PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel" (Mark 16:15). This is the Christian's privilege. It is also his duty. Those who try to opt out of the world only demonstrate that they are still in some degree in bondage to its ways of thinking. We who are "not of it" have no reason at all to try to leave it, for it is where we should be.

So there is no need for us to give up our secular employments. Far from it, for they are our mission field. In this matter there are no secular considerations, only spiritual ones. We do not live our lives in separate compartments, as Christians in the Church and as secular beings the rest of the time. There is not a thing in our profession or in our employment that God intends should be dissociated from our life as His children. Everything we do, be it in field or highway, in shop, factory, kitchen, hospital or school, has spiritual value in terms of the kingdom of Christ. Everything is to be claimed for Him. Satan would much prefer to have no Christians in any of these places, for they are decidedly in his way there. He tries therefore to frighten us out of the world, and if he cannot do that, to get us involved in his world-system, thinking in its terms, regulating our behavior by its standards. Either would be a triumph for him. But for us to be in the world, yet with all our hopes, all our interests and all our prospects out of the world, that is Satan's defeat and God's glory.

Of Jesus' presence in the world it is written that "the darkness overcame it not" (John 1:5 margin). Nowhere in Scripture does it tell us of sin that we are to "overcome" it, but it distinctly says we are to overcome the world. In relation to sin God's word speaks only of deliverance; it is in relation to the world that it speaks of victory.

We need deliverance from sin, because God never intended we should have any touch with it; but we do not need, nor should we seek, deliverance from the world, for it is in the purpose of God that we touch it. We are not delivered out of the world, but being born from above, we have victory over it. And we have that victory in the same sense, and with the same unfailing certainty, that light overcame darkness.

"This is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1 John 5:4, 5). The key to victory is always our faith-relationship with the victorious Son. "Be of good cheer," He said. "I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). Only Jesus could make such a claim; and He could do so because He could earlier affirm: "The prince of the world … hath nothing in me" (John 14:30). It was the first time that anyone on earth had said such a thing. He said it, and He overcame. And through His overcoming the prince of the world was cast out and Jesus began to draw men to himself.

And because He said it, we now dare say it too. Because of my new birth, because "whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world," I can be in the same world as my Lord was in, and in the same sense as He was I can be utterly apart from it, a lamp set on a lampstand, giving light to all who enter the house. "As he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17). The Church glorifies God, not by getting out of the world but by radiating His light in it. Heaven is not the place to glorify God; it will be the place to praise Him. The place to glorify Him is here.

W. Nee, Love Not The World, Chapter Six, "Lights in the World," Printed by Living Stream Ministry in The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, Set 2, Vol. 39, pp. 101-106.

APPLICATION

1. What is the implication for you as a Christian parent that Jesus declared that His disciples are the light of the world?

2. Explain in your own words the meaning of the statement: "the Christian life is something removed altogether from controversy about what we do and what we don't do." How does this principle apply to the raising of your children?

3. Satan either tries to frighten us from the world or "to get us involved in his world-system, thinking in its terms, regulating our behavior by its standards." How can we counter his strategy?