PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

KILLING OUR OPINIONS

Parenting is a divine responsibility—this is the fundamental axiom of the Parenthood paper. Whatever we do as parents must be done with the realization that the children placed into our hands belong first to God, not to us. We are stewards to God for the raising of our children. Watchman Nee wrote, "If we try to summarize the words in the Bible concerning parenting, the main thing parents should do is nurture their children in the teaching and admonition of the Lord and not provoke them to anger or discourage them. This means that parents must exercise self-control and must not be loose in any way" (Messages for the Building Up New Believers, Vol. 2, p.519).

In order to carry out the divine stewardship, we must realize that a major hindrance to proper parenting lies in our self, which is expressed in our opinions. When the Lord wants to do something concerning our children's training, our opinions and concepts stand directly opposed to His divine purpose. And it is nearly impossible for us to be aware of the impasse God faces because of our opinions. The concepts that are entrenched in the core of our natural man are unmoving in their stubborn resistance to God because the self presumes to know what is best for our children. At times we may be bewildered by the Lord's apparent lack of blessing on our efforts to bring our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This may be the direct result of our living in the opinions of our natural man. We must learn to put our opinions to death, to kill our opinions. We are in a fierce warfare with God's enemy, Satan. The unique way to overcome him consists in taking the blood of the Lamb, maintaining our word of testimony, and not loving our soul-life even unto death (Revelation 12:11). The soul-life is primarily expressed and fostered by the holding of our opinions.

How can we kill our opinions? This is the question answered in this issue: it is by pray-reading the Word of God. To pray-read is to "take the Word by means of all prayer. As we pray-read, the first thing the Word will do is kill our opinions….Our experience proves that pray-reading does not firstly nourish us; it firstly kills our opinions. Every time we have some practical pray-reading, our opinions are put to death."

In Ephesians 3:16 Paul prayed that the Father would grant us, "according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man." This strengthening takes place in our inner man, which is our regenerated spirit indwelt by the Holy Spirit….In verse 18 Paul continues to pray that we would "be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth." Although the King James Version uses the word "able," the Greek word translated "able" means to be strengthened with power. We must be empowered to know the dimensions of the riches of our Christ….We must be not only strengthened in our inner man, but also nourished with all the riches of Christ. Furthermore, Ephesians 6:10 tells us to "be empowered in the Lord and in the might of His strength." According to this chapter, the way to be strong is to put on the whole armor of God (vv. 11, 13), which is the all-inclusive Christ. To put on the whole armor of God is to put the all-inclusive Christ upon us. Every aspect of the all-inclusive Christ must become our covering….

FIGHTING THE ENEMY BY PRAYING

In the book of Ephesians we also have the warfare against spiritual darkness, against the principalities and powers in the heavenlies (Ephesians 6:12). These evil powers are, of course, the powers of the enemy, Satan….Ephesians reveals that a warfare is raging…and, furthermore, that this fighting is carried on by praying….Eventually, the entire book of Ephesians brings us to one climactic point—watching and praying.

TAKING THE WORD BY MEANS OF ALL PRAYER

At this point we need to present a literal translation of Ephesians 6:17 and 18. "And receive the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit, and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints." According to these verses, the way to fight is to take the word of God by means of all prayer. We should not simply have one way of prayer, but every means of prayer, exercising our spirit to pray in various ways to take the word of God. This portion of the Bible speaks about pray-reading, about taking the word of God by means of all prayer. It is of no avail to fight against the enemy with our own thoughts and words. We cannot use our mind or utterance to do battle against him. The most effective way to war against the enemy is to pray-read the Word, and the best portion of the Word to pray-read is the book of Ephesians. If you pray-read this book in a concentrated way for a period of time, you will be strengthened. Instead of trying to understand the book of Ephesians, you should pray-read it, even covering the whole book in two weeks….

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