Victorious Christian Life Sermon Iv: Making Mothers The Pride Of Our Homes Series

VICTORIOUS CHRISTIAN LIFE: MAKING MOTHERS THE PRIDE OF OUR HOMES

Consider the rose and how its beauty has brightened the life and made the day of many a woman whether wife or mother or unclaimed blessing.

No finer tribute has been paid to motherhood, yea, all of womanhood, than that which was rendered by the great tenor, Mario Lanza, in his classic recording, “For You Alone”:

“Take this rose, this little tender rose, the rarest flower in all God’s garden fair, and let it be, while yet its crimson glows, an emblem of the love I proudly bear.

“Take this heart, the heart that loves thee well, and let it flame before thy shrine, my own. Take thou my heart, for oh, your dear eyes tell God fashioned it for you, for you alone.”

In much the same way that rose growers take pride in the blossoms that are produced by their tender love and care, and some of them take the best of their roses to enter in a contest, most if not all of us take pride in our moms who brought us into this world and nurtured us into adulthood.

Thus, for the most part, none of us living the victorious Christian life should have a problem with the concept of Making Moms the Pride of Our Homes.

Say what you will about great men, but its mothers who make the biggest impact on the world! For example:

George Washington: “My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”

Abraham Lincoln: “All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my mother.”

Ronald Reagan: “From my mother I learned the value of prayer, how to have dreams and believe we could make them come true.”

Perhaps you’ve heard of the great sculptor Bartholdi – best known for his famous statue in New York Harbor. When commissioned, Bartholdi was told that the statue he would sculpt must represent the ideal of liberty, respect, love, and acceptance. He examined dozens of heroes to inspire his sculpting of the Statue of Liberty, but in the end, he chose as his model his own mother.

John and Charles Wesley, founders of the Methodist Church, are examples of many of the world’s most renowned spiritual leaders whose great success can be traced directly to the influence of their mothers - all of whom were women of faith and prayer.

And what about you and me? Cannot we attribute to our mothers much if not all our innate tendencies toward being honorable people who at least seek to do right in God’s sight - and seek to do right in our mother’s sight. Not only we ask, “What would God have me do?” but also “What would mama have me do?”

Did your mom, like mine, have an ability to be almost everywhere at once . . . have eyes in the back of her head . . . explain to you, in later years, that the joy of motherhood was what she experienced when all the children were finally in bed? One thing I learned early on about mama was that you can fool some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool mama. If she told me once, she told me a thousand times, “I can read you like a book.”

Try as hard as I might, I could never figure mama out – which turned out to be a helpful experience later in life, when I learned the same thing about my wife – just can’t figure her out. It must be a “woman thing”, you reckon? Which reminds me:

A man was walking along a beach, stumbled across an old lamp, picked it up, rubbed it, out popped a genie. Genie said: “Listen, I’m tired of all these wishes, so instead of three, you get only one wish.”

The man thought long and hard, then replied, “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii but I’m afraid to fly and I get seasick; could you build me a bridge?” Laughing the genie said, “That’s impossible!” You’ve got to come up with another wish.

After thinking about it, the man responded, “Well, I’ve been dating for years, and the women I date always tell me that I don’t care about them, that I’m too insensitive. So, my wish is to fully understand women and to know exactly how they feel and what they’re thinking.”

The genie paused for a minute, then answered, “You want that bridge with two or four lanes?”

Be that as it may, there is one thing someone figured out, about wives if not all women. It’s best summed up in the words of an old saying: “Men may wear the pants in the family, but the woman tells him which pair.”