Biting The Hand That Feeds You!

Happy New Year, Girls!  A new year is here!  A new start for you… and a new chance to make new decisions that will bring you happiness and please God.

I love new opportunities!  Don't you?

How did you do last year in respecting and honoring your parents?

Our world is rude.  Satan is trying to cause people to think that rude is funny.  It isn't!  It's demonic and ungodly.  Were you ever rude and disrespectful to your parents this past year?

If you never learn to appreciate and respect your mom and dad, you will struggle to respect any other authority that comes along in your life.  Your parents were your first nurturers.  They were the ones who gave the most, to bring you to where you are today!

If you only knew the countless hours of careful vigil that has been poured out over your life up to this point!  They sacrificed a lot of personal desires to give you the life you have enjoyed so far.  You might not have what some kids have, but you still have
more than what the most of the world has tonight.  And yet, you can afford to treat your parents with rudeness and disrespect?

That makes you an ingrate!

An ingrate is an unpleasant, ungrateful person.  Is that you?  If you have practiced rudeness and disrespect toward your parents this year….you are an ingrate.

I would like to give you a peek into a parent's heart.  Let me show you just a bit, of what loving, caring parents are willing to do for their children….no matter the age of those children. 

Parents willingly sacrifice sleep for the health and well being of their child.  How do you feel when you lose sleep?  It doesn't feel very good does it?  Try doing that as a way of life….day in and day out?  Parents do that willingly, to care for you when you're sick.  They will work longer hours or more than one job, to provide for your extra needs in life besides a nice home. 

I know parents who, when given a gift card by someone else for their own birthday, will turn right around and spend that gift card on their own children.  Why?  Often its because they don't have the money to get you what you'd like, but they will take from what was given to them….and give it away to you--- just to bless you!  That is a way of life for self-sacrificing parents.  When was the last time you did that for your parents?

You see….parents are literally willing to do anything and everything that needs to be done, to provide for and protect their offspring.  If a pastor is willing to gladly spend and be spent for people in his congregation…never forget….your parents are willing to do that same thing for you!  From the moment a good man or woman become parents, there is born in their soul a desire to nurture and fiercely protect that little one. 

The sad part is that after they have sacrificed and put off their own needs for years on end, their hard work and self-denial can be met with ingratitude and mocking rudeness by the very ones they were working for.  Parents often make all their hard work look easy to their children.  Let me tell you…it's never easy!
What wretched sinners we children can be!  This reminds me of what we have all done to the Son of God.  Isaiah 53:3 "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."  After all He had done for man…he was still despised and treated rudely for it.

There are stiff warnings in the Bible for children who dishonor their parents.  Your rudeness and disrespect will not go unpunished! 

Matthew 15:4 "For God commanded, saying, Honor thy father and thy mother; and, he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."

This same warning is given in Mark 7:10.

There are great blessings in the Bible for children who choose to honor their father and their mother!

Exodus 20:12 "Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."

Deuteronomy 5:16 "Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy day may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."

If this past year was filled with rudeness and disrespect toward your parents…would you ask God for forgiveness?  Then go to your parents and make things new with them too!

Start this new year right!  If you will….I promise you…..based on the truth in the Word of God….things are going to go well with you this year!