There are among the young men those who will be called “family men” and also those called to be only “ministry men,” who will not have families. No one should accept this walk with God just as an occasion to find someone who halfheartedly wants to walk with the Lord thinking this will be an answer for getting married. No one should marry now unless that marriage will contribute to the end-time ministry. The time is fast approaching in which the pastors and ministries will refuse marriages that are just marriages. The time is too short. The marriage will either be a marriage that will fulfill the will of God in the end time, or the couple will be told to forget it. The rules we must follow are a little different from those other people observe.
One point of contention with some people is the subject of divorce. We understand what the Scriptures say about divorce; however, we must also face the fact that throughout the Bible there are different standards of marriage presented at different times. In the New Testament there was an era when polygamy was forbidden, while in the Old Testament there was a time where polygamy was permitted. God can change the scene absolutely.
In my opinion, if there is real repentance when a marriage is broken, we can believe for a new day for everyone involved; and we will not hold it against them. The real basis by which people should or should not marry is not some old-order, legalistic standard, but the leading of the Spirit. We must ask questions such as: “Is this person really in the will of God for the other one? Is this marriage in the perfect will of God?” We must find out if the marriage is truly in the will of God and if it will contribute to the Kingdom. A time is being repeated that existed in the early Church when those who were married were told to be as though they were not, so that they could give themselves wholly to the will of God (I Corinthians 7:29).
Persecutions are upon us. Because of this, marriages should not be solely based on romantic love, though God grant that it be there. Marriages should not be based only upon the chemical attraction between people, but upon the fact that God has drawn two people together. Their relationship must definitely be led of the Lord. When it is, that couple will have ten times as many problems as anyone else, because their marriage has significance; it is important.
There is a need for counsel classes for young girls. There are very few books that I could even recommend for reference for such classes, particularly in the area of sex education. We will have to write our own books. We cannot deal with sex as just a physical or emotional phenomenon, or a biological function. In this day the Lord is trying to bring forth something more. People have never tapped into the process by which the physical is to be a release for the spiritual relationship. They do not know how, in spite of the fact that the Scriptures give some instruction concerning it. This has nothing to do with the erotic approach, but couples can come into the spiritual oneness that God intended.
One of the greatest problems today is the fact that marriage itself is undergoing a real attack from Satan. Why would Satan attack marriages now? Why are more and more people living together without being married? God has a new plane for marriage that people have never reached, and Satan is trying to hinder people from reaching it. Many are disillusioned. Divorce has increased. Misery and unhappiness in marriage has compounded through the centuries because marriage as we know it today is on its way out. But marriage of the Kingdom is on its way in, and there will be some marvelous homes and families. A few will be coming forth here and there as God raises up some beautiful models and patterns of the Kingdom family.
Not only is the structure of the home and family as we have known it under attack, but it is in danger of becoming obsolete. We have passed through various phases in the structure of the home. Until perhaps a hundred years ago the man dominated. In some parts of the world this is still true, but in America matriarchy began to emerge about a century ago and has gained momentum down through the years. The greater percentage of property in the United States is now owned or controlled by women.
Men have become so thoroughly emasculated that, if it were not for the economic factor of supporting a family, women might adopt the tactics of the black widow spider: as soon as the breeding is over, they would destroy the male because he seems to be almost an unnecessary object in the family. Even the courts have supported this situation: the mother taking the children and receiving sometimes very extravagant support for herself and the children. In the opinion of the courts of this country, the man is not necessary for the welfare of the children except for financial support.
As a result of these trends, there is a great argument, especially at the college level, against marriage. Thousands of young people are living together, without the benefit of marriage, with an attitude such as: “Why should we be involved in marriage which often brings bitterness and unhappiness? If we want to separate we will. They have such attitudes because they sense that marriage as it has existed in the past is becoming something detrimental to true peace and happiness.
One of the chief reasons for the trends we see in marriage is that we have left an age of individualism and have entered into an age of collectivism. Whether it is Satan’s expression of it in communism or socialism, or whether it is the more democratic way of co-ops, unions, etc., the world has entered into the age of collectivism. One of the extreme expressions of this is the group marriages which are now being licensed in several countries in the world. These are marriages in which several men and women are a part of one marriage. Each woman is a wife to all the men, and each man is a husband to all the women in the group. That is ridiculous; but again, it is an expression of protest against what has happened to marriage and the family.
Now God is bringing a restoration of the family unit and of submission to the husband. Yet there is still a piece missing. We are still retaining an idea of the family as a unit in itself, as an end in itself. The result is that even in Christian homes we have passed from the man’s domination and the woman’s domination; and we see too much domination by the children.
The more I counsel with people, the more I am aware they are frightened by their own children. It is as if they have begotten some monster of which they are afraid. Instead of disciplining their children parents try to buy them off. There is actual fear in the parents where their children are concerned. They have been indoctrinated that their children are almost to be worshiped, put on a pedestal, and given every advantage in the world. As a result, there are some very neurotic children, not geared to handle that into which they are being thrust. Even though they know how to get their own way, they do not know what to do with the power once they get it.
We need to pray that God will give us answers to help families become the kind of families which will make it in the Kingdom. It is possible to have the answers right now. The source of the problem is that the families have been a law unto themselves, an entity unto themselves. The attitude has been, “Lord, bless me and my wife, my son John, and his wife, us four and no more. Amen.” It is an exclusive idea left over from an age of privacy which is gone. The age of privacy saw men gain wealth, put up high walls, and build little castles inside. They and their families would withdraw from the rest of the world, finally discovering that they were imprisoned.
The family was created to be a unit for a purpose. In a way, a family can be compared to a brick—useless by itself. Until the mortar seals the brick into a wall, the brick has no value. A loose brick can be a dangerous weapon: you can stumble over it, or someone can throw it at you. But once that brick is part of a solid wall, it becomes something of real value.
Our families are changing and gearing themselves to do something. We must have a purpose in the way we live. Every family should have a purpose. A church should have a purpose. When all in the family are not geared for a goal that demands the efforts of the whole family in order to accomplish it, they are missing a great deal. Families were at their best in America, when everyone had to work hard to be able to survive and to accomplish things as a unit.
What is the problem in families? It is in getting Junior to eat decent food and keeping him from ruining his eyes watching too much television. He is lazy and good for nothing. He does not learn how to work. Children do not know how to take responsibility; consequently, they grow up undisciplined. They have been pampered so long and so much that they do not know how to assume the challenge and the discipline of walking as a disciple of Jesus Christ. The Bible says, It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Lamentations 3:27.
In past days children learned how to work and to share the burden very early in life. The whole family learned to trust God, but they came through without any harm being done. This is what God will do again in this day. This may be the day of the affluent society, but God is teaching us the discipline of becoming disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are learning to deny ourselves, and many are leaving all to follow the Lord. Our children will be better off if we start putting them immediately into the work of the Lord and let them bear the yoke in their youth. Children can learn to work together taking care of the chores to relieve their parents so that they can fulfill their ministry in the house of the Lord.
If you can teach your children to back you up and help you, it will be one of the greatest keys for the whole family. Train a child in the way he should go, and he will have faith and trust in your prayers (Proverbs 22:6). Learn to gear your family around doing the will of God. Then your family will be set to do the work of the Kingdom; they will be oriented to the Kingdom, and they will not have the problems they would have if they were geared for something else. If you have a family without a purpose, you will have a family with problems; if you have a family fulfilling the divine purpose, you will have a family blessed of the Lord.
If we want the Body ministry and the family spirit to flourish, we must set about to produce it. I would like to try a system which God has shown me which would reverse the trend toward age segregation. It is a revolutionary concept, completely contrary to the program of the modern system; but the modern system is not producing men of God or the spiritual walk that we want.
If we had a large enough facility to accommodate the entire congregation in classes of twenty to twenty-four individuals, we could have classes comprised of children, young people, married couples, and older people, with not more than six of each age group in a class. People of various ages and various spiritual development could learn how to bring the Word simply and effectively, with ministry on every level. I would suggest that parents not be allowed in the same class with their children. Some parents and children are hostile to one another, and they will not learn much in the same class. The hostility can be overcome by putting them in different classes; then when they come home, the father and mother will have learned something about relating themselves to all the various age groups and will be better able to communicate with their children. They will have been taught Body ministry, family style, in church; and when they go home, they can put it into practice.
There is a general breakdown in family altars, in family prayers, and in the reading of the Word, because the family members do not know how to relate to one another. Dad may know how to teach an adult class, but he cannot relate a spiritual truth to a three-year-old.
This teaching system would serve to provide the family spirit for those who have no families and who live alone: the orphans, those who are divorced or widowed or whose homes are broken for other reasons. The world is going another way, but we want to see the restoration of family life in effective living for the Lord. It would also foster the spirit of hospitality in the homes. People would be prompted to take others into their home because they have developed the family spirit.
If the groups of twenty or twenty-four prove to be too large, we can decrease the number to fifteen or eighteen. We will find the right size. The Lord will even give us the number. The teachers can also be of various ages, as long as they are able to teach. The purpose of the teaching should be to draw out the rest of the class and see that everyone is participating. Even sermons should not be strictly for adults; they should relate to families. There should be something folksy and homey about the whole approach, combined with a certain dignity and reverence. That is the way sermons should be, and that is the way studies and classes should be; they must relate to everyone.
The young people, with their zeal and enthusiasm, balance the wisdom of the adults. It is beautiful to see a wise father responding to the zeal of his children and the children responding to the wisdom of the father. Without this balance the family is a loose unit with nagging and pushing and with no one really relating to one another.
If we have the family spirit, the pressure on a child of junior-high age who lacks dedication or motivation can come from someone besides his parents, who often can be too egotistically related to the problem. The father, whose son does not know the Lord or is not pressing in as he should, considers this an insult and a reflection on himself. To his way of thinking his son may be just an extension of himself. Parents should raise their children as if they were the neighbor’s children whom they are only housing. Parents usually become too subjectively involved with their own children. Children often respond better to pressure put on them by those their own age or even by other adults than by mother and dad who are overly demanding. Young people often build an immunity to their parents, but they will usually respond when someone in the church talks to them about “shaping up.” Sometimes a younger person can literally demand that they be an example, or someone who is older can demand that they follow the example of someone else.