Femininity is in tatters. The family has been split apart. Churches worldwide are weakening. What must be done to regain the purity of a life that seeks to honour Jesus? How can we re-capture the depth of His love for us? How can femininity and true beauty be regained?

It starts with the Gospel. It starts with an almighty, sovereign God who “did not spare His own Son,” a Saviour who “for the joy set before Him endured the Cross,” a Holy Spirit “who is in you,” empowering you to do His will.

The Gospel is Jesus Christ

He came, He gave
He is mighty to save
To all who will repent and believe

This blog is dedicated to re-capturing femininity; femininity as God designed it. Femininity in our culture is desperately lost. Scripture testifies of this in Proverbs 31. “An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is far above jewels.” A wife of excellence is more rare that precious gems. In the 21st century, this is sadly apparent.

So let us raise the bar to a level of excellence that is rare and mysterious. Let us live our growing years with patience, our single years with dedication, our waiting years with service, our longing years with purity, our married years with faithfulness, and our entire lives under the blessings of our eternal covenant with the Prince of our souls, Jesus Christ.

May He have all the glory!

Friday, August 13, 2010

Series: The Counter-Cultural Woman: Part 2

Teaching By Example

First aired on Tuesday, February 13 2007

You can listen here:
http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php?pid=9462

Leslie Basham: Children learn many things simply by watching. This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Isn’t it shocking to hear some negative thing come out of your child’s mouth and then you realize they learned those things from you? Since kids pick up so much so quickly, we’d better learn how to set a good example. Nancy’s showing us how in a series called The Counter-cultural Woman.
Nancy: What are the very most important things that you want your children to remember? When they’re grown, when they’re gone from your home, what do you want them to remember? What do you want to be a part of their lifestyle as an adult, man or woman?
We’re looking at Proverbs chapter 31, this week. Today we’re still in the very first paragraph where we’re reading about the instruction that a mother gave to her son. Her son was going to be the king, King Lemuel. And when he became an adult, he would go on to teach others the things that his mother had taught him when he was still a young prince.
We think that perhaps this king was King Solomon. If so, then his mother would have been Bathsheba. She had learned some things the hard way as a result of her illicit relationship with King David, Solomon’s father. There were some things she was very concerned to pass on to her son, the young prince, to prepare him to be a good king.
So as we come today to verse three, we see this woman is going to give her son some cautions and some counsel in verses three through nine. We’ll just look at the first part of that today. Just by way of overview—cautions and counsel—she’s going to warn him about things like moral impurity and what that can do to a king.
She’s going to warn him about being intemperate and about the need for self-control and sobriety. She’s going to warn him against over-indulgence. Then she’s going to give him some counsel about the importance of being a king, of being compassionate and executing justice.
Beginning in verse 10, she’s going to give him a lot of counsel about choosing a wife, about the qualities to look for in this life partner, and the importance of choosing a partner who will be a blessing and an asset to him through all of his life. So she’s going to give him counsel and cautions, and it’s going to be very important that he heed this wisdom.
Let me just say parenthetically here, by way of reminder. Though we are now adults, how important it is for us to continue to heed the counsel and the cautions of godly parents, of teachers, and of pastors, because if we violate godly counsel, we will not be an exception to God’s rule. We will experience consequences that will be highly destructive.
That’s what we see here in verse three where this mother says to her son and then, as an adult, he’s telling what it was that she taught him. She said to him in verse three, “Do not give your strength to women, nor your ways to that which destroys kings.”
Now if you would think about the first thing you’d want to have recorded about what you taught your sons, would this be one of the first things? She says to her son—she taught him as a young prince—number one: “Don’t give your strength to women, nor your ways to that which destroys kings.”
This is a warning against, I think, two things. First, against losing his masculinity, and secondly, against moral impurity. Two things she’s cautioning him about here. Don’t give your strength to women.
Now the word strength here, interestingly, is the same word in the original language that is translated “virtuous” or “excellent” when we get to verse 10. Who can find a virtuous woman or wife, an excellent woman, a virtuous woman? She’s saying here . . . That’s the same word that could be translated in that verse strength.
We’ll come to that when we come to verse 10, but she’s saying here don’t give your strength—your manly strength—that which is distinctively your virtue as a man. Don’t lose it. Don’t give it up.
You see God made men and women different. I don’t have to tell you that. But God gave to men a distinctive type of strength and virtue. God gave to women—as we’ll see when we get to the latter part of this chapter—a distinctive kind of feminine strength and virtue. This verse, I think, is saying in essence, "Men, don’t give up your distinctively masculine strength or virtue."
When we get to verse 10 and the rest of the chapter, the message will be, "Women, don’t give up your distinctively feminine strength or virtue." See, our culture has today such a twisted, perverted, distorted sense of the differences between men and women. We’ve twisted the God-created differences, and now we have men acting like women and women acting like men.
So what do we end up with? Confusion. Chaos. The battle of the sexes. Competition. When what we should have . . . If men were keeping their masculine strength and women were keeping their distinctively feminine strength, what we would have is a beautiful rhythm, a harmony, a oneness, a complementarity. She’s saying . . . “Be a man” is what she’s telling her son.
Then she’s going to tell him, “Look for a wife who is a woman, a distinctively feminine woman.” So she warns him against the loss of manliness and then against adultery and immorality. She says it will debilitate your mind and your body. It will destroy you. Don’t give your ways to that which destroys kings.
Perhaps she was thinking of another leader: Samson, who not too many years earlier was one of the judges of Israel who had given his strength to women. This woman knew and she warned her son that violating God’s standards of moral purity will render you powerless.
Moral impurity, she’s telling her son . . . You need to be telling your sons and your daughters. We need to be reminding ourselves that moral impurity, sexual impurity will destroy your relationship with God. It will destroy your relationship with your mate, with your children, with other family members.
It will destroy your testimony as a Christian. It will destroy your future. It will destroy your sensitivity. It will destroy your reason. People who give in to moral impurity often become irrational. It will destroy your capacity for joy. It will destroy your conscience.
She’s saying no one is invincible. Just because you’re the king and you have all this power and you have all this authority, you are not invincible. You’re not past sinning in this way. You are not invincible. I am not invincible. The moment we start to think that we are, we are in the gravest of danger.
So she warns her son and then her son puts these words in the Holy Scripture to warn us. Not just to warn men, but men are not likely to be immoral without women being immoral, so it’s a warning for both men and women.
Now if this son was Solomon, then he apparently did keep his mother’s counsel early in his life, but later on he wandered from this counsel. He gave up his distinctive manliness to women. He gave up his distinctive strength as a man of God and he gave himself morally to other women. First Kings 11 tells us that his wives turned away his heart from God.
He started out with a heart for God. You need to remind your children and we need to be reminded, you can start out with a heart for God, but you can end up shipwrecked if you do not trust in God to preserve and maintain you in the area of your morals. Immorality will turn your heart from God.
Have you warned your children, your sons, your daughters about the importance of moral purity and the destructiveness of sexual activity outside of marriage? Have you been clear with them? Have you been specific? Don’t wait for the sex ed program in your kids’ school to teach them what’s right and what’s wrong. God gave you that responsibility to teach your children. If you’re not teaching them, the world is teaching them a whole different way of thinking.
Are you letting God guard your own heart? Or is it possible that even now you’re playing with fire? You’re involved emotionally on the computer, at work, even at church in a relationship that has the makings of something that’s immoral. Can I just say to you, “Get out.” Don’t stop to think about it, just get out.
Be ruthless in dealing with this whole area of sexual purity. The blessings to be had are incredible when we keep ourselves pure for God—when a man and woman keep themselves pure for that marriage relationship. The damage and the destruction is incalculable when we do not heed the warnings.
She says, “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine nor for princes intoxicating drink.” We come now to a caution or a warning that this king’s mother gave to him when he was still a young man. A caution against over-indulgence. She warns him about failing to be temperate, about the dangers of the lack of self-control. She reminds him that he is going to be a king. He’s a king in the making.
As you’re raising your sons and your daughters, remember that you are rearing young men and women to be kings and queens for God, to be spiritual royalty. You are a royal priesthood, Peter tells us. You want your children not just to be ordinary, not just to fit in with the crowd, not just to fit in with our culture or to survive it, but to be spiritual examples and leaders and revolutionaries.
So she reminds him, “You have a high and a holy calling. Remember who you are. You’re a king, and you're destined to lead.” Then she reminds him, “You cannot govern others well if you are a slave to your own appetites, your own passions and your own lusts. Remember your calling,” she says. “Remember your position and then act in light of it.”
That says to me what this mother told her son, “That means you better learn to rule yourself here and now if you’re ever going to rule others effectively.” Moms, you will never be able to govern your children effectively if you can’t govern your own passions, and you won’t be able to teach your children sobriety and temperance and self-control if you’re not a model of sobriety and temperance and self-control.
Now, in the Old Testament, kings were warned against drunkenness, against drinking too much, and this warning from a mother to her son who will be king is one of those warnings. But it wasn’t just kings in the Old Testament. It was also priests—those who served in the temple or the tabernacle who were told that they were not to drink when they were fulfilling their priestly role.
Leviticus 10, verse 9, tells us, “Do not drink wine or intoxicating drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of meeting, lest you die.” This is a command given to the priests.
Most commentators agree that when Aaron’s two sons, Nadab and Abihu, offered strange incense to the Lord and were killed (you read about that in Leviticus, chapter 10) . . . Most commentators agree that it was because of their drunkenness that they had done something wrong. There was an error in their judgment. Their thinking was clouded when they went in to serve as priests, and it was drunkenness that resulted ultimately in their deaths as priests.
Ezekiel 44 tells us no priest shall drink wine when he enters the inner court. So for priests to drink or for kings to drink in the Old Testament was considered dangerous. It would hinder them from fulfilling their God-given calling and role.
That’s what this mother understands and warns her son about. “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes intoxicating drink.” Verses 5-7: “Lest they drink [kings drink] and forget the law, and pervert the justice of all the afflicted. Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those who are bitter of heart. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.”
What she’s saying in effect is, though others may drink as a means to escape from their problems and their pain and their pressures, kings are not to do so.
Now, this paragraph is not promoting drinking for people who aren’t kings. In fact, it’s really a description—and a graphic one—of what alcohol does to the mind. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse results in a mind that is not clear or not sharp. It dulls your senses. Twice we read this person forgets. They forget the law. They forget their poverty. It dulls their senses.
Those who have, as we do, a high and holy calling as children of God will find that when we give ourselves to overindulgence in anything, including alcohol, drugs and substances like these, that we will forfeit our effectiveness. We will forfeit our calling.
She’s pointing out to her son that people use these types of things (drugs, alcohol) to escape from reality as a narcotic, to dull the pain, to drown out their sorrows. She’s saying, “You’re a king. You can’t do that. You cannot afford to have your senses clouded.”
Now, you say, “Okay, that’s for the Old Testament. I’m not a king. I’m not a priest.” But the Scripture tells us in the New Testament that Christ loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and has made us kings and priests to God.
We read in 1 Timothy chapter 3, that this is a qualification for spiritual leadership in the church. That elders in the church, spiritual leaders, are not to be addicted to wine and that deacons are not to be given to much wine. Lest you think, “Well, I’m a woman. I would never be in that position,” 1 Timothy 3, verse 11, tells us, “Likewise, their wives must be . . . temperate.” So if you are not temperate, you actually can disqualify your husband from a position of spiritual leadership in the family of God.
Titus 2 tells us that we are to follow after the things which are appropriate for sound doctrine, and one of those is that older women are not to be given to much wine (see verse 3). “Given to” means to be enslaved, to be addicted. Let me just say, if you’re not temperate as a younger woman, you won’t just wake up one morning and find yourself now an older woman being temperate. We are becoming older women and need to be learning habits of temperance and discipline now.
I think it’s so important that we not allow ourselves to indulge in or to become enslaved to anything as women of God that could make us less alert, less sensitive, less tuned to God, or that could make us less effective at fulfilling our God-given tasks. It can be other things. I would just ask, what are you using in excess as a drug to numb the pain that’s maybe dulling your senses and sensitivity to God?
I talked some time ago with a woman who had been abused as a child growing up and had a dad who was not able to give her what she needed. I talked to her about how God wants us to be willing to walk into the pain rather than numbing it as she for years had been doing in various ways.
She wrote me back and she said, “I realized that one way I was numbing myself was with the TV, so I turned it off about a month ago. I wanted to connect with Him or with people and not with the TV.” Then she was able to walk into the pain and to let God take her into a process of healing. There are so many ways that women today have of escaping the pain.
Now, this mother says to this son, “Don’t do that. Don’t run from the pain. Don’t escape it. Don’t drown out your sorrows. Don’t get into anything that will enslave you or addict you or cloud your reason or your thinking.”
She goes on to say in verses 8 and 9 Here’s why—it’s because you have a mission fulfill—“Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
She’s saying, “You don’t live for yourself. Your calling is to live a selfless and sacrificial life, so instead of using your wealth and your resources to hurt yourself, to drown out your sorrows, to cloud your thinking, use those resources to do good to others, to minister to others who are in sorrow or pain or need.”
It’s a call to get involved, to look around and see what the needs are and to use your position as a woman of God, to use your influence to do something about the problems around you. You will not be able to do that if you yourself are enslaved to anything other than the Lord.
What’s keeping you in bondage? What’s numbing your capacity to experience all that God has for you and to be used of God? You’ve got to be willing to say, “I’m not going to live in bondage to anything or anyone other than the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Father, would You please identify for us ways that we may be running from, escaping, numbing our pain? Would You give us the courage to run into it and to say no to anything that would enslave us? We want to live as women who are free under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
I pray for women who are wrestling with addictive behaviors and substances, whether it’s alcohol and drugs, illicit sex, or something that can be in and of itself harmless, as in friends or books. I pray that You would help us to identify what are the things that have enslaved us and then to be willing to walk in the power of Your Spirit to say no to anything that would be addictive in our lives and yes to Your lordship and Your rule in our lives that we may become instruments of mercy and grace to help others in their time of need. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.
All Scripture is taken from the New King James Version.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Psalm 67

"God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us -
That Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations.
Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You.
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; for You will judge the peoples with uprightness
and guide the nations on the earth.
Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You.
The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us.
God blesses us, that all the ends of the earth may fear Him."

Thursday, August 5, 2010

A Counter-Cultural Woman

The women in our family have been listening to a series by Nancy Leigh DeMoss on the counter-cultural woman of Proverbs 31. Please take the time to read these critical and powerful messages that will grow you into becoming a woman who is driven by the desire to know, love, and obey Christ and not driven by the culture around you. You can also listen to the message at the link below. Whether you are single, married, a young woman or an older woman, God has a purpose for your life. Discover His plan for you in these messages. Please explore Nancy’s ministry, Revive Our Hearts, for more excellent recourses and encouragement.

http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php?pid=9461

The Most Important Lesson
Series: The Counter-Cultural Woman: A Fresh Look at Proverbs 31
First aired on Monday, February 12 2007
Leslie Basham: Do you ever feel intimidated by the superwoman described in Proverbs 31? Over the next several weeks, Nancy's going to explain why you don't have to be intimidated. But Proverbs 31 isn't just about the “Proverbs 31 woman.” It's also about a son who had a lot to learn. Here’s Nancy to explain, kicking off an in-depth study of this important chapter. The series is called The Counter-cultural Woman.
Nancy: I'm almost a little bit hesitant to tell you what it is we're going to be teaching in this next series. Over the past weeks, as I've been studying, women have asked me, "What are you going to be teaching next on Revive Our Hearts?" When I've told them that it's going to be a series on Proverbs 31, I've had almost uniformly the same reaction. It's something like: eyes rolling or a gasp or a sigh. "I'm not sure that I want to sit through a whole series on Proverbs 31."
I can understand a little bit why people would have that reaction. I have to tell you what I think has happened in me over these last weeks as I've been studying is going to happen in you as a result of what God is going to do in our hearts through this series these next days. I don't even know how long we're going to take on this series. I can tell you it will probably be several weeks.
I've just been soaking and getting saturated in what is becoming one of my very favorite passages in the Scripture. I want to encourage you over these next days, to read Proverbs 31 for yourself. You may have read it many times in the past, but let me encourage you—since the number is 31—over the next 31 days to take a challenge of reading this chapter every day for the next 31 days.
As you do, you might just want to take a blank piece of paper or a journal (maybe something you record your quiet time notes in), and just take notes about what God shows you from this passage—not just from what I'm saying, but even more importantly, what the Holy Spirit shows you as you're reading it for yourself. Jot down, "Here's what this says," "Here's what this means," and "Here’s how God is applying this to my life."
When we talk about Proverbs 31, we usually start at verse 10. Now I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's because that's where the part about women specifically begins. But I want to start with verse one and have us work through the entire passage, not skipping those first nine verses.
So let's look first at verse one, which gives us the setting and the context of Proverbs 31. Beginning in verse 1: "The words of King Lemuel, the utterance which his mother taught him." The words of King Lemuel. Now you won't find that name anywhere else in the Bible. There's no reference if you go through Kings or Chronicles where all those kings of Judah or Israel are listed. There's no reference to a King Lemuel. It occurs just here in the Bible.
But there's an ancient Jewish tradition that identifies King Lemuel as the name that Solomon's mother gave to him; so thinking that this is perhaps King Solomon; and “Lemuel” being another name for him. If that's the case, who would be the mother who's doing the teaching here? Remember who Solomon's mother was? Bathsheba, which makes this a very interesting passage considering it in that light.
"The words of King Lemuel [perhaps King Solomon], the utterance which his mother [perhaps Bathsheba], taught him." Now that phrase, when you put it with some others in Scripture, speaks to me of the incredible power and impact of a mother's teaching.
Now all the way through Proverbs, we have a lot of references to the teaching of a father. We don't have a lot of references to the teaching of a mother. One that comes to mind is Proverbs 1:8-9. We read, "Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck" (NIV).
Proverbs tell us, that both our father's instruction and our mother’s instruction is something that can make us beautiful; it can adorn us. It’s an ornament we ought to make sure that we wear, and it will adorn us with grace and with beauty. This is the utterance which King Lemuel's mother taught him.
Now the word utterance—and in some of your translations, like the NIV, I think it's the word oracle—it's a word that means, “a prophecy or an announcement of truth.” This word, utterance or oracle carries with it the sense of weightiness. It's something heavy; it's something important. Sometimes in other parts of the Scripture, this word is translated "burden." You read that in Malachi 1—“the burden of the Lord” (verse 1, KJV). It's an important message that comes from the Lord.
These words that this mother taught her son are not just a mother's words. They are words that a mother got from the heart of God. As a mother, you can know that when you are teaching your children the ways and the Word of God, that what you are saying to them is very, very important. It's weighty. It carries divine authority with it if you're teaching your children and your grandchildren the words of God.
These are, according to this verse, “The words of King Lemuel,”—words that his mother had taught him. So apparently, this king is recalling some things that his mother had taught him years earlier, when he was not yet king; when he was a young prince; a king in the making. If the king was Solomon, and the mother was Bathsheba, you can see that these words come from the heart of a mother who knew about the grace of God—about the mercy of God.
We think of this passage, Proverbs 31, as being this impossible standard of God's law that no one can keep. Yet, if Bathsheba was the woman who taught these words, she was a woman who knew a lot about the broken law of God and what the grace of God could do to restore people who had broken God's law.
She knew how God had taken her, as a woman who had been greatly wronged and perhaps who sinned greatly herself . . . We don't know if Bathsheba was complicit in the sin with David. But certainly, she had been wronged and potentially had failed herself in this matter—maybe both. Nonetheless, she had been restored and God had made her fruitful and given her a son who would lead to the line of Christ the Messiah. Here is the woman who had learned a lot from a hard, painful personal experience.
Now she's teaching her son, this young prince who is going to be a king. She's teaching him the importance of things like faithfulness—faithfulness as a husband, faithfulness in a wife. Maybe, if this is Bathsheba teaching her son Solomon, she is certainly teaching with some degree of remorse or regret, that she and her husband had not lived out to the extent that they should have, the things that she is now going to teach her son.
You can just sense that here's a woman who doesn’t want her failures to be reproduced in the next generation, so she's going to speak words of warning and caution and exhortation and pleading with him to take God's heart and God's words as his own and to live them out.
So her husband, who'd experienced some serious consequences as a result of his adultery, she's saying now to her son, Solomon, "There are a lot of things in your dad to emulate, but there are some that you need to avoid." Learn from our example. Learn from what we have learned the hard way, and don't repeat the failures of your parents. So she's speaking words of protection, caution.
Then she's speaking words of preparation. Remember that when she spoke these words, her son was not yet the king. He was a young man, a prince. But she knew that one day he would be the king, so she's helping to prepare her son for his future. She knows that he is going to have a lot of responsibility on his shoulders.
Your question ought to be, "How can I best prepare my children for a lifetime of spiritual service, as kings and priests to God, to live as sons of God and daughters of God and as royalty? How can I prepare them to fulfill God's calling in their lives?
Sometimes you'll do that by teaching. Sometimes you'll do it by prayer. Sometimes you'll do it by example. We're going to see in this passage that this is a mother who has done all of these for her children. You want to prepare your children to live and to serve the King of Kings; to live and serve themselves, as kings and queens under God's authority.
“The words of King Lemuel, the utterance which his mother taught him.” He's now speaking these words. He's remembering back to what his mother taught him years earlier. Aren't you glad, those of you who are still in the child-rearing years, to have this encouragement that your children will remember what you teach them?
Now, you better make sure you're teaching them the right things because they will remember what you're teaching them. You are teaching them something. They're going to remember those lessons, and they're going to reproduce those lessons, for better or for worse, in the next generation.
What do you want your children to remember about what you taught them? What do you remember about what your parents, your mother, taught you? What do you want to pass on to your children? What are you passing on to your children and to your grandchildren? What are you teaching them? What do you want them to pass on to the next generation when you're no longer here?
“The words of King Lemuel, the utterance which his mother taught him.” She taught him; he grew up and taught others. Notice, by the way, she didn't leave all the training to the dad. He has a role of course of teaching and training, but this is a mother teaching.
I think that should be an encouragement for those of you whose husbands may not know the Lord, or may not be walking with God, or may not be actively committed to teaching the children. Now of course, they have a calling and a responsibility. But don't assume that because your husband doesn't have a relationship to God that you can't be actively involved in the training and the teaching and the discipling and the nurturing of your children.
Either way, with or without a husband who is training, you have a calling and a responsibility to train your children, to protect them, to prepare them—to speak to them weighty words; words that have the authority of God's Word behind them—so that your children will be prepared and equipped to go and provide godly leadership in the next generation.
She says in verse 2, "What, my son? And what, son of my womb? And what, son of my vows?" Now these sentences, unless you really take some time to dwell on them, meditate on them . . . They are not even complete sentences! What we're getting here is kind of the groanings, the longings, the outpouring of a mother's heart, a mother who can hardly even finish her sentences—not because she's not smart—because this is coming from so deeply within her that she hardly knows how to express what she's feeling.
It expresses the intensity and the passion of a mother's heart who's feeling love and tenderness and connectedness to this child who is her own flesh and blood. This is the child that she carried in her womb; she feels responsibility for her child. This is the son of her womb. This is a picture of a woman who has dedicated her child to God.
When I think of that phrase "the son of my vows," I think of another mother in the Old Testament. Her name was Hannah. She longed for a child, prayed for a child, wept for a child, waited for a child. Then came the day when God blessed her with a child. She said, "Lord, if You give me a son, I will give him back to You. He will be Yours." He was the son of her vows. We realize how important it is for mothers to recognize that their children are dedicated to God.
I was just thinking, over the last 24 hours, of what it has meant in my life to know that from the womb I was set apart for God; that my parents realized they didn't own me. That's what this mother is feeling. She is expressing the intent of her heart to raise this child in the fear of the Lord.
Someone has said, "If there were more Hannahs, would there not be more Samuels—great men of God, spiritual leaders?" If we only had more women: mothers, grandmothers, who were dedicating their children to God and crying out to God on behalf of their children.
So she says, "What, my son? What, son of my womb? What, son of my vows?" It's as if she's saying, "What shall I say? What shall I teach you? What shall I pass on to you?" She wanted her son to come to know God, in the ways of God, and she knew that she had a responsibility to show her son the ways of God; to communicate the heart of God to her son. It's as if she is saying, "What shall I say to him?"
Here's a woman who is taking very seriously her responsibility to train her son in the ways of God. She's looking to God, as if to say, "Lord, show me what to teach this child."
What are the key things you want to pass on to your children? If you couldn't teach them anything else, what would be the most important thing you would pass on to your son or to your daughter? How can you best prepare your sons and daughters to be all that God made them to be? How can you best protect them from what they will face later in life? How can you best direct them into the plan that God has for their life?
God has given those children to you. They are a sacred trust. They are a precious stewardship. You have a responsibility to those children that is greater than your responsibility to anyone else on the face of this earth, except for your husband. “What shall I say? What shall I teach you?”
In the next couple of sessions, we're going to look at the mother's instruction, what she taught to her son. But let's just take an overview of what she teaches her son. I want us to see that in these next verses, she's going to give her son some instruction that includes some absolutes.
There are absolutes. She's teaching her son that there is right and there is wrong. She's indoctrinating her son. There are some things she is going to say, "Don’t do this, and do do this."
Today, the concept of the post-modern generation is that there are no absolutes. Every child has to grow up and choose for himself what he'll believe. This mother did not believe that. She knew that there were absolutes on the basis of the authority of God's Word—there were things that she was to indoctrinate into the heart of her son.
Her instruction over these next few verses is very specific and practical. It's direct. She's practically applying the Word of God and the ways of God to everyday life. She's going to talk to him about marriage, relationships, women, habits, about areas of bondage, about lifestyle—practical teaching from the Word of God.
There are negatives and there are positives in her instruction. Don't be afraid as a mom to say, "That's wrong," or to say, "You must do this." In a practical sense of everyday life, "This is right; this is wrong. This is what you must do. This is what you must not do."
I got an email or a letter, actually, from a woman last week who was thanking me for talking on Revive Our Hearts about the importance of indoctrinating children in the ways of God. She said, "I'm doing that with my children."
She told me about a white board that she has in the dining room where her family eats their meals. She says sometimes she has a thought or something she wants to teach her children. She says sometimes it's something from the Scriptures. Sometimes it's something about math or about a practical issue of life. She says she just makes a note on the white board.
Then she said they use meal times for teaching their children practical things about life. She's teaching her children practically the ways of God by means of that white board, even as this mother did teaching her son the ways of God.
She's saying to him in the instruction that is going to follow, "Remember who you are. Remember that you're a king. You're a king in the making." She's giving her son a vision for how his calling in life puts some requirements on him.
I’m so thankful for the way that my parents, in many ways, gave us a vision for the fact that God wanted to use us. That meant that there were some responsibilities. There were some things that we had to be willing to make a part of our lifestyle, if we wanted to fulfill all that God had made us for.
She’s saying there’s a higher standard. There are responsibilities and requirements and accountability. "Others may; you may not. You’re going to be the king."
Then we see that she also teaches him—in this paragraph we’re going to look at, starting tomorrow—that choices have consequences. She’s saying you will have consequences for sin if you choose to sin. She paints a graphic picture of what some of those consequences will be.
The power of a mother’s instruction, given to a young man—and I assume—from the time he was very, very little. That instruction starts from the moment you first lay eyes on that child and all the way until that child leaves the nest and you send that child out as an arrow into this world to be a king, to be a leader, to be a godly man or woman.
That mother’s instruction that you’ve invested in all those years, in the son of your womb, the daughter of your womb, the son, the daughter of your vows; that instruction will go with those sons and daughters all through life.
Make sure that you’ve been giving the instruction that’s clear, practical, and specific. Don’t be afraid to say no. Don’t be afraid to say, “There will be consequences for your choices.” Then give them a vision for the future. “Remember who you are,” tell your children. Know that with that high and holy calling comes some very important responsibilities.
Leslie: I still remember some of the lessons I learned as a child, don’t you? Lessons that to this day influence the way I live. You’re influencing your children, whether you like it or not. Nancy Leigh DeMoss is so good at training us in biblical teaching, so we can pass that teaching on to the next generation.
Maybe you know some new moms who could get a lot out of Nancy’s practical, biblical teaching. You could also order a pack of Nancy’s booklet called Becoming God's True Womanand then share the copies with your friends.
Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com to discover all the ways you could share this important message.
We’ve heard about the importance of a mother’s teaching. Tomorrow, Nancy will explain why a wise
mother uses more than just words to teach. Now, let’s pray with Nancy.
Nancy: Thank You, Lord, for mothers we have had, who’ve taught and trained us. Some of them godly mothers, who’ve taught us directly from Your Word. Some perhaps with a mother who did not know You, but who still, as a mother, was teaching and training just basic life skills and modeled some important things about what it means to be a successful man or woman. We thank You, for those who’ve trained us and taught us.
Now, Lord, we pray that as women, You would show us how to teach and train the next generation; that we may raise up young men and women who will be kings and queens— spiritual royalty—who will provide spiritual godly leadership to the next generation. We pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.
All Scripture is taken from the New King James Version unless otherwise noted.
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