Spiritual Mothering

Years ago, I had the opportunity to hear a young mother share her story at my daughter’s church. She was a vibrant and powerful singer, and when she spoke, it was with strong conviction and an overriding joy that was contagious. But it wasn’t always that way for her. She told of when she was 11 yrs old, and her Christian parents divorced. Over the next 10 yrs she only saw her dad about 4 or 5 times, and there was a huge hole of abandonment her daddy left in her heart.

            When she was 13, at a youth meeting, she made a radical decision to follow Christ and invited Him to become her Savior and Lord, and He began to slowly heal her broken heart. Many years later, when she married a man who had made that same radical commitment, they determined to figure out what had not been modeled for either of them—they wanted to have a truly Christ-like family.

            As time went on, she became a runner, and one day her husband said they should run a marathon together. So, they trained for many months, and finally, the big run weekend arrived. They dropped their kids off with relatives and headed out on their trip. The closer they came to their destination, the more excited they got until they realized they were lost…really lost, and they spent several hours trying to correct their course.

            The young woman became increasingly irritated with her husband because they had planned a shopping excursion the day before the marathon, and she really loved shopping. As time slipped away, she realized she had a choice to make.          

            She spoke of the years she had spent learning from Spiritual Mother’s modeling how a Christian was to bring their emotions under the control of the Holy Spirit…and so, after wrestling a bit, she exercised her will and chose to give it to God, let her anger go, and purposed to enjoy the trip with her husband. Then she made a very astounding statement. She said, “I am so thankful I made that choice because little did I know that less than 48 hours later I would have to identify my husband’s dead body, and that was one of the last memories we had.

            We’ve heard it said many times, “Life is all about choices,” and choices can change your life. Let’s choose well…

            In Isaiah 54, Jerusalem is likened to a woman separated from her husband (who represents the Lord). She is being reassured that not only will her children (who represent the people of Israel) be restored and greatly multiplied, but that she will also one day be reunited with her husband. The passage suggests it will be far better than what they had before because God will give them many spiritual children. Isaiah tells them to sing loudly—in order to voice their expectation of deliverance from slavery…God had promised restoration, and He called them to sing a praise song before the answer actually came! They needed to choose faith. I think there’s a message there for us, for me.

            In Judges 4-5, we see that Deborah was a leader, a judge, a prophetess, and she was called The Mother of Israel. Back then, God chose judges to rally the people, calling them to repent and regain His favor because they kept going through cycles of rebellion, slavery, repentance, and then peace.

     Deborah was a wealthy landowner and a successful career woman of her time, greatly influential. As a judge, she heard disputes and made decisions, much as our judges do today. But she did much more than that, as called by God to be His spokesperson, she became a conduit for His will to be accomplished. And when He said it was time, she acted as an Army General and led them in war, fulfilling His promise to defeat their oppressors. I get tired just listing all she did!

    But the real lesson to be learned from Deborah isn’t all that she accomplished, but who she depended on… and the fact that she allowed God to use her however He needed.

            As a spiritual mother, she encouraged, comforted, challenged, and trained the people, acting as a midwife giving birth to faith. She nurtured the nation back to spiritual health, similar to how a mother tends a sick child. Deborah understood that if they heard from God and obeyed Him, He would not just give them victory, but eventually wholeness. The Hebrew word for it is Shalom. Sometimes we hear it defined as “peace,” but it is much more. It produces peace, but it’s better described as being “rightly ordered wholeness,” so nothing necessary is missing, and nothing that remains is broken.

            That’s what spiritual mothering and fathering does: it produces God’s Shalom in our hearts and lives. And He invites us who have received Him to not only experience it for ourselves, but to become vessels of Shalom for others to experience as well.

                        In Galatians 4:19-28, Paul describes those who believe in Christ as belonging to the heavenly Jerusalem and that they are the true Israel. He even quotes the first verse in Isaiah 54, concluding that we, like Isaac are children of the promise. So, it’s not too big a stretch for those who follow Christ to glean from this message the same identity given to the Israelites. In vs. 19 Paul said, “…my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!”  We see Paul, a man, exhibiting an aspect of spiritual mothering in his intercession. In the KJV, the word is travail, and it means to experience the pain associated with the birthing process. Spiritual growth is often painful. Among other things, it requires us to lay aside what we want and choose what God wants.

The book of Revelation refers to the church (at large) as the Bride of Christ, and as we know, a bride becomes a wife when she says, “I do.” Proverbs 31 describes the virtuous wife, and often, women get discouraged when they hear the description. But as I’d been studying this, my good friend shared a new understanding about it that goes along with what I’d been learning. Perhaps we need to view the virtuous wife as the church, the Bride of Christ. I encourage you to read it through and put the church in place of the wife and get ready for a new reality.

 In summarizing Prov. 31, virtuous means of high value, a doer of good deeds, sharing wisdom lovingly, industrious, able to plan for future growth, caring for the needy, known for positive actions and for truth…it’s a call to reflect well on our Husband, the Lord, and to be confidently trusted by Him to increase His Kingdom life.

            Remember the young mother I spoke of at the beginning? The rest of her story is a powerful example of what we’ve been talking about. When she explained to her children their daddy had died and gone to heaven, she told them, “God is good… period. And I don’t know why this happened, but we will trust God to take care of us…because He is good.”

            Do you know God is good???   God is good…even in the hard times, He is good.

            Some of you know by now I’m talking about Sarah Schieber and her husband Chad. And in the days that followed, it grew very dark, and her faith was severely tested. Day after day, she would send her kids off to school, and immediately close the drapes and go back to bed or the couch, barely able to breathe…but God’s Word is True…

            Psalm 34:18-19 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous [person] may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers them from them all.”

                        And so, her sister came up with a plan. She organized a rotation of women to come to Sarah’s house, one each day for several months. They cared for her when she couldn’t care for herself. They made her eat when she didn’t want to…they loved her and held her, cried with her and prayed with her…and when Christmas time came, they put up decorations so her kids would have something familiar to look forward to…they even took the decorations down and put them away in January. She and her children were nurtured by a host of spiritual mothers, lovingly bringing her to wholeness.

            Those women were the real church…their tent was stretched forth, and they became Jesus with skin.  And now, she is even speaking and singing at conferences on widowhood… She has been given the wonderful opportunity to share the life-changing power of Jesus Christ with many hurting women just like she was. She’s becoming a spiritual mother, bringing forth fruit for salvation and wholeness, because others did it for her.

            Sometimes people like Sarah need a spiritual father to help heal the hurt from their natural dad. To heal that kind of hole it sometimes takes a man led by God to stand in the gap and ask for forgiveness, and then speak words of blessing to restore and rebuild the damage. You may be a Sarah, and you need God to heal your broken heart.

     Or there may be someone like her within your influence, and God wants to use you as His agent of Shalom. And, if you’re a parent who has caused pain in your child’s heart, it’s not too late to heal it. First, let God minister to your heart, and seek help if you need someone to pray with you… Then go to your child in humility, no matter how old they are, and let God’s love heal.

     This really isn’t a gender issue; it’s a love issue, and it applies to all of us. Teens, some of your friends have been hurt in similar ways. I encourage you to talk to your parents…if they understand this, wouldn’t it be awesome to invite that friend over and help build a relationship that could bring about wholeness for them?

            We’ve looked at 4 ways of spiritual mothering: through exercising faith for expansion of the Kingdom, intercession, practical help, and leadership. Where do you fit in?

    Perhaps you have heard the geese honking as they fly North in a “V” formation heading toward the fields of Canada. Two engineers calibrated in a wind tunnel why geese fly in formation like that. Each goose, flapping its wings, creates an uplift effect for the goose that follows. The whole flock gains 71% greater flying range than if they journeyed alone. That’s why the leader of the “V” formation falls back periodically to let another leader take the point, and that’s why the rest stay in line together. Even in a flock of geese, leadership is a shared responsibility.

And you know what? Every disciple, every follower of Christ, at one time or another, is called to “take the point like those geese.” Male, female, youth…we’re called to live in such a way that we reproduce spiritual life. The last verse in Proverbs 31 says, “Give her [the church] the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.” The city gate stands for the place of decision-making and influence; it means she had a prominent place in the community through her life-giving actions.

  All this begs the question, “What are we known for?” If our reputation lines up with Proverbs 31, then Hallelujah! If it doesn’t, then what do we need to get us there?