EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER: MOTHER’S DAY
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 5/13/2012
Two little boys bought their mom a wreath of flowers for Mother’s Day. They were so excited to give it to her because they had used their own money. Mom held back laughter when she saw the ribbon that said, “Rest in peace.” The older of the two boys explained, “We thought it would be just perfect since you are always asking for a little peace and quiet so that you can rest.”
Erma Bombeck once said, “The easiest part of being a mother is giving birth. The hardest part is showing up for it each day...”
Mother’s Day is traditionally the day when children give something back to their mothers for all the spit they produce to wash dirty faces, all the old gum they held in their hands, all the noses they wipe, and all the bloody knees they “made better” with a kiss.
It’s an appreciation day for making your children finish something they said they couldn’t do, not believing them when they said, “I hate you,” and sharing their good times and bad times. Their cards probably won’t reflect it, but what they are trying to say is, “Thank you for showing up each day.”
As we celebrate Mother’s Day today, I’m reminded of a verse from the psalms: “Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain” (Psalm 127:1 HCSB). In fact, this verse is going to be the cornerstone for a series of messages starting today on Mother’s Day and culminating in six weeks on Father’s Day.
Unless you just don’t have a television in your house, then I’m sure you’ve seen some of these Home Makeover TV shows that populate nearly every network. They have teams of experts who come in and remodel or redecorate rooms or whole houses. There’s Trading Spaces, Clean House, Curb Appeal, Design on a Dime, and, of course, Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
Can you imagine building or remodeling a house without a plan? Saying, “Let’s just wing it?” No sensible person would think of starting without a well-thought-out plan or blueprint from an architect. And yet, so many couples try to build not just their house, but their home without consulting God’s divine design for marriage, or family, or parenthood. Some of us have made such a mess, just hammering away without consulting the Master Architect, that we are in desperate need of an extreme home makeover.
Today’s message is Extreme Home Makeover: Mother’s Day Edition, and I want to share some of God’s home-building instructions for moms—especially young moms with kids at home. If you’re not a mom or even if you’re a grandma, don’t check out on me because some of these principles will apply to you no matter what stage of life you’re in. All of these instructions are found in Psalm 127 and the first on is this—rely on the Lord.
• RELY ON THE LORD
Mom’s as you set out to build or remodel your home, you have to rely on the Lord. He created the family in the first place. It’s God’s design and he knows how it will best function. Let’s go back to that anchor verse again. It says, “Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted” (Psalm 127:1 NLT). The building of a house, here, illustrates the creation of a family. The point is—if it’s to be done right, God must inspire and empower the building efforts.
God wants to be intimately involved in the everyday life of your family. A long time ago, I heard about a family that was getting ready to go on vacation. They got the car all loaded up and pulled out of the driveway. As they started down the road, a little boy piped up from his car seat, “Mommy, can we drive by the church?”
“Why do you want to do that?” asked mom.
“So I can wave goodbye to God.”
As adorable as that little guy sounds, his comments reveal a serious problem. If your kids think that God lives at church, then that means they don’t see very much of him around the house. Moms, you’ve got to make sure that God’s presence is felt in every room of your house. Moses gave the moms and dads of ancient Israel this command in order to help with that: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:5-9 NLT).
Do you have God’s word written on your doorposts and on your gates? Is it written in your heart? Do you repeat his word to your kids again and again? Do you talk about Jesus around the dinner table or around the back yard? Let me give you some suggestions that might help you rely a little more on the Lord as you build your home.
1. Pray with your kids every day. Not just at bedtime, but anytime the Spirit moves you.
2. Read them the Bible every day. You might start out with a children’s picture Bible and then graduate to family devotional Bible, but your goal is to infuse your kids with God’s life-giving word.
3. Let them see your love for God. Let them see you reading your Bible. Let them overhear your personal prayers. Let them hear you sing a hymn of praise while you do the dishes. Let them know why you go to church and host a small group and volunteer your time and treasure. Let them see that your love is real and theirs will be too.
Furthermore, in addition to relying on the Lord, the next step in your extreme home makeover is to rest from your labor.
• REST FROM YOUR LABOR
Moms, if you want to build a strong and stable family, then you have to make them your priority. It’s been well said that children need your presence more than your presents. The Bible says it this way: “It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones” (Psalm 127:2 NLT). The point in this verse is that God doesn’t intend for us to work 24/7. And for some moms that’s a pretty hard pill to swallow.
I don’t care if you are stay-at-home mom, or a working mom, or a single mom—you’re job is tough! I know that. It’s a never ending battle against dirty dishes, piles of laundry, and crayon covered walls. When you are a mother you become a professional cook, a referee, a maid, a dietitian, a teacher, a seamstress, a counselor, a disciplinarian, a coach, a taxi driver, and so many other things all rolled into one—and there’s no salary involved. I love what Bill Cosby said about motherhood: “I am not the boss of my house. I don’t know how I lost it. I don’t know where I lost it. I don’t think I ever had it. But I’ve seen the boss’s job... and I don’t want it.” You have a lot on your plate. Just don’t let your to-do list take priority over your family.
Someone once said, “Good moms have dirty dishes, messy kitchens, sticky floors and happy kids.” The point, of course, isn’t that it’s better to living in a squalor, but that’s it’s better to get a little behind on all your daily chores than to miss out on playing freeze tag in the back yard, or building a Lego mansion in the living room, or coloring a picture that will hang on the refrigerator with pride.
There are so many distractions—Facebook, Pinterest, or Farmville, just to name a few—but so few things that really matter. Just like Martha learned the importance of taking time out from the business of life to just sit at Jesus’ feet, many moms need to learn to take some time just to sit on the floor and play with their kids. The laundry will still be there, but your kids are only young once. It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, and miss the moments that really matter most.
Finally, along with relying on the Lord and resting from your labors, Psalm 127 also reminds moms to rejoice in your little ones.
• REJOICE IN YOUR LITTLE ONES
Raising kids isn’t easy. They can be quite a challenge. But the Bible constantly assures us that children aren’t meant to be a burden; rather, they’re a blessing. It says, “Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him” (Psalm 127:3 NLT).
It doesn’t always feel like that; I know. When they smear chocolate pudding all over their body because it feels like lotion, or they get the wheels on the little motorized train stuck in their hair immediately after you warned them not to put to take it off the tracks, or when you hear “he keeps touching me” from the back seat every five minutes the entire trip home—it can make you a little crazy.
But something you need to remember is—you’re gonna miss this.
Let me share the testimony of one Christian mom of five with you. She and her husband’s last name, by the way, is McDonald so all of her kids have cute nick-names like Big Mac, Small Fry, Flurry, and McNugget. She calls hersels McMama and this is her story in her own words:
A beautiful bit of inspiration descended upon me almost two years ago. Right during bath-time. It was an inspiration which changed my parenting from that day forward.
It was dark out, I was wrapping up bath-time, and my husband was still at work. I was sitting on the toilet, hunched over the tub, preparing to get McNugget out of the bath, I lifted Nuggey up out of the tub and wrapped him in his green, hooded dinosaur towel. I slowly rocked him back and forth in my arms and sang Rock-a-bye Baby to my clean toddler. But as he sensed me about to right him, Nuggey tossed his wet head back into the crook of my arm and looked up at me, his forehead still glistening with bath water. “Uh-gain!” he squealed.
Like the good mother I tried to be, I sang Rock-a-bye Baby one more time, but I told him firmly that it would most certainly be the last. My blood pressure was rising as the heat and noise continued to permeate the bathroom. Our other two children were showing no signs of calming down, and I was tired. Yet when I finished singing the second time around, Nuggey begged in his sweet, young voice once again for more.
I didn’t want to sing to him one more time. I was tired. Tired of children, tired of singing, tired of bubbles, tired of voices, tired of being awake, tired of diapers, tired of…well, you get the idea. But then suddenly, it was as if supernatural fairy dust was sprinkled from the heavens directly onto my head, all at once I knew…
I was gonna miss this. I knew that when my children were grown, I was gonna miss this.
Twenty years from now, my older self would give anything for Nuggey to be a toddler again. Even if for just for one hour, I knew that I would love to rock him, sing and stroke his wet hair. But I won’t be able to. Once our children are grown, they are grown. There is no going back to toddlerhood, not for a day. Or an hour. Or a minute.
Right there and then, I vowed to try my best to be ever thankful for the moments I do have with my children. Oh Lord, help me not wish away their young years, always hoping to get more laundry done or other children dried off. I desire to not live my mornings only for the hope of naptime, my afternoons with just bedtime in mind. I will relish each kiss, hug and song. By wiping bottoms, telling the story of Jonah and the whale just one more time, smelling McFlurry’s newborn head, kissing booboos and playing house, I will leave their childhood behind with no regrets.
Even as the fish sticks with tartar sauce fly and the Sharpie stains our kitchen table, as I am awakened every three hours around the clock to nurse our newborn and my body carries around more baby weight than I fear I’ll ever be able to get rid of, I know now that…
…I’m gonna miss this.
No matter what stage of life your kids are in—toddlers, teens or twenties—treasure each moment of it. “Children are a gift from the Lord; babies are a reward” (Psalm 127:3 NCV)—treat them that way.
Conclusion:
So here are God’s blueprints for moms searching for an extreme home makeover… First, rely on the Lord—let God inspire and empower the building of your home. Furthermore, rest from your labor—take time away from all the chores and distractions to just focus on your children, your husband, and your God. Finally, rejoice in your little ones—children are a blessing from God; treasure every moment.
“Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain.”
When God is building your home, you can bet it’ll be a thing of beauty.
Invitation:
As our worship team comes up to lead us in praise, I want to invite everyone back next Sunday for Extreme Home Makeover: Singles Edition. And if you need to surrender your life and family to the Lord, why don’t you do that right now as we stand and sing?
