PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

Separated from the World

The Lord Jesus on the night of His betrayal, was heavily burdened for His disciples whom He was leaving in the world. He prayed to His Father that, while they remained in the world, they would be kept from the evil one: "And I am no longer in the world; yet they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given to Me, that they may be one even as We are.... I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world even as I am not of the world. I do not ask that You would take them out of the world, but that You would keep them out of the hands of the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth"-John 17:11, 14-17. "I do not ask that You would take them out of the world," our Lord prayed, "but that You would keep them out of the hands of the evil one." Earlier that same evening He had comforted His disciples by telling them, "These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have affliction, but take courage; I have overcome the world"-John 16:33. We are in a heavy conflict with the god of this world, Satan. He hates the church because the church will be God's means to bring the kingdom of Satan to ruin issuing in the utter defeat of Satan and his angels. For this reason in the world we will endure affliction.

Yet, (as Watchman Nee in his book, Love Not the World, points out) the affliction of us Christians in the world today is of a different nature from that of the early church. Today we are being subjected to a subtle influence of a world that is fully developed and intensified. The world today is found in common things such as food and drink, material goods, entertainment, and marriage. To escape the ensnaring influence of this world, we must know the stratagems of the enemy, take heed to ourselves, not let our hearts be weighed down with the affairs of this life, and watch at every season with prayer that we may stand before the Son of man. We must learn to hold all of our material things for God being willing to part with anything at any moment. In this way we may experience being detached, free, and separated from the world to God.

The apostle Paul was one who discovered early in his Christian experience that he did not belong to himself. He told the Corinthian believers: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price. So then glorify God in your body"—2 Corinthians 6:19-20. When our children learn to labor with diligence, they will become achievers. With every achievement, they will have rewards. For example they may become successful in business endeavors and in other fields of labor. Then they will be begin to have a surplus of money. How will they use their surplus? Will they consume it on their own wants or will they learn to use it to serve the Lord and His purpose? The answer to this question depends on how we train our children and what example we set for them.

We have seen the Church as a thorn in Satan's side, causing him acute discomfort and reducing his freedom of movement. Though in the world, the Church not only refuses to aid in the world's construction but persists in pronouncing judgment upon it. But if this is true, if the Church is always a source of irritation to the world, then equally the world is a source of constant grief to the Church. And because the world is always developing, its power to distress God's people is ever expanding; in fact the Church has to meet a force in the world today with which in the early days she was not confronted at all. Then the children of God met open persecution in the shape of outward physical assault upon their persons (Acts 12; 2 Corinthians 11). They were always coming into collision with material, tangible things. Now the chief trouble they meet in the world is more subtle, an intangible force behind its material things, that is not holy but spiritually evil. The impact of that spiritual force today is far greater than it was then. And not only is it greater; there is an element present now that was not there formerly.

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