Mothers With A Mission Series

Welcome and thank you for worshipping with us this morning. Keep Colossians 1 open before you, will you? You can find a link to our sermon notes in the chat and a communication card. For children’s and student resources, please visit our churchonline page at our website.

Happy Mother’s Day to you! The Maze family has big plans for later this weekend and I hope your family does as well. Mother’s Day is a very special day – a day when we remember our mothers.

Have you ever wondered what to purchase for your mother? It’s difficult proposition for many children.

I heard about a wealthy son who decided to do something special for his mother on Mother’s Day. He went to a pet shop and saw a very expensive talking bird. This was an unusual bird. This bird could whistle Amazing Grace. This bird could quote even the Psalm 23. It was an highly unusual bird. The cost of the bird was $30,000. He was wealthy so he didn’t he care. So he spent the $30,000 and bought the bird for his mother and had it shipped to her. On Mother’s Day he made his call to his mother. “Mother, how did you like the bird I sent you?” She said, “O, it was delicious, son.”

I hope you know what to get your mother this Mother’s Day.

Let me turn more serious for a minute…

To those who gave birth this year to their first child, we celebrate with you.

To those who lost a child this year, we mourn with you.

To those who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains, we appreciate you.

To those who experienced loss this year through miscarriage, failed adoptions, or a child that ran away, we grieve with you.

To those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with disappointment, we walk with you.

To foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms, we need you.

To those who have warm and close relationships with your children, we celebrate with you.

To those who have disappointment, heartache, and distance from your children, we wait with you.

To those who lost their mothers this year, we grieve with you.

To those who were encouraged to have an abortion, we cry with you.

To those who lived through driving tests, medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood, thank you.

To those who will have emptier nests in the upcoming year, we rejoice and grieve with you.

And to those who are pregnant with new life, we anticipate with you.

To all of you, we honor you.

Today, I want to speak to you about “Mothers with a Mission.”

Today’s Scripture (Passage Read Before Sermon)

“For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. 5 For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ” (Colossians 2:1-5).

We continue to explore the New Testament book of Colossians together. Now, Paul was a spiritual father to many of the early Christians: “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15). Paul is author of thirteen of the twenty-seven NT letters. Outside of Jesus, he’s the most influential person in Christianity’s history. He wrote the book of Colossians and he acts like a spiritual father to so many Christians. But he also compares himself to a mother: “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thessalonians 2:7).

For the next few moments, I want mothers to view your role through the lens of THIS spiritual father. Not just any father… Psychologists tell us that girls tend to marry men like their fathers. Maybe that’s why mothers cry at weddings ?. I want you to see the role of mothers through the lens of THIS spiritual parent.

Today, I want to speak to about raising the next generation to continue in the faith.

1. I Love to Encourage You

Paul expresses three progressive purposes in these verses. Think of steps on a staircase as you take each step to reach the second floor. Just like this, each purpose progresses in order to reach one ultimate goal: you are firm in your Christian faith.