What if the submission offends our conscience?
Submission is surely against your conscience if it leads you to worship an idol or to do something against the truth. Daniel and his three friends are an example of submission at the highest level, yet they did not defile themselves (Dan. 1:8-20).
In 1938 there was a sister in Peking whose unsaved husband greatly troubled her. He would go to the theater and then not get home till after midnight. Her way of handling the situation was to lock the door and not let him in till he had been knocking for an hour or so. When she recounted this story to us, we told her she must change her way in order to save her marriage. She asked us for advice, and this is what we suggested: “You have to submit yourself to your husband. When he wants to go to the theater, offer to accompany him. Ride in the carriage with him right to the theater entrance. Then tell him to go on in and that you will return home and wait for him. When you get back home, cook his favorite snack and have it all ready. As soon as you hear him knock at the door, open it right away and give him a warm welcome. Offer him the snack you have prepared and sit down with him while he eats it. Sister, if you will practice this, before too long your husband will be a brother in the church.” This is what subsequently happened. That theater-going husband became a brother because of his wife’s submission.
I believe this story illustrates submission according to the Bible. Submit as much as you can without defiling your conscience.
Matters pertaining to life may not be easy to explain, but they are easy to experience. Medical doctors spend years studying the physical body, but they do not know what life is. Even a baby, however, experiences life just by breathing, without any instruction or study. Without understanding it, I enjoy my physical life; it enables me to speak and move. The experience of life is just to breathe. A hundred books cannot explain breathing, but the act of breathing is simple. So is life in our experience.
To experience the life of God, we must have the Son (1 John 5:12). Life is a Person, Christ Himself. Do not think that jumping or shouting are indications of this life. Life is not a condition but a Person. Whether I sleep or jump, whether I shout or am quiet, I have life. Sorry to say, it has often seemed to me that the ones who shout in the meetings are the ones who are short of life.
Those who are rich in life have no need to shout. When they come into the meeting and sit down, life radiates from them. I remember the meetings in Shanghai in the early ’30’s. Brother Nee was twenty-nine, two years older than I. He would be in the meetings, perhaps not speaking, not praying, not even singing well, but full of life. If there was a meeting and he was away, how much we missed him! We would try hard to exercise in prayer, but we sensed a lack of life. The life in just one person makes a difference.
Why did God create the heavens and the earth? To accomplish His purpose, He needed the earth, the air, the sunshine, and the rain. All these things He made as the environment for the vine He wanted to grow (John 15). To our Father God, the earth is a vineyard in which He nurtures and tends the vine, His Son. Yet a vine amounts to very little without its branches. Is it not marvelous that we are those branches (John 15:5)? Why does God have the church? Why has He gathered us together? He intends to cultivate us, but not our natural life, as the outgrowth of this vine. When the branches grow, the vine grows. It is our profession, our calling, our responsibility, to grow and produce this vine. When we live Christ (“To me to live is Christ,” Phil. 1:21), we grow Him. When we grow Him, we produce Him.
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