Mother's Who Love Series

Mothers Who Love

On this day that we honor mothers, its good for us to think about how much you really do. Being a mother is not a walk in the park…

By the time a child reaches 18, a mother has had to handle some extra 18,000 hours of child-generated work. In fact, women who never have children enjoy the equivalent of an extra three months a year in leisure time!

A Junior High science teacher lectured on the properties of magnets for an entire class. The next day he gave his students a quiz. The first question read like this: “My name begins with an “M,” has six letters, and I pick things up. What am I?” Half the kids in the class wrote, “Mother.”

That reminds me of the father who was trying to explain the concept of marriage to his 4-year-old daughter. He got out their wedding album, thinking visual images would help, and explained the entire wedding service to her. When he was finished, he asked if she had any questions. She pointed to a picture of the wedding party and asked, “Daddy, is that when mommy came to work for us?

My dad and I were talking this week about how influential mothers are. While we were talking I remembered hearing this quote: “If daddy ain’t happy, who cares? If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!” He laughed and said, “That’s true in our house.” I think it’s probably true in ours as well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, “Men are what their mothers make them” and an old Spanish proverb says, “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.”

There are some great portraits of motherhood in Scripture.

I love the picture of the mother of Moses who cared so much for her son that she broke the law in order to teach him the faith of his people.

We see the sacrificial love of the mother who appeared before King Solomon and told him that she was willing to have her son taken away by another woman rather than see any harm come to him.

Or, the mother of James and John who loved her boys so much that she wanted them to sit by the Lord’s side in the heavenly kingdom.

And, the mother of King Lemuel, who gave some advice to her son about godly living and how to pick a good wife, in Proverbs 31.

Some of you have specifically asked me to not preach on Proverbs 31 because you’ve heard a number of Mother’s Day sermons on this text already. I’ve taken your advice for this year ­ but I can’t make any promises about next year!

I’m aware that Mother’s Day is a difficult time for some of you.

Maybe you want to be a mother but you can’t be for some reason

Perhaps some of you have not had the best mother in the world

Some of you have had a mother who has died

Some of you mothers have lost a child to death

Some of you mothers feel the pain of a wayward child this morning

And, some of you are flying solo as you work hard to nurture your child’s faith

This morning I want to begin by giving you my thesis: A mother can make a significant spiritual impact on her children with or without the help of a father.

A Grandmother, a Mother, and a Boy

I’d like to introduce you to a young woman named Eunice. She was raised in a religious home and was greatly impacted by her mother Lois. She loved to learn the stories from the Bible when she was young and enjoyed going to services where she could learn about God. As she approached her teenage years, she was still focused on spiritual matters but she became attracted to a young man who was not into religion at all. Against the best wishes of her godly mother, the teaching of her faith, and the tug of her conscience, she married the man. Don’t get me wrong ­ he was a nice guy but thought spiritual matters were for weak people.

After a couple years of marriage, Eunice and her husband had a baby boy who they named Timothy. In the meantime, Eunice’s dad had died so they asked her mother Lois to come and live with them. Little Timmy was a delight to everyone. Both his mother and grandmother spent hours with him, teaching him the stories of the Old Testament, praying with him and for him, and training him in the things of God. While they didn’t have any Veggie Tale videos or an AWANA club nearby, they created a spiritual environment where tiny Tim could flourish.

Then, one day, a preacher named Paul came to their town of Lystra and spoke about a man named Jesus. Both Lois and Eunice listened intently. They saw in Jesus the fulfillment of all the promises in the Old Testament and placed their trust in Him and were converted. These new believers in turn focused on teaching Timothy all about who Jesus was. We know from reading the book of Acts that Paul himself took a personal interest in Tim the teenager and, partnering with his mother and grandmother, led him to saving faith.