Cleansed by Faith

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Human Independence and the Need for God’s Help

So we're in 2 Kings chapter 5. Before we get into it, I want to open with a few words of introduction and I want to frame something. It was at the end of the 17th century that a book entitled Spiritual Truths was published on behalf of its late author.

He was a Puritan minister named Robert Layton. Maybe you've heard of his name. And like so many Puritans before him, Robert Layton really did understand the flawed propensities of the human heart. Nestled in this book that was published after his death, the Spiritual Truths, you can find an excerpt that I think stands out in the midst of that work as being particularly insightful on the point of these skewed intentions of our hearts.

And it reads as follows, there is a natural, wretched, independency in us. A natural, wretched, independency in us, in you and I, that we would be the authors of our own works and that we would do all things without Him, that is without God.

But faith's great work is to renounce self-power and to bring in the power of God to be ours. And then he gives us this, happy are they who are weakest in themselves and sensibly so. What Robert Layton was getting at is that we as sinful men and women all have this fierce bent, this inclination, this propensity towards independence.

And if you know yourself well, you will agree with me on this, that we are all inclined. That maybe, maybe it's smaller than it used to be, but it's still there to go our own way, to carve our own path, to do anything, nay, if left to ourselves, to do everything without God's help.

And you don't have to look very far to find this truth, do you? But when we examine the world around us, if you think about our literature and our movies and our stories and our legends and our values, absolutely everything, it seems, shows this predisposition to this do-it-yourself attitude.

We love stories about the self-made man who made billions out of his business that he started in the garage. We venerate those underdog stories where we learn about these people, these people who had everything against them and somehow they dug deep down inside of themselves and found a way to overcome.

And if you have children, and some of you are going to learn this really quickly when you have children, that even our children very quickly show this same inclination. That they're barely standing and they're wobbling, trying to get up on the coffee table, and you go to help them and they give you a look like, I can do this myself.

I can walk myself. I can open the lid of this jar myself. And if I do ask for your help, it will be on my terms, not on yours. Even in the youngest of children, we see this. And what a remarkable thing it is that this fierce independence extends not just to the things that we are actually physically and intellectually capable of with our God-given capacities, but it extends even to those things that we have absolutely no ability to do on our own ever, not once.

Some seek to achieve self-actualization and find their purpose. But apart from God, I want to know why I was made. I just refuse to acknowledge that I have a maker. Some seek to cheat death and live forever without God.

We see that in Hollywood, as the rich and famous are having their bodies cryogenically frozen, so that one day, someday, when the cure is found for old age, they can thaw their bodies and revivify them.

And some, most even, seek to find peace in their souls and atone for their own sins without God. And this week, as we're deviating from 1 Timothy, looking at 2 Kings 5, we find another example of this.

At least you see the silver lining of it. This week, what we're going to do is we're going back in time. We're going to leave behind the era of Paul and Timothy. And maybe you don't think that way, but I've been living in 1 Timothy for how many months now.

So to shift gears and go to 2 Kings takes a little bit of work. So I'm traveling in time. And we're going to go roughly 850 years before Christ. 850 years. And it's a scene where a Syrian man named Naaman finds himself in an impossible situation.

And while he seeks help, what we learn is that he wants help, but it's only on his terms. And what he learns in the course of his story is something that all of us need to learn and then relearn again and again and again.

And that is this, that if we are to receive God's help, if we are to be delivered from our own impossible predicament, and all of us are subject to this impossible predicament, we cannot come to God on our own terms.

To use the words of Leighton, we cannot come to God with our own works and our own self-power. But we must come to God as those who are weak in ourselves and who believe that He alone can deliver us on His terms.

And the story that we find of Naaman really spells out those terms. That no man on this side of the fall has ever been able to, nor will ever be able to, come to God except by self-abandoning faith in Him who alone is able to save, to heal, to cleanse, and to deliver.

And so really what my mission is today as we are in 2nd Kings is I want to reach into your soul, as it were, and strip down and seek to remove every possible self-confidence that you have so that you are left with only one hope.

And I'm going to make you, all of you know that hope, I think, but I'm going to make you wait to hear it. And so we find ourselves in this narrative passage of Scripture. We're going to make our way through the narrative.

I'm going to bring out at least three highlights, but I'm seeking more or less to tell the story, and then we're going to learn as the story goes on. We're going to glean all that we can along the way.

Naaman the Mighty Man with a Great Affliction

And beginning in verse 1, we come across this. We come across a mighty man with a great affliction. And this is what we read. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria.

He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. As we arrive at the story of Naaman, we find ourselves now back in the time of the divided kingdoms of Israel. If you can remember that time with Judah in the south, and Israel in the north.

Up to this point, the promised land has been conquered and claimed. King David's triumphant reign has come and gone. And then there was this tragic split that happened after the life of Solomon, where the northern and southern kingdoms were split apart.

And now as we come into the scene, 850 years before Christ, we find these two kingdoms. They're moving at different paces, but they're both on a steady slide toward apostasy, and then eventual captivity and defeat.

And at the genesis of the story, we go beyond the borders of Israel to the land of Syria. If you're looking on a map, you have Israel along the Mediterranean Sea, and you have Syria to the north and to the east of Israel.

In this opening verse, we find the main character of the story, a man named Naaman. And just as we would expect from any part of scripture, this account is rich in its details. There's just no word that is ever wasted in scripture.

Even the man's name, Naaman, can be translated as gracious or fair. And this was a fitting name for Naaman in some respects, because as we see him described in the next four phrases that we see, he is one of the fairest men of the land, if you could say it that way.

Well-known, mighty, wealthy. Naaman is described, when we look at verse one, as commander of the army of the king of Syria. And this is an important detail. When we look at that word commander, it doesn't imply that Naaman was just any lieutenant in the army, but it's a term that is translated as chief or as ruler.

And we see it used again and again in scripture, not to speak of one of the leaders of the military, but the leader, the commander-in-chief of the army. He was the highest ranking officer over Syria's military.

And this is significant because Syria, if you know anything about this country, was not just any other country in the Middle East. It was one of the world's mightiest superpowers at this time. It was home to a city called Damascus and another called Aleppo.

And these were two of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. It was the sworn enemy of the nation of Israel and one of its most fierce adversaries. And at least at this point in history, at this point, its military capabilities were undisputed.

But there's more. We're told that Naaman was a great man with his master. This means that he was a man of high social status. He was highly esteemed by the nobility of Syria, including the king. And the king at that time would have likely been a man named Ben Hadad II.

And for those of you who know me well, you know that I'm a bit of a history geek. Whenever I learn about somebody in history, I just deep dive. And I'm not going to take you into a deep dive, but we'll just wade into the shallow pool just a little bit.

This Ben Hadad II is the same man that we find by name in 1 Kings chapter 20. He was the Ben Hadad who fought with Ahab. He was the Ben Hadad whose military, eventually you'll remember the man who draws his bow at random, shoots the arrow and it kills Ahab.

That was a soldier under Ben Hadad and perhaps even a soldier under Naaman. He's the same Ben Hadad who in one chapter in 2 Kings chapter 6 is going to besiege the city of Samaria so that we're told that even things like animal dung and donkey heads are valuable and wives end up, or women, sorry, end up boiling their children and sharing the flesh of their children.

Now Naaman served this king and he found himself in high esteem with this king. And just like we know the names of our prime ministers, and sometimes we know the names of their really important ministers with important portfolios, you know, if I say the name Christopher Freeland, you recognize that name?

Well here you have a household name in the man Naaman. And it says that he was in high favor, meaning that he was highly regarded because of his military performance. And I love the way the author of Scripture does this, that he says, yes, he was in high favor, but then he tells us why.

Not because Naaman was anything special in himself, but what? Because God and his providence were on Naaman's side. Because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. That he was a mighty man of valor.

At this time, or yeah, at this time the language that's used of that mighty man of valor is the same language that we read of Boaz, the man who redeemed Ruth, in the book of Ruth in chapter 2 and verse 1.

And it's a reference not only to might, but to of wealth. And so to summarize, Nathan, if you'd tolerate this just a little longer, he was the commander-in-chief of the Syrian army. There would have been few men in the world at that time who would have matched his might.

He had the status among the elites. He had the favor of the king. You could say that he belonged to the class of the rich and famous. He had absolutely everything working in his favor. You can think of those times in your life when absolutely everything is going well.

It seems like the sun of God's providence is shining upon you. Everything is just as it should be. Except at the end of verse 1, we find that massive bombshell. That just as someone might begin to grow envious of Naaman, you learn what is under that robe.

But he was a leper. Now that might seem insignificant to some of us. But let me assure you, this little statement of five words overshadows everything else that we have heard about Naaman up to this point.

That he was a leper. All of Naaman's accomplishments, all of his acclaim, the mention of his wealth is evaporated by this little phrase, but he was a leper. And what does it mean? Well, here this form of leprosy is not the same kind of leprosy that we experience in our modern world, which sometimes is called Hansen's disease.

That disease didn't appear until 200 BC in Egypt, so about 600 years later. But instead what this is, is this is really a grotesque skin condition where a man might be covered in, in this case Naaman, in lesions or in white swollen and flaky skin.

It's like the scales of a fish, but when you touch it, it just kind of sloughs off. Sometimes it would swell, and then it would deteriorate almost like the skin on a corpse. And what people would do is when they would see this, they would say, surely this man has been cursed by the gods.

This man's being punished for something. We don't know what it is. And there is certainly some truth to that, because when we look in the Old Testament, if you think about the woman Miriam, when she's critical of her brother Moses, what happens?

But she develops leprosy. We're going to see it in the next chapter, one day when we get to 2nd Kings chapter 6. That in some ways to have leprosy was akin to having a death sentence. And that's why when Moses talks about Miriam, his sister, in Numbers 12 and verse 12, when she is afflicted with that leprosy, he says, let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away.

And the reason for this was because when one, at least in the nation of Israel, became leprous, what happened? But they were expelled from the home. They were expelled not just from the home, but they were expelled from the camp.

They were made to be outside. They were unclean. They were the untouchables of society. And they had to live out in the wilderness and in the waste places. And just so that they could not hide their leprosy even, we're told in Leviticus chapter 13, that they were required to wear torn clothes and to let the hair of their heads hang loose.

And they had to cover their upper lip. And whenever anyone came near, they had to cry out, what? I'm clean. Stay away from me. I'm unclean. If you come near, I will infect you. Stay away. I am unclean.

And so this is what we have in Naaman. He's rich. He's famous. But he is unclean. And he is untouchable. So that Matthew Henry rightly says about Naaman, that Naaman was as great as the world could make him.

And yet the basest slave in Syria would never be willing to change skin with him. He has everything, but he can keep it. I don't want it if it comes with that affliction. Now I have to, for the sake of time, draw a parallel really quickly.

We're going to cover some distance. But I want you to see perhaps what is the obvious parallel here. That Naaman really is just an illustration of the fallen human condition, not only of those who have leprosy, but of all people.

That Naaman is a picture, not just of himself, but of all men. That we are in no position to look down upon him, for no matter how mighty we are, no matter how mighty we may feel, no matter how mighty we intend to be one day, we too are all afflicted with a great disease.

But it is not a repulsive skin condition that makes men recoil in horror. It is much worse. It is the leprosy of sin, that though our culture might not be bothered by it, God most certainly recoils at it.

That every individual here either was or is a spiritual leper, unclean, unworthy, made only to be outside of the camp. And heaven forbid anyone should come into contact with you, because if they do, you're going to spread it to them.

That bad company corrupts good morals. And the worst thing that you can do is touch someone else. Romans 3 .23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That every last one of us is guilty of sin against a holy God.

And that scripture in fact likens transgression to the same kind of ritual impurity that Naaman was subject to. In Isaiah 64 .6 we read this, for we have all become like one who is unclean. All and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf in our iniquities like the wind. Take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquity.

This is really important for us to all think about, because just as we are inclined, like we saw in the introduction, to go our own way and to rely on our own work and to rely on our own self-power. So we are just as likely, just as ready to minimize sin.

That we're constantly playing this game where we inflate ourselves at the expense of God and we minimize our sin at the expense of righteousness. But all of us, as I've said, are either spiritual lepers now or were spiritual lepers at one time, and it seems that leprosy is always trying to gain a hold again on our flesh.

The Impossible Predicament of Sin and the Great Dilemma

Now I have more to say, but we're going to unveil that in the second part of the story. In verses two through seven, we come upon what I'm calling an impossible predicament. And this is the impossible predicament, beginning in verse two.

Now the Syrians, on one of their raids, had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, would that my Lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.

So Naaman went in and told his Lord. Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, go now, I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So he went, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6 ,000 shekels of gold, and 10 changes of clothing.

And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, when this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy. And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am I God to kill and to make alive?

That this man sends word to me to cure a man with leprosy? Only consider and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me. Now in these verses, we really begin to grasp the hopelessness and the urgent nature of Naaman's problem.

And it's seen almost surely as an impossible predicament. In verse 2, we read that some of Naaman's raids, he's sending men into these small incursions. That's a word we hear now from time to time. These incursions, military incursions into Israel.

And on one of these raids, Naaman, or his men on his behalf, mercilessly kidnapped a little girl to make her his slave and his home for his convenience. Now, because many of us are familiar with this story, and probably many of us are familiar with this story because of the Bible stories that we read, either the stories we read as a child or the stories we read to our kids or our nieces and nephews, we may be inclined to think that because of the way Naaman is portrayed in those books, he was really, you know, he's a colorful man, he's humble, he's soft-faced, and here he is coming from Syria into Israel to find a cure.

But verse 2 explodes that whole concept. Naaman was a merciless military leader and a kidnapper, if not by anything other than a kidnapper by proxy, who took no issue with separating a little girl, as the text says, from her family, that she might be slave to his wife.

Now, the Bible has a word for that. It's a man-stealer. It's someone who goes into another land, who defeats somebody, and who steals people to be enslaved. And do you know what the penalty was for a man-stealer?

It was death. You're to be put to death. It is a capital crime. And so here we have Naaman, not only the great leper, but Naaman the great sinner. But look at what we see in verse 3. If ever there was a picture, a perfect picture of what it means for a person to love one's enemies, this is it.

This little girl, rather than wishing harm upon her slave master, instead shares with her lord, Naaman, how he might be healed of his leprosy. Wishing the very man who took her from her home, with her family, who enslaved her, saying, oh that you were in Samaria, that that prophet might heal you.

What a picture. And she shares that this prophet is in Samaria. That's the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel. Oh that he might be able to heal him. And verse 4 then, ushers us into the desperation of the situation.

That Naaman doesn't rebuff the little girl's suggestion, but in fact he runs with it. He goes to the king of Syria. He says, could this be the solution to this great problem that clings so closely to me?

And in verses 5 and 6, we get a hint at the utter impossibility of the task. When we see just how much money, how much gold and silver and clothing is sent to the king of Israel. I know that oftentimes when we do our Bible reading, we read about talents and we read about all of these weights and measures in the Bible.

We just kind of gloss over it, right? You know, what is a talent? What is a denarius? But let's do a little bit of work here and convert what this is. 10 talents of silver amounted to 750 pounds of silver.

Now if you'd like to buy silver and gold, if you're an investor in bullion sales, 750 pounds of silver. But there's more. 6 ,000 shekels of gold amounted to about 150 pounds of gold. So that if you had that and you were to take that to whatever, whoever sells gold, Aaron sells gold, I don't know, in some bad neighborhood probably, and tried to sell this gold to them at today's exchange, or maybe it was Friday's exchange, that was worth $11 ,644 ,500.

You see the impossibility of the task, but by the fact that they are pouring a ton into this. If you came across someone who said, I have a really bad disease, but I found a treatment in Mexico, and I've taken out a loan for $11 million to pay for that treatment, you'd think that has to be the best treatment in the world, or the worst disease in the world, or both.

Now to put it into perspective, just so you understand the exchange rate here, in 1st King 16, just a few chapters earlier, King Omri buys an entire plateau, the hill of Samaria, a large militarily strategic place, big enough to establish a whole city for two talents of silver.

And here he sends, how many talents did I say? 10 talents of silver, and then 150 pounds of gold. And we see again an increase in the impossibility of the task, when in verse 7, the king receives the letter.

And I find verses 7 and 8 kind of humorous, that as the letter comes to the king of Israel, what does he do? But he tears his clothes. And this is an act that was reserved for the greatest blasphemy. When you think about the Lord Jesus in the gospels, when they said, are you the Christ?

And he said, yes I am. And one day I'm going to be seated at the right hand of the throne of God, and you will see me coming in the clouds. And the high priest, violating the law, tears his robes, and they say, what other witnesses do we need?

Well here the king tears his clothes, and what does he say in verse 7? Am I God to kill, and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? He's thinking, surely this man wants to pick a fight with me.

He's given me an impossible task, and when I don't do it, he's going to come and invade me. And so you've got this man with a horrific affliction. He is as good as dead, and he is in a situation of utter impossibility.

We're going to, we're going to take all the resources that we can throw at it. We're going to throw a Hail Mary. You go down to Israel. Here's 11 and a half million dollars, and you get there. And the king, rather than saying, oh I can heal you, he goes, ah, and tears his clothes in half.

What is going to become of this man? And this too, if you can take this leap with me, and this too is an image of the seemingly impossible task of a spiritual leper, of a sinner being cleansed from their sin.

The prophet Jeremiah once asked a question. He said, can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard, not the leper, but the leopard, his spots, then also, then if he can, then you can do good who are accustomed to doing evil.

If someone can change their skin color, if that animal can change the very thing that defines itself, then yeah, you can deal with your sin problem. But alas, there is no solution. A man cannot change the color of his skin.

The best thing a man can do is mask it. And so it is with the sinner and his sin. Now I know that there are, I'm not sure how many in this room right now, but there are about 21, 22 people that are reading through the Bible in the year with us.

And I'm not sure if you've drawn any conclusions, but at least if you're up to schedule on your Bible reading plan, you will know that yesterday we read from Leviticus chapter 12 to 14, which is an entire portion dealing with what?

Leprosy. And one of the things that I do, you've maybe heard Nicole talk about this before, is I will just read the Bible aloud, and sometimes she'll do things, and I'll just follow her and read, and I'll go around the house.

And it's interesting, I've kind of lost my voice from following her around the house yesterday, reading Leviticus 12 to 14. And we were about 20 minutes in when she said like, is this still dealing with leprosy?

Yes, it is. 20 minutes of instruction from Leviticus 12, 13, 14. I think it even dips into 15 on leprosy. And she asked the question, as we're talking about cleaning your clothing, and dealing with leprosy of the skin, and dealing with leprosy in your home, and taking the rocks and everything out, and throwing it into an unclean place.

I reflected on her, can you believe this, that they were unclean? And then in order to be clean, they had to shave their head, shave their beard, shave their eyebrows off, go and bathe, go to the priest.

Then the priest pronounces them clean, if in fact they are. And then they are monitored again to ensure that they remain clean. And she said, why are there so many rules about leprosy? Well, for one, the Lord was preserving the people in their geographical place, preserving them from illness and harm.

But there's another thing. What God was establishing with the nation of Israel was this, that I am a holy God, that I am a holy, holy, holy God, and nothing unclean or profane may approach my sanctuary.

That nothing that is undone, and diseased, and ill, and sick, and near to death may profane my holy name. And so what we find then in this spiritual leprosy, this leprosy of sin, and the impossibility of ridding ourselves of it, is what theologians have called for a very long time, the great dilemma.

That how can a sinful human being, a sinful man, and a sinful woman approach a holy God? And some of the classic texts on this great dilemma, one of them is Exodus 34, and verse 6, where we see this amazing picture, this dichotomy that exists between God and man.

Where we read, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

That here we have a forgiving God, but he will not clear the guilty. Proverbs 17 says as much, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. So that man's greatest problem, many of you have heard me say it, you need to hear it again, that man's greatest problem is that God is good and that we are not.

And that is the great dilemma. That how will a sinful man be reconciled to a sinless and holy and just God? I don't know about you, but I get sometimes in my algorithm, Facebook knows me well enough that I get all of the protestia videos.

If you've ever heard of protestia, they're a ministry essentially. I'm not sure if you can call them a ministry. It's almost, yeah, I'm not sure. But what they seek to do is to share clips of what happens in other churches.

And it really gives you a sense of the layout of the land. And I watched a clip this week of a female pastor. I don't believe that women can be pastors, but a female pastor in a liturgical church in her garb, standing behind a pulpit, very colorful pulpit.

And one of the things that she was saying was this, I do not use the language of sin and I don't call people sinners because that alienates people from God. Quote unquote, that the word sin or sinner alienates people from God.

And as I watched this, I watched it and I thought about it for a moment. And I thought, that is probably the most true thing she has ever said. It's almost prophetic. It's like the high priest speaking accidental prophecies before Christ is killed.

Why? You're right, ma 'am, because our sin does alienate us from God. And it doesn't matter whether you tell them that or not, it alienates them from God. That your sin has made a separation from your God, so that you cannot see God and live.

And so brothers and sisters, we end up in this impossible situation. Spiritual lepers, unable to be cleansed. And anyone who's truly honest, if we came to them and said, can you deal with this problem?

All they could do is tear their clothes and cry out, am I God to cure a man from leprosy? But the story goes on and we see, this is kind of the last chunk that we'll look at, is the test of faith in verse 8.

Naaman’s Test of Faith at the Jordan River

But when Elisha, one of the prophets of Israel, the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king saying, why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.

But Naaman was angry and went away saying, behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord, his God and wave his hands over the place and cure the leper.

It's interesting how he speaks about himself in third person as the leper. That is what defines him. And then he asks, are not Abana and Farpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?

Could I not wash in them and be cleaned? So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, what good servants. My father, it is a great word that the prophet has spoken to you.

Will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, wash and be clean? So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God. And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child and he was clean.

What a remarkable end to the story. Elisha says, why are you tearing your clothes? Do you have no faith? And so Naaman goes then to Elisha's home and he probably showed up, I imagine, with the silver and gold in tow, with great pomp, with this air of prestige.

You know, this probably wasn't the case, but you know, you think of those guys that lead the charge before royalty with the horns, right? And they come in and here he comes to to Elisha's home. And what does Elisha do?

He doesn't come down and bow before him. He sends his messenger. Yeah, go give him these instructions. It's like Naaman isn't even worth Elisha's time and attention. So he sends his messenger to Naaman to give these simple instructions.

Go to the Jordan, wash seven times, you'll be clean. And I think what this represents is a significant test of Naaman's faith. It's reminiscent of the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew chapter 15.

She's an outsider. She comes to the Lord Jesus. She asks for his help. She kneels before him. She says, Lord, help me. And he said, it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

But pressing past his resistance, she says, yes, but Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. And then what does Jesus say? He says, oh woman, great is your faith. Let it be done to you as you desire.