Honor your father and mother - Youth lesson

What does the word honor mean?

meaning to hold in high respect or great esteem

what relationship do you think exists between honor and obey, can you have one without the other?

Why or why not?

Exodus 20:12 ESV

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Honor and obedience usually go hand in hand

but not always

Do you think you can follow this command if you don’t respect your parents?

What would honor look like in an abusive situation?

Here is the reality, though honor doesn’t always require respect in most situations it is needed to follow this command.

The only situation i would say is that in the situation of abuse one may be honoring their father and mother by forgiving them.

Honoring ones father or mother would not mean tolerating abuse.

How could one honor a parent if that parent was asking them to go against God’s will?

I know of situations in which a mother who is a believer mind you. has asked a teen child to lie for the sake of a ticket.

What do you think of this situation?

what would you do and why?

Something that at times through my time as a teen that frustrated if not angered my parents was me being honest in the fact that I would not lie for them.

In fact it would be a dishonoring them and God for me to lie.

Im gonna list some practical ways that we can honor our father and mother even when we don’t agree with them.

Pray for them

forgive them

find things in our life we are thankful for

At the end of the day we all have to be able to discover why it is that God has set the standard for us.

First off as Christians we have to remember that he is our heavenly father.

We honor and obey him first and foremost

That being said, when your parents instructions fall in line with God’s you have a Biblical obligation to follow in that.

Part of that is recognizing when we have failed, and when we need to not only be obedient because of our failure but we need to ask repentance for our situation.