"Follow God!"
Letting the Spirit lead
Teaching The Family to Follow God
One of David's greatest gifts to the Family was teaching them how to follow God and get their answers from Him.
That's the whole idea of the [Family]: It's supposed to break you away from such a manmade attachment and manmade dependence where everything has to depend on one preacher, one denomination or whatever!
Each one is supposed to find God for himself and be filled with the Spirit and led by the Spirit of God individually, so that they find the answers for themselves, their own individual cases!
Heavenly Communication
David's writings reveal a deep faith in a living, moving and ever-changing God Who wants to communicate with and guide His Children just as clearly and directly today as He did with the first Christians in the Book of Acts.
David refused to be bound by centuries of religious dogmatism and tradition, and boldly encouraged his followers to exercise their faith and hear from God themselves. He wrote:
Some [people] think, "Well, that's enough, that's all we need! God hasn't spoken since then, that's why we haven't added anything to the Bible. God doesn't speak any more, He doesn't talk any more." Well, those people really worship a pretty dead God and a very inactive, untalkative God!
He's not a silent God Who shut up when the Bible was finished 2,000 years ago, He's a living God, a talking God, and He still speaks and has been speaking ever since then! -- Talking to His people and His prophets and His children down through the ages, ever since the days of Jesus and His Apostles and the Early Church.
Innovation, Change and Progress
David was a great proponent of change. He knew that one of the greatest dangers facing The Family was that it could eventually cool down and solidify and become just another denomination, following a rigid doctrine and set procedures. He was determined to avoid that, regularly exhorting his followers to remain flexible and adaptable and willing to embrace change. He said:
I don't give a damn how we used to do it, if it's not the way we ought to do it now! And I don't care how we did it yesterday, if we should do it differently tomorrow!
If we're not going to constantly keep changing our tactics and methods and modes of operation just like God does, to what He knows will work and what won't with a new day and new situation and new people, then we're going to stagnate.
This willingness to adapt, change and regularly reassess policies and practices enabled David and The Family to mature and successfully survive growing pains that overwhelmed other groups.
The ability to change and innovate -- radically, if necessary -- remains a hallmark of The Family to this day.
