Today’s verse in the Pleasing God search, starts with Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” Besides honoring and worshiping only God and not committing grievous sins towards others, we are commanded to honor our parents. 1 Timothy 5:4 adds these words, “Honor widows who are truly widows. ⁴ But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God.” Widows were to be taken care of but this is directed at their children. The children were to seek to honor their parents by making some return. We can speculate about that a bit. What comes to my mind is children working to support their surviving parent, taking part in the home and chores and honoring the memory of the deceased parent. Those types of actions would show growth in godliness and be pleasing to God.

Paul speaks of honoring our parents in Ephesians 6:1-3 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ² “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), ³ “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” The promise is that honoring our parents with godly behavior in both words and deeds brings long life. The act of honoring our parents is ordered by God and is indeed pleasing to Him.

How are you doing with this? It is not always easy to honor our parents especially if you have different points of view on major things in life. Family situation can be fraught with tensions. Sometimes it seems like a very fine line between being your own person and upholding your own beliefs and yet stay honoring towards your parents. Perhaps avoiding antagonizing words when in their presence and not speaking ill of them is a start. Even if you mostly get along with your parents, you can undermine your relationship with them by speaking poorly of them to others. It is hard to do at times but so important. The Word of God speaks plainly about slandering others with our words. In Mark 7:21-23, Jesus considers it evil in our hearts, “ For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²² coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Paul speaks to the Ephesians 4:30-32 about grieving God the Holy Spirit, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. ³² Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” In Colossian 3:8-9 Paul encourages us to put these things away as they were part of our old nature.  “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. ⁹ Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.”

Honoring all relationships is what we are called to in Christ. Is it easy? No, but we have His spirit living within us empowering us to navigate the pathway of honor as it brings honor to God. Honoring behavior pleases God!

Linda