Ep 18: Honor Your Father And Mother

We sit with the command to honor our father and mother and talk about why it is the first one paired with a promise. We connect faith to real life by looking at family meals, aging parents, and how showing up for them mirrors how we learn to show up for God. 
• the command to honor parents and the promise attached to it 
• honor as time shared and memories built, not just words 
• the family as the primary social unit worth protecting 
• why eating together changes conversations and values 
• what caregiving looks like when parents age or face Alzheimer’s 
• the pain of neglect and the call to be present even when stressed 
• gratitude for parents’ support and a commitment to return it 
• repentance as turning away from what hurts God 
• counting remaining birthdays and holidays to live intentionally 
• closing prayer for families and those who feel lonely

Transcript

Welcome And Why We Share

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to The Road Travel, a Christian podcast for men, where real faith meets real life. Through honest conversations and personal stories, we help you apply God's word to your everyday journey by sharing the road we've traveled. Whether you're walking through challenge, change, or calling, this is your road. And you don't have to travel it alone. Now, let's take the next step with your hosts, Aaron Degler and Alan Hugator.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Welcome back to The Road Travel. Thanks for taking a little time to join us today. I'm your host, Aaron Degler, along with our host Alan Hugator. Thanks for joining us on The Road Travel today. It is our hope that each week, each time you tune in, that we just share a little bit about our road and the road we have traveled, and we take a little bit of scripture and share some stories and share our experiences and how that scripture is applicable to real life. Some successes we've had, some failures we've had, probably more failures than successes. For me, especially. And we just share those with you in hopes that whatever road you're traveling on, it'll help you with. So thanks again for joining us. And we'll just kind of dive into it. I think Alan's gonna start with scripture.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

I'll start us as

Honor Your Father And Mother

SPEAKER_02 1:20

usual with a little scripture reading and we'll get going from there. But I'm gonna be reading today in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 2 and 3. And this is in the ESV version. It says, Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you, that you may live long in the land. Well let's back up to the commandments for just a moment. The first four is talking about our relationship with God and how to love Him and how to put Him first in our life and things of that nature. Then the second six, the next six, is about loving thy neighbor. That's the reason Jesus asked about the most important. He says a f number one is love God, and number two is the neighbor. But here, this is the fifth commandment to love to honor your father and mother. That's the reason it was talking about. But it is the first commandment that it comes along with a promise. So this promise is that it may go well with you, that you may live long in the land. It's a promise. If you do what and honor your parents, it maybe not have a long life, but you will be able to it will feel longer because you've shared it with them. If you don't share with each other, then it makes it short all of a sudden, right? But when you're enjoying things together, it you know, sometimes that feels short, you didn't spend much time, but a lot of times you look back, you go, look, what all we done together. So that makes a long life out of it together. It's a life filled of good things. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Of rich. But if you don't spend much time with them, that was a short life with mom and dad. Mm-hmm. That was a very short life with them. I think what he's saying there, that would make for a long life in this land because you shared a lot of time together. Oh, my mother was 17. They'd been married a year whenever I was born, and dad was like 21, 22, and he's 89. Mom's been gone now about three or four years, and you know, but I got to share a lot of time with them. Because mom said, Well, we kind of grew up together, and but we got to share a lot of time with them. And I spent time with her all the way till the end. And I got jillian stories and memories and everything, which makes that part long for me.

SPEAKER_03 4:06

And and even after she's gone, you still get that time with them, with her and with your dad, but because you still do have those memories. So it is a long time.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Yeah. But you know, the reason that we should honor our parents is that God commanded us to do it, number one. But go back to God, he's about love. If we honor them, we're showing our love for him and respect comes with love. And, you know, when God gave us the law, he promised to lengthen the days of obedient children. That's what he's saying there. You know, so there's a promise attached to the commandment. Well, it's also about dealing with human relations, which falls under the last six commandments of loving thy neighbor. But it's about human relations there. And the family is our primary social unit. And I think our society has forgotten a whole bunch about the family social unit. And we don't have time to do this with our family, or we don't have time to do that with our family, or we're not spending time in Scripture with our family. And that is the most important social unit. Your relationship with God and your relationship with your family, and they intermingle there. And that's what gives you that long life together.

The Family Table And Lost Time

SPEAKER_03 5:40

And one of the interesting things, we had a conversation with group this week that we were talking about food and nutrition and different things, and one of the things we talked about was the breakdown of the family over a simple thing. And it's a simple thing of we don't eat together. We're talking about how when we eat together, because we're talking about taking time, and we're talking about how we overeat sometimes when we're happy. But it well we used to come together at a table, and it's an interesting thing when we sit down and eat together, we have different conversations than if we're just passing, hey, I'm going to the ball game, hey, I'm going out, hey, I'm going to do this. You know, we have different conversations sitting around eating food, and that's one of the I think the breakdowns in our country altogether is that families don't eat together. And it's part of the problem with the breakdown of the family. And so those things aren't always being taught because society now is as kids start to get old enough to play little little basketball, they can be four years old, and before you know it, they're going every weekend, they're going every night. We're too busy, we're going to go through the drive-thru. And we start to lose some of those things that we're teaching our kids about honor thy mother and father.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Yeah, well, I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and we would have breakfast together probably five mornings out of the week. Home cooked. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh nothing. They finally come out with pop tarts. I mean, I'm not that old. Well, they talked about pop tarts, or mom do them every once in a while. Most times it was eggs and the whole works and not a huge breakfast, you know, lots of times. But we had something, and you know, if it may be oatmeal, mottle meal, whatever it was at that time, it'd come along. And but we would have breakfast probably together five mornings. It'd be a morning where something was up, or dad slip in a little bit on Sunday and it was up early for church, or you know, he had to go somewhere early that morning. And in the same way in the evenings, mom would have supper somewhere around 5:30, maybe six o'clock, because that's about time dad usually come in. But you never knew about from the late sales, he was working auctions. And so there'd be times that he'd be later, but we'd eat about that time, the three of us. And then, you know, dad would be late. But if he was home, we'd all sit down together and eat together. Well, there's only Kim and I at home now, and we don't hardly ever eat together unless she's saying, Take me out to eat, and that's when we get to eat together. And so when you eat together, what do you do? We visit. Yeah. We visit. She talks and I listen. It's kind of like a filibuster once in a while. But, you know, we do.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

And that's the part that's missing out of was it social is visiting and and sharing and and and you know, building relationships and and you probably learned a lot of a lot of lessons at the breakfast table, at the dinner table, from whether whether it was your mom talking about her day, your dad explaining what was going on at the sale and how somebody was acting or doing things.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

But you learned some mannerism right there too. I'm not saying I'm the neatest, cleanest eater in town, but I got up and I told my mother, thank you for the meal, mom. If I didn't, I got to wash all the dishes, not just mine. But I showed gratitude and showed respect for mom for what she did do. You know, I'm not saying we've done things right in our family at all, but that was just one part of what we need to think about as parents and grandparents in the family setting, is coming together and eating together and sharing time and stories together. That's where we'll remember whenever I get old, which I'm nearly there, but whenever I get to where I'm not able to get out and be socialize a lot, that's the memories that's going through my head. My dad's 89, and that's what he talks about is back in the day, back when we done this, back when your mom and I would do this, or we all done this, went to here together.

Aging Parents Alzheimer’s Nursing Homes

SPEAKER_02 9:35

As he says, he said, I can't talk to you about tomorrow because I don't know if tomorrow's coming or not at my age. I don't look to the future. My mind is in the past. You know, and that's very humbling, is the only word I can think of because I have to stop and think, no. You know, dad's at that stage that he can't think beyond that. Mother got Alzheimer's real bad, and in her last few days, weeks, months, or whatever it was, and she got real bad, I'd come and see her, and she's now, who are you? And I said, Well, I'm Alan Ray. No, you're not. I said, Oh yeah, that's I'm Alan Ray. No, you're not. You know that that I hated that she got that, but it didn't bother me. I heard people before, oh, it just made me feel so bad my mama didn't know me when I my mother was not denying, would never deny me as her child. But she was thinking of me when I was young. She wasn't thinking of me as a grown or older man, 60-year-old man, whenever I was coming to see her, she thought of me back when I lived at home with her and dad and rooster. At that age is what I believe that she'd done. And lucky we kept her home and didn't have to put her. And which brings up a point that I really bothers me a lot, and that is we went and looked at the rest home in case we ever got to the state, we couldn't keep her at home. And we went back and had a family, the three of us had a family discussion about we'll do everything we can to keep her from having to go there. And some people are unable to do that. But dad stayed and we done that, and I'm not, I'm I'm proud he was able to and bragging on him, but I understand some people can't. But I was at the doctor's office having some blood pulled the other day, and there were some elderly ladies there, and they was kind of getting around, need a little help and guidance, and a little help getting around. And I said to this nurse who's pulling my blood, I said, Man, you know, it's it's sad. It always saddens me to watch older people and no one there to help them and things of that nature. And she goes, Oh, tell me about it. I used to work out here at the rest home. And we've all heard stories like this before. And she used to tell me about this one lady and she needed something. So she called the one of the children that was on the list, maybe the only child, I don't know. She said, I called the child and said, She needs this, and y'all need to come to you. And she goes, Well, we don't have time. Y'all take care of it. And if you think about that situation, if you gain fancy, oh, it'll bring a tear to your eye thinking that someone don't have time for their mother or their dad that spent time and was thrilled to death when you were born and looked at you. What can you remember when you looked at your child and how happy you were, full of joy that you had this child, and then turning it around. And because mom can't do nothing, or dad can't do nothing, and you stick them out there and they don't have time to go. And the joy that you brought to them by whenever you come into their life, and they spend all the time of all the ups and downs through your childhood and taking care of you physically and taking you everywhere. When they didn't have time. And they didn't have time, but they did, and they done these things and these things and these things, and some of us didn't do as much as we should have, but they're again, but to put them off in a place like out of sight, out of mind. Well, they can't do this and they can't do that. I don't have time, I can't take care of them like that. Oh, sure, I understand if you can't take care of them in your home. But to honor them, you would need to be there for them. The way they were there for you, the way God is here for us every day. To go out there and spend time with them, go out there and take care of whatever their needs were, and yes, it can be very stressful, I'm not saying, but God is there for us every day because we're his children. Every one of us, whether we do right or wrong, is his children, and he's there. And all you gotta do is call upon him. And he's always there, ready, hoping you will.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

Just waiting. And and and being the exact example of a father, of and how we need to honor him is how we need to also honor our mother and father. I

Support And Gratitude As Adults

SPEAKER_03 14:25

I often think, as my parents are in their 80s, I often think about, you know, I always tell them, whatever you need, just let me know and I'll come because I think all the years that I wasn't a good kid and all the different things they had to do and put up with and stress about, and they were always there for me. I I started working at McDonald's at 19. My dad hated McDonald's. And but he would go to McDonald's. He would go eat at McDonald's because I worked there. Didn't like it. And and once I quit working at McDonald's, he never went to McDonald's again.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

I agree with him. But what did he want to do? He wanted to be with you, around you.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

And support me. Exactly. And I'm there. So, you know, him and my mom might come in and eat, they get to see me, but he and and I want to be the same. There's things, I mean, you know, as our parents get a little older, they have different ideas, different thoughts. But just I'm gonna do the same as they did for me and support them and say, that sounds great. I'll help you any way I can. And there are so many times that I look back and go, that was the dumbest decision. But my parents were always there to say, okay, what do we need to do? We'll help support you. We'll help, I mean, we'll, you know, whatever we need to do. And I want to be that same way as they get older. I want to be able to do that for them because, like you said, I feel that's honoring them for what they have given me. I'm not just giving me, you know, gave me life, gave me opportunities, gave me love, gave me discipline, gave me values, understanding, all the different things that gave me, I want to be able to honor that and show that it wasn't wasted. That I'm re- all the things you taught me, I want to return now to you.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Has there someone been in your life beside your parents that done a lot for you that you can think of? Anybody listening, think about someone that's just really stepped up and done a lot for you in your life and helped you somewhere. I mean, there's people that's come in and out, you know, maybe numerous ones that come in and helped you. Could any of them ever match up to the amount that your parents done from you from time of birth to today? Any of them ever match up that they ever done that much for you? That they were there, they wiped your nose, they done all the things, took you to the doctor, paid this. I mean, just you just go through it and you just you can't fathom what all we do as parents and have done to us by our parents. But nobody, and I can name three or four people that helped me in life with different things, you know, with advice or be there for me, or I kind of had a man, it was kind of like a godfather to me, and and he done some things, but he still didn't match up to what my birth parents have done for me. They'd done it day after day after day after day and was willing to do it all the way. Dad's 89, and if I call upon him, he would help me. If there's any way he could. There's no way to match up there. And what has God done for us? And he's there every day. Every day. Unconditional love. It's agopia love, it's unconditional. You know, if you are a parent, you know how it is to love a child. That's as close as we can get to thinking how much God loves every each and every one of us. He may not like just like dad didn't like some things I done. I embarrassed mom before. It really bothers me that I embarrassed her by something I said or done as a child or done, you know. It really bothers me. And God, it bothers him every time we embarrass him or don't do his will. But just like our parents, he was willing to forgive us if we just come to him and apologize. Go to him and tell him that I'm sorry, Lord.

Repentance And Not Hurting God Again

SPEAKER_02 18:10

And one thing I've heard about before was repentance is hating what you've done bad enough to never do it again. Being sorrowful enough on what you've done to never do it again. And the way I related that was it really bothered me when I hurt my mother's feelings. And when I did, I don't think I ever done that again. So why would we go with God and we ask for forgiveness and then we go do it again? That's not true repentance. Repentance with God is going and saying, I am sorry, and not doing it again. That won't ever do it again. Never do it again because you don't want to hurt him. I know how I hurt mom that time, and I would never hurt her like that again. Why if I'm hurting God, why would I ever hurt him again whenever I've done something wrong?

SPEAKER_03 19:05

And and it it it you know, I th I think sometimes we do that sometimes because it's easier to see the look on our mom's face or dad's face. And sometimes we're like, well, you know, I know I I don't necessarily see God. And sometimes it's because we don't quite have that relationship that we need, like we do with our our parents. We don't why? Because we're not have we're not going to talk to him, we're not seeking advice from him, and we're not saying, What what do you think I should do? Let me know. You know, here's my problems.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

What did a tear run down your mom's face mean to you? How did it affect you? Yeah. Whether someone else hurt her or you hurt her or whatever, and you see a tear run down your mother's face, and then just try to imagine. I don't have no idea what God looks like. No man's ever seen it, but I think there's one in the Bible, but imagine him having a tear run down his face, whatever image you want to put in there, because of something that I've done.

SPEAKER_03 20:12

And then you continue to do. And it's tier after tier.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

So think of this. If you're young and listening to it, you're still living with your parents, think about what they are doing for you. In your midlife, whatever, you got a child, think about it both ways. And when they get old, it's my dad, I'm gonna do everything I can to try to always be there for him. I may not be there every day, I may not be the person that's helping him at that moment every day, but I'm gonna see that it's done and try to be there as often as I can. I take him to feed with me now and two or three days a week. My brother's out there a good bit, and I go down there two or three or four days a week, and we'll go feed, and he feels better, it seems like, and happier when we're out just driving and going and feeding, and I'll say, Are you gonna get this gate? Well, no, I ain't getting this gate, you get the gate. And I said, Well, get out and do that, take me and get some exercise. Anyway, we have a fun, we enjoy that time together, and then yet there's times when it seems hard for me to get there. But when I'm there and then moments are priceless. And there are a limited time of those moments.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Because they're memories you'll have. Yep.

Counting Moments And Being Intentional

SPEAKER_03 21:33

I I heard a thing one time we think about, you know, you know, my my mom, my parents are in their 80s and they go, you know, they got, you know, maybe, you know, let's say 10 years. Oh, I I got plenty of time with them. Well, that's really my mom's about to turn 86 this next month, and I I really only if that were the case, she's she'll be 86, let's say I have five more years. I only have five more birthdays to celebrate her. I only have five more Christmases to celebrate. And that doesn't sound very long. And I think when we look at it in terms of that, that we get in those, we make those times more meaningful. Because like it those memories will last a long life. Sometimes the time with them isn't always long. But I think if we really be intentional with those actions as going out to feed with your dad, you'll have those long after he's gone. I mean, when you think of him, it'll bring a smile to your face and you think that was honoring him because I was spending time with my father. And I think sometimes all we have to do to honor God is spend time with him and be in that relationship. Absolutely.

Prayer And Final Encouragement

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Well, on that, join me and we'll go to the Lord right now. Lord, we come to you. Lord, we just we're on our knees just thanking you and giving you the praise for giving us this life. Lord, I just personally want to thank you for the family that you've given me and what that means to me. And be with everyone as they go through this life, Lord, and may they realize what the family means to them. And those that are lonely, Lord, I know they're not totally lonely because you're there with them. Lord, I come to you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

Thank you so much to each of you for joining us on the road travel. We hope that our conversation each time just finds you and helps you on the road that you're traveling, that you can take something we say and apply it to your road to make your road. Maybe it's a gravel road, and maybe it makes it a little bit smoother, a little bit easier on that road that you're traveling. So thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you down the road. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

You've been listening to The Road Travel, where real faith meets real life. Remember, every step matters, even the hard ones. So keep walking your road with courage, conviction, and Christ leading the way. Until next time, your hosts, Aaron and Alan, say, we'll see you down the road.