PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

Being Empowered to Stand

The labor of raising up our children in the Lord is a heavenly assignment-God has allotted our children to us as a spiritual work. Although it is physical and human in sphere, the overall controlling nature of parenting is spiritual in character. As stewards of God's heritage, we should not attempt to raise our children according to our own concepts and with our own capacity. By necessity we must draw on the direction, wisdom, and power of God. Our need of God is intensified by the fact that we do not have a simple task of doing the right thing. We have a powerful opposer who does whatever possible to disrupt our efforts to raise our children in the nurture and discipline of the Lord; he does his best to frustrate us and to ruin our children as vessels for God's purpose.

Satan has entered into all of God's creation with the goal of gaining man for his own evil purposes and spoiling man for the purposes of God. As a result of man's fall, every child is born into the kingdom of darkness. Our goal is to bring them into the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:12) and to prepare them as vessels to receive and contain God. At a certain point in their lives they will become candidates to be transferred. All of their earlier training is to prepare them for this divine transaction.

We must be acutely aware that we are not wrestling against blood and flesh. From their earliest days of consciousness, children display many aspects of the kingdom of darkness; cunning lies, uncontrolled rage, intractable rebellion, surreptitious stealing, backbiting gossip, etc. flow easily through them. Their deliverance from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God involves warfare. Satan is not passively allowing his kingdom to be raided and robbed. We must first bind the strong man before we can spoil his house (cf. Matthew 12:29; Luke 11:20-22). Even though the Lord Jesus has already bound the enemy; we have to exercise to stand in His accomplishment that we may be empowered in the Lord and put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18). Prayer is an essential ingredient in this warfare. Before doing anything in the care of our children we must pray for the Lord's wisdom, discernment, and authority that we may be able to stand.

Of the twelve aspects of the church covered in Ephesians, the main aspects are the new man, the Bride, and the warrior. The new man ... is used by the Triune God to accomplish what He planned in eternity past for eternity future. Nevertheless, although God's plan is fulfilled with the new man, Christ's desire still needs to be satisfied, and God's enemy still must be defeated. Hence, there is the need for the church to be both the Bride and the warrior.

The passage from 1:1 to 6:9 completes the revelation on the positive side concerning the church for the fulfilling of God's eternal purpose. Yet on the negative side, that is, for dealing with God's enemy, something still remains to be covered. In the first five chapters the church is portrayed in many ways, on the positive side, to fulfill God's eternal purpose. On the negative side, the church is seen in chapter six as a warrior to defeat God's enemy, the Devil. To do this, the church must put on the whole armor of God.

... In the universe there are three wills: the divine will, the satanic will, and the human will. If we would know how the church can be God's warrior to engage in spiritual warfare, we must know these three wills, these three intentions. God's will, being self-existing, is eternal, uncreated. As created beings, the angels also have a will. One of these angels, an archangel, was appointed by God to rule the universe that existed before the creation of Adam. Because of his high position and his beauty, this archangel became proud. This pride gave rise to an evil intention, which became the satanic will. Therefore, in addition to God's intention, God's will, there is a second intention. a second will, for now the satanic will is set against God's will.

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