Urgent Care // Honor Your Parents // John Wilson

Welcome to the Movement Church podcast. We want you to

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hear a sermon from one of our weekend services in

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He's a movement. So we're praying that this message will

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message for ways to get connection with us God. Bless you.

Thanks for tuning in.

Good morning move at Church. Great to see you all. Oh,

thank you, Mike. Appreciate that. Oh I do. All right,

let me say good morning Movement Church. Yeah, Mike, I

appreciate that. It's good to see you all this morning.

My name's John. I'm on the teaching team here at

the Movement Church and it's a pleasure to be with

you all this morning, this Memorial Day weekend. I appreciate

everybody being here with us today and not on the

lake till later today. So I really appreciate that we're

going with the lake after this. Don't worry. So I

just wanted to share with you something that might seem

obvious and someone who's teaching up here, but I am

a grateful follower of Jesus Christ. Do we have any

other believers in Jesus in here this morning? Let's go,

Let's go like we are here to follow after him.

And I just have to tell you, like I don't

always do what's right, and I'm in desperate need of him,

like he has brought me from death to life. He's

brought me out of the depths of despair and brought

me new life in my heart. And I just want

to tell you this morning, if you don't know Jesus,

this morning, today is a great day to follow him.

It's a great day to begin a new relationship with Jesus.

And I just want to tell you it'll be the

best decision that you've ever made. See all the people

around you, like we believe here at the Movement Church

that God ultimately is for you. He wants a great

relationship with you, and the people of this church want

that for you as well. And this morning, if God

is doing something inside of you, and you say, John,

that's me, I don't know. I've been waking up at night,

I've since something happening in my soul. I would be

willing to say that the Holy Spirit is probably doing

something in you and it's time to tell somebody God

is doing something in me or something's going on inside

of me, and I need to make this big jump

to following Jesus throughout eternity. So if that's you, I'd

love to talk to you before you leave today, and

many of our leaders would, prayer leaders would as well.

But honestly, that's why we're here. We're here to make

the name of Jesus great, and I hope you have

the opportunity today to make that decision. All right, let's

get to our topic today. I know PASTI fight for

those of you that are on his text thread. Know

what our topic is today. We are talking about parents today,

honoring like our parents. Love for you to shout this

out with me. When you see this word, forget the

pictures for a second, you see this word, just shout

it out. I know in church sometimes you're not supposed

to talk, but I'm gonna let you talk for a

minute here. What's the first thing you think of parents? Go? Love, discipline,

amazing you a fike? Yeah? What are you thinking? Your dad?

My works too, anybody else? Pain, yeah, suffering, maya, all

the emotions right, yeah, I think yeah, they really could

There could be just all of these mixture of emotions

in your life, right, Like with this relationship, it's love, laughter, frustration, difficulty, exasperation, depending, disappointment,

maybe joy, maybe the forgetful moments.

You know, I have some funny stories from my grandparents,

in particular extreme fun maybe some adventure, you know, some

getting out exploring the world, fond memories too, all mixed together.

Right, it's complicated. It's a dynamic relationship. When I think

of my parents, I think of sayings. See, I'm from

South Texas, so we have some some sayings you know

down there. My mom did she had this one? Maybe

i'll maybe i'll. You know, Southern folks, you may not

know this particular saying, but you know, somebody's really ragging

on somebody. They might say this to somebody. They say, well,

that's like the pot calling the kettle black. Anybody know this? Yeah? Okay, good, okay, good, Yes,

you know the pot calling the cuttle black. Hypocrisy, right,

the O there's speaking of that. Another thing you might

hear is something like, uh, it's hot as blue blazes

out there. Yeah, that's what it means. Right, Yeah, you

got the hotter the hotter thing off your stove. They're

hot as blue blazes. Yeah, that's what I grew up

with my family saying, I remember long car rides with

my dad, and my dad sold business equipment all across

South Texas, and so I went to a lot of

different small towns that, uh, you know, probably no one

has heard of. Maybe Chris tom Dale's heard of some

of them. Maybe you know he went to school Red Raiders,

you know, yeah, Lubbock, Texas. But yeah, I have a

lot of memories of that, you know, traveling around with

my dad. We usually got powdered doughnuts at the local

little gas station and then the biggest Coca Cola you

could get, and that would get you to the next town,

so then you could fill it up again, you know. Yeah, snack,

you know, snack and all that. I also remember, like

my parents divorce, I remember remarriage, I remember pain, and

I remember, you know, my poor desis and the communication

that I had with them that was not great, like

all through that time. So it's interesting just like fun sayings,

great trips, great emotions like love like joy like from

those times, but also like pain, difficulty, you know, parents,

like just there's a lot surrounding that relationship, and it

can be the most closest, most fulfilling relationship in your life,

but it could also be a real source of extreme

hurt and much needed boundaries. And then there's like everything

in between, right, Like there's this kind of mixture of

all of those things. And I would just argue that

this is like our series talks about an urgent relationship

that we need to address, Like it's something that often

is not spoken of or really worked through. How to

navigate and get specifically down to the how. And that's

where we're going to go this morning, is how do

I honor my parents? Regardless of what stage of life

that you're in, Like, this can be very challenging to do,

and I want to take you through just some real

practical ways to do that. So I have a tradition

that I like to do. I like to stand in

the honor of God's words. So if we could take

just for a few minutes here, well it might be

half a minute, but stand with me for just a

moment here, We're going to read the Word of God together.

If you've got a Bible with you, We're going to

start at the good old ten Commandments, Exodus twenty and

then I'm going to jump all the way over to

the New Testament. So you've got to be a good

Bible flipper if you're doing that, or fire up your phone,

or you can just look right up here if you like.

Let's read an honor of God's word. It says in

Exodus twenty twelve, honor your father and your mother, so

that you may live long in the land the Lord

your God is giving you. Amen. And then Matthew fifteen,

it says, for God said, honor your father and mother,

and anyone who curses their father or mother is to

be put to death. But you say that if anyone

declares that what might have been used to help their

father or mother is devoted to God, they are not

to honor their father or mother with it. Thus you

nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

Let's pray together. Lord, We think you for your word.

We thank you that you are here with us. God,

we thank you that this relationship you have spoken about

in your word and you want to come alongside us

to navigate in our lives. Speak to us this morning

in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you' all. You can have

a seat here for this next segment. Can you think

of some funny moments with your parents, kind of like

lock it in in your head for a moment, one

of those really goofy moments like with your parents. You're

like sitting with your parents. So yeah, you've probably got

some right next to you, right, is it, Miriam? Right? Awesome?

It's great to have you this morning. So I think

of a few like different moments. So my dad and

I we used to this was my dad here, He's

another John. My son's a John. I'm a John. He's

a John. Lots of John's. We we used to go

to Big Ben National Park. Has anybody been there before?

South South Texas? Like way down there, hot as blazes,

blue blazes, right, Oh my goodness. So we go down

there one time we decided we were going to camp.

Great idea, right, oh yeah, we'll take the tin out there,

we'll have our stove. It'll be awesome, right, So we

set it all up, We get in the tent for

the night and oh my gosh, it was so hot,

like I mean, I couldn't even like couldn't breathe inside

this tent the entire time. So my dad and I

we decided, shoot, we're just gonna abandon all of the

tent and all the equipment and just go to a hotel.

Let's stay for theme. We were not like the most

outdoor people, and like we thought we would brave it.

But man, it was like like over ninety degrees at night,

like this is out of control. It was like funny

memories as a kid. But I had some great memories

with my dad. This actually is right before I went

to be a missionary and where I met Christine, my wife,

So we were out at Big Bed National Park before

we did that. The other memories I have like funny

memories of my mom. My mom is a pianist, and

it's a very accomplished pianist. She has played piano for gosh,

I don't know, fifty years something like that. Of her life,

usually in like a church setting. One of the funny

moments was I went to a real like stiff kind

of church. Right, maybe y'all have been to some of these.

You know, you always have to wear a suit and tie,

always got to look your best. If you wear a

hat in the sanctuary, Chris Tomdale, like you are going

to be like thrown out of there, because like, you

cannot wear a hat in the House of the Lord,

that kind of place. So much so that if you

would clap, say that there was any clapping like we

had earlier, the pastor would get a letter that week

that said, Pastor, I don't know what kind of charismatic

business is going on in this church, but this is

not what God says to doverson My pastor's like, what

are you talking about? Right, we were like applauding the

graduates for their next segment of life. That's what I

grew up with. Well, my mom, she just had a

funny sense of humor. For those of you the musicians

or a pianist, you know, you can take kind of

any song and you can really doll it up. I

mean you can make it sound just like a masterpiece,

you know, with all kinds of running whatever. I don't

know a lot about music, my mom does. But she

would take the Happy Birthday song and during the meet

and greet, like y'all just had, she would play Happy

Birthday during the meet and greet at this really stuff church,

and she would doll it out. I mean it would

sound like this amazing masterpiece. But after a while you're like,

oh my gosh, that's happy birthday, like to recharge. My

mom was absolutely hilarious. She would kind of just throw

those little things in there just to kind of like

loosen it up like a little bit of People every

once in a while would catch that she was doing that,

and I always love that about my mom. It was fantastic.

So kind of like just kind of get back to

that these memories you've had. Then the question is like

today that we want to answer is how do I

honor my parents. There's two ideas I want you to

walk away with today around this word honor specifically, and

the first one and both of them start with the

letter R, just just because I can thank you pastor

fi thank you trying to follow follow your example. They

both start with R so you can remember it like

a little bit later today. The first one is respect.

You know, whether you're young and your parents are still

raising you, like, there is an element of respect, or

whether your parents have passed on, there is an element

of respect that's associated with this. And then the second

is responsibility. And I'll kind of unpack these ideas like

with you, So let's talk about God's expectation of us

with honor. He says, honor your father and your mother,

so that you may live long in the land that

the Lord your God has given you. Now, this is

one of the big ten Commandments, right, any Charleston Heston

fans in the oh, we've got one, we got two? Okay,

you know this scene you know might be you know

the stone tablets, Moses got them from God destroyed him once.

You know the whole thing. Uh. You know, if you've

watched The Old School, for those of you that have

not seen the Ten Commandments, it's not you'd probably watch

it now and think, wow, that cinematic quality has changed

a good bit. Right. However, it is a good film.

You should check it out sometime. But again, this is

one of the big ten commandments honors. An interesting idea.

I did some digging, like into this word, and the

word in Hebrew is kabad. Not that I know a

ton of Hebrew. This is just you know, my studies

from this week here. But it translates like the first

bit of this word of the words heavy and burden.

It's interesting. I always equated this word as like I

went straight to obedience. All right, I gotta do whatever

they tell me to do you know. That's that's what

I always always like thought this though, and that's probably

because of the younger years of my life. But heavy

or burden is kind of how this is translated. I

was kind of taken back by that because it develops

this question of like what what am I shouldering or

like what what burden am I carrying? And that's where

I really got to is this idea of responsibility And

I want to unpack this a little bit. The commandment

at the time was given to a culture where kids

had to take care of their parents. I mean, think

about us right now, right there's like a lot of

safety nets like in our society. Right in their society,

none of that existed. There was no home for somebody

to go into at the latter years of their life

where they have care. There was no medicaid, there was

no medicare, there was no social security, there was no

safety net for anybody. The safety net was your children, like,

it was your family like and your family had to

come alongside you because if you didn't, you were in

essence killing your parents, like they would have no way

to care for themselves later in their life. So it

was important that children like assumed responsibility. Like for their parents,

there was a sense of responsibility for their well being,

that they have a path to be cared for. It's

keeping an eye out for them when they lose the

ability to care for themselves. It's when they're basic needs

can't be met by themselves any longer, and you have

to step in and ensure that they have some semblance

of support. It's a deep care for their well being.

It's interesting we and this might be a shocker to

many in the room. We all get older. I know,

Oh man, it's really big breath there, Josh. If for

younger folks, Luke, you're gonna be old one day, bro,

Like that's the deal. Not there yet. Some of you

are like John, I'm already there right, Like it's gonna

it's coming, Like for all of us, we can't stop it.

It's just part of life, right. One of my favorite

quotes is from this movie Steel Magnolia's. Have y'all seen this? Okay?

Another movie you've seen perfect not Ten Commandments, but Steel

Magnolia's You've seen that, okay. So Steel Magnolia's has Dolly

Parton in it. Love is like in the eighties, I

guess right, Christine, I love this movie. And one of

the one of the film, one of the quotes is

one of the characters is played by Julia Roberts, and

she's talking about that she's got crow's feet developing across

the sides of her face. She's kind of like terrified

by this. And Truvi he's played by Dolly Parton. She says, Honey,

time marches on and eventually you realize it's marching across

your faith. Just terribly funny. And she like owns a

beauty part of or you know, that's part of her

job and everything, you know, but she like she makes

a valid point. Right. It's just like, no matter what

you do, you're gonna time just kind of continues forward

and you're gonna get there. We all age, we eventually

pass on. It's inevitable. We have to get to a

place where we're gonna need either support from somebody else

or we have to support the family that God has

put in our path. I knew a man named John

at the previous church I was at years ago, and

I remember, you know, him going through the latter years

with his parents, and it was just tough. It was

really hard because you're you're walking alongside them at a

point at their most critical need of their life. And

sometimes they're not real nice about it, and it's hard

to like navigate that with them through something as difficult

as that. But I remember he stayed the course with that,

cared for them, walked alongside them, so one of the

most difficult things he did in his life and brought

great compassion to his family. And that's the idea I'm

getting at, as are you looking out for the well

being of your parents? You know, Jesus kind of got

out this idea. He said, honor your father and mother.

For God said honor your father and mother, and anyone

who curses their father and mother is to be put

to death. I'll get to that. Don't worry. But you

say that if anyone declares that what might have been

used oops hops let me yeah right there, what might

have been used would be used for God. See, these leaders,

like at the time, they were saying that any of

the money or time or energy that you had put

into your parents need to be shifted to more of

their institution and more of what they deemed to be

what the rule was. See, they were trying to like

hold their own rules together and nullifying like what God

had actually commanded them to do, which was to care

for the well being of their parents. See. I think

honor is responsibility. It's ensuring there's a path for our

parents to be cared for and not neglecting your ability

to care for them when they need it most. It's interesting,

like it just in my life because I think my

younger years I spent a good bit of my adult

life like trying to forge my own independent life from

my parents. Like it's just you just spin your wheels

like trying to forge your own path. And it's interesting

as you age for many of you, like that begins

to go the other direction where you need to like

come alongside them at some point later on. See the

idea is that you come alongside them so they can

live as long as they can to invest in you

and then go to meet Jesus at their appropriate time. Honestly,

I think it's an incredible opportunity to share the gospel.

I think about this like, you've got people in your

life that can't care for themselves very well, and sometimes

they may not be nice about it depending on where

they're at in their life, and they may not know Jesus,

and you have the opportunity to share the Gospel with

them toward the end of their life. It's an amazing

I can't tell you how many people have told me, like,

I had the pleasure of sharing the Gospel with my

parent before they died, and they gave their life to Jesus,

and I just wanted to share, like, that's a huge responsibility,

but it's an amazing way to honor your parents by

ushering them into the Kingdom of God. I just want

to advocate that that's a great way to do it. Okay,

So let's get to the other idea, Like with this passage, right,

the other idea you have from this this Kabad Hebrew

word denotes the idea of respect. Honoring is respecting your

parent for the position that God's put them in in

your life. Whether they're raising you right now, or they

raised you or they've passed on, you can honor the

legacy that they've left with you. Your parents were given

authority over you, and whether they're living or have passed on,

or if you don't even have a relationship with them

at all, you are to honor them by respecting them.

You know, Jesus got it this as well. In fact,

this is kind of the elephant in the room like

statement that he says here. He says, anyone who curses

their father or mother is to be put to death.

God took this really seriously in the Old Testament law,

and I think part of the idea here was that

it was a very corrosive mentality to the people of Israel.

If you are willing to insult, disparage, and humiliate the

people that brought you life. That's like what this word means.

When you curse somebody, you're humiliating them, You're insulting them,

you are putting them in a place that disparages them.

And if you're willing to do that, there is consequences

for that. And in the Old Testament law it was

it was death. Now I'm going to say this right now,

Praise be to God. Right, Like Jesus died for us,

we are going to sin and mess things up with

our parents frequently. And God has provided a way through

Jesus to be redeemed and saved. Praise be to God, right.

And that's when you read Old Testament law, you see

like very clearly the consequence of sin but then right

afterwards you see the amazing blessing of following Jesus. See

Jesus was getting at it's important and serious that we

honor our parents, that those that brought us life deserve respect,

even if they don't respect us. So this is another

elephant in the room. You might be thinking, John, you

don't understand who my parents are. You don't know what

they've done. They treated me so poorly. They have been

unfair to me, They have ruined my life. Like, let's

just state what it is like. Not all families are

you know, rainbows and unicorns, right, Like, there's some tough

stuff that happen in our homes. And I'm not just

talking about you teenagers that your mom didn't let you

wear the outfit that you wanted to wear today, Right,

We're not talking about that. I'm talking about deep stuff, right,

like things that really hurt you. You might be exactly

right like in your assessment, like you might have been

abused as a child. And I just want to address

that that the command is not for you to be

best friends with your parent. That's not the idea here.

The idea is respect. It's not disparaging them, it's not

insulting them, attacking them, humiliating them, harming them. It's to

be kind when they're not. It's to show care when

they don't see. This is the idea that Paul says right.

He says, bless those who persecute you. Bless and do

not curse. Do not repay anyone for evil for evil.

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes

of everyone, and if it's possible, as far as it

depends on you, live at peace with everyone. And do

not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

The idea is that you aren't repaying them for what

they've done. We bless those who hurt us. We don't

curse them. The idea is that they may have harmed you,

but you don't harm them back. Even if your parents

have been horrible to you and you have terrible memories

of that as a child, it is not a license

to insult them with your friends and family. And you

know these conversations I'm talking about, like de side conversations

with friends or whatever, and you make a slight at

your parent with them present or not present, Like that's

an insult, that's not honoring to your parent. The idea

is that despite all of their wrongdoing in your life,

you don't return in the favor. You restrain that feeling

and instead you meet their evil with respect. You don't insult,

you don't curse, You let go, and you forgive. Hear

a pin drop and here, y'all, because it's true. This

is countercultural, right, this is hard to do. And John,

you don't know who this person is. You don't understand

what they've done to me. See, Jesus did the same

for us. Right, we know what we've done to him,

but yet he died. Anyway, that's the posture that we're

to have toward our parents. You let go and you forgive.

You know. One thing I do want to address is abuse.

If you are physically, verbally, or emotionally abused as a

child or even now as an adult, distance is critical.

Distance is critical. The command is not for you to

continue to be abused and to remain in a relationship

with people that are harming you. Here and I mean there.

This isn't like stay no matter what, that is not

the command in those situations. Boundaries are critical, and it's

the right move for you to be healthy physically and

emotionally like Remaining in a relationship like that is counterproductive

and would be harmful to you and your family. You

have to know the person you're dealing with, and if

your parent is harming you, God is not commanding you

to remain a relationship with that person. What he is

commanding you to do is to not return the favor.

You are not insulting them, You are not cursing them,

You are not holding grudges against them, welling up hatred

inside of you toward them, or speaking evil of them

with your friends. You see the difference. Distance is okay.

You don't have to be tight knit best buddies with them,

but you can't sit and throw rocks at them. That

is not the posture, and that is not honoring. It

is honoring for them. It is honoring them for the

position that God has given them in your life. And

relationship is not the requirement, but respect is. And if

you're in an abusive situation, I just want to tell

you right now, similar to the conversation about following Jesus,

I'd love to talk to you about that too, And

I know some great people that could help you in

that situation. Whether you're a child in that situation, or

even an adult in the situation, I would love to

get you some melt, because those destructive relationships are not

what we're talking about today. It's interesting that the command

comes with a promise, comes with a promise. Praise be

to God. By honoring our parent kind of this respect

and responsibility idea, we might live long in the land

that the Lord has given us. I think this is

connected to a few things. By not harboring hatred toward

your parent or insulting them, you will have more peaceable

relationships with those around you. I think if you start

from a place of respect and respect those that are

over you and honor them for that, it generally creates

opportunity for you. Like if you have a posture of

respect toward others. Blessing usually ensures is it immediate? Is

it always? No? But is it a long term potential? Blessing? Absolutely?

And this particular command comes with that very specific blessing.

All right, So now we're getting to the real elephant

in the room we actually have. If I actually had

an elephant, I would love it to be in the room.

I think that would be Now you don't, we'd have

to clean up a lot. I guess if we did that.

So the big elephant in your living room here and

that I want to you know, state the obvious, is

how the heck do I actually do that? You know,

Like there's always I feel like in sermons at the

times we do we talk about just generally like what

God expects of us and all that. So I would

to get like fairly specific with you know, three segments

of our lives here in just a moment. But you know,

wherever you are in your relationship with your parent, uh,

there's just I just want to acknowledge that it can

be very complicated, and so I'm just going to give

us some practical things that we can talk about today,

one of which is if you were in the early

third of your life, uh, you know, the younger years

of your upbringing. Actually, we do have some students in here.

This is great Hilosophia. We uh, and you're being raised

by your parents. If you're at a point where you are,

I just think you're you're at a little different spot

than folks that are outside of the house, right You're

not you're not having to you know, follow like your

parents or do what they've asked you to do. But

at this point in your life. You really do like

is part of the scripture, and showing respects your parents

is obeying them at this point in your life. It's

when your parent asks you to do something, you do it. It

means that that following them, even when you don't want

to follow them. It's sharing your feelings openly but kindly

with your parent. It's having healthy conflict with your parents.

It's okay to have conflicts. Just do it in a

healthy way, right. It's not insulting them, intentionally seeking to

harm them with your words or actions, or intentionally rebelling

just to get back at them for something that you

thought that they should have done. The obedience is critical.

It's this point in your life. It's hard to do,

but it's commanded to do, and it's interesting. It is

commanded to do for you like there is an element

here if God wants you to do this, because navigating

a complicated relationship with your parent prepares you for way

more complicated relationships later in your life. It's a critical moment.

If you can learn to respect this person that you

have difficulty respecting, it will help you in your life

because there will be a boss one day. Everybody right

that you will have to respect and you will have

to follow, And this prepares you first third folks like

to do exactly that. So again I'm talking about healthy relationships,

and obviously that could vary depending on where you are

in your journey as a kid. But I just want

to say, for this first third of your life, this

is a great opportunity to obey and follow like your parents.

Now for the middle third, I would say this is

the we're raised category. So hopefully you are onward in

your life. You've started your career, you're potentially like you

have a family, may have kids at this point of

your life. Hopefully you've left home, maybe at this point

of life, maybe not. That's all right, whatever point of

life you are here, you are moving beyond like the

need to obey a parent, and you are making your

own decisions. Right, Praise be to God. Right, you get

the opportunity to actually like make your own decisions, to

do your own thing. And if this is you like

your parents no longer have control over your day to day,

it's uh. You may you know look back now at

your childhood and think, you know, I don't know if

that was like the best way of doing it, or

that may not have been the best scenario. You may

play the blame game like a little bit at this

stage of your life. You may point fingers kind of

back at them. Your parents were human, they made mistakes,

and regardless of the mistakes that they made, it's time

to let go of the animosity toward them. So, if

you are carrying any weight from your childhood in these

middle third years of your life, I want to challenge

you to let go of them and forgive. Yes, assess, like,

look back over it, think about what happened. We're work

through that. That's healthy, but letting go of it and

seeing what the future holds is powerful. It will absolutely

change the way that you see your life. It's interesting.

It means that you look back and you share your

perspective with other people and you look at the great

things that came from that relationship. You're honest about the

things that were, but you look back with positivity at

the things that you can. In addition, I think you

start to look at where you can take responsibility for

your parents, Like you start to see where they can't

care for themselves any longer and where you need to

step in, Like at this point of your life, and

to take care of them in the latter years of

their life. I work in retail, as some of y'll know,

and unfortunately, I do see some folks in their latter

years that just get targeted by all kinds of people

in this world, and often, like, it's really important that

when I see like a son or daughter come in

with them, that they are there guiding them through some

of the some of the things that they that scammers

are trying to do with them. And so wherever you

are in that journey with your family, looking out for

their well being is critical, and I want to challenge

you to do that and choose to speak respectfully of

and look for opportunities to take care of them. And finally,

you may be in the latter third where you remember,

you're remembering your parents, like your parents have passed or

are close to passing, like in your life, and this

is the stage I think where you're honoring the legacy

like of your parents. So you are, for example, honoring

their wishes like when they pass, like doing what they've

asked you to do. Like I have a friend of

mine that their parents really wants to be cremated and

they don't like that idea like to do that, but

it is their wish, that's what they want. Like as

part of that honoring like their wish, depending on what

it is, it's preserving their legacy, Like it's telling the stories,

like of what impact they had on you and potentially

we'll have for future generations. So you get the opportunity

to show those pictures, You get the opportunity to share

the funny stories, to pass on the legacy of the

prior generations by showing love and respect to them. See,

I can think of some really funny memories of my

family that I want to make sure that I pass

on later in my life. And these two individuals in

my life, my mom and my dad, like made a

critical impact in my life. And I hope you can

think of even past some of the things that were difficult.

You can honor them, like with the specific steps you

could take to be respectful of them and to show

great responsibility to them, like in this stage of their lives.

So let's recap together the two rs. Right, what was

the first one? Respect? Right, Like, we want to respect

our parents for the position that God has put them in,

whether it's early in your life, or really late in

your life. You want to show respect to them, not

disparaging them, not seeking out their faults, but speaking positively

of them and seeing the best in them. Second is responsibility,

Like it's taking responsibility when they can't take care of themselves,

Like it's keeping an eye out for those opportunities. Sometimes

there's healthy space that has to be there, but sometimes

from afar you can look after them as well, and

there's some great ways to do so. So with that,

I want to take us into a time of response.

I want to leave you just some space to consider,

like what God would have you do? How can you

show respect? How can you show great responsibility like to

your parents, like at whatever stage of life you're in.

So I want invite you to just enter a time

of prayer with me, so you can bow your heads

for a moment here. I just love to ask you

if y'all can be around the room for a minute.

I just love for y'all to be available for people

that need to make a decision today. Thank y'all so

much for doing that. And I want you just you

to take a moment and pray, pray about what honoring

your parent looks like, how you show respect. What responsibility

you need to take? Do you need to obey? Are

you in that segment of life? How about navigating a

relationship that's really complicated. When a parent does evil to you,

do you respond with the same or is it time

that you respond differently than you have before. Maybe it's

taken care of the basic needs of your parent. Maybe

you need to have appropriate boundaries in place, but you

look for ways to bless them anyway. See, parents with

no form of care can be scary. I just want

to challenge you to look out for them and see

where you can make a difference with them. Lord, we

respond today to your word to honor our parents. God,

would you guide us through that. This is complicated, difficult

and we need you God to guide us through it.

Help us see the principles of your scripture and apply that.

We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.

So what's God leading you to do next? And how

can we help? Send us an email to infote at

momentchurch dot com and tell us how we can pray

for you and help you to take the next step

in your scriptural journey. If you like to contribute financially

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two five zero one three two, or just look us

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that you'll give us a follow. God bless you, and

remember God is for you, and so are we