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May 12, 2024

Divine Motherly Strengths

Preacher: Andrew Repsold

Category: Holiday

Keywords: significance, gratitude, motherhood, affirmation, qualities

Summary:

This message is a complement to the 2023 Father's Day message Andrew gave looking at what the Bible has to say about how fatherhood and fathers are uniquely designed to showcase several characteristics of God. This message looks at motherhood from the same biblical lense.

Detail:

Mother’s Day Sermon 2024

Fellowship Question: What is a positive childhood memory you have with your mother?

Goal: To restore the value, dignity, and high honor that motherhood is.

So that we see motherhood as what it actually is (from the true, eternal, “God” perspective) and not as it is viewed in our culture.

Motherhood today in America 2024, is viewed by so many people (especially women) as something which at best is an option for pursing personal fulfillment (just like any of the other many career options out there) and at it’s worst, a burden or hindrance to true fulfillment which will be found giving our life to something else (your career).

Qualities of Mothers (when living into their designed imaging of God):

  • Homemakers (giving meaning to the word “home”). You don’t see this combination made for fathers (verses about fathers working at home etc.)

Proverbs 31

27 She looks well to the ways of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children rise up and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women have done excellently,
    but you surpass them all.”

Titus 2

3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

You have a unique calling and gifting to labor for a home/household.

Example: Hobby Lobby…all about HOME MAKING stuff.

-Show pictures-

Note: this gift can be exercised, even if you are not married or have no children. The women here decorate the church for Christmas.

“A challenging career suddenly seemed more productive to me because I could measure the results of my work. These precious little ones had endless needs. They were busy little sinful creatures who demanded all of my body, time, life, emotions, and attention! As much as I loved my children, I often felt like a failure. Surely someone else could do a better job with these precious ones than I. And what exactly was I supposed to be accomplishing anyway? Was I wasting my time?” -The Mission of Motherhood

  • Comfort and compassion. (again, you don’t have to be a genetic mother of someone to exercise this unique gifting).

“As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:13).

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15).

Talk about the significance a mother has on a child. From the moment they are conceived, through breast feeding and comforting them in.

2 Timothy 3:14-15

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom[a] 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.

2 Timothy 1

5 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.

Acts 16:1

16 Paul[a] 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. 

What is one way Paul think Timothy can be strengthened to continue in the faith…by remembering his mom and grandma.

Is there a higher calling than investing in raising God-fearing/loving children?

We talk about influence. I now have more influence with the musicians of the SSO than I did before. But how much does that influence compare to the influence God designed a mother to have to her child?

Dear Mom,

Thanks for giving so much of your life to support and love me. I owe so much of who I am today to you. Things like what I do as a career now, my walk with God and my wonderful marriage to Katie because of you. Let me explain by briefly listing some of the memories I have with you from childhood. 

I have no recollection of the countless hours of sleep that I know you gave up to feed and comfort me as a baby but I am grateful for it now. I see Katie sacrifice that way for the boys and it is humbling and inspiring to see. That level of sacrifice for zero recognition of it from the child receiving all of the effects of that sacrifice is the most tangible thing I know of which mirrors Christ’s sacrificial love for us. Now that I am older, I realize how much of a sacrifice it was and so I thank you now.

The earliest memories I have in life are filled primarily with you and David as you spent your life caring for us. I recall things like going to Costco together and riding in the cart, knitting that weird thatch rug together, learning how to manage money with you by putting our allowance in the three different yogurt cups (giving, saving, spending), learning how to read from you with that 100 easy lessons book. It was you who noticed my proclivity for and love of rhythm when I danced to music and so it was you who encouraged me to consider taking drum lessons in 4th grade. It was you who drove me to EVERY single one of those drum lessons.

I remember in 6th grade how you drove us the extra 15-20 minutes to Pratt Elementary every day of school after we moved houses so that we could finish out elementary school with our group of friends (and then continued to do that with David for 2 more years). I remember in Junior High, you reading The Hobbit to Daniel, David and I one summer and for some reason that sticks out as a really pleasant summer and memory for me. I have multiple memories of Daniel making you laugh so hard at dinner that you couldn’t swallow the bite of food that was in your mouth and so you almost choked. I remember looking for you in the audience of all of my performances through junior high, and high school and college… and seeing you there every single time. I remember running home during lunch from Ferris almost once a week so that we could play a round of backgammon during my brief thirty minute lunch just because I really enjoyed that time with you. I remember you playing tons of badminton games with David, Daniel and I. And I remember feeling annoyed with you when you asked every single day, the second David and I got home from High School, with genuine excitement at seeing us home again “Hi! How was your day…what happened?”

I remember you and Dad praying for us every single morning when we left for school and tucking us into bed at night even up into high school.

Because of you, mom, I saw and experienced first-hand what it’s like for a woman to respect me and value me and to want to spend time with me, care about my thoughts, get excited about my dreams and visions with me and push me towards God and his plan for my life. You truly launched my into life and let me go…I felt that completely from you and am so grateful for it. You did not clamor to hold on to a memory of me as your little boy, but raised me into a man and then you let me go and I am SO VERY GRATEFUL for that. Thank you.

It is because of all of those experience with you (and thousands more) that I was attracted to someone like Katie. When I started to notice girls in junior high/high school, I recognized that many of them were physically attractive but I had very little desire to genuinely pursue any of them because so many of them were like the woman described in Proverbs 11:22, they lacked discretion and character and so their beauty to me was experienced like a gold ring in a pigs snout…it caught my eye but did not draw me to them. I had an unconscious standard of modesty and respect and love and humor and all the many qualities that make a wonderful wife because I had a mom like you. And the gift of Katie to me is THE GIFT of my life. So thank you for playing your part in that and now for taking all of those qualities and pouring them into your grandchildren and my four boys, specifically.

Love,

Andrew

“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 5:16).

1 Timothy 5:1-3

5 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

Proverbs 11:22

New International Version
Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion.