Encouraging Thoughts for Moms

Let's pray together. Father, the longer that any of us are on this earth, the more we, Our lives can accurately be labeled just, A series of disappointments, Especially in ourselves. We have proven that we are indeed in need of great redemption. Healing and forgiveness.

And there is no enterprise that we are engaged in that surfaces this anymore than being a mother and a father to our children. Help us as parents, To Embrace your forgiveness, to embrace your perspective. To thank you for your sovereignty in the ways that now we see that you've even used our children to surface things in us. And to grow us, The stings that we feel are, are good.

Faithful are the wounds of our heavenly friend. But as we embrace your grace, we humble ourselves habitually before our children whenever we wrong them, and then walk in that grace, Lord, may we progress and may our progress be evident. To all Bless The mothers and the fathers that are here. And may their hearts be lifted up, Lord, by your love and your grace, and may that make them a better parent today.

We just give ourselves to you in the name of Jesus. And all God's people said, Amen. Father, we, thank you and we praise you for the moms who are in This room today. We thank you for the work that they do and caring for, Their children and, not just caring for them and babysitting them, but in molding and shaping the lives of their children.

Lord, some of the moms of our church are young and others are older. Some have children that are in the home and others have children that are out of the home. some have one child, others have 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and so forth, Lord, and, various needs, Lord, that are represented depending on the age of their children and whether they are in the home or out of the home. Many of our mothers, Lord, we praise you, have husbands by their sides, who can be a support and encouragement to them.

And yet there are also mothers in our church family who are single moms who must labor alone in many ways, and in some ways, Lord, be both a mother and a father to their children. Father, we ask this morning that you would bless all of these moms in a very special way, that you would help them to understand how significant their role is, how fraught with eternal significance their ministry is to their children. We pray, Lord, that you would give to each mom exactly the grace to be exactly the mom that, Their children need for them to be at whatever stage of life they're at.

Help these mothers to mirror your image to their children.

Help them by the lives they lead, by the example they set, by the things they do, by the ways that they go about relating to their children in a gospel manner. Lord, help them through all of these things to show their children what you are like. And to instill in their children just an assurance and a conviction. And I hope And power in the gospel.

Use these moms, Lord, to bring up a godly generation of men and women who will be champions of the faith, who will stand firm in the days to come that will only grow darker. Lord, stand firm and be lights and do great exploits in the name of Jesus. So we just ask all of these things, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Came in.

Well, our prayer is that this will be a special day for, the mothers who, who are here. And to that effect, I'd like to take some time this morning to talk to the moms and, preach a message to you that is entitled Encouraging Thoughts for Moms, but anything that I say to moms this morning, dads, you're welcome to steal it and to receive encouragement. from, what is said this morning, because everything, in fact, I prepared this sermon partly with me in mind, like what would I want to hear, that would encourage me with some of the things that occasionally drag me down as a parent.

So this is something that I know would be a blessing to both moms and dads.

If you do not have, did I say have moms and dads? OK, never mind then. if you do not have children, please listen carefully and be sobered and be a little bit more ready for the role of motherhood and fatherhood than maybe you are, right now. Let me start this way.

Mother's Day is, I don't know who created it or when it was created, but it certainly is a day that a lot of moms look forward to. and there's a lot of things about Mother's Day to. to cause a mother to look forward to this particular day of the year. This is a day where a lot of moms receive cards of appreciation from, their children, just thanking them for all that they, as mothers have done for them.

This is a day in which some moms get a back and a foot massage from, Their children or their husband, where moms wake up in the morning to receive breakfast in bed at 5:00 in the morning, by their well intentioned children. some mothers receive, gifts of various sorts and jewelry. it also amounts to a day of rest for a lot of moms. instead of going home and preparing a meal, I know some of you probably will be going out to a restaurant.

this afternoon where someone else prepares the food and then you eat it and then you get up and walk away and leave it to someone else to clean up. And that's something that you enjoy doing on Mother's Day, or maybe you won't be eating out, but you'll be going home and your husband and children will be preparing the meal, for you and just helping you to enjoy a day of rest and to know how much you are appreciated. And so there's a lot of things about Mother's Day that would cause a mother to really look forward to this particular day of the year.

However, There are some moms on some years.

That actually dread Mother's Day. Because Mother's Day is the day where of all days of the year, they feel that they come face to face. With their failures as a mother. Where a mom already feels like she is failing.

As a mother, she has burning into her consciousness, thousands upon thousands of failures from the distant past, and even the more recent past. And now Mother's Day approaches, and Instead of it being a day of blessing, it can be a day of condemnation for some, where they feel that they have come face to face with their failures, and it drags them down and to make matters worse for some women, and this, this is factual, this actually has happened to make matters worse for some women, they have to come to church and yes, they get a free gift, and they're recognized and they're prayed for on Mother's Day, but they have to sit through a sermon, a Mother's Day sermon, where the pastor is preaching on Proverbs 30.

Here's the Proverbs 31 woman, look at this amazing woman. And this is all that you are supposed to be towards your husband, and towards your children, or a sermon on Mary, the mother of Jesus, or Eunice, the mother of Timothy, or some other, awesome woman in the Bible that just really exemplifies what you need to be as a mother, and you have to sit through that sermon and listen to this biblical standard being put before you.

And It'd be OK if it were just moms in attendance. But your husband is sitting right next to you and your children are seated around you, and they are listening to of all sermons with rapt attention, the Mother's Day sermon, and they're hearing what you are supposed to be as a mom in the home. And for some, that's a torturous experience. I remember a number of years ago, there was a woman who attended our church, she was a member of our church at the time.

And she was here on Mother's Day, and I preached a message on parenting on Mother's Day. Here's what the Bible says about how we can be a good parent. And nothing unusual that I recall about the sermon, but she left church that day, drove home, pulled in her driveway, got out of her car, went through her front door, walked through the living room, through the hallway into her bedroom, closed the door behind her, and did not come out for the rest of the day. Happy Mother's Day.

The reason was, she was so discouraged. By all the ways that she fell short as a mother, and on this Mother's Day, she was freshly reminded of what a failure she thought herself to be. So I, this morning on Monday when I began to think about what to preach on today, my number one prayer was God. Help me to be an encouragement to mothers.

Help me to preach the message that would leave mothers blessed. And encouraged in their role as a mother. And what I especially want to do is this, I want to help you as moms and dads, you're included in this. I want to help you to deal with your memory of all of those failures.

I want to help you. I want to give you some encouraging thoughts that can give you perspective. On this whole litany of failures that you see as you look back on your life and your ministry as a mother. And ultimately, I think I want to give you seven encouraging thoughts that can give you perspective on this.

The truth is you will never be the mom you're supposed to be today. If you are haunted by and not rightly dealing with your failures as a mother from yesterday, you must have a right perspective on these failures or you will be unable to have your chin up and to have the spiritual energy and vitality to be the mother that God wants you to be today. The truth is, from what I hear, motherhood is like a paradoxical institution. because it demands the very best from a woman.

And yet of all institutions, motherhood has a way of exposing things about a woman that she never knew were in her in the first place. I'll never forget one mother saying to my wife and I, she says, I never knew I had an anger problem. Until I had my 3rd child. And there was something about that 3rd child that just knew how to push all the right buttons.

And suddenly, all of this anger started coming out of this mother. That she never knew was there. Now that, that anger was in her before that 3rd child came along. But now that 3rd child comes along and pushes the right buttons.

And now some of this depravity that was in this mother begins to spill out. And, and so she has a 3rd child, and she's not just experiencing that 3rd child, but now this mother in a deeper way than ever before is experiencing herself. And realizing things about herself that she never knew were in her. listen to what Rachel Cusk, who is an award-winning novelist, she had a, a baby a few years ago, and she wrote a book on becoming, a mother, where she chronicles her early experiences.

But listen to what she says. She says, as a mother, you learn what it is to be both martyr and devil. In motherhood, I have experienced myself as both more virtuous and more terrible, and more implicated in the world's virtue and terror than I would from the anonymity of childlessness have thought possible. That that's stunning to me.

I don't even believe this woman is a Christian. And yet she's saying that, giving birth to, to children and having children, I have experienced myself in a way that's different than any other enterprise I've been involved in before, and I've experienced myself to be a greater saint and a greater demon than I ever dreamed that I could ever be, in my life, and I would have never known these things about myself if I did not have children to bring out that realization. And so motherhood can be a paradoxical type of thing.

It demands the very best from you from day to day, and yet often, it can bring out the worst in you and sometimes you might be shocked at the stuff that comes out of you.

And now, as a mother, you look back over your history as a mother, you, you dreamed at the beginning to be the best mom in the history of the world and to love your child. And when the child came out of your womb and you held that child close to you, your dream was to be the very best mom for that child. And now years later, you look back and you see that you have royally failed countless times. To be the mother that you longed to be and still long to be.

Times that maybe you've spoken to your child out of anger, out of irritation. and, maybe not been there for your child to the degree that you, looking back, realize you should have been there, for, them or times where you were in sin yourself and not walking with the Lord, and so that robbed you of the spiritual vitality that you should have had to be a leader and a helper to your child in their time of need. Now as your children get older, God says, this is a man after my own heart.

OK.

So, understand that there are examples in scriptures such as David and others who failed their children in some very significant ways. They failed to be the mother and the dad that they could have been and should have been. So, please understand, as you look at all of your failures that you are not alone in failing your children, a second encouraging thought, is you must believe this, that Christ died for all of your parental sins. He died for every one of your sins as a parent.

Jesus died for those sins that you have committed in your life when you were younger, sins that were committed in private, sins that may occurred in your own heart that did not seem to affect any other living person on the planet. and even sins that you have committed that have brought hurt to your children, harsh words that you have spoken to them in anger, punishing them too severely, neglecting them when they needed you, being in sin yourself, which robs you of the vitality that you should have had to be a spiritual leader to your children, even the sins that you have committed, that have Hurt your children, the sins that you have committed, that have rendered your children less today than they may have been able to be, had you done the right thing.

All of those sins that you have committed as a mom, as a dad, you have to know that Jesus died for every one of your parental sins. Sometimes we can make a distinction and think, OK, sins that I've committed in my heart that didn't affect other people.

Yeah, Jesus died for those, but sins that I've committed that have, that have hurt my children. And now I, I still even see the consequences of that hurt in my relationships with them. My relationship is less than what it could have otherwise been. And so I'm faced daily with the consequences of these.

Failures of mine, somehow, when we see the consequences lingering, it's harder to believe that Jesus died for those sins and that we're actually forgiven. But you have to know that the Bible is true, when it says that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that includes every sin, including all of your parental sins. King David again committing adultery with Bathsheba. After Nathan the prophet confronted him, David said, I, I have sinned.

He confessed his sin. And Nathan said, your sins are forgiven. You're forgiven. But then he says, but I want you to know there's going to be consequences.

A sword's going to come to your house. Life is not going to be what it could have been, but your sins are forgiven. And King David on the other side of that forgiveness writes Psalm 32 and says, How blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven, to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. The sins that I have committed that have brought death to this child and that will bring a sword to my house.

The sins I committed as a dad. Are forgiven. And I am blessed. To have this forgiveness.

Christ died for your parental sins. It is essential that you believe this because if you don't believe this, you will forever be held captive by those past sins. And here's the strange irony, as long as you're bound by the guilt of the memory of those past failures as a parent, you're doomed to continue to repeat those very sins about which you feel the most guilty, because as long as you're bound by the guilt of your sins, you are bound by the power of those sins. And you will never be the parent today that your children need for you to be as long as you are carrying a 100 pound bag of guilt.

On your shoulders. Take that load off and lay it at the foot of the cross, because Jesus died to bear that burden of all of your failures, and you, according to scripture, have not only been pardoned, but you've been abundantly pardoned. You've been abundantly pardoned. As a parent, you can look at your children and say, I, by the grace of God, have been abundantly pardoned for all of my failures as a mom and as a dad.

You might say, OK, that's encouraging, but I still, I just wonder why did God let me have children. When he did, why didn't he let me grow a little more first, and then, and then let me have children so that all of the mistakes that I've made and the sins I've committed would not have affected them? Well, here's my answer to that. And this is a a third encouraging thought.

And that is that realize that God actually gave you children partly for the purpose of growing you up. He gave you children, not only to bring them up in the nurture and discipline of the Lord, but God had a work he wanted to do in you. So he gave you children, partly with this agenda, and that is to grow you up. He wanted you to have children, not because he saw that you had arrived, but because he saw that there were many ways that you needed to grow.

and he gave you children, because, not because he saw that there was no more sin in you, and wow, you're going to make a great parent. He gave you children partly because there was sin in you that you didn't even know the depths of that sin. So he gave you children in order to surface that so that you could grow and become more like Jesus. We are told in scripture to bring up our children and the nurture and discipline of the Lord.

And the truth is that the process of bringing up our children and relating to our children day by day, has the effect of also bringing us up. We are impacted, we are changed by the process of parenting itself. In fact, the pain and the tears that you feel right now as you look over all of your failures, you wouldn't be feeling that about your sin if God had not given you children. That brought that to the surface that would bring you to the point that you find yourself now at where you feel pained by the thought of those failures and you want to be better.

So understand that God gave you children partly for the purpose of exposing these things that were inside of you and growing you up. In Romans 8, it says, we know that God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, whom he foreknew He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. God's agenda was to conform you to the image of His Son. And it says he works all things together for that purpose to do that good in you, and that would include even giving you children.

God, everything that he brings into your life, including giving you children. His agenda is to work that for good to make you more like His Son. And so in some ways, we're saved by our children. I'm not talking about spiritually saved, but we're saved from a life of selfishness.

By the children that God gives to us, we're delivered from certain levels of sin that we would have never known were in us, were it not for the children God has given to us. Listen to what Gary L. Thomas says in his book Sacred Parenting. It's a lengthy quote, but, Listen to what he tells about the transformative process of parenting.

He says, I knew the rules had changed just a few weeks after the birth of our oldest daughter. So, up until that point, they had no children. Now they give birth and they've got a child. He says, we were driving south to Oregon when we stopped at a restaurant to get a bite to eat.

At one time in my life, my favorite food on earth was a Dairy Queen Blizzard. I just knew that the creator of this fine confection had to be a Christian. Because I thought it would take nothing less than the Holy Spirit's inspiration to come up with anything that tasted as good as an M&M Blizzard. We ordered our burgers and fries, and I had my blizzard.

We took it outside on a sunny day and at exactly that moment, our daughter had her once every 3 day diaper blowout. Our first daughter as a baby liked to save it up. She preferred to wait until we were on our way to church, had just sat down for dinner, had just given her a bath, or some other convenient moment before she expunged the previous 72 hours' worth of digestive effort. I remember the helpless feeling.

Cold fries don't taste very good, and melted blizzards lose a lot. Yet I knew I had a good 10 to 15 minutes' worth of work ahead of me because this baby did it all at once. Changing her meant not just a new diaper, but a veritable bath and a full change of clothing, and we were on the road. Don't just stand there, Lisa, my wife said, help me.

But I started to protest. I looked at my fries already wilting with a shelf life of about 10 minutes. I stared forlornly at my blizzard, teasing my tongue with its promise, yet already looking as though it were about to start boiling in the hot sun. I put the food bag on top of the car.

And went to work. Life had changed indeed. It may sound like a small sacrifice to you, and even now as I look back a decade and a half later, it seems insubstantial, but it marked a major turning point for this then 25-year-old father. I was learning to put someone else's needs ahead of my own.

Little did I know that I had just begun the spiritually transformative journey called parenting. Unless we are stone cold spiritually, virtually spiritual corpses, the journey of caring for, raising, training, and loving children will mark us indelibly and powerfully. We cannot be the same people we once were. We will forever be changed, eternally altered.

Spiritually speaking, we need to raise children every bit as much as they need us to raise them. Most people when they have children, think things like, oh, I've always wanted to have a son that I could play catch with. Or I've always wanted to have a daughter that we can talk together with and, and, and do stuff together with or some actually go deeper and say I've always wanted to have a child. That I can, have in my quiver and train that child up for the Lord and fire them as an arrow into this godless generation to make a difference, in the world of this day, there are various reasons that parents want children.

No parent ever thinks, what, I am a sinful, selfish person. And there are pockets of sin in me that I don't even know exists. And I need to find out what those things are. And I need to grow out of my selfishness.

I need to be pushed and pulled and contorted and stretched in every direction. Confronted on every side with questions and situations that demand wisdom far beyond what I possess. I need to have my life in such a way that leaves me flat on my face before the God of heaven crying out for strength and for wisdom. I think I'll have a child.

No one thinks that, but if you did, you would be right on target. you would be ready for parenting, because parenting changes you. And so why did God give you the children that he gave you before you had fully grown spiritually? He gave you children when he did precisely because he wanted to grow you spiritually.

And the fact that you shed tears now of repentance over ways that you failed your children. Is proof that God's plan has worked. Because you realize things now about yourself and your sin that you would have never realized had God not given you children. So understand a third encouraging truth that God gives you children partly for the purpose of growing you up.

1/4 encouraging truth, because you might still say, well, all right, that's, that's an encouraging thought, but I still did what I did, and it's affected our relationship and How do I deal with that? Well, 1/4 encouraging thought is this humbly confessing your sin to your children can put healing where there was once failure. Humbly confessing your sin to your children can put healing where there was once failure. What do you do with those failures?

From maybe, Years ago or even this past week, maybe you spoke to your child out of anger. What do you do with that? You wish you had never done it, but you did. How do you deal with that?

Go to your child, confess your sin to your child. It says, therefore confess your sins, James says to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. Go to your child, confess your sin. In other words, say the same thing about your sin that God says about your sin.

Don't make excuses. Don't say, listen, I'm sorry. I, I, I yelled at you today, but understand that my mom yelled at me. And that's where I learned it from.

Don't make any excuses. Don't say I'm sorry I yelled at you today, but you did this and this and this and this, and this leaves me frustrated, and this is why I did what I did. Don't blame the child. Don't blame your parents.

Don't blame your circumstances. Just call your sin what God calls your sin. Acknowledge that, confess that to your child. And, when you do that, when you humble yourself in this way, the Lord can use that to bring healing.

In fact, this may not be feasible for all of you if, if you have a child that's not a Christian, but I, one of the things that I've done in my parenting is, like, for example, fairly recently, I was getting a little testy with, Benjamin schooling him, and I think I shared this with you guys before, but I just had to come to my, 10 year old son at the time and confess my sin to him and get his forgiveness, and then I asked him if he could pray for me. And it was interesting to me that when he prayed for me, the way he worded my sins was more intense than, I realized listening to his prayer that I came across to him way more intense than I thought.

I thought I was just a little on edge. but to him it, it just the way he worded it, it, it was obviously bigger to him, but there's something profoundly humbling about just lowering yourself before your child, saying, I wronged you, will you forgive me and will you pray for me?

Will you pray for me? Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another so that you may be healed. That's part of the genius of parenting and why God gives you children before you reach perfection, because, God gives grace to the humble, the more humble we are, the better.

And what is more humbling to do than to go to a 10 year old and say, Man, I, I was wrong. I'm sorry. This was a sin against God and against you. Will you forgive me?

Yes, thank you. And could you pray for me, to be prayed over by your child? That is incredibly humbling. But what, as I was there being prayed for by my 10 year old, I was just right underneath the waterfall of the grace of God, located myself right where the waterfall is flowing.

And so, some of you, maybe there are things you need to go back to your child for, of ways that you acted or things that you may have said this morning on your way to church or getting dressed for church, or this past week, maybe some of you have children that are out of the home, And your relationship with them is maybe not what it, could be, but just, maybe just ask the Lord to help you to search your heart. Are there ways that you have wronged them that, that God would lead you to just call them and just say, listen, I need to talk to you and, and, acknowledge those wrongs, express your regret, seek their forgiveness.

And if they know the Lord, ask them to pray for you. according to scripture, that brings healing.

And that that takes the failures where there was once failure. It now puts joy and healing in those locations. And so do not underestimate the power of this. We all wish that we were perfect before we had children and never ever failed our children or sinned against our children, but that's not the case with any of us.

But God says, Hey, let me invite you. There is a way to go back to these points of failure and allow me to actually bring healing where these wrongs were done. And so practice this. It's humbling, but it will sure put you under the waterfall of the grace of God.

a 5th encouraging thought to give to you mothers and by extension, dads, please understand that God still considers you worthy of honor despite your failures. When God says in the 10 Commandments, and again in Ephesians chapter 6, to children, honor your father and mother. Yes, he's talking to your children, but you should feel the sensation as a mom, as a dad, just, just picture yourself, all of these failures and ways that, oh, I wish I had been a better mother, better father to my children.

And I wish I would have never done these things or said these things.

And, but here you are in front of your children, and God has something he wants to say to your children. And I want you to feel the sensation of God coming alongside of you and putting his arm around you. And he says to your child, honor her. Honor your mother.

Honor your father. Do you feel the heart of God towards you, as he says that to your children? He doesn't say honor your father and mother. If they have in fact never failed.

Oh, God knows we've all failed. But he says to our children, you honor, honor your father. And your mother. So your failures do not render you unworthy of honor from your children, but not just that, don't look at that passage and go, OK, my children are supposed to honor me.

I want you to feel the heart of God towards you that he would tell your children to do that towards you, and he knows all of the ways you failed. And he still tells your children to honor you. The 6th encouraging thought to give you this morning, and giving you perspective on your failures. And that is this, that your failures make you the perfect person to be an example of progress to your children.

Your failures do not disqualify you from ever being an example to your children. Your failures actually make you the perfect person to be an example of progress. To your children. to Timothy, for example, who is going to be a spiritual father to a flock in Ephesus.

He says, take pains with these things, be absorbed in them so that your progress may be evident to all. He's saying, I want you to behave in certain ways and be absorbed in these truths that I'm giving to you so that not only so that you will progress, but so that your progress will be evident to the flock that you were leading. That you are serving as a spiritual parent, to. God is saying, I want your progress to be evident.

I want people to see your progress. I want you, Timothy, to be an example of progress before the eyes of other people. And I think God would say the same thing to you. You bemoan your failures and your children having their own memories, the memory of those failures, but understand that those failures make you the perfect person to be an example of progress and grace as you are drinking in the grace of God.

And understanding, I've been abundantly pardoned for all the sins that I have committed, and that grace is transforming you day by day, and your children see you gutting it out and fighting the fight of faith and being in the Word of God and focused upon Jesus Christ, and living and breathing the atmosphere of the gospel, and they watch you day by day, turn into what you're Becoming, so you were this, but slowly but steadily, you are being changed by the glory of God that is found in the gospel.

And now you're here. what, your children will go out of the home and they will have in their minds a tangible depiction of the incredible power of the gospel as they see that progress in your life. The truth is, moms.

Children don't want a perfect mother. If you survey children, I don't think many children would say, I want a perfect parent. If they did have a perfect parent, it would freak them out. They don't, they don't, I don't think that's what they really want.

Is a perfect parent. What they really want. Is a progressing parent. One of the benefits that we have found in having care groups and having the children and teenagers all in with the adults is that some of the teenagers in our care group have shared that it blesses them to hear adults share about their struggles.

And it makes them feel less alone in their struggles for them to realize that their parents and other adults in the church that they hold in high esteem and have on a pedestal and think, man, there's no way that they ever struggle with what I struggle with as they hear parents and other adults talking and processing and the discussion times and in the prayer times together in the care group. The young people realize, wow, they're, they struggle with the same things I do, and that actually gives them hope.

And makes them feel less alone in their struggles. And so understand that your failures actually make you the perfect person to be an example of progress to your children.

think about it. How does God define a righteous person? Proverbs 24:16, a righteous man falls 7 times. And rises again?

So according to this, is a righteous person, someone who never falls? Is a righteous person someone who never stumbles? Is a righteous parent, a parent that never sins in any way? No, a righteous person in the eyes of God is someone who falls.

7 times and gets back up. So a righteous person is not someone who never falls. A righteous person is not someone who never knows the pain of failure. Righteousness, according to God, is defined, not so much by where you were, but by where you're heading, not by where you are now, but by where you are heading.

You are known as righteous. By what you're striving for. God looks at a person and sees what that person is striving towards. And can pronounce a person righteous.

Based on that, Abraham believed God, It was credited to him for righteousness. Yeah, Abraham believed God, but his faith was so weak, and yet God pronounced Abraham righteous. There were many moments where Abraham's faith were to waiver in the days, in the years to come. But what, God pronounced him righteous at the very beginning.

And what late in Abraham's life when he waxed strong in faith, and he and Sarah conceived a child at the age of 99. It says in Romans, for that reason, God, it says in scripture that God credited to him his righteousness. When God saw Abraham's faith, At that first moment of faith, God did not just see that faith for what it was in that moment, he saw it for what it was going to become, and he labeled Abraham righteous. And so, where are you headed?

You're labeled righteous based on what you're striving for. Righteousness is a direction, and that is a righteous parent in the eyes of God. A 7th encouraging thought that I want to just pass along to you and then we'll wrap this up. Is that your children do not need nor want you to be perfect.

They just need you to lead them to the one who is. In fact, your imperfections make Jesus' perfection all the more startling. and attractive to them. Your children do not need you to be perfect.

They just need you to lead them to the one who is, to be like the parents in the Gospels in Luke 18 and in some of the other parallel passages who brought their children to Jesus. That was their goal. They had to endure the rebukes of the disciples. The disciples rebuked the parents for bringing their children to Jesus, but they just wanted their children to be touched by Jesus, prayed for and blessed by Jesus.

Paul was a spiritual father to many. The apostle Paul in Romans 7, The good I want to do, I don't do the evil I hate, I find myself doing. Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death. In First Timothy, Paul says, I am at the present time the foremost sinner of all.

I am. the least of the saints. And so Paul would say, yes, I stumble in many ways and fall short of what I know that I should be. And yet this same Paul as a spiritual father to many says in Colossians 1:28, we are constantly proclaiming him, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom.

Paul would not draw people's attention to himself. But he would draw people's attention to Jesus, and he did not view his imperfections as disqualifying him from being able to take people to Jesus. Listen to what Paul Tripp says in the book Age of Opportunity. He says, we share a fallen nature with our children, and we share progressive growth under holiness with them.

We must not act as if we are people of a different sort. and stand self-righteously above them. We must stand alongside of them, he says, stand alongside of them as the older brother and sister and point them to the only place of hope, Christ. We must communicate that there is no answer we give them that we ourselves do not need.

You see all of this legacy of failure that you see in your life as a dad and as a mom, all of that humbles you such that when you see your children dealing with sin issues, instead of standing over them and say, how could you do that? I never did that when I was a child, and you're like all shocked that there's like sin in their life and, and you might say, well, they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. You're right. But you shouldn't do some of the things that you do.

You say, well, they know better, and you don't. We know better. But because we have sinned and we have failed, that serves to level us and humble us before our children to where now we can come alongside of them. As a spiritual brother and sister and say, hey, I'm progressing too.

Let me share with you what helps me. And now our children feel less alone. With their sin issues, and they have a companion that could be an encouragement to them as they grow and develop in the Lord and deal with the sin issues that are in their lives. So I don't know if this encourages you or not.

My goal is to encourage and specifically to, help you as a mom and as a dad, In dealing with, Your failures that you look back on. For me, this is more poignant because I, my children are getting older and I've got a daughter who's about to go away to school. And I feel to an increasing degree, the sting. Of failures And wasted opportunities, moments from five years ago that right now I'd give a million dollars if I had them to just go back to that moment and do that moment again.

And I don't know if that's like just normal, just the older we get and the older our children get, The more we're aware of that. But I know that these thoughts minister to me. They give me a perspective that leaves me encouraged, and my hope is that these biblical truths will have the same effect upon you. Well, let's pray together and let's ask God to help us to just bathe in, His amazing grace.

maybe, maybe you're not even a mom or dad, but you, you've sinned. As we all have, you have failed. You've failed as a husband, you've failed as a wife, you've failed as a man, as a woman. There are things that you have done.

And head Attitudes you've displayed that are sins in the sight of God. You've affected and hurt other people? Jesus died for those sins. And he didn't just die to where there's barely enough grace to cover those things.

God is pleasured to abundantly pardon you for these sins. And so if you already know the Lord and you're trusting in Jesus, just believe that the devil's going to tell you it's not true, not for you, not for what you've done, but it is true. Drink that in and be strengthened by that grace. If you've never come to a point in your life where you've put your trust in Jesus, As your Lord and Savior, do that today and in a moment, your whole lifetime of sins will be instantly forgiven.

I know that sounds insane and it is insane, but it's true. And then you can walk in this grace. That God offers to you and Jesus.