Monday 4 Nov 2019

November 4: Exodus 20:12

Key Verse: Exodus 20:12
Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

Devotion:
I know it is difficult to honour parents who have abused their position in the family, but this commandment does not just relate to blood parents; this extends to all who stand in for parents, all who act as your parents and all who are spiritual parents. I am very lucky to have had blood parents who have loved me and cared for me and to have a stepparent who also loves me.

Obeying parents can seem difficult when you have a difference of opinion to them but I think this commandment is looking for something different than blindly obeying parents just because they are parents. If we can learn to love and honour our earthly parents, then how much more can we love our ultimate spiritual father in heaven? Living our lives is a learning curve where we pick up and remember things through example and through being taught. If we go through this life objecting to and rejecting those instructions, then loving and honouring others may well be a very difficult task to achieve!

I know I have joked with other Christians, and even non-Christians, about how our lives could be shortened or made very difficult if we disobeyed parents, but this does apply to our lives with God, albeit indirectly. If we continue to disobey God and not to honour Him, we are walking in a different direction to the path He wants us to walk. The longer we walk along this path, the more we walk into the influence of the world and even into the influence of those against God – our lives may not turn out to be as good as they could be if we were obeying and trusting God!

The Israelites were given explicit instructions from God and also had to learn the hard way what would happen to them if they did disobey God. Many of the commandments given to them had a penalty of death if they were broken – little wonder then that obeying spiritual parents would lead to a longer life! Think how much more we can gain from life by honouring our parental figures in our lives…

Points to Ponder:
Have you fallen short of honouring those in your life?

Are you willing to ask God to help you honour the right people?