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So, I'm all fired up. I just had a conversation with somebody and one of the things that sparked the fire is that she referred to quote her addictive personality. And so many things have changed so much in so little time that we sometimes we lose track of it all. We don't notice. But it's extreme. It's more extreme than it seems. So often today, people will say things like my anxiety, my depression. In Isaiah, he talks about this idea of attaching ourselves to sin as you would attach a trailer to something pulling it with a rope. Jesus on the other hand talks about cutting off the things that offend us and he wasn't using that. That's a poor translation. And he didn't um the English word that we use offend maps poorly to what he was he was actually saying in the original which is if something in your life doesn't align with who and how God is then you need to get rid of it and pick up something better. How much more literal could we be in doing exactly the opposite of what we're taught in the scriptures than to identify ourselves with or by things that are different than God, things that are less than the best we could be. There are a lot of people out there who teach about demonic possession and they say some pretty outrageous things and they're talking about some pretty outrageous situations. But it's so easy to miss how much actual demon possession occurs in our everyday lives. A lot of people because of these teachers are expecting to see somebody's heads spinning as they puke and levitate off the ground. And without saying that this doesn't happen or saying it couldn't happen, the truth is is that the devil has a vested interest in keeping himself secret. He gets a lot more work done by not being out in the open. He works in the dark. And so he can get a lot more done by persuading people that they can't help the way that they are. and by confusing people about the distinction in what they can change and what they can't change. And so when you convince someone that some fault that they have is an irrevocable piece of their personality, that it's genetically determined and there's nothing that you can ever do about it, well, of course they're never going to try. Of course they're going to find all kinds of other ways to explain it. and to blame other people and other things for it and they'll never get the happiness that's possible through improvement at least in those ways. One of the crazy things that these teachers teach is that there's some special power in knowing quote the name of the quote demon that's possessing you. It's much more effective to think about demonic possession in terms of ideas, beliefs about yourself, others, God, the world, that cow, whatever that are less than less valuable than an alternative to think about ideas and think about what better ideas might exist. And those ideas describe potential actions and better actions that might exist. Actions that lead to greater cost, sorry, to greater net benefit either through less cost or later greater benefit. So, in the scriptures, we have this story where Jesus asks the name of a literal demon that's literally possessing this guy. And the being replies, "We are legion or we are many." And people take this and they get crazy with it and they extrapolate all sorts of things out of it. In a related note, there's some understanding that there's power in the name of Christ. And in fact, if you if you look enough into these ideas of what people traditionally think of when they think of demon possession, people will literally say the name of the Lord. There's an interesting story where a set of people were running around in New Testament times after the resurrection of the Lord and they were casting out demons and they they came out came up to these people. Now, these were not disciples of Christ, and they didn't know the gospel at all. They didn't live the gospel at all. They were just imitating some things they had seen someone else do. And they try to cast out this demon and they they say in the name of the God of Paul and they use the name of Jesus. And the demon responds by saying, "Paul, I know." And Jesus I know, but who are you? And then he mauls these people that are trying to cast out demons. So what what's the real nugget here in in these stories? Well, one lesson that we can pull from this, it's not so much about words. It's about what backs those words. That person trying to cast out devils was not living a life any different than anyone else except in this mimicry of people who were actually living the gospel. He just mimicked them in that one piece which isn't the powerful piece. Anybody can do that and guess what? It's not going to work and it's going to lead to worse situations than if you didn't try. So what is the name of Jesus? It's not to say the word, okay? It's to live the example. The name of Jesus Christ is his character. It's what he feels. It's what he thinks. And it's what he does. It's to have the same motive as the Lord. And as we learn and follow his example, we'll experience more of his power. If you want to find better ways of living and you want to help other people find better ways of living, you need to learn more about how he is and live more like he would in your place and then help other people to do the same. Everything you know of as casting out devils is just a subset of this. It's a form of it where what I'm telling you is actually greater power than that. Anyone who does what I'm telling you about will be able to do that. But very few people who can do that will do this. A better application of this idea of the power of the name is to have a correct understanding of what's actually going on. What do I mean by that? So, we talked about these stories of a literal demon literally possessing someone. And maybe that literal demon has a literal name. Maybe that demon's name is uh I don't know. I I'm thinking of names and I know people with all these names, but um let's say my cat's name is Booker. Let's say that that demon is named Booker. And he heard his name, so now he's excited. My cat's right here. Okay. So what? So what? What's the difference? There is no difference. But if you know what's going on, if you know what that demon is trying to do, then it empowers you to do something about it. You can help the person who's subject to that by helping them understand what's really going on and helping them gain a more accurate understanding of the options available to them and the cost and benefit of each. And when you do that, it actually doesn't matter if there's a literal demon possessing them or not. Maybe the demon possessing them is that they're hooked on some drug. Maybe the demon possessing them is that they don't spend enough time with their kids. Maybe the demon possessing them is that they eat too much food. If you can understand what's going on, you can help them solve the real problem. And so we get away from this idea of magic power in names and to what actually causes the actual power in the actual name of Christ. And I hope that makes sense what I'm what I'm trying to say here.