More Examples Of Honouring Father
As we continue to view people who honour their fathers in the specific ways chosen for us, we must admit that we need the Holy Spirit to help us, not just to acknowledge our biological or spiritual fathers, the men of God in our lives whom we recognize, but we need to follow their good examples. In this way we have seen how we honour them as father and God as our Heavenly Father.
Our eyes are now cast on Timothy and how he honours Paul, in so much so, Paul is openly vocal and most proud of the ways Timothy honours God as he, Paul, does. Here is just one of many instances, as recorded in 1 Corinthians 4: 17.
For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. If this is not a son honouring his father, in living the ways of his father, which are the ways of the Lord, then what is? Note the joy of heart that Paul must live while even in the midst of his imprisonment and awfully cruel treatment from the enemies of Jesus. Timothy is faithful in the Lord. He will be true and honest to the ways of Paul, his father in the Spirit, so that to have the son, is to have the father.
Our final person of example is Esther. Who is Esther? She is the cousin of Mordecai, a man of great faith in God, who raised Esther as his own daughter. Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died. Esther 2: 7b. Now Mordecai and all his Jewish people had been taken into exile in Babylon and there they lived their exiled life. We fast-forward the story, which you can read in the Book of Esther. Esther, who by God and God alone, has become the wife of the reigning king. After a while, Mordecai and all the Jewish people are under threat of being killed. He sends word to Queen Esther, whose Jewish identity has been top secret so far, to help. The picture which has been highlighted and illuminated for us comes after Mordecai has made a bold request of her, which demands unadulterated faith in God. He wants Esther, to go into the king’s presence to beg for mercy and plead with him for her people. Esther 4: 8b. Esther draws on the faith she has seen and learnt, growing up with her adopted father, Mordecai. Is this not honouring one’s father with the attitude and actions of faith? Like father, like daughter. God never disappoints faith in Mordecai nor his daughter, who honours her father.
Once again we pause to take note of some vital truths which affect us positively, as we are granted even more understanding of honouring fathers. In the example of Timothy, Paul’s son in the Lord, we note how he honours Paul in being just as Paul is, in his love for the Lord. In so doing, Timothy is also honouring Father God. With Esther, we lift high the truth of how she honours her father Mordecai, in exercising great faith in God, as she has seen him doing. In this, is she not pleasing her father and also pleasing and honouring Father God?
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