Honour for Honour

UV 417/10,000 I Samuel 2 v 30 Honour for honour 1Sa 2:30 " Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed" We are blessed when we live with faith in the Lord Jesus. We are doubly blessed from generation to generation when the previous generation as well as the successive generation live in faith. As mortal human beings,we can only think in terms of three generations: as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob constituted a bloodline of faith. The Lord sees our generations forever. The successive generations are in the hands of the Lord. We honour the Lord when we speak to one another in psalms and quoting scripture and by teaching our children from His Word. Our homes would be blessed and protected. We need to honour the Lord in different ways when we live in faith. We honour His name and He promises to set us on high and satisfy us with long life. We honour the Lord with our praises and godly conversation. But, we cannot honour the Lord just with our lips. He will distance Himself from us as He sees that we do not love and honour Him in and with our hearts. We honour the Lord by giving from the firstfruits of our substance. We honour the Lord by keeping His commandments. We honour the Lord by revering His Word as truth and obeying it. We honour the Lord by keeping the Sabbath and being faithful in sticking to our commitment to have a daily quiet time. We honour the Lord by not denying Him in our workplace. We honour Him both by our silent witness, our open confession of our faith and by sharing our testimony of His grace and mercy in our lives. We honour the Lord in good times and bad times, when we give Him glory and thanksgiving for our victories, opportunities and blessings and at the same time, do not complain or murmur or grumble when things seem to be going the other way. We honour the Father when we honour the Son and hold the teachings of Jesus precious. We honour the Lord when we are sensitive and listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and do not grieve Him. We honour the Lord with our time and He will add hours to our days and years to our life. One of the lessons I learnt quite early in my life and career is that the Lord is no man’s debtor. When I honoured the Lord by giving Queen Elizabeth II a Bible with a word of blessing written on the front page, He honoured me with a Queen’s Award within five years. When I honoured the Lord as a student, He blessed me with a top rank in the state. When I honoured the Lord for every blessing He sent me, He opened new doors and opportunities. When I honoured the Lord in the downtimes in my career and life patiently without complaining, He gave me promotions due to me in due time. As I honoured the Lord for the increase in my substance, He has blessed me even more. As I honoured the Lord by teaching our children about His faithfulness, He has kept them safe and secure in situations where I could have done nothing to help them. At the same time, the converse is also true that the Lord will despise those who dishonour Him. The judgement is swift and certain. Take the case of John Lennon- he boasted that he was more popular than Jesus and a manic killer shoots him to death for no obvious reason. When we ignore the Lord, He will be happy to leave us to our ignorance. When we become arrogant in our ignorance, we will pay for our arrogance. Prateep V Philip