Coming Into the Father’s Love: When Honour Restores Order
- Rebecca Black
- Feb 8
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 13
This is Week 2 of the Coming Into the Father’s Love series. Because each week builds on the one before it, it may be helpful to pause and read Week 1, Coming Into the Father’s Love: Where Love First Took Shape, before continuing here.
We started Week 1 looking at how our foundational relationships, most significantly our parents, influenced how we see each part of the trinity. This week we are stepping into a place that has often been used to bring about condemnation or compliance. And because of the way this Scripture has been mistaught, it has also held many of us in ongoing places of pain.
"Honour your father and mother." - Ephesians 6: 2
If you grew up in the church, you would have heard this scripture. It was most likely thrown at you when you were acting out, struggling with frustration, or simply not behaving as acceptable within the social setting. It was seen as a way of bringing children back into line and reminding them that they had to obey their parents, regardless of how they felt.
This type of weaponised scripture in the church has led to a lot of damage. It has affected our view of the Lord, and taught us that others expectations are far more important than our own experience. Many people have struggled with healthy relational boundaries because of the incorrect teaching of what honour means in this context. Allowing themselves to be treated poorly, simply because social standards expect it.
As we unpack this, I want you to know that your feelings are incredibly important. And this post may trigger some of those emotions to come to the surface. Remember the Lord is not the one who silenced you. He will never tire of you or turn you away. Knowing that you are safe to feel whatever you are feeling with the Lord, without expectation or pressure, is incredibly important.
And yet, as we sit with this verse more carefully, we know it is repeated throughout Scripture for a reason. And the promise attached to this verse is evident, 'so it will go well with you and you will have long life." So we know that honouring our parents is incredibly important.
What is honour?
In our current culture, honour is often understood as respect, or even elevation. It can look like placing people above others because of their position or role. This is often the lens through which we were taught to honour our parents, that simply because they were our parents, they had the right to tell us what to do and how to behave. In the context of children, this makes sense as a way to guide and protect them. But it does not mean parents are meant to be elevated above others simply because they are parents.
In Ephesians, the Greek word for honour is timaō, which means to give proper weight to something or someone. The Hebrew word used in Exodus 20, kābēd, carries the same meaning. Honour, then, is about rightly assessing weight and ensuring it is placed back into its rightful order.
As children, no matter how good our parents were, we all have needs that were not met. Simply because our parents were not perfect. They are human, fallible.
But this is where something begins to shift.
When we honour our parents, and bring them back into their rightful order, they no longer stand over us in the same way. The pain no longer holds us bound in the same place. Not because what happened no longer matters, but because it no longer holds the same power.
As this order is restored, we allow the Lord to begin revealing our parents to us more clearly. Not only as parents, but as people. As men and women.
Before they were our parents, they were His children.
Before they were our parents, they were children themselves, walking through their own hardships, losses, and pain. Perhaps even experiences that shaped them in ways they never fully healed from.
Allowing the Lord to lead us into this shift of perspective does not take away from our own experiences. It does not dismiss what we felt, or what it cost us. But it does make space for something new to form.
Compassion.
Compassion for them as people doing the best they could within the circumstances of their own lives, while still acknowledging that their actions hurt us. That what we experienced was painful. That the impact was real.
Both can be true at the same time.
And they must be.
Because compassion without the acknowledgment of our pain minimises our experience and prevents us from moving through the healing process. It asks us to bypass what needs to be felt.
And pain without compassion keeps our parents elevated and tightly bound in a place they were never meant to occupy. It keeps them powerful in our inner world, holding weight that does not belong to them.
Honour restores order by holding both.
Truth and tenderness.
Pain and perspective.
What was lost, and what can still be healed.
We learn to honour our parents as people.
We learn to honour ourselves and what we have walked through.
And through this process, a way forward begins to open for resolution.
Some of our deepest wounds are formed within these relationships. Not always because our parents caused the greatest harm, but because these were the relationships that carried our earliest needs for safety, nurture, and belonging. These were the places where growth and development were most vulnerable.
As we learn to honour our parents, placing them in their rightful place for who they are, something else happens at the same time. We also learn to place ourselves in our rightful place of honour. And with that, we begin to place our pain in its rightful place as well.
Our pain is no longer dismissed.
It is no longer carrying more weight than it should.
It is seen, acknowledged, and held rightly.
Honouring our pain does not mean holding onto it as our identity. It means allowing it to be seen, named, and held in truth, without letting it take a place of authority in our lives.
Our pain matters. It tells the truth about what we have walked through. But pain was never meant to lead us. It was never meant to define us, shape our future, or become the lens through which we see ourselves or God.
When pain is dismissed, it festers.
When pain is elevated, it binds.
Right order is restored when pain is given its proper place, acknowledged without being enthroned, honoured without being clung to.
This is where letting go becomes possible. Not because the pain was insignificant, but because it has been truly seen and held. And once it is held in truth and safety, it no longer needs to be carried.
Because restoring order brings God back into clearer focus.
When God is returned to His rightful place above all else, we are no longer relating to Him through distortion or fear. And it is here that the promise attached to honour becomes clear. Not as a reward for obedience, but as the natural outcome of restored order.
That it will go well with us.
That life will be given space to flourish.
This is where honour quietly leads.
Back into life.
Back into love.
Coming into the Father's Love series
Week 3:
Week 4:
Week 5:
Comments