At every point in life, some people are positioned to be your parents. You are placed under their authority per time and for a purpose. At home, our biological parents are the authority over you.
At school, it is your teachers. In the church, it is your pastor. Above all these persons is God, who is the Father of all fathers.
Exodus 20:12 says, “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you”. God wants you to honor your parents so that you may enjoy long life and abundance. These parents are primarily your father and mother, and then any other persons that have been positioned in different areas of life to act as parents for you. These include your spiritual parents, school parents, and mentors.
How do you honor your parents?
Respecting them and submitting to their authority is the first form of honor. We are expected to accord our parents respect, addressing them properly, obeying them, heeding their counsel, and surrendering to their authority, among other expectations.
Secondly, you honor your parents when you are proud to associate with them, no matter the circumstances. They may be poor, not too elegant in dressing, not good-looking, live in shacks, and things like that. These conditions should never be inhibitions to proudly presenting, associating or identifying with them publicly. No condition is bad enough to make you treat your parents with scorn, contempt or consternation, or to make you ashamed of making your peers know or see them with you. They are your parents, who put in priceless time, energy and resources to raise and push you to the current exalted spot you may have found yourself. You cannot be too rich or too polished to proudly showcase your parents to the world. You cannot try to remove them from the narrative of your success. If you remove them from the backgrounds to your success or prosperity, it is an act of dishonor and this is like a river that distances itself from its originating point. Such a river will dry up.
Looking after them and ensuring that they are feeding well, are financially comfortable and are in a good state of health are acts of honor toward your parents, and these are recorded in your favor in heaven. These acts will increase your days on earth. These so-called aged or old-fashioned, filthy-looking people raised you against all odds. It is dishonorable to scorn them now, and condemnable to find them in the same spot and position or petty trade they plied while bringing you up. With the success you have today, you are supposed to take their old positions and be the one to care for them, raise, lift and nurse them to happiness.
Benefits of Honoring Your Parents
In Deuteronomy 5:16, we are commanded to pay attention to our parents and honor them so that our days on earth will not only be long, but that it may also be well with us. Each time we honor our parents, we are crediting our bank account of length of years and all-round blessings on earth.
A covenant practice that guarantees the covenant blessings of heaven-on-earth experience for the children of God is honoring our parents.
When you honor your parents, you attract overt parental blessings. Put differently, this means the intentional acts of parents invoking the powers from the divine covenant and showering you with blessings that can change your fortunes with immediate effect. What they cannot afford in money, they carry in potent parental blessings that God honors at all times. If your parents are still alive, you dishonor them, and things go wrong for you, there is nothing the prayer the spiritual father to whom you run showers on you that can change the doom.
Honoring your parents will lift any curse or threats over your life. The statement that “it may be well with you” is an unchangeable positive, life-changing aftermath of giving honor to your parents. so, no matter the situation, the honor given to your father and mother will force positivity such as mercy and favor toward you. As the word and promise of God never fall to the ground, the reward for your acts of honor must surely command blessings to you.
How to Trigger the Blessings of the Father
Among parental blessings, the blessings of the father are pivotal to the child’s breakthrough. Whether biological or spiritual or at other levels, God has placed special blessings in the hands of the father. In biblical times, a father’s blessing meant everything. It was not just a show of favor but it was the passing on of an inheritance and in many cases wishing that child a long and prosperous life.
“Isaac said, “Behold now, I am old and I do not know the day of my death. Now then, please take your gear, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me; and prepare a savory dish for me such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, so that my soul may bless you before I die” (Genesis 27:2–4). Isaac’s blessing was going to change the destinies of his two sons. To trigger that blessing, Esau must give him his much-desired favorite meal. Jacob through his mother beat Esau to it, as the bible teaches us, and stole Esau’s blessings. Once Esau realized that he had lost his blessings due to the treachery of his brother, he cried exceedingly to his father and desperately sought his blessings too. These two instances show how potent the father’s blessings are and how intentional you must be to seek them.
Genesis 49:26 says, “The blessings of your father are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents, up to the bounties of the everlasting hills”. This is instructive. If the father’s blessing is this effective, then we must not just desire to earn it, we must trigger them through meeting the specific needs of the father, and making him genuinely happy.
A spiritual father carries the heart of the Heavenly Father within him. He loves and cares for his spiritual children, through the heavenly expression of God’s love and care. The spiritual father begets his church members spiritually, provides mentorship, spiritual covering, guidance, spiritual parenting and oversight. To these ends, the spiritual father is in a significant position to act just like your father and such, deserves the honor due to a father.
Friends, let me quickly remind us that God is the Father of all, and as such, deserves the greatest honor. Give Him your heart, time, resources. Rededicate your life to him. However, he has placed your biological parents in that position to provide oversight on you on His behalf. He wants you to give your parents the entire honor as it is written in the scriptures. As you do these things, parental blessings are activated at all times, which will elevate you, build bridges and pull down strongholds in your life.
Until we explore another topic next Sunday, remain ever blessed in Jesus’ precious name!
You can watch our videos on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@chapelofpraisenorthwestark6564. You may also visit our website https://www.chapelofpraisenwa.org/ for more spiritually edifying content and information about our services.
- Pastor Sam Adelusimo is the Resident Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Chapel of Praise Parish, Northwest Arkansas, United States of America
