Mothering God’s Way

Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. Good morning. So excited that everybody is here. How about worship?

It really is amazing to get to enjoy worship from the crowd. Thank you so much. Alex, TJ, I joke that I get distracted because the drums are so good, and it's hard to follow along, so I just got to enjoy the drums in all their glory today. And how about Lydia's angelic voice coming in with that laugh? Did you get chills?

I got chills. I was like, yes, God, surrender. Oh, man. It was just such a blessing. So thank you, team, for giving me the opportunity to get to sit out there and just listen to the worship.

That was awesome. So, yes, I am here. I am Miranda. For those who don't know me, I do meet the minimum requirement to speak on Mother's Day in that I have children. That's probably about it.

But at least I have that. And I will go ahead and address the elephant in the room for anybody who has not yet had a chance to comment. Yes, I am now rocking a center part. It's actually a little disappointing how few of you have commented. That's a big zero.

My mother did comment when I did it. She said she didn't think she liked it or it worked for me. So if she's watching, Mom, what do you think? How does it look? How does it look?

It's been an interesting week for me besides the center part change. I don't think I've ever had a center part in my entire life. So I turned 40 and said, we're going to do a center part. And it's been a big week. It's been a big week.

But also, apparently, when you turn 40, lots of things happen. Like, you lose the ability to see. I was at the gym the other day, ran into a barbell, had a huge knot on the center of my forehead. I had to really concealer it up this morning. I was like, please, God.

Don't want to have a big purple, you know, thing in my head. It's like a really bad joke, right? A preacher's wife walks into a bar. That's it. That's it.

That's the joke. That's the end. That's the end of the joke. So that's been my week so far. But I'm so excited to be here with you guys.

Leon and I were discussing the message today. And Lot, there's so many great Mother's Day messages. There's so many things you can focus on. There's so many great mothers in the Bible. But we really wanted to talk about parenting a little more in general, just as another one of these extraordinary relationships, because that's been the series we have been building on.

And there really is not much more extraordinary than the relationship between parent and child. Leon and I together have raised just two incredible children, Max and Savannah. They are basically raised. They're 9 and 11. Our jobs are basically done.

It's very exciting. Max can make himself a pancake on the stove. I don't know if she can tie her shoes, though. So maybe we have a little more to be done. However, I'm also allowing them now to walk back from the bus stop to our home by themselves.

I watch from my house. I feel like this is growth. Yes? Is no one impressed? Thank you.

Thank you. So lots and lots of growth. We've done just an incredible job with our kids, as you can see. We are paragons of parenting globally. But I also wanted to focus in specifically from, who's laughing?

That's right, I knew she was. Christina and I both have incredible husbands who do actually a very good job parenting. So sometimes I'm like, ugh, how necessary am I? They do a great job. But moms, we do have something very special.

We do have something very unique to offer. So I wanted to talk today about parenting and mothering God’s Way. But through the lens of what we mothers need as godly mothers, what do we need to have within us? What do we need to have inside of us to be able to mother God’s Way? Because you can just apply a checklist or a playbook of rules, right, to your kids.

There's things you can do and things you can follow and behaviors you can adopt. But if it doesn't start from the inside, if you don't have something within yourself, if you don't have these qualities that you are trying to instill, they're going to know you're faking it. I mean, kids aren't dumb. And being a godly mother, it doesn't start from the outside in. It starts from the inside out.

So our basic premise today is that children need godly mothers. Amen? Right? Children need godly mothers. But the key to being a godly mother is being a godly woman.

I love Proverbs 31. I know you're thinking it's overdone and it's used so many times, but it just is so perfect. It's just such an incredible section of scripture that talks about women in the context of a wife and a mother. But really, you could just say a godly woman because so many of these attributes speak to her. So I just want to list just a little bit what a godly woman looks like.

Proverbs says, if you can find a truly good wife, she is worth more than precious gems. Her husband can trust her and she will richly satisfy his needs. She will not hinder him, but help him all her life. Am I doing good, Leon? On that?

Yeah? I ticked those boxes. I think I'm going to skip the next few because I don't actually tick any of them. Involving wool, flax, buying imported foods from ships, and getting up before dawn. I am not ever going to get up before dawn.

But it also says she gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household and plans the day's work for her servant girls. So I don't have any, I don't have any servant girls. I'm just saying we don't have any servant girls, so I feel like we should not have to get up before dawn. Those kind of, you know, cancel each other out. She is a woman of strength and dignity and has no fear of old age.

Well, when you look this good, why would you be afraid? When she speaks, her words are wise, and kindness is the rule for everything she says. I've got to work on that one. She watches carefully all that goes on throughout her household and is never lazy. And here's our core verses, Proverbs 31, 28 through 30.

Her children stand and bless her. So does her husband. He praises her with these words. There are many fine women in the world. There are many good looking ladies out there.

But... You are the best of them all. Charm can be deceptive and beauty doesn't last, but a woman who fears and reverences God shall be greatly praised. Isn't that just the most perfect thing? You know, it goes through all of this stuff that she does and that she does so well and who she is and even that she is beautiful and she is fine, but at the end of the day, all that stuff, it's just window dressing.

But a godly mother, a godly wife, a godly woman, she fears and reverences God and she is greatly praised for that and that's going to be the key. So, Mothering God’s Way, we have five steps. I wanted seven. I cut it down to five. I needed more than three.

It has to be an odd number. I don't know why that is, but the even numbers weird me out. Anybody else? Even? No?

Okay, thank you, Becky. So, our very first point today, lay the correct foundation. Lay the correct foundation. I feel like this is so, so critical. 1 Corinthians 3, 10 and 11 says, By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder and someone else is building on it.

That's our kids, right? But each one should build with care for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. We got to lay the correct foundation and spoiler alert, that foundation cannot be anything or anyone other than Jesus Christ. If that is not the foundation, yes, I clap too. I agree.

If that is not the foundation of your home, of your marriage, of your family, it's all going to crumble to pieces, some slower than others. Just, you know, life's hard enough, right? Things are hard enough, even following the Lord. So, first point for laying the correct foundation, what does that mean for a godly mother? Attribute of a godly mother.

The godly mother knows God before she knows anything else, before she knows how to cook a casserole, before she knows how to take food to sick people, bake some bread and some soup like our Lydia does, before she knows how to do her hair, before she knows how to dress, before she knows how to teach her kids math, before she knows any of that. She knows, the godly mother knows God. After all, we cannot pass on to our children qualities we don't possess. And although that Proverbs 31 woman does put her husband and her children first, you see that? I mean, she got up before dawn.

I'm just, hang on. Working on it. Sanctification is a process. I'm on my way. But they're not the center of her universe, are they?

You have to make the center of the universe the center of your universe. A godly woman has to do that first. The center of the universe, what's that Chris Tomlin song, Jesus, you're the center of the universe, everything was made in you. It's such gorgeous words. You're the center of the universe.

Everything was made in you and through you and for you and by you and about you. It's just all about you. It's just all about you. When you're children, though, I was thinking about this before the service started, have you ever made a gingerbread house? Lydia and I have.

It's really hard to do, like an actual one from scratch. And trying to put all those pieces together, I mean, it took hours. We had the royal icing. We're like trying to put toothpicks through it. We're trying to keep the royal icing at the right consistency to make things glue.

We're like sweating. We're not happy. We're telling the kids to step off. Can we help? No, you can't.

You will ruin this. Things are falling down. You're trying to get things to stay up. It is a nightmare. And I can promise you, if your kids are the glue that holds your marriage together, you're going to be like the most trash gingerbread house ever.

If your kids are the glue, I have, I am sad. I am worried for you. They cannot be the glue that holds a marriage together. And in fact, research supports this, that there's a huge rise in narcissism amongst the general population today in the younger generation, more likely to have an inflated view of themselves and to be indifferent toward other people, which is just the opposite of what we're trying to do here. And why?

It's because they're raised in families that were revolved around their desires, their moods, their happiness. And while that might seem good in the moment, it's disastrous in the long run. Your children are not the center of your marriage. That won't make them feel safe. It won't make them feel secure.

It will actually do the exact opposite of what you're intending to do by trying to put them at the center of the universe. Because when they're born, they're born into an already existing universe that was put into place. And the Bible supports this. And one of my very favorite passages on this topic is from the book of Job. If you remember Job's story, he was a righteous man and he had many, he had much prosperity, he had much wealth, he had many servants and beautiful home and a large family.

Satan attacked that and said, I think his righteousness is all bound up in his prosperity. And he asked permission to attack that. And he did. And over the course of all these events, Job is sitting and he's wondering and he's trying to figure out why this happened to him. And his friends come in and they're trying to understand and work it out as well.

And then God comes in and he teaches them a lesson, right? He comes in and he says in chapter 38, verse 4, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know so much about what you're doing. Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and cause the dawn to rise in the east? Who created a channel for the torrents of rain?

Who laid out the path for the lightning? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?

Can you, Job, or can you, mom and dad, direct the movement of the stars? Can you direct the constellations through the seasons? Do you know the laws of the universe and can you use them? to regulate the earth? Do you make the sunrise?

Do you keep the waves at bay? No? Well, I do. I do. We serve someone who does.

We already know who the center of the universe is. Everything that exists and every relationship we have is in service to Him. We are all born into a universe that He created, and you know what else? He knew the beginning, middle, and end before He created it, before He uttered the first word. He already knew the end and the answer.

He wrote all of our names, those of us who are believers, into the book of life before the foundations of the earth were even laid. He knows the whole story. It's, I mean, we're just along for the ride, and we want to make ourselves the center? It just doesn't make logical sense. But you know what else you can't do?

You also can't make your marriage the center. So it's good that our kids aren't the center, but you can't be either. A shared love for your kids and even a shared love for each other are not going to be enough. You have to have a shared love for Christ, the center of the universe. You have to honor God.

You have to honor the Father in heaven before you can say to your children, honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land that your Lord, the Lord your God is giving you. That's in Exodus 20, 12. Honor your father and mother. If you want them to, if you want them to do that, this is really simple. You got to teach them these commandments.

How are they going to honor you if they don't even know what the commandments are? Have you taught them Exodus? Have you shown them what the commandments of the Lord that he gave to his people? Have you said, hey, there's some really cool, simple boundaries that he put up to protect you and to give you the most fulfilling outcomes in life? How do we expect them to do any of that if we don't even teach them?

They can't just, they don't just get it through osmosis. Somebody's got to teach them. So we got to lay that foundation. Number two, we want to nurture your children's uniqueness. Nurture your children's uniqueness.

First Corinthians 12, 6 says, there are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. Trying to nurture your children's uniqueness is going to be very, very difficult if you do not know and appreciate your own. I think we really struggle to nurture uniqueness because we don't want to be unique. Most kids and honestly, most adults would be content, fading into the background, looking just like everybody else. Kids at school, you don't want to wear shoes the other kids don't wear.

You don't want to dress like they don't. You don't want to, you know, you want to be skinny like him or muscular like her. That was kind of backward. Sorry. Who knows?

We kind of want to blend in. I know. I'm really a bad example. I finally did a center part. I swore I never would.

I just wanted to try something different, okay? It's unique for me. But it's going to be very difficult to nurture that uniqueness as you as a godly mother do not appreciate your own. So a godly mother has to have a healthy self-image. She has to know God and she has to have a healthy self-image.

And the key to having a healthy self-image. The image is knowing how God sees you and understanding what your actual image is, because the image, the imprint you see in the mirror is not your image. That's like a worthless image. Break that mirror if you have to. Throw something at it.

You know, I broke our little cheap full-length mirror, and I haven't had one in forever, and I think I'm happier. I think I'm happier without it. I kind of want one because I think mirrors are pretty and I like them and they look nice in your home. But now I don't look in this full-length mirror and go, oh man, my hips are too wide, and that doesn't look good. I think I've gained five pounds, and I look swollen.

Who cares? Who cares? You know what my image is? I'm an image bearer of Christ. I bear the image of Jesus Christ.

I bear His image throughout my life. That is what my image is. 1 Peter 3, 3 and 4 says, Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry. I will wear silver today to show you I'm not putting it in gold. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

That inner self, understanding who you are. I think this is key because the essence of who your child is is not in reality something that you can change. Scripture supports this because the Word of God says that God formed your child in your womb. He knit that child together. Ephesians 2, 10 says, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand.

Did you hear that? Beforehand, so that we would walk in them. Everything your child is meant to do, God planned before He even put them in your womb. So the essence of that child, their uniqueness, it's done. God determined it.

He created it. Revelation 17, 8 also says that your name is written in the Book of Life. If it is in there, it says God put it there before He created the world. Your kid was designed in a specific way before you ever birthed him or her. And if you think there's something you can do to change that, I think it's going to be hard.

And I think you're going to be disappointed. And then that disappointment is going to spill over and they're going to notice. Again, they're not dumb. They see things. And if you wrap up how you see your kid and things like that, it's just going to be disappointing for everybody.

Genesis 6, 4 says each person should judge his own actions and not compare himself with others. Then can he be proud for what he himself has done. God really puts things so simply in Scripture, right? He says, first, put away the social media. Don't look at how somebody else did it.

Don't look at their barn door. Don't look at their azaleas or whatever. He said, put it aside. Do the thing. Do your thing for yourself.

Then, and only then, can you be proud of what you've done. You're not even going to have pride if you're comparing this to somebody else. God really drills down on this. And then probably my favorite thing. My favorite aspect, my favorite verse on nurturing your child's uniqueness, and I love this translation.

Most of them say, train up your child. I like this one instead, Proverbs 22.6. I think it's the Passion Translation. Dedicate your children to God.

I like that. Instead of train up a child, dedicate your children to God and point them in the way that they should go, and then the values they've learned from you will be with them for life. Notice the order here, right? You can't, oh, well, they come out. Okay, let me give them the rules.

Let me tell them what you do. You don't smoke. You don't drink. You don't do this. This is how you do.

This is how you dress. Good luck. Does it work? Just don't sin. Just don't do those bad things.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. You start with that.

If we start with those behaviors and the values and the character and ethics, which is just stuff we train, right? You're going to fail. You have to start with the inside. You start by dedicating your children to the Lord, saying, God made you in a certain way, and it wasn't a mistake. The way you are is not a mistake.

God doesn't make mistakes. He has a plan for you, and stuff may be hard the way you are. Maybe there's hard stuff you have to deal with. It doesn't mean it's a mistake, and God has a plan and a way to support that. Find out what that is in your child, and then you nurture that.

You help train them in the path that God designed. You're not trying to force them into a path that you've chosen. You're putting them into a path that God chose for them before the foundation of the earth, and then these values that you teach them, these Christ-centered values, they're just going to work themselves out, guys. If they know who they are, they're going to want to be, they are saved to a life of manifested good works. It's going to happen.

All right, next up. So we've said we have to lay the foundation. We have to nurture their uniqueness. Now we have to affirm their value. Affirm your children's value.

This is kind of related to the previous note, but I do think it's specific. God talks about our value a lot. He talks about our worth a lot. Matthew 10, 29, and 31 says, Not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without your heavenly Father knowing it, and you are much more valuable to him than a whole flock of sparrows. Value, our value is intrinsically tied up in our identity, and your journey as a mother, as a godly mother, it doesn't start when you give birth.

It doesn't start when you adopt or foster or take on anybody that you're mothering. It begins with you knowing your identity in Jesus. I know that sounds repetitive, but it's just so important. It starts with your identity in Jesus, and you cannot affirm your children's identity if you do not know your own, if you don't know who you are. And that's why the next attribute of a godly mother, the godly mother knows who and whose she is.

She knows God. She has a healthy self-image as an image bearer of Christ, and she knows who she is. Peace. Because she knows whose she is. She knows who she belongs to.

Your self-worth is not rooted in what the world thinks of you. Your self-worth is not rooted in what your husband thinks of you, or what your kids think of you, or what the neighbors think of you, or what your pastor's wife thinks of you, or what your pastor thinks of you. It's not rooted in any of that. Because all that stuff fades away. It could be gone like that.

Your self-worth is rooted in God's opinion of you. What does God think about you? I mentioned this earlier because it's just always so funny to me. My boss, the owner of my company, she almost always wears black. I mean, every once in a while she will wear something, you know, like earrings with color or something.

But, you know, regardless, if she does an event, or she's going somewhere, or I'm going to see her on a trip, I'm like, what are you packing? What are you going to bring? You know, I just want to see. And she's like, this is going to shock you. It's going to be black.

It's going to be black pants. It's going to be a black dress. It's going to be a black... Maybe I will wear a jean jacket over my black shirt. Maybe I'll wear some cute pink earrings, or I'll wear some cute pink shoes with my black.

It will be black. Spoiler alert, it will be black. So, spoiler alert for this message. At the end of the day, it's not about you. It's about God.

God, your value isn't even really about anything about you. Your value comes only from how God sees you and what God says about you. In fact, God loved you before you were even born. Instead of saying, I loved you before you were born. I knit you together in your mother's womb.

Thank you. Thank you, God, for making me so wonderfully complex. He made all the delicate parts of my body knit me together in my mother's womb. Your workmanship is marvelous. If he loved you before you were born, he could not have placed value on you and loved you for anything you did, for any talent you have, for any success you have garnered, for any beauty you may possess.

And it's not possible. He loved you before that ever even came into being. So, in the same way, that's how we need to value our children. You know, it's nice when I say to Savannah, oh, you did an incredible job on that reading assignment. Or, oh, it was so great to watch you at gymnastics.

You're getting so strong. Your pullovers are getting better. All right, tell Max, your piano is going so well. I hear you playing. It's just incredible.

I love to, you know, your drawings are amazing. That's great. But that's not really affirming their value. That's just affirming stuff that they do, right? That's just affirming things, things that could fade away.

Instead, we need to affirm who God says our children are. We need to speak to our children the things of God. And before they go to sleep, we need to be telling them every day, every night, the Lord of hosts created you, put you together in my belly. He knew your name, Max. He knew your name, Savannah, before the foundations of the world.

He was protecting you from the darts of the enemy before time even began. He knew who you were. He gave you all of these gifts before the world even came into being. I know you. I see you.

He was specifically thinking about you, Max, and you, Savannah, when he put his son up on a cross. When he let his only child die, he was thinking about you. You specifically were in his mind. God is outside of time. He can actually think about all the trillions of us who have ever lived all at the same time, and it's all special and significant and specific to us because he is God, and that is what he was doing.

That's how I value my child. I tell them how they are valued to the creator of the universe. So start speaking things to your child of God. Tell them that God ordained all the days of your life before you were born. Every minute you're going to live, he ordained and he put it into place.

It's the perfect amount of time because he decided it. He wrote your name in his book before one day of your life even came to be. Daughter, you are of noble character, and that is worth far more than rubies. You were bought for a price. You were redeemed, purified, and sanctified, and God is preparing all of us for an eternal weight of glory.

Isn't that just incredible? You know, the apostles and the disciples in the New Testament, they're being martyred. They're suffering. They're being stoned. They're being imprisoned.

They're running from the guards, and they're like, isn't this great? Yes, all of this suffering. You know why this suffering is great? Because my God is preparing an eternal weight of glory for me. That is how much God values you.

It says he prepares a mansion for you in heaven. He prepares a table for you in the presence of your enemies. You have a God who's doing unbelievable things in the heavenlies right now for you, for you. Isaiah 43, 4 says, others were given in exchange for you, whole nations, God says. I traded their lives for yours because you are precious to me.

You are honored, and I love you. It kind of makes our, I love Max, pale in comparison to what God says about him and his value. Okay, that was nice. Now we'll move on to the hard one. Number four, correct without condemnation.

Correct without condemnation. I had a middle school teacher, a middle school music teacher. His name was Andrew Robison, and hysterical man. Great, great teacher. Loved him.

But I used to talk back to him a lot. I know. So all my report cards growing up, I think my mom probably remembers this. You remember when you had, what was it, S's for like satisfactory, maybe N for needs improvement, U for unsatisfactory? I would get all S's, except I'd get an N in talking.

There was, that was, that was something you were graded on. It was like talking too much. And in fact, I, I forgot this until just now. My senior, most likely to, was most likely to talk, talk without ceasing, talk to a brick wall, talk forever, talk into eternity. Wow.

So it's probably not, it's not. It's not surprising, but you know what? God made me unique and he makes no mistakes. He makes no mistakes! But anyway, Mr.

Robinson, because I would ask him all the time and talk back, and he would start class almost every day by saying, Miranda, what does Proverbs 12, 1 say? And I'd say, he who loves instruction or loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid. So I'd have to preemptively start my day with just saying I'm willing to be corrected because I knew I would be. And I deserved it because I was a little something else. So the godly mother, we know that she knows God.

She has a healthy self-image. She knows who she is. Now we're getting to action steps. The godly mother speaks truth. Not just any truth, the truth.

There's really just one truth. We know that. Romans says there's a truth and there's the lie, and that's it. There's the truth is Jesus Christ. The lie is Satan.

That's it. The kingdom of grace, the kingdom of darkness, really just one. You can wrap up a lot of lies into that one lie, but there's just one truth. And as a godly mother, we need not to be so focused on the physical needs that we neglect our real calling, which is to raise future disciples of Christ. That is our job.

That is our job for our kids. You know, becoming functional members of society and, you know, graduating summa cum laude from graduate school. That is not our purpose. That's great. It's great stuff.

It's a great side effect. Our purpose is to raise disciples of Christ who will perpetuate the kingdom of God, who will go out every single day of their lives telling the truth of Jesus Christ, the gospel to anybody who will listen. That is our purpose. We exist to glorify God and enjoy him forever. How are we going to enjoy him forever if people don't know him?

How are they going to enjoy him? How are they going to spend eternity with God if you don't tell him who he is? That's our goal. That's our job. That is your job as a godly mother.

Raise a disciple of Christ. And to do that, you're going to have to correct. You're going to have to discipline. So how do we do that without wounding them, without condemning them? And that's to understand that your words have power.

They have power to build up or tear down. And as a godly mother, you have to choose them wisely and use them to build everybody up, but especially your children, because the enemy wants to twist your words. The enemy knows words have power, and he wants to twist them around and turn them into complaints, into gossip, into criticism. Let me criticize my husband, because, ugh, he's just done X or Y. Let me just, like, criticize my kids, because they've done this or that or other.

And let me just complain about how hard things are. I do this all the time. Leon's like, hmm, sounds familiar. That's because that's what the enemy's trying to do, because he knows how powerful your words are. So he says, if I can just, you know, shove them over here.

But Ephesians says, do not provoke your children to anger. Instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Really interesting, right? It says, don't provoke them and make them angry. No way around the Stuart's up in Linux.

Thank you. Instead, discipline and instruct them. That means the discipline and instruction will not bring forth anger. That's what that's saying. There's a way to discipline them, a way to instruct them that won't make them angry.

So let's think about what correction is. Can we talk about that? Because I think we live in a culture where people hate to be corrected and they try to say, you know, they try to take correction and conflate it with other things like shame. Shame and condemnation come from the enemy. Correction and discipline come from the Lord.

God disciplines and corrects. The enemy makes you feel ashamed. Shame is about who you are. Correction is about something you've done. It ain't hard.

Just don't do it again. You touch the stove and you burnt yourself. Next time, don't. I mean, is that making you feel it? I'm so ashamed.

My mom, she told me not to touch the stove. I feel ashamed. Really? I think you feel a lack of blistering pain. I would like to think that's what you feel after this word of instruction to you.

But correction is really just like it sounds. You hear course correct, right? That's because someone's going off the path or they are running into an obstacle and they can't navigate where they need to go. They can't get to where they need to go without some correction and falling off the road. You have to show them how to navigate life.

When you don't correct, when you default to what we were talking about at the beginning with making your children the center of the universe, what you're actually doing is you're teaching them or rather you're not teaching them how to actually adapt to circumstances. As Sandy said this morning when we were talking, how to deal with loss and disappointment. They need to learn to be disappointed. Your kids have to learn how to be sad. Your kids have to learn how to lose.

They also need to learn that just because other people win doesn't mean they've lost. If they don't get that, guys, can you imagine? I can't imagine sending my kids out into the world. So, you know, my son Max, he's got a lot of anxieties. And sometimes I have to just sit with him and go, I get that you're really sad or upset about this thing that happened.

I'm just going to sit with you and we're just going to be upset about it together. We're just going to be sad because I can't fix it. I can't make you not sad. I can't physically turn that frown upside down. He would be like, what are you saying, Mom?

Sometimes you're just going to have to learn to be sad. Sometimes people are going to say things. Sometimes you're not going to be the best. Sometimes you're going to get kicked off the kickball team. You're going to get hit and out first.

It's life, man. Get ready. It gets worse. No, I'm such a motivational mom. But when you don't do that, what you do is you're actually saddling them with an expectation that life, work, relationships are going to bow to their will and nothing could be further from the truth.

And actually science says that this is no good. There's other research that says the same thing. That what that does when you constantly give them things and don't correct them, you create a huge sense of instability and insecurity. And I guarantee the vast majority of people you work with who hate to be corrected, they're actually extremely insecure. They have massive insecurities and that's because they probably grew up in a home where you didn't have Godly correction happening.

Godly correction will make your kids stronger. It will make them more assertive. It will make them more certain of themselves. It has an amazing, amazing...I'm actually very assertive, so I think I must have gotten corrected a lot.

I'm trying to remember. I think I must have. I must have had constant correction. This level of assertive is extreme. But just try it.

See. You know, see if it works. But we don't want to create that insecurity because they crave stability. And Scripture supports this. Proverbs 19.

18 says, Discipline your children while they are young enough to learn. If you don't, you are helping them destroy themselves. And you've got to start young. Did you know that around age 12 or so, the hemispheres in the brain totally separate? And they'll never be able to learn to the extent that they could before that.

Scripture is like, do it. Do it now. Do it young. Do not pass on this because it's going to be extremely difficult to remediate in the future. Science and God, man, they go together with peanut butter and jelly, like Nutella and the spoon.

It all supports this. All right. We're...he told you to buckle up. We're coming in to the end.

Last point. Who's excited? We're on point five. We're on point five. Oh, I see.

It's like I'm wrapping up. I love this one. So what have we said so far? Let's recap. We have to lay the foundation.

We have to nurture their uniqueness. We have to affirm their value. We have to correct them without condemning. Now we have to love them unconditionally. This one's so hard because I don't think most of us can comprehend unconditional love.

Think about it. Most of our relationships, friendships, marriages, they're...they're conditioned. They're all conditional. With your friendships, there's deal breakers.

There's, you know, lying, constant lying or gaslighting or maybe constantly flaking on somebody to the point that you cannot rely on them at all. It's a condition. In marriage, there tend to be lines we can't cross like infidelity or constant infidelity or abuse, physical or otherwise. Those are conditions. That's what that means.

God is saying, I need you to love unconditionally. Let me think about it. God loved me before I was born. It says that God loved me. It says I only love God because he loved me first.

That's what unconditional love is. So how can we really understand God's bold, fierce, unconditional love when we've never truly experienced it? I think this is kind of the last...this is the thing that motherhood really does create. I don't know why it works because when you have a child, when you birth a child and a squalling child comes out and you hold them and you realize for the first time maybe ever about anybody or anything, I would die for this human.

I would do anything for this child. I love them fiercely. There's no rational reason for it. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, they literally just arrived in the world.

All they did was make you fat and give you heartburn and like pregnancy rhinitis and like, you know, fundamentally change your body, you know, forever. They come out, they poop and they throw up. I mean, what did they give us? I'm just being real. Well, it does not make any sense.

And I think that's what God's trying to say. Y'all, it doesn't make sense. My love for you doesn't make sense. It defies reason. It defies rational thought because God loved us while we were still yet sinners.

It says while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ didn't die for you because of something you did. Christ didn't die for you because you asked him real nice. Christ died for you because the Father loves you. That's it.

Full stop. Christ sacrificed himself and the Lord gave up his only child because of his desperate, unconditional love for you. I mean, if it were conditional, every single one of us would spend eternity in hell. That's that. Because there's not there's not one condition we could adhere to to make God love us.

And this is why I love I love some of the verses. Some of those visceral expressions of God's love and compassion are actually linked to a love of a mother for this very reason. As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you. That's Isaiah 66. Then Isaiah 44 says, can a mother forget the infant at her breast?

Walk away from the baby she bore? But even if mothers forget, I'd never forget you. Never. God's linking his own love for you to a mother's love for her infant. So the last attribute of a godly mother is understanding that the godly mother is an expression of God's love.

You as a mother are the living expression of the unconditional love of the father. And, you know, what's funny is the science actually supports this, too. I was talking to Leon about this last night. It's so fascinating to me how oxytocin works. You know, the love or bonding hormone.

Did you know that both men and women emit like the oxytocin, right? But they're different. So when the mom, when the female, you know, gives off this like oxytocin, this hormone, it actually has, it creates a nurturing and empathetic sense in the child. When a father does it, it actually encourages them to playfulness, independence. It's a total different thing.

When the father's love, that oxytocin, it has a whole different result. You need both, right? We absolutely know we need both. Boy, that one from the mother, though, that's super important. I don't need my one-year-old to be super playful and independent.

I need them to understand empathy and nurturing. And we give that to them. It's something so specific. God created you in such a special, special way to express. It was the only way he could really express his love for us through us.

It's the closest we can come. It's the closest we can come. 1 John 4, 19 says we love God because He first loved us. Our children only learn how to love because we love them. It's the only way they're going to see it.

It's the only way we're going to model it. And is Greg Emanizer here? Okay, Greg, I can't believe I'm saying this, but once again, Greg Emanizer is right. And it is really, literally all about love. It's literally all about love.

I know. Wow. We can all go home. Greg did it. Isaiah 54, 10 says that the mountains and hills may crumble, but God's love for you will never end.

So says the Lord who loves you. And the Phillips translation of 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, says this. It's so beautiful. And we'll end with this. Love knows no limit to its endurance.

No end to its trust. No fading of its hope. It can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen. When everything fades away, when everything crumbles to dust, the love of God will still be there, the love of our Father.

And that's how we be godly mothers. We have to know who He is. We have to know who we are and who we belong to and understand that our entire motherhood journey is just an expression of God's divine love for you, for us. So let's get that in our bones this Mother's Day. As you affirm your kids and correct your kids, just keep pointing them back to the Father who made them, who knit them together in your bellies.

Thank you, everybody, so much for listening to me on this Mother's Day. I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful day with your mothers. And I'm going to let Pastor Leon finish this out. Let's pray. Let's pray.

Father, we just thank you for your love. We thank you for your love, Lord Jesus. That last thought, the unconditional love, the Father and the Savior. Jesus, we just, what more could we do, Lord? Because you poured your life out for us, Lord.

If there's somebody here today, make this the opportunity to give your life to Jesus Christ. Would you do that today? Would you consider Jesus? Would you consider Jesus today? Just give Him an opportunity.

He knocks on the door of your heart. Just make that decision. Just pray this with me. Father, I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sin. You loved me so much that you gave your child for me, Father.

You gave your child for me so that I could have everlasting life. And today I receive you as my Lord and Savior, King, over my heart. Come into my life and change me. Change me forever in your name. Amen.

Amen.