So John chapter 15 verse 5, the very end of the verse is the phrase we want to use. The Lord in the passage is talking about the true vine and the necessity that we have of being connected to Him. Empowerment, we could talk about all of that, but there's a phrase in here at the end of verse five where he says, for without me, ye can do nothing. Without me, ye can do nothing. As we think about 2025, that's what we're thinking about. As 2024 draws to a close, what kind of year has it been for you? Now, I'm sure for some of us, we would say 2024 was a great year. For some, we might say, well, it was an okay year. In terms of life and the happenings of life, there are good and there is bad. But whatever this year's tone, New Year's Day brings hope, doesn't it? I mean, we acknowledge that calendars are man-made in the sense that when we say it's the year 2024, what are we measuring from? Well, we're measuring from the time of Christ. What part of the time of Christ? Are we measuring from his birth? Well, point of fact, he would have been born probably around 4 BC. I still use those designations, by the way. 4 BC, not 180. So 2024 isn't really even exact in terms of the birth of Christ. Then we would more likely be saying, well, we're ready to go into 2029. We're counting from His birth. We're counting from His death. Well, that's a whole other question. We're not even 2,000 years, strictly speaking, from the time of His death. We're getting close. But it's a designator. We designate the calendar for time. And so when we think of 2024 to 2025, there's nothing magical about a calendar. It just helps us to gauge time because we are creatures who live in time and we live a linear line in time. And so, for us, it's all about a date when we were born, a date when we will die if the Lord tarries, and then dates that fit in the middle. You know, everything that happened, all the major events, all the anniversaries and birthdays and everything else. It's a convenience, nothing wrong with it. But I say that simply to say that when we say that 2025, New Year's Day, brings hope, it isn't because, oh boy, it's a new year, and that means everything's different. Wednesday is no different than Tuesday in terms of a day. It's just a day. But it brings hope in the sense that you and I have a chance for a fresh start, a new beginning. It's a chance for us to evaluate our lives and determine what about the new year? What went well in 2024? Some things were out of my control. Some things weren't out of my control. What could I do different in 2025? The point I'm making is there's nothing magical about January 1st. other than the reality that it gives us a time of the year to pause, to consider our lives, and to consider what we should do differently in 2025. If anything, I'm saying you have to have resolutions, as we call them, but it is a time that we can consider and if we want to make a change, it's a convenient time for us to do that. Now the average person, you know, when they make resolutions, by the end of the first couple of weeks, most people have dropped them off. Some people are more hearty and can make it to the end of January. Very few go beyond that and actually make you know, drastic changes in life. But, it's an opportunity. There is hope. And that brings us back here to John chapter 15 and verse 5, because the challenge that I want to make is what our Lord says here at the end of that verse when He says, for without Me, ye can do nothing. Whatever 20-25 holds, it is relative to our connection to Him. through our walking with him. We could take this morning's message about dedication to the Lord and make that application practically. Whatever I need to do differently in 2025, I cannot do alone. I need the Lord's help. So with that in mind, let's ask the Lord to bless our Sunday school time today. Father, I thank you for the opportunity that we have to spend these moments together in this Sunday school class. I pray that it would be a fruitful time for us, a beneficial time I pray, Lord, that you would use this to challenge our hearts as we close out 2024, as we begin 2025, that we take advantage of the opportunity offered to evaluate and to make changes that might be necessary. May the Holy Spirit direct us in determining what changes we might need to make, and may he empower us to make those changes. Lord, thank you for your care and provision. Thank you for this time we have together. We'll seek to honor you through it as we pray this in Christ's name. All right, so when we think about resolutions, New Year's resolutions, what is a resolution? Well, it's a pledge or a promise to yourself or to God that you will personally be different this year. There's some aspect of your life that will be different. What might that be? Well, that depends on where you are in life. Do you need to be a better husband? Do you need to be a better wife? Do you need to be a better parent? Do you need to be a better child? Do you need to be a better employee? Some area of your life, just that I want to walk with the Lord more closely, that I want to be dedicated to Him more so than I have been. Some suggested New Year's resolutions that each of us should consider for ourselves. I'm just gonna suggest some things here this morning. But before I do that, some cautionary thoughts about resolutions. The story is told at the beginning of a new year, a high school principal decided to post his teacher's New Year's resolutions on the bulletin board. As the teachers gathered around the bulletin board, a great commotion started because one of the teachers began to complain. Why aren't my resolutions posted? She was throwing such a temper tantrum that the principal hurried to his office to see if he had overlooked her resolutions. Sure enough, he had mislaid them on his desk. Happens, right? As he read her resolutions, however, he was astounded because her first resolution was this, not to let little things upset me in the new year. I think she had a little work to do on that one. A son called his parents to wish them a Happy New Year. And when his dad answered the phone, he asked his dad, Dad, what's your New Year's resolution? His dad replied, to make your mother as happy as I can all year. Aw, I thought somebody would say aw. His mom, when she got on the phone, he asked her the same question. His mom replied, my resolution is to see that your dad keeps his resolution. Okay, Calvin and Hobbes, you're familiar with Calvin and Hobbes, right? I guess I did put these on the screen. Hobbes once said, God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I'm so far behind I'll never die. Well, if only it worked that way, right? It doesn't really work that way. But with that in mind, here's the challenge that I want to place before us this morning. Give a new year resolution one more try. And by that, I simply mean each of us has probably at some point in our lives made a resolution. I don't know what it was. Maybe it's to lose some weight. Maybe it's to read your Bible more effectively or more faithfully in a new year, whatever it might have been. Whatever that resolution may have been, if you're like most people, that's all it ever was. It was a good intention, and we all have good intentions, but it's not an intention you followed through with. I'm suggesting that if that's true, that if there is some area of your life that you knew you should have addressed in 2024, let's say, and you started out well-intentioned, but it just didn't happen, don't just give up. Don't say, well, I tried, and it's just not gonna happen. Realize that it is a team effort. Now what do I mean by a team effort? Simply this, invite the Holy Spirit to join you in that resolution this year. Because I think here's what happens from a Christian perspective. From a worldly perspective, okay, it is what it is. But from a Christian perspective, hopefully our resolutions are somehow grounded in biblical principle, right? Whatever it might be, whether it's, you know, taking better care of myself physically or being a better spouse or whatever it might be, there's some biblical principle that I need to make application up to my life. And I'm well-intentioned to do it, but how often have we set out to do something we know that God would have us to do, and we failed, and we failed simply because we didn't really ask God to help us. Now, we prayed, you know, Lord, help me to do this this year, but we really did not live every day in dependence upon Him, acknowledging that we could not do it alone. Consider the disciples. They face a new day. I mean, when you come to John chapter 15, you know, things don't look really great. I mean, they're confused. Judas is left to go and betray the Lord Jesus. He has told them that he's going to die. Peter has spoken up and said, hey, these guys, they might turn and leave you. I'm not going to turn. I'll die with you. And Jesus says, you're going to deny me three times before morning, Peter. I mean, they're confused. They don't understand. They came that week, began with such a high note, right? The triumphal entry on Sunday, and it's like, wow, this is great. He's finally going to do it. And then suddenly everything takes a turn over the course of the next few days and he's talking about being betrayed and going to his death and they just don't understand that their circumstances in some sense is dire because They don't realize what's going on. Their hopes are crushed because they want Him to be king, right? Even, what had they been doing in John chapter 13 around the events of the Last Supper? Do you remember? What conversation did they have? Their conversation was, which of us is going to be the greatest in the kingdom of God next to Jesus? I mean, the night before he died, hours before the crucifixion, this is what they're talking about? How have they missed what he's been telling them over and over and over and increasingly so as they got to that night? That he was going to Jerusalem to die. And somehow they heard what they wanted to hear Are we guilty of that sometimes? We hear what we want to hear. You know, those of us who are parents, sometimes we feel like that with our children, that we tell them things and they only hear what they want to hear and conveniently they don't remember us saying anything about, you know, taking out the trash or whatever it might be. Human nature. Well, these are adult men. but they're following that same trait. They've heard what they wanted to hear. They disregarded what they didn't want to hear. And here Jesus is saying, you know, this is what's going to happen. And, you know, I'm going to be betrayed and I'm going to die. And they don't want to hear that. Their dreams are shattered because they want him to be the king, not talk about dying. So they're assembled in that room. knowing what needed to be done but lacking the power and desire to carry it out. And so it's interesting that in that context, of course we're talking the upper room in that last sentence, in the book of Acts, at chapter 1, they've gathered in the upper room after the ascension of Christ. They just don't understand. And then verse 2, And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. They're in doubt and then the Holy Spirit enters the picture. The Holy Spirit powerfully enters their lives and they become bold preachers of the gospel. This is the same Holy Spirit that our Lord spoke of in John chapter 14, verse 26. When He said, But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." The Holy Spirit was promised. And in chapter 2 of Acts, we see that He comes. New Year's resolutions cannot be successful apart from God. Now, I hope I'm not straining passage too much here. I'm trying to take a point out of it without... We understand Acts chapter 2, the day of Pentecost. This is what we call the birth of the church and a momentous occasion, to say the least. But just trying to see it from the standpoint of these men and where they would have been psychologically, if you will, how confused, how concerned, how they didn't really know how Jesus had told them what was going to happen even here in Acts 2, what did he said in chapter 1 verse 8? You know, tarry here until the Holy Ghost comes upon you and then you're going to be witnesses to me everywhere. He's going to empower you to be a witness to me around the world, starting in Jerusalem and then spreading out from there around the world. But they had no real sense of what that meant. They had certain knowledge, they had experience you and I don't have, but it is still a state of confusion that they are in. And then we see that phrase that we began with, apart from me, you can do nothing. The reality is they could not change the world with the spirit at the end of Acts chapter 1. They're in the upper room, they cast their lots, they choose Matthias to replace Judas. I mean, they're going through some motions, they're doing some things. But it isn't until the Holy Spirit comes in chapter two that they really begin an impactful ministry for the Lord Jesus. Thousands of people get saved. The church is formed. Yes, there are some bad days coming. James, the brother of John, will be a martyr in very short order. Peter thinks he's following suit, and the Lord saves him with an angel. So there are a lot of events that are going to happen through the chapters in Acts. But here's the bottom line that I'm driving at for us and trying to extrapolate from it. They could do nothing in their own strength, as well-intentioned as they might have been at the end of Acts chapter one, they needed the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish what God would have them to accomplish. And what I'm trying to say for you and me is, if we're going to accomplish what God would have us to accomplish in 2025, it isn't our good intentions that will matter. It is the empowering of the Holy Spirit who not only helps us to determine what those intentions should be, but who then empowers us to accomplish them. And with that in mind, let me just share a few things with you here this morning. I don't intend to dig too deeply here. It's more of a devotional challenge, I hope. But here's the first one, and you know this, right? I don't really need to say it, but then again, it needs to be said. Find time for God. Build that personal relationship with the Lord. Find time to be with Him. In the course of each day, creatively spend time with God. Now, why would it be important to have that word creatively there? Because it's not gonna work the same for us. We're all different, we have different schedules, we have different responsibilities, and so it's not a cookie cutter in the sense that I say, okay, if you do A, B, and C, you got it. Because A, B, and C may not work for you. But what I am saying is, consider the ultimate goal, to spend time with God. to build that personal relationship. That 2025 will be a year for you whereby the grace of God, you spend every day seeking to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. And that may not be measurable in the sense that come the end of the first week of January, you can look back and say, wow, I can see such a difference any more than you can look at a young child. And from week to week, do we see a difference? But what happens, you know, Jan was looking at some pictures yesterday of Abby. And she held a picture up to me. She didn't say who it was. And I'm looking at the picture afraid to really say, because, you know, I'm... It didn't just jump off the page, oh, that's Abby. I had to look at it a little bit to realize, oh, that little kid is... Wow, she has changed. Yeah, she has. And that's the same with spiritual growth. That growth that she has had through the years is not something that I can look at Abby tomorrow and say, oh, look, I can see she's changed from yesterday. But a year from now, wow, look how Abby's changed. That's true for all of us individually as we've grown, true for our children, grandchildren, but here's the reality that I'm driving at. It's not a question of whether I can measure it week by week, and if I don't see any change in the first two weeks, then it's just not worth it. Faithfully stick with it. And you will see a change. Over time, you will see how the Lord will use that time in your life to help you. Where in your day can you make an appointment to spend with Jesus? Where in your day can you do that? Maybe some of you are morning people. See, this is why I said it's not cookie cutter. You know, there are some people that I've heard, some preachers that I've heard, that make other people feel bad because they'll make statements like, if you can't get up at five o'clock in the morning to spend time with the Lord, then you are. And I think, you're just, this is too pharisaical. You have to get up at five o'clock in the morning. Some people can do that and function well. Not everybody can. But okay, you might not be able to then, but when can you? The point is, it may not be five o'clock in the morning, but there's some time in the day that you can give to the Lord, even if it is at night, because you're a night person. And so you spend that time in the evening commuting with the Lord. Whatever it might be, my challenge is, make that time happen. Start with a short amount of time. Again, this is nothing new, right? We've touched on this in the past. Start with a short amount of time. Use the exercise principle. You know, some may have a resolution that, you know, I'm gonna exercise more in 2025. Wonderful. But you have to work your way up if you exercise, right? I mean, if you decide I'm going to run a marathon in 2025, And Wednesday afternoon, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna start preparing for the marathon and let's see, 26 miles, I think I can do that. What's gonna happen before the end of Wednesday? If I don't have a heart attack, I'm gonna have to be calling for somebody to come and get me because I can't breathe. You have to build up to that, right? It may be if I wanna run a marathon that the first thing I need to do is run a quarter mile. So wait a minute, that's really a small proportion, that's true, but I have to build my way up. And what I'm saying is, when it comes to spending time with the Lord, you will make a mistake if you haven't been doing this regularly, you will make a mistake if the first thing you do is say, I'm gonna read my Bible for an hour every day. Unless you are the aberration, the norm will be, you have good intentions, but you're gonna end up not spending an hour reading your Bible throughout the year 2025 because it's gonna become cumbersome to you. But could you do five minutes? Oh, that's not enough. You know, five minutes is more than zero. So do five minutes. And then as this becomes more comfortable and it becomes more of a, I use the word habit, It becomes a part of your routine. Then you can say, you know, maybe I can double that and do 10 minutes. Now how long should it take you to go from 5 to 10? I'm not going to give you a time period because it depends on you. But the point is, you need God's help to do that. that you can't just simply say, Lord, I'm gonna start reading my Bible, and then you set out to do it, and you forget that every day you have to say, Lord, help me to stick with what I know is important. Help me to spend that time every day. If you spend an hour exercising in the beginning, you will be too sore to exercise. You need to pace yourself. Jesus would rather meet with you for one minute a day than 20 minutes once a year. That's the point. So it may not seem like much, but I'm not here to guilt you into saying, how many of you are gonna read your Bible for a half hour every day starting Wednesday morning? Because that will do you no good service. It'll just guilt you. I'm challenging you to say, Lord, help me to seek your face. And part of that is I need to have my nose in the book. God help me. Help me to give you that, even if it's five minutes, help me to give it to you and help me to put it in my schedule. So that it's not a, I intend to do it because, you know, we're all gonna get around to it, right? And that's a nice sticker to have on your refrigerator that we all chuckle about, oh look, around to it. But at the end of the day, you have to make it something important. And by the grace of God, you set a time for it. Number two, trying not to beat a dead horse. Number two, be active in the church's worship and Bible studies. Again, does it need to be said? But it has to be said. This means you should come to church. Don't just come on Sunday morning or once a month or a year and expect personal growth. That's the point. Do you really want to grow in the Lord? Then you need to take advantage of the opportunities. You need to worship with God's people and you need to be involved in other opportunities of Bible study. Why do we have Sunday school or dig classes? I mean, wouldn't it be a lot easier if we start church early at 9.30? Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we just said, hey, you know what? We're gonna finish by 11 o'clock. Some of you can be home. Others can be on their way home. Man, that'd be great if it was that convenient. Is it about convenience? We have to make it important. Why do we have Bible study on Wednesday night? I know many of you work with teens or in clubs. You are engaged in ministry. But what are we trying to do on Wednesday night Bible study? Well, we're just trying to provide a place for parents. When they bring their kids, they can also... No, it is intended for a really important purpose. We're studying God's Word together. There are other opportunities, the ladies have opportunities where they get together, they have their mentoring program and other things the ladies do. The guys, you know, we, last year some of you and I set out to meet once a week and work through a book together. Because I enjoyed meeting you at nine o'clock at night. No, but because it was important that we spend time and even if that's what we had to do, It's important that we do that. That's why we have the men's services once a month. That's why we have the ladies' services once a month. These are all activities that are intended to provide opportunities for us to study God's Word together. I'm not saying you can do every one of those. And there are other obligations that you may have, but I am saying that it ought to be something important to us. In order to become all that we can be, we need each other. You need your brothers and sisters in Christ. You need to spend time with your brothers and sisters in Christ. We can fellowship in small group Bible studies, Sunday school, other Bible studies, but choose to study God's word within a group. Yes, read it on your own. But you know, there's something to be said when, just using this as an example, when the guys and I would meet, we were typically doing it on a Thursday night, and we would talk. Everybody had a chance to say something. What about this chapter? What did you think about this verse? What did you think about this point? We're just discussing it. It's not a, how did you get that out of there? It was intended for us to sharpen each other. Iron sharpens iron. And when we spend time together, we have an opportunity to sharpen each other in the Lord. So the point I'm making is, it is important that we spend this time together. An illustration. Here's a letter that was written to a pastor. Now, I'm not gonna tell you this is actually real. You know, a lot of illustrations we find and we say, it'd be interesting if that really happened, but I don't know a time or a place, but it's purported to be a letter. Alright, I'll let that stand for itself. Dear Pastor, you often stress attendance at worship as being very important for a Christian, but I think a person has a right to miss now and then. I think every person ought to be excused for the following reasons and the number of times indicated. Christmas holidays, the Sunday before and after, that's two. New Year's, well, you know, the party lasts too long, so that's one. Easter, well, you know, you gotta get away for the holidays, so it's either the one before and Easter or Easter and the one after, but it's two. Memorial Day, well, you know, I have family visiting, so that's one. School closing, you know, the kids need a break. There's another one. School reopens. Well, it's our last opportunity for the summer. There's another one. Family reunions. Well, there's mine and there's my wife's and, you know, combined there's at least three Sundays we're gonna miss. Sleeping late. You know, sometimes you just can't get up. So I think we ought to have at least nine a year that we can just choose, you know, this is one of my nine that I'm just gonna skip. Death in the family, okay. Anniversary, well, you know, you have to have a second honeymoon. Sickness, well, you know, we're all gonna get sick and I think, you know, even at work, you have so many days for sickness, right? So I think we ought to have five Sundays that we can just, you know, this is one of my six Sundays. I went golfing, but still one of my six Sundays. Business trips, one. Vacation, well, three to four weeks a year, so there's six. Bad weather, two. Well, probably not in western New York. Ball games, well, yeah, come on. Races, NASCAR. Unexpected company, you can't just leave them at home alone. Time change, have you ever tried to get up when you lose an hour sleep the night before? I don't know why they include the one though where you gain an hour. It seems like, you know, but okay. Special days like Super Bowl Sunday. Here's the bottom line, pastor that leaves two Sundays per year. So you can count on us to be at church on the fourth Sunday in February and the third Sunday in August unless we're providentially hindered. Sincerely, a faithful church member. Okay, a little tongue-in-cheek there perhaps, but you get the point. If we want to find a reason why, we can find a reason why. Reasons that would not work for our place of employment, but after all, it's just church. And it adds up, doesn't it? It adds up. Number three. So you miss out on, by not risking getting involved. Number three, put an undesirable habit, addiction, sin, you name it, in the hands of God. So this is the last one. Too many of us start here with resolutions. We try to treat a symptom without addressing the root cause. So what I'm simply trying to drive at here is, There are times when we know there's something that needs to change, but we're not really addressing the real problem. If we're going to abide in Christ in that passage in John 15 where he says, you can do nothing without me, that's the point of the passage. We have to abide in Christ. The word is minnow. Interesting word there about abiding. We think of minnows as being little fish, right? I kind of get that picture in my mind that that little minnow can be eaten by a lot of bigger animals, right? Well, you and I, even though the word isn't really minnow fish, you and I must stay close to Him. We must abide in Him in order to be protected from those bigger fish or bigger animals that would eat us up if we aren't careful. So to abide in Him, we have to invite the Holy Spirit to walk with us, we have to seek to walk in the Spirit, and we can only have hope of making needed changes with His help. And that means we have to ask, what is the real problem? Is the real problem that I'm overeating because that's the problem, or is it that I haven't There could be some other issue, right? I need to recognize what is the problem. I can't change myself is the point. You will always try to quit and you will almost always fail. You can't change by yourself. You need the powerful presence of God. But here's what I'm driving at as we come to the close of our time here. We have this hope because we do have the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And if a resolution that I'm making really is something important, then can I not trust that God can help me overcome that particular thing? And I think the answer is obvious. We can because that's part of what we would call sanctification. If there's an area of life that I need to change, then the Lord can help me change it. If you want to change, start by building your personal relationship with Christ, and then let God begin to cause you to hunger for change, to thirst for righteousness. Hope that makes sense. What I'm saying is, in a vacuum, you might know you need to do something, and you may be well-intentioned, and you've done it in the past, and you just can't follow through. But what needs to happen first is drawing near to God. And the promise is, if we draw nigh to Him, what will He do? He'll draw nigh to us. Right? So the first thing I need to do if I know there's something in my life that I need to address, I need to make sure I'm drawing near to God. Hence my personal time with Him. Hence my time with God's people. Because we need each other and we need to have those godly relationships where there are people who care enough about us to tell us if we're kind of drifting in a bad direction, right? We need that. And then we need, yielding ourselves to God, to recognize that God himself will create within us a hunger for righteousness. So in 2025, make it a year where you place it all into the ever-capable hands of our God. Let God make a difference in your life. Don't just set out on your own and say, well, I think that this year I'm going to, say by the grace of God, and mean it that way, this year I'm going to address a certain area in my life, but it begins with my drawing near to him. Let me close with a poem entitled, The New Year. I am the new year. I am an unspoiled page in your book of time. I am your next chance at the art of living. I am your opportunity to practice what you have learned about life during the last 12 months. All that you sought and didn't find is hidden in me, waiting for you to search it, but with more determination. All the good that you tried for and didn't achieve is mine to grant when you have fewer conflicting desires. All that you dreamed but didn't dare to do, all that you hoped but did not will, all the faith that you claimed but did not have, these slumber lightly, waiting to be awakened by the touch of a strong purpose. I am your opportunity to renew your allegiance to Him who said, Behold, I make all things new. You can do nothing without me. The new year is a chance, is an opportunity to evaluate where you are in your walk with the Lord and say, Lord, help me in 2025 to walk more closely with you. Whatever changes you need to make, if you walk, if you are seeking to walk closely with him, he will, over the course of the year, help you find those areas in your life that should be addressed. But don't seek to do it, don't seek to make changes if you're not first seeking to draw near to Him. That's really the gist of the challenge today. Opportunities? Great. Resolutions? Wonderful. Most importantly, draw near to the Lord. Make that commitment by His grace to do what you know is necessary. Spend time with Him. and take advantage of opportunities to fellowship with God's people, communing in the Word of God, and just wait to see what God does. Wait to see the changes He brings into your life. I guarantee you, if you set out this year by the grace of God to do this and you allow the Spirit of God to work in your heart, next year you'll be sitting here looking back at 2025 and you will say, wow, look at what God has done in my life. God is good. Let's close in prayer. Father, I thank you for this opportunity to think through this challenge about the new year, about the idea of resolutions, the idea of making changes. Ultimately, Father, I hope that we will come away with the challenge of recognizing that whatever we might in this time of year recognize that we need to address, that we do not address it in a vacuum alone, that it isn't incumbent upon us by ourselves to make a change, that that change can only be accomplished as you empower us and encourage us and as we walk in the spirit and that ultimately the most important thing we can do this year is to draw near to you, to spend time working on our relationship with you and allowing the Spirit of God to do His work in our hearts as we draw near to you in Scripture. And Lord, as we do that, I am convinced that through the power of the Spirit, through the Word of God, you will mold and shape us into the image of Christ and whatever changes we may need to make. will come about as a result of our time with you. So bless us, encourage these folks as we complete this last Sunday morning in 2024 together. Lord, we look forward not only to the next few days, the turning of the calendar, we look forward to all that you will bring into our lives in the year to come. We thank you as we pray this in Christ's name and for his. Amen.