Shepherding : Our Family

These days the Lord in His mercy has been recovering the fellowship within my own family. All these while it has been that my shepherding is mostly for others who are not physically related to me. The Lord has been gracing me to visit families on a regular basis, shepherding them. Not that I neglected mine own, but paying heed to the need of time. Somehow, the Lord also has been gracing me to pray with my family and my wife has been so cooperative and good in handling the family affair which I entirely left to her, and I have been fully concentrating on the need of the saints and the new ones. 

As my sister and some other sisters came to stay with us these days, the need for setting up our own home meeting arose; as some of them are very new in the Lord and in the church life. I took this as an opportunity for shepherding. So we set up our family meeting every evening after dinner for prayer and fellowship, and every morning for morning revival and prayer. 

Giving hospitality to the needy is a real blessing to us. Because of them, as a family we could spend more solid time to pray and pursue the Lord together. In shepherding others we are being shepherded. Not only so, even our neighbour's children joined us for the morning revival every morning. They are also blessed. Every one is blessed by this simple act of hospitality at our home.

The Lord truly blessed all the meetings together, as I myself could testify in my own life. All my personal morning revival or sometimes just with my wife is now very much strengthened with the whole family and neighbour joining us. We are so shepherded.

Besides, every time we meet, the Lord has something to speak to us, some specific burdens were released for the young saints regarding their living, education, character, church life etc. And our prayer life is strengthened very much. Our burden increased, our prayer life increase, our enjoyment of the Lord also increase. What a blessing!

For such family shepherding, the Lord sent some to our family and they all are a blessing in disguise. 

The Lord has His own marvelous way of taking care of all our needs, both physical and spiritual too. The best way I find is a time spent together in the word, in prayer and in fellowship, as a family. It's a real blessing to have our own family meetings everyday. A lot of perfecting work happens here within the family; besides the blending, bonding and building. How I wish all Christian families to have their own family home meetings! Herein is the way for love to flow through among us, and herein is the way to know each others' situation and perfect one another, and herein is the way to live out a God-man family life. 

Lord, our family is for You. Bless our family meetings and perfect us all to be Your testimony as a family.