Honour your Parents

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

This is the first commandment in the list of the ten commandments about loving others. And not only is it the first commandment about loving others but it's the first commandment with a promise. Honour your parents "so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you".

God wants to bless his people. After generations of slavery in Egypt, He is giving them their own land, a beautiful garden land. And if God’s people want things to go well in the land It starts with correctly ordered family relationships.

We the church can live in a way where we are a sign of restored familial relationship that showcase God’s faithfulness and point to the hope of fully restored human relationships. I pray that is particularly hopeful for you if you come from a family of origin where your parents have not honoured you as they should and that maybe it has become the case that the way to honour them best is to have boundaries so that no one is dishonoured.

You have a new family and God will call us all to honour our earthly parents in a way that is safe and appropriate. But we can receive from God, our good Father, all that we need to be able to do that. The healing and transformation we encounter today points in hope to when one day God fully dwells with his people and all broken family relationships are fully restored.