The Mission of the Spheres - Part III

The Mission of God and the Spheres of Christ's Lordship

Well, this morning we complete our little detour of sorts into this topic of the mission of God and the spheres over which Christ reigns, the spheres being the family, the church and the state. And though we are in one sense completing our series this morning, in another sense we're only beginning as we will spend some time next week reading the opening salvo of chapters from the book of Exodus and then actually dive into the text next year.

Hard to believe next year is a week away. We'll actually be still chasing down this larger theme of the mission of God and a lot of the application of our time in Exodus will relate to the family, the church and the state.

So in many ways this is sort of an appetizer or perhaps laying the foundation for what will come, Lord willing, through our time in the book of Exodus. This morning we're hoping to be a little more practical than the past two weeks.

The past two weeks were sort of the big picture, laying down some really important distinctions and laying down some very important structures for thinking about the mission of God and how that relates to the church.

We spent most of last week considering simply the church, the church local and the church universal, the church gathered and the church scattered. We talked about that being the primary manifestation of God's kingdom, the, if you remember this, the hermeneutic of the gospel, that is the way that we visibly experientially understand the gospel.

It's in the communal life and witness of the church. One of the things we said two weeks ago is the mission of God is much broader than evangelism. The mission of God is broader, is wider than the Great Commission, although that is a vital center of it being fulfilled.

And we've seen and we will see, we get a broad view of the mission of God when we follow the logic of Scripture from beginning to end, when we don't just dive into the middle, but we begin in Genesis and we end in Revelation.

It requires a framework, in other words, that begins with creation and also includes with that kingdom and because of the fall into sin, redemption, and the great goal, the great telos of that, new creation.

So from creation to kingdom to redemption to new creation, the mission of God comprises all of these things. Now we said the local church, this is last week, the local church is sort of the dawning, the first fruits of the new humanity.

Of course, Jesus Christ is the first fruits of what we shall be. Because we're united to him by faith through the Spirit, we become gradually conformed into his image and in that very image, we are the dawning of a new humanity, a redeemed.

Humanity.

And as such, we are given not only the task, but indeed the command to go to all people and to share the good news of this gospel of the kingdom and to call them to repentance in faith in the risen Lord Jesus, to be reconciled to God through his blood.

And so not only do we engage in worship and enjoy this sort of visible, experiential community as God's chosen people and all of the benefits and blessings that that entails, but also there's this missional dimension to our worship and our communal life.

There's a missional dimension to our task, which is go to the very ends of the earth as God's chosen people, as the foretaste of God's redemption in Christ. Now flowing out of a church that is aware of this missionary dimension, there's going to be words and deeds.

This is what we mean by committed participation, which will point to, if not enact, the words and the deeds of Jesus. That's deliberate, intentional activity, both in and outside of the church as a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, as a manifestation of the Lord's presence here on earth.

We are his body here on the earth. And so, as we begin the book of Exodus in a couple weeks, we're going to keep this focus on the mission of the spheres, and this morning we want to tease out initial sketches of practical application.

We're going to let Exodus guide even more of that, but I just want to lay down some practical beginning points, some practical starter points that, in my mind, are absolutely foundational if we as families, as a local church, and indeed in our presence in the public square and our interaction with the state, if we're to understand our role with the mission of God, there's some things that we simply must have in place.

So this likely won't exhaust everything that could be said, that should be said, that will be said, but it certainly is something that must be said as we begin the book of Exodus. Now since we focused on the church last week, we're going to continue with the church in.

The first part.

So we'll go church, then briefly we'll talk about family, and then lastly, the state. So the church. Where do we begin, as a church, to seek the mission of God? Where do we begin, as a church, to seek the mission of God?

We read it.

Let me read it again, beginning in Titus 2, verse 11. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works.

Speak these things, exhort, rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you. Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men.

We ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another, but when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration, the renewal of the Holy Spirit.

That having been justified by his grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life, this is a faithful saying. And these things I want to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works.

These things are good and profitable to men. If you have Titus 3 open, look at the very last thing he says before he closes with the.

Greeting, right?

Standard boilerplate closing of the letter, but what does he say as his sort of parting command before he gives that final instruction and greeting? It's verse 14, and let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs that they may not be unfruitful.

Now what stands out to you reading Titus 2 beginning in verse 11 through 3 verse 8? There's many things, of course we're seeing this great contrast between who we once were and who we are now because of the kindness and mercy of God.

We see this higher calling that belongs to the people of God. We should live soberly, righteously, godly in the present age. But notice something that's repeated, there's of course a lot of emphasis on the mercy and the grace of God and Jesus Christ, there's references to God, to Jesus, and to the Holy Spirit.

There's of course a repudiation of works of righteousness that we have done, which is a way of saying we have not done works of righteousness. The focus is on what God has done for us and in us and through us.

But there's only really one thing that's repeated throughout these verses. Do you know what it is?

Good works.

Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

Chapter 3, beginning in verse 1. Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work. At the very end, in verse 8, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works.

That's a faithful saying and Paul repeats it in verse 14. Let our people learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs so that they will not be unfruitful. So what do we need? Where do we begin as a church to seek after the mission of God?

Well, here's something we need first. We need zeal, readiness, and care for fruitful good works. We need zeal, readiness, and care for fruitful good works. We need to be zealous for good works, ready for every good work, careful to maintain good works so that we will not be unfruitful.

The mission of the church begins with this great redemptive zeal. Paul assumes the church understands that the reason they have been purified is in part so that they will be zealous to do good. God has done good for them despite them.

And therefore, having received that redemption of God, they will be zealous to do good to others despite others, despite how they're treated, despite how they're used or abused. They will seek to do what God has done for them.

They will seek mercy and peace and justice and grace. They will seek to magnify the Savior's name. They will be zealous for good works, ready for good works, careful to maintain good works. So we need zeal, readiness, and care for fruitful good works.

And I think fruitful is an important qualifier there. It ends the letter, right? Maintain good works to meet urgent needs that they may not be unfruitful. The question is, is the kind of work we're seeking, the kind of work we're pursuing as a local church, as believers assembled together, are these things that are bearing fruit, not only in our lives and in our church, but in lives outside of our church, in places beyond.

Our church.

The mission of God in terms of the church is, first of all, to be this contrasted people, right? You're not this way anymore. You once were this way. You were once deceived and hateful, but God in His mercy has delivered you, has redeemed.

You.

And so first and foremost, we're this radiant demonstration of the grace of God. We're a people who are contrasted from those who have not received the grace of God. And Paul assumes, and he wants to repeat this again and again and again in the letter to Titus, you have been redeemed so that you will be zealous and ready and careful to do the good work of God.

So we need zeal, readiness, and care for fruitful good works. We need that flowing from our corporate life as words and deeds meeting urgent needs, both physical and spiritual. Deeds that point to Jesus, that embody the mission and ministry of Jesus, even as Jesus made His own kingdom known and His own message understood in His words and deeds.

This is how God intends for the local church to operate. So what does He do? He calls people into this local assembly. They've come from all different walks of life. They have all different backgrounds, different temperaments, different personalities, different giftings that are given to them by the Holy Spirit.

And He puts them all together into one place for Romans 12, 4 and following, as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So we, being many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another, this radical union between the believer and the Lord and therefore between the believer and other believers.

Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them.

We've been given gifts.

It's a good morning to think about the giving of gifts. What does Paul say? What's the point of having received these gifts from God? Paul says, let us use them. Let us be zealous to use the gifts. Let us be ready to use the gifts.

Let us be careful to maintain the gifts. Zeal, readiness and care for fruitful good works. We as a local church will not be able to seek the mission of God unless we have what Titus 2 and 3 is describing.

This reality of the fact that we have been redeemed leading to a zealous pursuit, looking, not just ready, but looking. Some of you guys are all into EDC and, you know, tactical holsters and if this fails, I go for this and use the back site to do that and there's a readiness, right?

So I know, I go to breakfast with some of you guys and I know that I'm always going to have to sit with, you know, my face to the corner because you guys all want to sit in that back corner and you want to be ready.

You want to look for who's coming in and going out. You're at the gas station pump and your head's on a swivel.

You're ready.

And Paul's saying in Titus 2 and Titus 3, that's how it looks spiritually. You're ready, you're looking for opportunities to do good in the name of Jesus. Zealous, ready, careful so that you will not be found unfruitful.

Prayerful Vision and Visionary Prayer

Well, second thing that's needed, and perhaps in some ways the bedrock even of that, but the second thing that's needed is prayerful vision and visionary prayer. And let me, that sounds somewhat mystical, so let me unpack it.

I don't mean it in that way.

So he said, first, we need zeal, readiness, and care for fruitful good works. Secondly, we need prayerful vision and visionary prayer. The gathered and scattered people of God are presently involved in the mission of God, whether they realize it or not.

They are part of God's larger work, the sort of cultural task that God has for the world, and therefore their lives are intertwined with God's purpose to the very ends of the.

Earth.

Remember that God's mission, we saw this in Genesis, in the logic of Genesis, in the logic of the Abrahamic promise. God's mission is to make known His good news, the promised seed's arrival, the good news to all peoples of all tribes of all tongues, to the families of the earth that will be blessed in this promised seed.

And as a local congregation, even as a relatively small local congregation, we must take up our responsibility to that great task. The church has a local mission.

Amen.

That local mission is essential. That local mission is primary. But that local mission exists for the sake of the universal mission, the global mission. We are simply faithful to our part where we've been planted, much like a platoon or a division of the military has a certain locale and their mission is primarily where they are and what's in front of them.

But they'll be short-sighted and perhaps lacking all sorts of necessary regimen and discipline and zeal if they don't recognize that they're holding and maintaining that ground, their locale is ultimately for the sake of the larger war, the larger operation, the larger military endeavor.

And so it is for the local church. We recognize that our local mission is essential, but if we're going to be a healthy church, a godly, pure bride, we must also maintain a vision for mission globally.

We must maintain a vision beyond our neighborhood, beyond our community. Sadly, throughout much of church history, this was not the case. This is a relatively recent development in church history. There's a lot of historical factors to that.

But where does this vision begin? It begins in prayer. This vision, this ardent desire, it begins in our prayers. I don't think it's anything we can manufacture. I don't think we're there and I don't think we will be there until it begins to spontaneously manifest and snowball in our prayer lives, both as individuals and then from that leading into our corporate prayer life.

Foremost, we need prayerful vision and that prayerful vision goes hand-in-hand with visionary.

Prayer.

I mentioned to you a little bit last week, robbing the thunder for today, the Moravians. Michael Hagen had a wonderful article on William Carey, who's sometimes called the father of the modern missions movement.

Of course, he preached a very famous sermon from the first seven verses of Isaiah 52, attempt great things for God, expect great things from God. And that was his call to foreign missions there in England.

It seemed that finally all the vicissitudes of the church and state and all that repression that had finally been dealt with and there was peace and tolerance and then everything turned toward let's spread, let's advance the cause of Christ in the world.

William Carey, he wrote a treatise where he sort of gave a miniature overview of missions up to that point. He was using that to stoke the flame. Why should there be missions renewed and sought after that had hitherto for not been sought.

After?

And so this famous treatise, 1792, an inquiry into the obligations of Christians to use the means of conversion for the heathen. And in that work, especially as he recounted a sort of history of missions, he made a special note of the Moravians, who I mentioned last week.

He said, none of the moderns have equaled the Moravian brethren in this good work of.

Evangelism.

He was zealous for good work, ready for good work, careful for good work. This community led by Ludwig von Zinzendorf, I mentioned him, began with an around the clock prayer meeting. And so people would come in shifts to pray and it was a prayer meeting that never ended.

And before they even set a foot in a foreign land, they just began to gather and pray. Praying to pray for a heart for missions, praying to feel God's own compassion and desire for the families of the earth, praying that God would do what seemed impossible.

That around the clock prayer meeting was later called their Moravian Pentecost by their own.

Historians.

And then finally, after five years of around the clock prayer, after five years of around the clock prayer, they sent their first missionaries abroad to the West Indies and the prayer meeting continued around the clock, unbroken for the next 100 years.

Moravian missionaries literally went out to the four corners of the earth. After the West Indies in 1732, they sent to Greenland in 1733, to a colony of the nation of Georgia in 1734, to Suriname in 1735, South Africa, 1737, Algeria, 39, Native Americans, Sri Lanka, Romania, Persia by 1747.

All of this was fueled by this little group of Christians in Hern Hut, praying visionary.

Prayer.

William Wilberforce, such an influential Christian, said of the Moravians, they are a Christian body who have perhaps excelled all of mankind in unequivocal proof of the love of Christ and of active zeal in his service.

It is a zeal.

I love this. It is a zeal tempered with prudence. You see, it's not off the handle zeal. It's not foolish, lightning strike zeal that fizzles and burns out after three days. It's a zeal tempered with prudence, softened with meekness, supported by a courage which no danger intimidates and a quiet certainty that no hardship exhausts.

What a description. We need prayerful vision and visionary prayer. We need our prayer lives to be so saturated by the spirit of God and his work in this world that our hearts begin to break and our imaginations begin to spin about the possibilities of how God may use us and our resources, even when we're essentially a little circle of Moravians in Hern Hut.

And that leads to visionary prayer. That leads to unrolling the maps in that little hut and pointing to nations that had never heard the name Jesus. And praying for years until someone was ready to go and was called to go.

First John is very clear, right? We go back to this, the church as a people of contrast. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him, right? If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.

But in a different sense of the word world, we could say, if anyone does not love those who are in the world, the love of the father is not in him. I remember I was, I'm mentioning him later this morning, but Wang Yi, a very important dissident pastor in China, who's currently incarcerated.

And he came to Baltimore and he gave this talk and it was attended through a sort of conference of Chinese Christians here that were stateside. And many, of course, were from mainland China and had settled here in the states and had ministries or had gone to seminary and they had finally peace and comfort and freedom.

And he was coming to speak to them to encourage them to go back. One of the things he said in that address was, you say, well, I hate the culture and I hate the corruption. I hate the ways of China. How could I go back to it seeing as I don't really have a heart for it?

I don't love it. And he would say, do you think that God raises up someone who's in love with Rome to be sent as a missionary to Rome? He actually will send the people that hate the corrupted ways of a people, but has the father's heart for those people.

That's what he's getting at. If we don't love those who are in the world, the love of the father is not in us. So part of this prayerful vision is having a tenderness toward the lost. So much of the tenderness of our soul is simply between us and God as our heavenly father.

This is sort of classic, you know, Puritan piety that we only think of spiritual affections in terms of our relationship with God. We rarely think about it in horizontal terms. It's almost exclusively in vertical terms.

Bunyan, consider Christ did use no means to harden his heart against you, and he undertook every suffering and sorrow which was necessary for your redemption in his love and in his pity. He has saved you.

He loved you and gave himself for you. Learn then of Christ to be tender and to endeavor to keep your heart tender to God for the salvation of your soul. So he's saying Christ has been tender toward you.

Therefore, you should be tender to Christ. But by extension, if Christ has been tender to you, how tender should you be to the lost? How tender should you be for those who are outside of Christ? This ultimately manifests in prayer, quite simply, Michael Goheen from his book, A Light to the Nations, quite simply.

A church that does not pray fervently and corporately will never be a missional church. We may build a large crowd of excited Christians with marketing techniques and attractive programs, but this will not necessarily be a community that embodies the power of the gospel.

There is nothing glamorous or novel here. Prayer is simply central to the mission of the church. And we know this, but what happens is we sort of have this default, this penchant to assume prayer and then go on with our planning.

And our planning is what makes a difference, not our prayer. Take note that the Moravians prayed for five years before they sent missionary. They prayed, we may not know what it looks like, but it's not going to be the result of our efforts and our planning, it's going to be the result of God hearing our prayers, God giving us prayers to pray, God breaking our hearts in prayer, God giving us a vision, a hunger through prayer, and then in those prayers we begin to pray with vision, pray with imagination, pray with a zeal and a readiness and a care for good works.

So that's the second, a prayerful vision and a visionary prayer.

Willing Commitment and Committed Willingness

Third.

We need willing commitment. And committed willingness. Willing commitment and committed willingness. There needs to be a sort of overflow, an abundant, a sort of generous willfulness when it comes to our commitment, right?

Not dragging our feet, not ho-humming and being, I can't wait till this is over. There needs to be something willful in our commitment. But at the same time, our willingness needs to be committed because sometimes it's easy to be on the sort of downswing of the roller coaster and it's all just so exhilarating and encouraging.

But then the climb begins to slow things down and you begin to lose heart and it's not as fun. And so you need to have that willing, exhilarated commitment. But at the same time, your commitment must be willing.

You must have a committed willingness. You're in it whether it's thick or thin, whether it's long and hard, whether you spent years laboring and praying after something and still have very little fruit to show for it.

Part of the problem with the church as this sphere is a shift from sort of missional thinking, a missional way of being to a consumeristic way of being. The idea once was that churches would be missional, would be seeking to persuade and win those to Christ.

And so churches in the in the vein of being missional became seeker sensitive. We're going to hand out gas cards and, you know, we've got the big bouncy house. Bring your kids over. We're going to be everything that you could want.

The church resembles more of a circus than a place of worship or a house of prayer for the nations. Here, the idea is mission began to be seeker sensitive. And once mission became seeker sensitive, man centered toward man's ends, then the church lost its mission and became simply consumeristic.

It became a business. Using better means and strategies to attract potential customers, and sadly, the idea of mission fell out of view altogether. Tactics from the marketplace became streamlined to attract customers to the church, consumers that would then hop from body to body when services weren't as fulfilling as they used to be.

So the only thing that grew was not spirituality, not holiness, not zeal and readiness and care for good works, but simply consumerism. We go back to Wang Yi for a minute at this address for Chinese Christians in Maryland.

Remember, he's seeking to persuade them. Go back to this hard land, go back to China where you're under the thumb of the government and life is difficult and supplies aren't ready and there's all sorts of hindrances and difficulties that you are spared while you're here on American soil.

And he's trying to persuade them to essentially leave safety and comfort and return to the work that God had called them to. And this is what he says. Everyone wants to meet someone else in their best season of life.

He relates this just a human relationship. We don't want to be treated by the doctor in training. We want the pro. We don't want to be served by an intern. We don't want to commit to an immature church.

We certainly don't want to live in a corrupt or unfree society when it comes to our relationships. We always hope the other person is ready and is at their best. And this is how most people in the world today define happiness or romance.

But this is not how the Bible defines love. This is simply a consumer's idea of love. It does not include within it the desire to grow and suffer with the other person. You see, speaking about the church here, he's saying you want the church to be at its best, triumphant in its best season with all of its doctrinal ambiguity cemented and to have that impact, kind of like you feel in the security and safety of what the U .S. church is.

Then you want to go to China. He's saying that's not biblical love. Biblical love is this desire, not only what is, but what would be and what that means for you and what that requires of you, a desire to grow with and to suffer with the other.

That's what he's saying. Come to China and grow with us. We're in a mature church. Come grow with us. Come suffer with us. We need to encounter people who are learning how to commit to a church when it is still imperfect, to stay in a country when the government is still corrupt, to serve a world while it is still falling apart, because the church is the mother of all believers and it's the manifestation of the kingdom of God.

And then he goes into a note that one of his elders sent to him. Remember, he was raided by Chinese authorities this month. Yeah, this month, I believe he began serving his nine year sentence. This is what one of his elders at his church, Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, this is what one of his elders wrote to him.

The greatest thing that I can think of, it's actually, he actually says the most romantic thing, but I think that's a translational issue that we have. He's saying the loveliest, most passionate thing that I can imagine, this co-elder, the greatest thing that I can think of is to grow old with you in the smog and the pollution, sharing the gospel of Christ alongside you.

The greatest thing that I can think of is to have chemotherapy with you years later and to pray to God with you. The greatest thing that I can think of, my very flesh and blood, is to share the same fate as you so that I can preach and living and live according to a true understanding of the gospel.

That is a committed willingness. And a willing commitment. So let's talk about the family briefly, briefly, these are three things that the church needs, but the church is the mother of all believers.

And though the family is a separate sphere of Christ's lordship, the church has a lot to do with that sphere. The church is the family of God made up of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers in the faith who are older than us, our sort of spiritual co-heir, our brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, the heir of all of God's promises.

And therefore, we in him receiving all of God's promises. Well, certainly there's something to say about that family of God being composed of families, so the spheres overlap, the spheres always overlap.

We want to keep in view the fact that the local church is the family of God. That's very, very important. But the family of God is comprised of different members of different families. And as a church, we follow patterns for worship and discipleship, and as families we follow patterns for worship and discipleship and hospitality.

Reformation and revival, remember we said two weeks ago, what we need is reformation and revival begins with the reformation of the family. It's an important point here. We occupy this space as a gathered family of God.

We occupy this for a few hours. In a given week, a handful of hours, we are gathered together as brothers and sisters in the Lord. But the whole of our lives is taken up in the home, so the reformation and revival of the church begins with the reformation and revival of the family, and the reformation and revival of the family begins with the reformation and revival of a godly marriage.

Marriage, family, church. Abraham Kuyper, we've talked about him now for several weeks, wrote a very important book, Practical Christian Living, the second volume of his book called Pro Rega or For the King.

This is what he had to say in his articles on the family. He says, the church, the sphere of the church, the church has a most solemn task to fulfill for and in the family. Do you notice the overlap? The church has something to fulfill for the family and in the family.

It may not abandon the family to its own lot. We don't gather as generic individuals. We gather in the logic of the New Testament as widows and mothers and fathers and young men and young women and children and slaves and masters and whatever season or walk of life we're in.

That dynamic is taken up into the church, and the church, therefore, has a task to fulfill. It may not abandon the family to its own lot. It does not have to pass through locked doors. The church has a right to enter in the name of him who is the king of the church, but also the king of the family.

The church and not the world. Must tell the family how to be. In order to honor Christ, the mission of Christ is as broad as the lordship of Christ, Christ is lord of the sphere of the church, Christ is lord of the sphere of the family, Christ is lord of the sphere of the state, the church.

The prophetic task of the church must tell the family how to be, how to live, how to look, how to operate in order to honor Christ. It has to guard against the desecration of marriage. And this is Kuyper with the help of the state.

A little harder in 2022 here in the West. You can see, you know, things weren't always this way and things will not always be this way. The church rightly understanding the spheres and its obligation, the church, with the help of the government, must oppose every wicked notion circulating in the public mind concerning polygamy and divorce.

So as to protect marriage in the life of a nation as the foundation for all society, the church must find avenues to fight against sexual immorality, which in all kinds of ways attacks the family, uproots its very foundations and consumes with its curse whatever falls into its clutches by the power of the words of the church and by its influence.

The church must resist every form of evil that would undermine marriage and thereby rob the family of its greatest honor. See, the church has an obligation to the family. Because of the spheres and God's mission for the spheres.

This isn't something novel or new to Abraham Kuyper, the great series of sermons by the Puritan John Brinsley, who gave just such a charge, he said, would we have the church's.

Floor purged?

Let every one of us purge his own floor. Every man must sweep before his own door. This is the next way to make the street clean. For everyone to purge his own floor is the next way to have the church's floor purged.

Home reformation is the first step and a good step to reforming the church. Here we begin the work, everyone at his own home, the reforming of ourselves and those who belong to us. It is our Savior's speech, after all, to those women who lamented and bewailed him going to his passion.

Remember what Jesus said, daughters of Jerusalem, I tell you, do not weep for me, but.

Weep for yourselves.

Well, here this church, Brinsley says, speaking in like language to her daughters, the church saying this, daughters, daughters, reform, not me, but reform yourselves. Not that only private Christians may have an eye to public reformation.

But the main business which they should be most intent about is home reformation. We want reformation and revival, do we want prayerful vision and visionary prayer, do we want this this participation in God's mission?

It begins at home. It begins in a marriage overflowing to the household, and then we gather as a body. Kuyper says for a family to be a Christian family, three things must be present in it through the spirit of Christ and a result of his work.