We are His household. (Hebrews 3:6
.
With all that the Lord needs and
desires to do in the recovery of His
first thought, His original idea for His
people, not the least is the
recovery of the spiritual family. Any
fresh movement of God which
relates to His original thought will
most certainly reintroduce the
spiritual family, and all that that
means. That may mean the
breakdown
of a lot; it may mean that a good deal
of misconception will have to
be set aside; it may be that a whole
traditional system will have to
be discarded.
There is a tremendous value
connected with the spiritual family life
and with the training in the family.
There is no training better than
the training in the family. You cannot
find an adequate substitute in
the institution. Really, the Lord's
responsible and useful men and
women are not trained in the
institution; they are trained in the
family. It is because of the lack of that
family background of
training that so often those who go
out into the Lord's work break
down in the matter of relationships.
The tragedy of so much of the
work of God is the tragedy of broken
relationships between workers who
are put together in an organized way,
and they have never gone through
the discipline of family life to know
how to live triumphantly with
difficult people. There is an immense
value in the training of the
spiritual family and that necessitates
very close relationships. We
have heard Christian people (church-
going people) say that they do not
want to come into too close an
association with their fellow
Christians and church members; they
would rather not know too much.
That is defeat, and that means the loss
of a very great deal for the
Lord. The Lord's way is to bring His
people together in the closest
relationship and not to eliminate the
most difficult ones. He has a
very peculiar family, made up of all
sorts, and some of the sorts are
very funny sorts; and that all provides
the basis of a wonderful
training.