Mother’s Faith (5/14/17 Goal #2: Families restored)
ATTN: How important is your children’s salvation? – their knowing and loving Jesus? If you told me that in order for my children to be saved, I’d have to give up everything I have – my house, car, my health, learning, even my life – would I do it? I absolutely would. Because I love them and the absolutely the greatest thing that can ever happen to them is for them to personally know and love Jesus. I’d rather have them drop out of high school and love Jesus than they get their doctorate from Harvard University and not love Jesus. And I’m Asian! “What good is it if you gain the world but lose your soul?” Jesus said.
And who will have the greatest influence on their knowing and loving Jesus? That would be me and my wife – their parents. Today’s mother’s day. If you are a mother, the most significant thing you can do in life is leading your child to Christ. If you are a father, the most significant thing you can do in life is to lead your child to Christ. Everything else we do for our children, feeding them, clothing them, sheltering them, wiping them, changing them, driving them to soccer games and dance recitals is so that they will know and love Jesus. As a matter of fact, everything we do as adults in life is so that we can know and love Jesus more – “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God.”
I’ve done 17 years of youth ministry prior to this church and one conclusion that I drew is that “Behind praying mothers, are saved children.” One consistent factor that I saw again and again is that if there is a praying mother, God gets a hold of her prayers and will more likely grant her wish of bringing her children to the Lord. Why not the praying fathers? I just haven’t seen too many men in my life who were strong in the faith to lead the family. Many were faithful in providing for the physical needs, but not so much the spiritual.
Perhaps you are a mother in a similar situation. Your husband is not much of a help when it comes to spiritual things. He’d rather watch pre-season Football on Sunday mornings or play video games than to go to church. What chance do you have of raising godly children since it is the husband who is supposed to be the spiritual head of the family? Or you are a single mom!
Let me give you an example of Timothy, the Apostle Paul’s protege, a pastor to the church of Ephesus, and later a martyr for Christ, Paul is writing to Timothy in this letter…
2 tim 1:4, I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure,dwells in you as well.
Paul makes it clear where Timothy learned his faith from. It was his mother who learned it from her mother – Timothy’s grandmother. Now, can faith be inherited? If a mother is believing, do children automatically get saved? No. You cannot give your faith to anyone. It has to be your own. But that faith can be learned. Since faith comes by hearing and hearing comes from the word of christ, when the mother faithfully teaches her children about Christ, God grants that faith to the children through the teaching of the word by the mother. And that is what happened to Timothy.
And then Paul gives this admonition to Timothy:
2 Tim 3:14, 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
So, Timothy, a young pastor, is admonished to continue in the faith that he has learned from his mother. And he says it this way: “how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” So, from the time he was a child, his mother taught him the Bible – the sacred writings. And he says about the Bible: “which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
So, it is the Bible that is able to make us wise for salvation. What does it mean? I thought we got saved by received Jesus as our greatest Treasure. Yes, but what tells us to do that? The Bible. And what keeps us being saved? The Bible. Salvation is an event as well as a process. In the theological lingo, it teaches us how to be justified as well as how to be sanctified. In everyday language, how to be accepted by God, and then become like him. But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum, magically or miraculously. But God uses human agents – in this case, mothers, to love the word that is in the Bible!
Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Paul only mentions Timothy’s mother and not his father. Why not? Because his father was not a believer. Acts 16: 1 Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek.
So, he had a believing mother but an unbelieving father. Not only that, Timothy was bi-racial. A Jewish mother and Greek father. And that was not good in those days. There was a name that they were called by that was not flattering. In other words, Timothy comes from very difficult circumstances. And yet, it was the grandma and mother who taught this boy the word of God and influenced him enough that he came to faith and later on the apostle paul put him under his wings and made him oversee a congregation. He ultimately died a martyr like many other Christians of his era. He was a great man of God with a very humble beginning. And behind him was a praying mother!
Mothers. Pray for your children. How? Pray these: Eph 1:15
- Wisdom & Knowledge of God
- Hearts to be enlightened.
- To hope in God.
- To value Inheritance in God.
- Power of God.
How different are these from what we wish for our children? What do we typically pray for our children? Safety. Health. To do well in school. Good friends. Self-confidence…. Yes, pray for all those, too, but more pray that they will have Jesus as their treasure. Would you now pray over your children? Verbally, so that they can hear, pray for them.
0 Comments