I have recently been reading Danny Silk’s book, Culture of Honor. In it he encourages us to live out our identity as sons and daughters, and that we are to “walk as children of light”Ephesians 5:8
He states that the”Principle of honor accurately acknowledging who people are will position us to give them what they deserve and to receive the gift of who they are in our lives. Honor gives life-giving and life-promoting relationships.” While Danny applies most of his principles to the church community , they can also be applied to our families. As we acknowledge and affirm our children in their identities and lovingly encourage them to live as the precious loved sons and daughters of God they are, they will more freely be able to be children of light, honoring their heavenly Father as their source of all things.
The Biblical model Silk used was Jesus himself, ” who explained that all supernatural things that happened through Him flowed directly from His intimate connection with the Father, and that connection was what he came to give us through his death and resurrection.” We are to empower are children to know and walk in the fullness of who He says they are as children, intimately connected with the Father.
How do we do that?
Again the answer is in going to the word. What God says about who we are is found in the pages of a book we have readily on hand , but don’t access as much as we should.
As parents we can direct our children to books like Ephesians which lays out that we are God’s beloved children whom he chose”before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight.” Eph 1:3
And that we” have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms”! Ephesians 1:3 That we have an “eternal inheritance in Him, predestined according to the purpose of His will, and to the praise of His glory.” These are some amazing verses that define who we are and what we have been given!
Paul,the writer of Ephesians, goes on to say that our position is that we have is”raised along with Christ and seated at the right hand of God…that we are his workmanship created to walk in works he prepared in advance to do.” Ephesians 2:6,10
Paul goes on to call us saints(not sinners) and in God’s household with all the saints with the foundation of the apostles, and prophets with Christ Himself as the cornerstone. ” Eph 2:19,20
This is all from one book!!
We don’t have to be Bible scholars to read these verses- They hold the defining characteristics of who we are and who are children will be as they begin to grasp what Jesus has appropriated for them and make it their own.
The foundation for all of Jesus’ and Paul’s teaching is LOVE.
“Dear Friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God , because God is love. God’s love was revealed to us in this way:God sent his one and only son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this:not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son propitiation for our sins(satisfying God’s just demand for sin to be punished) 1John 4:7-10. His sacrificial death for our sins was enough- we are no longer guilty sinners, but purified innocent children and saints of the living God!
Jesus came to bring the love of the Father back to His children and restore the state we had in the garden before the Fall! He prays in John 17 that we would know, ” that you (Father) have loved them (those who believe)JUST AS YOU HAVE LOVED ME. ” John 17:23b This love from the Father should define us!
My earthly father loved me and showed his love everyday- He adored me and spent his life showing me love and devotion as a father- When he began to tell me that my heavenly Father loved me even more than he did, as a young child, I believed him. He had demonstrated love and because I trusted him and honored him in my heart, I too was able to receive my Father’s love and goodness and I grew to trust and honor Him in my heart as well. My parents were the direct connection for me between loving and respectfully fearing them and loving and fearing God.
They treated Him with awe, respect , and honor, modeling it to me. They brought me up in an atmosphere of worship, thanksgiving, and a humble sense of dependance on God the Father, which I adopted.
I reiterate how incredibly important our role is as parents in demonstrating love, honor, respect, reverence for God in our daily lives, so that it is naturally accepted and adopted by our children.
Honor believes the best in another person and brings it out of them so that the other can become all that God has for them to be. It’s basis is love.
As we develop a culture of honor in our homes and we teach our children to honor us as parents and God as their Father, it will have a life-giving, supernatural influencing power on them!
“Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself as a fragrant sacrifice for us. ” Ephesians 5:1,2
