The Seeds We Sow

Greeting - Joanna

Good morning Lighthouse and Happy Mother’s Day!

It is so good to be here with you all this morning. Tell one of the mothers around you, Happy Mother’s Day!

I am excited this morning because I get to Team Teach with my husband today. Can we give it up for our Pastor, and my husband this morning.

We are excited to teach together and we believe that we have a special word that is going to make a strong impact on everyone here today, but especially for our Mother’s.

I want you to go with us now to the book of 2 Timothy chapter 1 and we are going to read verses 2 through 7. I am going to ask my husband to read these verses, and then pray for us as we dive into today’s message.

Reading - Josh

2 Timothy 1:2 NIV

To Timothy, my dear son: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve, as my ancestors did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.

Joanna - for the next few minutes we want to speak to you on this message that we have called, The Seeds You Sow.

Josh - Let’s take a moment and pray.

{After prayer}

You may be seated.

Introduction - Joanna

Before we begin, I want to know how many people in the room are real plant people?

Ok, now for my people, how many of you are fake plant people?

Come on, those fake plants look really real, don’t they? And thank God for fake plants!

When we first got married, we had every intention to be real plant people. We had every intention of potting, and watering, and propagating!

But that’s a lot of work, isn’t it?

Transition

And that’s what we want we to talk about today in this message. Are we committed to being the best Mom, and the best parent we can be.

Text - Josh

Now we are introduced to four people here in our text. The first is Paul, the Apostle. He is the writer of this letter to Timothy, but more importantly Paul is Timothy’s spiritual father. We can see how close they are because Paul refers to Timothy as his dear son.

The second person we meet is Timothy. And we’re going to really dive into who is by way of relation, but if I could give you his professional resume, he is a Disciple of Paul. He joined Paul on his missionary journeys. And he is also a Pastor to the churches in Ephesus. These are churches that he helped Paul start, and when Paul was imprisoned, Timothy assumed the leadership of these churches.

We’re also introduced to Eunice, Timothy’s mother. We can read from the text here that she was responsible for beginning her son’s faith journey.

And finally, we are introduced to Lois, the matriarch. Lois is Eunice’s Mom, and Timothy’s grandmother. And she too was responsible for her grandson’s faith journey.

So where do we begin with Timothy’s story?

We have to start with Lois.

Stand By Your Side - Josh

As I said a minute ago, Lois is the matriarch. She’s the Queen Bee of the operation. She is a Jew, and she raised a Jewish daughter, Eunice.

Beyond just her nationality, we also read that she was a person who came to follow the life and the teachings of Jesus.

Now this is extremely important because we are going to read about the first obstacle that she had to overcome along with her daughter, Eunice.

Let’s read this in Acts 16:1

Acts 16:1 NIV

Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek.

OK, let’s pause right there…

We can read through that and miss the implications in the text. Her daughter was a Jew, but her daughter decided to father a child from a Greek man. For the Jews, this was culturally a no-no. As a matter of fact, this was such a no-no that they had a name for this no-no. It is a Samaritan. A Samaritan is someone who is part Jew and part something else.

And we read throughout the Bible that many of the Jews thought less of the Samaritans. They were culturally in an out-group.

So, think about how Lois must have felt when her daughter brought home a Greek boyfriend. She probably wanted someone else for her daughter. But when her daughter became pregnant, things got real, real quick.

She had to make hard decisions about how this was going to play out for her family.

Joanna

Mom’s I want you to think about the words we speak over our children when we aren’t proud of their decisions. What are the words we say to them when they make a bad decision? Are we saying hurtful things to them that will adversely affect them for the rest of their life?

Do we sow seeds of anger?

Do we sow seeds of disappointment?

Do we sow seeds of frustration? With our words

And I know this is hard. You might be thinking to yourself, “Well of course, I feel anger! Of course, I feel disappointed! Of course, I feel frustrated!” “They just made a bad choice!”

Yes, those feelings are a natural response.

But here is the thing…

Just because you feel it, doesn’t mean you need to sow it.

Let me speak to the room for a second… our actions always have consequences. Some are positive, and some are negative.

I liken consequences to seeds that are placed in the hands of those who are affected.

If my son does something to me that leads me to get angry, I now hold in my hands, seeds of anger. I have seeds of disappointment. I have seeds of frustration.

But wisdom teaches me that I don’t need to sow these seeds.

I can carry these seeds. And I’ll need to handle these seeds. But sowing these seeds into the life of my children? Telling them:

“Your life is going to be so hard!”

“You’re never going to recover from this!”

“Why can’t you make better choices?”

What kind of fruit do you think is produced when we sow these kinds of seeds into the lives of our children? Do you think these seeds will produce fruit that is good for them or fruit that is toxic and is bad for them?

All my plant people, my friends with a green thumb…you all know that you can speak life to your plants. They thrive in a good environment…doesn’t have to be a perfect environment, but a good environment.

Every parent in this room, I want you to hear me… we have a role that we play in our garden and our garden is our children.

Josh

Now, I wish I could say that Eunice’s decision stopped with fathering a son with a Greek man, but historians and commentators agree that after Eunice got pregnant and had her son, Timothy, the father was no longer in the picture.

So Eunice isn’t just having a Samaritan son, but now she has to raise her Samaritan son without the help of his father.

And as any single parent in the room knows, being a single parent can be very difficult for the parent, and it could potentially create issues in the child.

But I love how in the text we read that Eunice wasn’t alone. She had her Mom, Lois, nearby.

Why is that? Because Lois made a decision that even though her daughter was walking through a very difficult life moment alone, she wasn’t going to be lonely.

So here’s what these two ladies did together - they came to faith in Jesus.

Joanna

If there’s anyone here who thought to themselves, how can I feel these things and not sow these things? What kind of fantasy land do you live in?

Let me tell you that my faith in Jesus gives me the strength to speak life over my children. James, the author of the book of James in the Bible, teaches us that faith comes by hearing the word of God but faith also gives you power and that power manifests itself in actions, in better living, in better speaking, in better stewarding, in better tending to our garden. You see…Faith in Jesus gives me the strength to speak life over my children.

There are times when I don’t have the strength. I’m tired. I don't want to be positive.

There are times when I don’t want to be wise. I want to be mean!

But here is what the word of God teaches us about the power of our words.

Proverbs 18:21 msg

Words kill, words give life, they’re either poison or fruit- you choose.

You choose- will my words speak life or will they poison my children?

Jesus gives me the strength to be better than myself. Jesus gives me the strength to overcome my emotions, and my feelings, and think about how my words can either bring life to my child, or they can bring death.

And if I am being careful, and if I am being intentional, I’m going to sow words of life, and my child will eat from the fruit of the life-giving words that I speak over them.

Studies show that the words of parents become the inner dialogue of their children as they get older. Children internalize the words. Our words directly affect them. We have an important responsibility and we need God just like Lois and Eunice.

Josh

So now Lois and Eunice, having overcome the difficulty and the complexity of her pregnancy and now motherhood, do the best thing that they can do for their kids.

They start to disciple young Timothy.

As a matter of fact, Timothy’s name means “honor God.”

And that’s exactly what these women did. They honored God with how they raised Timothy.

They didn’t let a bad decision get in the way of good future.

What you need to do is figure out what can I do differently to ensure that my children don’t repeat the mistakes that I made.

That’s intentional parenting. That’s not side stepping and making your son “figure it out.” But that’s getting into the fight together with your children, and making a decision to figure things out so that they have the best chance at success.

And part of that was not just discipling their son Timothy, but also getting him to the feet of other men so that they too could pour into Timothy.

Parents, let me talk to you for a moment.

You not having the information for your children doesn’t mean you get a pass for not pointing them in the direction of someone who does.

There is a book that is a multiple time best seller, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

And buried in the introduction of this book is the author's own experience with learning from another man in an area in which his dad was deficient.

As a father, I’ve put some men into the life of my son to pour into him in ways that I can’t. I am not going to let my lack of education or lack of experience prevent me from making sure I get my son access. That’s what an intentional parent does. They get their children access to the best nutrients for the seeds that they are sowing.

And I say all of that to introduce you to Paul. He is Timothy’s mentor, and he would become a father figure to Timothy.

Letting Go - Joanna

When Paul met Timothy he was blown away. He was not only impressed with him, but the report he got from others was this:

Acts 16:2 NIV

The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him.

Good job Eunice and Lois! They had a beautiful garden.

I think it’s incredible to see that these women not only overcame the hardships of a bad decision but they turned everything around for Timothy.

Parents, listen we can either allow our children to live as victims and wallow in their misfortune, or we can pour so much of ourselves into them that everyone takes notice and mentions how amazing they are!

And their rewards for their great job was this - now they needed to let him go.

Oh man, maybe not the answer we thought we’d hear.

But Eunice and Lois knew that when Paul asked for Timothy to join him, they needed to let him go and trust the seeds that they planted in him.

I’ve been watching Josh disciple Jaden and I have seen his intentionality. One of the things that Josh has embraced is that one day Jaden is going to leave our house, and Josh wants there to be no regrets with the seeds that he’s sown into him. He doesn’t want Jaden to leave the house one day and live with the regret of not having prepared him for adulthood.

So here’s what I want you to write down.

You can trust the fruit of the good seeds you’ve sown.

At the beginning of the message I challenged us to examine the seeds in our hands, now let me add this, sow the good seeds!

If you have good seeds to sow into your children, sow all of them!

Be generous with your good seeds.

Be generous with your life giving words. Be generous with your affirmations. Be generous with the memories that you make!

C’mon plant your garden my friends! I actually brought a gardening belt with me because I am going to get serious about my garden, I am going to go all-in, I got all my cute tools and all. I am going to plant my seeds and give it my best.

Gardening is not a walk in the park. It’s hard work! But it’s necessary. Many moms want the garden blooming with all of the fruit, but don’t want to put in the labor.

There isn’t a single parent in the world that looks back and says, “I said too many nice things about my kids. I think I told them that I loved them too much.”

No! If anything, most parents in their later years wonder, “Did I say that I loved them enough? Was I affectionate enough with them? Have I done enough to prepare them to no longer need me?”

When Paul asked for Timothy to join him on his missionary journeys Eunice trusted the seeds that she had sown into the life of her son Timothy and then released him.

Conclusion - Josh

Before we end I want to come back to what I believe to be the moment where everything changes for Lois, for Eunice, for Timothy, for Paul, and for you too. That moment is the moment when Lois and Eunice came to faith in Jesus.

When they placed their faith in Jesus it absolutely changed everything.

You see, a family like theirs could live in freedom when they lived in Christ.

The Jewish religion at that time held people like Eunice and her fatherless Samaritan son in contempt. Oh but in the crowd of those who follow Jesus, they found love. They found acceptance. They found a home and they found a new family.

This radically changed everything for them, because Jesus radically changes everything for us!

Jesus gives us the ability to overcome our past.

Jesus gives us the ability to change the trajectory of our future.

Jesus forgives us, then he heals us, and then he gives us hope and a future.

And today, this is what we want for all of you. If you can relate to this story, and if you are feeling like your life is in great need, then we want to pray for you to meet and surrender your life to Jesus.

I’m going to lead us all together in a prayer to surrender our lives to Jesus right now.

{Josh - Prayer}

Finally, we will close by having Joanna pray over all of our Mother’s in the room. Can we do that? Can we honor all of our Mothers who are here today with a prayer of blessing?

{Joanna - Prayer for Moms}