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It's Mother's Day. It's the day we set aside to take special time to celebrate motherhood's joys and hardships. In America, the average household will spend over $100 for mother's day this year, yet a poll shows that most mothers would just rather have some time to relax, and to be with their family than receive all of the fancy gifts and flowers. I'm not a good "special occasions" preacher, but I did try to find some things pertinent to our celebration this morning for this sermon.

One thing I found was an article entitled "Great Sayings of Biblical Mothers" (Gurley, Ken; The Bones Go Too). It records what possibly could have been heard by the mothers of some of the central figures of the Bible.

Noah's Mother: "No, you can't keep them! I told you, don't bring home any more strays!"

Samson's Mother: "Get your hand out of the mouth of that lion. You don't know where it's been!"

David's Mother: "I told you not to play in the house with that sling! Go practice your harp. We pay good money for those lessons!"

Jonah's Mother: "That's a nice story, but now tell where you've really been for the last three days."

and for the grand finale:

Judas Iscariot's Mother: "Have you been in my purse again?!"

So much for deep thoughts on this Mother's Day! But our mothers have more to do with who we are than perhaps any other person in our life. Maybe you remember something that your mother used to say and then comes that day that you find yourself quoting it! Of all the "talks" that my father gave me, I can't seem to remember any one of them standing out, but I often think and even quote my mother in everyday life. Some of my own mother's gems were:

Your attitude determines your altitude!

Always take time to make a memory.

If everybody's wrong and you're right, then you're wrong.

This too will come to pass...

Even if you're right, if your attitude is wrong, then you're wrong. (maybe she was constantly working on my attitude!)

Two wrongs don't make a right.

If in doubt, keep your mouth shut.

You can't have everything that you want right now.

Hear, Oh Israel the Lord our God is One Lord!

Read the Bible every morning.

Drink a glass of water every morning.

Life's too short to eat store-bought Chocolate-Chip Cookies!

My mother also could perfectly quote every scripture about patience in the Bible: "Patience is a virtue," "In your patience possess ye your soul," "Good things come to those who wait," "They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength." Looking back, I guess my dad, brother, and I needed more work on our attitude and impatience than anything else. And of course, these quotes wouldn't be complete without putting in my grandmother's favorite saying of all time:

Make it do, wear it out, use it up or do without!

Maybe some of you can relate to the very practical wisdom of the following poem:

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In Old Testament times, most of the cultures back then had a very low regard for womanhood in general and motherhood in particular. But in the land of Israel, God's people, motherhood was one of the most respected positions and titles that someone could have. Moses thundered as one of the top ten commandments from God: Honor your father AND your mother. And to be a mother was considered the highest calling for a woman to the point that if you were married and were not a mother you were looked at as cursed of God.

Today, we live in the "liberated" society where more and more women are working outside the home and more ladies are "career" orientated. I don't mind that women are getting better pay and able to get an education and vote and all of that. But let me say this, even today when women can get their Ph.ds and make millions of dollars a year, I think the highest calling, the most noblest calling, and the most important calling that woman can fulfill is that of a mother! If you are a mother, then that is much more important than being the CEO of a major corporation or even president of the United States because you will affect your world and the future of this world more by your actions as a mother than in any other role! It's very simple but true: every great man and woman that was ever born had a mother! Some of them were perhaps better than others, but more than any other person, a mother affects and shapes the course of destiny for her child and thus the future of this world.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) said: "All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my mother." and "I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They clung to me all my life." And remember that history records that Abraham Lincoln's mother and father were "Holy-Ghost filled."

George Washington (1732-1799) said: "My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual, and physical education I received from her."

It was a woman, Lin Yutang that said "of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother."

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This is more than a social phenomenon, but it is a scriptural principle that a mother is the most important and influential job on the face of the earth. Bible scholars have long noted how interesting that in one portion of the law, the mother's prominence was placed before the father's:

Mothers hold a special place in the Bible. The term mother is mentioned some 300 times in scripture. The prophet Ezekiel declared:

And that principle is obviously not limited to the female gender, because the most prominent mention of the term "mother" is found in the genealogies of the kings of Israel and Judah in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. When you read those books, you will find that portions of them are little more than lists with very little detail of kings that reigned in Israel throughout that time. We are told only the bare necessities of what we need to know. And yet over twenty times the phrase "and his mother was" is included and then immediately after that phrase, a statement telling us of the moral effect of that king such as "he did right in the sight of the Lord," or "he did evil in the sight of the Lord. About many of these kings we read nothing about their fighting skills or great victories or defeats. Scripture records nothing as to the laws that they passed or the treasures that they accumulated, but it does be sure to point out who their mother was and the resulting character of their life. It says "their mother was" and then "they did right," or "they did evil." The two phrases are linked because obviously God was trying to teach us a principle that more than any other influence, the mother has quite a say so in how their children will live.

I'm preaching to some mothers today that you still have children in the house and at times you are exasperated and exhausted and sometimes would love nothing more than just an hour of uninterrupted sleep. On top of that, you are besieged daily with a world that exalts the single, uncommitted, and unfaithful woman. You see constantly an attack of the media upon a woman that puts her family and children first over her career and personal motives. But I'm preaching to you today: take heart! God needs mothers in this world and mothers in this church! And He wants you to be reminded that of everything you do, the most important and the most impacting job that you have is that of motherhood! You are not only impacting the present but shaping the future of this world and this church by your constant care. So take a deep breath, take a short break, kneel down and ask God to help you, but whatever you do keep fighting the fight of motherhood. Don't let down your principles or your dreams for your children. Don't throw in the towel and let this world shape your offspring. Realize today that the devil wants you to be downtrodden today because he knows the power and the potential of motherhood!

What is true in the natural, is also true in the spiritual. You are not only handing down life principles but spiritual blessings as well to your children. In our first text, Paul is writing to Timothy who was a young pastor of Ephesus and who had become like a son to Paul. Paul is encouraging Timothy to keep fighting in the faith despite opposition from people and spirits. He then makes this statement:

Timothy was young but he was working in the ministry full time and facing the same devils as the Apostle Paul! And this great faith in God, Paul said first dwelt in his grandmother Lois, and in his mother Eunice. I have nothing against men and we need daddys and come back on Father's Day and we'll talk about that. But understand that grandfather and father are not mentioned here. In Acts, we find that Timothy's father is mentioned as an unbeliever and so here in this letter, he is either dead or simply not following Jesus Christ. The names "Lois" and "Eunice" are Grecian and not Hebrew and we know from other scriptures that Timothy was a Gentile. And despite not having any background in following Jesus or even worshipping Jehovah God, somewhere "Grandma Lois" had gotten hold of truth and had begun to serve God and had allowed the Holy Ghost to put a tremendous faith within her that caused her to be faithful even despite no other family member is recorded serving God. Not only was Grandma Lois full of faith and faithful to God, but she put it in her daughter Eunice that despite not having anybody else to live for God with them they were going to serve the Almighty God that had come and died for them! It has been said that nothing is more determined than a determined mother!

And so we find years later, Paul is writing to Timothy and the Apostle Paul is about to pass off the scene. The church leadership will be left in the able hands of people like Timothy, Titus, and Mark. And the young man Timothy is now in Ephesus fighting for the cause of Christ. He no longer has his mentor, Paul, with him to show him how to live, but he is winning souls and preaching truth and turning his city upside down! And Paul says, "I can see the faith of your mother and your grandmother coming out of you and I am convinced that their faith has been placed within you!" Despite daddy being a failure. Despite grandpa never embracing truth. The young man Timothy became a mighty leader of Apostolic revival because his mother and grandmother had placed something within him that even fighting every devil in hell could not discourage or displace!

And so if we are to have a revival in the future generation. If this church is to have anointed preachers and teachers and worshippers and prayer warriors tomorrow, then we must have mothers today that will stand up and serve God despite whatever anyone might do! There will never be a Moses until we have a mother that says "God has given me a special gift and therefore I will put my child into God's hands and train him up in the fear and admonition of the Lord!" Without a mother, there would not have been a Moses, and without Moses there would have never been deliverance from Egypt! There will never be a Samuel until we have a Hannah who says "motherhood means more to me than anything else so I will develop a prayer life and fast so that I can be a woman that raises up my son to love God and to serve Him!" Motherhood is the calling from which all other callings spring and therefore it is the highest calling of a woman! Revival and deliverance and victory and salvation rests upon the mothers of this church and world!

Mother's take heart: despite the struggles and despite the heartaches and long, self-less hours there is a Timothy that is being birthed! There is a Timothy that is learning to have faith in God from seeing your responses to the blows that life send you. There is a church in Ephesus that is having mighty revival and countless lives that are going to be changed because you unselfishly took the time to put something good into your children! If you are a mother, then it must be the most precious thing to you! Even if your salary was millions a month, it cannot even stand beside the importance of motherhood in the scope of God! Motherhood is truly a woman's highest calling! You are putting things into your children that money can't purchase and that programs can't instill!

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Not only has our society demeaned the role of motherhood but it has also attacked the role of manhood. The tough, uncaring, jerk that Hollywood portrays as the ideal man, bears no resemblance to the compassionate yet strong manhood of Jesus Christ. We live in a time where many men are not men at all but boys playacting, putting pleasure before responsibility and self before family. I'm realistic and I am fighting to be the man that God wants me to be myself. I believe that when a man is the man of God and spiritual example that he should be there will never be any authority problems in the home. And to the women of this church, you must learn to be into subjection to God and the authority that He has placed within your life, whether it be your pastor, your father, or your husband. And, in converse, the men of this generation need to stand upon their knees and become men of understanding and yet principles. Men of prayer and praise. God wants to use the men of this generation and until the day that I die, I will be preaching the truth that men need to grow up and take spiritual leadership of their homes and be examples in prayer, faithfulness, praise, and worship to their families!

But I have a question for the women of this church and in particular the mothers that are here. If your husband, father, or whatever never stands up and lives for God, what are you going to do? If they go through a time of spiritual weakness, are you still going to do what's right? If they fall by the wayside, then will you follow them or will you join the countless mothers of the Bible that said "we will raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord."

May you ladies be like "Belshazzar's mother," the wife of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, who history records her name as "Nitocris." When you study the historian Herodutus' works you will find that for the seven years that Nebuchadnezzar was driven from the throne into the fields to live as an animal because he had exalted and worshipped himself above Almighty God, that Nitocris stepped in and ran the day to day affairs of the kingdom and did more in those seven years to beautify Babylon than her husband did in his entire career. She built bridges and wharves, and lakes and enlarged the most important buildings. For seven years she kept the country in peace and made sure that the throne was intact and then when God restored Nebuchadnezzar, she gracefully went back to being the wife of the king. For seven years, Nitocris was the "mother" of Babylon and yet did not do it in an usurping role trying to take away her husband's God-given authority, but simply said, if he is struggling to live for God and to fulfill his lives calling, then I will not destroy him, but I will step in and do the right thing in support of him! If he is unable to fulfill his God-given calling then I will sacrifice my time to help him obey God! And if God restores him, then I will graciously bow out!

Nitocris' husband died and her son Belshazzar became king. He listened to the wrong advice and lived evilly and yet the only mention of Nitocris in scripture comes from when Belshazzar is seeing the "handwriting on the wall" and is trembling because the judgment of God is coming upon him and Nitocris appears and commands him to "call for the true prophet Daniel." Even though her son had chosen to walk away from the Almighty God. Even though her husband's faith in God left a lot to be desired. Even though she, herself, was raised in idolatry and probably didn't completely understand everything that there was to know about this God of the Israelites, in her son's darkest hour, Nitocris is still pointing her children to the true prophet Daniel! She is still urging him to "listen to the man of God in your life, son." She wouldn't give up! The judgment of God was written, and yet she is pointing her children in the direction of Almighty God! We need mothers with the determination of Nitocris that say "It doesn't matter what I have to endure: if my husband goes insane and my son goes crazy, I will live for God and will go to my grave pointing others in the right direction!" That's the power of a mother's influence! She didn't show up in scripture as Queen, but rather as mother! The queenship wasn't important to her and was one that was quickly relinquished, but the role of a mother became her life's calling! To be a mother is truly a woman's highest calling!

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In reading about Paul's admiration of Timothy's mother and grandmother, I immediately think about Paul's own mother. Surely such a mighty man of God would have had a mighty mother. And yet, we find nothing recorded about Paul's biological mother in scripture. We know his father was a Pharisee, but that is it. Yet, such a great man cannot go down in history without some reference to a mother-figure and we find such a reference in Paul's letter to the churches in Rome. After most of the deep theological issues, Paul begins in chapter 16 to address some of the people there with personal greetings. In verse 13 we find that he says:

Paul said to "say hi to Rufus who is chosen by God and his mother who is also like a mother to me!" This Rufus has a remarkable history along with his brother, Alexander because we find from Mark 15:21 that they were the sons of the man whom the Roman soldiers grabbed to carry the cross of Jesus when He fell. He was a man who was from Northern Africa, and yet, obviously Simon's contact with the cross that day caused him to eventually sell out and serve Jesus of Nazareth. Both of his sons, Rufus in particular, became ministers in the Apostolic Church and here in just a small phrase of scripture we learn that Rufus' mother, the wife of the man who helped Jesus carry His cross, had become like a second mother to the Apostle Paul.

They didn't share bloodlines or even skin color, but yet Rufus' mother took the young Apostle Paul in as one of her own! Our only glimpse into this relationship are these words, but realize the impact of what it means: the Apostle Paul was a product of someone who became a "mother" to a young man who found himself without close family in church. This lady realized that the call to motherhood surpassed bloodlines are physical genealogies!

And so I am preaching to everyone today, even those who do not have a contact with their natural mothers, or who may be women that have no children! The call of motherhood far surpasses such barriers! The church of God needs mothers who will nurture and encourage and sacrifice to help others to Christ! The blood of Jesus is the common family thread between us! Even if you have no biological children or no spiritual contact with a biological mother, you can be impacted by the call of motherhood! The Apostolic Church is to be a family of families! It is to be a kinship between men and women that surpasses cultural boundaries, skin color, economic background, or even religious background. Jesus emphatically declared to the crowd when His family wanted to see Him:

The church family can provide the nurture and care that you may have been lacking in your life! Someone needs to make up their mind that they will "do the will of the Father!" We must win others and help them grow spiritually and protect them and be there for them! The call of motherhood is so high, it reaches beyond even the female gender and calls out to the family of God to answer!

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As I begin to close, I want you to realize that God exalted motherhood when He decided to come to this earth and pay the price for the sin of humanity by becoming flesh and blood and dying on Calvary. He could have chosen any method of coming into the world that He wanted, but He chose to be born a baby, helpless in the arms of a young, first-time mother. Do you realize what that baby born to Mary represented? Without it's sacrifice, we would all be doomed to a devil's hell! Without it's ministry, we would still be bound up by the philosophies of this world. The hope of mankind rested within that child. Scientists say that the more intelligent a species, the more helpless it's new born babies are. Human babies are the most helpless creatures on earth. And yet the Creator who had orchestrated the universe and masterminded such a fantastic plan of redemption was quite comfortable to put all of mankind's fate into the arms of a first-time, newly-wed, teenage mother!

The old song said "Mary, did you know?" Did you really realize who and what you were holding and nursing? Did you really realize the magnitude of the responsibility that God had placed upon you? Did it really hit you what the shepherds were relaying about the angel's message or what the wise men represented? Did it really click to you why your baby had to be born in the little town of Bethlehem? Did you go into this motherhood thing with the star shining over your head realizing the significance and that all of heaven was breathless watching your delivery and your baby's first breath? Did you realize that every spiritual being both good and evil would pay with rapt attention to your ever move over the next 30 years!? Did you really understand how special and chosen that you were to kiss the face of the Son of God?

I don't think she did. I think she just did what came naturally to her. I think that she was simply being a mother, and even though she was only fulfilling the so natural role of womanhood, that only later did she grasp the significance of what a high calling that God had given her! I believe her thoughts were as most women's in her labor. I believe that she thought the same worries as mothers today think as she awoke throughout the night to satisfy the never ending cravings of her newborn's hunger. Only as she is standing at the cross with two other mothers and seeing the sun go out and seeing the earth quake shake Jerusalem and hearing her SON whisper words of forgiveness and then instructs John to take care of her, does it really began to dawn on her how important those nights in Bethlehem really were. It's only after her younger son James rushes into the house after Jesus' death to declare that his older brother is not only alive, but that now James -- who before was a skeptic -- now believes that Jesus was the One, Jehovah God come in flesh that is sinks into Mary the importance of those years in Nazareth. Only as she is standing in the crowd of believers who are watching Jesus Christ ascend into the clouds and then are met by two angels instructing them to go back to Jerusalem to await the Holy Spirit and only after she had been filled along with the 119 other believers and now the mother has the Spirit of her Son inside her, does she really begin to grasp just how important her time of motherhood was. It is after the fact, after the diapers, after the late nights, after the tears, after the hurts and heartaches, after the laughs, after the stable, and after the cross that she really realized how important those years of motherhood were! What she thought was just a normal routine of life turned out to give birth to the most important event and power that would forever change this world and all of humanity!

And so I close this message by preaching to every natural and spiritual mother in this building: I know you are only doing what comes natural. I know that it seems sometimes that your work is never done. I know that motherhood seems as a hapless and thankless calling. But I urge you and adjure by the Holy Ghost to give it your best. Place your hand in the hand of the God who created mothers. Wipe your tears away and get your focus back, because God has placed upon you the highest calling that He has created for a woman. It was job that He did not entrust with a man but that only a woman's emotional makeup and spiritual strength can endure. It is the highest calling of your life and the titles of "queen" and "princess" pale in comparison to it. If you are a mother, then you hold heaven's highest calling for your life. And it will only be after the diapers are put away and the children have moved on to the "carpenter's shop" or whatever lot of life they may find themselves working, that you will look back and realize the full magnitude and importance of what you did. And so today, we salute you ladies that have taken the challenge and borne the brunt of the load. You are heroes and you are royalty. Motherhood is truly a woman's highest calling!