Excess of confidence To go forward without stumbling, we must have the assurance that a hand all-powerful will hold us up, and infinite piety will be exercised towards us if we fall. God alone can at all times hear our cry for help. It is a solemn thought that the removal of one safeguard from the conscience, the failure to fulfill one good resolution, the formation of one wrong habit may result not only in our ruin, but in the ruin of those who have put confidence in us. Our only safety is to follow where the steps of the Master lead the way, to trust for protection implicitly to Him who says, Follow me. Our constant prayer should be, Hold up my goings in thy path, O Lord, that my footsteps slip not. The Israelites needed the benefits of assembling for worship and entering into covenant together to serve the Lord, and separating themselves from the place of worship divinely appointed, they lost much. God had servants whose lips He unsealed to speak words of warning, encouragement, and reproof, so that the light received from heaven by one shone not for himself alone, but to lighten the path of others. God knows best what His people need. His word comes down to us in warning and instruction, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as you see the day approaching." Brothers and sisters, pulling out of the passage for a moment, if we remove ourselves from the environment of a church family that is in the Laodicean condition, before God bids us to do so, and I want to uphold the truth that there is definitely times, there are definitely church environments where we need to withdraw. Jesus says, if they persecute you in one synagogue, flee unto another, you will not have gone over the land of Israel, to the Son of Man cometh. There's our example. There is a time and place where we have to remove ourselves, but let us beware, lest we do it on our human reasoning as Gideon did. Let's make sure that if that time comes, that it's through the voice of the Lord that we've learned to understand as we've torn down the altar of Baal in our own experience. But in those church environments where there is a struggle of Laodicea going on, Sister White here says, God had servants whose lips he unsealed to speak words of warning, encouragement, reproof, that the light received from heaven by one shall not for himself alone, but to lighten the paths of others. If we who profess to be experiencing present truth remove ourselves from those churches that are struggling in darkness, it says here that the Lord is going to raise up people