A Faith Over Fear Mom

Good morning, Salt Church. We hope you enjoyed the worship. Hope you were blessed by that. Obviously, I am not Pastor Leon. If you haven't met me before, I am his very lucky wife, Miranda, and I'm so excited that you're joining us this morning.

As usual, if you are watching live, please interact with us. Check in on the Church Center app. Talk to your friends. Start a watch party. We want you to talk to us.

Throw up some emojis. I just ask that you don't abuse the care emoji, because I don't have it on any of my devices, and I'm a little resentful. But in all seriousness, it's really good to interact in times like this. This is your chance to grow in your faith with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And today, today only, if you are a mom, or an expecting mom, or you're just wanting to be a mom sometime in the future, we have something special for you.

If you post or email us or instant message us and give us your name and your email address, you'll be entered for a $100 Amazon gift card today and today only. So please interact. Let us know you're here, and you might win something in addition to hopefully getting a great message today. On that note, happy, happy Mother's Day. I'm so honored that Leon asked me to speak to you today on this wonderful, wonderful holiday, second only to Easter and Christmas.

I am, in case you were wondering, a mom. I have had children, so I meet the bare minimum requirements for speaking on Mother's Day. If you don't know my kids, Max and Savannah, they are painfully cute. Max has the sweetest heart. Savannah probably should have her own YouTube channel.

She is hilarious. She provides hours of endless entertainment day in and day out. While I was preparing this message, I couldn't help but think of all the wonderful mothers in my life. If you know me, you know I love to talk about the people that I love and the people in my life. First and foremost, my own mom.

She's probably watching today, I hope, with my dad. She clearly did an amazing job. Look at me. Thank you, Mom, for giving birth, for bringing me into this world. I also have an amazing, amazing work culture.

My boss. I am thinking about her right now. She is such a Hannah. She has spent years on her knees, praying and waiting and hoping. And she's finally, finally about to be a mom for the first time.

Any second, it's going to happen. I'm so excited to get to be a part of that. I have co-workers who are incredible moms. Two of my best friends and co-workers, they were into homeschooling before it became the hottest trend of 2020. One of them, I actually saw a picture this week in her high chair, her baby.

There's a safety harness. I didn't even know those were a thing. Such a good mom. The other one, literally on her lunch break at one point this week, she made her kids sandwiches in the shape of robots. I'm pretty sure yesterday, Savannah came running up to me with a honey bun and said, can I have it for lunch?

And I said, you absolutely may. And furthermore, thank you for being so independent. So many great moms in my life. But you know, the one I want to focus on today, let's call her Kim. The Kim's in my life may or may not refer to a real person.

The Kim's and the Miranda's. These are the moms who, at our Sunday night salts, and if you don't know what those are, that's when in the summer, for one Sunday, each month during the summer, we all get together at 43rd Street at the oceanfront, and we have an amazing time as a church family. We bring food, we pop up a tent, we have tables, we all sit around in our beach chairs, and we talk to one another and have an amazing time. Except for Kim and Miranda. We're the ones who, when we get there, we immediately take a head count of all the children who are there.

And then, like Rain Man, we obsessively count them every 10 to 12 seconds. You know, we're just talking, interacting. Tell me about it, Teresa. Tell me more. And then it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Good, good. Then we go back. You think we're talking to you. You think we're listening. We're not.

We're counting the kids. We're doing a head count. Don't you think we would rather stuff our faces with guacamole and, you know, all those little crescent-wrapped hot dogs? Don't you think I'd rather be like my husband and all the other husbands there who are surfing and having a good time and generally not paying any attention to the kids? But we can't.

Why? Because there's a huge ocean. It's right there. The actual ocean. There's no safety fence in front of it.

It's an ocean. And some of our children can't swim. Yes, I realize this reflects poorly on me as a mother. Don't care. Savannah really can't swim yet.

How am I supposed to relax? If you're like me, if you're the fretful mom, if you're the anxious mom, I'm talking to you today. So what are we to do? What is an anxious mom to do? I know that I can't live my life that way.

I know that I cannot spend the rest of my children's adolescent years sick with worry and anxiety constantly. Although I can try. I'm doing a good job of it now. I know in my head that God has answers. One of our theme verses for this series, Faith Over Fear, has been 2 Timothy 1-7.

It says, God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. I know other verses by heart. Isaiah 43, chapter one. It's a gorgeous song. Look it up.

I won't sing it to you today. It says, do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. I also love 1 John 4-18.

We get that love theme repeated again. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. I know rationally that God is love. He's perfect love.

And I know that if I have faith in Jesus Christ, I can walk continually in the presence of the God of perfect love. And that will help me drive out the fear and the anxieties. But how do I do that? How do I become the faith over fear mom? No shock.

I went to the Bible to look for some examples and I found the perfect one. And it might be a little cliche, but Mary, the mother of Jesus, this is a woman who experienced the complete extremes of anxiety in parenthood. I mean, think about it. Before Jesus was even born, she got pregnant as a virgin. She was already betrothed to her husband, to Joseph.

They had not come together in a public marriage, but they were, according to custom of that day, they were in a covenant marriage. They were already technically married. So she faced execution. She could have been stoned. The only thing that stopped that was Joseph not reporting it.

So she faced major anxiety before she even had her child. Anxieties we would never face today. Not in America. Fast forward to delivery. Can you imagine?

Just imagine right now you are pregnant. It's 40 weeks. You're about to deliver. Not only do you not have a hospital to go to, you don't even have a home. You don't even have, you're walking down the street.

You're in labor. You're having contractions. You have nowhere to go. Just think about the fear and the terror that you would be... Experiencing.

Fast forward 12 years. Mary and her family, probably her extended family, and Jesus, they travel to Jerusalem just like they did every year for Passover. Jesus is 12, and he is her perfect, sinless child. But there's still cause for fear and anxiety. Somehow, it's not exactly clear, they are separated.

And Mary and Joseph don't know where their son is. They spend three days searching for Jesus before they finally go back to Jerusalem and discover that he's sitting in the temple teaching, apparently displaying teenaged wisdom and understanding far beyond anybody's imagination. And Mary, I love this verse, she goes up to her son and she says, son, why did you do this to us? Your father and I were worried sick. Of course, Jesus famously replied, why were you looking for me?

I have to be about my father's business. Would your 12 year old get away with telling you that? I'm just trying to imagine the situation and how she must have felt when she heard that and that the confusion and the fear and the anxiety of trying to balance being afraid and caring for her child and knowing that his destiny was world-shaking. And of course, Mary faced every mother's worst nightmare. She had to surrender her son to a brutal, undeserved death on the cross.

She really is a great example that we can look to for someone, a real person who existed, who experienced so much fear and so much anxiety. And I think there are three small talking points that we can take from Mary's experiences. And I'd like to talk about those with you today. Now, the first one I think is the most painful. So let's just rip it off like a bandaid.

And that's this. Number one, being a faith over fear mom means learning how to manage suffering. Yay. Let's go back to Isaiah, shall we? Chapter 43, verse one.

We do start with God saying, don't fear. I have redeemed you. I know your name. I have called you by name. You are mine.

But it goes on. And in verse two, I just I love this translation. God says, when you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned.

The flames will not consume you. But you have to think about what those words are really saying. It doesn't say if we go through trouble. If we walk through the fire of oppression. It says when you will experience difficulty.

You will walk through the fire of oppression. You will be so underwater that you feel like you can't breathe. You will encounter something so scorching that you think you cannot endure the pain. It's right there. He says it's going to happen.

But God says, I'll be with you. I won't leave you a smoking husk. I won't leave you a pile of ashes. I won't let you be destroyed. You see, the idea of the prosperity gospel doesn't just apply to our finances.

There's this overarching idea that if we pray enough and we try hard enough and we do everything right enough, our finances will be blessed. Our families will be blessed. My marriage will be perfect. My kids will be Christ followers and healthy and live long lives on this earth. But what do you say to the scores of faith-filled, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving mothers who've experienced so much pain, so much struggle, children who have rebelled, who've walked away from their faith, who battle addiction, sickness, illness, injury.

I lost my brother Stephen in 2011. My own parents, I watched what they went through, what my mom went through. My mom's mom went through the same thing. My grandmother, she lost a child at 20 to cancer. I bet you, if you are not personally, you don't have a personal experience with that, you absolutely know someone who does.

What do you say to that mom who's endured that kind of suffering? What do we do? Because it's going to happen. The answer sounds a little trite, but it's a pretty simple command. We are to pray.

We are to learn to pray with intention, with persistence. You pray first, you pray next, and you pray last. You can ask anyone who's really gotten on their knees for days, months, maybe years. We have a mom in our own church who has an incredible testimony about her children, especially her son, who was battling so much addiction, turning away, was not treating his mother well. She never stopped praying.

She gave him over to God, she prayed, and now she's seeing miracles happen. It can happen if you go boldly into the throne room and you ask God for what you want and what you need, and you do not give up, no matter how long it takes. Please keep praying. I've seen those miracles in my own kids' lives. I remember this time when Max was just a toddler, and we lived at another house, and the whole ground floor was tile.

He was coming down the stairs. We had a landing in between the two sets of stairs, and just as he started toddling down that second set, I saw him overbalance, and he started to pitch forward, just on the top stair. I mean, head first. There was nothing stopping this fall. I was across the room.

I knew there was no way I could reach him in time, and I threw up the quickest prayer of all time, just begging God to stop him. And you know what? I watched. As I watched Max almost past that point of no return, I saw his little body jerk back. It was very unnatural to see.

It did not look like it should have been possible in reality. It looked like someone was behind him and had yanked on his shirt and pulled him back and righted him. I have no doubt that that was the Lord. And it can happen in your life, too. You will see miracles.

James 5, 16, and I love this translation, says, the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Get in right standing with God and get on your knees, and you're going to see miracles happen. Number two, being a faith over fear mom means learning how to distance. Doesn't sound a lot better than suffering, does it? But hear me out.

We all know the story of Jesus turning water into wine. If you don't, it's in the Gospel of John. It was Jesus's first miracle. All the wine drinkers out there are cheering right now for that. It was the first miracle.

He was at a wedding in Cana in Galilee, along with his disciples and Mary, his mother. Well, the horror, they ran out of wine. Mary goes up to Jesus and she says, they have no more wine. Son, the wine is gone. Now, she didn't explicitly ask him for anything, but the implication is clear.

She wanted him to take care of this. What happened next? It's really, really interesting. Jesus' response in chapter 2, verse 4. He says, Woman, what does that have to do with us?

Well, snap! I mean, that sounds rude. That sounds harsh. But believe it or not, Jesus was not being hostile to his mother. Woman was actually a common greeting.

It's the way that Jesus greeted various women throughout the Gospels. We see that. That was not uncommon. What was odd was that he used it to address his mother, who was not just another woman. Right after that, the next phrase, what does that have to do with us?

That's actually a translation of a common Hebrew idiom. Not one that implies hostility, but one that implies disengagement. So when you take that greeting and that idiom together, they have a combined rhetorical effect that's very specific. It's one that minimizes the mother-son relationship. It creates disengagement.

Now, the reason for it is immediately clear in the same verse. Jesus immediately goes on to say, after he says, Woman, what does this have to do with us? He says, My hour has not yet come. What was he saying? He was saying no human, no person on the planet, not even his own mother, knew or could control his destiny and his purpose, which was, of course, to restore all of humanity to God the Father.

Now, the connection to the faith over fear mom may seem tenuous, but I think it's there. We know, we know from various verses in the Bible that God, he formed our babies in our wombs. He numbered the hairs on their heads and raised their lives. We even desired to be a mom. He knew who our children were.

Our kids belong to God first. And they're going to belong to God last. And honestly, in between, most of them will spend most of their lives belonging to their spouse. We won't be number one in their lives for a lot, for a lot of time. It's sometimes hard to swallow, but I think the art of distance is critical in the parenting journey.

The point of that distance, learning that God alone determines when your child's hour has come. I think one of the most abused verses is the one that says, train up a child in the way he should go. And later on in life, he won't depart from it. That does not mean train up your child in the way you want him or her to go. That does not mean train up your child in the correct biblical teaching.

Train up your child and conform his or her will to your own or to God's. It means you lovingly shepherd that child in the way that God has designed them to go. It means you let them walk into their God-given purpose. And you don't know that purpose. And you can't control that purpose.

You have to let go and let God direct their path. Number three, we're moving right along. Now, being a faith over fear, mom, means learning how to surrender. We've talked about prayer. We know we have to pray.

We know we have to pray without ceasing. But what happens when you have prayed and you have prayed and you have prayed? And no matter how hard you pray and no matter how prostrate you are and no matter how many years you've prayed, those prayers are unanswered. What do you do? The critical piece in becoming a faith over fear mom is learning the art of radical surrender.

Of learning to say, thy will be done no matter what. You know, being a mom so often is about doing for other people. But I think being a mom does something for us. Something happens to me. Something happens inside of me.

Yes, I'm enriched. Yes, I'm blessed. But I'm pruned. I'm stripped down to my most vulnerable. And ultimately, I realize that I am not in control.

Now this one's a hard ask. Letting go. Letting go of that control and learning to just say yes to God. And it's a hard ask because of psychological principles. I mean, in the real world, in reality, with tangible things that you can see and touch, you can control them.

You can kind of move them around. But your feelings, your thoughts, your impressions, they do not work the same way. The more we focus on trying to control our thoughts and our fears and anxieties, the more we obsess over them. And the more you obsess, the more you begin to worship your own fretful thoughts. Think about it.

What do you give your devotion to? What do you spend the most time on? What do you focus your thoughts on? Whatever it is, that's what you worship. And I have come to realize at points in my day and in my life, I am worshiping my own fear.

I am worshiping my own anxiety over my kids. But you know what? Life is never going to unfold according to my plan. I will never conform the will of my children to my own will, much less God's. We have to allow God the room to heal us, to transform us.

And sometimes that comes in the form of unexpected tragedies, reversals of fortune, but they're not evil. They're chances for us to turn ourselves over willingly to God and give him the space to come in and heal and just pour his grace over us and change us. Mary, she beautifully illustrated this posture of surrender throughout scripture. From the very beginning, when the angel came to her and said, Mary, I know you're a virgin, but the Holy Spirit, he's going to put a child in your belly and his name is going to be Jesus. And he's going to alter the course of history.

And it's going to be amazing. Is that OK? And Mary said, I am your faithful servant. You can do whatever it is you want. Everything you've said, let it be done.

She surrendered. And she did the same thing at the end. She surrendered her child to death on a cross. She knew his hour had come. You see, surrender, it's about giving yourself over.

It's about giving something back. It might mean giving it back to God. It's all about your yes. Instead of being an I'm afraid God, mom. Learn to be an I'm afraid God.

But yes, anyway, mom. Surrender isn't easy, but it's absolutely possible with God's grace. It will take prayer and petition and persistence and discipline. But the results, they're miraculous. For God is able through his mighty power in us to accomplish infinitely more.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Then we could think or ask. Let's pray. God, sometimes it's really, really difficult to say, Thy will be done.

No matter what, I lift up my hands and I open my heart and I give you everything, my will, my desires, my hopes, and even my children. Help me to say yes to you in all things, God. Help me to say yes, even when I'm grieving, when I'm disappointed, even when I'm crippled with fear, because I know that I know that I know that you are good and that you work everything out for my salvation and my sanctification. And God, if there's anybody listening today who doesn't know you, and this sounds foreign to them, I ask that you would move in their hearts in a mighty, powerful way right now, right this second, that you would reveal to them that your son, Jesus, he died and he rose again and he ascended to heaven with you. And that if they just say, I can't do this alone.

I've fallen short. I need help. And they believe that, that they can live eternally with you one day. God, we ask all this in the precious name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

Now, if you prayed that prayer, you gave your life to Christ, or even if you just need more prayer and this message has stirred something up in you and you say, hey, I've got all these fears and anxieties and I don't know what to do with them. Please let us know. Reach out, comment. If you are watching live, no one will judge you. And even if they do, who cares?

It's Facebook. Send us a message. You can go to saltchurch.org and you can send us an email. Let us know.

We have prayer teams, connections teams, kids ministries who want to help you and get you plugged in. If you want to meet with virtual groups and you need that interaction, we can get you plugged in there too. Don't be silent and don't be a stranger. So that's all for this week. I want you to go out.

I want you to celebrate your own motherhood or celebrate all the amazing mothers I know you have in your life. God bless you and we'll see you next week.