We are His household. (Hebrews 3:6 ISV)
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.