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The story is told of an elementary class that was studying magnets and how that they attract metal objects. After they had spent much class time picking up paper clips and such with the large magnets, the teacher decided to test the class on their knowledge of the subject. She put the following question on the test: "I have six letters, start with the letter 'm' and pick up things. What am I?" Over half of the class wrote, "mother." Can I hear an 'amen?'

One mother had three grown sons that were very successful businessmen. Once when the boys were together, they each bragged about what they had done for their mother. The eldest said, "I built a big house for mother." The second said, "I sent her a Mercedes limousine with a driver." The third one said, "I've got you both beat. Do you remember how mother enjoyed reading the Bible, but now she can't see well? I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire Bible. It took the parrot twelve years to memorize it. All mother has to do is call out the chapter and verse and the parrot recites it."

Soon thereafter, each of them received a letter of thanks from his mother. To the eldest, she wrote, "The house you built is too big. I live in one room but I have to clean the whole house." To the second son, she wrote, "I'm too old to travel. Most of the time I stay at home so I rarely use the car." To the last son, she wrote, "Dearest son, you alone have the good sense to know what your mother likes. The chicken was delicious!"

Today is Mother's Day and it is right and needful for us to take a service and remember and honor the mothers among us and the mothers of our lives. Our text in Proverbs said that:

The may be such a generation today, but God forbid that we be that generation. The word "bless" here is the same word that is used toward God as in "bless the Lord, O my soul" and it means to exalt, to lift up, to kneel before in reverence; to praise. We've come to bless our mother's today -- not to the point that we worship them as we do God -- but we certainly need to do give them the honor that is due them. I believe that God is pleased with a day to honor our mothers. And I hope all of you mothers get something besides parrot to eat today!

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It is true that the Bible exalts motherhood and calls it a blessed privilege. There are good mothers in scripture and there are bad mothers, but the good far outnumber the bad. To be a mother -- according to the scripture -- is a great thing and the highest calling that a woman can have. Recently, one of President Bush's key environmental directors stepped down because she did not like living in Washington and being away from her family and children. To her, the role of motherhood was a higher office than serving in the White house! God agrees with her: if you are called to be a mother, then don't stoop to being a queen. To God, motherhood is the highest calling of a woman.

As I scanned the scriptures this week reading about the various mother's that are mentioned in scripture, I was drawn to the story of the Syro-phonecian woman in our text that came to request a healing of her daughter by Jesus. She was a Gentile woman and was not getting very far with the Master heeding her plea until the Bible says that she stopped reasoning with Him and:

When you read the story, you can see how everything changes at this verse. Such is the power of worship. Such is the power of when a mother worships God! I've preached before on the power of a mother's prayer. And after that, I believe the second greatest power and spiritual weapon that a mother has is in her worship of God.

We must begin by understanding what is meant by the broad term "worship." The Greek word for worship, proskuneo, literally means "to crouch before, to lay one's self before in adoration, to do reverence or homage to." It is derived from combing two Greek words: pros, meaning "to come before or toward" and kuon which means "a dog," and the term began as a compound Greek word that literally meant "to kiss as in a dog licking a master's hand." And so the idea of worship is submission and adoration combined. One must humble themselves to worship another. One can only worship someone who is their master and owner. By the very definition of the word, the worshipper lays down their idea and will before the will of the one whom they worship.

From the wise men at Jesus' birth, we learn another important aspect of what worship is, because the wise men said about Jesus, "where is He? . . . for we have come to worship Him." To worship someone, you must first be in their presence. Just as a dog cannot lick his master's hand from a mile away, so can I not worship God if I am not in God's presence. Now God's presence fills the universe, but we are speaking of His manifested presence -- when He reveals Himself to us so that we can feel Him and know that He is near. And this is where praise enters the picture. Praise is simply outward motion of appreciation and thankfulness like clapping and dancing and raising one's hands and shouting and singing and bowing and leaping. Psalms 22:3 teaches us the wonderful principle that God inhabits or becomes "enthroned" in the praises of those who are in a covenant relationship with Him. When you begin to praise Him, He shows up! And when He shows up, your praise is elevated to worship because you are now in the presence of the One of whom you are worshipping! Praise is only a means to an end to usher us into the presence of our great God!

Furthermore, worship is very important to God. Jesus told another woman, the one at the well in Samaria:

The Father is seeking "true worshippers" and so we learn yet another important principle about worship: there is false worship and true worship. You can worship God and yet not worship Him in the true way that He desires. Many people are guilty of this across America. They file into churches every Sunday (or every other Sunday for some) and they in some form or way or tradition worship God, but yet God is not pleased because they are not worshipping Him the way that He desires to be worshipped. They are trying to worship Him but fail because they are not in His presence because they have not praised Him or met together in His name. Or they are in His presence but they do not worship Him in both spirit and in truth.

Your spirit refers to the inner man that God placed within you to recognize His Spirit. Many people just go through an outward motion of worship, yet their mind, emotions, and inner man is not truly involved. They worship out of habit not out of passion. The worship as they check their watches to see how long they have been worshipping. Or they bow or kneel on the outside, but their inner will is not submitting itself to God and therefore they are not truly worshipping God in spirit!

And many worship God but fail to worship Him in truth. That is, they worship God at church by going through the outward actions of submission to God on Sunday, but on Monday through Saturday, their outward actions and lifestyle speaks that they are nowhere near to submitting to God's will. Such is worshipping God but not in truth. We must realize that worship is not just what I do at church. But worship is a lifestyle for the true believer. I worship Him with my inner man but I also must live in truth every minute because every minute His presence is there! God is looking for people to worship Him in Spirit and in truth!

So what does it mean to worship God in the manner that He desires? It means that we come before God acknowledging that He is the master and owner of our life. It means that we adore Him as such and pay homage and honor to Him for that. It means that we submit and surrender our will to His and we do so on the outside and the inside. It means that we live a lifestyle of such submission. That is true worship! A worship that is in the presence of the One whom you are worshipping and that worships in spirit and in truth!

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And so understanding all of this, we come back to the mother of our text that was begging Jesus to heal her daughter. And she was not getting very far with Him until she put aside her pride and her ways and she began to "worship Him!" She's not there for her own blessing, but rather for a touch for her child. And so we have this scriptural portrait of a mother worshipping Jesus and we discover a powerful truth, and that is:

The Syro-Phonecian woman came to Jesus with many strikes against her. For one thing, she was not approaching Jesus at the right time. Jesus had been doing His best to avoid the crowds so that He could teach some final important principles to His disciples. The crowds of people in Galilee and Judea had so hard pressed Him that to get some time alone to make sure that the men that He had chosen to lead the apostolic church understood truth, Jesus had had to travel clear out of Palestine into the land of the Gentiles on the coast just to be able to have a private meeting with His chosen twelve. It was a time when Jesus did not want to be bothered by healings and the crowd.

Another point against her, was that she was a woman busting up into a meeting of men. Jewish men in those times didn't look too highly on women interfering with important discussions. A third point against her, and by far the greatest strike against her cause, was that she was a Gentile and not Jewish. Jesus had come to be the Jew's Messiah first, and then after His death, turn His disciples loose to preach to the heathen Gentiles. Like Gideon's fleece that was at first wet with a dry ground all around and then dry with the ground all around it wet, so was the plan of God to saturate Israel first with the miracles and preaching and signs and wonders, while leaving the Gentile nations around them dry, and then later -- after Israel had dried up spiritually because of their unbelief -- to saturate the surrounding Gentiles with spiritual blessings and healings. Because of this general plan of God to go to Israel first and the rest of the world second, Jesus only traveled outside of Palestine this once, and it was only to get away from the crowds in his final year of ministry. Within His ministry, He had only ministered to Gentiles if they were living among the Jews of Israel and thus part of the local landscape. He had no intentions of starting at this time to minister to Gentiles from other nations -- it simply wasn't the correct timing in the will of God.

And besides all of that, to heal her daughter would open up the door to the rest of the town of Gentiles and would force Jesus to flee again to some other desolate location to finally have a time of teaching and clarification with His disciples. And so all the strikes were against her. And at first Jesus rebuffed her requests by trying to explain all of this to her. He first said:

And that was going to be the end of the conversation but then she worshipped Him! She knelt before Him and began to worship Him and asking for her daughter to be healed. It was here that Jesus' resolve to rebuff her began to crumble a bit. He told her that as a Gentile, she was a "dog" which wasn't a great putdown back then, but rather was an analogy to the dogs that roamed without the walls of the cities of the day. To His mind, the Gentiles were "without" and "beyond" the realm of blessing, but she replied with the analogy of worship: "true, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master's table." What she was saying was "I may have been outside and without, but now I'm in your presence and I'm beneath your table and in the full sense of the word, I am worshipping you: surely you will at least give me the benefit that the dogs get!" What great faith! What great worship, to humble yourselves at the feet of the Master as a dog! And her worship and faith caused Jesus Christ to step out of time and changed for a moment the divine will and made exception to bless this woman's daughter. Despite all of the strikes against her, and despite her faults and sinfulness as a Gentile, a worshipping mother caused God to reconsider His will for her situation and her child!

I'm preaching to many mothers today that like the Syro-phonecian woman, you are far from perfect. But whatever you do, don't let your past and your circumstance keep you from worshipping the Master in spirit and in truth! Because your worship has the ability to transform heaven's mind about your situation and your predicament and -- most importantly -- your children's lives. Her daughter would have never been healed had she not fallen to her knees and began to worship Him! The devil would like to tell you that you have too many strikes against you to be worshipping God and approaching the Master today, but don't you dare listen to that father of lies: Make up in your mind to keep worshiping God despite the past and despite the strikes against you! Your miracle is dependent upon it! Your children finding mercy and healing is dependent upon it! It could be that it would change the very will of God for their life. Such is the powerful effect of a mother's worship!

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We also learn in scripture that worship from a mom doesn't just influence a particular situation but:

Such a theme is found throughout the Bible. It was Ezekiel that said "as is the mother, so is the daughter" (Ezekiel 16:44). We preach of the great prophet Samuel, but don't forget that it was his mother Hannah's worship that brought the miracle and calling of his life into existence. In similar fashion we speak highly of Moses and rightfully so, but it was his mother who obeyed the voice of God and placed him in position for the miracle of growing up in Pharaoh's palace! What about the mighty prophet Elisha, whose anointing was a double portion of the great Elijah? But we forget that when he was called, he went to kiss his mother goodbye, indicating a powerful influence in his life that had brought him to the place of his call. A few years back there was a great surge of popularity in the study of the man name Jabez who prayed a great prayer and whom the Bible says was a man full of faith, but we forget that the Bible says that his mother brought forth a son "more honourable than his brethren." His mother played a great role in his greatness. And so it is with even Mary, the honored virgin chosen to bear the Son of God. Jesus was absolutely God in flesh and a miracle worker supreme, but His miracle ministry was started by His mother placing her faith at His feet and telling the servants at the wedding "whatever He tells you to do, do it!" She had just acknowledged for the first time that her son was more than just a human being and more than just a prophet! And her worship led to the ushering in of the supernatural and to the world being forever changed!

Don't misunderstand me: you can be great and blessed in God and not have a mother in your life -- the story of Jephthah in the book of Judges proves that conclusively -- but at the same time, more people become great because of their mother's worship and influence of their mother's walk with God than without it! Because in the history of the world, the greatest influence over what the next generation will do in God is the mother's devotion and worship!

In the books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, there are long lists of kings of Israel and Judah. And a striking feature of the lists is that often, it states their mother's name and pedigree and then immediately following the name of the mother is the statement "and he did that which was right in the sight of God" or "and he did not that which was right in the sight of God." Over and over again, we find that scripture links the mothers with the outcome of the son's lives. More than their fathers; more than the men of God in their life; more than what God's sovereign will was for Israel at that time. What influenced Israel's leaders the most in whether or not they served God was what their mothers had done. Such is the lasting influence of a mother's worship.

There was once a skeptic named Robert Ingersoll who wrote and lectured very eloquently about his doubts of faith and Christianity in general. He was a frequent and popular speaker at college campuses. After having heard Ingersoll's lecture one day, two students discussed the implications of his speech. one said to the other, "well, I guess he knocked the props out from under Christianity, didn't he?" To which the other student replied, "no, I don't think that he did. Ingersoll did not explain my mother's life, and until he can explain my mother's life I will stand by my mother's God!" (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p. 381).

I feel very much as that student did. God gave me a wonderful gift in a praying and worshipping mother. Every morning that I woke up -- if I got up early enough -- she was kneeling at her prayer chair with her Bible open, talking to God and worshipping Him. Every morning, I heard first thing Deuteronomy 6:4 quoted to me and it was often that I heard as I retired to my room for the night, "Son, hear o Israel the Lord our God is one Lord!" It was often that when the Spirit of the Lord would begin to move in a joyful way in church services that my mother would leave the organ where she was leading the worship and began to leap and shout in rejoicing to God, pumping her fist in the air like so. It was a rare situation in my life that my mother didn't respond with "Son, the Bible says. . . "

Some of you quote scriptures that you have heard me say often and you do it smilingly as if it were a habit of mine, but you don't realize that I am just quoting a scripture that I first heard my mother quote in a similar manner. I have the habit of bringing up odd bits of scripture that I have been recently studying and expounding upon it in weird moments even though the conversation may not have been about scripture at all: that is my mother coming out in me. Often what she had studied would be burning in the back of her minds and so I would be talking about needing money to go buy gas for my four-wheeler or school work or something and she would bust out with "you know I learned something today. The Bible says in Proverbs that . . . " My mother loves the Word of God and loves to worship God.

Now I am grown and have a child of my own. Ajadiana hears often from my lips, "Hear O Israel the Lord our God is one Lord!" My mother's lifestyle of worship changed and effected my life for forever! And it is effecting the third generation. Such is the powerful impact of a mother who was willing to lay everything down to focus on the worship of Jesus Christ!

Paul told Timothy:

Timothy and the apostolic church that continues on through today has been forever changed by the faith that first resided in Lois and then in Eunice and then was passed on to her son! Such is the power of a mother's worship! Such is the power of mothers leading by example. Fathers are important and I would never diminish their role in the Christian home and come back in a month and I'll touch on that with the Lord's help, but I must admit that Timothy's grandfather is not mentioned here. His father is mentioned in scripture but we are told that the dad was an unbeliever and well-known opponent to God's church. And yet a grandmother and mother's life of worship overcame and overshadowed and out-effected a non-existent grandfather and a reprobate father. Such is the effect of a mother's worship! Such is the importance of mothers even today worshipping God with everything in them! There is no greater influence on the next generation!

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The effect of a Mother's Worship! And so we come to a third and final effect that you should know:

The story is of another unnamed mother, this one found in the 4th and 8th chapters of 2 Kings. She is known to us only as the "Shunemite woman" because she lived in the city of Shunem. But the Bible also refers to her as "a great woman" (2 Kings 4:8) and she was a worshipper of Jehovah God. When she met the man of God, Elisha, she asked her husband to add on a room to the house so that the prophet would have a place to stay and recline and rest when in the area. The Bible said that she often fed him as he passed by. [Notice: if you want to be called "great" then feed the man of God often! :) ]

The story continues that as Elisha wanted to repay her for her kindness, he and his servant had a talk and they realized that she was barren and her and her husband had been unable to have children. Elisha prophesied and sure enough in time, a son was born.

We find that in time the child grew up to be at the age where he could help his father in the fields and one day, he felt weak and returning home, he was tended to by his mother, but there in the mother's arms, the child died. What is remarkable about this story is the mother's actions. She does not wail and get mad at God. She does not even tell her husband and ask him for help. She tells the servant to get her a donkey, and she heads off for the man of God. When she gets to where Elisha is, he asks her "is all well?" And she says "all is well!" The story continues with Elisha raising her young son back to life through the power of God and that is often where we stop the story.

But the scriptures tell us a bit more of this Shumamite mother that worshipped God. In the 8th chapter of 2 Kings, we find that Elisha prophesied to her that a great famine of seven years was coming on the land and he commanded her to take her family and go into the land of the Philistines for seven years. She obeyed and at the end of the seven years, she returns to Israel only to find that her land has been taken from her and that she has no more inheritance in the Promised Land. Her response is remarkable: instead of mouthing off incoherent threats and trying to take matters in her own hands, she just kept worshipping God and kept silent about the matter until she was permitted an audience with the king. What she did not know was that the former servant of Elisha was now the king's personal servant and God had already worked it out for him to witness to the truth of what she had said and the king restored all that she had lost and then he said "also give her enough produce that represents all of the harvest that she would have had if she had kept the land for the seven years!

As one commentator said: "in all of scripture, there is not a better example of a woman with positive faith and quiet trust despite the worst situations in her life." With her son dead, she was able to tell the prophet "all is well." She was willing to let God fight her battles. And the reason that she was able to have such peace in the ups and downs of life was because she was not just an ordinary mother, but she was a worshipping mother!

Listen to this preacher, very carefully: you can not change the storms and valleys that life brings to you, but you can change your response to it! And you can change how it affects you in the end. Eventually the storm will be over. But you will be forever changed because of it. If you rail and get bitter and blame God and foolishly speak, then you will be changed for the worse. If you trust God and keep worshipping, then you will be changed for the better because God takes note of those who worship through the storms! We forget that Job ended up doubly blessed at the end of his trial because he worshipped God during the middle of it! And this Shunamite woman not only came through life's trials intact, but ended up being the more blessed for having gone through them and her family shared in the blessings as well. Why? Because of her trust and faith and hope and positive walk through the storms of life. How did she do such a thing? Because she was foremost a great and powerful worshipper of God! Oh, that somebody would get the revelation today that despite the worst circumstances in life, you can make sure that your family comes out blessed, if you will keep worshipping God and simply trusting in Him! The powerful effects of a worshipping mother!

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And so I close with this:

The Hebrew word for mother is ame. The word literally means "the bond of the family." A Godly, worshipping mother definitely is what holds the family unit together. It is interesting to note that when all of the disciples except John abandoned Jesus at His arrest and crucifixion that there was a group of women that never ran nor turned aside. The chief characteristic that we are told about this group of faithful women, with only one possible exception, they were all mothers! When the disciples ran and the believers were scattered at what seemed to be one of the darkest moments of following Jesus, the mothers of the group held the nucleus together. It would be this same group of ladies -- mostly mothers -- who would discover the empty tomb first and cause a meeting of the disciples to talk things over. Such is the bonding and strengthening power that a worshipping mother brings to life. She changes the mind of God to be favorable for her children; she effects her family's spiritual climate for generations to come; and she brings a hope and quiet, positive faith to life's trials and dark moments. Happy mothers day to all of you to whom it applies. I'm glad you are in the house of God today. May you continue worshipping Him! Because a mother's worship is a very powerful thing, indeed!