Being a Prayer Closet Mom - Mother's Day Message

Well, you know, back in the year 2007, Washington, D.C. swore in a new police chief. Her name is Kathy Lanier.

But the swearing-in ceremony was very different than most people had expected. Quoting now from the Washington Post, it said, in a room full of Washington's top law enforcement officials, Lanier chose not to speak about her vision for crime fighting. Instead, she talked about her mother. During much of the speech, she directly addressed her mother in the audience, who raised three children as a single-parent mom in Prince George's County and sometimes stood in long lines to get food stamps to put dinner on the table. You are the one person who never gave up on me, Lanier said, and who was never embarrassed or ashamed of me, even when you probably should have been.

The Post went on to say that Lanier often choked up, as did many people in the audience. And finally, when Kathy was finished speaking, she actually left the stage and went down into the audience and gave her mom a big hug. Now, this Mother's Day weekend, I want to talk to us about how we as moms and grandmoms and future moms can make this kind of impact on our children's lives for the Lord Jesus Christ. But before I do that, I want to say that I know today is a hard day for many women.

I understand that even for some of us here today, this may be a very hard day. Some of us here maybe have lost our mom in this last year, and we're still grieving that loss. Some of us here are single, and we want to have children so badly, but we know the clock is ticking and God hasn't sent that right man along yet. Some of us here are dealing with infertility issues. Some of us here are single parent moms, and we're struggling. Some of us here have a child that we're alienated from or a child that's away from the Lord. Some of us here have even lost a child this past year.

And I want to say that if you're a woman in any of these categories, I have tremendous respect for you, for the courage it takes to come on a Mother's Day, even carrying this kind of pain. And I want to say something to you that I hope will help. In Genesis chapter 18, the Bible says, shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Folks, the Bible says God has a perfect plan for every detail of our lives and that God doesn't make mistakes. And the Bible says, as hard as it may be at a given time in our life, if we will, Proverbs chapter 3, if we will trust in the Lord with all of our heart, he will make our paths straight.

He will do what in his infinite wisdom and his utter faithfulness he knows to be best for us because he promises that's what he will do. And so if you're here today and you are carrying pain about the issue of motherhood, no matter what kind of pain that is, I want to urge you to believe God. I want to urge you to affirm the truth in your heart of what God is saying that even though you may not understand now what God did and why God's doing it, that you believe the promise of God that if you will trust him, he will by the end of the day, by the end of the life that you're living, he will make your path straight and you will understand it all and you'll say, you know, Lord, I can really understand yes, you did right. Now, friends, if you can affirm that truth with me, will you say amen? Amen.

All right, good. And I hope that through as difficult a time as it may be that you moms, all of you, you ladies, that we'll trust God that he's telling us the truth. Well, I want to move on now and I want to talk to the moms and the grandmoms here about how to make the kind of indelible impact on our children's lives that Kathy Lanier's mom made on her life. And, you know, I got to thinking this week that every mom makes an impact on her children's life, every mom. I mean, bad moms make a bad impact on their lives, but it is an impact, right?

Yeah. Good moms make a good impact on their children's lives and godly moms make a godly impact on their children's lives. And we see this so clearly in the life of that wonderful man of God, Timothy. Timothy references to him abound in the New Testament.

He was Paul's most trusted colleague. And listen to what Paul says about him. Paul says Philippians 2 19 for I hope to send Timothy to you soon, for I have no one else like him who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare for everyone else, Paul says, seeks after their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ. But you know, of Timothy's proven character, that he has served me in the furtherance of the gospel, like a child serving his father.

Wow, what an accolade. How would you like to have that written about you in the eternal Word of God. But folks, please, we must understand that this great man of God, Timothy did not come out of a spiritual vacuum. Paul says in Second Timothy, chapter one writing Timothy, he says for I am mindful Timothy, of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother, Lois, and then in your mother, Eunice, and which I am sure is in you now. And later on in that same letter, Paul says to Timothy for from say the next word. Ah, come on, say louder childhood from childhood, you have known the holy scriptures, folks, who do you think taught Timothy as a little child, the holy scriptures?

Well, if you guess his grandmother, Lois, and you guess his mother Eunice, then you got it right. These two women, these godly women spiritually cultivated the soil of young Timothy's life, so that God was able to make Timothy into the man of God that he became. Now, listen, I'm not saying that every man or woman of God had a godly mother, nor am I saying that you can't become a man or a woman of God unless you had a godly mother. What I am saying is that you find a godly mother, and you will always find godly seed in her wake. And ladies, this is the kind of mother that God wants you to be not just a good mother, he wants you to be a godly mother who makes a spiritual impact on your children that they can never and they will never outgrow. Praise the Lord, huh?

Amen. Now you say, Well, Lon, how do you be that kind of mother, practically speaking? Well, I've spent the last 35 mothers days telling us how to be those kinds of mothers. So you can go back and listen to 35 times me tell you the very same things, because it's not that profound.

There's only a few principles here that apply to this. But if we do them, we'll make that kind of impact. Let me begin by saying that the greatest thing you can do for your children is for you to know and love Jesus Christ as their mother, and for you to have a deep and serious walk with him that is visible to your child. So if you don't know Christ, like I said earlier, come on down front here after our service at any of our campuses, and we'll help you to come to know Christ. That's the greatest thing you can do as a mother. But once you know Christ, there are four principles that I've been telling us for 35 years that will produce this kind of impact on our child.

And I want to tell you what they are very quickly. And we're done. Number one, want to make a great impact spiritually on your child's life, then we do it number one, by cultivating our children's spiritual life with Bible reading, and Christian music in our house, and scripture memory, and family devotions, and putting Bible verses on the wall by saturating their life in every way we can think of with the Word of God, just like Lois and Eunice saturated Timothy's life. Isaiah 55, God says, my word, the Bible, which goes forth from my mouth will not return to me void or empty, but it will succeed in the matter for which I sent it. And one of the matters for which God sends his word to this earth is to help us make an impact for Christ on our children. Psalm 119 says, how can a young person keep their way clean your daughter, your son? Well, by keeping their way according to the Word of God that you saturate their life with.

Psalm 119 your word, David said as a young man, I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Look, godly mothers get this, and they are all about getting God's Word into the hearts, the minds and the lives of their children. Number two, want to make a godly impact on your child. And number two, we do it by placing our children squarely in God's path.

We do it by putting them in kids quest or in a wanna and in kids stuff. We do it by putting our teenagers in the junior high group and the senior high group and the midweek junior and senior high meetings. And we do it by sending our junior and senior high schoolers to summer camp to winter camp on missions trips. Look, there is no reason every teenager in this church shouldn't be on winter camp, summer camp and mission trips because we are willing to pay for it.

We have scholarship money. I announce this every time we announce these camps that if you can't afford it, we will pay for your child to go to camp. We want that child in God's pathway. Look, if you want your child to get hit by the train, you got to put them on the tracks.

Yeah. And God is rolling down the tracks of winter camp, summer camp, kids quest, a wanna of missions trips. That's where God's rolling. Put them on the tracks.

They'll get hit. You put them there. Amen. Number three, want to make a spiritual impact on your child's life? And we do it number three by being the most Christ like example that you as a mom can possibly be.

The apostle Paul said, First Corinthians 11, verse one, follow me, imitate me as I seek to imitate Christ. And listen, we can't tell our Children to obey God if they see us disobeying God. We can't tell our Children not to lie. If when they pick up the phone, we say to them, Tell him I'm not home.

Tell him I'm not home. We can't tell our Children that they must obey the law when they see us doing 80 on the beltway. We can't tell our Children that it's important to be in God's house and drop them off at kids quest. And then we go sit at Starbucks for the hour that they're in kids quest. Yeah, I see you there. I know where you are.

Don't tell me I know. You got the point, right? Listen, more godliness is caught in a home than is taught in a home. And if you really want to make a spiritual impact on your child for Christ, then you as a mom and you as a dad, you try to be the most authentic believer, the most obedient believer that you can possibly be in that home. That's how we do it.

Not by being hypocrites in our homes. Praise the Lord. Yeah, number four.

And finally, and I hurried through the other three because I really want to spend the most time on this. And that is for 35 years I've been appealing to us as moms and dads that if we want to make a spiritual impact on our children, we have to become prayer warriors for our children. Jeremiah 33 God says, call unto me and I will answer you and I will show you great and mighty things that you know not. In James chapter five, the Bible says the what's the next word?

What's the next word? The effectual and the next word, fervent prayer of a righteous person that is righteous because we're in Christ avails or accomplishes much. Elijah was a man just like us and he prayed next word earnestly that it might not rain and it did not rain on the earth, meaning the land of Israel for three and a half years.

And he prayed again and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit. There is no power anywhere on earth equal to the power of prayer. And the power of prayer is never greater than when a mother is praying for her children. You say, Well, I pray for my children. Well, I'm sure you do.

The question is, how is what do you mean how? Well, how do you pray for your children? How do you pray? You know, the saints of old, if you read, you start constantly referred to a place they called their prayer closet. Now, this wasn't always a literal closet. It was a private place where they got on their knees in secret and where they met with God. It was a place where they humbled themselves before God. It was a place where they pursued God. It was a place where they second Corinthians seven one perfected their own holiness in the fear of God. But it was also a place where they poured out their hearts in intercession for other people, especially their children. It was a place where they lingered. It was a place where they persevered.

It was a place where they contended for the souls of their children. So let me ask you the question, Is this how you pray for your children? Or do you do prayer light? You say what's prayer light? Well, you know, prayer light is putting on your makeup going, Lord Jesus, I pray for Johnny today. Prayer light is sitting in traffic and going, Lord Jesus, I pray for Susie today. What's wrong with you up there? I pray for Jimmy today.

Move it! Prayer light is when we pray for our children at bedtime and we're falling asleep between the sentences. This is prayer light. Is prayer light praying?

Yes it is. But it's not powerful praying. It's not earnest praying. It's not prevailing prayer. It's not effectual prayer. It's not fervent prayer. It's not Elijah type prayer. It is not prayer closet prayer. E. M. Bounds said, and I quote, Praying, true praying is taxing work.

And to do it well, there must be calmness and time and deliberation. The apostles, as he points out, the Bible did not say they prayed. The Bible said they gave themselves to prayer. And my point is that serious prayer that accomplishes serious things for God is serious work. And it's those moms and those grand moms who are willing to do the serious work of prayer. Those moms and those grand moms who are the mightiest in their prayer closets.

These are the people who have the mightiest impact on their children for Jesus Christ. Amen. Now listen, you say, Well, don't you think dads ought to do this too? Well, of course I do. And I do it in my family.

Absolutely. But mom, even if dad doesn't do it, it doesn't matter. If you are a godly mom who wants to make a godly impact on your children, then you must do this, whether dad does it or whether he doesn't do it. If dad does it, it's a bonus.

If he doesn't, it doesn't matter. You can still impact your children all by yourself in your prayer closet. So let me conclude and ask you the question, moms, grand moms, do you have a prayer closet? Do you have a place that you go to meet with God where you take time and where you take the liberation and where you pray fervently for them like Elijah did? And if you have a prayer closet, is it heavily used or is it rarely visited? Is the carpet worn down in that room where you put your knees every day in those holes in that carpet? Are the blood of Jesus and are the name of Jesus invoked by you against the enemy on behalf of your children each and every day in that room?

Is the carpet tear stained in that room or is it dry? Moms, if you don't have a prayer closet, I'm here to challenge you on the behalf of God to start one. It is never too late to start being a prayer warrior for your children and your grandchildren. Never too late.

And if you haven't done it up to now, it's OK. We can't go back and change the past, but we can change the future. Let's get a prayer closet. Let's pray for these children.

And I just want to remind you what I said earlier. The moms who are the mightiest in their prayer closets are the ones that make the mightiest spiritual impact on their children. May God help us to be those kind of moms. May God help us to be those kind of grand moms. And if you're a future mom, you're not a mom yet. May God help you to be that kind of future mom.

So when you have a child, you know what it is you're supposed to do to make that child into a Timothy, a young man or a woman of God. Let's pray. And with our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I want to give us a moment to talk to God. My friends, if you don't have a prayer closet, whether you're a mom or a dad here today, I'm wondering if you're willing to say to the Lord today, Lord, with your help, I'm going to make a prayer closet in my house and then I'm going to use it. I'm going to go to bed a half an hour early.

I'm going to wake up a half hour early to be in there before I go out into the day. I'm going to pray for my children, not putting my makeup on or driving, but on my knees with tears. If you need a moment to talk to God and ask Him to help you do that, change your very schedule, then let's take it and do it right now. Lord Jesus, when it comes to raising our children to walk with you and love you, we need the every hour. Oh, how we need the Lord.

And if we need you that badly, then we need to reflect that in our daily schedule. Lord, forgive all of us for charging around out of our house so busy with the affairs of life that we neglect to really get on our faces before you fervently and effectually and passionately to pray for our families, our children, ourselves. Lord take the word of God today and not only use it to encourage our hearts, but use it to challenge our hearts and make us prayer warriors for our children. Make us like Aaron and her who hold their arms up as they go out, our children, to face the trials of this world. So speak to us deeply, Lord, and change our very lifestyle because we were here and we sat under the teaching of the word of God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. When God's people said, amen. Amen.