Moms on a Mission
Hopefully I’ll be able to share some truths from God’s Word this morning that will encourage your hearts, and that’s the goal. So, one of my favorite TV shows growing up in the 60s and 70s was a CBS TV show called Mission Impossible. Does anybody remember that? Peter Graves? Oh, some of you are old like me, yeah, Peter Graves.
It was a CBS show from 1966 to 1973, and it featured the Impossible Missions Force. And if you saw that show, the music is replaying in your mind, but every episode started the same way. There was a cassette recording.
I brought one to show some people. This is a cassette tape. There was a cassette recording, and the Impossible Mission Force would play it, and it would lay out, this is the mission that we have laid out for you.
If you should decide to accept it. And then it would play the mission, and then the TV show would say, this tape will self-destruct in five seconds, and it would just go poof. And then the rest of the show was about Mission Impossible.
Now, some of the younger ones, this is where the Tom Cruise series of movies, Mission Impossible, originated from, from this original CBS TV show. Well, this morning we want to think about missional moms, because moms, whether you realize it or not, are on a mission, and that mission doesn’t come from a cassette tape. It really comes from the truths of God’s Word.
And I have to tell you, in the seasons and journeys of being a parent and being a mom, sometimes it does seem like Mission Impossible, because there are varying seasons of life, and raising children, and sometimes very, very challenging seasons in life. But the good news this morning, from God’s Word in 1st Thessalonians 5:24, it says, faithful is he who calls you, who also will do it. So, God doesn’t call you to be a mom and just put you out there on an island and say, oh, I hope you do your best.
No, he’s given us some resources as moms and as dads to help us with that mission. So, here’s the $64,000 question. What is the mission? We kind of heard some of it this morning from the panel.
You know, parenting gets so busy, and, and I remember when we were raising our three boys and life was so busy, like, have I ever stopped and just thought, like, what’s, what’s the real goal here? You know, sometimes you’re in survival mode. And God has given us, through his Word, a mission. Author Gary Thomas wrote a book entitled Sacred Parenting, and I’m going to share a quote from that book.
It’s a rather long quote, but stick with me here. He writes, most of us have superficial reasons for having children. Some young, some single young woman will tell crisis pregnancy center counselors that they wanted to get pregnant to create someone who would love them.
Some men think it’s important to carry on the family name. Other couples have children because little babies seem so cute. I have to confess that I felt eager to have kids.
This is, this is Gary Thomas writing, in part because I longed to experience a close father-son relationship as well as an intimate father-daughter relationship. I wanted to be a hero to my kids as my dad was a hero to me. I had a sense that these children would validate me as a man.
Yet these motivations, as noble as they may sound, are still narcissistic at the root based on an idealized notion of children and a romanticized view of what family life is really like. Before long, I discovered what every parent has discovered. Babies come to us as sinners in need of God’s grace and dependent human beings demanding around-the-clock care.
We need something more concrete, something more eternal to see us through the challenges of parenting. The best reasons to have kids, the one reason that will last beyond mere sentiment is this. When God commanded us to be fruitful and to have children is to raise spiritual children who will serve God and work for the glory of his kingdom.
That’s the goal. That’s the target. Chip Ingram, in his book Effective Parenting in a Defective World, gave a succinct statement of what’s the target for parenting.
What, how do you define success? And I’ve quoted it many times, but he wrote, success in parenting is when your child transfers their primary love, submission, and obedience from you to Jesus Christ. That’s the target. Because moms and dads, you’re not going to be with them all the time.
And after 18, 19, 20 years, they’re going to be launched. And what you want to do is cultivate in them a transfer of their love, submission, and obedience from you to Jesus. And so that’s the task.
That’s maybe a mission impossible request. And I have to tell you, now looking back and we’ve raised three boys and have eight grandchildren, but when I was a dad, I had a haunting question. And feeling the responsibility to spiritually drive truths into my kids.
4 resources for missional moms…
And here’s my question, am I doing enough? Am I doing enough in the task that God has given me to raise children? And so, this morning, just in the last 15 minutes here, we want to just share some truths, some resources that God’s given to moms and dads and parents to accomplish this goal of raising kids for the glory of God. So, I’m going to give you four resources that can help with this. And here’s resource number one.
i. Prayer
They all start with the letter P. Resource number one is prayer. Prayer. Perhaps nothing more ramps up our prayer life than having kids and grandkids.
And 1st Thessalonians 5:17 says, pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing. The late Dr. George Sweeting, he was the president of Moody Bible Institute for many years, became their chancellor.
He died a couple of years ago, about three weeks short of his 100th birthday. But Dr. Sweeting made this statement in one of his books. Prayer is one of God’s cures for worry.
Prayer is one of God’s cures for worry. Philippians 4:6, and 7. Do not be anxious about anything. It’s a command.
It’s an imperative. It’s saying, stop worrying. But in everything with prayer and supplication, let your request be made known to God.
Don’t worry about anything. Pray about everything. And then there’s this wonderful promise.
And then the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Isaiah 26:3. Thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is fixed on God. And so, resource number one, that prayer that God has given to us, is God has given to us this wonderful resource of prayer.
And the good news is that in our communication with God, you don’t have to make an appointment. He’s there 24-7. There in the middle of the night.
Never get put on hold. We have a direct access line to God through Jesus to pray. How often should we pray for our children? Every day.
Every day. Job chapter 1, verse 2, and verses 4 and 5 is a picture of a parent in intercessory prayer. Job had 10 children.
And it talks about when a period of feasting was over, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning, he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. This was Job’s custom.
It’s a picture of Job every day praying for his 10 children. How long do we have that task? As a parent, the rest of your life. Rest of your life.
Pray daily for your kids. Pray daily for your grandkids. It’s interesting in Luke chapter 2, verse 52, talking about Jesus’ life and growing up.
This is that Jesus grew and became strong and he was filled with wisdom and grace of God was with him. And Jesus grew in wisdom. It’s a good way to pray for your kids.
God give them wisdom. Stature. Pray for them physically and in favor with God spiritually and man.
And so, the power of prayer, James 5:16 says, the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. And so, resource number one to accomplish this task is the task of praying for our kids and our grandkids.
ii. Precept
Well, there’s a second resource and it’s a precept. Precept. I had to look up the word precept in the dictionary to remind me what’s the word precept mean. It’s not a word that we use often, but a precept is a rule or principle that guides action or conduct.
And so, God’s not only given us the resource of prayer, but he’s given us some truth in his word. Precepts to guide our lives and our kids’ lives. Psalm 19:8, the precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.
How do you know what to pass on to your kids in this age of relativism? Where most people in America do not believe in absolute truth. It’s the truth is relative. Truth is changing.
But the truth of the matter is there is absolute truth. It comes from God. It comes from his word.
Sanctify them through thy word. Thy word is truth. And so, God has not only said we’ve got this resource of prayer, but moms and dads, I want you to teach them.
Deuteronomy 6, the Shema. The Jews repeated it every day. The Lord our God is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. These commands I’ve given you today should be in your heart. And once they’re in your heart, what’s the responsibility? Now I want you to pass them on to your children.
And so, moms and dads, I want you to feel the primary responsibility is moms and dads. Ephesians 6 reinforces that truth. Now there’s some other ways that others can help, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit.
But precept, teaching God’s truth. There’s a wonderful example in 2nd Timothy of this truth. And it was the apostle Paul’s son in the faith, he was Timothy, became a pastor.
He was one of Paul’s right-hand men. And Paul’s writing to Timothy from prison. It’s his last letter that he writes.
He says, I’m reminded, Timothy, of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I’m persuaded now lives in you also. Oh, Timothy, God’s truth was passed on from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now what’s in you? Teaching them God’s truth. Back to that passage in the book of Deuteronomy, he says, how are we to do this? Well, the book of Deuteronomy says you pass on this truth when you get up in the morning, when you walk by the wayside, when you go to bed at night.
iii. Pattern
In other words, use everyday life and point your children to God’s truth. There’s a third resource, and it’s pattern. Yes, we can teach them truth, but perhaps the most significant impact on the lives of our kids and our grandkids are going to be the model and pattern of our lives.
This was Paul’s mode of ministry. 1st Corinthians 11:1, he says, follow me as I follow Christ. Philippians 4:19, he writes to the Philippian church, the things that you have learned and heard and seen in me do.
Now, there’s no perfect examples, but we need to live a consistent life that speaks of integrity because our lives are going to make an impact on the generations to come. And so, youth specialist Greg Steer writes, your child’s greatest spiritual influence isn’t their youth group, it’s not a speaker, it’s not a program, it’s you. They are watching everything, how you respond to stress, how you talk about God, how you live when life gets hard.
More is caught than taught. So don’t aim to be perfect, but aim to be real. Show them what it looks like to follow Jesus in everyday life because discipleship doesn’t start at church, it starts at home.
And so, God gives us the resource of prayer and of God’s truth, precept, absolute truths of God’s word, and then the pattern of a godly life. I grew up in a pastor’s home. My dad was in ministry for 60 plus years.
Were they perfect? No. But what I saw was a consistent life of serving God, loving God, loving people, not just in what they said, but in what they did. And it greatly impacted my life, the impact of the pattern.
iv. Partnership
Here’s the fourth one and then we’re done this morning. The fourth resource is partnership. So, it’s prayer and it’s precept and it’s the pattern of our lives, but it’s partnership.
And the old African proverb, it takes a village to raise a child. In one sense, it does. Perhaps the hardest job on planet earth is a single parent.
And God gives us these partnerships to raise children. All of us desire other individuals in our circle of influence who will positively build into the lives of our kids and our grandkids. Who are these potential partners? Well, first of all, if you have a spouse, it’s your spouse working in partnership with the same goal in mind.
But it’s also grandparents. If you have got grandparent influence, what a blessing that is. I grew up never living close to my grandparents.
My paternal grandparents lived in Buffalo, New York. We were in Cleveland, Ohio. My maternal grandparents were in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
We would see them maybe once a year. We would see them once a year. But grandparents can be a great source.
That was true in Timothy’s life when we read 2nd Timothy chapter 1 verse 5. Spiritual mentors. The apostle Paul had Timothy who was called his son in the faith. Extended family, aunts, uncles, teachers, friends, the church, youth leaders.
Ultimately, you’re in partnership though with God. That God will be your partner. And God will give you the guidance and God will give you the direction to build into the lives of these precious children that he’s blessed us with.
Psalm 127 verse 1. The psalmist writes, unless the Lord builds the house, the labors work in vain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to do anything that like, I hate wasting time. I hate wasting money.
I hate putting my resources into something and it doesn’t really come to fruition. And Psalm 127 verse 1 says, if you’re trying to do this alone, you’re working in vain. You need to partner with God.
God’s given us these resources for missional moms who want to raise kids for the glory of God. And you’re not there alone. He gives you prayer.
He gives you God’s word, precept, teach them, not just teach them, but show them with your life and then partner with others for the glory of God. Well, that’s my prayer for all of you.