This ought to be an outflow of that, not the other way around; and God has to address this in Isaiah 1. God's talking to the prophet, and He says: I'm sick of your church services. I'm sick of your festivals, I'm sick of your sacrifices, I'm sick of your music, I'm sick of your traditions. I'm sick of all those things; and you know what was true of every one of the things? God thought it up!
God essentially says: I'm sick of all the ideas I gave you, of how to worship Me; because you come into My house and you worship Me with all the proper things; but then you go out there, and you leave a hungry person to die, instead of feeding them.
It hasn't translated into generosity in your heart. Honour has more to do with what you do out there, than what you do in here; the same with your parents. Honour has way more to do with what you do away from your parents. Teenagers: honouring your parents - to tell your mum and dad: “I love you. I honour you”; but to then go out and dishonour their name - that's dishonour! It has more to do with what you're doing out there, than in here. It has more to do with what we pass on.
Let me just give you three definitions of honour. Honour is...
1) Maintaining godliness through our generations.
It's actually doing some heart examination, and investigating: what part of my family heritage do I need to pass on? My dad's prayer discipline - I need to pass that on; but his propensity to think it's hilarious to scare people - I need to stop that. My mum's heritage of being generous - my mum is the most generous person I know in this world. Compared to what she makes, she writes bigger cheques than anybody I've ever seen, to all kinds of things. She lives a life of generosity, and I need to pass that on; but there are things in my mum's life that I need to say: no, no, no, wait a minute, that was wrong. It's choosing to pass on the godliness.
2) It's choosing to be honest about the ungodliness, and choosing to break the cycle; so that we pass on godliness, but we break the cycle of ungodliness, to the next generation.
It's tied to a promise of land, that we will “live a long time in a land”. This has nothing to do with a long life. There are other scriptures that talk about long life, that's fine. This has to do with when you walk into what God's best is for you. That the key to living a long time in that land is: to perpetuate godliness; to continue to honour. It has to do with the time in the land; it has to do with the health of an entire society.
In order to heal from the wounds of the past, and create a life of godliness, how do we get over this? How do we get over the fact that our parents were ungodly? How do we get over the fact that they were destructive? How do we get over the fact, and still honour, and move forward something to the next generation? Let me just give you a couple of very simple thoughts that hopefully help you.
2a) You need to develop an intense gratefulness for the fact that you're alive. We have to realise that before we deal with our parent's issues, we have to develop an incredible gratefulness for the fact that God used them to give you life. That in fact God created you in the spirit, and He put in all your personality, and all your passions, and all your gifts and talents; He breathed a vision into your heart, and a dream into your life; He built you in the spirit, and He said: you know what? I need two people to come together, so I can put some flesh on this - this is a great idea right here - and that idea was you.
So before your parents did anything wrong to you, they were actually used by God to do something very, very right - which was put flesh around His big idea - which was you. Before we deal with the whole anger and bitterness and rage about: oh, I was dealt the wrong set of cards in life - before we deal with all that, we have to actually step back and say: you know what? Hold on, before we talk about this any further, I need to stop, and I need to breathe, and I need to be thankful that two people came together and gave me life. Before they did anything wrong, they actually did something right, and that was give you life.