PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

The Secret of Parenting--Enjoying Christ as Life

Never try to raise up your children by your own energy, resources, wisdom, patience, and endurance. Always learn to draw from the Lord as the enlightening source of your understanding and wisdom and as the energizing fount of your living and walking. The Lord Jesus urged his disciples to learn to live by Him in an organic union typified by the branches in the vine: "I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing"-John 15:5. In spite of such a clear word, we parents often try to do the right thing in the care of our children without realizing our need to live by another source-the Lord Jesus as the very life of God now dwelling in our human spirit.

In this issue, Witness Lee points out that the very God has come to earth in the Son, not as a king to be worshipped by all His people, but rather to be their food. He is now the Spirit for us to contact and experience as our life and our life supply. God's intention is to mingle Himself with us in order to become everything to us. Nothing is more important, more central, or more necessary than this. Many believers, perhaps most, believe that God desires us to worship Him and to seek to do things so as to please Him. This concept may not be entirely wrong, but it is not the central purpose of God in His economy. God wants us to enjoy Him as food-our spiritual nourishment-applying Him moment by moment in everything we do in our daily living.

If we realize the intrinsic actuality of this indwelling Christ, we will not miss any opportunity to enjoy Him practically and be filled with Him. When we are mingled with Him in this way, we spontaneously minister Christ to our children and to all around us. Christ becomes the reality of our nurture of our children. Christ becomes the way we think. Christ replaces our anxious praying with His bountiful supply. By experiencing Christ, we put off the old man with its nature, corrupted according to the lusts of the deceit, and we put on the new man, which was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the reality (Ephesians 4:22, 24). We've learned the secret of parenting!

God's eternal intention is not to be worshipped in a religious way nor to be served by us, but to be eaten as food. He wants to enter into us, be digested by us, and become our very constituent. He desires to mingle Himself with us. This is His desire and intention. We have to take Him in as food and digest Him so that He might become our very constitution. Many of us may think that since our Lord is so glorious, great, and wonderful, we should enthrone Him in the heavens. Our concept is to prostrate ourselves in worship before Him. However, the Lord can never be happy with this. He may say to us, "Don't keep Me in heaven. I wish to dwell in your heart. I wish to be received by you, digested by you, and wrought into your very being. I want to be mingled with you to such an extent."

Once as I spoke with a group of Christians, I asked a sister, "Will you tell me how the Lord is a help to you?" She said, "Since the Lord is in the heavens as the Almighty One, when I pray, He answers me. He simply stretches out His strong arm and mighty hand to do something for me. Isn't this wonderful?" But I shook my head and said, "Sister, this is not the way the Lord works today in the New Testament age. Today the Lord's way is to come into us and dwell within us. He is not in the heavens stretching out His mighty arm to help you; He is now within you." There are many people who think that the Lord is in the heavens stretching out His arms to help them in this way. On the contrary, the way the Lord takes today is to enter into man, dwell within him, and energize him from within. His working within us strengthens and energizes us, making us strong, active, and full of vitality so that we can never be idle and never be quiet. The way the Lord takes today to strengthen us is not from the outside but from within. As I am speaking for the Lord, He helps me and strengthens me but not from the heavens outwardly. He is energizing me from within because His indwelling, working, and strengthening are from my spirit. He works within us because He is life, even the bread of life, to us. This is wonderful!

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