I want to focus on Commandment Number Five: to honor your father and mother. This is about the family. God created and God loves the family. His template is for a man and woman to come together, commit to each other for life in a monogamous relationship, ultimately to have children, if that is God’s will, and to raise those children in the way of the Lord. What’s our example and point of reference? Our Father who is in Heaven.
Practical Principles
- Put the needs of your spouse above your own. Wife, this means you submit to the loving leadership of your husband. Husband, that means that you bow to the needs of your wife.
- It’s not about you, it’s about your mate. You must support one another in the fear of God, as Ephesians 5:21 instructs.
- Fathers need to step up and lead. A father is a visible representation of God in Heaven. Many people form their view of God based on their relationship with their earthly father.
- Bring your kids up; don’t knock them down. Ephesians 6:4 says, “Bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” This speaks of nourishing them.
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Relevant Reminders
- Don’t show favoritism to one child over another.
- The Lord wants us to write His commandments on our hearts, to get them inside of us and inside of our children.
- Family devotions are good idea, but don’t make them long and boring.
Applicable Actions
Nothing can happen through you until it has first happened to you. You cannot take your children any further spiritually than you yourself have gone. As Paul wrote in Philippians 4:9, “These things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” So, they need to see it in you first. When do you teach them? You teach them all the time.
