Kaleo San Diego Church > Sermons > Mother's Day: God's Hand in Motherhood

Mother's Day: God's Hand in Motherhood

David Fairchild
May 9, 2004

INTRODUCTION

Most messages you hear on Mother’s day are very similar to a hallmark greeting card and focus on all of the same stories and verses that show us how important mothers are to us.

I think we can all agree before we begin that our mothers are extremely important to us. Without them, we wouldn’t be around to talk about how wonderful they are!

I believe that our mothers should be honored and loved, cared for and revered. I also know that the only way we will be able to love and honor our mom, and the children that God gives us, is by God’s grace and love in us so that we can demonstrate to them the kind of love that only our God can give.

This morning I want to talk about motherhood, which can be a fairly difficult subject for some of you ladies. As we deal with issues of infertility, single motherhood, and widows, I want us to understand God’s place in all of this.

Most of the time when we think of motherhood we are given a list of all the things that you need to do to be a good mom. The list of do’s and don’ts of good parenting are varied and many. Some completely disagree with one another.

Even the standard for what it means to be a Godly mother within the family of God’s people is debated from one side that handles discipline more liberally, and the other which handles it more legalistically. It can be very confusing to sort through all of the things you should do and shouldn’t do.

Today I want to focus on what you can’t do. I want us to look at the role God plays in motherhood so we can see that there are many things that we can’t control.

I want you to see your God and His beautiful hand in motherhood so that we can trust in Him and His ways and lay our desire to control these things at His feet in faith and believe that the God who sovereignly brought us into existence through his own choice at this time in history is the same God that has his hand upon you in your joys and difficulties.

Some of you ladies may not see how this applies to you this morning because you are not a mother, are not pregnant, and don’t even have a fiancé to dream about these things with. One day, by God’s grace, you will and I want you to think about these things now because it will better prepare you as you think of God’s hand in motherhood.

For some of you ladies that are struggling with infertility and wondering where God is in all of this, I pray this message will comfort you as you see His hand on your life.

Some of you ladies have lost a child to miscarriage as Grace and I have and I want you to see the hand of your Father at work in that situation even though it is difficult and painful.

Some of you are currently pregnant. As a church we rejoice with you and look forward to the day of being able to love your child with you and help you as God brings another of His into this world.

Some of you have children and are wondering how that happened. That will be a different message as we teach through Song of Solomon, but suffice to say God’s hand is upon you and your womb.

For others, like Grace and I experienced yesterday, you have and will see your child grow up and move out on their own one day and you will weep with joy for their maturity and mourn for your loss as they leave your care and you now are fully aware of your trust in God’s hand upon them.

Whatever the circumstance, I want us to lift our eyes from our own expectations, our own opinions, and even our own attempts at sovereignty and foreknowledge and view our great Father who loves us and cares for us and who continues to work in and through our lives through times of rejoicing and in times of tears.

Let’s back up and start with the basics.

God created all things. Our first father Adam was created by God followed by our first mother Eve. God brought them into existence exactly at the moment he chose and He did so without any counsel from anyone else. It was His choice at His time.

God gives a clear command to obey His word and instead of listening to the best Father in all the universe, they disobey God and want to do things there own way.

Because of that disobedience sin enters into humanity and the punishment that God promised upon Adam and Eve God keeps His word and now we experience that punishment, that curse that our first parents experience.

For the man, not only will he die one day, but the days that he lives will be lived from the sweat of his brow. He will struggle against working and toiling under the sun. Men, is this true?

For the woman, her primary frustration is going come from her husband and children. Ladies, is this true?

A woman struggles first with getting a husband, then when she has one she spends many days and nights wondering why she did that. It becomes immediately clear that living with a husband causes difficulty and strife.

A woman also struggles in pregnancy as she is stretched to a point of human oddity, she begins to waddle instead of walk, she begins to look at couches differently because she knows the oversized soft ones will mean she will spend 10 minutes of aerobic activity trying to get out of the sofa that has all but swallowed her. Labor begins and she is introduced to a legalized drug pusher who sits a waits eagerly until he’s called upon to charge $500.00 for a shot of feel good.

Then after she has a child she is now called upon to raise the child, discipline the child, she spends the first two years of the child’s life teaching it to walk and talk, then spends the next 16 trying to get the child to sit down and be quiet. This morning at about 4:00 I was jolted from a pretty deep sleep from my wife Grace yelling “shut up.” Needless to say I was a little confused. I woke her up and asked her she was talking to and all she could mumble was “the teenagers weren’t listening to me.” Yes sweety, that is true…

Then the child grows up, moves out, goes to college, brings a girl home, or a boy home, and says they love them and want to get married. They get married, have kids and you’re officially considered old as you are given the “grand” whatever title and the process begins all over again for them.

All of this can cause tremendous anxiety and stress. It keeps companies like Pfizer and Eli Lily in business as mothers try to self medicate to get through their children’s teen years.

Instead of offering you Prozac this morning I want to show you who God is and pray that your peace and calm comes from Him and not from the pharmaceutical industry.

My goal this morning is to get you to sleep well and trust God as you hear what you can’t do as a mother.

STUDY

First, for those of you ladies here this morning who are not married and are single….

God determines where you live

Acts 17:26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.

God has determined when you would be born, when he would be born, what you would be like, where you would live, how you would meet, what kind of personalities you would have and when you finally collide together and fall in love and when you would get married.

Until then there isn’t much that you can do to force the issue. Throughout the Bible we see that men take a wife and daughters are given in marriage. It is the mans responsibility to take initiative and it is the Fathers responsibility to give his daughter to a Godly man to be married.

Proverbs tells us that…

God chooses your husband

Proverbs 18:22 He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD.

Until God gives both of you favor, there isn’t much that a woman can do. There are things you can do to make sure that doesn’t happen but that’s another issue.

If you love God and follow Him the most you can do is to trust Him and wait until He brings you a husband and makes you a mother. You are called to a place of faith in trusting God and waiting on Him to give you a man that will honor you and love you all your days.

God not only brings you into existence at His chosen time, raises your husband, and is in control in your meeting, he is also in control of whether or not you will have children together.

Only…

God fully understands fertility and infertility

Ecclesiastes 11:5 As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.

God is the only one who fully understands this. He knows His plan. He knows your desires, but in His sovereign reign over all things He is the only one who can be trusted for counsel over the issue of infertility because it is ultimately His plan.

God has allowed mankind and medicine to assist in the process, but even with the best-laid plans God is sovereign and will give or withhold. For some of you this is a very difficult because you are having a hard time trusting God in this issue. We need to remember that sometimes when God withholds something from us it is a blessing not a curse. We also need to remember that God grows our faith in trust in Him when we have to grow in our faith and trust in Him!

God places us in a position of fully relying on His sovereign hand in everything we have and desire.

Ladies, do you trust that God has His hand upon your womb. That His sovereignty extends all the way to the beating of your heart and the womb He created?

Eve says this in Genesis 4:1…

God rules over your womb

Genesis 4:1 Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man."

Ruth 4:13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her, and the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

Eve and Ruth both realized that without God’s hand they wouldn’t have been able to conceive and have children. Every life is sacred, every child has been granted by God and is a gift.

This is why the Bible teaches us that children are a heritage from God.

We also know that God does answer prayer and that God has and does make a barren woman a mother. God can make a barren woman a mother

Psalm 113:9 He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the LORD.

God took a virgin woman and made her a mother with Jesus, and with Sarah God took an old woman and made her a mother.

The point is that God is in control of childbearing and motherhood.

God knows your child from your womb

Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

This was a great comfort to Grace and I when she miscarried because even though I didn’t get to know this child, and even though there is sadness because you didn’t get to know the child, God did.

God knew that child from always, and this gives me comfort because I know that God is a much better Father than I am.

John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit in the womb of his mother.

God also can have a life of ministry laid out before the child even lives a day.

God knits your child together in your womb

Psalm 139:13-16 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

God causes your child to be born

Psalm 71:6 From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you.

God determines the length of your child’s life

Job 14:5 Man's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.

God determines the exact days of your child’s birth and death

1 Samuel 2:6 "The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.

God alone can save your child

Jonah 2:8 Salvation comes from the LORD."

God gifts your child for ministry

1 Corinthians 12:11 All these [spiritual gifts] are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

God ultimately controls every aspect of your child’s life

Proverbs 20:24 A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way? Proverbs 16:9 In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.

God redeems every experience of your child’s life if that child loves Him

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

God cares for single mothers and their children

Deuteronomy 10:18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. Psalm 68:5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.

BENEDICTION

Numbers 6:24-26 "The LORD bless you and keep you; 25 The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; 26 The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace."'