Hope Church LV Sermons
The Life of a Jesus Follower :: I Belong
A few years ago, somebody introduced me to a book by a man named John Eldridge, and the title of the book is simply "Epic." And it's a book that talks about the story of humanity from the beginning of time. It's a story that began with the person of God himself. And in this book, John Eldridge writes something that I want you to hear as we begin this morning. He says, "Now I have a confession to make. Ever since I began to believe in God, I have pictured God as alone, sovereign, powerful, all that, but by himself. Perhaps the notion sprang from the fact that I felt myself to be alone in the universe, or perhaps it came from religious images of God, seated on a great throne way up there somewhere." How wonderful to discover that God has never been alone. He has always been Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God has always been a fellowship. This whole story began with something relational. Let me read it to you in the Bible. Genesis chapter 2, the Word of God says, "Then God said, 'Let, what's the next Word, us, let us make man in what, our image, according to our likeness.' And if you go down a little further in chapter 2, it says, "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.'" The whole story of humanity began in the fellowship of the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And one dimension of our being made in His image and in His likeness is that we were created for relationships. Rick Warren in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, says it this way, "We are created for community, fashion for fellowship and formed for a family, and none of us can fulfill God's purposes by ourselves." The writer of Genesis said, "It is not good for man to be alone." The word "good" there in the Hebrew language that's used in the book of Genesis is a word means best or beneficial. The Bible here is declaring that it's not best, it's not good for us to live in isolation from other people. The word "alone" means to be separated from others without the help or support of other people. And here's the bottom line, "The very best God has for you will never be experienced apart from relationships with others." Let me say it another way, "The life of a Jesus follower is all about relationships." We're in the middle right now at hope of a seven week series that we've simply entitled "The Life of a Jesus follower," and we laid down that statement as a foundation for the entire series. And I want you to read it off the screen with me, you ready, one, two, three. The life of a Jesus follower is all about relationships. And we began over the last couple of weekends unpacking the biblical reality that first and foremost, Christianity is about an intimate love relationship with God. If you're here today and you think somehow that Christianity is just a religion or a system of do's and don'ts or rights and wrongs and rules and regulations, you've missed the very essence of what following Jesus is really all about. Following Jesus is first and foremost about an intimate love relationship with God where everything else in my life is lived out of the overflow of that love relationship with the God of heaven. We gave you a key word to identify this relationship with God. And it was the word. Anybody remember? Abide. The word abide. And that word describes the biblical reality that you and I were designed by God to live our lives constantly out of the overflow of this intimate love relationship with God. Now I want to stop right here and say this. If you miss this first principle, you miss everything about what Christianity is. If you miss the reality that God's invited you into a relationship, listen, God did not invite you into a system, God invited you to know him through his son Jesus Christ. And following Jesus begins with understanding it's about a personal love relationship with God. But this weekend we're going to begin to transition and talk about another relationship because it is true that following Jesus is about a personal love relationship with God, but following Jesus is also about another set of relationships. Let me give you a statement. Although God designed our relationship with him to be personal, it was never his design for it to be private. Have you ever heard anybody say, well my relationship with God is just between me and God? I don't need that whole church thing. I don't need anybody else. I got God and that's enough. It's just me and him. The problem with that is it is true that what you have is a personal, intimate fellowship relationship with God. But as you understand the teachings of the Bible, God never designed us to live out our relationship with him in isolation from other people. God designed us to live out our relationship with him in fellowship with other followers of Jesus. And that isn't just true in the book of Genesis. It permeates the New Testament. Think at Acts chapter 2, where the Bible records this story of the first believers coming to Christ in the city of Jerusalem and 3,000 people give their lives to Christ and listen to what it says happens next in Acts 2.41. So then those who had received his word were baptized and that day they were added about 3,000 souls. Then down in verse 47 it says, "And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved." The Bible says when these people were coming into relationship with God, then they were baptized, they were added to something, added to what? They were added to the community of believers. You see within the larger context of the community of Jerusalem, people were being born again into a new community, the household of God, the family of God, the community of believers. And the New Testament knows nothing of a Christianity without community. Now, one of the dangers of being an American is we grow up in a culture that is very individualistic. Our culture is very much, I'm going to make it on my own, I can be my own person, I can pull myself up by my own bootstraps, I can make something out of my life, a very Western individualistic mindset. The problem with that is that's not the pattern of Christianity in the New Testament. The pattern of Christianity in the New Testament is not a me against the world mentality, but it's a togetherness, a fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, living life together in dependence on God and also in dependence on each other. I want you to think about it this way. Other than the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then the book of Acts, which describes the birth of the New Testament community and its expansion, other than the first five books of the New Testament, there are 22 more books in the New Testament. Did you know that every one of them is written to address a community of believers? They're not books written to individual issues, they're not books written about individuals per se. They're books that were written, they were letters, think about the book of Romans and the Bible, what is that? It's actually the letter that Paul wrote to the community in Rome so that they could understand the theological truths of justification by faith and how those truths begin to impact our lives in community and how they impact us through the giving and receiving of spiritual gifts and how we use those gifts in service to other people inside of the fellowship called the family of God. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, what are these? They're all letters written to the community in Galatia or letters written to the community in Ephesus. Every one of these letters are written to address community. They're even letters like First and Second Timothy and Titus that were written to individuals, but if you read those letters, they were written to give instruction about how to establish leadership in the context of Christian community and to provide structure so that the community of God was functioning in a Biblical fashion. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute, Pastor, you forgot about one." The book of Philemon. I know that was right on the front of everybody's mind this morning, right? Some of you are going to Philemon. That's in the Bible, was he, don't matter. The book of Philemon is a little bitty book in the New Testament. If it gets stuck together to another book, you'll just go right over because it's just one page, and it is a letter written to an individual named Philemon. But have you read it lately? You know what it's about? Philemon had had a falling out with another brother in Christ named Onesimus. And Paul wrote the letter of Philemon to restore and reconcile the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus to bring harmony back to the community of believers that they were living in together. The New Testament knows nothing of a Christianity without community. It's a foreign concept that you and I would have a relationship with God and try to live out our relationship with God apart from ongoing, continuous fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. So let me give you the key word for this relationship. It is the word connect. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are to regularly connect with other believers. Now when we began this series, we asked a question. What does it look like to faithfully follow Jesus? We looked at the life of Christ and we examined his life in the Gospels, and we talked about how Jesus lived his life out of the overflow of intimate fellowship with the Father. But then secondly, Jesus lived his life in fellowship with his disciples that was ongoing and continuous. When we're talking about connecting with other believers today, we're not talking about a program of the Church. We're talking about the simplicity of living out the life of Christ in our everyday lives. If you and I are going to be honest and do what we ask you to do at the beginning of this series, if we're going to have an honest examination of our own heart and say, "Am I faithfully following Jesus or am I just going through some Christian motions?" We're going to have to answer the question, "Am I abiding in Him? Am I living my life moment by moment out of the overflow of intimate love relationship with God?" But there's a second question you've got to answer, "Am I living life connected with other believers and living out my relationship with God by sharing in life with other Christians?" That's a regular part of the life of a Jesus follower. So I want to give you three biblical realities this morning that will introduce this relationship and then we'll dig deeper into it next weekend. Here's the first one. Because I have a relationship with God, I now have a relationship with God's family. Let me show it to you in the Bible. But as many as received Him, it says in John 1, 12, "As many as received Him, to them, He gave the," what does it say, "right." He gave the right to become the children of God even to those who believe on His name. Did you hear it? The moment they embrace the gospel, the moment they receive Christ, the Bible says they were given the right, the authority, the freedom to declare themselves children of God. When they were born again in the relationship with God, listen, they were born again into the family of God. Let me show it to you in another verse, Romans 8, verse 15, "For you have not received the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, by which we cry out," listen to this, "Abba, Father." It's a beautiful term of endearment. In the original language here, the word "Abba" is probably best translated in English with the word "Daddy," meaning that we've been adopted into such an intimate love relationship with the Father, that we can, with all boldness, go into the presence of God and approach Him as our Daddy, our Father, but then look what it says, "The Spirit Himself testifies with our Spirit, that we are," doesn't say we will be, doesn't say we hope to be, we are the children of God. Because you have a relationship with God, you now have a relationship with God's family. Let me say it to you in another way. Being Jesus means that you belong. Following Jesus means you belong, you belong to the family of God. Every one of us has a deep-seated need to belong. We may or may not admit it, but if you want to see just how much you need to belong, grab your old high school yearbook and pull it out. We flip through the old high school yearbook and we think, "Why did I wear that? Why did I do my hair like that? Why did we do all of those crazy? We did that because we wanted people to accept us. We wanted to belong. We wanted to fit in, we wanted to have somewhere we connected. We all, as human beings, were made of the image of God with a longing for relationships. And the biblical principle here is, because you have a relationship with God, you have a new identity in the person of Jesus Christ. And a part of that new identity is you and I now belong to the family of God. Now let me give you a couple of common mistakes we make in applying this principle. One of the mistakes we make is some people have the idea that when I'm born again I have a relationship with God, but then I have a decision to make about whether or not I want a relationship with God's family. As soon as I was born again, I was born again in the...how many of you figured out real quick when you got married, you didn't just get a relationship with one person? Be careful, they may be sitting around you. It's Mother's Day. That's going to make for an awkward lunch if you am in too loud right there, right? Hey, marriage came with a whole package, right? Want it or not? Like it or not. It's the whole deal. Seems true in Christianity. When you were born again into a relationship with God, guess what? You got us. We came with it. We came with the package, the family of God. It's not a decision that I have to make, do I want to be a part of the family of God? It's not I've got this relationship with God and now I get to pray about whether or not I want to connect. No. The Bible says the moment we're born again into a relationship with God, we're given a relationship with God's family. A second common mistake we make is some people have had a bad experience in a church. They've had a bad past experience and so what they've decided to do is just throw out the whole concept of family. Listen, if you're a part of a church, let me just make it even more personal. If you're a part of this church, there will come a point in time when you will either get your feelings hurt or have a bad experience. You know why? Let me give you a secret this morning. Your church is full of sinful people. You get a bunch of sinful people together. Guess what you got? You're going to have issues. Somebody's going to get their feelings hurt. Somebody's going to say something wrong. Somebody's not going to consider you the way they should consider you. Listen, I'm the pastor here and it has happened to me. I've had a bad experience here. That's what we're not going to do. We're not just going to pack up and throw the whole thing away, right, and be done with it. If somebody in my family at my house offends me, I'm not going to pack up their bags and put them on the front porch and say, "Get out of here. I'm done with this whole concept of family," right? No, we're going to work through it. Why? Because that's what family does. Listen, we're going to have some times when as a family, we have to work through some issues together. But we are the family of God. Here's what I want you to understand. It means that you and I are now a part of something that is so much bigger than us. Here's what that means. When you're reading in the Bible and you're reading the stories of Abraham and of Noah and of Moses, and you're reading the stories of Isaac and Samuel and David and Joshua and Caleb and Isaiah and Jeremiah, when you're reading those stories, you know what you're reading? You're reading the history of your family. When we get on an airplane, like we do here at Hope Dolphin, and we go to the other side of the world and we either go into Africa or the Middle East or Southeast Asia or we go to Central America and we get off the plane and we connect with some of those fellow Christians that are out there and we begin to talk with them. Let me tell you what we're meeting. We're not just meeting some other Christians out there somewhere. We're meeting our brothers and our sisters in Christ, and it doesn't take long at all to spend time with them when you understand, "Man, there's a kindred spirit. I love these people. They love me. We are one family together." When you read on in the New Testament and you're reading the story of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and His glorious triumph over all of the world and you're reading that story when around the throne of Jesus, there's going to be people from every tribe, tongue, people, nation, worshiping God. Let me tell you what you're reading. You're reading the future of your family. That's our story. Let's say we're a part of something that is bigger than us and here's the bottom line. You will never, you'll never experience the best God has for you if you're not living connected with other believers. You can try to do it on your own. You can go out there and try to live out your relationship with God, but I'm telling you, you'll never experience God's best. He said, "It's not good." Let me say it another way. You need us and we need you. I said last weekend that humility says, "God, I need you." Let me tell you what else humility says. Humility says, "I need others. I need people in my life to encourage me, to pray for me, to hold me accountable, to be an example. I need others." Let me give you a second reality. It is impossible to be right with God and not be right with God's family. Now I want this one to sink in so I'm going to get you to read it with me off the screen. You ready? Here we go. One, two, three. It is impossible to be right with God and not be right with God's family. Now hang on to that for a minute. Remember last weekend, if you were here, I took you to a verse of scripture that God used to radically change my life, John 14 and verse 15. Here's what it said. Hope a lot of you know it. It was your memory verse for the week. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Remember what I told you last weekend, the way I heard that for most of my Christian life was I heard Jesus saying, "If you love me, you better obey me." And so the focus of my life was on obedience, trying to do what I was supposed to do so that I could show Jesus here. I love you. And then I began to understand that's not at all what Jesus was saying because you know if you've tried that, the harder you try to obey and the harder you try to prove, the worse you do, right? Jesus didn't say, "If you love me, you better obey me." Here's what he said. If you love me, you will obey me, emphasis on love me, meaning that what he'd invited us into was an intimate love relationship. And the more we focus on cultivating that love relationship, the more we develop intimacy with God, the greater he will manifest his life in us, which looks like obedience. Now Jesus didn't just say that one time in John 14. If you were here last weekend, we unpacked that Jesus said it four times, four times in one chapter. And just in case the disciples didn't catch it, in John 15, he gives them an illustration to show them what it looks like. And he said in John 15, "Five, I am the vine." You are the what, branches. He who abides in me and I in him will bear much fruit. For apart from me, you can't do anything, you can do nothing. Here's what he was saying. Our role as followers of Jesus is to sow a bite in him, to focus on our intimate love relationship with him. And in doing that, he the vine literally begins to press his life out through us. And when he begins to live his life out through us, let me tell you what it looks like, obedience to the commandments of God. Now after Jesus said it four times, and then gave an illustration, listen to what he said next, John 15 verse 12, "This is my commandment." Let me say it another way. Here's what it looks like. When you begin to abide in me, when you begin to focus on intimate fellowship with me, when you begin to cultivate a love relationship with me, my commandments will come out of you. Here's my commandment, that you love one another. Here's what he's saying, the first obvious evidence that you and I are walking in fellowship with God is that through us, he begins to love our brothers and sisters in Christ. Now if that's all he'd said, it was a weighty statement. But then he added that last phrase on John 15 12, "Just as I have loved you," I want you to look around you this one, look up and down your road. Here's what Jesus said, "When you're abiding in me, here's the first obvious evidence that your relationship is right with me. You're loving the people around you, just like I loved you." I know what you're thinking, pastor, have you seen my road? I'm not sure that's possible. Hey listen, it's not possible in your strength. You see, I don't have that kind of love. I don't have the capacity to love somebody else like that. But here's the beautiful picture that Jesus is drawing for. He doesn't ask us to. He wants to love them through us with his own love out of the overflow of our fellowship with him. And the picture is, when you and I are living in fellowship with him, it begins to manifest. He begins to literally love others through us. Now John is one of the disciples who heard Jesus say it four different times. He saw the illustration that Jesus gave, John understood what Jesus said, and John wrote about it in the letter that he wrote, called first John in the fourth chapter, the 20th verse. And let me tell you before I read it, when John said it, he would near as nice as Jesus was. Listen to the way John said it. If someone says, I love God, me and God are good. My relationship with God's great. If somebody says I love God and hates his brother, he is a, what does it say? I'm glad John said it, not me. I don't know what you're thinking, but I don't hate him. Let me tell you what the word hate in the Greek language. This is the definition from Spiro Zodiaces, one of the greatest Greek scholars of our day. Listen to the way he defines the word hate. Active ill will in words and conduct. Here's what it means. John says, if you say me and God are good, and you've got ill feelings towards a brother, sister in Christ that are evidencing themselves through what's coming out of your mouth or the way you're acting towards them, listen to what John says, you are liar. First and foremost, you are lying to yourself to deceive yourself, to think somehow you can be right with God, that your fellowship with God can be okay, and you can have that kind of bitterness or anger or ill feeling towards a brother, sister in Christ, John said it's not possible. Listen what he goes on to say, for the one who does not love his brother whom he is seeing he cannot love God whom he's not seen, and then he then he quotes Jesus. And this is the commandment that we have from him. John said, I heard him say it, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Roy Hessian wrote a great book called the Calvary Road. If you've never read it, highly recommend it, Calvary Road. Here's what he said in the book. Everything that comes as a barrier between us and another, be it ever so small, comes as a barrier between us and God. Our relationship with our fellows and our relationship with God are so linked that we cannot disturb one without disturbing the other as heavy. And just in case you think we're reading too much into it, I want you to hear the example Jesus gave in Matthew chapter five verse twenty three, listen to this, Jesus says, therefore if you're presenting your offering at the altar, if you are a church and you're just worshiping God and you're praising God and you're presenting your offering of praise and sacrifice to God, and there you remember that your brother has something against you. Jesus said, you leave your offering there before the altar and you go, first, first, be reconciled to your brother, then, then you come back and present your offering. It is impossible, it's impossible to be right with God and not be right with God's family. Let me give you the third and final reality this morning. My relationship with God grows by fellowship with God's family. My relationship with God grows by fellowship with God's family. Here's the big picture. It is my relationship with God that has given me a relationship with you. It's your relationship with God that's given you a relationship with your brothers and sisters in Christ, but listen, it's your relationship with each other that deepens and grows your relationship with God. You see how it works together? Here's the reality. There are things in my life. There are truths about God. I will never learn apart from fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ. What do we say at the beginning? The overall goal of the Christian life is it's to know God. God's invited us to know him. Listen, there are things about God you'll never know. There are truths about God you'll never discover apart from fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ. Let me try to illustrate it. How many of you this morning are married? Let me see your hand. Just hold them up. How many of you are married? A lot of us here are married today. You can put them down. See if you agree with this statement. There are some things in life you just cannot learn until you get married. Come on now. That's a good amen point right there, right? Yeah. There's just some stuff you can't know, right? For example, there were some habits in my life that needed to change. I didn't even know about them until I got married. I remember sitting across the table one day and my wife said, honey do you realize that when people are talking, you just cut them off and jump right in on top. I just cut her off and I said, what are you talking about? I said, give me an example. You know what I found out? She's right. It's something I have to watch in my life. I mean, I feel like I know what they're going to say anyway, so just go ahead and save their breath, right? Just jump right in there. But it wasn't until I was married that somebody loved me enough to point that out in my life and I learned something about me that needed to change. Listen, there was some truth, some truth that I needed to discover that I couldn't discover until I got married. For example, there were some foods that I was never brave enough to try out there on my own, but I wouldn't brave enough not to try out when my wife put them on the table in front of me, right? And you know what I discovered? I loved some of those foods. I came to an amazing truth that some of those foods are wonderful things and I would have never known that, listen, the same thing's true spiritually. There's some things in your life. There's some characteristics. There's some habits that God wants to change in you. He wants to conform you to the image of his son Jesus. He wants to produce Christ's likeness in you and it's not going to be until you get in fellowship with some brothers and sisters in Christ and God begins to show you. Somebody will either confront you and they'll point something out that you need to see or you'll see a characteristic in somebody else's life that's absent in your life. And God will use those relationships to sharpen and to shape you into the person God wants you to be. There's some truths about God that I'll never learn apart from fellowship with other believers. There's some things about God that you see in other people's lives. As you see Christ manifesting himself. Maybe it's a compassion or mercy or maybe it's a boldness to share their faith, whatever it is. You see it in somebody else's life and God uses those relationships to deepen our relationship with him. One word for this is the word fellowship. Now we hear the word fellowship and we think small talk before and after church or we think coffee and a donut is fellowship. But the word fellowship is the Greek word quinonia and it literally means to share in the life to participate in the life of somebody else. Let me give you a definition of the word fellowship. It's living out our relationship with God together with other believers. And hear me again. What we're talking about is not a program of the church. We're talking about the life of a Jesus follower. So you got to ask yourself, am I abiding in Christ daily and personally? Am I connecting with other believers in fellowship where I'm sharing life? Listen, listen, you cannot accomplish this principle by sitting in a seat for an hour and a half a week and listening to somebody teach. You can't do it. This principle goes so much deeper than that. It's about sharing. Listen, it doesn't say sharing a row with somebody, it's about sharing life with other people, walking through ups and downs, encouragement, meeting needs, praying for, sharing in the mission together. Let me show it to you in the Bible. Acts chapter 2 and verse 42, listen what it says, after those 3,000 came to Christ. It says they were continually describing an ongoing continuous action. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer, day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. They were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. Listen, what I'm reading to you is not a program of the church. It was just the expression of life-changing community that was being lived out after people were born again in the relationship with God. We're to live out our relationship with God. Now how do we do that today? What is God's plan for us? God's plan to accomplish fellowship is the local church. You know what a local church is? A local church is God's divinely established community for me to live out my relationship with God and fellowship with others. You see, that's why church is such a big deal. Church is not a big deal because it's what you have to do to be a good Christian. Listen, if you're here today and you're attending church because you think this hour and a half in a seat is somehow earning you some points with God, listen, you've missed the whole essence of what following Jesus is about. Church is not important because I'm checking off my list of what I've got to do. No, let me tell you why this is important. God in His sovereignty established this as the platform where we connect and fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ to live out our relationship with God sharing in the lives of other people. It's God's plan. Let me give you a definition of the church, here it is. It's a local community of baptized Jesus followers, uniting together to share in the mission of Christ. That's what the church is. It's a local community of people that have professed faith in Christ and made that public testimony of baptism who've joined themselves. They've united together to live life and share in the mission of Christ to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. At hope we gather every weekend in a setting like this. Why do we do that? The Bible says in Acts, they would gather in the temple courts. It was a large place for them to gather as the body of Christ and the apostles would teach the Word of God. And then the Bible says they gathered house to house through the week and we encourage every person that's a part of this fellowship to be involved in a small group during the week. Why? Is that because we've established a program in the church? No. It's because we're trying to model as close we can the biblical New Testament community where they would gather in large groups for the teaching of the Word of God, then they would gather in small groups for application of that truth, do life together, meet needs and share in the mission to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. That's why being a member of a local church is so important. It's God's plan for fellowship. Why is this such a big deal pastor? Here's why. He started with this. You'll never know God's best without it. You'll never know. Listen, just simply having a relationship with God. That's awesome. You go to heaven when you die. It's wonderful. But you'll never know the best in this life apart from fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ. Let me show you another reason. It's so important. I want to look at another verse. John 13 verse 35. Listen what Jesus said. He said, "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. As soon as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, listen to this, by this, all men will know that you are my disciples, by your love for one another." You hear what he's saying there? What authenticates the message of the gospel in Las Vegas? Las Las Vegas supposed to know Jesus is real. How they supposed to know this gospel is transformation. Let me tell you how they know. They see it in us as we live out a radical community. As we from different cultures, different backgrounds, different places, as we come together as the body of Christ and we begin to live in fellowship together, the lost world is able to see what Christian community looks like. And Jesus said when they see that, it's an expression of my love. One of Jesus's phrases or one of the phrases that the Word of God uses to describe the church is the body of Christ. What is a body? A body is that which provides a physical reality of existence. You see the reason you know I'm real is I've got a body, you can see me. You can touch me. I'm a real person, has a world no God's real. He has a body and you're looking at it. We're the body of Christ and as we live out community, it's a radical expression of the love of God to our city. Let me show you one last verse and we're done, 1 John 4, 12, listen what he says, no one, no one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. Nobody says there, the only way the world sees God is in the effect of God and his gospel on your life and mine as we live out our relationship with him and fellowship with each other. As a Jesus follower, I'm to abide daily, personally, continually, but also as a Jesus follower, I'm to connect large group and small group to share in the life of other believers. [BLANK_AUDIO]