May 9, 2008
One cannot overestimate the wisdom of God in the creation of the high and holy calling of motherhood. Nor can one fathom the unsearchable depths of His grace and love in His deploying of mothers across the world throughout the long annals of its history. What beautiful and wonderful worth has our God attached to motherhood! What an awesome calling it is to be the vessels through which Creator God pours expressions of His own love as children are nurtured, taught, and comforted! God created motherhood with eternal things in mind.
But the significance of motherhood, like fatherhood, has become confused, distorted by warped perspectives that radiate from a corrupted world. And honestly, the spiritual adversary that the Bible describes as seeking to consume the unwary (1 Peter 5:8), is wily enough to know that mothers must rank high on his priority list for spiritual attack. If he can influence the culture, which shapes the attitudes of people and the resulting policies of those people’s society, he can distract mothers from their awesome mission of rearing their children in a holy reverence of God. He can degrade their sense of dignity and worth and convince them to spend themselves on things other than raising their children to walk with Jesus. And he can destroy the narrow window of opportunity that mothers have in the years that their children are young and open, resulting in failure to prepare them for the spiritual and moral battles that are rapidly heading their way.
It really is time for us reclaim motherhood as God’s territory. Let us realize the power and significance of godly mothering and let us look to the Lord in helping us to do just that.
Consider for a moment the strategic involvement of God in the appointment and preparation of mothers who would influence the world. They became tools in His hand to steer people back to faith in God and obedience to His will. Sarah, the mother of Isaac, was groomed for faith so that her son and then her son’s sons would know what faith is (Genesis 21:1-7). Moses’ mother, through her watchful willingness to lose her son in order to save him, was divinely restored as the little one’s caregiver so that he might become a mighty means of deliverance for God’s people (Exodus 2:1-10). Manoah’s wife was called to holy living so that a legacy of power would endure in her son’s life (in spite of his own moral deficiencies), providing aid and encouragement at a time that the people of Israel were especially vulnerable (Judges 13:2-25). Or Hannah, Samuel’s mother, whose dogged persistence in prayer resulted in a blessing from God that not only provided her what she wanted, but gave the world a prophet who would unite the Lord’s people and anoint a lineage from which God’s own Son would descend in human form (1 Samuel 1:1-28, 16:1-13, Matthew 1:1-17). And then, of course, there was Mary, the humble young woman that God chose to be the one to miraculously give birth to, love, and nurture His own beloved Son.
A godly mother is worth far more than her weight in gold: her worth can’t even be contained by all the bank vaults on earth (Proverbs 31:10-31). The only place large enough is the treasure house of heaven itself.
Is this then a pressure to be a “perfect” mother? Nope. There isn’t any such thing. What’s necessary isn’t perfection, but an understanding and appreciation of the wonderful assignment that God has given a mother. The kind of understanding and appreciation that I’m talking about generate dependence on God to lead the way in how to rear a mother’s child. They produce a determined commitment to so cherish the precious life entrusted to her that she constantly wrestles with God in prayer for her child. And they result in a personal surrender to the Lord that is renewed each day. As her life is increasingly aligned with the will of God in all the spheres of her life, her work as mother is filled with the power, love, and wisdom necessary to parent the way that the Lord does.
Don’t let anyone kid you: mothering is four or five fulltime careers all wrapped up into one. There is nothing that can compare with parenthood’s potential to impact the world for eternity or even alter the course of the generation that is being raised up for its turn at the helm of world events. The first roles that God instituted after He had made the first man and the first woman, were husband and wife. The NEXT roles, naturally flowing from the first two, were father and mother. No office or title bestowed or created since in the normal conventions of any human society have been so significant. If you’re a mother, you’ve been given such a tremendous position of influence that mere words cannot express its worth. Seek to be the kind of woman that God can use. Depend on Him for the patience, love, and energy necessary to be the kind of mother you want to be: even if you feel like you can’t measure up, remember that God has chosen YOU to be His special ambassador to your child.
If you’ve been blessed with a godly mother, take time to honor God by honoring her – not just on Mother’s Day but in general. If your mother has fallen significantly short, then seek to forgive her and remember that you still have a Father in heaven Who loves you and will be all and more than you could ever ask in a parent.
God’s people today need to honor motherhood, protect it, and support it. It’s time that we esteem it and restore it to its place of prominence in the list of vocations a woman pursues. And again, it is definitely time for us reclaim it as God’s territory. It was, after all, His idea in the first place.
(Thom Mollohan and his family have ministered in southern Ohio the past twelve and half years and is the author of The Fairy Tale Parables: Classic Fairy Tales Pointing to God's Love and Truth. He is the pastor of Pathway Community Church and may be reached for comments or questions by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).
