How Far Away Are You From…

I'm going to start today off with a little bit of data. Most of you know I was previously an engineer, so I do a lot of facts and figures and numbers. Let's start to show off some data. On the last day of Unleavened Bread last year, we had 89 people in attendance in the AM service. At the PM, we had 49 people, 55% total. It was kind of disappointing. Others noticed it as well, and we heard a sermonette encouraging us on reasons why we should be at services.

Why we should make every effort to be at services. And by trumpets of that year, we did a lot better. It was about a 75% attendance in the afternoon when we had two services. This year, I was pretty excited to see on the last day of Unleavened Bread, we broke 100. I'll do that very often.

We had 104 people there in the AM services, but unfortunately, that number fell to just 60 in the afternoon. That's 58%. That's pretty much right back to where we were last year. If it were a test, that'd be a failing percentage. Now I realize there are a lot of factors to go into why you might not be able to make it to services. Whether that's a PM service on a holiday, whether that's a regular service. There's illness, right?

There's things like that. I know when you get to a certain age, you just don't have the strength. There are other extenuating circumstances. There's a lot of very legitimate reasons. I'm not here to ask for reasons today. I'm not here to debate the legitimacy of missing a service or not.

If you have a question about, hey, do you think this is a fair reason for me to not make it to services, call me, talk to me. I will share with you that's probably one of the most common questions that I get on a weekly basis. People say, hey, this is going on and that is going on. Do you think it's okay if I don't make it to services? I cannot remember a time in the past, I don't know, years where someone has called and told me, hey, I don't think I'm going to make a service because of this, where I've said, nope, that's not a legitimate reason.

There are special, precious things that come up. Maybe it's a graduation, maybe it's a wedding, maybe it's a funeral, who knows? Maybe you're sick and I've had to tell people more often, please don't come to church because you're sick and I don't want you to get anybody else sick. The sermon today isn't really about attendance. I want to talk a little bit about it, use it as an example, but the sermon today is about a much bigger subject, a much more important and a much more serious subject. That's the subject of spiritual drift, the slow and steady drifting away from God, something that can destroy us and cut us off from His kingdom if we are not careful.

The title of today's sermon is, How Far Away Am I...and we're going to look at three hard questions we have to ask ourselves. Three hard questions we must ask ourselves. Let's begin today with the topic of attendance. Again, it's not really about attendance, but it's something that's kind of easy to analyze and look at from a numbers standpoint. I already gave you some numbers already on that, but I actually want to read an excerpt from the church's recent study paper, Keeping a Holy Convocation.

This is something that the Council of Elders and Education Committee have worked on for quite a few years, and it was published May of last year. So I want to read a fairly lengthy excerpt from it, so please bear with me. There are many scriptural references in here. I'm not going to read all of them for sake of time. I do recommend that you go back and read this paper. It is excellent. But I'm just going to pick it up here. It's again, it's called Keeping a Holy Convocation. If you go to ucg.org and you go to the Members tab, you can look under Study Papers and you can read it there. But I want to pick it up, and this is starting in Section 5, which is entitled, Gathering to Hear God's Message.

It says this, it says, Gathering before God is certainly an inspiring honor, but is also an awesome responsibility that should never be treated casually or taken for granted. God rules His creation, all things, seen and unseen, from His heavenly throne. From there He directs the universe with Jesus Christ at His right hand. The description of this setting in Revelation 4 is all inspiring. God wants His children to come before Him and learn how He rules His creation. He also wants the host of heaven to see how His children honor and emulate Him. Like any delighted Father, God dually loves His children and wants them to respect Him for their own good. This is very different from when we approach Him privately in our personal prayers, which, by His gracious consent, we initiate in our time.

Rather, God initiates a Holy Convocation for His purpose and His time and in His place. How do we respond when God calls us to a Holy Convocation? We should approach Him in a dignified manner befitting His position, His place, and His occasion. We put aside our pursuits to honor His. We should be mindful that in the presence of God's throne, that matters most as His will and His purpose. We should approach Him with a humble and contrite heart that acknowledges and appreciates who He is and what He has to say.

When we attend a Sabbath or Holy Day service, we leave our life, our home, our work, our hobbies, activities, and interests to submit to and honor Him. Praise and worship are certainly appropriate, but God commands us to assemble before Him because He has something to teach us. Sabbath and Holy Day services are primarily a time for God's people to quiet themselves and listen to what God is telling them.

Again, reading and expounding from the Word of God is the primary focus of all holy convocations. This was the practice of Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul, and it should be ours as well. Skipping on down to Section 6, which is entitled, Respecting an Orderly Assembly, it says, "...as any command to assemble issued from an established authority, the issuing official would expect it due to full response, respecting the court in its established form, and a respectful and dignified assembly." The word mikra, translated the calling or for summoning, is used as such in Numbers 10 verse 2.

An orally assembled suggests that every holy convocation has structured design. It infers respect of hosts, place, and time in compliance with an established protocol. It might also mention 1 Corinthians 14. It tells us, you know, we can do all things decently in an order. Continuing with the paper, it says, "...those invited to the kingdom of God need to be prepared for the formality of kingship." This includes deference to etiquette, custom propriety, and decorum before God's throne and all the reverence that He deserves in His holy court.

Our response should show our honor and respect to Him and His rule. Loving our Heavenly Father should always include our reverence for Him as God and our submission to His will. I'll stop there. It's a very good paper. I do highly recommend it, but I hope you see the point here. We are called together as a congregation to honor and praise God. That's what we are here to do and to learn, to understand how we should behave before God, to understand more about His Word, to be edified so that we can grow closer to Him and being obedient to Him in emulating our Lord and Savior as Jesus Christ. So with that as a backdrop, I'm going to ask you the first hard question today. How far away are you, how far away am I, from not being here at all? How far away are we from not being here at all? How close are we to not bothering to come to church at all anymore? Kind of drifting off a little bit this way, slowly but surely, until we're far removed from God, maybe to the point where we don't keep the Sabbath at all anymore.

Turn to Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews 10. Remember, we're going to pick it up in verse 24. Hebrews 10 verse 24 says, And let us consider one another in order to stir up love in good works, not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more, as you see the day approaching.

We're reminded how important it is as at a part of that ecclesia, that mikra, those who are called out to be together. We certainly need to be here to be taught, to be edified, for iron to sharpen iron.

We need to be here to learn how to honor, to worship, obey God, how to come before Him, before His throne. We're here to stir up one another. And it's hard to stir up one another when you're not with one another. Now, the response I get most often when it comes to attendance questions or things like, you know, well, I keep this out, but I just do it at home, and I watch a webcast or something like that. Or, you know, there's no command, you know, for two Holy Days or two services on the Holy Days and things like that, and you can make those arguments.

We don't know what the first century church service looked like. The webcast is a great tool. We're not going to get rid of it anytime soon. It's very valuable, and we'll continue to use it. And I'm thankful that we have it so that others who can't be here can be a part of services.

But, you know, I have to wonder sometimes if I told you next week that Jesus Christ was going to be our guest speaker. Would you be here? Bet you would. What about Nehemiah 8? You remember after they had been exiled to Babylon, the people were beginning to understand the law, and they were beginning to come back and learn how to keep the Holy Days, and they gathered for the Feast of Trumpets there, and they stood out in the court. If you do the account, they stood there for about nine hours listening to the law be expounded on. I wonder what God would think if they said after the first hour and a half, this is boring. I'm going home.

You know, having a 90-minute service and then a little break and another 60-minute service, and by the way, being able to sit inside in air conditioning, you know, comfortable seats, don't sound too bad compared to what others have had to do. I have to wonder that.

The Sabbath is, first and foremost, a time, a holy convocation declared by God. Known as an organization, we have an administration set up to do various things, to rent halls, to organize fee sites, to put together materials to help, you know, educate children, to run camps, funds to support the needy. You know, we just talked about that during announcements. There's lots of different things. The list goes on and on. You know, if we don't respect that authority, if we don't respect that administration, which of course is ultimately accountable to God, then we run the risk of things breaking down pretty quickly.

You know, God reminds us a couple different places in Scripture why we ought to respect different authorities. Let's start at 1 Peter 2 verse 13. 1 Peter 2 and verse 13.

You might think of Romans 13 as 1. We won't turn there today, but 1 Peter 2 and verse 13 we read this.

We often look at this Scripture and we think, well, that's talking about government, you know, federal government, state government, local officials, and that's, you know, certainly applicable. But it says every ordinance of man. We're not talking about laws that contradict God's laws, right? We're not talking about things like that. We're talking about all sorts of laws. So if we go to a grocery store and the line says, you know, express checkout 12 items or less, we don't go through there with 25 items and say, that's not a state law. You can't make me do that.

There's no Bible verse that says that. We respect that's the ordinance of the grocery store.

Why don't we apply that same respect then to the church? Question worth asking.

It's worth mentioning something in regards specifically to Holy Days.

Having two services on a Holy Day, that's not my idea. And I don't say that like, oh, don't blame me. It's not my idea. No, I say that meaning I don't arbitrarily come up with that, right?

That is something that's a policy that the Council of Elders has developed and given as a guideline for us as congregations to follow. I'm going to actually read from you what's known as the pastor's policy manual, section 2.6.1. This is something that I mentioned a little bit on the Bible study Wednesday night.

So that is our church policy. That's what is set by the Council of Elders.

For some of those of you who have been around for a while, you know this wasn't always the case, right? I remember having two services on the date of atonement, and man, that was a rough one, right? Having two services on the first day of unleavened bread after you'd been out, you know, late, maybe at a restaurant with family. If you go back way back, my mother-in-law will tell you about when you had two services every day at the Feast of Tabernacles, plus a Bible study that night. And oh, by the way, it wasn't just the Feast of Tabernacles, it was unleavened bread. Lots of kids got failed because they missed too much school for church. But you know what? People showed up.

People showed up. I personally feel that the schedule and policy and guideline we have right now is very reasonable. It's very reasonable. Again, there are legitimate reasons not to beat there. There are extenuating circumstances. There's health. There's all sorts of things.

Continuing back, though, in 1 Peter 2, verse 15, he says, For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorant of foolish men, as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.

Honor people. It says honor all people, not just federal officials or people that got a batch.

That would include the church.

Do you have freedom to ignore things? That's what it talks about there in verse 6. He says that's free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice. If you decide to miss services for some reason, why are you missing? Is it a legitimate reason or is it just because you kind of want to do your own thing that day? Question worth asking yourself. Who does it serve?

Who does it serve? You might notice I'm asking a lot of open-ended questions today, and that is by design. I'm not trying to beat anyone down. Please understand that.

My goal always as your pastor, somebody who loves you and cares about you, I want you to think. I want you to think, and I want you to look to the Scriptures and understand how to think. Think about the question, how far away am I? What would it take to push you over the edge to the point where I don't come at all? Verse 17 says, Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the King, honor all people, not just civil authorities. Love the brotherhood. It's kind of hard to do when we're not together, isn't it? First question, then, I really want you to ask yourself today, how far away are you from not being here at all? How far away are you? Why is it that I come to church every week? And what might push me over the edge, or I don't bother to come back at all?

Let's shift gears a little bit, talk about another challenging subject that comes up, another hard question you have to ask yourself from time to time.

This one often comes up in regards to relationships with other Church of God groups.

There are many Church of God groups out there. It's not like it was, you know, 40, 50 years ago, when there was really only one church that was sticking to the fundamental truths.

I'm not here to pass any other Church of God groups, believe me. I have lots of friends and other groups. I have good relationships with them. If you tuned into the Bible study, you saw the video that I played from Dennis Luker in 1995, when United was being formed.

He talked about the fact, you know, somebody asked him, so is this the true Church? And he said, we got to stop thinking that way, that we, a P.O. Box, are an organization. We are the true Church. The true Church is that body, the ecclesia, the believers, those who worship and obey God, and have His Spirit, rather. There are people and other Church of God groups that I firmly believe are a part of that group. I don't have any hate. I don't have any animosity toward them. Please understand that. But sometimes, our interactions with these other groups can bring up a challenge from time to time. You know, we in United Church of God, we welcome anyone who wants to come and worship with us and fellowship in peace. They're interested in learning about us, so they want to come and check us out. And we work very hard to be inviting, to be a warm congregation. And by the way, I will share with you, I consistently, consistently get feedback, not just from random people, but from other people within United Church of God that pass through Charlotte and Hickory and Columbia and say, this is by far the most friendly congregations they have been to. So good on you. Good job. That's fantastic. That's not just random, you know, platitudes from people. Those are people who have been around a long time.

But, you know, welcoming people to come from other groups and backgrounds to worship with us doesn't mean that we just accept any old thing. We're not a melting pot for people who just happen to keep the Sabbath day or things like that. You know, one example comes up from time to time, and again, I'm not trying to pick on anybody, but this is a visible example, and one that I know we've all seen is somebody who might, they choose to wear tasks, right? And they come to church and they visit with us, and that's fine, but at the point in time when they try to start convincing everyone else that you need to wear castles, now we've got a problem. Now we've got a problem because we don't teach that, right? We don't teach that, and so now there becomes a challenge.

The inevitable problem is that it sets up division. It sets up division, and there are many other ideas out there within the Church of God that others believe that we don't necessarily believe. Some teach that you can't eat out on the Sabbath day. Some teach a different way of tithing.

Some teach a different way to count Pentecost or the meaning of Pentecost. Some believe that once you're divorced, you can never be remarried. Some believe the ministry shouldn't get paid, right? There's a variety of things. I'm not here to criticize anybody else, but we don't teach those things. That's not what we believe. And so when things like that start to creep up and come within the Church, it creates a problem. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

This, of course, is the Apostle Paul, and he's writing to his congregation. He says, Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Now, when we as a Church might teach one thing, and then somebody else comes along and says, Well, this is what I believe. You know, it creates some challenges. It explains up not bringing unity to the body, right, as we're instructed to do here, but it winds up bringing division.

Well, occasionally, this might happen by intention. Somebody's looking for a following, right, and they say, Oh, here's a group of Sabbath keepers. I'll go over there and see if I can't recruit a handful of them and maybe go off and can go by my own Church, right?

Happens occasionally, not very often. Far more often, it's accidental, right? People might believe something. They read about something. They're excited about it, and so they want to talk about it, and they bring kind of Church, or they send a, you know, a text to a friend or whatever, and they wind up inadvertently kind of setting up a division and setting up a challenge and setting up a problem. Oh, I understand the intention is to help and to edify, but the end result is, if we are not careful, that it sets up division. I don't care what Church of God you go to, you won't find a pastor that says that's okay, that it's okay to have division within the body. If you haven't listened to it yet, there's a sermon from a new president, John Elliott, called Toward One-ness. I believe it was either Last Sabbath or the Sabbath before, and he talks about the need for us as the body of Christ, forget organizations, as the body of Christ to be unified, to have one mind. You read about that in John, in Jesus Christ, in God the Father, said they are one, they have a perfectly unified mind. My mind's not perfect.

I want to be perfectly unified with God. I want to have that Oneness.

A big part of being at one with God is making sure we are not stirring up and creating any kind of division. Please understand what I am saying and what I am not saying. We do very much welcome visitors. Don't care what your affiliation, what your background, whether you come from a Protestant background, whether you go to another Church of God group. We do very much welcome and I'm glad to have anybody to come and join us for services. What we do not welcome is the promotion or propagation of things that we don't teach in Unite. If you believe those things, if you think those things, that's okay. I'm not the belief police, right? I'm not the brain police trying to control your thoughts. But we do need to make sure that we aren't creating division. And I will say, you know, be very, very careful about where you spend your time on the Internet or elsewhere because, you know, not every other Church of God is set up as UCG is in regards to some of the safeguards we have in place to prevent heresy. I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute.

But at this point, you might be thinking, okay, Dan, I get it, right? I think something a little bit different. Just keep it to myself. Don't bother anybody. Why are you yammering on about this?

Again, I'm not here to judge anybody. I'm here to criticize or put down any group.

You know, I have a responsibility. I have a responsibility. I need to protect the flock that I've been entrusted to oversee. And when issues start to come up, the Bible is very clear on what I have to do. Turn to 2 Timothy chapter 4. 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 1.

He says, Paul is charging Timothy here with some responsibilities.

And this applies to all of us to a certain degree, but to me as a pastor, this applies very specifically. James 3 verse 1 tells you that I am held to a stricter judgment.

Right? And what follows, I read the next few verses, is a commandment to me personally.

Says, I've preached a word lots of different times. You know, a sermon, a Bible study, writing an article.

You've heard the old saying, preach, always use words when necessary.

Try to do the way I live, the way I drive down the road, and go through a checkout line. Now, I try to preach a sermon, and I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. I've got plenty of faults. I'm sure y'all can think of a dozen or more. But you know, we preach. And so I try. Convince.

Yeah, and this is a regular part of my life. I get questions, I get emails, I get phone calls all the time. Why do you teach? Or can you explain to me the doctrine of yada yada yada?

And so I go through and I'm convinced, well, this is why we keep the Sabbath.

This is why we don't believe in the Trinity. Things like that.

Says, rebuke. Now, quite frankly, that's a little bit of what I'm having to do right now. I can't sit around and do nothing. I can't pretend there aren't issues, there aren't problems. Can't turn a blind eye because that's when divisions start. Exhort. This is also what I'm trying to do. I want everyone to ask themselves hard questions, difficult things, things only you know the answer to. How far away are you? From drifting away from God. It's a tough question, but one that needs to be asked.

While it might not feel like it at the moment, I am truly trying to do these things with long suffering and patience. This isn't a message I entered into very lightly, by the way.

I've been thinking about this since the last day of Unleavened Bread.

I didn't give it in Columbia the week after because I didn't want anybody to think I was running away and not willing to face anyone here in Charlotte, part of Henry.

So if you have questions, you have problems, you have concerns, please come talk to me.

But things need to be said sometimes.

Verse 3.

Since where the time will come when they will not endure a sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves, teacher. This is a huge problem within the Church of God today, the greater Church of God group.

Oh, hey, did you hear about this message over here? Oh, this guy has a really interesting thought on that. And what about this? Did you know that the people over there, what they tell their members is... dot dot dot on the blank. Sometimes we just want to hear something because it's different. It's interesting. It might be different. It might be interesting. Is it good?

Is it fruitful? Is it edifying? Verse 4.

He says, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. This is where we get into the real issue. People begin to drift away from what the Bible defines as truth, reading more into it than what the Bible actually reveals to us.

They begin to turn aside to some fable, some interesting thing that you can't necessarily prove or that hasn't necessarily been arrived at with a multitude of counsel.

This is where I want to ask you the second hard question.

How far away am I? How far away are you from not enduring sound doctrine?

How far away are you from not enduring sound doctrine? Or, or said another way, how far away are you from just scratching an itchy ear?

Enduring korna has a negative sort of a sense, but enduring can be translated also as holding up or persisting in. The New Living Translation puts it this way. It says, for a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.

I mentioned a moment ago about safeguards that UCG has in place. I want to talk about that for a minute. Again, for those of you who were at the Bible study on Wednesday night, you heard some of this. This will sound very familiar. You know, at the GCE this year, our theme was 30 years of faith and service. We heard from many who were at Ground Zero and headquarters in the early 1990s. When the split came in 1995, they saw exactly how division came in the church and how the church was dismantled, was taken away from us as the body. It was a very difficult time. At that time, as we were reminded of there in the video by Mr. Luecker, two things, two very important things, came out of that conference in 1995. One, we do not say we are the true church. Everybody else over there, there are heathens. It's not what we say. Not at all. We also said we're going to make sure that heresy can never creep into the church the way it did then. And so the church was set up with a system of covenants. The main mechanism which we do that is we have the general conference of elders. That's all 400 elders in the United Church of God. Right? Here locally, that's myself, Mr. Simino, Mr. Pass, Mr. Mays, up in Hickory. And anytime anything would change, any sort of doctrine, any sort of a bylaw even in our Constitution, there has to be a vote by those 400.

Right? And it has to pass with a two-thirds majority. And if it's a doctrinal change, one over there, our 20 fundamental beliefs, it has to be a three-quarters majority. Oh, by the way, there's no secret ballots. There's no backroom thing where anybody can say, oh hey, we're going to just... there's three of us here who believe in the Trinity, so we're going to have this secret ballot, and then we're going to vote all that, and boom, change our doctrine. That can't happen because any kind of change has to go out in writing to all the elders 30 days before the vote would happen. So that's not going to happen. All right. We'll set up to protect the Church, and then from that general conference of elders, 12 men are appointed for each year on a three-year cycle as a council of elders, and the council sort of lead and guide and direct the overall movement of the Church, and from there they elect a president, and the president handles sort of the day-to-day issues. You know, the president, not even the council of elders, can change doctrine. Well, they can set policies on renting and buying buildings, and you know, how many services we might have on a holy day and things like that, but it can't change our doctrine. They can't change the bylaws, the laws on which the Church is run. They can't change the laws and say the president now has supreme power and authority and can do whatever he wants. They just can't do it.

There are other groups out there, again, who teach much of what we do, and they do things in a certain way, and that's up to them, and this is not a criticism. Well, please understand that everyone is set up to protect the doctrines, to protect the bride of Christ. The way United is set up. I'm not trying to tear them down, but I am going to tell you that long before the church was a pastor, long before I was a deacon, the two things that drew me to the United Church of God were the openness and willingness and not this haughty attitude that we are the true Church, and the fact that it was set up to protect the doctrine. Those are the two things that drew me to church, this specific organization. I don't claim UCG is perfect. It is not. You know why? It's just got human beings in it, but I think it's worth asking yourself some hard questions from time to time. Now, how far away am I from not enduring a sound doctrine, from just scratching an itchy ear? I'm going to ask one more question today. It's going to be the simplest and the hardest question at the same time. It's interesting this question because someday you're going to be told the answer. You will be told the answer directly face to face by Jesus Christ. My question is this. How far away are you? How far away am I from God? How far away am I from God? How far am I away from actually living like a disciple of Jesus Christ? How far am I away from people not being able to identify me because of my love for the others? Or am I just going through the motions?

Am I just warming a seat? Matthew chapter 7. This will be our last scripture today. Matthew chapter 7 verse 21 Look at how many magazines we produced. Look at the number of sermons I've given.

Look at how I really gave people what for. It's not what God's looking for. That's not what they're looking for. We're not trying to impress Jesus Christ. Not in those ways. Verse 23 says, These words that Jesus speaks are very powerful. Very powerful. If we're not careful, these words might be the answer to that question. How far away am I from God?

Something worth thinking about again, huh? I'm not here to judge anybody. I'm asking myself these questions just as hard as I am asking them to each of you. These kinds of things come up. How close am I to God? Not just at 10.30 on Saturday every week. I feel pretty good when I'm here.

What am I like at 9.30 on Monday morning or 6 o'clock on Wednesday night or whatever when I'm driving down the road, when I'm at work, when I'm by myself at home, when I speak to a friend?

How close am I to God? How similar am I to living a life that Jesus Christ did?

Jesus Christ is going to look me right in the eye someday, but he's going to answer this question.

Until then, I need to be asking this question myself every day.

I pray that you take time to consider that question.

Mr. Elliott has called for a churchwide fast, asking for guidance and direction, and this might be a good question to think about during that time.

If the answer you get is something that makes you a little bit uncomfortable, I have time to get on that. I have time to get on that.

Brethren, I am not an ogre by nature.

My goal today was not to get my big hammer out, beat everybody into the ground until they felt two inches tall. If you felt like this sermon was something other people needed to hear, or if you felt targeted, singled out, and picked on, I assure you both of those thoughts are wrong.

What was said today is something that needed to be said.

Not just because it's my job, it is. I do need to say some difficult things to say. I was given some very helpful advice just before services today said just tell the truth.

Just tell the truth because we need to hear it, even if we don't like the way it makes us feel sometime. Say these things as I love you. I care about you. I can't say nothing.

Today's sermon was at its core about spiritual drift. Things that start to add up, maybe a little at first. Take us away here, take us away there. If we let those things carry on long and far enough, it could take us to the point where Jesus Christ doesn't even know who we are.

Something worth considering.

Brethren, be strong. Be faithful. Stay close to God. And do not spiritually drift away.