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24 Family Ways # 3
We honor and obey our parents in the Lord with a respectful attitude.
Memory Verse:
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother
(which is the first commandment with a promise)
so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.
Ephesians 6: 1-2
Countless literally thousands of early mornings through my lifetime, I would arise early, light candles, make a cup of tea and sit quietly with my Bible before the Lord. Faith is not built in a moment, but over a lifetime. Yet, now, in this season, I understand more profoundly how important it is for us to store up and live daily by the wisdom of God. Every day I feel these ideals become even more important, as I watch the difficulties in the world grow greater and mamas growing weary. Sometimes that weariness causes us to neglect to train our children to honor us—which in turn causes even more weariness!
From the first days of life, we speak the attitudes of faith into our little babies. When we treat them with gentleness and respond to them with patience and treat them as little infants of great value, we are already training the value of honor and respect into their brain patterns.
We are living in a time in which everyone is fair game for criticism, every person can be devalued. Especially in online places, there seems to be no decorum that would suggest we should treat others with respect our of our respect for Christ.
If we do not teach our children the value of honoring us as parents, or adults in charge of them, or people in positions of authority, then they will never have a trained heart attitude that says, “I must bow the wishes and needs of my own heart in order to please God.
Children must be taught to submit, even as we adults need to remember that we are to be people who can submit. God is our King and maker and He is in authority over us. We must place areas of practicing this in real life in order for our children to understand what it means to fear and serve our wonderful God.
Honor is a value that must have precedence in a home so that a child can understand the importance of people, and to learn to bow their knee before others who deserve respect.
Honor comes with humility—the ability to see others as more important than ourselves. To teach honor and obedience means we will have to occasionally cross our children’s wills. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. I hope this podcast is an encouragement to you, and that you’ll get your own copy of this book which will be a blessing to your family!
