Mother Knows Best

Taken from Dinner Table Devotionals

What have you learned from your mother or other female role models in your life? How to back a cake, ride a bike, balance a checkbook, read a book, write a letter? Your mom probably didn't have to teach you how to cry when you were born, but that's about it. After we're born we have to learn how to walk, how to talk, how to eat, as well as how to know right from wrong. The family is the first school God gives us so we can learn what we need to know for life. Parents teach their children through modeling, counseling, explaining, correcting and disciplining.

The Bible says the most important thing parents should teach their children is to fear God. A parent's job is to show children what it looks like to treat God with reverence, what it sounds like to talk over everything with him and what it's like to trust him in good times and bad.

Solomon knew something about how we interact with our parents. We are often tempted to rebel by not listening when our parents give us instruction, so he told us to listen when they correct us. We're also tempted to forget about what we've learned when we leave home, so he said, "Don't neglect your mother's instructions." When children learn from their parents' teaching and example to fear God, they have learned the most important lesson in life.

Proverbs 23:25
Give your father and mother joy. May she who gave you birth by happy.

Exodus 20:12
Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving to you
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Proverbs 1:7-9
Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. My child, listen when your father corrects you. Don't neglect your mother's instruction. What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honor around your neck.

My thoughts:
I was taught, from an early age, about God's love and what the scriptures teach us. My Grandparents as well as my parents made sure that us kids had a good foundation. However, as I got older I turned from my upbringing. I was literally running from God for a period of time. How much different my life would have been if I had heeded those instructions from my parents and grandparents. Fortunately, those lessons can't be unlearned. Even though I wasn't abiding by them, I knew them as well as I knew my own name, and because of having that firm foundation, when I came to the end of myself, I knew where I needed to go. So my question to all of you who are now the parents, what kind of foundation are you laying for your children? Are you following the instructions of your parents, or if your parents were not Christians, of your spiritual parents? Are you imparting knowledge to the youth around you? Are you living it as well as speaking of it?

I hope all the Mom's on Christian Homesteader's has a wonderful Mother's Day. Let's never forget that we are charged to train up our children in the way that they should go. Let's teach through example as well as our words.

So very true. Train up your children in the ways of the Lord and they shall not depart from it.
I was raised in a christian home and I also departed from it for a span of time. However my mother's midnight cries to God were answered and I came back to the Lord. I am so thankful for a Mother that spent many night praying for her children and grandchildren.
I hope and pray that when I die my kids and grandblessings can say the same thing about me.

Carla, I always tell people that it was Grandma's prayers that brought me back to God. Through her prayers God sent certain people in my life that were able to cut through my stubborness and reach me with God's love. I know you miss her, and I do too. Grandma was a very special woman of God.

Without the prayers and guidance of my Grandma's I would have never known the true power and love of God. We would talk for hours and read parts of the Bible when we visited either of them. When we were very small we would look at the pictures in the center of the Bible and they would teach us from those pics. Our Grandma's would assure us that God had our daddy right there with him. That it was ok. Without my grandmas we would have never known who our father was that gave his life for his country. I thank God everyday for my grandparents and I thank my grandparents for teaching us about God. I have never been afraid of death. People ask me how I can truly mean that and I really can't answer except to say that my grandparents made it all so real to us. God loves us and will never forsake us. What was there to be afraid of?

Some of us grew up with godly parents .. others of us did not.

I think the main thing MY mother taught me is what NOT to be. God's hand is on everything though. Without the experiences I had in my childhood I would have never been equipped to help the hurting at risk kids that my job always led me to.

Her mother, my Grandma Nettie, did a lot more teaching. She taught me about love and she also taught me how to cook. Grandma Nettie was a whacky old lady, but her heart was always in the right place.

Farmfresh, I agree, that our experiences help to equip us for God's calling on our lives. God knows what He's doing, even when we don't see the why's of things. I've been through enough in my lifetime to have learned that nothing really matters without the Lord. I'm just thankful that He knew who to have praying for me and who to send to me when I was ready to listen.

I have had many occasions in my life when my personal experiences and pain was EXACTLY what was needed to help another.

Some of the kids that I dealt with at the Alternative School I used to work at, were angry and full of hate, ready to give up on life. When you have a young person like that look you in the eye and scream, "You just don't UNDERSTAND!" It tears your heart out.

When I can look them dead in the eye and say, "Yes. I do." They can see the honesty in what I am saying. Many times that has been the crack that eventually led to an open door for me to come inside. I always shared openly and honestly with those kids. It took away a little bit of the pain I carried for years each time my sharing helped one of them.

It was a HARD job, mentally, spiritually, and physically. Finally the physical part got to be too much. I didn't realize how tired I was until I quit.

Farmfresh, I know what you mean. I don't know if you read my testimony, but I have suffered many losses in my life. I had buried 4 children by the time I was 21 years old and could not have any more. I had been married to an abusive alcoholic, I have been homeless. I ran from God for many years, but when I finally came to Him, He led me into children's ministries. I always prayed that he would send me the kids no one else wanted. I have ministered to and even given a home to kids who came from drug addicted parents or who had been molested. It takes a lot out of you. I just recently resigned as a children's pastor, and that's been hard for me, but I can no longer do it physically. We still minister to our neighborhood kids though, many who are growing up in a single parent home. I really believe that the only reason I finally came to God was because my Grandmother prayed for her grandchildren on a daily basis. I know that Carla knows what I'm saying, because she's my Aunt and spent her life hearing Grandma praying and the tears she shed for those of us that were lost. But thankfully God is faithful to the prayers of his children.

Yet we can be thankful for all of that "stuff", because it is through that that we grew into the Christians that we are today.  

I had a Christian friend that prayed for me.  I will have to share my testimony sometime, but before I was saved I too was a VERY different person.

Believe me if you notice I say grandparents.  My grandparents did not raise us they just saw us occasionally but had huge impacts on us.  My father died in Vietnam when I was very small.  He and momma were both raised in very Christian homes, however after my fathers death momma just kind of went into a depression and never came out.  She remarried a man that was raised Christian but you could not tell it by his actions. He hurt her and both of us girls very badly.   It was a hard and sad upbringing.  I was also a very different person in that home.  However I so believe that the things my grandparents taught us led us back to God when we left our home.  At the very end of momma's life (the day before she passed) she told me two simple things without explanation.....I'm sorry and I dreamed about your daddy last night.   I think I understand them both.

Katrina, mom's prayers are still being answered almost 33 years after her death. As far as I know all of us kids have given our life's to God, except I'm not sure about Ruth. She was a true prayer worrier! I miss her every day. She was the perfect role model of a Christian.

Carla, I know she touched the lives of her grandkids too.  Like you, I miss her and wished she had lived long enough to see me come home, but I have a strong feeling she knows.