‘..but the Messiah was faithful as the Son in charge of God’s household, and we are his household if we hold on to our courage and the hope in which we rejoice.’ Hebrews 3:6
The Lord’s need and desire, and his original idea for his people is the recovery of his spiritual family.
Any fresh movements of God which relate to this will most certainly reintroduce the 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 or it may be that a whole traditional system will have to be disregarded.
There is a tremendous value connected to the spiritual family life and with the training in the family. You can not find an adequate substitute in any other institution outside. Say, for instance, you missed a single church service or a fellowship, trust me you can feel it inside, inherently. Really, because the Lord’s responsibility and useful men and women are not trained anywhere else; they are trained in the family.
There is an immense value in the training of the spiritual family and that necessitates very close relationships.
The lack of that family background of training more often affects those who go out into the Lord’s work in the matter of relationships. The tragedy of so much of the work of God is the tragedy of broken relationship between workers who are put in an organized way, and they may have never gone through the discipline of the family life to know to live triumphantly with difficult people.
We have heard many Christians or church-going people say that they do not want to come into close an association with their fellow Christians and church members. They would rather not know too much of each other, except on some church business. That is defeat and that means the loss of a very good deal of 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 all that provides the basis of a wonderful training.
‘So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,’ Ephesians 2:19
So, as Christians, we need to know more of each other because we are a family, a Spiritual one made by God himself. It’s his desire that mankind unites under his banner and become what the first family of Adam and Eve failed to do; live together harmoniously while having an interpersonal conduct with God. That is the essence of the spiritual family.
