The Word To Live By: 8-11-25
Phil Waggoner
Honor your father and mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. Exodus 20:12
The Word To Live By: This may sound like a strange promise for most of the demographic that receives this WTLB. I know that there is a percentage of you who had a hard, unpleasant home life growing up, and another percentage whose parents have passed on. The word, honor, in the Bible signifies high respect, esteem, and reverence, particularly in the context of relationships and towards God. Honoring your parents is how you learn to honor God. If you never learned to honor your parents and what they said, it’s going to be hard for you to honor the Word of God. In the book of Proverbs, Solomon, the wisest man to ever walk the earth except for Jesus, started the first seven chapters talking about what His mother and father taught him, and eleven other chapters out of the thirty-one. If you read the stories of many of the heroes of the Bible, you will be surprised to see how many of them started by obeying, which is a form of honoring their parents. David was obeying his father when he ended up in the presence of Goliath. When David started running for his life from King Saul, the first thing he did was make sure his parents were taken care of (1 Samuel 22:3). In the famous story of Jesus getting left behind in Jerusalem when He was 12 (Luke 2:41-52), we often center on the fact that He was found in church, confounding the priests with questions and answers about the Word of God. But to me, just as important in the story are verses 51 and 52, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” The first recorded miracle of Jesus, turning the water into wine, came on the heels of obeying His mother, and He was somewhere near thirty years old at the time. Your time has not passed for this “commandment” to be obeyed in your life, even if your parents have. How? Forgive them their trespasses against you as God has forgiven you. Change what you say about them/to them. “But there is nothing good to say, brother!” They at least brought you into the world, which gave you this great opportunity to be blessed by God.
Read through the Bible in a year: 2 Corinthians 12; 1 Chronicles 1-2; Habakkuk 3;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 11, Matthew 21:24-36, Romans 14
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160