The Impact of a Mother

There is a man in the New Testament whose mother and grandmother are mentioned by name as having impacted this young man's life in a very deep way. That young man's name is Timothy. He was the disciple of the Apostle Paul. In fact, he was so close to the Apostle Paul that in Paul's last days, just before he died, he wrote a second letter to this young man Timothy. Telling him how much he longed to see him, wanted him to be with him, hoped he would be able to come before Paul's life was taken. And as he begins this letter, you don't have your place there already, please open your Bible to 2 Timothy chapter 1. As he begins this letter, this letter that drips with nostalgia, this letter that reans with a challenge to Timothy to take up the mantle, and to continue on the work and guard the faith, preach the word. This letter begins with remembrances of Timothy and Timothy's family, and the impact that his mother and grandmother had upon him. The tremendous impact this young man's family had on him. And what Paul remembers about Timothy and what he challenges Timothy is a reflection of what his mother did for him, and his grandmother did for him. And what they built into him, what Paul does in these few verses is identify five qualities that a mother should impart to her children. Some of them are directly spoken of as having been imparted from Timothy's mother and grandmother, others surfaced in the context of character qualities that Paul enjoyed upon young Timothy and that no doubt were modeled by his mother and his grandmother. What is it that a mother gives us? What is it that a mother imparts to us and should impart to us? First of all, a mother should impart to us a transparent tenderness. Look at verse 3, if you will. Paul says, I thank God who my serve as my forefathers did with a clear conscience. As night and day, I constantly remember you in my prayers. Verse 4, Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. Recalling Timothy's tears, no doubt at a time when they must have parted ways, and Timothy does not want to part with his beloved mentor. He does not want to part with the one who has poured so much into his life, and his heart overflows with emotion, with tenderness toward this man whom he loves so much. That transparent tenderness, let's face it, most of us learn tenderness from our mother. Paul will go on to talk about the impact of his mother in the next verse and his grandmother, but no doubt even this tender side of Timothy's character, no doubt some of which was due to his personality. But some of that, no doubt, was learned from his mother. We tend to learn tenderness from our mother, and it's good to have that. We need that. Both boys and girls need to learn tenderness from their mothers, and us dads would do well to have a good dose of that every once in a while too. Although that may not be seen as a manly quality in the Bible, it is. Tenderness, gentle heart, kindness, graciousness, those are biblical, Christ honoring qualities, and we see the most often practice and lived out by our mothers. You see, we men tend to be analytical and practical by nature, and so from our dads we learn things like the value of a dollar, the necessity of hard work, the importance of perseverance, standing for what's right, and those good qualities. We typically see modeled in our fathers, but from our mothers we learn to demonstrate caring, tenderness, a transparent tenderness. It was that way in our family for sure, and our three girls were growing up. We faced all of the challenges of parenting that everybody else faces, especially when it came time to teach the girls how to drive. I was the main teacher, evidently I didn't do such a great job from the story you're going to hear next, but I tried to teach my three girls to drive, and they all had various issues with driving. We lived for 14 years into Parsony, out here in the side, a lot of the church, and our dear friends and neighbors across the road were whitey and silvia-becket. I'll never forget when our oldest daughter, Amy, was learning to drive. She one time pulled out to the end of the driveway right across the road from whitey and silvia-becket, and she stopped to get out of the car to check the mail box, which was on their side of the road. The only problem was she forgot to put the car in park, and so when she let her foot off the break, obviously it coasted right out across the road into their beautiful stone wall destroying a major section of it. Our second daughter, Ruth, when she's learning to drive, she was learning how to navigate around these parking lots in the church, great place to practice a few things. At that time we had 200 parking spaces, and that evening there was one car in the lot, one car in 200 spots, and Ruth just happened to think, you know, it'd be great to learn how to pull in beside another car. That one car belonged to whitey-becket because he was working on a car in his garage, and so he had parked across the road just for a little while getting his car out of the way. And then the way, still, she took out a tail light. I believe to this day, that's the reason when Missy got old enough to earn her driver's license, that's when whitey and silvia moved into town. It was tough, with our kids learning to drive. Amy had four wrecks on Hall's Ridge Road in her late teen years. One of them was a bloat, tire blowout. She had a love affair with the ditches of Hall's Ridge Road, and one of them was a tire blew out, one of them was ice. One of them deeply marked our family and still does, but she had four accidents. I'll never forget the first one. She took off in that little rear wheel drive car that was never made to hold the road anyway, and it was icy morning, and she got to this little hill right in front of David Bolton's house here and slid off into the ditch. I remember going down there. I could tell she was okay. My concern was, what about the car? How are we going to get it out of the ditch? How are we going to get it repaired? What's this going to do to our insurance? Hope no other cars come over the hill. There's a big pile up here, you know, and we'll be liable for all of that. That's what I'm thinking. What Genie saw was a herding teenager who did not want to drive again. I can tell she's okay. Amy's okay. The car is the problem, right? Well, it wasn't maybe quite that bad, but it was close. You see, from our mothers, we learned that nurturing, transparent tenderness. Women, please don't lose that. Please don't swallow the lie of this world from the feminist movement that you need to become more masculine, tough, militant, harsh, even mean. Please don't lose the tenderness that God gave you in your hearts because all of us in our homes, our children, all of us as husbands and fathers need and long for that transparent tenderness that we learn at the feet of our mother. Transparent tenderness. But Paul goes on to describe another quality that mothers impart to their children. And that is genuine spirituality. Verse 5, he says, I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother, Lois, and in your mother, Eunice. And I am persuaded now lives in you also. Please don't misunderstand that verse. Paul is not saying that a mother or a grandmother can transmit faith to a child. God doesn't have any grandchildren. God has only children. Only those who personally recognize their need that they are sinners and that they need to be forgiven and cleansed of sin and made righteous, declared righteous before holy God. Only individuals, individual people who understand that and receive Jesus Christ as Savior, can trust Him and be saved. So faith is not passed down in the sense of saving faith. What Paul is talking about is your grandmother and your mother modeled genuine faith to you. Paul calls it sincere faith. The word sincere comes from a word that we get our word hypocrite from. And if we were to actually translate this word, it would come out something like unhippocritical. So don't have a hypocritical, have an unhippocritical faith. That's what you learned. Paul says from your mother and grandmother, an unhippocritical faith, a sincere faith. Now that word in the New Testament was a word that was used of Greek actors. On the stage in Greek dramas and tragedies, actors would play the part of other people and they typically would do two things to portray someone else. They would put on a mask or they would change their voice inflection or tone or whatever to sound like someone else. And thus portray another character that may not be anything like them. That's acting. That's who put who pokedratas. That's the word. That's the idea of an actor, one who is not sincere, but putting on a mask and portraying someone else. Paul says what you saw in your parents was an unhippocritical faith, a sincere faith. Just recently I saw the wonderful film Shadowlands, which is the story of CS Lewis and his romance with a woman who came into his life at middle age and they eventually married and then his grief as he saw her dying with cancer. It's a wonderful film, but I could not get over the fact that Anthony Hopkins played the part of CS Lewis and he did so so well. He gave the nuance of CS Lewis's brilliant mind and yet his deep spirituality. I could not help but remember that Anthony Hopkins is best known for portraying in a couple of films one of the worst mass murderers in film history, Hannibal Lecter. How can a man play that part and then also seem to be CS Lewis? Because he's a good actor. He can put on a mask. He can put on a front. He can show something that either way may not really be there. What Paul is saying is I saw in your grandmother and your mother no masks, no putting on a face, no changing the tone of voice for prayer to act or look or sound spiritual. They were sincere, no masks. And that's what we need from our mothers. You see, it is so important for us as a church to help you rear your children in helping you to teach them. And we can do that through Bible fellowships and through children's church and through the Awana ministry. We can be a valid help to you in rearing your children. But unless they see those biblical principles translated into authentic living in the home, all of our teaching is for not. And by the way, all of your teaching is for not as well, unless they see it translated into authentic faith, sincere faith, no masks, no putting on another voice, but just authentic living. You see, children can learn all the right words. They can learn the Christian terminology. They can, they can learn to convey themselves all the Christian doctrines till they are blue in the face, but it will never, it will never have any connection to real life unless they see it modeled for them. And where are they going to see that first at home? This is Mother's Day. So I'm going to focus on the mothers. They should see it from dad too, but you'll get your turn in six weeks. It's Mother's Day today. So mom, they need to see it from you. They need to see this modeled from you. There were four scholars who were debating the merits of four different Bible translations. And one of them in the midst of that made a comment that all four of them agreed on about the only thing they did agree on in that debate. And that was, he said, you know, the best translation of the Bible I ever witnessed and read was my mother's life. And they all agreed the best translation of the Bible you will ever see is the translation of those words into real life, genuine spirituality, sincere faith as your mother's live out that faith in the context of your home. So Paul says, mothers can impart to us transparent tenderness, genuine spirituality. But notice the next one. Interconfidence. Look at her six. For this reason, and by saying that Paul ties what is going to say next to what he's just said about the influence of his mother and his grandmother. So I don't think I'm stretching the text too far to tie my next comments back to his mother and grandmother. Says for this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. Evidently, Paul had recognized maybe even because he had miraculous gifts as an apostle when he laid hands on Timothy, Timothy's ordination actually may have conveyed to him a spiritual gift that would have been pertaining only to the apostles and their ability to do things miraculously like that. But whichever way it was, Paul either recognized or actually imparted to Timothy a spiritual gift. But it was Timothy's responsibility to fan that into flame. In other words, to develop it, to make it more effective. And so he will tell Timothy a lot of things in these two letters about studying, about developing himself and training himself and disciplining himself in godliness and things that will help build up that gift and make it more effective. But he says, you know, that gift you need to take the initiative to fan into flame for this reason, verse seven, for God did not give us a spirit of timidity. And some believe that because of that, Paul is referencing the fact Timothy may have had by nature a more timid or more withdrawn personality. And so Paul goes on to say, God did not give us a spirit of timidity or fear, but a spirit of power. Again, I do not think I'm stretching it too far to suggest that Timothy may have seen this quality and been taught this quality and seen it modeled in his mother and his grandmother. This inner confidence, the word power is a word which means inherent strength. It's talking about inner might. It's the opposite of being timid. It's the opposite of an inferiority complex. It's the opposite of not feeling confident about life. The idea of this inherent strength, this inner strength is to be able to move into life with security and confidence, to be comfortable with who you are and to believe that God loves you and he can use you. That you are a value to him, that he gave his son for you and that gives the inner confidence and strength that the Lord owns you and that he will use you. You have you have what it takes by his grace, by his grace, to be all that he wants you to be. Now, mothers, you can communicate that to your children or you can destroy that in your children. They will learn this quality probably from no one better than you as a mother. You have the opportunity through the way you treat your children, the way you speak to them, the way you speak about them to others. You have the potential to either tear them down or to build them up, to give them the solid foundation of knowing that they belong to God and they are highly cherished as his children. And that God can use them greatly if they will give themselves to him. You have the ability to embed that in their hearts and minds or to tear it out of them. I want to read to you a story that bears out this principle of mothers having that influence of developing an inner confidence in their children, the power that Paul speaks of. The lazy B ranch is comprised of 260 square miles of scrub brush on the New Mexico and Arizona border and has been in the day family since 1881. When Harry and Atom A Day were ready to have their first child, they traveled 200 miles to El Paso for the delivery. And Atom A brought her baby Sandra home to a difficult life. The four bedroom Adobe House had no running water and no electricity. There was no school within driving distance. One would have thought with such meager resources, Sandra's intellectual future was slim. But Harry and Atom A were dreamers who did not allow themselves to be limited by their surroundings. Harry had been forced by his father's death to take the ranch rather than interstantford university. But he never gave up hope that his daughter would someday study there. And Atom A continued to subscribe to Metropolitan newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker and others. When Sandra was four, her mother started her on the Calvert method of home instruction and later saw when she was older and had outgrown her mother's ability to teacher that she went to the best boarding school possible. Sandra's brother Allen says that one summer their parents packed them in the car and they drove to all the state capitals west of the Mississippi. He says we climbed to the dome of every building until finally we had to come home. Sandra did go to Stanford then on the law school and eventually on to become the first woman supreme court justice in the United States. On the day of her swearing in the day family was there of course. During the ceremony her brother Allen watched her closely as she put on her robe and walked to her seat among the justices. She looked around, saw the family and locked her eyes right into hours. He says that's when the tears started falling. He goes on to write what calls as a woman like Sandra Day O'Connor to go so far. Intelligence of course and lots of inner drive but much of the credit goes to a determined little ranch woman sitting in her Adobe house at night reading to her children. She says that she was two or three children hour after hour and to parents scampering up the stairways of capital domes their children in tow. You see what happened in Sandra Day O'Connor's life is what can happen in the life of any child not necessarily the same career track or anything like that. But the same inner confidence to be able to meet life no matter what the background is no matter what the humble beginnings may be. The same inner confidence in the Lord not in themselves not talking about that this is power that comes from God but power which is seen in a mother's life and which is communicated by a mother's teaching and training and modeling that God can enable you to be whatever he wants you to be. Moving to life with self confidence inner confidence in the ability of the Lord to use you however he wants to use you that inner confidence that inner strength that inner power that that do to us that dynamite power not explosive but inner strength is what Paul's talking about here inner confidence. But then Paul goes on to say there's something else that we can learn and should learn it comes from the Lord but it can be transmitted through our mothers for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power notice the next two words of love of love. An unselfish love and I described the love that way because that's the meaning of the word used for love here. It's an unselfish love the kind mentioned here the kind of love referred to here is a love which has the highest good of another in mind it is a love which sacrifices itself for the good of another person. It's a love which gives and gives and gives and gives unselfishly and every mother in this building knows that it takes a whole lot of that to be a good mom a whole lot of unselfish love. Loving unselfishly your children means that you love when it hurts. It means that you love them when you're so tired you can hardly go on. It means that you still give unselfishly when you don't feel like there's any more to give. It means that you will still discipline still continue to train again and again to mold character and to mold the self will of a child. It means that you will wash and iron cook and clean when you don't feel like it. Our good friend and the lady from whom we bought our house when we came back to Princeton had a little saying put up over the washer and dryer area on the wall. It said wash dry fold repeat. That's true isn't it mom's the never ending job and much of what you do in the homes and never ending job but you keep at it. You love unselfishly when you don't have the strength to love anymore. Loving unselfishly means that you hug away the hurts. It means that you listen and seek to understand that teenage daughter or son when dad gave up 15 minutes ago. It means that when you've heard 200 guest wats and 500 whys you're still listening and you're still answering the questions. That's unselfish love and every mother in this room knows that takes a special measure of God's grace and strength to love in that way because it is not easy. It is not easy. I read about one harried mom who received a phone call from a friend called and asked how she was doing and the lady said terrible. My house is a mess. There are dishes in the sink. House is just a complete mess. My head is splitting my legs and back ache and the kids are driving me crazy and the lady on the other end of the phone said okay just calm down a little bit. Listen I'll come over. I'll wash your dishes for you. I'll clean your house. I'll take care of the kids. You just lay down and get some rest and by the way how Sam doing and the lady on the other end said Sam. My husband's not named Sam. The woman said oh I'm so sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number. There was an awkward pause on the phone before the harried mother said are you still coming over. Mom you can use that sometimes right. You can just use someone to come over sometimes. It's hard. It's hard to keep at it day after day after day. I think the hardest job in the world is being a mother of a preschooler or two preschoolers or three preschoolers. That's that is tough. And my hat is off. I honor you mothers who are rearing children today and grandmothers who are rearing children today. My hat is off to you. That's a hard job. It's an endless task. There is seemingly no rest and it is only the grace of God and his strength which will give you the unselfish love to keep it up. Paul tells Timothy God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power of unselfish love. And again I don't think I'm stretching it too far to tie it back to the context of his parents is his mother's grandmother who modeled that unselfish love in his own life. But there's one other quality that Paul talks about us developing as believers which know that our modeled and can be passed on to us from our parents should be we probably will not learn this if it's not modeled and passed on to us from our mothers. And that is a consistent self control. The very end of verse seven God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a power of love and of self discipline. Some of you may have the translation that says and of a sound mind. The word here though is of one which means a well ordered mind, a structured mind, a disciplined self controlled way of thinking about life. It does have to do with self control discipline. I want to make it very clear that a loving mom is not one who always gives in. A loving mom is one who demands the right things, one who balances that tenderness and compassion with consistent boundaries sets wise guidelines and knows when to say that's it. A wise mother disciplines and trains just as she loves and affirms. I read a piece by John MacArthur one time, well known pastor and author who talked about seven disciplines that were of great help to him in his life. And when I read that I thought wow those are very wise. But they also form a great pattern for mothers to teach their children these seven disciplines so that children grow up learning self control. Nobody nobody is self controlled by nature. Children must must be taught from their earliest years self control discipline. And then as they get older and get out on their own, hopefully that translates into their own desire to be self controlled. Hopefully if they know Christ the Savior, the Holy Spirit, part of his fruit is self control and he enables us to do that. Here are the seven things John MacArthur said have helped me through the years to develop self control. Number one, he says start small. By the way, if I were a mother here this morning, I'd be jotting these down and I'd be saying hey these are the things I want to train my kids to learn self control. First of all, start small, he says start with your room, clean it, clean it. And then keep it clean when something is out of place, train yourself to put it where it belongs. Then extend that discipline of neatness to the rest of your home. And I might say to the rest of your life. Self control discipline. Start small, he says with cleaning number two, be on time. He says that may not seem very spiritual, but it is important. If you're supposed to be somewhere at a specific time, be there on time. Develop the ability to discipline your desires, activities and demands so that you can arrive on time. A great part of self control is the ability to control. Now obviously some things are out of our control in schedule, but the ability to control your schedule so that you are on time and you're not an annoyance to other people. You take into account their lives and their schedules as well. Be on time discipline. Number three, self control tip. Do the hardest job first. Doing that will prevent the hardest jobs from being left undone. Number three, he says, or number four, excuse me, organize your life. Organize your life. Mother's please teach your children these elements of self control. Organize your life. Plan the use of your time. Don't just react to circumstances. Use a calendar. Make a daily list of things you need to accomplish. If you don't control your time, everything else will. My mother keeps a book which she has ever since I can remember from my earliest childhood memories called her brain. Right, Jan? That's her brain. And in that book goes everything she's supposed to do and what she has planned for the day. Whatever degree of that kind of organization I learned, I learned from her. I have not a book. A pda that is my brain. And I have to list. I have to organize or everything else controls your time. Number five, accept correction. John MacArthur says accept correction. Correction helps make you more disciplined because it shows you what you need to avoid. Don't avoid criticism. Accept it gladly. Number six, tip for self control. Practice self denial. Learn to say no to your feelings. Occasionally deny yourself things that are all right. Just for the purpose of mastering doing it. Cultivating discipline in the physical realm will help us become more disciplined in our spiritual lives. I would encourage you to read Dallas Willard's book The Spirit of the Disciplines on spiritual disciplines because spiritual disciplines and he lists about 16 of them will will as you practice them and develop them in your life will help you to maintain self control. Number seven, he says welcome responsibility. When you have an opportunity to do something that needs to be done volunteer for it. If you have a talent in that area welcoming responsibility forces you to organize yourself. I would dare say if you would read the book of Proverbs you'd find all seven of those tips on self control there in some form or another. Those are biblical tips suggestions, biblical principles for developing self control. I think they would be wonderful models to teach our children to train our children. From our mothers we learn transparent tenderness. We learn genuine spirituality. We learn inner confidence. We learn unselfish love and we learn consistent self control. Now moms does that sound like a tall order? Does it sound impossible? Does it sound like too big a task to do consistently? It is a tall order. It is an impossible task on your own. I think that's why Irma Bombak the humorist says that being a good mom requires 180 movable parts, three sets of hands and three sets of eyes. Actually more biblically we could say this kind of motherhood requires the grace of God. It really does require the grace of God. You cannot do this on your own. There is nothing we can do to please or glorify God that we can do on our own. None of these qualities are developed on their own. They are all developed by the grace of God. And as God gives mothers and fathers the responsibility of training, of disciplining, of bringing up children in the nurture and instruction of the Lord as Paul says, as God gives you mothers that responsibility. Depend upon his grace to enable you to do it well. Would you bow with me in prayer?