Title: Mothers Day

Date: 2009-05-10

Reference: Exodus 20:12

Today is The Festival of The Christian Home, on the church calendar, and of course Mother’s Day. The concept of Mother’s Day has a long history of religious connections. In ancient Greece persons paid tribute to motherhood with a great religious festival dedicated to the Mother of the Gods. This festival was always performed on the Ides of March throughout Asia Minor. Years later the English Church developed Mothering Sunday. On this Sunday persons were encouraged to attend their Mother Church in which they were baptized on a Sunday in Mid lent. Gifts were offered at the altar to the church and to mothers who were present. Our United States Mothers Day also has church ties. The First Mothers Day was actually celebrated in a Methodist Church. A Methodist Woman, Anna Jarvis campaigned for years for a holiday for our mothers.

People of Faith have always understood the importance of Christian Mothers and Fathers and of Christian homes. We have always been aware of the connection between the Christian Home and sharing our faith in the world around us.

According the Book of Proverbs and our life experience we know we’ve developed a happy, healthy family when the children in the home take pride in their parents. These last few years I’ve learned that teenagers particularly don’t always include parents in their plans. I have managed to embarrass both of my kids from time to time. But at any age, our children crave our love, guidance, approval and our interest in their lives.

Affirming words from parents, and other adults, are like light switches. When we speak a word of affirmation at the right moment in a child’s life it’s like lighting up a whole roomful of possibilities. Families like this may not be as common as they once were but they still exist. I believe each of our families can be one of them.

Family pride is meant to go both ways. We also heard in our reading from Proverbs how parents delight in wise children. Every Mom and Dad can be a son or daughter’s greatest cheerleader. In healthy, Godly homes respect, love, and admiration are shared by parents and children. When parents delight in the children, the children usually return the favor.

A key verse for parents is I Cor. 11:1..”Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” We all learn more by example than we do by lectures and exhortation. A Christian parents attempts to model a Christian life for his or her children. We all need role models and God put Christian adults into the lives of children for this purpose. Teaching about Christ, by daily example, is a huge part of any parents job description. This assignment is difficult, never easy. And yet this is God’s plan for Christian parents.

Modeling is incredibly important in the process of parenting. Long after our children have forgotten what we have said they will remember what we do. Images both negative and positive, pleasant and unpleasant will be burned into their memories for a life time.

If I want my children to honor me now and as I age, as commanded by God they need to see my honor my aging mother. If I want my son to be a man of the book he had better know I read my Bible each and every day and see me doing so.

If I want him to become a man of prayer he needs to know I am up early each morning in prayer and I am praying for him. If I want him to love and serve the church and to be faithful in giving to the work of the church he needs to see that in his parents lives. He needs to know the first check we write out each month is our tithe. The way parents treat children in daily lives has far more impact on their spiritual development than any of our family religious practices. Daily life illustrates for our children our real convictions.

If our children do not have parents setting examples for them the adults in the church need to be faithful in modeling a Christian life. Our children need to have as role models adults who attempt to live out what they believe. This doesn’t mean we won’t all make mistakes. We will. But then we deal with our mistakes and shortcomings in an honest way.

I believe 80% or more of our children come to faith in Christ as a result of parents, grandparents, and other interested adults. A relationship with God is not taught as much as it is caught. Our adult walk with Jesus should be infectious as our children begin to see that what we believe has a real impact on how we live our daily lives. The warning is clear for all of us...”We cannot pass along or share what we don’t have.”

Ideally God intended for children to grow up with fathers and mothers modeling the faith for their children. This is not an ideal world. I was raised by a single parent and a grandparent. Thank God for those two faithful women who showed me what a walk with Jesus looked like. The most important gift my mother gave me was to instill in me a confident trust in my heavenly father. My mother and my grandmother worked hard to raise us. Neither of them was educated but they both lived with a Bible under their arm. I was able to succeed because I had a mother who understood her job as a role model. It would have been much easier on her if she had a mate to help her but she didn’t. And so she did the best she could. And she always made home happy.

The influence of a Godly parent has life changing power. Some children don’t even have one loving parent as I did. In a few short weeks this congregation will sent off a mission team to Uganda. There our mission team will work to build a classroom you have funded. Many or most of the children in Uganda have no parents. The parents were killed in war or died of the Aides virus. These children are the future of a nation and entire region. They need us to help them, to love them, to be involved in their lives. For the life of me I cannot understand why this congregation is not more excited about what we are doing for children in Uganda. If, for instance, each of us here today would give a single dollar we could keep a student in college for a year. You’re mission team has asked for your prayers. We need to know you are holding us up in prayer. We were hoping to have someone or some church in each of our fifty states praying for us while we are in Africa. We don’t have a commitment from even ten states. Children there, like children here need our involvement. This Mother’s Day we are reminded to give it.

Kids today are watching us carefully. Saying to them: “Do as I say not as I do won’t be helpful.” What we do is so powerful it can destroy everything we say. Many young people have walked away from the church and their parents faith because thee was too huge a gap between what was said and what was done.

Our children don’t expect us to be perfect but they do expect us to be genuine. They are walking behind us trying to find our footprints.

I saw a little boy and his father the other day walking with a dog. The child was following the dad and the dog. The little boy was jumping trying to reach his daddy’s foot prints. Christian parents and adults need to be careful how and where we walk. The children are behind us, following our example.

Today we thank God for the many mothers over the years who have been faithful in teaching their children about God. The Bible mentions many such faithful mothers. Eve was the first of many faithful mothers. Eve had no one to pattern her life after. She learned as she lived. Eve had no role models to follow. She created a job description for herself.

Moses had two mothers. One who defied the law of the King and placed her child among the reeds in order to save him. And the Kings daughter who found the child and loved him and adopted him raising him as a Price of Egypt.

Hannah was the mother of Samuel. For the longest time she was unable to have a child. She prayed to God for a Son. When he was born she named him Samuel meaning: “I asked the Lord for him.” When Samuel was a little boy his mother brought him to the Temple and dedicated him to God. The child grew up in the temple assisting Eli the Priest. God prepared Samuel to himself be a priest and prophet.

Ruth was faithful in adversity and became the grandmother of King David and an ancestor of Jesus. When God was ready to send his Son into the world God chose a young girl, Mary. She was faithful to God’s will even when she didn’t understand it.

In the New Testament, Lois and Eunice were Timothy’s mother and grandmother who raised him in the faith.

They were so faithful they were mentioned by the Apostle Paul in Scripture. We thank God for all the faithful mothers and faithful women who were involved in the lives of the children who needed them. As the old Proverb says: “God couldn’t be everywhere so He made Mothers.” And we thank God for them.