“Those who honor Me, I will honor, but those who despise Me, I will disdain,” Jesus says. God does not make honor optional. He tells us who to honor and how to honor them. A self-focused or narcissistic generation overlooks the power of honor because of a faulty value system. Honor basically means “value.” The power of honor is the purchasing power of leadership; we can release power into our lives through honor, but the honor is carried within others. Releasing honor creates a place for power within us because honoring others releases the power of their lives. Treating someone with honor releases the precious, rare value Jesus designed into them when He created them.
Jesus positions people in our lives by design who contain spiritual power necessary to our maturity and success. God designed us to be interdependent, and honor connects us to matrix of spiritual power. Honor releases anointing. Honor releases wisdom. Honor releases strategy. Without honor, we tend toward the systematic barrenness and death of this world’s entropy: through honor we enter the Body’s “building itself up in love,” an perpetual motion of spiritual supply.
Honor twins with promise. They walk together. They grow together. They are fulfilled together. “Honor your parents, the first commandment with a promise. You shall enjoy long life and your promised inheritance will respond to you with plenty.”
Honor begins at home. 1 Peter 3 explains to husbands that valuing their wives as equal heirs of life’s grace releases power in prayer. Literally, dishonoring their value because they are weaker vessels causes prayers to hit the ceiling and boomerrang back down. This is why most of the people I train as intercessors are women, although that trend is rapidly changing. Men tend to see intercession as women’s work. They don’t discover the power of prayer because they dishonor women. They simply need to stop trying to pray like women and pray like men. They don’t have to pray like women to intercede, since intercession is not women’s work.
Honor within marriage releases the power of a man’s unique anointing as husband and father. Honor prefers one another and reaches its highest human expression and efficiency in marriage.
Honor releases anointing within the Body. We are honored by God as living stones fitted into a holy house. In this way, we share Christ’s honor and share His power. The fullness of Christ’s power is expressed and released through the fullness of the Church. Contempt or disdain shuts down anointing and power: a prophet is not without honor except in his own country. “Jesus said, ‘A prophet is taken for granted in his hometown and his family.’ He didn’t do many miracles there because of their hostile indifference. By dishonoring Christ, a whole region shut down the release of His anointing.
There are regions in the earth where dryness and death continue because of dishonor. There are sections of the church-anity suffering from generations of dishonor of the anointing. There are ministries floundering without the power to fulfill their assignments because of disdain for people who carried the very thing that ministry needed to flourish, grow, and mature.
A whole day of honoring God will not make up for two minutes of dishonoring His people. He won’t bypass people you disdain to release the power He placed in them and placed at your disposal.
Honor releases revelation available through multiple sources. Since we don’t each have all the revelation God is releasing, honor puts the puzzle pieces together. Incompleteness of strategy or confusion of purpose results when we attempt to obligate God to tell us what we need to know so we avoid people we don’t want to get credit or honor for revelatory leadership. We often insist that God tell us everything so we can get honor! God isn’t a machine: put in a nickle and get a revelation. God has a strategic leaders and He positions them as watchmen or prophets or–in order to make them available to us. Honoring them, honors God who sent them and releases anointing and revelation.
Honor releases something to our children and generation that dishonor cuts off from them. How many thousands are wandering now because parents and leaders in their lives failed to honor and children disdained anointing and revelation because of disdain they learned from their leaders? Parents blame church for their children’s waywardness when some times the waywardness was created by the words and curses of parents against the very kingdom leaders their children needed to flourish.
Honor releases God’s strategy. He sends leaders in the authority of their assignments. Dishonor stops the flow of that authority to our lives. Fussing with God about His strategy does nothing to create an alternative. God said to Samuel, They have not rejected you, seeking a king to rule over them. They have rejected Me. Although God did have kingdom strategy for Israel. He gave them the leadership they deserved in Saul, the people’s choice. Saul’s rebellion shackled a generation until David could bring honor back to the nation. David remained honorable to Saul for decades so the power and anointing of kingship would be available through his reign as king.
Honor also means money, and Scripture reveals that dishonor can be understood in holding back financially because of disdain for God’s leaders. “Keeping the pastor poor” has been a curse, or limitation, on the Body for generations, an excuse for dishonor that sucked the life from God’s sent ones. I don’t get tangled up about how much money leaders have. I hope they all get rich as long as their wealth remain honorable wealth. Why not? Their wealth empowers their lives. Their wealth doesn’t rob a cent from your pocket. Wealthy leaders are wonderful givers. They understand the power of honor.
By failing to honor Jesus, a generation, a nation, a people, failed to receive the honor of His Father.
