Mother's Day

But we were sharing this morning about our memories of our mothers and our grandmothers and um I was just made so aware of how our experiences are kind of different.

You know, it's a day we celebrate Mother's Day, but sometimes this is a highly emotional day for good things and bad things.

Sometimes it's because we lost our mother, sometimes it's because we love our mother so dearly, sometimes it's because maybe we felt like we missed out on some mothering for whatever reason.

And yet, God has a plan for raising up the next godly generation, and it has a lot to do with mothers, has a lot to do with fathers too.

I guess it applies to parents.

But God has a plan.

And this morning, more than our personal experiences, I want to share with you from the Word of God on what his plan was.

Not that we always measure up just exactly right, but God has a plan for the home, and the mother has a very, very special place in that home, and that's what I want to about talk to you about today.

Um, the title of the message is Roots and Wings.

When I reflect on what my parents did best for me, and this will make me cry is thinking about how dear they are, but they gave me, thank you, honey.

Um I knew this would be hard.

Um they gave me two things.

They gave me roots, a firm foundation, a stability that I didn't always recognize until I got a little older, because they did love me and they had high expectations, and they um they were consistent in my life.

It's amazing what stability will do for a child.

And so they were they were that, they were that foundation, but they also gave us wings.

We live all over the place.

My brother's in Richmond, my sister's in Tuscaloosa, and uh she lived for eight years in New York City.

But in wings, it's the idea of flying off, it's the arrow that's you know shot out, and that means it leaves and it it goes out into the world and has an impact.

And sometimes that's hard too.

But roots and wings are the two gifts that we need most for our children, and so that's what I want to share a little bit with.

I wanted to have a little bit of an interaction time, and I don't know if you can talk back to me if you will, but I'm a teacher, okay?

So I'm used to people participating.

So when you think of mother, what is the most, what word comes to mind?

What do you think of when you think of mother?

Gracious, love, nurturer, kindness, teacher.

Okay, all of those good words, good words.

Awesome.

Yay, awesome for moms.

That's good.

Um I I think that we all of those words fit.

All of those words.

I my mother was definitely a teacher.

Um when I would think this is too hard, I can't do this, she was always there saying, Yes, you can.

I can still remember saying to my youngest daughter, she'd say, got up every morning saying, I hate school.

And you know what I said to her?

No, you don't.

You love school.

I hate school.

No, you don't, you love school.

And she'd say, Why do you say that?

You know I hate school.

I said, You don't hate school, you love school.

And every day we would have this conversation back and forth, and you know what?

She loves school.

You know, sometimes you just have to help them to get where they need to be.

But um, as a mother, we often have goals and plans for our children.

What goals do you have?

Think about if your children are raised, what is it that you really wanted for them more than anything?

In first 3 John it says, I have I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.

I wanted my children to walk with God.

That was my number one goal.

What do you want for your children?

Talk to me.

To love Jesus, what else?

To be content, okay?

To be obedient?

What else?

What do you want for your children?

I'm sorry, too many at one time.

What?

To be independent, yes, to be responsible, to have a heart for God.

You know, I wanted mine to be healthy and strong.

How many of y'all have been through the lunch line and I put something green on your plate that you didn't ask for?

Come on, raise your hands.

Go ahead.

All these children are going, yeah, yeah.

If you go through Miss Susan's line, she's gonna put at least one green bean on your plate.

You know, I want you to be healthy.

I want you to be strong.

So I, you know, those are goals.

I wanted my children to do well in school.

I wanted them to do their homework.

I wanted them to be dependable.

And when I asked them to do something, did not have to come behind them and wonder if they, you know, were cooperative.

I I, you know, I wanted them to do good work.

Probably one of the best compliments I ever received was from an English professor who had the habit of inviting his classes to his home for a final dinner.

And he had both of my girls on different occasions.

They were a couple years apart in school, and after the youngest one, he said, Well, I didn't say anything after the first one.

But after this one, I thought I needed to write you a little note.

And he said, I've been doing this for years.

He said, Both of your girls would not let us do the dishes.

They insisted, they said, our mother would whoop us if we came to your house and ate without cleaning up.

If you cook, we clean.

That's the rule.

And uh it was it was sweet to see that maybe some little nugget, boy, that's it.

I taught them how to wash dishes.

But anyway, I want a little more than that.

But when we start with the end in mind, we have a better chance of hitting that target.

What is it that you want for your children?

If you want them to love Jesus, if you want them to grow up and walk with God, then you've got to lay a foundation for that.

It's not gonna happen by accident.

You're gonna have to parent on purpose.

And so there's some things that I want to um, I I guess if if I had a biblical foundation for what we should teach our children, it'd probably be what we learned from Jesus.

We don't know a whole lot about his childhood, very, very little.

We know a little bit about his birth.

We know about one little story when he was 12 years old, when he ran off and taught the teachers in the temple, you know, and they lost.

How do you lose your child?

You know, but Mary and Joseph did.

They lost Jesus, and he was he was in the temple and he was teaching.

And then the passage says that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

In wisdom is he he grew in knowledge, and not just knowledge for knowledge's sakes, but how to apply it.

He grew in wisdom and in stature physically.

He was a carpenter, he was strong, that was hard work.

He grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God.

He had a relationship with God and in favor with man.

He knew how to make friends.

That's the goal of kindergarten is how to be, how to fit in socially.

Do they do they have good manners?

Can they take turns?

Can they can they get along with people?

How many of you would say that's important your whole life?

Yeah, how to get along with people.

That's an important lesson.

So if you want to teach these things, they have to be in your mind.

I um I want to I have three main points today, and I don't know if I'll follow the outline very well.

I hope I will, but um, I'll put it up here so I can pay attention to where the blanks are since I know how that drives me crazy when the blanks aren't filled in.

Amen.

But motherhood, first of all, requires us to raise our children with a consistency of training.

You know, you can't decide one day what the rules are and the next day there aren't any rules.

You can't just say that today we brush our teeth, but tomorrow we don't.

Today we go to school, but tomorrow you get to sleep in.

There has to be a consistency every day.

In Deuteronomy 6, when Moses was describing how we should raise our children, he said that when you walk in the way, when you get up, when you get down, whatever you do, that as you go through life, you teach these things diligently to your children.

So there's a diligent thing.

Um the timing is very important.

Number A, timing is very, very important.

Proverbs 6 tells us a story about the ant, and it says, Go to the ant, you sluggard.

You know what that means, you lazy person.

Sometimes children are a lot of work.

I don't know if anybody noticed that besides me.

You know, children are wonderful, but they are a lot of work, and they they get up in the night and they every time you feed them, they get hungry again, and you wash their clothes and they get dirty again.

And you know, they're a lot of work.

They're worth it, but they're still a lot of work.

But timing is important.

There is a time for training children, and then that time passes.

And so we have to be like the ant, and we've got to work while the summer is here, while that training time is there.

And there's a lot of different stages that children go through as they grow.

In the baby stage, you're nurturing them and you're feeding them and you're responding to their cries, and you learn what's the hungry cry and what's the wet cry, and what's the my my teeth hurt cry, and what's the I'm just spoiled cry, you know.

I mean, you you learn all those things, and you're you're just meeting their needs.

It's it's very much physical care.

But then they get to about 18 months, it's not too, it's younger.

They get to about 18 months preschool, toddler age.

Now you're in child training in earnest, and there is a season of time.

If you don't teach children early to respect you and to obey you, and to mind you, and to listen when mommy and daddy speak, you might miss a window.

And the harvest you're going to get from that neglect in those early preschool years is an adolescence where they don't listen to you, and they have uh wheels and they have you know strong wills and all kinds of things, but timing is important.

Um, when the children are young, it's important to teach them basic things.

The Bible says in Ephesians 6 there's only one instruction to children.

What is it?

Ephesians 6:1, children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Ephesians 6:1

And he says that your days may be long upon the earth.

That doesn't mean that your parents will kill you if you don't do this.

It just means that there is safety in authority.

Now, I have to tell you that the parents are under the authority of God.

Everyone's always under authority.

Isn't that true?

How many of you I have a boss, I've got bunches of bosses.

I I have trouble keeping up with how many bosses I have.

I really do.

You know, I I I seriously, at work I have like three different supervisors.

It depends on which part of the job we're talking about.

Okay, so I've got bosses for everything.

My husband is the head of the home.

I've got a boss.

He's my pastor.

I have to respect him as the pastor.

But he's double boss to me.

You know, so all of us are under authority, and so teaching children early that they are not the center of the world is important.

Because besides the fact that the world will reject that idea and they'll have a world of hurt, but they it is for their good, that you may live long in the earth.

Okay?

And so teaching your children, James Dobson says that spanking is actually a biblical concept.

Now, I know it talks about beating them with a rod.

It sounds like you took a tree trunk down, you know.

I I don't think that's what he has in mind.

And I don't think he has abuse in mind either.

But he said something that my parents certainly knew about.

It said that um that we were to discipline their children while they're young enough to learn.

If you don't, you're helping them sell helping them to destroy themselves.

When Mary was about 18 months, we were visiting uh the all wines.

Uh, we called them Ma and Pa, but um, we were visiting a seminary professor and his wife that had been really close to Danny and I, and she said, if you want people to like your children, don't let them be a brat.

I mean, they're I mean, we're talking 18 months, and so I was just getting started, but you know what?

That was good advice.

If you want them to have friends, then they can't be completely selfish.

Nobody wants to play with somebody who won't share their toys.

You know, if you want people to like your child, don't let them be a brat.

Sometimes we have to say no.

Practice.

No.

Come on, practice.

No.

Okay.

It's okay to say no to a child.

We avoid it.

I teach early childhood.

I can tell you what the textbooks say.

It's like, don't say that.

You just redirect them.

I'm like, no,'s okay.

It's all right to say no.

Yes, we direct them.

Instead of saying, don't run down the hall, we should say walk slowly.

Well, that's true.

I agree with that.

Because if you don't run, then what should you do?

Turn somersaults?

I mean, you have to tell them what to do.

You have to give very specific, positive instruction.

I understand all that.

But we have to be consistent and we have to do it during the timing.

That's important.

When when you have a child that reaches for the remote, I remember days before the remote.

Do you remember when you actually had to like turn the dial?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I remember that too, and I remember it because it was a toddler lesson with Mary, because Mary would reach for the TV controls, and we'd go, uh-uh, and she'd look at us and go, you know, that's time for a lesson.

Okay?

She it's not childish.

She didn't make a mistake.

She knew exactly what she was doing, and she was going to do what she wanted to do, and she was going to touch that TV.

And so, did I go outside and and grab a big tree stump and haul it into the house and beat her with a rod?

I smacked her little hand.

You'd have thought I had gone to the backyard and pulled up a big tree, you know.

I mean, you just thought that was awful.

But you know, she learned not to touch the TV because mama said no.

Sometimes you just have to say no.

Again, I'm gonna refer to James Dobson because nobody's an expert on anything all the time.

But this idea of spanking our children is not something you do when they're 15.

You do not get into a fist fight with your children.

That's not child discipline, okay?

That's unwise, and now you're starting to get toward abuse, okay?

Spanking a child when they're young, when they're little, is simply teaching them to listen.

Part of the reason we do that is because their brains are not able to understand reasoning.

You can reason all day with a child, they don't get it.

A little pop on the hand or the soft part, and they suddenly they get it.

They understand.

But by the time a child gets school age, first grade, five or six, if you have been consistent, you'll be through.

I know you're looking at me like, what?

Maybe I wasn't consistent.

Well, maybe, I don't know.

When you consistently teach a child, and I'm not talking about controlling them to the point that they don't get a choice, so that they're there that what they like doesn't matter.

In this world, I have to, I can't even just say that because people will so misunderstand.

And yet children need training.

And then when they get to school age, now there's a lot of teaching that goes on.

Now they're able, their minds are able to start understanding the why.

And so you start explaining the why.

You start explaining this is why we do this, this is why we're kind to others, this is how we brush our teeth, because we don't like to go to the dentist and have him put a drill in your head.

You won't like it.

It's terrible.

My grandson had a cavity, he's nine.

He brushes his teeth regularly.

That dentist taught him a lesson.

If you don't brush your teeth, you get more of this.

And he didn't like it.

And so he's more careful about the things they had been telling him.

But now he's learning.

Why do you brush your teeth?

So you won't get cavities.

Why do you eat your food?

So you'll be healthy and strong.

Of course, they won't know about sunscreen until they're 60 years old.

But you know, we we try to teach them those things.

And then as they get to adulthood, that's a time when we have to let them go.

But we'll get there in a minute.

So, number one, timing is important.

So know the stage that you're in.

Number two, we must be intentional and courageous and diligent.

Do you know it's hard to do all the things I just said?

First of all, you have to have a plan.

You have to be intentional.

You have to have a plan.

Mom and dad have to get on the same page.

If you're a single parent and you're co-parenting and the kids are one house one week and the other house, you got everyone who's involved in parenting the children needs as much as possible to be on the same page.

So that the children are learning with consistent boundaries.

Children love, no, they don't.

They need limits.

They don't love them.

But sometimes we do what is best for our children, not what they say they want, right?

I mean, if you fed them what they wanted, they would eat candy and Snickers, you know, for meals instead of meat and vegetables.

And they wouldn't drink their milk, they would drink coke.

And they, you know, so sometimes you do what you need to do for them on their behalf.

So you have to be intentional.

Proverbs 21:5 says that the plans of the diligent lead to profit.

Proverbs 21:5

Parenting requires a parent, a parent that agree, and it requires prayer.

You know, there's this baby dedication.

Danny was so right.

This isn't about, okay, Lord, you take the babies.

It's about, okay, parents and grandchildren and grandparents, I mean, you take your responsibilities seriously.

You've got to have a plan.

If you want them to grow up in the nurture of the Lord, when are they going to learn about God?

Are you saving it for Sunday school?

Are you saving it for church?

Are you day in and day out opening the word?

Are you memorizing Scripture together as a family?

Are you are they learning their ABCs with Bible verses?

A.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

B, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.

C, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

How are they learning the Word of God?

You've got to have a plan for that.

It won't happen by accident.

It won't happen when they play with their buddies.

It won't happen on television.

It's not going to happen most of the time in their schools, unless they're in a Christian school.

But day in and day out, you've got to have a plan.

Do you pray with your children?

Do they learn to pray?

I love what my daughter and son-in-law do in California.

They let the kids pray at mealtime.

It's quite interesting.

The oldest one's five, and then there's a four, and then there's a two and a half, and then there's a baby.

And they pray.

Well, when one wants to pray, they all want to pray.

And then they try to outpray each other.

And then the food gets cold.

And, you know, so this is what they do.

They the first few minutes they let them pray with everyone's attention.

The first 30 seconds of praying gets everyone's attention.

After that, we just pick up our fork and they just keep praying and we just start eating because they could go, you know, for a long time.

And they say whatever they want to to Jesus.

And sometimes they're looking around the room and thinking.

Him for the lamp.

But you know, they just they learn it, they're learning to talk to God.

It makes mealtime very interesting.

It's fun.

But they have a plan.

They have a plan to teach them how to pray.

When you're building a foundation, you have to build very carefully and with a purpose.

You'd never build a building without starting with a set of plans.

You'd never plant a garden without hoeing the field and putting the seeds in the right place and figuring out how much space you need and how much water they need.

So when we have children, do we have a plan?

Do we think about this?

And do we think about it before the Lord?

Do we think about it with the Bible in our hands?

Saying, Lord, what would you have me to do?

How do I raise these children?

You know, I have to tell you, I don't have any answers.

I can't tell you what's best.

I have to go to the Word of God and see what He says.

And so when we talk about spanking, and you think, I cannot believe she is not with the times.

Do you know you can get arrested and have your children taken away from you in some states if they see you publicly spank your children?

You know, as a country, this is so out of style.

But the Bible's still true.

Amen.

The Bible's still true.

And so I have to, you know, I'm going to be wise.

I mean, I've had Stephanie say, I I can't, I will talk to you when we get home.

In California, oh no, you have to be very careful about what you do with your children, or they will come take them away from you because they think they're you're being abusive.

You know, there are some parents that are abusive, and that should never happen.

That should never ever happen.

We're supposed to discipline our children in love because we want their welfare, not because we're angry or because they're inconveniencing us or because we didn't get our way.

The parents are supposed to be grown up.

Yes.

Isn't that right?

Supposed to have grown-ups raising the children, not out of control, angry people.

But that being said, Proverbs 22, 6 says, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he'll not turn from it.

I train teachers.

That's what I do for a job.

So I teach teachers how to be teachers.

And if you're a good teacher, you're going to spend the first week of a new school year establishing routines.

This is how we sharpen our pencils.

This is when we sharpen our pencils.

This is when you can get up out of your seat.

This is how you talk in class.

This is how we walk down the hall.

This is when we take our bathroom breaks.

This is how, and you establish all these things.

The whole first week, you don't teach much about George Washington.

You teach about how to sharpen your pencil and when to be quiet and when to talk and what the class rules are and how we treat each other.

And you establish that so that later, what can you do?

Teach.

Yeah, you've got things that they need to know about, but you can't teach them if they're running all over the room and there's chaos.

And the same is sort of true with our children.

When they're preschoolers, we're teaching them to listen, to respect what mommy and daddy say.

And when we speak to them to listen and to respond appropriately, and we're teaching them that.

Why?

Because we've got a whole lot of other things to teach them, and we can't teach these lessons unless we've got these.

It's a building plan.

You lay a foundation and then you build on it and you build on it.

And you know what you're building from?

You're building from complete dependence, where they can't feed themselves, can't clothe themselves when they're in diapers, complete dependence.

Where are we headed?

To independence.

And so you're teaching them step by step all along the way.

And so we have to have a plan for that.

Discipline and instruction go together, hand in hand.

Proverbs 13, 24 says, He who spares the rod hates his son.

But I don't hate my child.

I could never spank them.

You know, if you grew up in an abusive home, what I'm saying to you is like it brings back such horrible memories.

I would never, you know what?

You can do that.

You can do that.

And you're gonna have to get really creative for how to teach them these lessons without it.

But you can do it, okay?

I'm not saying you can't.

You're just gonna have to be really creative and figure out how to how to make it work and how to help them to listen.

But when you it's a lot of work, Suzanne Wesley had 19 children.

Do y'all know who I'm talking about?

The mother, uh the Wesleyan um that started the Wesleyan Methodist, their mother, Susanna Wesley, had 19 children, and when she wanted to be alone, she would take her apron and pull it over her head because it was the only privacy she got, you know.

And it was like, you know, and and she said, if you read some of her things, she would say, I would see a child doing something that they were not supposed to do, and they knew better, and I knew that they knew better, and I so wanted to just sit in my chair and continue, you know, act like I didn't see it, but I couldn't.

I had to get up.

Okay, that's what it that's what it means.

It means it's a lot of trouble to be consistent.

It's a lot of trouble.

You can't you you have to every time.

We have dogs, you know that.

Watch it.

You know, children are easier to train than dogs, I think, but I'm not sure.

But when I I went to a dog training school years ago when we had a Dalmatian, and I thought this, this is terrible, but this is the truth.

I wish I had taken the dog training school before I had children.

Because the things they teach you about, you know, how consistent, and the lesson one is you have to get the dog's attention before you can teach them anything.

That's what discipline's about.

It's about getting their attention so then you can teach them.

That's the whole thing.

That's the whole point.

You know, they're not paying any attention to you until you stop them in their tracks.

So if you, you know, if if for whatever reason you just cannot bring yourself to use physical punishment, then you're gonna have to figure out something that will still get their attention.

It may be no electronics.

Today that might work too.

Um, but children who grow up in undisciplined homes feel that nobody cares about what they do.

There's an old study that was done about playgrounds and early uh early childhood children, and they decided that the fences around the playground were inhibiting the children's freedom.

So they took the fences down.

And because before that, the children were always at the edge of the fence, like climbing up on the fence, hanging on the fence, and they're thinking, they're trying to get out of here.

They don't like this fence.

So they took the fences down, and you know what the children did?

They hung out with the teacher.

They just stayed right there by them.

There's something about a solid limit, a solid boundary.

And and and the children are gonna bump up against that boundary all the time.

They're gonna keep bumping up, bumping up, bumping up.

Are is this still, do I really, is this really my bedtime?

Is this really all the time I can have on my iPad?

Is this really the rule?

Do I really have to brush my teeth?

Do I really have to wash all the dishes?

Do I really have to?

They're gonna bump up against the boundaries.

But if you take all the other boundaries, if you take them all down, well, well, nobody's even paying attention to me.

Nobody cares about me.

You don't care what I do.

I could go play in the street and you wouldn't care.

Children need lots of love and limits that are firm and set, that they can depend on.

It makes them feel secure.

When the fences were taken down, they were afraid to go explore the edges.

But when the fences are in place, they're climbing all over the fence because they were safe to do that.

Sometimes raising our children is that way too.

When we don't, when we discipline our children, we have to balance it with love.

Colossians 3.21 says, fathers, do not discourage, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

Our expectations are supposed to be appropriate to their age.

You know, babies, when they eat food, they make a mess.

Are you going to discipline a child for being messy when they eat?

Of course not.

That's just child behavior.

They can't help that.

They would be discouraged if you expected that.

If your kindergarten child is still learning to tie their shoes, you don't spank them because they don't tie their shoes.

You teach them.

So the expectations have to line up with their abilities and what they can do.

But children can usually do more than they want to do.

We're on to you.

We know.

We know that you can make up your bed.

We know that you can find your socks.

We know that you can fold the laundry.

You know, we know that you can.

And our expectations should line up with what they can do so that they have a sense of self-esteem.

Where does that independence come from?

I can do it.

I remember when my children first learned how to do laundry.

It's when they put their clean clothes in the laundry hamper, so that was how they cleaned up their room.

I know y'all would never do that.

Ever.

You would never do that at all.

You would never, you know, try to con your parents.

You know, I have eyes back here.

My children used to say, How do you know we did that?

And I thought, I thought, you left a crumb trail the whole way.

How did how would I not know what you did?

But you know, they were taking clean clothes, they'd try them on and go, no, I don't want to wear that.

And then they'd throw it on the floor, and then I would ask them to straighten their room.

And so what do they do?

They'd pick it all up, throw it in the dirty hamper.

Fastest way to clean your room.

When I discovered I was washing clean clothes, I just quit washing their clothes.

They were 10 and 12.

And they, you know, it's like three buttons.

Choop, choop, shut the lid.

There you go, washing clothes.

Children can do more if we will let them do more.

And we should expect them to do what they can and help them and train them with the things they can't do.

All right.

God also knows that discipline is painful.

Hebrews 12 says that no discipline is joyous, but rather it's painful.

But afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness by those who've been trained by it.

Have you ever been forced to do something you didn't want to do?

How many of you have had somebody, your parents or a teacher, some mean person in your life made you do something you did not want to do?

Okay.

Did it hurt you?

Was it hard?

Did it did it hurt you to do that work?

Did it hurt you to do your homework?

Did it hurt you to weed eat that yard?

You know, we have weed eaters now, but I remember the old kind that you squeezed the handle and the little blades, the scissor blades.

Do you y'all you only the 50, 60-year-old people are gonna, the old hand thing?

You get blisters right here.

Okay?

When my family did yard work, we did it all together.

Dad was cutting the grass, mom was planting the garden, I'm doing the trimming by hand.

Weed eaters are a blessing, okay?

But I remember those things.

It wasn't fun, but teaching me how to work was not a bad thing.

It was good for me.

It was very good.

The peaceable fruit afterwards is good.

Ephesians 6 says the same thing.

Fathers, don't exasperate your children.

Don't expect too much.

Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

I want to say this we should not expect too much, but neither should we expect too little.

Let them rise to the occasion.

Yes, they can do it.

Yes, they can do so many things.

And there's not there's a um an early childhood textbook had it was chapter 10.

I still remember the book.

Chapter 10 was about children and work and how teaching children to work builds their self-esteem.

Nothing makes you feel prouder of yourself as a sense of accomplishment.

I can do this.

And so chapter 10 was not in the next revision, and it was my favorite chapter.

I kept teaching it.

I just didn't, you know, it wasn't in the book.

But there's when children will have a learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness.

I can't find anything to eat, I can't find my songs, I don't have a towel.

Learned helplessness.

Oh, honey, let mama do it for ya.

No.

Okay?

If there's nothing wrong with their hands and feet and their eyes work, okay?

It's good.

It's good.

Are they gonna whine and complain?

Yes.

When my children were little, they were whining, and I we were at a family gathering, and I said something to my aunt at the time, and I said, Did I whine like this when I was little?

I did not like her answer.

No, your mama didn't let you.

Oh.

My sister has a good cure for this.

She goes, I'm sorry, I can't hear you when you talk like that.

Did I?

Are you are you talking to me?

She said, I can't, when you talk in that whiny ear, I I can't, my ears don't hear that.

She taught her children not to whine, but how to work.

All right.

Children will absorb more from our example than from our words.

Luke 6, 40 says, A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who's perfectly trained must be like his teacher, will be like his teacher.

So you're going to teach your children things by default.

They're going to learn from you by the way that you do things.

And they're going to absorb that.

And you want to do that on purpose too.

It's sort of like the oxygen mask.

If you want your children to love God, then what do you have to do?

You've got to love God.

You want your children to be kind and to speak respectfully, then what do you have to do?

See, children should be spoken respectfully too as well.

And that's how they learn.

This is how we talk to each other.

All right, the next thing.

So we must, timing is important.

We must be intentional.

We must be diligent.

We must be, what was the other one?

Courageous.

I think it does take courage.

The third thing, God must be at the center of our life and family.

God has to be at the center.

You can read every book, every baby book, every how to raise children.

There's probably YouTube videos on how to raise your children.

I don't know.

There's YouTube video on everything else.

So there might be something on there, but God has to be at the center.

If you want them to really come to grow and to know the Lord, to be a disciple, then you're going to have to raise them according to that.

God called Abraham to be the father of a new nation, and it's for this reason.

Genesis 18 19 says, For I have chosen him so that he will command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.

Micah 6.8 says, He's shown you, O man, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Loving God and loving people, being rightly related to God, being rightly related to people, being saved and learning how to walk in the Spirit.

These are the things that we want to lay a foundation for.

1 Corinthians 3 says that the only foundation is that of Christ.

The last verse, verse 11, says, For no one can lay any other foundation than the one which is laid, and that's in Jesus Christ.

If you're going to build a solid child, a solid life, a solid human build human being, you're going to build it on that foundation of Christ.

2 Timothy, Paul reminds Timothy of how he learned some things.

And he says, But as for you, continue in what you've learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it.

In the first part of the verse, the chapter, he talked about his mother, Lois, and his grandmother, Eunice.

And how from infancy you have known the do you hear that?

From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation.

How are your children going to come to the Lord?

They're going to have to know the Word of God.

And so you need to teach them the Word of God.

Even the two most important lessons as children are little bitty.

God created the world.

God created you.

God loves you.

There you go.

That lesson will do for about five years.

God loves you.

God made you.

My grandchildren's favorite song right now is God's Beautiful World.

Do y'all ever remember that?

God's beautiful world.

I love God's beautiful world.

He made it for you.

He made it for me.

I love God's beautiful world.

Braxton will be in the back seat.

World! He got it.

It may be the only word, but he got it.

But we teach them the scriptures from infancy.

How did Jesus make disciples?

This is a good parenting model.

How did Jesus make disciples?

First, Jesus had a relationship with God, he walked with God.

Then he walked with God in front of the disciples.

Then he had the disciples learn about walking with God while he was watching them, and then they independently walked with God.

So they started out, he did it, then he did it with them, then they did it while he watched, and then they did it independently.

That's how we parent, that's how we make disciples.

We walk with God, we do it, then we teach it to the children, then we let the children start to do it.

The other day when our young people were leading the worship and were helping with the sign language and the solos, what are they doing?

They're learning to worship the Lord.

This is that stage of discipleship.

They've seen it done, now they're doing it.

And they're doing it with help.

But the next step is they'll do it without us.

And we're gone.

That's discipleship, and that's what we want to see.

You do it, you show them how to do it, they do it with you, and then they do it.

Taking them to church, bringing them to the house of God.

Deuteronomy 6 is one of my favorites.

It says, These words I command you today, you shall teach them diligently to your children.

You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down.

Okay, that's about all the time, right?

When you're sitting, standing, and lying down.

That's all everything.

And when you rise up all day long, every day.

Number one, motherhood requires that we have a consistency of training.

Number two, motherhood requires us to release our children in a celebration of trust.

The training's over.

We've done our jobs.

You put them on the school bus, give them their lunchbox, and then you cry yourself all the way home.

I didn't do that.

I was like, woohoo! My mother and I talked about that this morning.

She said, you know, people talk about crying when their children go to first grade, when they go to college, and when they got married.

She said, I always felt like that's what I trained you to do.

Yay! I did my job.

My job's over.

Woo-hoo! I, you know, I thought, well, I guess that's where I get it from.

But there is a time to release your children to the Lord.

There's a time to let them go.

Now, those of you in here who are 14, it's probably not yet.

So just hang on.

Okay?

The time's coming, but it's not yet.

Who owns your children, by the way?

Well, you say that now, but when they get a certificate at the end of school that they were the best of this and they did that, that's my child.

I did that.

And when they're bad, that is your child, not my child.

Your child did this, your child.

It's funny how parents do that.

They look like you, they act like you, so of course they're yours, but you're right.

The true answer is that children are in heritage from the Lord.

It's really a matter of Now, I know there are some people who say, no, they're mine, and they're gonna be mine, they're gonna be mine.

The only children who live with their parents are the children that have special needs.

And that's okay.

That's all right.

God had a plan for that to put us in families.

But most people are going to grow up into independence and they're going to fly away.

And the mother bird either is going to have more eggs or she's going to go dig for her own worms.

I don't know what she's going to do.

But the children that we're raising don't belong to us.

And sometimes, sometimes we want to mold our children into our own image.

Well, I never got to do this when I was a child, so I want to make sure that my child learns to do this.

Well, if you never learn to play the piano when you were growing up, you know, the child needs to have some musical ability and some interest and all that.

But when they grow up, it's time for them to start making their own decisions.

Think about Jochebed.

Does anybody know who Jacobed is?

Jacobed was Moses' mother.

Now talk about a woman of faith.

The law is that all the Hebrew children are supposed to be thrown into the alligator, crocodile, it's crocodiles there.

The crocodile-infested Nile.

And she was hiding baby Moses.

And one day he got big enough that he was not being quiet anymore, and she couldn't hide him.

And she made a little basket and she put him in the Nile, but in a boat, not just put him in the Nile.

Put him in a boat and then sent Big Sister to watch him, trying to keep him safe.

I can't imagine how terrifying it would be as a mother to have that kind of choice.

My child's going to die or I'm going to have to hide him or something.

And then you know the story, Pharaoh's daughter came down, it was where she bathed and found the baby and picked him up.

And you know, the mother didn't come running out and say, Oh, that's mine, you can't have him.

It was like, Lord, this is your child.

This is all I know how to protect him.

You're going to have to do that.

So Miriam said, You know, I know one of the Hebrew women who could probably nurse this baby for you.

They didn't have formula back then.

And so I think I can went and found Moses' own mother.

And she was the nursemaid to her own son, but at Pharaoh's expense.

Isn't that awesome?

She let him go into the Nile, probably half terrified.

But she let him go and said, Lord, you're going to have to protect this child.

There was another one, Hannah.

You know, she prayed for, uh-oh, my phone's going off.

What does that mean?

If you're in my Sunday school class, it means five more minutes.

That's right, that's what that means.

All right.

Thank y'all.

That's funny.

All right.

Hannah prayed for a child, and God gave her Samuel.

And when Samuel was only three years old, or about that age, he was weaned, she took him to the temple where she had promised him to the Lord and dropped her baby off with Eli.

That's a little terrifying, too.

Then we have Mary, who had Jesus.

She was the only one who really knew he was virgin-born.

Okay, everybody else can talk about it, but she knew that he was virgin-born.

And she knew he was God's son, and she knew that God had a plan for him.

And she knew the prophecy that one day your heart will be pierced by what's going to happen to him.

You know?

Sometimes I wonder if I was Mary, if I wouldn't have clung to him and said, No, kill me, kill me.

You know, I don't want this to happen.

Can we make a deal?

Can I pay you money?

Can I stop this somehow?

Can I can I rescue Jesus from the cross?

But Mary is mother, let God have his way, even though it broke her heart.

There's another Mary.

We don't know her as well.

We find her in the book of Mark.

And it's only right that Mary would be mentioned in the book of Mark because Mark, who wrote the book of Mark, was her son.

So Mary, the mother of John Mark, who wrote the book of Mark, was a woman that had a house big enough for them to have a prayer meeting in.

She was in with the early believers, and when she was mentioned in the book of Acts, actually, not Mark, but was mentioned in the book of Acts, and they were meeting, praying for Peter, who was in jail, and a servant came to the door, and it was Mary's house.

Mary, the mother of John Mark.

Well, John Mark had come to be a believer.

He'd seen everything.

He was a relative of Barnabas, and somehow he ended up in Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, and he went on their first mission trip.

Mother lets son go to Antioch, leave Jerusalem, and go on a mission trip.

Deedra, you'll appreciate this one.

You know, sometimes people don't want their children to go to the mission field.

They don't want their children to go away from them.

I grew up living all over the Southeast, but my dad told me recently that when his mother found out that he was moving from Tuscaloosa to Gadsden, she thought he was moving to the moon.

You know, it was so far away.

How could you leave us?

How could you go so far?

But you know, if if children are arrows in the hand of a mighty man, I don't know where they're going to fly.

I don't know where God might send them.

And yet God has a plan.

And it's a stewardship.

They don't belong to us.

What is it that God wants for your child?

Sometimes it might be heartache, it might be suffering, it might be the mission field, it might not be what you would choose.

This is a number two, this is a matter of prayer and faith.

Jesus prayed for his disciples and he prayed for us in John 17.

He said, They're yours, but you gave them to me, and I've taught them.

And now he said, I am praying for them.

Father, protect them by the power of your name.

That's what Jesus prayed for his disciples.

Father, protect them by the power of your name.

May the Lord protect our children.

And then he prayed the same thing for Peter.

I'm going to have to wrap up.

But he said in Luke 22, I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith will not fail.

And when you repent, you're going to go through a hard thing.

Sometimes as mothers, we have to have we have to allow our children to have wings and to fly away from us, even if it means that they're going to hurt.

Number three, motherhood requires us to invest in the next generation of mothers.

This is our last thing.

My children are grown, and they're raising their children, and I want to support them as much as I can.

I want to help them as much as I can, but I can't raise their children for them.

That's that's their their task.

That's what God wants them to do.

And I thank the Lord for godly grandmothers.

I don't know where Danny would have been had he not had a godly grandmother who raised him.

And so I don't make light of that, but God has called me to lift them up.

You know, the young mothers in here, I want to pray for you.

I want to support you.

I want to help you.

I want to encourage you.

I want you to recognize that you're doing a good job when you're tired and frustrated and hadn't had any sleep and feel like I'm a failure.

I asked somebody one time what to do with teenagers, and they told me, don't kill them.

And I thought, that's all you've got?

That's it?

That's all the advice you've got for raising teenagers?

Just don't kill them.

She said, Yeah, you'll regret it when you're old.

I thought, what?

You know, oh my goodness.

I needed encouragement.

I'm not sure that that's what she gave me, but that was it.

You know, sometimes a message like this when we talk about mothers can make you feel discouraged.

But 1 Thessalonians 5 says that faithful is he who called you, who also will do it.

If God has called you to mother, he's going to give you the power and the strength and the wisdom and the grace and everything you need.

And you just need to call on him and he'll help you to do that.

But if you're the dad on this Mother's Day, if you're the dad, if you're the grandmother, if you're the uncle, if you're the friend, you need to do everything you can to make the mother's job easier.

You need to support her.

You need to get on the same page.

Parenting was never intended to be mom's job, it was supposed to be parents' jobs, and dads are so crucial.

So get on the same page and encourage each other in the Lord.

Remember Abraham, God chose him because he was going to raise his children.

I want to read two more verses to you.

This is where we find our roots.

Ephesians 3 says that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, may we do that for our children, rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend what is the breadth and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge.

Those are the roots.

To know that they're deeply loved, no matter what they do, no matter where they go, no matter how much they mess up, they are loved.

There is a foundation in that.

And then give them wings.

Isaiah 40 says, But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up wings as eagles, they'll run and not grow weary.

I have, I'm sorry, I was trained by a seminary guy, so I have a poem for you, but I think you've heard this before.

It says, Roots and wings.

If I had two wishes, I know what they would be.

I'd wish for roots to cling to and wings to set me free, roots of inner values like rings within a tree, and wings of independence to seek my destiny, roots to hold forever, to keep me safe and strong, to let me know you love me when I've done something wrong.

To show me by example and help me learn to choose, to take those actions every day to win instead of lose.

Just be there when I need you, to tell me it's alright, to face my fear of falling when I test my wings in flight.

Don't make my life too easy.

It's better if I try, and fail and get back up myself so I can learn to fly.

If I had two wishes and two were all I had, and they could just be granted by my mom and dad, I wouldn't ask for money or any store bought things.

The greatest gifts I'd ask for are simply roots and wings.