Mother Knows Best

Mother Knows Best

Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

Exodus 20:12

Fear of the LORD is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. My child, listen when your father corrects you. Don’t neglect your mother’s instruction. What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honor around your neck.

Proverbs 1:7-9

Give your father and mother joy! May she who gave you birth be happy.

Proverbs 23:25

What have you learned from your mother or other female role models in your life? How to bake a cake, ride a bike, balance a checkbook, read a book, write a letter? Your mom probably didn’t have to teach you how to cry when you were born, but that’s about it. After we’re born we have to learn how to walk, how to talk, and how to eat, as well as how to know right from wrong. The family is the first school God gives us so we can learn what we need to know for life. Parents teach their children through modeling, counseling, explaining, correcting, and disciplining.

The Bible says the most important thing parents should teach their children is to fear God. A parent’s job is to show children what it looks like to treat God with reverence, what it sounds like to talk over everything with him through prayer, what it means to worship him, and what it is like to trust him in good times and bad.

Solomon knew something about how we interact with our parents. We are often tempted to rebel by not listening when our parents give us instruction, so he told us to listen when they correct us. We’re also tempted to forget about what we’ve learned when we leave home, so he said, “Don’t neglect your mother’s instruction.” When children learn from their parents’ teaching and example to fear God, they have learned the most important lesson in life.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

What are some specific things you learned from your mother or another female role model?

What do you think the promises in Exodus 20:12 and Proverbs 1:7-9 mean?

What are subtle ways people dishonor mothers in our society?