Begins At Home

John 14:¹⁵ “If you love me, obey my commandments.”

The deepest question every Christian will have to answer is “me or Jesus?” Is it going to be my way or is it going to be His ways? Is it going to be my idea or is it going to be His ideas? The Ten Commandments is a blow out of the struggle between “me or Jesus?”

God is going to change our lives in this season, so stay plugged in and hunger for this change. Also, remember to thank Him even as you grow in choosing Jesus over self daily. The Ten Commandments can be summarized as love God and love people.

In the first four commandments, God teaches us how to love Him with our souls, with our hearts, and with our minds. And then He uses the remaining six commandments to teach us how to love people the same way we love ourselves. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be looking at loving people in God’s prescribed way.

Ex.20:¹² “Honour your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” Another translation says “….so it will be well with you and you will be prosperous in the land that the Lord your God has given you.” It is easy for us to love our friends because we chose them, so when we no longer like our friends, we simply change them. We find new friends that have new ideologies and are going in the same direction we are going. So loving friends is pretty easy, but God does not give us the luxury of choosing our parents.

However, God is saying, love for people begins with showing love to the people that raised us – our parents. Your love for people starts with loving your father and mother. I understand that this will stir up a lot of emotions in our hearts, some pleasant and some not so pleasant. This is because some of such relationships can be described as periods of shame and pain. So, the default action is to sweep it under the carpet. But God’s heart is for us to honour our parents in spite of what your relationship has been like and in spite of the periods of shame and pain. “Honour your father and mother…”

Prayer: Holy Spirit, I ask for the grace to truly honour my father and mother, both biological and spiritual, according to God’s heart, in Jesus Name. Amen!