Honor

Lately a few different, and at first glance contradictory, verses have been on Cliff and my hearts.

The first is Matthew 19:19 “Honor your father and mother.” Neither Cliff or I are perfect, but it seems the past few months this particular command has been increasingly difficult to obey.  We don’t intend to disrespect either of our parents, but our focus has been on our relationship and what God wants for our future, and consequently our family has been left out of a big part of our life.  

After talking to leaders of our church and praying about it, we think that this is because our relationship with our family, and especially our parents, has to change.  The second verse we’ve been thinking about is Genesis 2:24 “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Our relationship with our parents is supposed to change. For all our lives our parents have been the main people in our lives, guiding us, helping us, being a friend when we need it. Everything we truly needed from another person we could usually find in our parents. 

But no longer. We should not be looking for what we need from our parents, we shouldn’t be running to them with every problem and decision we need to make. We should be going to each other and to God. God is the head of our lives, and Cliff under that. So we can ask for wisdom from our parents, but our decisions are just that: ours. Cliff and me with God’s guidance. This won’t be easy for our family. They have to get used to being in the ‘backseat’ so to speak in our lives. We’re not going to tell them everything in our lives, we’re not going to base every decision on what they think. 

It sounds so harsh, but that’s how it should be biblically. We can and should still honor our parents, but what that means will change as we start to build our life together.