THE TRIALS OF OUR FAITH

The speaker discusses the importance of understanding the trials of faith. They reference various scriptures and emphasize the role of faith in the lives of believers. They differentiate between persecution and prosecution and explain that faith comes from hearing the Word of God. They also emphasize the need to trust in God during difficult times and not rely on self-effort. The speaker encourages believers to endure hardship and find rest in Jesus. They caution against equating material possessions with being blessed and highlight the importance of trusting God in all circumstances. Finally, they discuss the testing and strengthening of faith through trials. So, we talked about on the other night, we talked about understanding the trials of our faith. I want to continue there, talking about understanding the trials of our faith. I want to go back to reference these scriptures, St. John chapter 9, verse 1 through 3, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 4 through 9, verse 11, 20 through 23, and then verses 30 through 35, 39 and 40, that's of Hebrews 11 chapter, Habakkuk 2 and 4, Romans 1 and 17, Galatians 3, verses 1 through 5, then skip to verse 11, then verses 22 through 24, Hebrews chapter 10, verse 38, Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, St. John chapter 19, verse 30, Acts chapter 17 and 28, Psalms 1, 18, 23, John 6 and 29, Galatians 3, 1 through 6, then skip to 22 through 29, 1 Corinthians 6 and 17, and then John 1 and 12. We talked about faith is the focal point of our life as believers, because without faith, it would be totally impossible to even say that we are believers of Christ, because again, I reiterate the fact that none of us have seen Jesus, none of us have seen God, but we believe in what's placed on record for us as believers, and that's what we go by, the account of the apostles and the other men and women of God, or the men of God that recorded, but then the men and women of God who had encounters with Jesus Christ, and who had encounters with God our Father. And we gain our faith by the accounts that others have had before us, and then by our own personal accounts that we have as believers, all right? So when we look at our faith, our faith should be going from faith to faith, glory to glory. This is how our faith should be going, from faith to faith, glory to glory, which means that our faith comes and is placed on a totally different level than just an ordinary believing, because we go from believing to knowing. We go from believing that God can, to knowing that God can work a situation out in our lives. Again, we have on record believers that are before us that have had encounters, and your own personal encounter that you have with Jesus Christ can also attest to your faith. The Word of God says this, faith comes by hearing, and hearing the Word of God is what brings us faith. Then it says, how can he hear? How can they hear without a preacher? How can he preach except he be sent? All right? So when we preach, we preach to help edify, to help strengthen the faith of the believer, and to help activate the faith of the non-believer. That's the reason why we preach, all right, is to help develop the faith of the non-believer, and to help take the faith of the believer to another level, or to another dimension, however it works. And so, living godly lives does not come, or does not excuse us from undergoing hardship and tribulations. Now, we talked about tribulations on last week. We talked about hardship. This is something that all believers, we got to understand this, that just because we belong to God doesn't mean that we won't have hard times. And just because we encounter adversity, it does not mean that we sinned, or we did anything wrong. Again, I put the difference between persecution and prosecution, okay? The people like Paul and Silas, when they were put in jail, they were being persecuted because number one, they preached the name Jesus. But second of all, they were placed in jail because there was a little girl that was following them around, and she knew who they were in God, and she began to tell the people, now Paul and Silas, they preached Jesus, and it was against the law to preach Jesus. This little girl was following them around, saying, these men are servants of the Most High God. They turned around, and they rebuked the demon that was in her, because people, her caregivers, or whatever the word you want to use, was using her because she had this gifting or this different spirit in her that would allow her to tell fortunes, or something of that nature. She was a psychic, basically. And so they made money off of the gifting that she had, okay? So when Paul and Silas turned and they cast the demon out of her, they knew that they couldn't make money anymore because that spirit was gone from her. They had Paul and Silas cast in jail for that, okay? That's an example of persecution. Prosecution is when you've done something wrong. You're paying the penalty for what you've done wrong. So persecution is being done wrong for the right that you do. Prosecution is being done right for the wrong that you do. That's the difference between the two, all right? So the faith that we need to push through is a tough... We need the faith, excuse me, that would help us push through all adverse situations in our life. And it's not our faith that gets us there, but it's God's faith. His faith is much better than ours, okay? We find real rest in the midst of turmoil when we stop working hard to believe that we're righteous, we stop working hard to believe that we're redeemed, delivered, and healed, and just simply believe it because Jesus believes it. Just believe it because Jesus said. Just stop working to try to prove what Jesus has already proven. Just sit back and rest and just believe it because Jesus believed it, all right? And that's kind of simple. That kind of simplifies everything. So this removes all of the pressure of self-effort, and it gives us the highest kind of faith that we can ever accomplish. Because the self-effort thing, it will sooner or later fail us, okay? Because most people don't really have faith, they just have, what do you call it? They have self-esteem, but they have, what is this word I'm looking for? They have motivation. They have self-motivation. They don't really have faith. You know, people, you know, I'm blessed and I'm highly favored. They only say that because they just got their income taxed, or they just got a raise on their job, they just bought a new car, and they attribute being blessed and highly favored to having stuff. But stuff doesn't necessarily mean that you're blessed and highly favored. The Scriptures declare, say, what does it profit a man? To gain the whole world and lose his soul. There are people that don't have many fame and fortune, but they full of the Holy Ghost. They full of the power of God, but they lack, you know, the riches of the world, okay? There are some people that have a balance. They have the riches of the world, and they also have the power of God working in their life, and some people have it, some people don't. Some people lack one or the other. But what does it profit a man? To gain the whole world and turn around and lose his own soul. So we can't equate having stuff by saying I'm blessed. Well, you're blessed even when you're going through circumstances and tribulations in your life. You're still blessed, all right? But we have to learn, as Paul declared in the Word, it might have been Timothy, one of the two, said that we should endure hard times as good soldiers. Now, I don't know what's good about being a soldier, because there's so many elements that we can describe in being a good soldier, but we're soldiers of Jesus Christ. And he said that we should take pleasure in hardship and in hard times, amen, because we know that we have someone on our side that's going to always be there to help us through our circumstance and our situation. But the very first thing that we do is when we go through hard times, we retreat to fear. We retreat to complaining. We retreat because, as I said on Thursday night, because it's a situation that brings fear because it's out of our control. And when we can't control it, it causes us to be scared because we don't know the outcome of the situation. There are many times that we're faced with things that we probably could have gotten a whole lot further in that situation and even in your believer's life if our first response to the situation was just, I'm going to trust God through this. It's kind of hard to say that when you go to the doctor and the doctor says you've got stage three cancer. It's kind of hard to believe that when you go to the doctor and they say your heart is holding on by a string, all right? It's hard to believe that when you've got two eviction notices, you know, they gave you one, they gave you a chance, and then they brought you another one. It's kind of hard because your first response as a human is to say, well, what am I going to do? How am I going to make it? Where am I going to go? Where are the resources going to come? Who's going to help me? How is this going to be possible? That's normally our first reaction. But as a believer, our first reaction should be, God, you got this, all right? Because if you can have it, when everything is going good, David declares this. I will bless the Lord at all times. All means all. It doesn't mean just when I got a raise or just when my income tax comes or just when my baby mama or my baby dad, however you work it out in your life, you know, just because things are going good, then I'm, you know, always thanking Jesus, you know, and I found out that as a believer that's going through troubles in their life, they won't go to church or they won't come to Bible study when they're going through hard times. Now, I don't know what, I don't know, it's the trick of the devil, that's what it is. But I don't know what in the thinking process of the believer or the ones that say they're the believers to keep you away from the very thing that's going to give you strength. But it goes back to the lack of faith. Now, faith is easy to be preached about or to be spoken about as long as there's no trouble or there's nothing to try or test your faith. You can't really necessarily say you got faith if your faith hasn't been tried, if your faith have not been tested, okay? But when you're in that situation in your life where your faith is being tried and your faith is being tested, that's really how you're going to know if I really believe or if I really trust in God, okay? That's when you really know, all right, if you really trust God or if you really got faith in God when your faith is at the point where it's almost becoming shaky. You ever been through a situation in your life where your faith was just kind of rocky? You was like, okay, now I believe God, but I'm like that boy daddy. Lord, I believe, but you're going to have to help me with this unbelief that's creeping in because I know what your word says, but I done been to three doctors and each one of them seem like they got a report worse than the other, okay? So now that kind of shakes you up a little bit, all right? But you still got to learn how to trust God because trusting God means I'm going to take all the effort out of my hand and I'm going to place it into the hands of God. I'm not going to do anything to try to fix this, but just pray, have faith, and keep my trust and my focus on the Lord. David was surrounded by enemies. He was in the valley. Everywhere he looked was trouble. This is what David declared, Psalms 121 and 1. Psalms 121 and 1. I will look to the hills for what's coming, my help. And David said this. He says, all my help come from the Lord, all right? So we got to learn that even in hard times and most assuredly in hard times, there's those are the times that we should trust God. Now, believers or as believers, we must expect trials and tribulations. There will be things that will happen for those or to those that live a godly life. You already become a target, all right? When you say, I believe God is going to do this. When you say, I trust God. When you say, I know God is going to get me through this, you become a satanic target because he's going to come and he's going to challenge what you say out of your mouth. He's going to challenge your faith, okay? Now the thing about him is he wants you to denounce all faith and all trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's his job. So we don't, you know, I don't expect the devil to do anything, but be the devil. Now he would scare me if he, if he could love, I will be totally scared of this joker because one minute you can love and next minute you can't, but he doesn't know how to do that. Okay. So I expect him to be the snake he is. So it doesn't surprise me when, when attacks come or when circumstances come, you know, I, I just eat. I stopped referencing it because I was referencing it because I expect him to be him. I expect him to show his head up and try to bring adverse situations to bring adversity to a thing to try to cause us as believers, not to continue to trust God because he throws that slight monkey wrench in. It seemed like every time you were to do something for God, he throws that slight curve in there. Don't go the way you anticipated in time. It don't go the way you anticipated. Then that's all your mind wondering. And the first thing we say, Oh, this can't be God because if it was God, it would have went this way. How can you say that? How can you say if God was in it, it would have went this way or it would have went that way. You just continue to trust God. You can't dictate how to get to where you're going. Just get there. Okay. I think we as believers, we worry about a little bit too much because we try to sit back and we try to put labels and we try to eat. You know, we try to think, well, if this was God, I know that it, you know, everything would have just worked out perfect. No, because it's God. Sometimes it doesn't work out perfect because sometimes God wants to build your faith. You pray and he won't answer you. You like what I do wrong. And the first thing your friends will tell you, well, you must have seen, you must have did something wrong. Where'd you get that from? Preacher, look at Job. When the devil took his family, he lost everything he had. Then his body became stricken almost unto death. I'm talking about, but the Lord had told Satan, he said, you can do anything you want to him, but you can't touch his soul. You can't kill him. Now you can make him sick unto death, but you can't kill him. So here Job is, that lost everything he had, all of his family, everything that he possessed, all of his riches. And he was within one inch of death. That's how close Satan got him. His friends came and they was far off looking at him, at him suffering in his pain. And you know, these jokers say, oh, he must've made his God mad, his God. He must've made his God mad. Look at him. He about to die. No, he did nothing wrong. He still trusted God because the Bible says he got down and shot Clark and in the ashes. And he said, the Lord give it and the Lord take it away. Then guess what he said? Bless be the name of the Lord. Can we say that when we go through sickness? Can we say that when we lose what we have? Now the moral of that story of the end of that, of that was that God gave him everything that he had double. So he had more twice as much as he had before because of his faith and because he trusted God. See, we run around here saying that if we give to the prophet that, you know, that's how we're going to reap our blessing, you know, cause we didn't, I sold the seed to the prophet. Well, I'm not going to doubt that. But I'm going to tell you this, that when you have a unlimited faith in the middle of your situation, if you should lose anything, God will reward you double for what you lost. It's too many instances in the Bible where God did it. When David had went to zig lag and came back, uh, the city had been burnt up and he asked God, he said, well, shall I go and pursue my enemies? And God said, yeah, go pursue the enemies. But God gave him back everything that he had lost. So if you want to, again, if you want to catch the attention of God, we have to catch God's attention by faith, not by how good you are as a believer, not by how much you fast, not by how much you pray. But your faith is what gets God's attention because no work that you and I could ever do would catch God's attention. All right. But your faith will always catch his attention. New Testament believers live by Jesus's faith, which is much better than ours. His faith gets us through triumph and his faith gets us through tribulations. We can rely on his faith when our faith is weak. When our belief is not enough, we can believe what Jesus believes. If you want to know how to get your faith to level, you believe how Jesus believes. You think how Jesus thinks. The scripture declares, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Now watch this. Jesus came out of the wilderness from fasting 40 days and 40 nights. He came out of the wilderness for Satan to meet him right when he came past that last tree, the devil standing right there. Now, first of all, Jesus hadn't eaten in 40 days or 40 nights. So he was vulnerable because he had no nourishment in his physical body. And anytime something's going on in your physical body, it begins in your spirit first. So his mind was at a place, amen, where he didn't have, you know, he wasn't all the way there because, you know, your food is what helps keep your brain active. So he didn't been without food. He'd have been without water for 40 days and 40 nights. So here comes Satan offering him, he tempted him three times. And each time Jesus told him that it's written that you, that you should not tempt the Lord by God. So he was letting Satan know, I'm your God and you can't tempt me with something that I already have. Isn't there something that Satan is trying to make it appear that he can offer you something that ain't his anyway. But everything that he tried to offer to Jesus were things of the world. Okay. That's why he's the prince of the air. Okay. He tried to offer him things of the world, but little did he understand or he understood it, but he was just trying to throw that little curve ball in there. Everything belongs to God anyway. All right. So you can't give God what's already his. All right. Old Testament believers living under the law had faith, but their faith required self-effort. Our faith should not be attempted to manufacture what God has already completed, but a response to what is done. That's what our faith should be. The New Testament faith brings us into rest. Old Testament had so much work to do because it was under the law that God gave and they had to do this. They had to kill a certain animal at a certain time and certain people had to go in and they had to do this in order for God to accept them. Jesus came as the ultimate sacrifice and everything that they did in the law, Jesus did. How they had to carry the lamb outside of the city before he was slain and killed. Why do you think they took Jesus up Galileo's hill 34 miles out of the city so that he could be killed? All of that was, you have to look at all of that was in the order. It had to be a young lamb. It had to be an innocent lamb. Jesus was an innocent lamb. Everything that led up to Jesus' death was what God had given the law. He changed nothing. That's why they called Jesus the ultimate sacrifice because after his sacrifice there could be any more sacrifices that could even compare to the sacrifice that he made when he gave his life. But our response to our faith should be us responding to what God has already done in his word. Now the finished work of Jesus gave us access to the same faith that Jesus had. His finished work was he went to the cross and he said it is finished. It is finished. Okay, so now what is finished? He had completed the will of God as far as the sacrifice. Okay. And right after he said it's finished he said Father into thy hands I command my spirit and he died. Okay, so that completed what was needed to be the sacrifice for our sins. But then if it would have completed the sacrifice for our sins then guess what I want to bring you to revelation here. We could have died and still had no hope. Because we could have died our sins would have been covered just like those people's sins were covered in the Bible. But we still could have died and still could have been bound under the law. Okay. So now what Jesus did when he died he went to hell took the keys of hell and death from Satan. Okay, you have to understand the work that he did when he went to hell. That was a reason why he came back when he rose and said I got the keys to hell and death because if Jesus would have just died and stayed dead the sacrifice for our sins would have been forgiven just for that time. Okay, but we still would have been bound at some point or another under Satan until God took the keys. What are the keys? His authority. He took the authority that when we were condemned under sin he took that authority back from Satan. And he said I got the keys now. So that was the first thing. Then when he rose from the dead he defeated death when he came back because he came back and he stayed alive. The Lazarus came back from the dead but he died again. Enoch never died. He started walking with God and just kept walking straight on into heaven. He never even tasted death. The Bible says he started walking with God. This is in Genesis. I believe or Exodus. One of them. I think it's Genesis. He started walking with God and just kept walking. He never even died. He just walked right on into heaven. All right. He never tasted death. That was when Jesus stopped the funeral procession, touched the casket and the child came back to life. There were people that came back from death but they died again. When Jesus came back from death he never died again. So then he said so this same thing that I've done you don't have to die anymore. Okay. Because you got to understand the second death was taken away from us if we die in Christ. Now the Bible says it is given unto all men to die then after death the judgment. So we have to die a physical death here on earth which changes us from mortality into immortality. That's the thing. That's what death represents. It takes the mortality away from us and it places us back into our Genesis 1 and 8 stage. Let us make man and all him after our likeness. That's when he created us spirits. Okay. So death takes us back to the spirit but then after the spirit there's a soul there. Okay. And that soul is what's being judged because that's the heart of your mind. Okay. That's the heart of your mind. Your soul is the heart of your mind. And you could not imagine the intent or how deep the heart of your mind goes. Okay. There are so much things that's in our soul because there are some things that affect your soul greatly. This is why we have to be careful who we are sexually active with. Okay. Because these things bind you to these folks. You walk around here just having sex and you're bound to that person. You don't even understand why. You think you're in love with them. Okay. But little do you know a soul tie has been formed because God created that tie for a man and a female when the two becomes one. That's what he was saying. Okay. So you think you're just solely in love with this person and you don't understand that you created a soul tie that you need to be asking God to break because you're just running around here just being loose. All right. You think it's love, but it ain't love. Your soul is in trouble. But one of the greatest sins that affects our soul is a sexual sin. All right. Anything dealing with lust, anything dealing with lust is sexual. And when it's dealing with lust, you don't care what you lay down with as long as your flesh or that lusty desire or that lusty appetite can be satisfied. This is why when we go back to the word of God, it says this kind that we preached about suddenly, this kind come out by fasting and praying. Okay. Because there are no other sins that can get to your soul like a sexual sin. Okay. And then not only that, but that sin not only bounds you, but it bounds the person or per sin. Some people have persons. All right. It bounds everybody that you have caused to fall into that trap. It gets all of you in trouble. But the one that knows better, if it's a believer, somebody that has been a believer, but they're in a backsliding state, you're held accountable not only for you, but for everybody else that you have entangled into this myth. So it all affects your soul. Let me go back to what I was saying. So now your soul is what is returned either back to God or your soul is what goes to hell. Now, because your soul deals with your mind and your mind triggers the reaction of your body. It's your brain, which is connected to your soul that tells your legs to get up after bed. You got to go to the bathroom. You don't just wake up out of your sleep and just say, oh, I got to go to the bathroom. It begins with a thought first. It works so quick until we don't even understand how quickly it works in our mind. Your brain tells you, you're kidding me, fool. You got to go empty. You got to get up. So then in the process of telling your brain, your brain telling you that you're kidding me fool is also telling your legs to get up at the bed and walk to the bed. All of this is working in sync with each other, but it's working all together. So as you've been trained to go through, however you use the bathroom, all of that is working together, but it started with your mind first. This is why Satan works so hard in order to try to keep our minds away from the things of God, because he knows if you can get your mind locked in just on God and just on the things of God, you can give him hell. And that's what he don't want. So he don't keep us distracted with little bitty things that catches our attention so that we can be pulled away from the righteousness of God. This is why it's important to exercise your mind. Let me say this. A person that won't exercise like me, y'all see how fat I done got. Well, it's unhealthy not to exercise. It's also unhealthy not to exercise your mind as a believer in Jesus Christ. You got to feed your mind with the word of God. You got to feed your spirit with the word of God and with prayer. This also helps build up your faith. You know, I ain't worried about character right now. I'm talking about building up your faith, because watch this. There's going to come a time, and it could be, you know, I can explain some stuff, but I ain't going to do it tonight. And we're talking about the trick of the enemy. Well, I'm going to give you this example when we talk about faith. My mother, before she passed, was blind. So we walked into the room. This was a few days before she passed. She's having a conversation with the devil. She didn't even know we was in the room. So we walk in, and the nurse comes in to do whatever she was doing. And my mama's sitting here saying, I love God. You can't make me say nothing about God. I love God. Jesus is my savior. So then my mom went back. I'm like, so then the nurse says, oh, well, you know, she's been laying flat on her back for 14 days. And any time a person lays on their back, they start hallucinating. I say, so it's really the medicine. I say, that ain't medicine. I say, she is having a conversation with the enemy. So then God gave me this revelation, because her faith was being tested at that point. You see what I'm talking about? And so if she had given in to what the devil had told her, he'd have took her right then, and she'd have went to hell. But she kept saying, you can't make me say nothing about Jesus. Jesus is my savior. So then when I made her realize we was in the room, these were my mama's words. She said, I want you to pray for me. Save my soul. I want you to pray for me so it can save my soul. And I prayed for her. So when we talk about testing faith and keeping our mind conditioned to be on Jesus Christ, what if you were in that situation that she was in, and you don't know the voice of God? What would you do? Because at some instance, there are people that have gone that didn't know the voice of God, and they listened to the wrong voice. And I'm sorry to say, they ain't where we think they are. When we go through, everybody can't be in heaven. If everybody feeling that I done went to, then went to heaven. Ain't no hell nowhere. And I'm sorry. It's the truth. Everybody ain't in heaven. Everybody ain't flying high and watching over us. I'm sorry. That's just not the case. And I know that helps our mind cope with death and, oh, I'm going to see you again. No, you're not. You're not. Now, that hurt me to my heart to know what the Word said concerning that. It also hurt me to my heart to know what the Word concerning heaven, because I thought we were going to be up there eating grapes and eating honey, killing by the river, under the tree, just hanging out, chilling. No. We've been in the presence of God, and we'll be praising Jesus, saying, you are king of kings. You are the Lord of lords. Everything in heaven is light. Those things that you read in the Bible about the streets made of gold and the walls of Jasper and there are mansions up there. Paul was giving you the best description of that, that your human mind can understand how beautiful it is to be in the light of Jesus Christ. It's not light. It's a revelation of what heaven is like, okay? When it says the walls of light are like. Notice the walls are like Jasper, okay? So, that means if it says it's like, there has to be a revelation there. So, it's not the walls are not Jasper, but when you look at Jasper, that's a precious ruby, all right? That's a beautiful ruby. So, they were giving us descriptions of what God had shown them to better help us visualize it and understand, because God created us to be visual individuals. A lot of times we can understand it and we can see it. And so, that's what they were doing when they said Jesus' hair was like sheep wool and his, what was it? His eyes was like, I think flames of fire and his voice was like sounding brass, all right? And they take that to, you know, whatever they say, all right? It was just giving us a description, all right? The best described to help us to understand it. But whatever he looked like, I believe, all right? And I got faith that he completed the work on the cross concerning my sin and your sin. So, the finished work of Jesus Christ gave us access to his faith. We can now be one with God because of what Jesus did. Now, we were once one with God when he first created mankind. Mankind was one with God. After Adam's sin, that's when the separation came. I'm gonna give you this revelation. I can't go too far into this because that's a whole nother, that's a whole nother lesson. But watch this. If you notice, go back and read it. When Eve ate the fruit, nothing happened. Nothing didn't change until Adam ate. So, we can't blame the woman, all right? And I know some men like to say it's the woman's fault. It was not the woman's fault because when she ate of the fruit, nothing happened. Nothing didn't change until that man did it because God gave that command to him. He was the head, and that's when everything changed. And they like to say, well, the woman, she is the weaker vessel. Well, you know, I like to say that in that instance, I believe the man was the weaker vessel, and I'm gonna tell you why. Because he partook in it, and he never even asked the question. He partook in it, and he knew that this was something that they had never done or experienced before, and he never even questioned it. So, in my belief, I think the man was weak because he partook in something, that he know what God said, but he went along with it, and that's when things changed. So, man at that point was one with God. When they ate of the fruit, their eyes became open. When does your eyes become open? When you receive a different revelation. That's why I know the fruit was not a physical fruit. It was a spiritual fruit, because their eyes became open to something that they were standing there butt naked around each other and never knew it. All right? So, now I'm sick because I got a different revelation. Now I'm seeing stuff different. All right? So, that's what went on in that instance. I'm sorry. I didn't try to get into that. So, it helps us to be one with God again. So, when Jesus died on the cross, he came back from the grave. He said, I got the keys to heaven and death. He then bridged us back to God so that we can again commune with God and be one with God again. All right? And that was important, that we be one with God. But we can't be one with God and be separated as believers. That's why Jesus prayed this prayer before he left to go back to God. He said, I prayed for y'all. And his prayer was, Lord, make them one, because they're up here arguing about who the greatest and who's going to do this. No, I was closer to him. No, I did this. And they went to the upper room with that, and they stayed up there 10 days before the whole of those even came. They couldn't get together. But Jesus had already prayed on their behalf because he knew that they were not united. And when they got with one accord, that's when the power of God manifested and it showed up. Isn't it something how if we all working in different areas and we, one going this way, one going another way, we can never do nothing. But if we all agree to go the same direction, we can accomplish a lot more than each one of us trying to end up in the...