One Thing for Children

Continuing the look at Ephesians 6:1-3 that I shared with the youth, we notice that while God has a lot to say and directions to give about how wives should relate to husbands, and husbands to wives, slaves to masters and so on, there is only one requirement he gives to children: obedience. Not only so, but he also gives the rationale for the command (which he does not always do with the others): that it may go well with you and that you may live long on the earth.

So, I spent a good part of the talk discussing reasons to obey our parents, and they are:

1. Because God commands it.

2. That it may go well for us

3. It is for our good (Prov. 1:8,9)

The idea here was that God has given us parents to be an instrument of His blessing in our lives, that their instruction may “be like a wreath about your head”.

4. It is good preparation. (Prov. 3:1-4, 11-18)

This chapter of Proverbs directly ties obedience to our parents with obedience to and fear of, the Lord. This, in turn, is the basis of all wisdom, for which accrues many benefits to us. One way this applies specifically to the idea of obeying parents is that learning to obey our parents at as young an age as possible, is excellent training for a life of obedience to Jesus Christ. If a child learns to bend his will to the directions of his parents, even when the reasons for the directions are hard to understand, that child will, we pray, find it easier to bend his will to God’s because he will already be accustomed to obedience.

I summarized all of that, by making the statement, "your relationship with Jesus Christ will grow proportionately with you willingness to obey your parents".

Next time, I’ll relate some of the specific goals I shared with the youth with respect to relating to their parents.