I have been walking through a hallway when I have overheard people of all ages complain about their parents. I have also overheard so many arguments between teens and their parents on the phone. Now, most of you may not be aware of the tone of voice you are using or even the words that you are using. I know that when I have been talking to my parents the message that I am sending through my voice and through my body are not always quite what I wanted to come. But more often than not, we want them to know how mad and frustrated we are with them. No matter what the case may be, we are still responsible for our actions and our words, and even more so because we are commanded to honor our parents at least nine times in the Bible. All of you should know this, but what is the first commandment with a promise? "Honor thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;)" Eph.6:2. We have been raised with an expectation of rewards for our good works, which is a good thing, for even God gives rewards. "For He repays man according to his work, And makes man to find a reward according to his way". Job 34:11 You would think that out of all the rewards we could possible want, a long life would be at the top of the list.
So far I have been very cut and dry. As hard as this may be for some of you to believe, I have a hard time obeying my parents too. It seems that they have a rule for everything and that they are always making new ones, and some of their rules do not even make sense. In our minds our parents’ rules are kind of like the cautions and warnings on appliances, bottles, and everything else. Almost everything we buy has cautions and warning labels on them. Some of these cautions and warning tags can be really dumb and silly in our minds. For instance. "Do not use while sleeping" on a hair dryer. "Do not eat toner" on a toner cartridge for a laser printer. "Not intended for highway use" on a 13" wheel on a wheelbarrow. "Do not recharge, put in backward, or use." on a battery. "For use by trained personnel only" on can of air freshener. "Not for weight control" on a pack of breath savers. At times I look at my parents rules in the same way that I would look at these cautions. "They’re silly; they do not apply to me because I am smart enough to not let that happen." In all honesty, I have not obeyed all the caution and warning labels that I have come across for the simple reason that I did not think it applied to me. This is just like I have not always obeyed my parents’ rules because I did not think that they applied to the situation that I was in.
My family has a rule that on Saturday night we are to stop all movie watching, internet, and activities with friends by 7:30 p.m. Now, you have to understand that this is not a hard and fast rule, but there have been many times that I have thought to myself, "who will know if I get on FaceBook really quick, or who will know if my movie does not get done till 9:00?" My parents never knew and no harm was done right?... Wrong. God knew and lots of harm was done. I just broke one of God’s ten Commandments, I just let Satan convinced me into a lie, I just compromised my standards. And this is only the beginning of the list. We all know that one sin leads to another, and each time the compromise and lies get bigger.
Why do our parents give us so many rules and guidelines to live by? Because they love us. We have all heard that one before; most of us hear it almost every day of our lives. I am sorry to tell you that this simple reason is all we need to honor and obey them.
We are at a hard age because our moms and dads are starting to give us more liberty. But no matter how much they give us, we will always want more. This is just where we have to trust them to know what is best. I think the biggest area that I hear the most trash talk about parents is in the realm of dating. I was sitting at a table eating lunch one day when I heard this young lady complaining about how her parents were unrealistic about the way dating works. "Things are not the way they were back in their day," was one of her main points. "They just do not understand the way John and my friendship works." (Random name) After harping on these two points for a long time, she started to complain about how ridiculous some of their rules were. For instance, she said that they could only hug for five seconds, and that they could not have a text conversation past 10:00 p.m. The list was full of lots of little things like this. If our parents have to lay down rules that are this detailed, we must need it.
The last point that I want to make is that they are not trying to take the fun out of life; even though that is what it seems like at times. Why do manufacturers put warning labels on things like blow dryers that say "do not use near or in water"? Is it because they want to take the fun out of us getting electrocuted? Do you think that one day they were working with their product and found out how fun it is to get a great big electric current surge through their body that could very well kill them, and after this discovery, they wanted to keep the fun all to themselves, so they put a label on all their products saying "do not use in our near water"? Do you feel robbed that you never got to experience the thrill of getting electrocuted? Do you feel robbed that you never got to experience the thrill of going to jail for a D.U.I ? Do you feel robbed because you never had to face charges of a car accident where someone got killed because you had more people in the car than you should have? The small little rules add up into very big decisions. There is story upon story of people that broke a rule or disobeyed their parents just once and it took their life. Our parents do not want bad things to happen to us, they want us to grow up as happy as we possibly can, even if that means they have to take the fun out of life for a little while. Even the silly rules are there for a reason. "
Project: I am not sure that I really have one for this other than to ask God to help you daily. If you want accountability or prayer, please feel free to talk to me. I know that blogs seem very impersonal, but that is not what I want my blog to be like. We all have a really hard time in this area; if I had to say there is one problem that all teens struggle with I would have to say that obeying our parents would be it. The only other word of advice that I will be taking myself is, talk to them. Their not as out of touch with reality as you think they are. They love it when we ask them questions our ask their advice. Satan will tell us that they do not have time or they do not want to hear our problems, but do not give into this lie. They want to know what is going on in your mind and heart. So I guess my project for this month is to be open with my mother and father.
Follow-up: Well, getting up at 7:00 every morning was really hard for a very long time. I was not good at it and there were a lot of mornings that I kind of fell back asleep, but now that the month is over, I think that I have finely got the hang of it.
My one day of fasting went really well. I was surprised how easy it was. There were those times where I found myself standing in the kitchen looking at food. But by God’s grace, I never gave in.
The witnessing to five people did not go well at all. I thought about doing it quite a few times, but I only ever got around to it once. But I am not going to give up; I will try again this month.
