Obeying Your Parents in the Lord (Eph. 6:1)

Paul writes: “Children, obey our parents in the Lord.” God has called you to be a parent. It is perhaps the highest calling that you will ever have. Your child should be taught to live a life not in accordance with your will, but in accordance with God’s will. The only way that you can do that is to maintain a close relationship with Him and partner with Him in raising your child. In order to teach our children obedience “in the Lord,” we must be intimately connected with Him.

“The best way to educate children to respect their father and mother, is to give them the opportunity of seeing the father offering kindly attentions to the mother, and the mother rendering respect and reverence to the father. It is by beholding love in their parents, that children are led to obey the fifth commandment and to heed the injunction,” (Review and Herald, November 15, 1892, Art. B, par. 1)

As our children mature and change, we also grow and change as adults. The parenting process is a mutual give-and-take experience in which we raise our children and, in many aspects, they raise us too. Through the parenting experience, we learn more about God’s unconditional love and forgiveness toward us.