer.
Lord, by the Spirit of truth, we ask that You would bring us into reality, that all who have heard Your Word, that Your Word would become experience and would become our strength.
Lord, in this fierce battle, may we fight the good fight. May there be soldiers for Christ in every location.
In this battlefield, may we be victorious and give all the glory to You. May You work in us.
We thank You for Your presence, and we give You all the thanksgiving and praise. We pray in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.