The Family - Pt 3

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12 ESV). It is easy to merely skip over this commandment when we read it in the Old Testament. However, when we realize that God distilled all of his desire for our behavior into just ten statements, we ought to pay close attention. It is clear in describing the value of family. Let me mention five things that can be seen in our reading today. 1. First, family is the core for discovering your values. It is in the family setting that we discover the things that are really valuable to us. By the time that your child is a teen, their identification with a set of values is set and a direction for their life is determined. What we see done in our family had much to do with this direction. Values are really taught in the home. 2. Second, a family is where we learn what a healthy, positive relationship looks like. We learn how to interact with one another, how to treat each other, we learn how or how not to express affection for one another. Parents should realize that we are teaching our children how to be husbands and wives that value one another and ultimately their children by what we do relationally to one another. 3. Third, family is where a person learns about authority. It is in the home where we teach most effectively how to relate to authority once they leave home. There are many authority figures in our lives: coaches, teachers, government officials, pastors, and ultimately God; we learn best how to relate to all of these through the home environment. 4. Fourth, family is where we learn our self-worth. We literally see ourselves through the eyes of our parents, brothers and our sisters. So the way we are treated in the home, good or bad, shapes us. It shapes the way we see ourselves. If we were accepted, encouraged, praised, if we were ignored, criticized, belittled, all of that shapes us and we determine our worth and value as a human being. 5. Fifth, family is where we learn about faith. Most children leave home with a very similar faith of that of their parents. So if our parents modeled a genuine faith in God in the home, there is a good chance by the time the child leaves, or shortly after they leave, they have a genuine faith in their lives. Not always, not 100%, but at some point, they are going to come back to that. Home is literally a training ground for relationships, not only with one another, but with God. How’s your family doing? It is never too late, as long as we have breath within us, to make our family what God desires it to be.