Mother’s Day 2020
Scripture: Proverbs 18:22; 31:10-31; 1 Samuel 1:10-28; John 10:26-27
I want to say Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers. This is your day and I hope you recognize the importance of the role you play in the lives of your children and all those who look to you as a mother figure.
Today is the 34th anniversary of the day my mother met her heavenly Father and His only Son Jesus Christ. Yes, today, May 10th, thirty-four years ago, my mother died and this has made Mother’s Days hard for me ever since. Many of you know from my previous Mother’s Day messages that my mom died on the Saturday before Mother’s Day in 1986. This morning, if you don’t mind, I want to reminisce about my mother because the person you see before you today was heavily influenced by her presence for 25 years.
Now I’ve got to tell you that I am a card carrying member of the “Momma’s Boys Club.” If you talk to anyone who knew me back in those days, they will confirm my lifelong membership. Man, I loved my mother. We called her Muddear, which I thought was our name for her. But I have since learned that there were many “Muddears” in the south. My mother was special to me because of who she was and how she lived. I want to share a few things about my mother this morning because, like me, some of you have mothers who are already in heaven and some of still have your mothers here with you. In my reminiscing this morning I hope that you will think about your mothers and the impact they had or are having on you and you will take time to give God praise for them.
Now anyone who met “my” Muddear would leave thinking she was a good, God-fearing mother. Proverbs chapter thirty-one talks about a virtuous woman and that is a good description of my mother. When my father married her he knew he had found a virtuous woman. My father was a living testament of Proverbs 18:22 which says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.” My mother had grown up in the Church, but more than anything else, she loved God. My father trusted my mother and she co-managed the finances of the home. It was because of my mother that my father began to tithe to the Church. My father told me that my mom convinced him that they would not lack if he did right by God and he said after he started tithing they did not lack, even when he was unemployed.
My mother made personal sacrifices to provide for the five of us. She made sure we had food to eat, even when there was little in the house. My mother could take a bunch of miscellaneous leftovers and make a meal out of it. That is why my girls have seen me eat things that did not make sense to them, but when they tried it, it sure tasted good. For example, my mother’s version of sloppy joes was a combination of ground beef, soup, mustard, onions and ketchup. (My wife calls it condiments.) But this is the way my mother made it because it made it stretch to feed more people. I remember making it once when my father was visiting and I could see tears in his eyes when he told me it tasted like “Dot’s” – that’s what he called my mother. Needless to say my kids grew up eating that version of it and they have an appreciation for it. Another “food” memory is what Muddear would do when we would get hungry between meals. She would give us a tablespoon of peanut butter to tide us over. To this day, as recently as last week, I still eat a tablespoon of peanut butter to curb my appetite.
My mother would sew for us because they couldn’t afford to buy us everything that we needed. She would also spend time with us playing games. Many a Friday evening I spent playing cards with my parents and my mother’s brother. My uncle and I were teamed up against my parents and when we would be losing I would have this very sad look on my face which would cause Muddear to have pity on me and let me win the hand. Oh that literally drove my daddy crazy! He believed if you were old enough to sit at the table and play, then you were old enough to get a good whipping - if you couldn’t stand the rain go inside. He would fuss at my mother and she would just look at him and smile and keep playing. Oh and did I mention that she was active in our school life. When we did not do what we were supposed to do in school all our teachers had to say was “Do you want me to call Dorothy?” All of our teachers, and I do mean all of them, knew my mother. As I thought about this, what this should have told me was my mother and father had raised us better than the way we were acting. And that one question would cause an instant reset of our actions.
While Proverbs 31 describes my mother, but that is not why I am a momma’s boy. And it’s also not why I have such a great appreciation for my mother. My mother taught me to love God. She made sure we got to Church when she and my father were working weekends and couldn’t take us. When I was a teenager, my mother and I would have long discussions about Scripture because those were the kinds of discussions she had with her father, who was a minister. It was my mother who taught me that a person has to have a set of principles that guide how they live. If they didn’t, they opened themselves up to things that could hurt them in the long run.
One of the examples of this was a job she lost because she wanted to attend Church with us. My mother worked as a waitress which required her to work some weekends. One Easter Sunday she wanted to come see us perform our speeches at Church – she wanted to worship with her children on that Easter Sunday. Her boss told her that if she did not come to work she would be fired. That Easter Sunday morning my mother was with us at Church. I do not know if she and Daddy talked about her decision or not, but she told us it was important for her to be there. Worshipping as a family was so important for my mother that she left her Church and came to my father’s Church so we could all worship together. This was another example to me of one of her guiding principles. Family first. Not me first. Prior to her making that decision, we went to Church with my father and my mother would attend her Church alone except for special occasions when we would often attend both Churches. In her decision to join us at my father’s church my mother wanted us to see her and my father serving God together so she made the decision to leave her Church and worship with us.
There is one more memory that I want to share with you. This is probably the most important step my mother took in her quest to truly know, understand and serve God. After I went into the military, my mother shared with me her desire to have a more intimate relationship with God and walking in the gifts of the Spirit. She was hungry for more of God and she knew there was more than what she was learning at our home church. I want you to understand what it took for her to find what she was seeking. We lived in a small, southern town where segregation was firmly practiced on Sunday mornings. This was in the early eighties when blacks went to the black churches and whites went to the white churches in our town. My mother grew up Baptist. Her father was a Baptist minister who had pastored several small churches in the community. Most of my mother’s extended family had Baptist backgrounds. My father’s family was also Baptist. All of my parent’s friends were, for the most part, Baptist. You get the picture.
So imagine the surprise when Muddear made the decision to leave her Baptist church and start attending a white Assemblies of God church. My mother went to that church and integrated it. But it came at a cost. Some of her closest friends turned their backs on her – not only because she went to a church of a different denomination but also because she chose to attend a white church. These were some of the people whom they would get together with on the weekends to have cookouts and play cards with. Some of them, whom she loved dearly, even told her that she was going to hell because of her decision. So she lost friends when she made that decision. But that’s not the worst of it. The white church did not immediately accept her either. Now let me remind you New Light. We are talking about people who professed to love and serve Jesus, who professed to be Christians. Initially, she was allowed to attend the church, but not join it. So initially she lost her friends in order to attend a church that did not want her. Again, we are talking about Christians. Can you imagine the strength it took for Muddear to do that? But what did she receive? She found the relationship with God that she was seeking. That was more important to her than how her friends treated her. That was more important to her than looking into the faces of people that did not want to worship with her. My cousin told me that once when she was sick my mother visited her and prayed for her. She said after my mother prayed for her, she actually started feeling better and this was the first time that had happened. My mother gained the confidence and faith to do that after she left and started growing spiritually. She knew this was something Christians were empowered to do and she believed it was something Christians “should” be doing. The pastor of that Church died last year, but at my mother’s funeral he said that when my mother started coming to his Church it caused him to study more because she had so many questions. Her being their lit a fire within him that made him grow. Before her death Muddear was allowed to join that church.
I want you to know why I am the way that I am and why I have such a high appreciation for good mothers. I am not talking about the mother who has a child and does nothing for them, expecting everyone else to raise their child. They spend their time living their life rather than making sure that their child has the things that they need in order to grow up and be a good citizen who loves God. Being able to make babies does not make you a good mother or a good father. It’s what you do after they are here that make that determination. I am sitting here before you today because my mother made sure that I had a relationship with God. She wanted all of her children to have that relationship and she spent years praying for all of us. But she was not alone. I want to share two stories with you about godly Proverbs thirty-one mothers.
In First Samuel chapter one you will find the story about Hannah, one of Elkanah’s two wives. She was barren and her rival, Peninnah, threw it in her face every chance she got. Hannah was so miserable that she was constantly crying and began to be resentful toward the Lord. But one day she decided to go to the temple and, while crying out to the Lord, she made a vow. Let’s pick the record up in verse 10. “She, greatly distressed, prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly. She made a vow and said, ‘O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head.” (1 Samuel 1:10-11) The Lord answered her prayer. Eli, the prophet, saw her crying and asked her why and she told him everything. In verse 17, he tells Hannah, “…..Go in peace; and may the God of Israel grant your petition that you have asked of Him.” Hannah gave birth to Samuel, perhaps the greatest prophet in Israel outside of Moses, a little over a year later. After Hannah weaned Samuel, which means he would have been anywhere between five years old and 12 years old, she brought him to Eli so that he could serve in the temple. Let’s pick the record up in verse 26. “She said, ‘Oh, my lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you, praying to the LORD. For this boy I prayed, and the LORD has given me my petition which I asked of Him. So I have also dedicated him to the LORD; as long as he lives he is dedicated to the LORD.’ And he worshiped the LORD there.” (1 Samuel 1:26-28)
The reason I wanted to share this record with you is because of the sacrifice Hannah made. Peninnah, her rival, had several sons. Hannah only had Samuel. But she was a Proverbs thirty one mother. She loved her son but she was also a person of her word. She kept her promise to the Lord and gave Samuel to God for safe keeping. Hannah knew that she would not see Samuel grow up the way most mothers see their children grow. New Light, this is an example of how mothers make sacrifices for their children. But Hannah’s story does not end there. When you keep reading into chapter two you see that Hannah does kept her word and every year she took Samuel a new robe to wear as he ministered to the Lord. And it was during one of those annual visits when Eli blessed her and her husband. First Samuel 2:20-21 records, “Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, ‘May the LORD give you children from this woman in place of the one she dedicated to the LORD.’ And they went to their own home. The LORD visited Hannah; and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew before the LORD.”
Hannah was blessed with three additional sons and two daughters because she had given Samuel to the Lord. And please do not forget that Samuel replaced Eli as God’s prophet in the land because Eli’s sons, who should have replaced him, were so evil God destroyed them. Hannah gave her son to the Lord whom God raised up to be His prophet. Mothers today continue to give their children to the Lord, some because of their love for the children and the Lord and some because they do not know what else to do with the kids. Regardless of the reason, a mother who gives her child to the Lord is putting her trust in God to do for their child what she herself cannot do. Praise God for these mothers!
God is sovereign. He can do anything His heart desires. Right? But, what is the one characteristic that defines who He is? 1 John 4:8 says “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Because God is love, this is why we have John 3:16 in the Bible. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” To me, this is amazing. God is love but in order for Jesus to be the Savior that we needed, He had to experience a different kind of love. And the first human love Jesus experienced, New Light, was the love of a mother. Think about that. God the Father put the Savior of the world into the hands of a mother because one of the most important things in this life that He wanted His Son to experience was the love of a mother. It was the loving eyes of Mary, His mother that Jesus saw as she nursed Him. It was the loving eyes of Mary, His mother that Jesus saw as she changed His diapers. It was the loving eyes of Mary, His mother, that Jesus saw as a baby and a toddler. It was into the loving arms of Mary, His mother, that Jesus ran crying after falling and scraping His knees. It was the crying, hysterical Mary, His mother, that Jesus saw running to Him when she and Joseph found Him in the temple after searching for Him for three days. It was the loving eyes of Mary, His mother, that Jesus saw as she walked toward him saying there was no more wine for the wedding guests in John chapter two. And it was Mary, His mother, who told the servants with the uttermost confidence, “This is my son. Whatever He tells you to do, don’t hesitate and don’t ask why. Just do it.” New Light, that is a mother! But I want you to see something else. For me, that one moment while He was still on the cross demonstrated truly just how important Mary, His mother, was to Him. Turn with me to John 19 and we’re going to read verses 26 and 27. “When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ From that hour the disciple took her into his own household. (John 19:26-27) When Jesus said to Mary, “Woman,” it was the highest honor that a son could bestow upon his mother. A son, in that culture, only had one “woman” in his life – His mother. Jesus was letting Mary, His mother, know how much He loved her and, just as important, that it was honor for Him to have her as His mother! And to prove that, Jesus looked at the disciple He loved, John, and said to him, “This is now your mother. You are now her son. She will be to you what she was to me – your only woman! I’m trusting you John, and only you, to are care of our woman! I’m trusting you to take care of Muddear!” Just like God the Father had put the Savior of the world into the hands of Mary to love and care for, now the Savior of the world was putting Mary into someone else’s hands, who would love and care for her.
New Light, like me, some of you no longer have mothers who are physically here to celebrate Mother’s Day. And like me, you do have their memories. You do have stories to tell. Tell them today. Give your children a glimpse into the lives of your mothers. Let them hear about the sacrifices that they made. Let them hear about moments in your life that made you smile because of her. And for those of you, who will be celebrating Mother’s Day with your mothers, let them know how much you love them. Tell them. Tell them how they have impacted your life by telling them “your stories.” I believe the greatest gift we can give to our mothers, especially on Mother’s Day, are the stories that show them how much the sacrifices they made for us means to us. Today, I want you to honor your “Woman,” New Light. And if this applies, honor your Muddear!
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
(If you are ever in the Kansas City, KS area, please come and worship with us at New Light Christian Fellowship, 15 N. 14th Street, Kansas City, KS 66102. Our service Sunday worship starts at 9 a.m. and Thursday night Bible study at 7 p.m. Also, for use of our social media, you can find us at newlightchristianfellowship on FB. To get our live stream services, please make sure you “like” and turn on notifications for our page so you can be notified when we are live streaming. We also have a church website and New Light Christian Fellowship YouTube channel for more of our content. We are developing more social media streams so please stand by and we will notify you once those channels are up and running. We look forward to you worshipping with us. May God bless and keep you.)
