I’d like to know how to deal with inward things like pride.

You deal with this in the same way as the outward matters. Whenever you sense something sinful, you should repent, confess to the Lord, and get cleansed. Also, by getting into the Word, the killing factor it contains will smite your pride. If you take in the Word, the Word will become the Spirit to show you your pride and then to live out Christ instead of pride.

What about our failure to obey? You said the only way we could touch the Lord’s life was by obedience.

Today the Lord as the Spirit is merciful and gracious. Like air and water, wherever He finds a narrow crack He slips in. Even if you are only slightly obedient, the Spirit comes. Are any of us completely obedient to the Spirit? But we all enjoy Him to some extent. The amount depends upon the degree of our obedience. The more we obey the Spirit, the more we enjoy Him.

When we come to contact the Lord, how do we empty ourselves of all our busy thoughts?

The best way to set your mind on the Spirit (Rom. 8:6) is to get into the Word; this will release you from your distracting, disturbing thoughts.

As a new Christian and the mother of four children, I would like to know how much scriptural teaching I should impose on them and how much I should insist on their behaving properly.

This is a very practical matter. As human beings, we fell and need the Lord’s salvation. After the fall, God came in to restrict man. For example, God imposed restrictions on the woman because the fall had come in through her (Gen. 3:16); this restriction was actually a protection. In human society today, chaos would prevail were it not for the restraints of ethical teachings, the police, and the law courts. These have been ordained by God to limit the fallen race. Since our families are part of the fallen race, we as parents must exercise God’s ordination to restrict our children by ethical teachings, regulations, and discipline. For proper human living in your home, you must teach your children to behave properly by honoring their parents, caring for their brothers and sisters, respecting their neighbors, and not stealing.

Do not say that ethical teachings are apart from Christ and therefore worthless. The necessities of our human existence are one thing; the experiences of Christ, another. For our human living we must buy groceries, do laundry, lock our doors to prevent burglaries, be careful about fire, open and close windows, and cook and eat. Besides taking care of these earthly matters, we are also learning to experience Christ. These are two different areas; both are needed.

Does 1 Thessalonians 5:22 also apply to corporate housing? The neighbors have cause to wonder what is going on in a young couple’s house, if the husband is at work and there are brothers coming and going while the wife is there by herself.

It is better for the single brothers to live by themselves in a brothers’ house and for the young single sisters to have a sisters’ house. This is not only for the sake of appearance, but also as a safeguard of morality. One of the reasons for the divorce and fornication that are so prevalent today is that there is not the proper separation between men and women. The first charge I was given when I came out to serve the Lord at the age of twenty-seven was to always have a third party present when talking with a sister for any length of time. Practicing this has been a protection to me.

We have the example of the Lord Jesus in this regard. He spoke with Nicodemus privately at night (John 3:1-2), but when he spoke to the Samaritan woman (John 4:6-7), it was under the sun in the open air. Had the situations been reversed, even the disciples might have had a question. (The Lord was about thirty-one or thirty-two at that time.)

The flesh is still prevailing, even in us older people. To keep a proper separation between the sexes is a needed protection. In former days young girls would always be chaperoned when they went out; today the intermingling of young men and women, which has become common even in college dormitories, is an invitation to immorality. Nothing defiles you in the presence of God like fornication. I exhort you to protect yourself from this by maintaining a separation. The young sisters should have a third party present when they are out with a young man. We must learn to keep our vessel clean and honorable before the Lord (1 Thes. 4:3-7).
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