Daniel 2 - Integration Over Segmentation
Tom Shrader continues the Daniel series by examining how Daniel handled King Nebuchadnezzar's impossible demand to reveal and interpret his dream without being told what it was. When the king threatened to execute all wise men, Daniel requested time, gathered his friends to pray, and received the dream through God's revelation. Shrader emphasizes that our faith should be personal but not private, and that our relationship with Christ is our strongest asset in the marketplace, not a liability to hide.
“Our God is not a distant God who's disconnected who wound all this up and then stood back just to see what would happen but our God is an intimate God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Integrity Under Fire (2013)
Recorded: November 07, 2013
Duration: 39 min
Themes: integrity, prayer, faith, courage, friendship, wisdom, witness, persecution, workplace pressures, young adult, facing persecution, compromising beliefs, hostile environment, professional, new believer, peer pressure
Scripture: Daniel 1, Daniel 2, Romans 12:2, John 17
Theological Themes: revelation, divine guidance, spiritual warfare, worldliness, sanctification, biblical authority, providence, discipleship
Full Transcript
Today, week two. If you have your Bibles, you can open them to the book of Daniel. We're going to spend six weeks on the topic "Integrity Under Fire," and the subtitle that really comes into play today is "Principles for Living in a Hostile Environment."
Last week we were introduced to the guys who, humanly speaking, will be our main characters: Daniel and his friends that we know as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar in 605 BC. The king has taken these guys captive and orders his chief of officials—in a sense, his chief of staff—to get these young guys.
He describes them for us in verse 4 of chapter 1: There's no defect in them. They're good looking. They're intelligent in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding, discerning, and knowledge. They had the ability for serving in the king's court, and he ordered the official to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans.
The King's Strategic Plan
Nebuchadnezzar looks around and says good help is hard to find. He looks at these guys and they have potential. They're young men—that word would be used to describe guys probably 14, 15, 16 years old. They've got the right resume, right pedigree. They've demonstrated some capacity to learn and discern. They've got a little common sense in them.
Nebuchadnezzar says we want to use these guys, maximize them for our benefit, but we can't use them until they become one of us. The idea here is assimilation. We're going to assimilate them into our culture, our language, ultimately into our worldview so they begin to see the world as we see it.
We camped last week on a passage I go back to over and over again: Romans chapter 12 verse 2, where Paul tells us don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Some of the paraphrases are really helpful. The Living says don't copy the behavior of the world. The Message says don't become so well adjusted to the world that you fit into it without even trying.
The Danger of Cultural Conformity
It's the idea of the frog in the kettle. You're around a cultural climate, and all of a sudden, even though it's contrary perhaps to what you think or believe, after a period of time you just become part of it. Phillips says—and I like this because there's action in it—don't let the world squeeze you into its mold, but be remolded from the inside out.
That's the tension we feel. Jesus set it up for us the night before He was killed in John 17, when He prayed, "Father, as You sent Me into the world, I send them into the world." That becomes the tension for us: we're living in this world with a dual passport.
Here's somebody who comes to Christ, who's converted as an adult. After a period of time, your friendship circle starts to change. All of a sudden, those people who you interacted with at the club or you'd see them at various places—well, all of a sudden those people are viewed as not followers of Christ, and you begin to circle yourself with men and women who generally speaking agree with what you believe.
Integration Over Segmentation
For us, the word Christian becomes an adjective rather than a noun. But Jesus said, "Father, like You sent Me into the world incarnationally, I want to send them into the world." He's saying to us we are engaged in the world around us. We represent Christ there. You become salt and light. You become a display case for His great works.
Today the idea is what we've called integration over segmentation. Last week we said here's my conviction: When they're challenged, what do I do? Intuitively we think of two alternatives. One's to cave in, which doesn't sound good—that doesn't look good on your resume. Two is to fight, but now I'm dying on every hill. But we saw in Daniel chapter 1 that there's this capacity to find a win-win situation, which means I have to know what I believe. I have to listen to the people around me, and the best I can without giving up conviction, I am trying to find that win-win.
Faith: Personal But Not Private
Today the basic principle is this: our faith is a personal matter but not a private matter. Deeply personal, but for me to keep it to myself is not an option.
I was raised Catholic—grade school, high school, college. Growing up, I just watched two hours of John Kennedy material last night. John Kennedy was this iconic figure, and he's running for president when early on the issue emerges. Remember what it was? He's Catholic, and the common thought was if he gets elected president, the Pope's going to run the country.
There was a time where John Kennedy went to Houston. He met with a group and did a Q&A—very engaging if you go back and look at this—of Protestant pastors. His whole point was the Pope's not going to run the country, and he said, "I won't let my faith affect the way that I'm president."
I remember as a boy not understanding the full implications of that but thinking that seems odd, because all the nuns and priests since I can remember have told me that because I have this Catholic faith, I should live in a certain way.
The Challenge of Compartmentalization
You and I are in this situation. Imagine you go to Scottsdale Bible Church, and you're interviewing. You're back at work on Monday, and a guy comes in. "You look familiar. Do I know you from the gym?" "No, no." "I remember—up at Silverleaf, Scottsdale Bible, you're up at Silverleaf?" "No, do I know you from somewhere?" "No, I know you go to Scottsdale..."
The Interview Question That Changes Everything
At Bible Church, someone once said to me, "Yes, I love it there. I love the teaching." But then imagine if during a job interview, when asked about your faith, you responded, "If you hire me, those core beliefs won't affect how I work for you at all." There's a giant disconnect there. I want to move beyond seeing faith as merely a personal matter and recognize that it's not only meant to be lived out publicly—not in an obnoxious way—but it's also the strongest asset you have in the marketplace.
Nebuchadnezzar's New Policy
With that background, let's pick up Daniel chapter 2. It's the second year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. He gave orders in verse 2 to call in the magicians, the conjurers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king, and the king said to them, "I had a dream. My spirit is anxious"—the NIV says "my spirit is troubled"—"to understand the dream."
Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king and said, "O king, live forever! Tell the dream to your servants, and we'll declare the interpretation." That had been the standard operating procedure to this point.
But verse 5 shows the king replied with something different: "This is what I firmly decided: if you don't tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I'll have you cut into pieces and your house will be turned into piles of rubble. But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me great gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me."
The Stakes Couldn't Be Higher
He said, "This is a new policy. In the past, I give you the dream, you give me the interpretation." There used to be a show on Saturday nights—in my routine, because I taught on Sunday, I'd go to bed fairly early and turn on talk radio. There was nothing on but this show where a guy would connect you to "the other side." People would call in, and he'd say, "I'm getting a hard C. Christy? Charlie? Kathy? Surgery? I'm sensing a surgery. A problem with your hand?" When they'd say no, he'd respond, "This isn't a very good night for you." I'd think, "No, it's not a very good night for you."
It's way easier if somebody calls in and says, "Here's my problem. What should I do?" But the king changed the rules. And by the way, "cut into pieces"—what they would do is tie down each arm and each leg and then sever them. The motivation level couldn't be higher at this point.
The Astrologers' Response
The astrologers had a conversation. Look at verse 10: they answered the king and said, "Here's the truth: there's not a man on earth who can do what the king asks. Beyond that, no king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of a magician or enchanter or astrologer. What the king asked is too difficult."
Verse 11 is crucial: "No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they don't live among men." Their theological view was polytheistic—there were many gods who'd morphed over time, seen as elements like the god of sun, fire, and wind, and later they'd get names. But their view of God was that He was distant and removed. He doesn't live among men.
Our God Is Not Distant
I was teaching at a family camp, and the music guy before me violated basic principles—music guys should sing, teaching guys should teach—but he wanted to teach. He said, "I'm going to sing a song. Some of you aren't going to like it. You're not going to like the theology. Every time I sing it, I get pushback." Then he sang that Bette Midler song "God Is Watching Us from a Distance."
I thought of this passage and how grateful I am that our God is not a distant God who's disconnected, who wound all this up and then stood back just to see what would happen. Our God is an intimate God.
Objective Truth vs. Subjective Preferences
He's objective truth, and we always illustrate this through temperature. If I say right now, "Is anybody cold?" there are always a few voices that say yes. Ladies are often cold, others say it's hot, and someone always says "it's just right." We understand that's subjective truth.
An objective truth would be this: two plus two equals three. No. Five? At that point we say, "When did you graduate from the U of A?" We work through that because it's not five, it's not three—with great confidence we can say it's four, and you are wrong.
Now we come to God and bring that subjective mentality: "This is what I want God to be. This is what I want God to do." Rather than understanding that God is what He said I am, we can discover Him in a general way through creation—we can see His power and might—but if I want to know who God is, I've got to be reading this book because this is how He reveals Himself to me.
The Personal God We Serve
When I come to Him, I don't see He's a distant God. I see that He's a personal God. "The Lord is my shepherd"—I can have an intimate relationship with Him. In spite of the fact that there are seven billion of us on the planet, He keeps track of every little thing.
It's early, but I talked to Jamie yesterday just to see how things were going, and I told him—I rarely do this—"I'm already working on what I want to talk about at Scottsdale Bible Church." He said, "Wow, that's alarming." I said, "I know, but I read this the other day. I don't know that it's true and I don't know how you'd verify it, but..."
A gentleman said that the average teenager today has the same stress level as a psychiatric patient in 1950. I don't know how you can measure it, but it preaches well so we'll assume it's true. Here's what I know: stress is a big deal. Uncertainty is a big deal. Markets up, markets down. You have it in a micro view, you have it in a macro view, you have it in your individual lives. Relationships up and down. Life has this uncertainty.
What's my anchor in the midst of this? My anchor has always been that I trust in the character of God and the promises of God and the faithfulness of God and the sovereignty of God. I need to know who He is. If I'm going to put my faith and trust in Him, that faith is going to grow deeper and stronger the more intimately I walk with Him and frankly the more I see Him work in my life. To a point where He doesn't owe me an answer for everything.
It's funny—I never say "God, where were you when the deal closes?" but I do tend to say "Where were you when the accident happened?" That's that 9-11 syndrome. Where was He on 9-11? Same place He was on 9-10 and 9-12: on the throne. I don't fully understand it.
The Limits of Our Understanding
I will tell you from my experience, and hopefully this isn't intellectual shallowness—I don't think it is—from my experience, when I try to explain those whys is when I get myself into theological trouble. There was a book written years ago, and the title was "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?" I think it's chapter seven—I could be wrong on it—where the author's writing out of a real hurt in his life, and the title is "God cannot do everything, but He can do some very important things."
Let me go through the list again: we trust in His character and His promises and His faithfulness and His sovereignty. Our God is not a distant God, but they see it that way. This is what the kings decided, and they accurately say, "Nobody's going to be able to do this."
Look at verse 14, still in chapter 2: "The chief of the commander of the king's guard had gone out to put to death the wise men." That's the ramifications of this. "And he spoke to Daniel with wisdom and tact. And Daniel asked the king's officer, 'Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?' And he began to explain the matter to Daniel, and Daniel went into the king and asked for time so that he might interpret the dream for him."
Practical Lessons from Daniel's Response
There's some theological truth in here, but the rest of the way I'm just going to give you one practical thing after another. First of all, look at the courage. Here's this young man, probably 16 or 17 years old, who goes into the king and says, "I need time"—obviously not in an arrogant way.
The second thing is Daniel looks at time as his ally here, not as his enemy. So often we talk about the shortage of time, but time can be your friend. I mentioned to you a couple weeks ago I don't do anything around the house that's fix-up stuff, but I watch Home and Garden. I don't know why. And I don't cook, but I watch cooking channels, and my favorite is Paula Deen because Paula's answer is sugar, a pound of sugar, two cans of cream cheese, chocolate—and that's just for the turkey. That's just to get the turkey started. She's killed more people than died in the Civil War.
But the guy that was hot a few years ago was Emeril. Bam! And I'm watching Emeril one night, and he's doing his thing, and he said, "Here's where everybody makes a mistake. Everybody at this point takes the meat out right now, and you need two more minutes in there. What that's going to do is get a crust on there that's going to seal in those juices, and you're going to have the juiciest meat you've ever had."
Our flinch in terms of tough times is to cut and run too quick, I think. So you're sitting at Starbucks talking to a friend, they're sharing with you the issues they're facing in their life, and you're immediately trying to figure out, "How do I fix this? What's the answer to this?" Rather than asking, "How did I get into this, and what's God teaching me?" Time can be my friend. I used to have a saying that I'd rather make a fast bad decision than a slow good one. After about a decade of bad fast decisions, I realized we could go a little slower. Somehow Daniel, as this young man, gets it.
The Power of Community in Crisis
Look at verses 17 and 18. This is easy to miss. "Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon."
Here's the obvious: Daniel's not saying, "Oh, this doesn't alarm me." He said, "No, I don't want to be killed." He returns home—again, I think easily missed, but to me a big deal—he doesn't have to call together a group to pray for him. They're already in place.
You need in your life this group—and I don't think it's a big group, I mean this is a group of four—where your custom and your habit on some level is to meet regularly to live life and talk life together. I wrote here: not necessarily an accountability group. I've watched a lot of those, and it's like set somebody in the middle and then it's like Seinfeld and Festivus, airing your grievances. It's not that. It's not "here's what you don't do." It's living life together, praying together, eating together, watching games together, because those moments are going to come when you're going to need them. They're going to know you and they're going to know how you respond, and they're going to be able to give you solid advice.
You weren't designed to go this alone. It's the nature of a lot of people because relationships and groups—that's sloppy. I used to think that a lot of people didn't have friends for a variety of reasons, and then I landed on one of the reasons we don't have a lot of friends is not that they won't call, but that they will call. Now the phone starts to ring at 2 in the
A Relational Foundation for Crisis
Now the phone starts to ring and it's the sloppiness of time and it's living life together. You desperately need to have in your life a person or two. I'm happy if you want to include your spouse in one of those, but I think apart from that - men, if you're men, women if you're women - who know you, who can say "You know what, buddy, I can just see what's going on." Or who sometimes can just look at you and say "You okay?" I hate that. I hate it when somebody says "Are you okay? You don't look very good." Those are not the combination I'm looking for, but they sense it and they know it.
Daniel had this in place. They're there to encourage him when he falls and to watch out for him and now to pray. Daniel returns to this.
Prayer for the Impossible
In verse 18, he pleads for mercy from God because the secular guys told you no man can figure this out. This is going to be a God thing. "Father, we know You, we know Your mercy, we know You can do this." I'm going to guess there's an intensity to that prayer.
Then we see Daniel in verse 19, and during the night the mystery's revealed to Daniel in a vision - literally in a dream. So again, immerse yourself in the story. Here's Daniel understanding if he doesn't get this dream and get it by morning, he'll be killed and interpreted the dream. And Daniel falls asleep.
I don't know what your sleep number is - I don't know if it's 15 or 30 or 50 - but if you know they're going to kill you the next morning if you don't have the interpretation of a dream, I don't know what that is. But Daniel's asleep - not because he doesn't care or not because he doesn't understand it.
Trusting God's Timing and Power
I wrote this - it's clearly not original: "It doesn't make sense for me to do what only God can do, nor does it make sense for me to wait for God to do something I can do." Daniel's acknowledged and says if this doesn't come from You, it isn't going to happen. I don't know how he knows how much to pray. All I know is he's hit what he thinks is his prayer limit, and at this point he's done.
Every Sunday morning at our campus at church at 7:30, the guys who are engaged in Sunday teaching - music leaders - meet in one room and pray. Every week the prayers vary, but they always end the same: "Father, we've rehearsed, we've practiced, we've prepared, we've studied, we've done everything we can do, but if You aren't there, then it's just our effort, and our effort isn't worth much."
Daniel somehow gets comfortable with this and he is asleep. Then Daniel gets this vision - God reveals this to him in a dream.
A Supernatural Response
Look at verse 23, and I may make a bigger thing out of this than it is - I don't think so. Daniel's response I think is supernatural. Daniel awakens in this, and he thanks God, he praises God. "It's the God of my fathers, You've given me wisdom and power, You have made known to me what we asked of You, and You have made known the dream of the King. God, You've done this."
I say supernatural. My natural response would be to rejoice in the answer.
I think my daughter Haley is an interesting gal, and I think I've said it to you before - she could have raised herself. She's an amazing gal. She has four kids now. The flu is ravaging their house right now, and Haley from the time she was a little girl, everything was gross. Bugs were gross, crickets were gross. She's now potty training, so put gross in there. Kids are sick, she is sick.
The Tooth Fairy Illustration
When she lost her first tooth, it was gross. The tooth got loose, started hanging, finally came out, and she said, "I've heard that if you put the tooth under your pillow you get money for it. Is that right?" I don't know. She said, "Well, I want to try that," and I said, "All right."
I had the tooth, and she went in and got a roll of toilet paper and dropped a tooth in it, wrapped it all up, put it in a baggie, squished all the air out because it's going under a pillow - it's gross - went to bed. I don't think much of it. I go in in the night and do my little deal.
The next morning I hear this scream and I hear these feet running down the hallway, and she said, "Dad! Dad! I got five quarters!" I said, "Wow, that's really cool, that's great. Your dad's sleeping." She said, "Dad, I mean, when will the rest of my teeth fall?" I said, "I don't know, honey, they just start to fall out." She left and she came back and she said, "Think about this, Dad - if I lost all my teeth and Sarah lost all her teeth and Mom lost all her teeth and you lost all your teeth, we would be rich!"
Now that's a normal reaction. To me, for Daniel at this point would be able to go "Boys! Boys! Boys!" - the equivalent of the tooth fairy visited me. But he doesn't. He's so in tune and so understanding with God and who He is that that's his natural reaction. He's not stunned that God answered his prayer.
A Mature Faith Response
That little move for us is we pray in the midst of these - we're never surprised if God moves, but we're not disappointed if He doesn't. Because here's what we went back to that we started with: God is God.
Daniel now makes his way to the king. Verse 27: Daniel said, "No wise man, canter, magician, diviner can explain to the king the mystery he's asked about, but there's a God" - look at the difference from earlier. There were gods - there is a God in heaven who reveals mystery. "As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me," verse 30, "now not because I've got greater wisdom than every other living man, but so that you might know" - not for my benefit, but for yours - "there's a God in heaven."
And there's the testimony. There's that same supernatural attitude. Daniel doesn't come in and say it's about me. He says this is about the living God answering your need.
Nebuchadnezzar's Selfish Interest
Here's Nebuchadnezzar who's very excited by this because he's going to have the benefit - in essence, a piece of God - without having any of the responsibility of establishing peace with God. Looking at, to me, the humility - I'll put myself into this. If I'm Daniel at this point, I might have a tendency to walk in and say, "Nebuchadnezzar, can I call you Neb? Because I got this dream, and I'm not saying that God gave it to me because..."
Daniel doesn't even leave that possibility out there. He wants to make sure that everybody in this story and everyone who ever reads this story understands this is about God and His grace and mercy, not about Daniel and his wisdom. It's about God and the character of God.
This is similar to what John the Baptist said when he spoke of Jesus: "He must increase and I must decrease." When Herschel Walker's jersey was retired at the University of Georgia, Herschel said in his acceptance speech in front of the full stadium in Athens, "I achieved all that I achieved through the power of Jesus, not through my power."
It was interesting because my phone started to ring and everybody would say, "Did you see Herschel? Did you see his testimony? Did you see what Herschel did?" Yes I did. But my question is: am I doing the equivalent in my life at those moments where people are asking me about the strength in my life?
God's Glory, Not Our Own
Herschel worked hard. He's not a fool. He didn't leave to God the training that he could do. But he understood that his protection and his abilities are God-given. There's often that undercurrent with incredibly gifted people: "Yes I am brilliant, but God gave it to me. But why wouldn't He look at me? Is He going to give it to you?" There's none of that in Daniel. It's amazing.
He said, "Listen King, this is about the one true God and Him caring about you."
The King's Response
Verse 47: "The king said to Daniel, 'Surely your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal the dream.'" The king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all the wise men.
Verse 49: "Moreover, at Daniel's request, the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego administrators over the province of Babylon while Daniel himself remained in the royal court."
There's the point we made a minute ago. Nebuchadnezzar is in a great spot humanly: "I'm going to get all this benefit of a relationship with God, but I don't have to have anything with Him." Look at Daniel's greatest asset in the marketplace he's in - it's his relationship with God. In our context, it's our relationship with Christ, our relationship with God.
A New Organizational Chart
So there's a new organizational chart. Here's what the org chart looks like: Here's Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel's under him. Babylon is separated into three provinces and each of the boys is over one. Now that's going to set up a professional jealousy among all of these guys who were not just these boys' peers, but really their superiors.
Here's what we said: integration over segmentation. We maximize our performance by unleashing the advantage we have in the indwelling Christ.
Faith as Our Greatest Asset
I was going to say I don't read management and leadership books, but I guess I do, mostly as people say "You should read this" and give them to me. But the last three that I've read have all had the undercurrent of collaboration, love, yielding. In fact, the last one was titled "Love Works." Any of you read that? "Love Works," written by a Christian guy who leads a big organization. He was delivering this speech to his peers and he starts talking about the quality that he tries to nurture in the organization - love.
He's stunned afterward that as they line up, they don't want to talk about any of the technical stuff. His peers say, "Give me that love thing. What's that love thing?" So he writes a book called "Love Works." At work, love is patient, love is kind. Those things that God has given to us are our greatest assets.
Isn't that what people talk about when they talk about work? We want somebody who's service-oriented, somebody who cares, somebody who cares about the customer or the client, or a manager who truly cares about his people. Your strongest asset, not a liability, is your faith.
The World's Assumptions
A friend of mine was speaking to a group of freshmen at UCLA. They were made up primarily of what would be business students. When he was done, he said, "Let's do a Q&A." The first question asked was, "Do you know anyone who's successful in business and a person of honesty and integrity?"
Think about what's assumed in that question: that I'm going to have to cheat to get ahead. What we're saying to you is where we started: don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. All of a sudden I begin to see the world not in a horizontal plane where the bottom line is the bottom line, but in a vertical plane where God says, "No, the process is what's important to Me."
Practical Preparation for Collision
Just a couple of things you see on your outline: understand that you're going to hit a collision with the values of the system around you. Don't be complaining about it. Don't run and hide. Assess what you're being asked to do and assess the issue as accurately as you can.
It's silly to do what only God can do, but foolish for you to wait for Him to do something you can do. Get ready to prepare a petition if you have to. Petition those around you clearly to get together, to get that group together to pray, and then engage, anxiously waiting to see what God's going to do.
Don't be surprised if He does, but don't be disappointed if He doesn't. He is not a hostage to my plan. It's not me going to God: "This is how I'll do it, then we'll let You go." As I go to God and say, "We're in a really sticky situation here" - I might not say "buddy," but "We're in a real situation, friend. Here's what I see. Here's option A, here's option B, here's option C, and here's the answer to our question."
The idea here is not to limit Him. The idea is to let God be God.
What's Next
Daniel makes it through these two pretty tense situations. Here is the heading for next week in my Bible: "A Fiery Furnace." When we pick up Daniel right there next week.
Father, we leave this place and the minute we walk...
Out this door we know we're on a collision course with the values around us. Now we don't have to cave in and we don't have to fight every battle. Help us see the strength that we have is the most powerful force on the planet. It's when Your Spirit applies Your word to our heart where we can live today with a great sense not of arrogance but of confidence—confidence in Your character and Your promises and Your faithfulness and that You're sovereign and You can do and will do what You promise.
God, allow us to act in a supernatural way, not a natural way. To trust You and not our own cleverness. To serve You and then God, always to point people away from us but to You.
Father, thank You that we can be here. Thank You for the men and women that get up early on a Thursday, and I pray that this makes a difference in our life whether it's at work, at home, the gym, in every relationship we have. God, will You do that in our life? We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.