Respect: November 6, 2010

Today's Word for Monday November 8, 2010

RESPECT

DEFINITION

Esteem; admiration; to give honor to; to show high regard for

SCRIPTURE

"Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect." Hebrews 12:9.

"Show proper respect to everyone. Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the King" I Peter 2:`17.

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

Without question one of the most serious problems we see in young people and even adults today is their lack of respect. Most young people do not respect their parents, their siblings, their peers, their teachers or even their friends. Adults show very little respect toward their family members, fellow workers or even their friends. The root of the problem is that children and parents who do not show respect to others do not even respect God Himself.

How many times a day do we hear God's name and the name of Jesus used in a disrespectful way? For example parents and children are heard saying: "Oh my God, it was awful." This is the ultimate of disrespect and misuse of God's Holy Name. When even God is not respected it is not surprising that people show little respect to anyone else.

In Exodus 20:7 we are warned that the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name. When children hear their parents misusing God's name they think it is OK for them to do the same. Respect must begin in the home.

The issue of respect is nothing new. It is an age old problem. God holds those who believe in Him to a higher standard than the non-believers. When God gathered the Hebrews out of Egypt to become His chosen nation, He instructed Moses to teach the Israelites God's standards for living a life pleasing to God and for living in harmony with one another.

In Leviticus 19:3, God instructed, "Each of you must respect his mother and father." In verse 32 God said to, "Show respect for the elderly." In Ephesians 5:32 we are instructed that husbands and wives are to respect one another. In addition to showing respect in the home, Peter tells us to show proper respect to everyone.

From an early age we taught our children to honor God and respect us and others. We did not allow disrespect to go unpunished. We set standards of behavior for our children based on Biblical principles. When one of our children broke the standard that we had set, we first of all spent the time to remind them and clarify for them the reason for the standard and then issued the penalty. We always tried to be fair and consistent in our response and then we insisted that the penalty terms were honored with respect. The penalty was always increased when our child would respond with a lack of respect.

Now that our children are parents, they fully understand the necessity of setting standards for their families and they expect their children to be respectful to them. This is very rewarding to us because our children learned respect and they are now teaching their children respect and even though they live in a TOUGHER WORLD today their children all show great respect to God, their parents, their grandparents, their siblings, their cousins, their friends and those in authority over them.

LEARNING

Our memory verse for this week is found in Psalm 118:24.

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

PRAYER

Dear Lord, help us to honor and respect You in all that we do. Help us to respect those that we meet with today, including our parents and friends, and let our love for You shine through our lives to them. Help us have a goal to honor all the people we meet, love the unlovely that need our love, and then honor the Lord in all we do and say.