This morning, we are going to deal with how to raise your parents. And how many of you are excited about that?

This is awesome. I see some parents back here. They’re like, this is great.

This is going to be good. I’m looking forward to it. This is something that the Lord has been doing in my own heart.

As I’ve been on a journey of my own self,

believe it or not, I actually have two parents. Wow. Maybe you do too.

And that helps us, you know, have that common bond. So that’s good. I know as people have looked at this title, they’re thinking, is this a typo?

You know, did you mean to say how to raise your kids? No, they’re doing a workshop for teens, so that wouldn’t work out. Is there actually ways kids that are involved in raising their parents?

And I have two little daughters myself. One is a two-and-a-half-year-old, so I’m right at the beginning stages of raising a child. And then I had one that was born four-and-a-half weeks ago.

And so life is good. It’s awesome. I also work with the young adults here at Falls Baptist Church.

And so as I’ve grown up, I looked at how I responded to my parents. I am now a parent myself. These are principles that I have gleaned.

I also have talked to many others and then talking to young adults,

helping them with their relationship with their parents. And I trust to be a blessing to you this morning. Earlier last year, maybe two years ago, I was out in the woods up here, and we have a shed back there.

And I happened to be just sitting there watching. You know, there’s a lot of wildlife that comes up. And all of a sudden, I started hearing this pecking noise.

So I was looking, okay, where’s this woodpecker at? I’m looking at all the trees. And then I find it pecking on the side of a shed.

Why is the woodpecker whacking? Try and say that five times fast. why is the woodpecker whacking his head against the shed?

Bugs don’t live in the shed. You know, they live in the bark, the tree, the thing that’s alive. I thought, that’s interesting.

And as I was in a prayer time and talking to the Lord, and even I think I was studying for a sermon along these lines,

and I said, you know, sometimes I felt like that as a teenager. I would, you know, people would preach about honor your parents or my relationship with my parents, and I need to help that. And I felt like I was doing it.

But I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I wasn’t getting anything from it,

like that woodpecker. Hmm, nothing here. Well, just keep going.

Honor your parents. Just try harder. Do better.

I’m doing it. And I trust that the principles today will help you understand that it’s not the shed, and maybe some of the things you’re doing are right things, but maybe it’s the attitude. Maybe there’s other dynamics in your relationship with your parents that could be changed that could help you going from pecking on the trim of a shed, which is not

going to help you, to have fulfillment and be what God wants, so can I speak, pecking at a tree and getting the food from there. Maybe you say, I would honor my parents. I feel like if you were to ask me right now, I do what they say.

I don’t say too many bad things about them, and maybe I don’t honor

them totally when I’m around my friends, but you know, overall, I would say I’m pretty good. Eventually, I get around to the tasks that they’ve given. Maybe not right away when they ask me,

but I get to it. I obey them. But my question to you today is, are you honoring them?

True honor. That’s how you should raise your parents. That’s how you should respect them.

So this raising is not so much, Mom and Dad, this is what I want you to do. This raising of your parents is, wow, this is a God-given authority in my life. How can I honor them so that they are honored, I am fulfilled in my relationship with them, and most of all, God is pleased.

The reality is that your parents are humans just like you. And just as you are desiring that respect, just as you desire your parents to value your opinion, value what you have to say, they want you to give them respect. They want you to value what they have given to your life.

Deuteronomy chapter 5. If you have your Bible, let’s turn there. Let’s unpackage where this command is found.

I know it’s there in Exodus. That’s the common scripture passage we go to. Let’s do Deuteronomy, though.

Deuteronomy chapter 5,

the second giving of the Ten Commandments. Must be important if God gave it to us twice, and it’s one of the top ten commands. Verse 7 to verse 21, These are all the commands that are given there.

He goes through and talks all the way up until verse 16. And those commands are the commands that deal with your relationship with God. And what you have to understand as a young person, or a little bit older person, is that our relationship with God is what first must be priority in our lives before our relationship with our parents can be proper, before we have that right relationship with them.

Verse 7 of Deuteronomy 5, we find here there’s no other gods. God says, don’t put any other gods before me. I alone am God.

Verse 8 through 10, no graven image. God is very much alive and he’s jealous for our attention. He’s jealous for our devotion.

God says, don’t put other things before me. Verse 11 then, don’t take God’s name in vain. he’s holy.

He doesn’t want you to use his name lightly. Verse 12, the Sabbath day. 12 to verse 15 there he talks about the fact that we’re to take a day to rest.

A day to focus on that relationship with him. It’s been said that respect for parents then as we take and we look at these first four commands that deal with the relationship with God It’s respect for parents in this next command that now connects us from our relationship with God, the vertical commands, and it deals with our horizontal, the horizontal commands that come. And verse 5 is that key connection.

Tim Keller says it’s respect for parents that is the basis for every other kind of respect and every other kind of authority. The society falling apart, why? It can be traced to the homes.

Back there in the days of the giving of the law, God was using Moses to build a great nation. You can find that in Exodus 19, 1 through 6. And the wisdom of God seems to indicate that if there is a reverence in the home, there is a reverence in the state.

If there is lack of authority in the home, there is lack of authority in the state. If there is disobedience and violence in the home, there is disobedience and lawlessness in the state. But reverence in the home means respect and civic life.

And order in the home means prosperity and stability in government and in the state. This, says Paul, is the first commandment with promise. We’re going to go there.

Let’s read this, though, here in Deuteronomy 5, verse 16. Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, and the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Turn with me now to Ephesians 6.

This is where we’re going to spend the rest of our time. As we talk about raising our parents, Really, the matter here that we’re going to get down to is giving them proper honor. Raising them up in our esteem of them.

Raising them up around our friends. Those that we would talk to about them. Man, my parents, this is what I appreciate about them.

Even to God himself, who sometimes maybe we pour out our heart to. And I understand there’s difficult situations. Well, you don’t know the situation on it.

I don’t have a mom and a dad. I only have a single parent. You don’t know some of the, maybe the verbal abuse.

Some of these things that have happened in my life. You don’t understand. But I can tell you one person who does understand.

And that’s God himself. And that no matter what happened in your life, he gave us these commands. And those things that may have happened, that your parents may have done to you, that may be hurtful.

We have to remember, though, they’re human. They’re sinners. And as we look to God, we realize, God, that wasn’t your plan for these things to happen in my life.

That was Satan. You allowed it. You allowed him to do these things.

Okay, so how can I turn them for good? Ephesians chapter 6 now. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise,

that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. How many of you, you would think this was probably one of the first verses you learned as a kid? You would say, yeah, this is probably one of the first.

Well, I don’t know why it is, but this is one of the first ones that I’m teaching my daughter Lucy. Children, obey your parents. Let me figure out, who is your parents?

Okay, mommy, daddy. All the way before she could even really talk. We’re going to work on this, help them understand this.

Why? Because it’s so important. Because if she doesn’t understand this, then the things that I have learned in my relationship with my parents, if I don’t pass them on, I don’t help her to understand that proper relationship with God, the proper relationship with myself, the fact of the matter is, though she’s not responsible to raise me as her dad, it definitely helps when she understands these biblical principles.

What’s define children? Who in here, you would say, I’m a child. maybe I should ask who would say I’m not a child okay we’re all children right is there ever a point that you stop becoming a child you that’s just by nature we’re children mom and dad we’re birth here we are we’re a child children obey your parents now this does have some of that fact of some of the connotation there that it is a younger person

so as you’re in the home, you are to obey. So defining children, you never really stop becoming a child, though I trust that you are growing up. So you’re always going to be a child of your parents.

But I trust that maturity comes in, the respect there, that mutual back and forth, they giving you responsibilities,

you being trusted in them. When are your parents no longer your parents? It’s never going to happen.

They’re always going to be your parents. So to raise your parents is to honor them It doesn’t matter how old you are. It’s to obey them, to have that proper respect for them.

Let’s then define obedience. What does it mean to obey? Is it obedience if it happens the second or third time they ask you?

Is that real true obedience? Not really. Really, obedience is that first time.

Is it obedience if you’re kicking your feet, you’re mumbling, and you’re grumbling when they ask you to do something? Is that obedience? Maybe.

No, that’s not obedience. Obedience with a happy spirit right away. Obeying.

Mr. Forrester, really? I’m 15.

I’m 16. I’m 17. I got this thing down.

My parents don’t need to be telling me this. I don’t need to be obeying that. When am I old enough?

When can I do my own thing? Children, obey your parents. Some want to say that this in the Lord, well, that’s in the Lord.

So only if you have a saved parent do you have to obey them. You don’t find that anywhere else. Jesus Christ himself said in Matthew 15, 3 to 4, but he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?

For God commanded, saying, Honor thy father and mother. And he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. We don’t find Jesus Christ saying, well, you can honor your parents as long as they’re good Christian parents.

As long as they’re in the Lord, no. Right here, honor your father. What’s the law say?

You’re to honor Jesus Christ himself. So this isn’t the fact of, well, they’re a saved parent, they’re not a saved parent. understand there’s some definite things that are hard then when it’s an unsaved parent.

But Jesus Christ can give the grace. There are some ideas. We’re going to talk about that in the application part here of how we can help be a part there, how we can honor even an unsaved parent.

Obeying them, the reality of obedience in the Lord, what’s pleasing, what’s right,

even Exodus 21, 17. He that curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. This is speaking of a wrong speech towards them.

This idea of that word curse, it’s a disdain, a despising, a making light of. Have you ever done that before? Been with a group of friends?

Oh, my parents. Oh, that’s what your parents do? Oh, man.

They tell you to be in bed at this time? Oh, that’s… Why do they tell you to do that?

Oh, man, they still have you taking out the trash. They still have you helping do these things. Man, you need to experience free.

You know what? Yeah. Why do my parents have me do that?

That’s not speaking highly of your parents. That’s disdaining them. And here we find the Old Testament.

And that day, don’t curse your father and mother. It was so strong. God was so strong that when a person that’s cursing, they should be put to death.

That would help in some of today’s society problems, for sure. That was given, though, to the children of Israel. And we see, not that this is what needs to be happening, but we see how strongly God feels about this.

Don’t disdain your parents. When you’re around peers, when you’re around friends, you need to talk highly of them. You need to honor them.

You’re a child. You need to obey them in the Lord. What’s going to please God?

In this situation right now, how can I please God? The story’s been told of a teenage girl who became a Christian and started going to church. She was really on fire for the Lord and wanted to go to church every chance she got.

But her parents didn’t want her to go to church on Wednesday nights

because they felt like she needed to study for homework and school the next day. She was so desirous to be in church that she would sneak out of her home and go to church. She thought, God’s going to be okay with this.

It’s not a problem. I’m going to church. I’m doing a good thing.

I know I’m disobeying my parents, but they don’t know it’s not a problem and I’m going to a good place. One day the pastor was preaching on this subject here of honoring your parents, and the Lord convicted her. She went and talked with her pastor and told them, this is what I’ve been doing, this is what my parents asked me to do.

And he said, you know what you need to do is you need to go back and you need to talk to your parents. You need to tell them exactly what you’ve done, and you need to tell them that you’re going to honor them, you’re going to obey them from here on out. The girl was, she was horrified about it.

What’s going to happen? If I do this, what’s going to take place? What are they going to say?

She went back, though, and said,

okay, if this is what I need to do, then I’m going to do it. She went back, talked to her parents. You know what her dad said?

If this is what your church is teaching you,

you can go there any time the door is open. Oh, okay, that’s not what I expected. And as she did that then, that’s great.

It created a totally wide-open door. Dad started going to church, and I believe got saved after that point. What am I saying?

To honor parents. Yes, I understand there’s dynamics there when it’s an unsaved parent. And there’s some different dynamics, maybe a step-parent in that.

But when you choose to keep God at first place,

it’s not trying to get out of things. And well, I’m going to be with this parent because they decide on this. And I want to do with this parent because they’ll let me do this.

No, I want to do what pleases God. And then I’m going to do it in line with what my parents say. But let them know that I need to be pleasing God.

And this is how I need to do it. Well, God can work on your behalf in a very definite way. So we’ve seen children, obey your parents.

You’re a child. You’re to obey their parents in the Lord. Do it in a way that honors and pleases Him.

Now let’s go to that second verse. Honor thy father and thy mother. It’s interesting to make that note there.

Your parents, who’s over you, the authority right now,

but then come into this, honor thy father and thy mother. What does honor mean? 1 Samuel 2, 29-30, this word honor is used. We won’t turn there for time’s sake, but it talks about Samuel saying,

you should have honored me with your heart. You brought these sacrifices, but your heart wasn’t there. I would rather have honor, value, importance, and weight.

That’s what honor. Giving value. Making something important.

giving weight to, respecting. The honor that is due our parents is not inherent. You know what inherent is?

It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily belonging by nature. You don’t have perfect parents. I didn’t have perfect parents.

So it’s not inherent because they’re perfect. It’s inherent because God commanded it, but it’s also to be bestowed by us on them. So this honor that God’s talking about isn’t, Okay, you need to honor your parents if they’re perfect.

If they match up this list of criteria, you’re not going to find it in the scriptures. You’re not going to find it even if you go back to the ancient languages and look for it. What we look at is honor is given.

Okay, so if it’s not inherent, it’s not because they deserve it per se, except that God said it. Well, then it becomes a bestowed honor on my part to them. This honor, it’s bestowed.

We make a choice to honor our parents. We decide to speak highly of them. We decide to give weight to the counsel they would say, to the advice that they would give us.

We invite them into our lives to ask them how we should be living,

how we should be walking there. So this honor, it’s one that’s bestowed. It’s a choice on our part, even to throw our phone out in the session, turn it off.

There we go. Thank you. There was one said, a perfect parent is a person who has excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.

Maybe you’re there. Man, my parents would just do this. Yeah, just wait until you’re a parent.

Just wait until you’re in that situation. Just wait until you have some of the pressures that they’re facing of feeding and clothing and helping to educate you and giving you just even that desire to serve God. Give parents respect.

Value their authority. Give them importance even though they’re sinners. We understand that.

We’re all sinners. For all is sin and comes short of the glory of God. Even your parents, they’ve sinned.

But that doesn’t negate your responsibility to have a proper honor, a proper respect. It’s especially important as young teenagers with life decisions coming up, where you’re going to go to college, in years to come, who to marry. Your parents are important aspects, important authorities to have there in your life, to value their opinion.

Maybe you don’t have a parent or maybe one of them is absent. Well, then a pastoral authority to help to fill that void, to talk to them. Pastor, what do you think?

Mom, Dad, this decision here that I have to make, what do you think? This is what I want to do, but does that line up with what you’re praying about for me? Is this how I should raise you, give you importance and decisions, the wisdom that you would have?

Do you know this, that your parents have lived longer than you have? And with life comes experience. With life comes knowledge and you know, actually that decision that this is what you’re doing right now, what you want to do, that’s not going to help you.

If you’ll listen, if you’ll heed what I say, this will be a blessing. This will give you what you’re looking for.

Ask them for advice. You don’t know it all. Some people have attributed to Mark Twain the statement, When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.

But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. It’s derogatory, but yet it gets to that point. I remember being at that point thinking, man, I know how to do this.

I know how to live life. I’m 15. Man, I got this thing down.

And I can tell you now, being a little bit older than 15 and having a family,

I do appreciate the advice of my dad. And I wish I listened as a young person more than what I did. And so I trust that even today you’d be challenged and thinking, go back and talk to them.

Mom, Dad, how can I live my life? Am I doing what’s right here? Is this the best for me?

Do you have advice? Talk to them. Value your parents for their experience.

Value them for the time, the effort, the money they invested into you. Family, it’s an ordained institution. Don’t believe Satan’s lies, the lies of you’re not good enough.

You are a mistake. God is punishing you by the family you’re in. I didn’t ask to be born, so I don’t need to obey my parents.

I don’t need to honor them. This is their fault. You’re not going to find that anywhere in Scripture.

In Scripture, you’re going to find you need to raise your parents. You need to honor them. Yes, they might have made mistakes, but that doesn’t give you a pass to be believing these lies of Satan, to be disrespecting them, to be disobeying them.

Lucy, even a year ago, she was so excited to see me, and now as a toddler, some of these memories all blur together, but I can tell you one of the most exciting things,

especially as a little toddler, to come in. daddy that you no this is uncle drew no daddy that you and then to come and to run to give a hug wow that’s awesome that’s the best but then what changes you know even as a study and thinking about this thinking my own life i was probably there as a toddler but i know something changed

when i was a teenager and so what is it for me as a parent to help her to grow up to continue to have this honor, this respect that as a little kid she gives. Maybe not totally naturally, there’s definitely a sin nature that’s there that we’re working with. But what is it?

And

why is it that we would go and all of a sudden go from being sweet to, I got this down. I can do this. I don’t need you.

And I think some of it is that relationship with God like

we first talked about. Honoring them, obeying them, honor at its simplest, purest form right there in her toddler stage. The results then of obeying this command, what are they going to be?

The results of you obeying this command. Obey your parents, honor them. What does that say there in the end?

This is the first commandment

with promise. What was the promise that was given? What’s that?

That you may live long. So every person that dies young, they must not have honored their parents. Well, this is given.

If Satan were not seeking to destroy our lives, and God was allowing different things to come into our life,

trials like that, this would be that reality. Here’s also the thought then too. Do you know that to live bound, especially with your parents, can make four years, five years, six years to seem like an eternity?

Because you’re not obeying them, you’re not honoring them. you’re not respecting them, you don’t value their advice, you don’t want to hear from them, listen to them, and so you’re just living there, and you’re bound, and it just seems like, I’m never going to be able to get out of here. Just so, whatever.

Frustrated. Can’t make this happen. Well, that’s not going to seem like a long time.

But I can tell you from experience, when I flip this relationship around, my time with my parents then became sweet and I appreciate having my parents in my life now at this stage that I’m in and this long days it doesn’t feel like oh wow a day seems just to be a month and a month seems to be a year with them

no now it’s sweet and now a week that was too short man I wish I could take more time with them to have this relationship with my parents can help the days go by it helps bring fulfillment and satisfaction it’s not a that connotation of the long days, prolonged days, an honorable memory rightly related to parents and able then to impact those around them for good. So much better to live rightly related,

to have that relationship with your parents that honor. That it may go well with thee. Do you want it to go well with you?

Do you want to be successful? Yeah, who doesn’t? Honor your parents.

Do you want it to go well with you? And value them, respect them. How to raise your parents?

is to have a right attitude. When they ask you to do something, do it right away. Don’t think, well, I’m a teenager.

I don’t need to do that. That’s below me. That’s when they ask you to do something, to do it with a spirit of honoring.

Not doing it and grumbling. Not doing it and feeling inside, well, why do I have to do this? Let me give you some application here, some points.

Just a couple of them. Number one, help you to do this. Okay, so how can I, as a child, How can I obey and honor my parents as I ought?

Number one, pray for your parents. Have you done that? Are you doing that?

It’s hard to pray for someone that you don’t respect. It’s hard to pray for someone you don’t really care for. And praying for them, though, can help you to see where you’re not honoring, where you’re not respecting right.

Praying for them can help them in decisions they’re making. They’re facing pressures. As a parent, there’s a lot of pressures there that they’re facing that you don’t understand.

So, God, I’m asking you, would you help give them understanding? Pray for them, and then pray for yourself. God, help me know what it is to obey them in the right way.

Help me to honor them in a way that would honor them, respect them, give them value, give them raising them up to the place that they need to be in my life,

and then help me to have the right spirit in this. You must obey them. Then secondly, so pray for them, pray for yourself.

Secondly then, obey them without complaining, without arguing. You can look at it sometime, Jeremiah chapter 35, it talks about the Rechabites who obeyed their father. He said don’t dwell in houses and a couple other things that he gave them.

They weren’t wrong things. It was just for what God had done in his heart. He said this is what I’m going to do just to show my appreciation.

This is what I’m asking my family to do. So don’t do this. They weren’t bad things.

But you know what? They honored him. They obeyed him.

Even a ways down the line

and then someone tried to get them. You can read the story there. Hey, come, live here.

Hey, eat this, drink this. No, my dad said not to. These aren’t wrong things to do.

Doesn’t matter. And then God says at the end of the chapter, right there is a family. They’re going to have a strong family.

I am going to bless them for honoring. God will bless you for honoring your parents. God will bless you.

Going? What? Is there something wrong with this?

What? Mom, Dad, really? Honor them.

Obey them. You know what? I’m going to do this.

This is what you’re asking me to do? I’m going to do it with a happy heart. Pray for them.

Obey them. Number three, forgive them. There may be hurts.

They may have done things to you. They may have broken promises. they’re not perfect

and I know sometimes it’s easy. I didn’t ask to be born.

You don’t know how they hurt me. You don’t know what they’ve done to me. You don’t know what they’ve said to me.

I understand that. But you need to forgive them. Didn’t Jesus Christ forgive us a lot?

Did he do anything to hurt us? Of all the perfect examples we have, Jesus Christ is the ultimate one there. Totally forgiven.

While we were dead in sins, trespasses against God himself,

he is forgiving us. He is giving his life, our forgiveness. Number four then, ask counsel, ask advice.

Age brings experience. So as you’re praying for them, as you’re obeying them then, you’re forgiving them when they’re humans, they’re making mistakes, it’s okay. You’re going to pray for them

that God would give them grace. Ask them then for counsel and advice. Mom and Dad, I’m getting to

be at the point. Where do you think I should go to college? What do you think I should do with my

life? How do you think I should live in a way that would best honor and please God? And you guys have

lived more than I have, and you’re praying for me, you’re raising me. How should I live? Number five then, would you talk highly of them?

And I think this is probably one of the biggest

things. You might feel that you honor your parents in the home. You obey.

You do what

is asked. But let me ask you, when you’re around your friends, maybe even not that, maybe it’s just the thoughts in your mind. Are you honoring them?

Are you raising your parents

up in a proper way? Mom and dad, wow, I appreciate them. Yeah, there’s some things here that

happen. It hurts, but I’ve forgiven them. Man, I’m so thankful for what they do for me.

They feed me,

they clothe me, they want the best for me. Talk highly to them with your friends. It’s so easy

for this to happen. Get talking. Someone’s talking bad about their parents.

You start grumbling about your parents and the fact that I think it doesn’t help anyone, no matter how bad your situation is,

is to think on all the negative things that your parents have done. All the things they could have done better. Why don’t you stop thinking on that and start thinking on all the positive things?

I could only think of one or two. Start there. Start thinking on those one or two things.

Okay, this is what I appreciate about my parents. Oh man, I don’t like what they did here. I don’t like how they said this to me here.

No, I’m not going to think about that. Because to think on the negative only makes you respond in a negative. So to think on the positive, how good God is, and giving them to you and the good things they do for you, now that will help you to respond in a right way.

That will help you to obey. That will help you to honor them. Speaking of authorities, in Romans 13, 7, Render honor to whom honor is due.

Honor is due to your parents. Why? Because it’s a God-ordained institution.

Don’t dwell on hurts, on promises broken, what you wish your parents were,

Think on the positive. Think on the blessings of God for the family you’re in. Praise Him for what you are doing, what He’s doing in your life.

Truly honoring your parents will result in verbal praise of them. It will result in verbal praise to your parents. Thank them personally.

Say it out loud to them. To your friends. Talk about your parents to your friends.

Man, I really appreciate my parents here. And ultimately to God. Remember that just as you want your parents’ praise and affection, they want your praise.

they want your affection as well. You can maybe write them some notes. That might be a good place to start.

Talk to them even as you would go back. Sit down and have them involved in your life. That’s how God made it.

Let me give you just a list of ten things. I know we’ve got people here. They want to listen in here.

We have just a minute left. Ten things you can listen. Then go back and listen to it there on the podcast.

Number one, what is causing you the most stress with your parents? Are there things your parents just don’t seem to understand about you? Have you talked with them about it?

Number two, do you have a regular time that you and your parents talk about your life

and the relationship you have with them? Oh, if I did that, I might actually like them. If I actually talk to my parents, I might actually understand where they’re coming from.

Yeah, that’s the point. How to honor them. Number three, are you showing honor to your parents?

What can you do this week to show them honor? Next week, once you get back, how could you show them honor? Have you thought about that?

How could I honor my parents? What could I do? Number four, why should you not expect or want your parents to treat you as an equal or a friend?

Why should you not want them to give you everything you want? Maybe because everything I want isn’t what’s best for me. That’s not God’s will for me.

Are you doing anything on a regular basis in your family to demonstrate responsibility and maturity? If not, what could you do this week? Number six, have you violated your parents’ trust?

What can you tell them about that would show them that you won’t keep things hidden? What could you tell them there? I’m not going to keep things hidden.

I’m not going to violate your trust here. Number seven, what can you do that would meet a real need or desire of one or both of your parents? How could you go back to them?

Number eight then, how are you treating your siblings? What are you doing to protect them? Do you pray regularly for them?

Number nine, if you’re living in a divorced, single parent, or blended family,

are you talking to anyone about the unique struggles that you’re facing? And this is going to a pastor, a youth pastor. I know there’s some dynamics there that are not easy.

But you need to talk to some godly counsel. There is biblical truth, biblical way to respond. Number ten, then, are you getting to spend enough quality time with your parents, especially your dad?

And if not, what can you ask him to do with you? you need to invite your parents they need to be involved in your life maybe you already feel like I have a great relationship how can you make it better what are things that you can do maybe say my dad he’s distant my mom she’s distant she’s not there do you have communication could you write a postcard I know I’ve heard stories of people that have written postcards

to their mom and dad they said wow I didn’t have a relationship before them talking on the phone with them didn’t work I started writing them these notes every one you know a couple weeks and it was incredible what God did in their hearts young people you have a responsibility to honor your parents. You’re a child. You’re a young person.

You have a responsibility to raise your parents

and even raise them as you’re growing up. They’ve never done this before, so they’re making mistakes. That’s okay.

You have a responsibility to respond in a right way, and that’s how you raise your parents properly as you give them importance in their life, as you give them value,

as you take their advice. You then will honor. You then will obey them as God wants.

Let’s just pray here real quick. Lord, I thank you for these young people. I pray that you help each one when they have a right relationship with their parents.

Would you help them, Lord,

that they would know what it is to honor and to obey. Thank you for your word, how it speaks to us, how it convicts us. I pray that you would help each one.

There’s things that need to change,

they need to talk with their parents and make different. Would you help them to do that? Even these next couple of days, I pray this to your name.

Amen. Amen.