Encouragement for Mothers and Others, Part 2

Most of us assume that Solomon wrote the Proverbs. Yes, he wrote most of the Old Testament Proverbs, but the final chapter is an exception. King Lemuel records his mother's teaching in Proverbs 31. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll will continue a message started last time that's squarely founded on this passage. Originally presented on Mother's Day, Chuck devoted his first message to the matriarch in your family in which he brings encouragement for mothers and others.

But first, we begin with prayer. Thank you, our Father, for these and so many others in other places who could stand today. Thank you for these who bore their children, who have reared them, some still in the process of doing so. Thank you for that which characterizes them most often, their unselfishness, their willingness to adapt their lives for the betterment of their families. Thank you for raising up such women, especially in this day, when a godly woman stands out above all. Not a perfect woman, there is no such, but a godly woman.

One who fears you, one who walks with you, one who takes your word seriously, one who talks with you often, one who leans hard on you for strength, one who acknowledges times when she's at wit's end and often at energy's end. Encourage these ladies today and remind them that perfection is never the goal, never. Give them the ability to read through the Scriptures, finding comfort and encouragement, rather than being overwhelmed by guilt and shame. We're grateful, Father, to the end of our days for those who were our mothers.

Thank you for the memory. Now, Lord, we pray that we will be led into the truth of what you have written in this section of Proverbs. Guard us from extremes, making it say what it was never meant to say. Enable us to see what is here and to understand what is not here.

And give all of us a sense of purpose and encouragement as a result of what we hear today. We commit our time to you and we're so grateful, Lord, that you accept us just as we are. Just as you accepted us when we came to your son, Jesus, just as we were. In all of our needs and all of our sins, just as we were, you took us and saved us and began to change us. So that we might be just like Christ. In whose name we pray. Everyone say, Amen. And now we resume the message that started last time.

Chuck begins in Proverbs chapter 31. In the message we read, the words of King Lemuel, the strong advice his mother gave him. She's saying to Lem, Lem, you're royalty. You're already a king. Now you're seeking a wife. You don't have one. This is aim high, Lem. Aim high.

And here's the list to go by. She has great character. Verse 30 tells us charm is deceptive and beauty has a shelf life.

It's temporary. She has a fear of the Lord. That means she holds him in high esteem. She's secure also. You see that in verse 25? She's clothed with strength and dignity.

I love the way that reads. She's not trying to be the woman next door or the woman in that TV show. She's not competing with someone else in the neighborhood or worst of all, trying to compete with her husband. Please enjoy the fact that you're woman, that you were made a woman, greatly needed in this age when they're all blending together and all looking for changes of gender. I came across an interesting piece that I paraphrased that I want you to listen to very carefully.

This is Wisdom in Print. The woman who is secure in Christ, regardless of her marital status, does not need to abandon her role for something better. If women felt equal with men and personal worth, as they certainly are, they wouldn't need to be equivalent to men and competitive with men and responsibility. If they could only bask in the dignity and status guaranteed to them by their Creator, I love the way that reads, then their femininity would be valued as their greatest asset rather than scorned as an old garment to be discarded.

I may sound awfully old-fashioned here, but there are few things more beautiful than your femininity. I'm not saying that you're dainty. Not all women are dainty. Not all women are prim and proper. Not all women are any one thing. But you can all be feminine. And how beautiful to appreciate your femininity, just as I've always appreciated men who accepted their masculinity. Doesn't mean you walk around flexing your muscles and talking about how strong you are. That isn't masculinity.

That's arrogance. You know who you are as a man. You know who you are as a woman. It goes on to say, in many ways the future of our nation depends on how it values its women. He writes, I hope we will teach our girls as they are growing up to be glad they were chosen by God for the specific responsibilities and pleasures of womanhood. There's something beautiful about it. And I will tell you, as we bask in the twilight with the wives of our lives, we often sit in awe of you.

I know I do. And I know I did not marry anyone perfect. I mean, had she been, she'd have left me a long time ago. But she didn't. And she does appear to be, or need to be perfect. Just needs to be a woman, which is something I cannot be and I admire greatly, have it even words that I can find that describe my admiration. Let's observe her role, now that I've gotten to the point, as a wife.

Let me begin with some clarifying remarks here. Not every woman is called to marry. If you're not married and you're getting up in years, that's fine. And by the way, this is a good time to pass a little advice that's not requested along to others of you that will be tempted to ask, what's wrong with her? She's not married.

Well, what's wrong with you for asking that? Where does it read in the scriptures that all women are to marry? Or that all women are to be single?

Or that all women are to be anything, like all men? Some very competent, capable, godly women have never known a husband. Or they've been divorced.

Or they've lost their mate and they're going on with their lives. Talk about admiring folks, widows that go on with their lives and they don't marry. They don't choose to marry. Not every widow should marry.

Some should. Again, that's however God leads. Some are called to a life of singleness. My sister was never married, always bothered my mother. My mother was always talking to her about, have you met a man?

I met one. Relax, mom. Relax.

Do you have a son that hasn't married? It's okay. It's okay. Relax. That's my favorite word today.

Take the sweat out of it, folks. If you are to be a partner in life with a man, then God has chosen that one for you. And it's a calling, just as the life of singleness could be very easily seen as a calling. Accept that. Respect that. And your role as a married woman and a woman with children and ultimately, by the grace of God, grandchildren. You'll never be the perfect grandmother.

Relax about that. You'll always meet another grandmother that's doing what you're not doing. You know, she may make their bedspreads.

Well, that's great. Or she may quilt. And you're not even good with putting the thread through the needle.

And you live long enough, you'll never get that thread through the needle. Take it from me. You're not good with stuff like that. It's okay. Hey, relax. There's no special ultimate reward for those who quilt.

Or for those who stop quilting. It's okay. You have to confess that.

It's okay. Be who you are. It starts with knowing who you are.

I love the way Jim Dobson puts it. We aren't who we are. We aren't even who we think we are. We are who we think other people think we are.

And what a miserable existence that is. I remember the great day in my life when I stopped trying to be anyone else in the pulpit but myself. You know who I learned that from? She's with us today. This lady said to me as I was struggling and struggling. We were in New England and I was ten years out of seminary trying to be one prof after another and trying to be one eloquent preacher after another. And she said to me, why don't you just be you?

I thought, what are you talking about? She goes, you're fun to be with. But when you get in the pulpit it's like, all right. All right.

She was right. I was driving the sheep. You know, I realized I didn't have to walk on water. I'm doing good to pass water.

So I don't have to walk on water. The rest is none of your business. Okay. I love the way it writes about her husband and her.

Look at this. Guys who've stopped phrasing your wives. That's where a little rebuke is needed. It's the last time you really, really poured it on without any other plans in mind, but just telling her how great she is. Her husband, verse 11 into verse 12, trusts her. He's never suspicious. When he's away, even away for a day, a night, another day, never once suspicious. He trusts her. She will do him only good all the days of her life.

Never suspicious. He respects her and that means he listens when she speaks. He values her opinion. The best advice you're going to get, men, is from your wife. Listen again. Listen again to that. The best advice you will get will come from her because she knows you best.

You can trust her. It's easy for a wife to forget how valuable her role is. Think about those whose wives brought them down.

May I for a moment? Solomon's wives turned his heart away from the Lord. You know that? It's in 1 Kings.

You'll read about it. Abigail saved her husband's life. A fool named Nabal. David was on his way to kill him and Abigail stepped in and was the advocate. And she saved the life of a man who was making her life miserable. Abigail, what a great, great lady. Ahab's wife was Jezebel and she led Ahab along with his own evil plans into an evil kingship.

What a wicked rule they had. Amram, a name you will hardly even remember, had a wife named Jochebed. They already had two children and when the third one came along, they named him Moshe. Moses. And it was Jochebed who came up with the creative idea of that little, that little basket that would float in the Nile without leaking, knowing that the daughter of Pharaoh would come and she worked out a plan so she would keep Moses long enough to instill within him a godly, godly understanding. That's Jochebed, the wife of Amram, mother and father of Moses.

People you probably didn't even know their name. And since we're in Egypt, I have to mention Potiphar's wife. Rather than being faithful to Potiphar, she was seducing Joseph and who knows how many other men. She was a woman you couldn't trust. But the result was Joseph never yielded and he was thrown into prison for two years from her false accusation of rape.

He never touched her. And Herodias, can you link her up? The wife of Herod, whose daughter Salome danced in front of drunken Herod, who promised her half his kingdom. And she raced to her mother and said, what shall I ask for? And the mother, who is bitter toward John the baptizer, said, ask for the head of John the Baptist. The next thing they knew, they brought in the head of the recently murdered John the baptizer.

A woman, a wife of Herod. Women, your role could not be more important. Just as Lem's mother said, aim high, pick up the torch and follow it.

Keep your sights high. And of course, I hardly need to mention, your devotion and sacrifice for your children goes on all your life. You just never stop loving them. They break your heart. They move away from the Lord and you just keep loving them. And you cry yourself to sleep at night, longing that they would return and you may not live to see it. Keep loving them. Keep sacrificing for them. Don't chide yourself because some of them turn out wayward. You're not responsible for that. Every child has his or her own will.

But the love of a mother, I mean, you can't be richer than having the memory of a mother who loved you. Gary Bauer in his fine book, Our Journey Home, includes this true and touching story. The Tompkins family, mother and father and their two teenage sons, lived in a trailer park in Woodbridge, Virginia, a southern suburb of Washington, D.C. Last April 9, a fire broke out in the trailer while the family was asleep. Their home was quickly engulfed in flames, but the parents managed to scramble outside. Firemen had already arrived and were trying to rescue the boys, Adam and Benjamin, who were trapped in their room. Neighbors tried to restrain her, but Lily Tompkins screamed, My babies are in there!

My babies are in there! and broke from their grasp and rushed into the burning trailer. One spectator remarked she was on fire the moment she ran through that door.

After the blaze was extinguished, firemen found her body just outside the room where Adam and Benjamin lay dead. This age of ours doesn't value folk wisdom very highly, but it was folk wisdom that one of the Tompkins neighbors relied upon when asked to comment by reporters. He said, Well, I've heard it said that a mother will go through fire for her children, and that's what she did. Gary Bauer adds, It should give us pause to realize that if we were to go to the statistics alone, we would find neighborhoods like the Tompkins trailer park wouldn't count for much in most people's eyes. It would rate low on the income scale and probably very high in dysfunctional families.

The experts tell us that abuse and neglect of children are common among the poor. Yet this neighborhood gave us Lily Tompkins, who shouted, My babies are in there! and then rushed in to be with them and ran into the arms of a loving God. Would any of us not do the same? I don't know when I first realized that the lives of my children and my wife became more important than my own, confesses Bauer. But I know without a doubt that like most parents, I would willingly die for my family.

Just as importantly, we must live for them. To all you ladies, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to each one of you for carrying your child nine months when you didn't have to, you chose to. For seeing the value in that pregnancy, for having that baby or those babies, and then alongside your husband, if he stayed with you, or even if he didn't, you stayed with them, we salute you on this special day, this very special Mother's Day. Knowing that not one of you is perfect, we like it like that.

At least in that way, we can identify with you. But I often repeat to myself the words of Abraham Lincoln, no man is poor, who has had a godly mother. Many of us are rich, and you make us so. It's a great time for you today to just pause long enough to give God thanks. And if your mothers are living, to tell them how much they mean to you, and how much they mean to your children. Lord, you've given us a lot of wonderful, wonderful gifts.

Very few more important than those who birthed us and reared us. And for those of us who have the privilege of living with great mothers, we will thank you to the end of our days for what we see in them and witness from them. Thank you for Lily Tompkins, who gave her life trying to reach and rescue her boys, reminds me to thank you for Jesus, who died for us. How grateful we are for the Savior, who never met a sinner he didn't love, and never turned his back on one who called for help. We worship you today with gratitude, deep gratitude, in the name of our Savior Christ.

Everyone said, Amen. We've been looking at Proverbs 31 today. Chuck Swindoll titled his message Encouragement for Mothers and Others. It's the first in a brand new seven-part series called Restoring Your Family's Foundation. You know, every sermon you hear on Insight for Living is complemented by Chuck's online study notes. We call this free Bible study tool Searching the Scriptures Studies.

To take a deeper look at Proverbs 31, go to insightworld.org slash studies. Look for the series called Restoring Your Family's Foundation. Chuck also wrote a book for moms, dads, grandparents, and anyone, like an aunt or uncle, who loves the family. It's called Parenting from Surviving to Thriving. You'll enjoy reading the biblical wisdom that Chuck offers in the refreshing and sometimes humorous approach you've come to expect from him. And this book would make a thoughtful gift for young parents as well. To purchase a copy of Chuck Swindoll's book Parenting from Surviving to Thriving, go to insight.org slash store. Or call us.

If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888. In the early days, you may remember listening to Chuck's teaching on the family when your kids were quite young. You didn't have a lot of financial resources back then. You were just trying to make ends meet.

But years have passed and the picture has changed for you. We invite you to give generously so young families will benefit from Chuck's teaching just as you did. To give a donation today, call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888. Or you can give a donation online at insight.org. You know, we often hear from listeners who tell us they recall hearing Chuck's teaching in the car on their way to school with their mom and dad who enjoyed Insight for Living.

Well, maybe that's you. We'd love to hear your story. So connect with us today by going online at insight.org. We look forward to hearing from you soon. I'm Bill Meyer. Chuck Swindoll continues his brand new series called Restoring Your Family's Foundation next time on Insight for Living. The preceding message, encouragement for mothers and others, was copyrighted in 2022 and 2023 and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2023 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.