Raising Kingdom Kids (Giving Your Child a Living Faith) by Tony Evans

Author:Tony Evans [Evans, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / General, RELIGION / Christian Life / Family
ISBN: 9781624054143
Publisher: Focus on the Family
Published: 2014-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

How to Show Honor

How do children honor their parents? Let me suggest several ways.

First, children need to honor their parents emotionally. This includes spending time with them and showing them some concern and love. Some mothers and fathers are wasting away in retirement homes and care centers for lack of attention and honor from their grown children.

Someone may say, “But you don’t know my mother. She was a terrible mother.” Or, “My father was bad news.” But this person is still your parent. He or she must have done something right, because you’re still here. This doesn’t imply that you have to honor what your parents did wrong. But you can still recognize and honor your parents for their position.

You can also honor your parents verbally. When I visit my parents’ home in Baltimore, I don’t say to my father, “Hey, Art. How’s it going?” It’s “Yes, sir” and “No, sir.”

Paul told Timothy, “Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father” (1 Timothy 5:1). In other words, even if he’s wrong, you must still speak to him with respect. A mother and father are not, “Hey, you” to their children. Parents are to be spoken to—and spoken about—with honor.

God also calls children to honor their parents financially. In 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul wrote, “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.” In verse 16 we read: “If any woman who is a believer has dependent widows, she must assist them and the church must not be burdened.”

As children, we have a financial responsibility for our parents when they can no longer take care of themselves. This means more than buying them a Mother’s or Father’s Day card. It means seeing to their well-being when they need our assistance. Maybe they can’t live with us because of the kind of medical care they need, but honor still demands that we look after their welfare.

Notice that in 1 Timothy 5:4, Paul described what we do for our parents—in this case, our mothers—as making a “return” for what they have done for us. Your mother carried you for nine months. She went through painful labor to bring you into the world. She fed you, clothed you, and housed you.

In the case of many poor families in our generation, your mother may have boarded a bus every day to go to the other side of town and scrub other people’s floors so you could eat, have clothes, and go to school. Your dad may have worked like my dad did, until he was so tired he could hardly drive home. That kind of sacrifice deserves to be honored.

When an elder in our church was a child, he was abandoned by his father. Not long ago, the father fell ill, and the elder went to the hospital regularly to visit him, even though none of the elder’s siblings would have anything to do with their father.

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