Limiting God Through the Home by Dr. John E. Hunter, Torchbearers Fellowship
other homes it is a luncheon group or an evening group. Sometimes they listen to a special speaker or a message on a tape, or they study on their own. The ways are varied and the needs are tremendous, but it would seem that God has a definite work to do in the United States, and He is doing it once more through the Christian home. Many problems and difficulties emerge as the work goes on, and not all is as good as it might be, but the home is back once more as a means to an end in the hand o f God. Very often, however, the Christian home can be the one place where we limit God most. A study of the Bible will teach us how important the home is in the eyes of God. It is the unit with which He builds His church and His people. A reverse pic ture of the importance of the home can be seen in the way the Communists view it. Whereas God uses the home to build His people, the Communists seek to destroy the home as a family unit. I was speaking sometime ago with a Chinese Christian who had come from Red China, and who had friends and relatives still there. He was fairly up to date on the state of the nation. I asked him what effect the Communists had had on his coun try. He replied that for the older people, it was another adverse outside influence. He explained that the basis of all previous Chinese culture was the home, the authority of the home, allegiance to the home, and a natural loyalty to all that the home and tradition stood for. To people raised in this
I N THE days OF THE early Christian church as por trayed in the New Testament, the center of all the activity was the Christian home. Paul refers in I Corinthians 16:19 to Aquila and Priscilla, “with the church that is in their house.” In Colossians 4:15 he greets Nymphas “and the church which is in his house.” His letter to Philemon is addressed to Philemon, and to “ Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and the church in thy house.” In those days there were no sanctuaries or excel lent church premises such as we have today, with buildings for Christian education. There were no Bibles or hymn books as we know them. But there was a tremendous power of effective witness and a dynamic outreach — all centered in, and radiating from, the Christian home. One of the remarkable developments in the United States in recent years has been the rapid growth of Christian meetings held in private homes. These meetings seem to be springing up in dependently and almost “ naturally,” with no appar ent human plan or organization behind them. Sometimes it is a special morning meeting for ladies where friends bring friends to meet around the Word of God. Some Christian women have been finding how easy it is to arrange such a meeting, how smoothly God seems to keep things moving, how the most unexpected women will come and — best of all—how many have come to meet and know the Lord Jesus as their own personal Saviour. In
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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