Lead-A-Sheep!

Prov. 22:⁶ (MSG) “Point your kids in the right direction—when they’re old they won’t be lost.”

Your first experience of a person of authority shapes your reaction to other authorities. Our parents are the first authority figures in our lives. Our experiences with our parents shape our experiences with God and with authority to a very large extent.

Except we break out of it, it can become a filter through which we see God. The command to love our parents is really our battle with authority. Some people are just rebellious because they have had authority issues, so they cannot trust any form of authority because their parents abused them.They become suspicious of every authority figure. They are suspicious of church, of the government, of their teachers and of their bosses. Their problem is dysfunctional parenting. I pray that today, God will heal you totally in Jesus Name.

Respect for authority is learned in the home. When respect for authority breaks down in the home, it breaks down in school, in the community, and in the nation. A classic example is in the United Kingdom and a lot of western countries where they take authority away from parents and put it in the hands of the children. Parents no longer have the authority to discipline their children (note that discipline does not mean abuse.) So when a father disciplines his child and the child reports it to the police, the police take the father in for questioning or worst case, take the child to social services. This has degenerated to a situation where the children are training the parents.

Over the years, they have dismantled the authority in the home. A few years ago, in the United Kingdom, the youths took to the streets destroying things, looting and were generally out of control. Finally, the U.K. Prime Minister came to his senses and said on public television that they have actually gotten this parenting thing wrong. Parents should be allowed to have authority over their children. We need to learn how to parent and how to train our children where necessary.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, help me honour my parents and empower me to pass down this honour principle to my children also so that it will be well with us, in Jesus Name. Amen