Church discipline

Do not be afraid, O believer, to be a stranger in the earth. Be assured your spiritual safety, comfort, and usefulness are all bound up with your really being so. "Know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity to God? whoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is an enemy to God." Whoever is at home in the earth is a stranger to God. But the more you are alienated in spirit from a passing, shallow, heartless, ungodly world, the more will you feel constrained to apply in livelier faith and prayer to your heavenly Father for friendship and fellowship with Him. 
It was thus that the Psalmist pleaded his separation from the world as a reason for his obtaining clearer insight into the gracious purposes and holy will of God: "Open mine eyes that I may behold the wonders that are in your law. I am a stranger in the earth, hide not your commandments from me (Ps. 119:12). The more, also, will you love the worship, the house, the cause and kingdom of Christ upon the earth; and the more liberally, joyfully, and prayerfully will you give for the support and propagation of his gospel. For thus again spoke this same stranger on the earth, Israel's sweet psalmist and king: "For who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of you, and of your own have we given you. For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as were all our fathers; our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding? (I Chron. 29:14-15). 
Nor will this be lacking to you in the hour of sorrow and anxiety, to plead with God as a reason for his hearing and answering your cry, when, as a stranger in the earth for his sake, you cast yourself upon his help and faithfulness: "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not your peace at my tears; for I am a stranger with you, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." The appeal is one of inexpressible power with God. His heart warms towards the stranger. He has most solemnly assured us that he is the stranger's shield. He has forbidden us, under pain of his especial displeasure, to vex or oppress the stranger. He has in the most simple and affecting language commanded us to be kind unto the stranger. He has allured us to the duty of entertaining strangers by beautifully reminding us that some have thereby entertained angels unawares. His dear Son - in whose name we pray, and in whose sympathy we may continually rejoice and enrich ourselves - was preeminently a stranger on the earth, and knows more than any man the heart of a stranger. In his members, and in his cause, he is a stranger still: and so highly does he estimate the entertaining of the stranger that, on the great day of accounts, one of his tenderest and most affecting commendations of his people's faithfulness will be in these terms, "I was a stranger, and you took me in." 
With such affections on the part of the Most High as thus indicated towards the stranger, let me only be able honestly to plead at his throne, that "I am a stranger on the earth," and how can I doubt that in my every need and in my darkest hour he will hear my cry, and not be silent at my tears? Rather, may I not assure myself, when poor and needy, when pursued by evil and by fear, when perplexed with guilt and with Satan, when ready to sink under trial and temptation, I flee to his door, he will give me invariable ground to bear this testimony to his grace and faithfulness: "I was a stranger, and the Lord took me in"?