I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day being celebrated or celebrating your Moma!
I had a wonderful weekend getting some time off on Saturday and being celebrated on Sunday!
Church on Mother's Day always gets me.
Our church does baby dedications on Mother's Day, so we get to see all these precious babies and new moms and I always cry - of course! And lots of the babies do too!
Then our pastor gave the message and it was like no other Mother's Day sermon I've ever heard.
He started by asking, "Are you trapped?"
Are you trapped in expectations? Either yours or someone else's?
Are you under pressure as a mom?
These are things we talk about as moms and in moms' groups - but I've never heard a pastor talk about the pressure moms are under from other moms and ourselves! And he wasn't speaking at a moms' group - he was talking to our whole church!
Pastors usually talk about the super holy mothers on Mother's Day - Mary or Ruth and Naomi!
They don't talk about us and our constant struggles to step out from under the oppression of judgment, guilt and comparison.
But there he was, talking right to the moms in the room
about our mostly private struggle of feeling trapped.
He then asked, "How do we experience freedom in the midst of the pressure, expectations and responsibilities as moms?"
"Yea, how do we?" I thought!!
He then read Romans 8:1,2
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death."
We are totally accepted in Christ. We are not condemned. And that truth is NOW, not once we've proven ourselves worthy, or potty trained our kids, or mastered organic purees for our babies or... Right NOW we are accepted in Christ without exception.
Satan loves to make us feel trapped. Trapped by other's opinions of our parenting. Trapped by comparing ourselves to other moms. Trapped by the guilt of being less than healthy with our kids' meals or bed times or discipline. And the list goes on.
But all those other voices are just noise. They are not truth.
"Great freedom comes when you understand what God says about you matters more
than what anyone else says about you."
LOVE that!
I want that freedom.
I want God's voice to be louder than any other voice in my life.
My identity is found in Christ alone and He says I'm accepted, today, without exception.
Single Mom. SAHM. Breast feeding. Working Mom. Bottle Feeding. Home Schooling. Attachment Parenting.
These are not our labels or identity!
For those who are in Christ Jesus, we are Children Of God. That is our identity.
And what our Father says about us is that He loves us. We are His Beloved. We are accepted.
We are free.
Mother's Day is over and my prayer for you and for me is that we will listen to the voice of God above all others about who we are and how we're doing!
Happy Monday
