My Mom, Lexi Moe, humanly speaking is my life-giver. One of my pastors several years ago used this term for women, specifically mothers. I like it. I think it’s fitting. We all have Mom stories that we could compare, and when we really take some steps back into our childhood or even into just the past few years, we can recall either our actual mom or a motherly figure in our life who has made a huge difference in our development in Christ and/or even our initial introduction to Christ.

As I read Psalm 116 today, I was caught up by the sight of God as our Deliverer through Jesus Christ. I was also impacted by the reality that as we draw near to Jesus Christ through His Word, His Spirit, and His people, we less and less feel encumbered by the cares of this world. That said, we are more and more ENGAGED in the cares of those we are showing the love of Christ to daily.

Who better understands this than patient and caring Mum – to wax English a bit. Our “Mum” knows what’s best very often and understands us and listens to our monologues. Moms are one of the best pictures for us of the Holy Spirit of God. Just watch this video and we will pick up this conversation shortly.

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God ministers to us through His Word, His Holy Spirit, and through His children. This means, as His children, we are one of God’s primary tools for ministering to one another and to the lost. Every human around us is an opportunity to show God’s care and patience and kindness and forgiveness. As we live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ by being available, present, and representative of God’s character to others, we find the fear of death and disease and our desire for sin diminishing.

What do I mean? Why am I writing in a bit of a scattered way this morning? I’m overwhelmed by this love! God pours His grace, His underserved favor upon us in a way that is much like a mother’s nurturing love. Yes, He is severe and holy and awesome and worthy of constant adoration. He is not a fluffy God Whom we should behold as a teddy bear in the clouds. This is similar to how we shouldn’t view our Mom as just a nice woman we give Mother’s Day cards to once a year and give a cordial hug to because she gave us physical life.

If you don’t have this in your mother, imagine this vision with me about my mom and my mother-in-law and my wife. These three women are the mothers I’m nearest to, and I can truthfully say these character traits are true of them:

Labor pains: These women gave life to their children with hopes to raise them to fear and love God, their God, and to benefit those around them in the next generation.
Nurturing: Moms attend to the needs of their families in life-supporting ways that we don’t stop and attempt to measure nearly enough.
Education: The amount of desire for their children, increadible, longing that they would rise above the noise of culture and be culture-shapers instead of being shaped by an ever-increasingly worldly culture. These ladies pray more earnestly, even still in my Mom and Mother-in-law’s case, for their children, asking God earnestly that Christ would be their children’s primary hope and focus as they show God’s character to a dying world.
Presence: These ladies show their children their presence and attention in such giving and sacrificial ways it is staggering.
Kindness with truthfulness: These ladies show their children kindness with truthfulness, speaking and living the truth in God’s love.

Okay, so my hope here is not only to honor the moms in my life, appropriate as that is with Mother’s Day nearing. My hope is to remind us that God is constantly attending to the needs in our life and those in others’ lives around us infinitely more thoroughly than even our Moms and Mom-types around us. As you take in and consider what it really takes to be a motherly figure in your life, consider what God is like in the lives of all of His children. He is perfectly aware of the needs of those around us.

Appeal: May we so observe the lives of those around us that we become tools for God to give life that overcomes death to a dying world around us.
May we so observe the lives of those around us, that we become nurturing friends to those in our lives
May we present a taste of God’s character to those we can encourage and be fully present for, showing them His truthfulness, His genuine and full kindness, His patience, and ultimately His Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here is to the Moms and Mom types in our lives.

Here is to learning about the enduring love of God through their examples.

Here is to replicating that love through being fully present in every interaction with those God has placed in our lives.

Thank you, Mom, for your love and for pointing me to Christ, my ultimate Life-Giver and the One in Whom I find all my delight.