Becoming a better mother

How To Bake A Cake

Preheat oven, get out utensils and ingredients.

Remove blocks and toy cars from table.

Grease pan, crack nuts.

Measure two cups flour.

Remove baby's hands from flour, wash flour off baby.

Remeasure flour.

Put flour, baking powder, salt in sifter.

Get dustpan and brush up pieces of bowl baby knocked on floor.

Get another bowl.

Answer doorbell.

Return to kitchen.

Remove baby's hands from bowl.

Wash baby.

Answer phone.

Return.

Remove 1/4 inch salt from greased pan.

Look for baby.

Grease another pan.

Answer telephone.

Return to kitchen and find baby.

Remove baby's hands from bowl.

Take up greased pan, find layer of nutshells in it.

Head for baby, who flees, knocking bowl off table.

Wash kitchen floor, table, wall, dishes.

Call baker.

Lie down.

I’ve run out of ways new ways to say “Thanks Mom”.  I mean that relative to my mother and my wife as well.  I say it to my grandmother for the mother that she raised.  I say it to my mother-in-law for the daughter who has become my wife.  There are no new thoughts or expressions.  Perhaps it’s just a slightly different perspective that we can offer with each new Mother’s Day that comes and goes.  We were in Disney World recently and took pictures in front of Cinderella’s castle.  I might never be able to recreate that picture exactly for the angle and the lighting vary and so in that respect it is different.  I would just like today to offer a perspective that is my own and I may never be able to recreate it exactly because there are so many variables.

There are those here today experiencing their first Mother’s Day since their mother has gone.  I hope that you will sense God ministering to you and that you can reach into the rich memory bank and thank God today for this special lady who has impacted and shaped your life.

There are those who are not able to celebrate your relationship with your mother for any number of reasons:

q      You never knew her

q      She abandoned you

q      She ran away

q      You ran away

q      She never took the time to understand you

q      You never took the time to understand her

q      She was impossible to please

q      You were pleased to be impossible

Whatever the reason, this sermon is crafted prayerfully with you in mind.  Primarily it is a challenge for our Mom’s, our women who will one day be recognized with this singular honor and responsibility.  It is not a challenge that is unattainable for we are looking in the scripture at a very ordinary mother.  She faced her own peculiar set of strengths and flaws.  True to form the scripture presents her – an untouched proof.  You will see her to be guilty of things that you perhaps have never been guilty of.  Lest pride bring blindness to your heart and cause you to miss the message, remember that it is in our weakness that God’s strength and sufficiency is best displayed.  The grace of God is best dispensed in flawed vessels – cracked pots.  While you may not share this specific set of flaws remember that God himself used this lady mightily, ultimately influencing the destiny of a nation.  This message is not a call to perfection and not an indictment if you feel inadequate already.  It is merely a call to aim higher forever.  Most often this is where we should be shamed – not so much in what we hit or miss but in what we aim at. 

Let me introduce you to Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban, the Aramean.

Genesis 25:21

“Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was barren.  The Lord answered his prayer and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.

Apart from the supernatural intervention of God Rebekah would not have had children.  There may be those here today who have been able to have children.  I have always felt that Mother’s day is a tribute to womanhood.  There is some unidentifiable “X-factor” that makes a mother.  It is more than a biological capacity to produce children.  There is some spiritual predisposition that is standard equipment.  Men come with different predispositions.  You can see it early in life.

 Equality

"Equal" is not always synonymous with "the same." Men and women are created equal. But, boys and girls are not born the same.

You throw a little girl a ball, and it will hit her in the nose.  You throw a little boy a ball, and he will try to catch it. Then it will hit him in the nose.

You dress your little girl in her Easter Sunday best, and she'll look just as pretty when you finally make it to church an hour later.  You dress a boy in his Easter Sunday best, and he'll somehow find every mud puddle from your home to the church, even if you're driving there.

Boys' rooms are usually messy. Girls' rooms are usually messy, except it's a good smelling mess.

A baby girl will pick up a stick and look in wonderment at what nature has made. A baby boy will pick up a stick and turn it into a gun.

Boys couldn't care less if their hair is unruly. If their bangs got cut a quarter-inch too short, girls would rather lock themselves in their room for two weeks than be seen in public.

Baby girls find mommy's makeup and almost instinctively start painting their face. Baby boys find mommy's makeup and almost instinctively start painting the walls.

If a girl accidentally burps, she will be embarrassed. If a boy accidentally burps, he will follow it with a dozen fake belches.

Boys grow their fingernails long because they don't want to bother cutting them. Girls grow their fingernails long - not because they look nice - but so that they can protect themselves from the boys.

Girls are attracted to boys, even at an early age. At an early age, boys are attracted to dirt.

Baby girls often talk earlier than boys do. Before boys talk, they learn how to make machine-gun noises.

Girls turn into women. Boys turn into bigger boys called men.

Posted From [Andychap's The Funnies]

We all need God’s personal help and promise when it comes to parenting.  He gives us as parents these incredibly complex little beings and entrusts them to our care without any detailed instruction manuals.  No two are the same.  So we all ought to pray when we have kids because it will test everything within you.  It will cause you to reach for resources that you never knew you had.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Make me a better parent.

Teach me to understand my children, to listen patiently to what they have to say

and to answer all their questions kindly.  Keep me from interrupting them,

talking back to them, and contradicting them.

Make me as courteous to them as I would have them be to me. Give me the courage to confess my sins against my children and to ask of them forgiveness

when I know that I have done them wrong.

May not I vainly hurt the feelings of my children.  Forbid that I should laugh at their mistakes or resort to shame and ridicule as punishment.  Let me not tempt my child to lie and steal.

So guide me hour by hour that I may demonstrate by all I say and do that honesty produces happiness.  Reduce, I pray, the meanness in me.

May I cease to nag; and when I am out of sorts,  help me, O Lord, to hold my tongue.  Blind me to the little errors of my children, and help me to see the good things that they do.

Give me a ready word to honest praise.  Help me to grow up with my children,

to treat them as those of their own age, but let me not expect of them the judgments and conventions of adults.

Allow me not to rob them of the opportunity to wait upon themselves, to think,

to choose and to make decisions.

Forbid that I should ever punish them for my selfish satisfaction.

May I grant them all their wishes that are reasonable and have the courage always to withhold a privilege which I know will do them harm.

Make me so fair and just, so considerate and companionable to my children that

they will have a genuine esteem for me.

Fit me to be loved and imitated by my children....Amen

Author unknown

So as we celebrate Mother’s day we salute our ladies.  I had no idea the mother that that my girlfriend would one day become.  We salute you ladies for the nobility that graces our lives through you.

Genesis 25:22  The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, "Why is this happening to me?

Rebekah had an instinctive awareness that God holds the answers.  She asked God what was happening when she felt unusual movement inside of her.

" So she went to enquire of the LORD. 23  The LORD said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger."

So right away God spoke to her in her pregnancy with a promise. God gave her a definite message relative to her children. (any Mom’s like that his AM?)  I’ll bet you that there are many mothers here today who have had some supernatural communication from God in the days of their pregnancies.  I’ll bet you as well that there are very few mothers here this morning who have not stopped to pray to God about the life within.  I wonder what some of those pleas were?  I know that my mother tells me about rocking my brother and I on her lap when we were just babies praying that God would call us into the ministry.  She was making no personal profession of faith at that point in her life but it would seem that God answered her prayer.  That would challenge the theology of some but I’m convinced that God hears the prayers of mothers.

This was quite a message as well because she knew from birth the plans that God had for reach and that one would surpass the other and it would not be according to the traditional birth order.  The older would serve the younger.

Genesis 25:24  When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25  The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. {Esau may mean hairy; he was also called Edom, which means red.} 26  After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob. {Jacob means he grasps the heel (figuratively, he deceives).} Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.

And they were different for sure – as night from day.  Look at some of the differences with me.

Genesis 25:27  The boys grew up, and Esau became a skilful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents.

 28  Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Rebekah’s Failures

Now remember mothers, we are looking at a very ordinary mother.  She had her strengths and her weaknesses.  Let’s look at some of Rebekah’s failures.  Chapter 27.

q      Worst case – she played definite favorites – loved Jacob more than Esau

q      Best case – she assumed responsibility to work out the promise that God had given in response to her prayer. (25:22)

q      She conspired to cheat one of her sons out of his blessing

q      She deliberately deceived her husband

q      She encouraged her son to lie to his father

Applications:

1.   Parenting needs to be a spiritually resourced experience.  I am not sure that any of are really ready for what parenting demands of us.  We can never be truly ready for the specifics.

2.      There are enough real burdens and complexities in the process of parenting that we don’t need to assume responsibility that is not ours.  God’s concerns need to be left with him.  We don’t have to experience parenthood very long before we discover who is in control.  There are things that we cannot do for our children.  There are mistakes that they must make and painful lessons that must be learned in order for them to be truly prepared by God.

3.      There are no perfect parents.  You will make mistakes and that does not mean that you have failed.  You have done the best that you can do.  If it is true however that children are a gift from God then there is at least one thing that every parent can do if they will and that is to let God be the Lord of your life and in turn your home.  Until you have done this then you have not done your best.

4.      There are no perfect children.  Children are stamped with the imperfections of their parents and a few that are uniquely their own.  No one in the world is equipped to love you kids like you can.  Don’t parent your children according to the expectations of others.  Do it the way that you see fit – with and by God’s help.  You are the expert when it comes to parenting your children.  No one else.

5.   God will deal with each of us in His own time and His own way.

q      Jacob had a strange encounter of his own.  (28:10-22)

q      He made him work for someone like himself in order to show him how unfair he was. (29:14-30)

q      He made him face his past. (32:22-33:20)