The speaker discusses the challenges of honoring parents in adulthood when it comes to matters of marriage. He offers principles for dealing with difficult parental relationships, including rebuilding trust and dealing with overzealous or sinful parents. The speaker also highlights the importance of parental authority and the obligation to honor parents even as children become adults. He draws examples from the Reformation to illustrate the significance of the doctrine of marriage and the role of parents in the process. Ultimately, the speaker encourages listeners to be patient and discerning in navigating these complex issues.

There are a couple of questions about honoring parents in adulthood when it comes to matters of marriage And I think the difficulty of the answer to the question is that there's so many moving parts to something like this, but maybe we could just deal with some principles here. What advice would you give to a single young person who recognizes the importance of parental relationships before and during the process of forming relationships that may lead to marriage and desires such parental relationships, but is having difficulty rebuilding trust in that parental relationship that has been less than ideal for a number of years. And where the other person in the parental relationship is not interested in reinvesting in it. I do understand that rebuilding trust takes time and commitment, but how do you move forward? So you have a situation here where you have a person who wants to honor the parents but there's been some, seems like there's been some sin in the part of the parents and there's some wounding there.

How do you take the advice of parents who you think are doing wrong? There's another one like it, where is it? Well I'm not finding it. But it has to do with parental authority. How does a 26 year old man deal or 30 year old man deal with parental authority and his parents are throwing shade on the relationship.

Let me just start, just say a couple of things because they have a bearing on it. Age matters. A young man came from my 18-year-old daughter. My obligations in principle are the same across the board, but in application with a really young daughter, it changed what I felt like how that role should play out. Right now I have an unmarried 27 year old daughter.

The principles will all be the same, but the way they are applied, whenever that time comes for me to play this role, it's going to look very different, because age matters. Your 18-year-old's not like your 27-year-old. Your 27-year-old has a whole different set, more extensive set of life experiences and more developed thought processes and all of that. And that is gonna change how I do play my role. Children must always honor their parents as long as they're alive and after they're not alive.

The Bible commands us to honor our parents. As our children become adults, the way that they honor you, and their obligation to obey you changes. So that changes how this plays out. Well here's your opportunity for your daughter. You can take some interviews right here.

We have a scenario right now that I'm working through, a man in our church is 30 years old, he likes someone, it's 36, but the parents are involved, heavily involved, as if the 36-year-old was 18. And you're like, wow, I mean, it's, I don't know if this girl's ever going to get married under such circumstances. So sometimes you can have overzealous parents, and they put all these hoops in front of you. A lot of it's, you want the parents involvement, obviously, and they need to be involved. But obviously, there's some parents that are just overzealous on this issue and their poor daughters may not ever get married because of it.

You all probably know someone like that, you know, at least I've heard of stories like that. And in the end I'm like, I'm telling this man he's not that young anymore, it's like you just got to determine if the woman's worth the battle. I do think you should honor the parents. And so you don't necessarily need to go in there and get the girl to change things and rebel against her parents. You just, it's like, can you jump through these hoops?

There may be some legalistic hoops. There may be some things that you think, this is ridiculous. I mean, But at the same time, it's important to submit to even some I think maybe over the top things. It gets complicated. It can be complicated, Let's say if you like someone who's 36 years old that's single, who has a job, and there I know that's an extreme case.

What you know, what does I think is more on what is a what is honoring for a 36 year old woman, what is honoring her parents look like at 36? And that's more of the question on her end at that time. But it can be very delicate. But I would, As a general rule, I would say, for you who's asked that question, honor the parents, and even that means doing things that you think's over the top. Yeah, and I think the question is how over the top there are sinful parents that deprive their children for marriage, they forbid them for marriage.

The Reformers had to deal with this, particularly in Kalvins Geneva, where 25% of the population had taken vows of celibacy. And they were in convents and monasteries. And you had parents during the Reformation that forbid their children from getting married and the reformers stood up and said, that's sinful. And so the Reformers were not only getting women out of the convents and men fleeing the monasteries because of the doctrine of marriage. There was a restoration of the doctrine of marriage during the Reformation.

And the Reformers married many people against the will of the parents. Many people. Because their parents wanted them to be celibate. That was sinful. So you have to ask, to what degree is this sinfulness in the part of the parents?

And you have to ask 50 questions to understand that. And patience is necessary. My view has always been if your parents aren't for it, you should at least wait, at least wait. But all situations are not the same. And if you have evil parents who do not want to have a Christian couple in the world Then you just have to you have to deal with all that but some you know non-christian parents also have insight on their children You don't want to just dismiss the opinions of a parent just because they're not Christians.

That's not right. They're still parents and they still have your best interests in mind, hopefully. But if they don't, I think there should be a process to determine that.