Children and Honour // Building a Godly Family, Part 10
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Release Date: 08/22/2025
Encountering Bullies // Living Your Dreams, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Each one of us has some big dream for our lives – woven into our DNA by God. But sometimes, when we expect those closest to us to be excited and supportive, they’re anything but! Why is that? It's great to be with you again today. You know, this week and next week we are doing something that's really exciting. I'm excited by the teaching that we are having on the program over these next two weeks. We are looking at the dreams in our lives. What's the dream that God has planted in your life? Are you living that dream or is it, maybe, a lost and forgotten dream? Or is it maybe a...
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Leaving Your Comfort Zone // Living Your Dreams, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Each one of us has some big dream for our lives – woven into our DNA by God. But most people realise that to live out that dream they’re going to have to leave their comfort zone. And that … that’s scary. We all have a dream, something that we really want to do. It’s not only something we’re good at, it’s not only something that really excites us. Sometimes we had the dream a long time ago and through the pressures of life we’ve forgotten them. But God weaves those dreams, His purposes, into our DNA. The things we’re really good at, that we really enjoy doing. We...
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Embracing Your Dreams // Living Your Dreams, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Each of us has a big dream for our lives. Sometimes it’s forgotten. Sometimes we’re afraid of it. And sometimes we’re just too busy for it. But that God-given dream is woven into our DNA. It’s great to have your company with us today. I want to begin by asking you three distinct questions. The first question is this: how many people do you know who are living out their dream? When they’ve discovered who they are and what they’re good at and what God made them for and they’re out there, living it and loving it. Second question: how many people do you know...
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Enough to Go Around // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
One of the greatest things in life is when you sow a good seed and one day you get to reap a good harvest. That’s probably why so many cultures have harvest festivals. But – what do we do with that harvest? What we get out of life depends pretty much on what we put into it. It's a self-evident piece of blindingly, glimpsingly obvious wisdom isn't it? That’s why this week we've been looking at the whole idea of sowing and reaping in our lives. We're confronted by a tough or a difficult situation and if, instead of running away or kicking and screaming, we actually sow some...
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Waiting, Waiting, Waiting // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We pretty much know that to reap a good harvest, we have to sow a good seed – but I’ll tell you sometimes it’s a long way between sowing and reaping – waiting, waiting, waiting…. I'm not a farmer but I've often imagined what it must be like, you know you spend the money, you buy the seed, you prepare the soil, you plant the seed and then you wait. So many things can go wrong, too much rain, not enough rain or it rains at the wrong time and pests and disease and fire and hail. Sometimes it can be a different one each year but eventually after some hard work, the investment and the...
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Weathering the Storm // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Have you ever noticed – when you take a good decision to plant some good seed in difficult soil – all of a sudden, a dirty great storm whips up. Hey, I’m trying to do the right thing – God what’s going on? We all like sunshine and warm weather. You know when the weather forecaster comes on and says it's going to be cold and wet tomorrow, we go, "Augh yuck," but of course without the rain we'd all be dead. It's as simple as that, and sometimes it comes down in torrents, storms blow, the rain pelts down. Have you ever noticed the plants and the trees and the bushes in all that?...
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Watering the Dirt // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Sometimes, when we go through a bit of a rough patch, instead of running away (which is always our first instinct) instead, we make a good choice and decide to plant a good seed in that place. But then for a while, it feels like nothing’s happening. Have you ever planted a seed into some dirt? There’s something that, well frankly, is unnerving about this simple transaction. You take the seed and invariably it costs you something, you put it into the dirt and you cover it up and it's gone. There's a little kid inside each of us who wants to sit there and say, "Ok, well. I planted you, I...
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Planting the Seed // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Sometimes when you’re going through a bad patch – all you want is for it to get better. But actually, sometimes, what we need to do is to plant a good seed while we’re waiting. Can I ask you, what do you want to get out of life? I mean when you stand back and survey the landscape called, “your life”, the highs and the lows, what are some of the things that you’d love to see there? Relationships, achievements, family, career, money, a promotion, holiday? We’re all different, but basically my hunch is that we kind of want the same sorts of things in life. We want health and...
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Back to the Future // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
One of the things that nobody ever really tells you when you’re a teenager, is that the tough lessons you learn now are going to be so important later on in life. Is that really true? There's a great film that was produced back in 1984 called, “The Karate Kid”. It's about a teenage boy who had just lost his father and who ends up studying karate under an older Japanese man called, Mr Miagi. And for the first few months, all Mr Miagi does is to get this young Daniel Laruso to do menial chores – polish the car, paint the fence, sand the deck and after months Daniel has had enough. He...
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The Marque of Maturity // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
One of the things I did when I was a teenager is that I wanted to act like a child and yet, to be treated like an adult. So what are parents looking for in their teenagers as key indicators that they’re actually growing up? Can I ask you a question? How would you define maturity? I mean, you look at two people, similar ages, similar backgrounds and you think that one, well she definitely has it but that other one over there, he just needs to grow up. So what’s the difference between the two? What sets them apart? What makes one person mature and the other one immature? Interesting. We...
info_outlineHonour is not something that gets talked about a lot these days. But Commandment number 5 out of the top ten is to honour your father and mother. And it turns out that there’s a very good reason why it’s right up there at number 5.
It's funny how the way we think; the things that we think are important. They change over time. If you got a 15 year old down with a 45 year old and a 60 year old and a 90 year old and got them together and asked them what things are really important my hunch is we'd get quite different responses from each of them – the values of my parents generation, people who've been through World War 2 and their parents who'd been through the Great Depression.
Well those generation’s values are quite different to those of my own, the baby boomers, for whom the term the ‘me' generation was invented. I mean my grandfather on my father’s side (who's now long gone) he was born in the 1800's and he lived in a house in Romania (a place where it gets bitterly cold in winter) with animal skins instead of glass for windows.
And there's one core value though. One that we don't hear people talk much about anymore, that's so important when it comes to building a godly family. That value is honour. It's something that today’s generations don't talk too much about. Oh we know that we want other people to honour us. But honour, as it turns out, is a two way street and without it we simply can't have a godly family.
And in fact, God thinks it's so important that in the Ten Commandments, the first four are about God and us and the very next one, the fifth Commandment is about honour in the family. It’s pretty amazing that whole Ten Commandments thing when you think about it. Let's have a quick look. The first commandment, Exodus chapter 20, verse 2:
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other Gods before me.
That's the first Commandment. Put God first. The second Commandment:
You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that's in the earth beneath or that's in the water or under the earth. You will not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject Me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
So there it is, the second one. The first one was honour God. The second one is you don't get to worship anything other than God. The third Commandment:
You will not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. For the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses His name.
So, it's again about honouring God and the fourth Commandment, Exodus chapter 20, verse 8:
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work but on the seventh day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God, you will not do any work.
So again it's about our relationship with God and setting time aside for Him, to rest in Him.
There are the first four Commandments. What are they all about in a nutshell, the executive summary? Well Jesus summarised it pretty well when some young lawyer asked Him, 'What's the greatest Commandment of all?' Remember what He said. Luke chapter 10, verse 27. He answered:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first and the greatest Commandment.
You see, this whole "first four Commandments" thing is about honouring God, first and foremost, above all other things. That's the executive summary, nothing more important than that.
Now, I'm wondering if you or I were God, what would we have put down as the next commandment? Well, if it were me, I think 'don't murder' would be number 5. I mean what can be more important than that. Don't steal. Don't commit adultery. Mmm, I think those should have come next but number 5 probably "don't murder". So, what does God choose as Commandment number 5? Here it is:
Honour your father and your mother so that your days maybe long in the land of the Lord your God is giving to you.
See, this 'honour your father and mother' comes ahead of murder, ahead of adultery, ahead of stealing, lying and jealousy. Honour your mum and your dad. I don't think I would have even had that one in the top 10 – maybe in the top 20 but probably not in the top 10. Yet where does God put it? Number 5, the very next Commandment after He's given four commandments about us honouring Him first and foremost.
Not only that, it's the very first commandment to which there is a blessing attached. You honour your father and mother, and here's the blessing, so that you may live a long time in the land that God has given you. You know what that's about? Israel was, one day, going to go and possess the Promised Land. They were going to have to take it by force and all the nations they took it off would try and get it back. And all the other nations around them would try to defeat them. But the blessing attached to honouring your father and mother is this – that there would be peace.
Ain't there a message in that for a few families? I mean, how many families are a mess because the children have never been taught to honour their parents? I know young adult children in their 20's who live with their parents who don't pay board, who drain on parents finances in their old age. Who leave a mess behind and they cause pain. Why? Because these children needed to be taught to honour their father and their mother. That's why.
Have a listen to how the psalmist puts it. Psalm 37 beginning at verse 25. He says:
I have been young and now I'm old. Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending and their children become a blessing.
Do you see the link between what happens to children when we are righteous? They become a blessing.
Now, let me warn you here. Teaching our children to honour their parents is plain hard work. It's ongoing. It's incessant. Why? Because we're all born to sin, all of us. Think about it. What's the first or the second word that each young child learns to say? No. We are all naturally rebellious. And that's why God calls us, first and foremost, to honour Him, and secondly, for us to honour our parents. Honour, respect, revere, listen to, obey, speak well of – that's what honour means.
Parents, listen to me. In this day of consumerism we've been conned into thinking that unless we pander to our children’s every whim and desire and race here to do this for them and make their lunches and clean up after them, unless we do that we're not being good parents. We rationalise it. We think we're so busy at work, "I need to do things for them in other ways."
Listen, the very worst thing that we can do to our children is to fail to teach them to honour their mother and father. The very worst thing, because if we fail in that, we fail to give them one of the most important elements of maturity that they will need in their adult life: the ability not to be first’; the ability to be subject to authority; the ability to serve others, to put others before themselves. Do you get it?
In our home there are some bottom lines. I mean our kids are basically grown up now but there were some basic rules. You do not go out unless your bedroom is tidy. No exceptions. You speak with respect to your mother. No, she is not your personal slave. You say thank you when your mother or your father play taxi driver for you and pick you up on Friday night late at night. You say thank you directly, straight away as you're getting out of the car and loud enough for us to hear.
See, this isn't about ego. It's not about being mean. It's about one simple thing. The best thing I can do is to teach my boys to honour their mother because if they don't learn to honour her, they will never honour a wife. And the same is true of my daughter with a husband.
Unless children are taught to honour their father and their mother, there will be, listen to me, there will be no godliness in the household. There will be no peace. There can't be. And the time to start is here and now.