Mother's Day, 2020

My mother has an enviable reputation. She is known as a godly woman. I know people who have met her and tell me, "Be sure to talk to your mother about this stuff. She knows the Lord." I will share a prayer request with some and they'll say, "Tell your mom, too. She's a good person for prayer." Someone told me the other day, "How did you come to this problem in your life? Your mother is such a godly woman."

I was raised in a Christian home. I mean that in the very real sense, not the nominal sense. My mother and father actively love God; they have as long as I can remember. Since my youth my mother has discipled young women because, shock of shocks, she figured that was what Jesus told us to do. Since my youth she has taught ladies' Bible studies because that is what the Spirit has gifted her to do, so she has. In my home I was Bible-bathed. My mother urged us to read Scripture and to memorize Scripture and to know Scripture. I remember as a youngster I complained once that I didn't want to sit in church because I didn't understand the sermons. (I grew up in a time when parents took kids into church with them rather than farming them out to "youth ministries" that, I contend, separates rather than builds up families.) My mother was wise. "Yes," she said, "I can see that. I'll tell you what. Here's a pad of paper and a pencil. When you hear a word in the sermon you don't understand, write it down and we'll talk about it later." Clever girl. She not only got me to stay in the church service listening to adult sermons; she made me pay attention.

The truth is clear. God made me. He told Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." (Jer 1:5) David said, "In Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." (Psa 139:16) God made me. But because of the grace of God, His chosen method to accomplish this was my father and mother. My mother birthed me. In the most direct sense, my mother made me. She made me physically. She was critical in forming my thinking, my beliefs, my character. My parents -- especially my mother -- built in a great love for God's Word. My mother, in daily interactions with her children, introduced us to the God she knows personally and encouraged that in us. She still does.

I'm grateful to God for that. Today, I'm grateful to God for my mother for that. I thank God for having been given a mother I dearly love and appreciate, a mother who formed me in the best possible way, a mother who modeled godliness to encourage godliness. God uses instruments, and my mother has been an incredibly useful instrument in His hands and in my life. Thank you, Mom.