A Mother's High Calling

Many women aim to break the glass ceiling as they aspire to executive power and perks. But no position has more potential to influence the future than that of being a mother. There's no better role model for motherhood than Mary, who struggled as a single mom, caring for several children, including her firstborn, Jesus, the Son of God. Her calling as a mom shows us how crucial motherhood is. From Chicago, we welcome you to The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching under the ministry of Dr. Erwin Lutzer.

On this program, we continue a 10-part series on fighting for your family. Later in our broadcast, we'll learn about a mother's high calling. Pastor Lutzer comes now to open our service. We are going to sing together, and today is unusual at the church.

We do this several times a year where we highlight children. Let's pray together and give ourselves to the Lord and thank the Lord for his many goodnesses to us. Would you quiet your heart before the Lord?

Would you ask him for focus so that you might be able to honor God with your thoughts? Father, we come before you today and thank you for life itself, for the gift of life for every child which is so special to you. We pray today, Lord, that you might help us to have a bigger vision of what you are about in the world and in our own individual lives, and help us to worship you and to thank you, and to thank you with all of our hearts for your mercies. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. For faith is round and strong Through all our life we near us Give ever joyful cries And bless with peace to cheer us And keep us in his grace And guide us when we're blessed And free us from all ills With his word and promise All praise and praise to God The Father and love he gave him The Son and him who reigns With heaven in highest heaven The body, drink of wine Whose birth and death have grown For thus it was, it's now, and shall be evermore Worthy of worship, worthy of praise Worthy of honor and glory Worthy of all glad songs we can sing Worthy of all the offerings we bring You are worthy, Father and Creator You are worthy, Savior and Savior You are worthy, worthy and wonderful Worthy of worship and praise Worthy of reverence, worthy of fear Worthy of love and devotion Worthy of bowing and bending of peace Worthy of all this and adding to this Worthy, Father and Creator You are worthy, Savior and Savior You are worthy, worthy and wonderful Worthy of worship and praise Almighty Father, Master and Lord King of all kings and Redeemer Wonderful Counselor, Comforter, Friend Savior and source of our life with heaven You are worthy, Father and Creator You are worthy, Savior and Savior You are worthy, worthy and wonderful Worthy of worship and praise Worthy, Father and Creator You are worthy, Savior and Savior You are worthy, worthy and wonderful Worthy of worship and praise The Maker He formed my God Before even time began My life was in His hand He knows my name He knows my every thought He sees His children lost And hears me when I go He'll never leave me No matter where I go He knows my name He knows my every thought He knows my name He knows my every thought He sees His children lost And hears me when I go He knows my name He knows my every thought He sees His children lost And hears me when I go And hears me when I go You have searched me, Lord, and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You deserve my going out and my lying down.

You are familiar with all my ways. Before word is all my strength, You, Lord, know it completely. 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 a 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 to be came. Search me, God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offense away me and lead me in the way everlasting. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him on creatures here below. Praise Him above the heavenly host. Praise God with son and holy host.

Amen. This is the second in a series of messages called Fighting for Your Family. And we have to fight for our family.

It says in the book of Nehemiah chapter 4, Fight for your brothers, your sisters, your wives. And today we have to fight like never before, not physically, but spiritually for the family. I'm expecting miracles as a result of this series, not because of the messages as such, though I hope God uses them, but rather if we pray together as families and as we begin to call on God, God can do what we can't, what sermons can't do.

He can take the Word of God and apply it. Last time I gave you the challenge of looking for two miracles. First of all, the miracle within, whatever resentment, anger, brokenness there might be, that God might bring about a kind of healing so that there can be reconciliation and hope and as a result of the past that there might even be a tremendous amount of blessing. But also pray for another miracle, pray for somebody else, maybe your spouse, maybe a wayward child, or maybe there are other people and you say, I'm going to call on God and things are going to be different because I've prayed. This morning I was so blessed here at the church, rather early on, a woman came to me and said, oh, thank you so much for the assignment that you gave us last week, reading 1 Corinthians 13 every day. She said it made a great change in her life and God is working in me, she said. That blessed my soul. Every one of these messages is going to have an assignment.

Today's is going to be very clear, very simple in many respects, and it will be given to you near the end of the message. But stay with us. Well, we emphasize, of course, motherhood and, you know, I was reading this week, someone sent me questions and then they are answered by second graders. Nothing as sweet as children. Why did God make moms? Because she's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is. And isn't that true? Mostly to clean the house.

There you go. More thoughtfully to help us out when we were getting born. How did God make mothers?

I like this one. He made my mom just like he made me, but he used bigger parts. Why did God give you the mother you have and not someone else's mom? Because we're related. Because he knows, and I love this one, because he knows she'd love me more than any other person's mom.

That's great. What did your mom know about your dad to marry him? His last name. And then finally, does he make at least $800 a year? And did he say no to drugs and yes to chores? I think that is very important.

Hopefully, it's even a little more than $800 a year, but at least the kid is on his way. Motherhood. Well, today we're going to look at the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and I can imagine immediately what you are thinking. You're thinking to yourself, already I struggle with being a mother, and I feel so inadequate, and I feel as if I'm failing. And now you're going to take this woman, who went to heaven every evening supposedly, came back every morning, and you're going to use her as an example just to load me with more guilt.

Not at all. This message is going to be one that is laced with grace. But I need to tell you that the Mary I'm going to present to you today is not the somber-faced woman that we see on icons and statues. This Mary was a tough woman who managed a blended family that obviously had a great deal of conflict.

And for the most part, she did it alone. This is not the Mary that we oftentimes visualize in the next few moments. I hope to blow every stereotype as we look at the total teaching of the Bible. I need to warn you in advance that we might not be able to turn to all the passages I'd like to turn to.

So in some instances, I may simply give you the reference, have a pencil, jot it down, and read it later, because I want you to see that I'm not making this up. And when this is over, I hope that even those who aren't married will be able to understand that the principles of this godly woman help all of us in the family and highlight the importance of childhood and family reconciliation. First of all, we see, of course, the importance of realizing that children having a child is a divine calling from God. Do we even need to turn to the first chapter of Luke?

Because it's really the Christmas story. You know how an angel comes and says, You've received favor from God. You'll conceive in your womb and bear a son. This is verse 21. He shall be great. His name shall be Jesus.

He will save his people, etc. Mary asks, How can this be? Because I'm a virgin. And he says, The Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and you will have within you, created within you, this child, this holy child will be created within you.

You will conceive, but do so miraculously. And Mary says, Be it as you wish. Wow. Well, first of all, I want you to see that raising a child is a divine calling. But was it important for Mary to give great concern and attention to raising Jesus?

Well, of course. And you're saying to me today, but I have a four year old son and pastor, believe me, he's not Jesus. He's not Jesus.

No, he's not. But he's also an eternal being, an eternal being. Now, Jesus was eternal in both ways. He was eternal in an eternity past because he's the one who existed as the son of God forever. He was actually the creator.

He created his own mother, ultimately, because he was God. But he is also going to exist as a man forever. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews, this man, because he has an unchangeable priesthood, endures forever. And the child that you are raising is also going to endure forever. He's a forever baby. Existing forever, either in unimaginable bliss or unimaginable horror.

One of two places. He is an eternal child. That child that you are raising is also a valuable child.

Great value. Because, you see, he's not simply a product of conception. The moment a woman conceives, she already knows, by the way, that she is a mother. God has implanted that in her heart. But the moment that conception takes place, God begins to go to work and not only create the biology of the child, the physical characteristics, but he also implants within that child a soul and stamps on that soul the divine so that every single child is created in the image of God. No matter what the circumstances of the conception were.

I love to tell the story of Los Angeles, California, where a young woman at the age of 14 was sexually assaulted. She gave birth to a little baby girl whom she called Ethel. When Ethel became an adult, she said she never as a child had a lap to sit on. She said every child should have a lap to sit on.

Absolutely every child should have a lap to sit on. But that child grew up and she became Ethel Waters. And you think of all those of us who live from another generation who remember night after night singing in the Billy Graham Crusades and her favorite song, His Eye is on the Sparrow, and I know he watches me. And I think she loved that song because she knew that when she was conceived, regardless of the circumstances, she was valuable to God and his eye was on that sparrow even before she was born. Every child valuable, every child created in the image of God. Could there be a higher calling?

Secondly, you have the dedication. The dedication, now this takes place here in the scriptures in the book of Luke chapter 2, actually. And I wish we had time to read it all, but I'm in Luke chapter 2 and there in verse 22, it says that the time of purification came. Jesus was about eight days old. They brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. That's what happens here at The Moody Church when we have a child dedication.

We're presenting the child to the Lord. But in order for Mary to be the mother that she had to be, she had several issues that she needed to surrender on. First of all, she had to welcome motherhood.

Remember, she was not campaigning for this particular assignment. It was given to her by God. And it wasn't easy for her to say to people, oh, you know, I am not married, but I'm pregnant and I had an angel come to me and tell me that this was to be divine.

And the neighbors would say, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. This was not easy. But she first of all gave herself to God. She embraced her responsibility as a mother.

And then she dedicated the little baby Jesus to God. Oh, my parent today. And by the way, the next message in the series is to dads. But I am speaking to moms. Will you remember that when you have that child, I want you to visualize God in heaven saying to you, this is my child, raise him, raise her for me.

Because you're going to have accountability. And parents, please, and I speak especially, I suppose, to mothers, if you have a great deal of hurt, if you are angry at the child's father because he has walked away and now you're a single mom and there's a hundred different scenarios we could tell you, please don't transfer that particular feeling that you have towards the child's father to the child and be an angry mom. Embrace that responsibility gladly regardless of your past and say, oh, God, this child has come from you to me and you're telling me raise it for your glory. Listen, Mary didn't know what she was getting into. That's why we're going to be very surprised at the kinds of hassles that she had within her own family. And Simeon here in this experience says to her, and I realize this, but yesterday afternoon as I read this, it hit me with such clarity. When Simeon says later on there in the temple, he's speaking to Mary, he does not speak to Joseph. Later on it'll become clear why, but it says here to Mary, his mother, he said, behold, this child is appointed for the fall and the rise of many in Israel and for a sign to be opposed and a sword will pierce through your own soul also so that the thoughts of many people might be revealed. Motherhood comes with its joys, but oftentimes part of the assignment or sorrows. Mary is going to have to endure that sword, as we'll explain in just a moment, and she's going to have to endure it alone evidently without her husband. What a challenge she's going to have. But she didn't know who she was raising. I mean, she knew that he was the divine child, but she had no idea what this meant.

And you don't know who you are raising either, my dear friend. This past week as I was reading a book written by Charles Swindoll, my claim to fame is that he and I are friends, though we're distant friends. He's a great preacher. You've probably heard him on the radio.

He's on about a thousand stations. He says in his book that his parents really didn't want him, that they always favored the older brother. Why can't you be like the older brother?

Yadda, yadda, yadda. And, you know, why did we have you? And I'm thinking to myself, you were raising Charles Swindoll, for heaven's sake.

And you had that kind of an attitude toward him? And you have no idea, no idea who you are raising. Raise him, raise her for Jesus.

And you might, too, live someday to be very pleasantly surprised. The dedication. Next, we have the nurturing responsibility, and this fell on Mary's shoulders, as we shall see also now. This is in Luke also, chapter 2, and I wish we could read the story, but we can't.

I assume that you know it. His parents are at the Passover in Jerusalem, and he's 12 years old, and they are now going back, and they go an entire day's journey without realizing that Jesus isn't in the company. Now, Jesus had his friends, he had his relatives.

By now, probably, he had his half-brothers, some of them, certainly, because in total there were four brothers and at least two sisters. And so they think to themselves, well, Jesus is there, and they are with the younger children, of course, who were born later, but they go an entire day's journey, and Jesus isn't there. And then they go back to Jerusalem, and I'm just reading the text. It took them three days to find him. They were probably thinking, oh, he's playing with the other kids in this suburb or this area of Jerusalem. He's not there, he's not there. What in the world is a 12-year-old kid doing in the temple? So they find him three days later.

Have you ever lost a child? I remember at the condo, and it's a small condo, but one of our grandchildren pushed the button, hopped in the elevator, didn't realize that he was in the elevator alone, got off on some floor, and he thought that it was the right floor because every floor looks like the other one. And we're thinking, where is he? Where is he? You run up on that floor, and I'll go get this floor. We need to find this kid. How would you like to lose a 12-year-old at a Cubs game?

That'd bring some white hair to you rather quickly. So his mother now speaks. She takes the lead here. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.

I would think so. And he answers and says, why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? Jesus isn't an easy child to parent.

He breaks the mold. What do you mean your father's house? Your father's house is there in Nazareth in the carpenter shop, and that's where you should be. And Jesus said, no, no, no. This is my father's house.

Not easy to raise. He was always punting the ball to his divine origin and not his human origin. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus ever call Mary his mother. They're at the feast there, and they need wine.

You know, they have no wine. He's saying, now, Mom. He doesn't call her that. He calls her woman. Woman, what have I to do with thee?

Don't invade my space. That's what he's saying. He's on the cross, and he's dying. And you can read it there in John 19. And he says, woman, behold thy son. And he's looking at John. John, behold thy mother. But he doesn't call her mother.

Why? She was the physical aspect of his being. But he knew he had a divine origin.

He knew that he was responsible to his father in heaven. And so he wanted to, right from the beginning, sever that bond, that physical bond, so that she would realize that he had a spiritual bond because this was no ordinary child, no ordinary child at all. And you know, they had to treat Jesus differently than they did the other children. And you have to treat each child differently because each child has its own bent, its own DNA.

And it's not one size fits all. You have some children who are incredibly sensitive. You look at them, and they dissolve into tears. You have other children. They need a lot more than that to dissolve them into tears.

I happen to be related to someone, and I'll be as vague as possible, who, when he was getting his spanking for eating chocolates, reached over and took another one during his spanking. Well, he also wasn't Jesus, may I say. But Mary has to negotiate that. Now, the Bible does say that he went to Nazareth and was submissive to them, and his mother treasured all these things in her heart. She's trying to figure out all this business of parenting.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. He had an ordinary upbringing, but also very, very unique. Don't treat each child the same way. Study the child.

Pray for wisdom to understand your child and deal with that child, nurturing them according to God's will. Well, now we get to the real difficult part that Mary had. After this incident in the temple, we never hear from Joseph again.

Now, Joseph must have been around because they did have lots of other children, as we shall see in a moment, but we never hear from Joseph. Everything now falls into the lap of Mary. She has to take charge. There's no doubt in my mind she was one tough woman. Simeon had predicted that a sword was going to pierce her heart, and that sword began very early on when Herod killed all of the male boys in the environs of Bethlehem from two years of age and under, the boys, and he did this because he was trying to kill Jesus. So Mary knows immediately, this is because of my son that this is happening. And then she lives through all of those controversies that we read about in the Bible regarding Jesus when the Pharisees throw it in his face and say, we weren't born of fornication, implying you were. We know your mother.

She wasn't married when she had you. Mary had to listen to all that. She had to endure it. And then the fact is that there was controversy in the family. Now, in order for you to understand how many children they had, I'm reading this directly out of the Bible. This is in the sixth chapter of the book of Mark.

It says, where did this man get these things? We're in about verses two or three. What is the wisdom given to him? How can such mighty works be done by his hands?

And now notice it carefully. Is not this the carpenter's son of Mary and his brother James, Joses, Judas, and Simeon? And are not his sisters here with us? These are all four half-brothers for sure, at least two sisters because it's mentioned plural. She was managing a household with Jesus as the oldest and six other children.

Can you imagine what that was like? Who punched Simeon? James. I think it was Jesus that punched Simeon.

Are you sure? No, Mom, it wasn't Jesus. I mean, he never lied. He never punched anybody out. He told the truth.

He never stole anything. And he's this righteous older brother. And she's managing this household and the Bible says that his brothers didn't believe on him even when his ministry begins.

Now that's one I'm not going to turn to, but you can write it down, the opening verses of the seventh chapter of John. They say to him rather sarcastically, well, why don't you go up to the feast and show the miracles you can do there because if you stay here nobody's going to see these miracles. And John says, and this they said because even his brothers did not believe in him. And Mary has to manage this.

It gets worse. You'll notice in the third chapter of Mark we have a remarkable, remarkable in Mark, I think, we have a remarkable story where evidently members of his family think that he is insane. You'll notice in chapter 3, I'm in verse 20. Then he went home and the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat. And when the family heard it, they were out to seize him. For they were saying, he's out of his mind. He's out of his mind. Here's our brother and look at what he's doing. He has all these large crowds. He is making all of these stupendous claims and we know we ate with him. We played with him in the playpen.

How can this be? And they want to rescue him from the crowd, which verses later says that he is beside himself because he has a demon. So let's pick up the story now a little later on. It says in verse 31, and his mother and his brothers came. They want to take him.

I don't think that Mary ever doubted who her son was, but who knows the role that she was playing in this controversy. They were standing outside. They sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. Does he say, Okay, Mom, I'll come over and talk with you and I'll connect with my brothers now. He answered them, Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking around at those who were around him, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers and whoever does the will of my father. He is my brother. He's my sister. He had sisters too. And my mother.

Thank you very much. Jesus kind of blows them off. They don't understand. And Mary is there trying to navigate all of this tension that develops because this child was not only precocious, he was a divine child and he refused to fit the mold and they didn't know what to do with him. Now, of course, the sword finally enters into her heart and hits the most sensitive place of who she was. When Jesus is being crucified, Mary shows up again. Joseph is not in the picture.

Virtually everybody, and I believe this to be true too, believes that early on Joseph died. He's simply not a part of the picture. She has this blended family. She has this remarkable firstborn.

She's got at least six other kids. And now Jesus is dying and she is there. She'd have gladly traded places with him, but she knew that that wouldn't have worked because he was the Redeemer and she wasn't. As a matter of fact, she also knew that she had to be redeemed by her son as the Magnificat indicates, where it says so clearly, it says, I rejoice in God my Savior. She also was a sinner who needed to be redeemed.

And there she is. She could have gone to the authorities and said, He's insane, take him down from the cross. But she doesn't interfere with the divine will because she knows enough that the divine will is being accomplished there. But she's there and she is not only watching him die, she is watching him die an excruciating death. And none of his brothers, so far as we know, are mentioned as being anywhere around and the mother bears the sorrow alone.

The sword had come to her and what a sword it was. The joys of parenting, the challenges of parenting, the exhilaration and opportunity of parenting, but also the tremendous amount of sorrow that you sign up for oftentimes when you become a mother. Mothering is not easy.

It's not easy. What I'd like to do is to wrap all this up by helping us understand three life-changing lessons that will be an encouragement to mothers, but to all of us ultimately, and to help us to understand the divine calling that God puts upon as single life, as single baby. First of all, it's very clear that motherhood is the highest calling.

It is the highest calling. I'm sure that there's not a mother that is listening today that doesn't agree that parenting a child is important. Is it important? Oh yes, it is important. What they often don't see is that it is ultimately important, massively important.

Many don't get that. I realize, of course, that there are many because of tragic circumstances who have to work outside the home. Many mothers, sometimes single moms, sometimes because of other reasons. There are also those who thankfully can work, but they can work from within the home rather than outside the home. So it's not my intention to load people with guilt.

Every situation is different. What I'd like to be able to say is that those who are struggling, especially the single moms, may we as a church come together and stand with them and help them in the parenting process by the giving of ourselves, by representing family to them and being there for them. I can't think of any job that would be more lonely than to be an adult with children and you come home and there's nobody, no adult to talk to.

God bless you single moms. But nonetheless, I am going to read a passage from what a Selma Freyberg wrote. I worry about babies and small children who are delivered like packages to neighbors, to strangers, to storage homes. In the years when a baby and his parents make their first enduring human partnerships, when love, trust, joy, and self-evaluation emerge through the nurturing love of human parents, millions of small children in our land may be learning values for survival in our baby banks. They may learn the rude justice of the communal playpen. They may learn that the world outside the home is an indifferent world or even hostile. They may learn that adults are interchangeable, that love is capricious, human attachment is perilous, and that love should be hoarded for the self in the service of survival.

Again, I must say it, and you can receive it, and let me emphasize again that God's grace covers all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of them. But all the indications are the studies that that bonding of a baby and its mother, if that is not a close, loving, secure bonding, the child will feel the effects when they go into their marriage, their inability to be able to bond permanently, and on and on it goes. Mothering is not just important. It is supremely important. And you and your family have to figure out exactly what that means for you because it may look different in every home.

But remember, God says, this is my child, rear him or her for me. Nothing, nothing more important than that. Secondly, the rewards of motherhood. Oh, you've been waiting for that. You've been waiting patiently.

You're saying, where's the reward? The rewards of parenthood are often delayed, delayed. When Mary is there at the crucifixion of Jesus, that's the best Jesus can do to take care of his mom, but it must have warmed her heart. Woman, behold your son, points at John. John, that's your mother. And the Bible says from that moment, Mary went into John's home. John said, okay, I received a commission from Jesus to take care of you. And I'm sure that he took care of Mary for the rest of her life. So even there, there was a reward.

And maybe this is a good opportunity for me to give you an assignment. This week, affirm to your mother how much he means to you. Rebuild that relationship. I can't do that anymore. I used to always call my mother on Mother's Day, and these days, heaven is not taking my calls.

So if your mother is still alive, or finds some other mother that needs affirmation, and honor her, there are rewards to motherhood. And then you know the story there of how Jesus Christ's brothers did not believe on him, and they're saying, oh, you know, he's out of his mind. Let's go seize him. How did that all end? Oh, my friend, that ended beautifully. Acts chapter 1, we won't take time to read it, but it is there in the upper room where they're waiting for the Holy Spirit, the beginning of the church. The Bible says there was Mary and his brothers were there in the upper room. And you know, when it uses that phrase, it very frequently means sisters, too. Brothers are used in a larger context, and I could show that to you from scripture. So in the end, his brothers believe.

And you know what? The oldest of their natural children happens to be James. And James begins to lead the church in Jerusalem. He writes a book in the New Testament by the name of James, and that's where the book of James came from, the half-brother of Jesus.

Now, you know, I read this yesterday and smiled. If I had been writing that book, what would I have written? I'd have written James, a half-brother of Jesus, and then I would have put in brackets, I actually shared a bunk with him when we were growing up. I mean, James was the oldest of their siblings, apart from Jesus, who, of course, was the oldest, but born of a different father. But no, he doesn't. He just says, James, a servant of God. Why?

Because the physical relationship was not the important thing. And you and I today, we can be called servants of God, we can be called daughters of God, and we can have an intimacy with Jesus, the same kind that James had, even though he was the half-brother of Jesus. There's something interesting in the Bible.

I'll just throw in as a parenthesis. In 1 Corinthians 15, that great chapter on the resurrection of Jesus and how he manifested himself, it says, he appeared to Peter, and he appeared also later on, it says, to James. We're not told which James that is.

It could be the James of the disciple, Peter, James, and John, but I tend to think that that might be his own brother, and his own brother saying, wow, to think I grew up with him, and he was the Messiah, he was the Son of God, I believe on him, I'm now a leader within the church, and I even get to write a book that's going to become a part of the New Testament. It ended well. Parents, oh, my heart goes out to you. I see the struggles even of our own children as they rear our grandchildren, the hassles, the things go wrong, and you don't know whether to discipline, whether or not to discipline. You do your best, but sometimes your best seems to be so woefully inadequate.

You're tired, you're weary, and you know that tomorrow is going to be a day just like this one. It's very tough. But you look at it long-term, and you say, wow, God used me? Imperfection?

You know, secret. God uses only imperfect parents. And the reason he does is that's all he's got. That's all he's got.

That's all he's working with. And there have been those who haven't been properly parented, and they turn out to be servants of God and daughters of God. And remember what I told you in the last message. Wherever you see sin, you also see grace. You also see the redemptive aspect of God. We get our priorities right and our hearts right, and we do our best in God's good power as we yield to him. We might be surprised someday that the rewards of parenthood, those rewards, exist in the future, even when you can't see them now.

And what's the bottom, bottom line? Mary raised a Savior. We get the opportunity of raising children who love that Savior, who serve that Savior, whose hearts have been given to that Savior, and who will spend eternity worshiping and praising God along with us, praising that Savior forever. And that's who it is that God gives you to parent, a child that lives forever, giving praise and honor to God.

That's our calling. What a privilege. What a privilege to raise a child for Jesus. There is a story about a woman who is walking along, and because I wasn't able to verify the story, I won't give you the name that I was given, but I verify this part of it, that she was in a blizzard and she had a baby.

The blizzard came, and when she was discovered, she was dead because she had taken off all of her outer clothing and had wrapped her baby in that clothing, and the baby lived. You know, that's a picture of motherhood, but it's also a picture of what Jesus did for us. He came and he saw us abandoned. He came and saw us in our need. He saw us under judgment, and he came and he wrapped his love and his righteousness around us and saved us. And then he was raised from the dead, and he went to heaven, and he's going to return for us because he is a very wonderful Savior who saves us from our sins. Mary raised him, but we get the privilege of raising those who will also worship and love him.

Have you believed on that Savior, by the way? You can have the assurance that you belong to God forever. That assurance can be yours if you respond to what Jesus did on the cross and if you give your life to him.

I mentioned earlier that I was giving you an assignment. Part of it is to say thank you to some mom and encourage that mom, but there's something else. I want you this week to lay hold of Isaiah 64, verse 4. It's only a snatch of verse that you can hold on to. It says this, God acts on behalf of all those who wait for him. If we pray earnestly and we wait on God, God acts on our behalf. He can change our family. He can change our hearts.

He can transform us because God acts. That's why prayer is so important on behalf of those who wait for him. And we can raise that child for the glory and the honor of God. Let's pray. Father, despite the imperfection of our parents, the inconsistent discipline, the struggles, sometimes the rejection, we thank you today that we are here today to testify to your goodness in, through, and in spite of human failure.

Thank you that you use imperfect people. Encourage each, we pray. And for those who have never received Christ as Savior, we pray that you might enable them to do that. And may we look into the eyes of a child and say, we're rearing that child created in your image for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Take my moments and my days Let them flow in ceaseless praise Let them flow in ceaseless praise Take my hands and let them move At the impulse of my love Take my feet and let them be Safe and beautiful for thee Take my love, my Lord, I know That I need His precious Lord On today's Moody Church Hour, Dr. Erwin Lutzer spoke about A Mother's High Calling, the second in a ten-part series on fighting for your family. As our series unfolds, you'll hear teaching on marriage and children and on the threats posed by modern technology and the Internet. You'll look at the curse of debt and the rising danger of abuse within the home. Don't miss any of these crucial messages.

Society demeans the leadership role of fathers. Next week, join us as we look into the Bible and discover what it means when Dad's in charge. Our current series can be yours on CD as our thank you for a gift of any amount to The Moody Church Hour. Just call us at 1-800-215-5001. Let us know you'd like to support Dr. Lutzer's ministry.

When you call, mention the series on fighting for your family. Call 1-800-215-5001 or write to us at The Moody Church, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Online, go to moodyoffer.com. That's moodyoffer.com. Join us next week for another Moody Church Hour with Dr. Erwin Lutzer and the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago. . .