1 Samuel 1:26-2:11 • A Mother’s Prayer
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Sermon Notes
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
1 Samuel chapter 1. 1 Samuel chapter 1. There is a mother who wants a child, but the child is not coming. So Hannah prays and people misinterpret her prayer, but ultimately the Lord gives a child. And we pick up that response of Hannah as she is celebrating what the Lord has done, but considering what the Lord must do now in the prayer that would follow. I'll ask that you stand as we honor God's Word. Look at the end of chapter 1 and then the mother's prayer in chapter 2 as well. 1 Samuel 1 verse 26. Hannah who has now had Samuel says this. She said, "Oh my Lord, as you live my Lord, I am the woman who is standing here in your presence praying to the Lord for this child I prayed and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him," that is the child, "to the Lord. As long as he lives he is lent to the Lord and he that is Samuel worshiped the Lord there in the temple." Hannah now prays for the son that she has left to be raised in the temple and dedicated to the Lord's work there. Verse 1 of chapter 2, Hannah prayed and said, "My heart exalts in the Lord. My horn that is my dignity or my strength is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. There is none holy like the Lord for there is none besides you. There is no rock like our God. Talk no more of so very proudly let not arrogance come from your mouth. The Lord is a God of knowledge and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken but the feeble bind on strength. Those who are full have hired themselves out for bread but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. The barren has borne seven but she who has many children is forlorn. The Lord kills and brings to life. He brings down to the shale and he raises up. The Lord makes poor and he makes rich. He brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust. He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's and on them he has set the world. He will guard the feet of his faithful ones but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness.
For not by might shall a man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces. Against them he will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed. And when Hannah ceased praying her husband Elkanah went home to Rama and the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for the mother's both biological and spiritual who are used by your hand to take us to your hand. You work beyond us and through us for the sake of your glory and the good of our children and so we seek you in your word this day to give us instruction and grace for the mothering a church is called to do in Christ's name. So we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Please be seated. The first church in which Kathy and I ministered was a church that had an unusual tradition. If it were a church this size it wasn't this size but the elders wives by tradition baked the communion bread for every Lord's Supper service. The recipe had been handed down for generations in that 200 year old church and the elders wives had at some point learned a great way to get people to come to the Lord's Supper. It was called sugar in the communion bread. It probably was not according to the recipe for unleavened bread in the Passover or the wilderness but the communion bread if you partook was as good as any sugar cookie you could find anywhere which means you can hardly wait for communion and not just the adults but the kids.
Somehow it always seemed that there were more of those Oreo sized communion wafers baked than there were people to partake which meant at the end of every communion service was a communion table that had lots of sugar cookies on it.
Now if you can just kind of not put yourself in the place of the controversy that ensued,
consider what the children of the church did after every communion service. What would they do? They would rush the communion table. And again if you just won't put in the theology of that, just presume the bread is no longer holy, the service is done.
Isn't a wonderful picture of what we would actually pray for for our children?
That in that symbol of the Lord's sacrifice and love for us, in that picture of Jesus, you see the children of the church running to Jesus.
The Apostle John of course prayed in the New Testament, "I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth."
Wouldn't it be even more wonderful if they ran to Jesus?
How do we pray for that? Not just desire it, how do we actually pray for God's work in the lives of His people and the children that we nurture? On a mother's day it's perhaps good to think about a spiritual mother in the church of all ages whose prayers were powerfully used not just for the salvation of an ancient people, but for us as well as her prayer and its power are reverberating through the centuries. What is Hannah's prayer teaching us?
First she is teaching us that a mother's prayer arises out of pain.
Whether you know it or not, our children are a pain.
They are, you know, for all kinds of reasons. Kathy and I have friends with a large family, and after the last child had graduated and gone to college, the parents were sitting on their back deck one wonderful spring morning, sun is shining, the birds are chirping, they're having their orange juice and coffee and enjoying just the two of them. No soccer games, no SATs to prepare for, no formulas to fix, none of that. They're just enjoying one another. And at one point our friend looked at his wife and he said, "Rebecca, why did we even have children?"
Now we can tease about it, the pressures of having children, but the pain involved is not just the pressure.
You may remember when we began our redemptive story with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Because of the sin, God spoke to Eve and said, "In pain you will now bear children."
Which was not just a reference to the physical process of childbearing, but a recognition that if now the world is broken, if sin has left the fallenness of the world and all her people and all our children, then inevitably moms recognize, "I birthed children into a broken world." And I can't escape that, and they can't escape that. So there is this pain of recognition that my children will not just themselves create pressures in my life, but there will be pressures in their life that require my prayers.
The pangs of pain for Hannah are intense. In the first chapter of 1 Samuel, you may remember that she is struggling with infertility.
And our families, a number of your families, have struggled. Every one of my adult children who is married has struggled at times for years with infertility. It was even more intense in the time of Hannah were a woman's worth and significance and the legacy of that family, all dependent on having children. And Hannah can have no children. And what makes it even worse is the blame and the ridicule and the mockery that is put upon her because she can't have a child.
And so she prays out of the intensity, "God, give me a child."
Despite all of that, her pain comes from being mocked by her husband's other wife, who could have children, yes, in that day and age. Remember the people are ignoring the law of God, and everybody did what was right in their own eyes in the period of the judges. So here's Elkanah, her husband. He has a wife who cannot have children, a wife who can, and the wife who can mocks the one who cannot. Not only is Hannah mocked, she is misunderstood by, how do we say this, kind of an offish husband. At some point, she is weeping for her childlessness. He says to her, "Hannah, why do you weep? Am I of not more worth to you than ten sons?"
Right after this, he's going to sing Gaston's song again, you know.
Kind of like, "You don't get it.
No, you don't satisfy all of a mother's heart's need."
She is mocked by her rival. She is misunderstood by her husband.
But perhaps worst of all, she is blamed by her church.
Year after year, she and her husband go to the temple. Year after year, they pray for a child, and a child does not come. Finally, in the intensity of her pain and her prayer, she goes to the temple, she is praying. She cannot even utter anymore all the pain out of her heart. So words do not come out of her mouth, but she is just praying to God so that her lips move, and the priest comes by and he says, "Stop drinking your wine, drunk woman."
She's been there year after year.
He has seen her. But instead of encouraging, instead of building her up, he blames her as if drunkenness now is her fault, her sin, and the cause of her pain.
It happens even in the church, doesn't it?
Our reflex is, if there's trouble, it must be somebody's fault. It was even the thinking of the apostles of Jesus.
Remember John 9? They come across a man born blind. And the apostles say, "Lord, who sent this man or his parents?"
She said, "No.
This was so that the glory of the Lord might be revealed in him." That is a tough truth for us. As it is tough, even in this passage when we get to verse 5 of chapter 1, where you read, here is Hannah praying, "But the Lord had closed her womb."
For reasons that are hard for us to discern in this broken and fallen world, God meant even the wrong for good. Here's this biological trouble, and the Lord is even taking that for good. And we struggle with that. You know, Hannah prayed, our Hannah prayed earlier today as she was praying for the whole church. God, we know that you work all things together for good, and that's a beautiful truth, but it is hard to receive.
I know that God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. I know they can bring good out of disaster. I know that affliction makes no sense to us, and it's still driving hearts to him for eternal purposes. But we struggle to know that, and we struggle when other people struggle. If their kids are struggling, if they struggle to have kids, if the kid himself is not living up to the expectations of the church, it is so easy for us to say, "Who sinned?"
The child or his parents.
It happens over and over again in the Bible, that God is taking tragedy, even that childlessness, to lead people to himself in greater and greater dependence for more glorious purposes. God meant it for good. Joseph, Abraham, Judah, the man born blind, Hannah, Elizabeth, Jesus on the cross, evil, awful, terrible, hurt, affliction, pain, fallenness.
God uses all things together for good.
To them who love God and are called according to his purpose, how hard it is to receive, how important it is to accept.
P.B. Station in North Carolina recently reported just the account of a family who had gone to a pizza parlor for a meal, crowded place.
Because it was crowded, the intensity of the noise began to affect a special needs child that they had with them, eight-year-old Riley.
And as the intensity picked up and Riley didn't know how to take it all in and to respond, at some point he tipped his plate through his mom's phone, through a fit, began to scream.
And so the family got up to leave.
The waitress approached them, "Okay, we'll pay the bill."
She said, "That's not why I'm here.
I'll try to say this without crying," she said.
Nobody else has already paid your bill and left this note for you. God only gives special children to special people.
Hard to receive.
And those of you who have special needs in your families, like my family knows, sometimes we don't hear it even in the church.
God gives special children to special people who by faith, who by love, who by endurance are showing the world the grace of God beyond our strength, beyond our ability, beyond our understanding. We are showing the grace that we have ourselves received. To any who watch us, to any who see us, we are perceiving and receiving and transmitting a message by faithfulness in difficult things. It's not easy.
It is a path of pain that Hannah is herself walking.
After all, her prayer in its intensity arises from a place of pain it is hard for us to actually assess. But it comes out in the eleventh verse of the first chapter where she is so desperate for this child that she vows a vow, "O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life. No razor shall touch his head. If you just give me a child, I'll give him back to you.
I'll dedicate him to you. If you just let me have a child."
And so she's so desperate for this child just to feel a body in her hands, just to touch a cheek, just to hear his breath that if you'll give him to me, I'll give him back to you. And the dedication indicated in that Nazarite vow, remember that Samson took his well.
Here is Samson, the child of strength, who shows that he is not able to save Israel.
And now comes a child of weakness, out of barrenness, out of one's incapacity.
And God is saying, "This one I will use." You may not perceive it if you don't know a little bit of history, but what's happening in this birth of Samuel is we have Samson, the last of the judges, when everybody's doing what's right in their own eyes, and the first of the prophets in Samuel, who's going to anoint the kings from whom the king will come.
God is transitioning not out of strength, but out of weakness. I will provide what you cannot provide for yourself. I will provide the grace that you need, but it's not perceived, it's not even requested
until the pain is intense. "God, you must provide what I cannot provide. I need your help." And that help comes after a prayer, in the form of a prayer, of Hannah recognizing who this God is that she must seek. It's the same God to whom moms pray now.
What is the content of Hannah's prayer in the second chapter? She prays for God's strength in the light of her own weakness and the weakness of the people around her.
Chapter 2 in verse 1, "Hannah prayed and said, "My heart exalts in the Lord. My horn is exalted in the Lord. My strength, my dignity, it's exalted in what God does. I'm attaching myself to His strength." He's the power of my power. We are to be strong in the power of His might, not our might. My soul exalts in the strength of the Lord. They are glorious words, but they must be hard to say. "God, I'm not trusting my strength, but yours."
Parents, why does God give us second children?
So we won't be so proud that we're perfect children because of our comp...perfect parents because of our compliant first children, right? Now I know that both birth order stuff is a lot of voodoo and hocus pocus stuff, but you know, there's a reality at times of first kids to whom we pour all of our attention, pour all our energies and efforts, pay so much attention to, and then comes a second child who says, "Hey, I'm here too."
Maybe not always in the healthiest of ways. Why?
Because if we only had compliant first children, we would all worship at the idol of parental success.
Look at how good my parenting, look at how well I teach my child what to do. Remember before you had children how you were sure other people should raise their children?
Remember when you had only the first child, you had all the affirmation that you were the perfect parent?
And then we begin to discover that may not be the whole story.
God, I have a child I'm struggling with now.
I'm not the perfect parent. I thought, "I need Your strength. I need Your help. I need to pray to You. I need something beyond my own resources, my own cleverness, my own requirements of what my child should do. I need You, Lord. My soul exalts in the Lord my God." If we did not have second children, the idol of parenting success would not only overwhelm us, it would probably overwhelm our children. Because if your children are your trophies, the way I affirm who I am, look at my wisdom, look at my strength, look at my parenting, look at my godliness, if our children are the mirrors of our success, then we can never rest and they can never rest in a broken world.
And so we pressure more and we push more and we seek conformity more. And we have all the right reasons for doing it. I'm doing this for my child's good, for my child's success, but you and I all recognize there is this very thin line.
Am I doing this for my child's success or for the affirmation of my worth, particularly in the opinions of other people around me? Now, that is a very thin line.
And it's a line that we may not know, but over the course of time our children discern.
"You doing this for me or you doing this for you?"
And if what we are doing is taking our identity from the success of our children rather than the reception of our Savior, they and we both feel the pressures of this prayer. "God, I need your strength. My child needs your strength. I do not have enough control. I do not have enough control over my own heart, not to need you." And that's ultimately what Hannah is praying to, not just my soul exalts under the strength of the Lord, I need that. I need it because I recognize my own fallenness, my own sinfulness, my need of the strength of one holier than I. Verse 2, "There is none holy like the Lord.
There is none beside you. If you pray that prayer, Lord, there is no one holy but you." What did you just confess?
I'm a sinner, I'm not the holy one. There's only one holy.
And that needs not just to be the silent profession of our lives, but what our children know about what we believe and think and testify to them and to others. Pastor Jeff Robinson in a fun article on "Six Ways to Run Your Children" writes this, "Here's the first way to run your child.
Don't tell them you're a sinner."
Now as counterintuitive as it may seem, because we want to give good examples and we want to give good instruction and good direction, if we present to our children that we got it all figured out, that we never make mistakes, that we're as holy as God, then our good example is destroying their spiritual walk.
We cannot be their Redeemer and we cannot portray ourselves as the perfect ones. We have to be able to say, "God alone is holy," writes Jeff Robinson.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, you are at your weakest in spiritual power for your children when you assume the role of a sinless Savior.
That belongs to Christ alone.
When we say things like, "I didn't act that way when I was your age," first it's a lie.
Secondly it confuses children as to why they need the gospel in the first place. If you don't, how are you getting the balance of children understanding? You and I recognize there are difficulties, honest talk. There are children that you can tell about your sin and there are children you better be very careful when you talk about your sin. Given their age, their personalities, what was the thing we're talking about, we have to exercise some discretion. Some may be helped by it, some may take advantage, but what they have to recognize is you have some struggles too or else they don't need a Savior any more than you do.
The balance is perhaps received when Jeff Robinson says the second way that we can ruin our children.
Don't ask them to forgive you for sinning against them.
Always that hard.
I messed up. I got too mad.
I required what I shouldn't have required. I was living through you and put pressure on you I didn't mean to. One of the men I respect most in this church who after a period of time of our being in the church simply shared with us, he said, "I made a cross country trip in my car to visit my adult son to simply say, I apologize for the pressure I put upon you for your performance to affirm my dignity in our church and I confess I apologize to you." Now I'm not going to tell you it was a great conversation.
I am going to tell you it was the beginning of real talk between the two of them. A conversation that is still going on as somebody simply said, "I confess that I didn't do everything right with you." When we are making that kind of confession it comes out of something in our hearts that says God alone is holy and that means I'm broken in some ways and it may be the way that I'm treating other people, it may be the way I'm treating my own child and I need to acknowledge that as part of my gospel walk and my gospel testimony.
Jennifer Phillips is a wonderful product of campus outreach in a recent article.
You're going to get the gist of what she was saying. Tiles are article when your kids won't bow to your idols.
What do you do when your children will not bow to your own idols? What is an idol? Something good actually that we begin to substitute for God as the basis of our identity or for our satisfaction. "I've got to have this in order for me to be happy. I've got to have this in order to have worth." And our identity in Christ, His reception of us gets displaced by something that's good but is now greater priority than God and His purposes in our life. Jennifer writes, "When I had my first child I read all the books.
If you do these things, they promised, your child will be on a predictable schedule, will sleep through the night by the time you come home from the hospital."
Did you watch the Prince Harry interviews after the birth of Archie, the new baby? Did you see that? So here is Prince Harry, you know, standing in front of all the photographers and announcing, you know, the birth of his and Meghan Markle's child. And he says, "Our child has a wonderful temperament.
He's so calm, he sleeps all the time.
He's not even two days old.
Give it a few weeks.
Give it a few months. Give it a few years. We'll come back to you." And how the British say that he was so gobsmacked by having this new child that he thanked the reporters, he thanked the people, and then he turned around and thanked the horses in the stable behind him for being there. You kind of go, "What?"
He's a little overwhelmed and it may get worse.
writes Jennifer Phillips, "My son would not cooperate with my idolatry."
He cried endlessly. He had trouble feeding. He would not nap for more than 20 minutes. Do you know what my predominant emotion was in the midst of all this?
Anger.
At an infant, I threw pillows in the middle of the night. I yelled at my husband. I said not so kind words to a baby.
I was upset because I had faith he followed A and B and I wasn't getting C. I deserved a child who would cooperate.
All the books told me if I did my part, he would do his part and I did my part.
I continued to bow to my idols control, reputation, success, convenience, and he wouldn't bow.
And I was angry.
I know the anger.
And I'm guessing every parent here at some point knows the anger.
You would think by our third child, I would have learned a few things. But that was the one with six months of colic.
I mean, not just weeping, not just crying. I mean all night long screaming, writhing. I can remember endlessly walking in the living room trying to give Kathy some time to sleep and remember we've got two other kids.
I'm trying to run an institution. I'm trying to travel. I'm trying to do all of my career things, take care of a family. And this little thing who's less than 20 pounds in my arms won't let me sleep.
As a matter of fact, I cannot calm her down as much as I walk and occasionally she wants to just throw herself out of my arm. I'm tempted to let her do it.
How can I be angry at this infant who has no reasoning but pain in this moment?
How does it happen?
There's no one holy but God.
And the rest of us are broken.
And the rest of us need his help and his forgiveness and his strength, which begins to reveal what Hannah prays about, God's purpose even in our brokenness. What is God revealing about himself through all this brokenness in her and in us as well? First he is revealing us to ourselves.
God is after all the great revealer. Verse 3, "Talk no more so very proudly.
Let not arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge."
Any parent, I don't believe it.
The child with no trouble, the marriage with no issues, the picture perfect home, no.
Arrogance, pride, doesn't work if we get beneath the surface and get to where you really are.
God is helping us understand that he is revealing us to ourselves. Why? Because he's going to reveal himself to you out of your brokenness. God is not just saying, "I'm here to reveal things. I am here to reverse things," says the Lord. The struggle, the difficulty, the things that you can't fix, "I am here," God says, "to reverse course in your life." Verse 4, "The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength." Wait, those who are strong get weak and those who are weak get strong. Verse 5, "Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread. Those who were hungry have ceased to be hungry." Verse 6, "The Lord kills and brings to life. He brings down, he raises up." Verse 7, "The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and he exalts." Here are people going down one course and suddenly there's another course. Sometimes it's to punish evil, but sometimes it's to bring good back around.
The story making the news so much right now, remember the wealthy, famous celebrity parents who were truly worshiping it, the idol of parenting success and paid all the money to get their kids into the right colleges?
And now what a reversal, not just for them, but sadly for their children.
But if God has the power to punish wickedness, what does He also have the power to do?
He has the power to turn people's lives around for good. He is the great reverser. That's why we as parents, as moms, as dads, that's why we pray. Not only do we recognize our brokenness, we recognize He can reverse what our brokenness is causing even when we look at our children with all of their difficulties. Because it was so unusual in my youth for pastors to talk about their struggles. I just have in my brain, "etch," the story of the pastor in my teenage years who in our church talked about his rebellion as a teenager, quite unusual in that day and age for pastors to talk about their struggles. But he said he can remember where he actually planned and plotted how he was going to get out of his house on a particular night to do things that he should not be doing. But to get out of the house, he had to go down the stairs past his parents' bedroom.
And he arranged it. He got down the stairs undetected, went past the parents' bedroom, looked back the open door and saw a couple of dimples on the bedspread and recognized what had been happening was his mother had been on her knees with her elbows on the bed praying for him.
And it turned him around.
Not just back up the stairs. It turned him around for life. My mother is praying for me. She is seeking God. She trusts Him to even control me.
And for that reason, he turned around.
God is the great reverser. And so we pray to Him, not just because He can, but because His power is so able to do the things that we could not do. God is amazing. There is none holy like God. There is none who compares to not just His righteousness, but His strength. And so we turn to Him when we recognize how badly we have messed up, only because Kathy tells the story so often to young moms. I'll tell it too. I can remember when she called an adult son of ours who was having children of his own to apologize. And the reason was because we've gone back to our church in St. Louis and we went past a particular intersection and even as we went past the intersection, she could not help remembering when my oldest son was learning to drive and he pulled through that intersection into a line of traffic that was oncoming.
And at that very moment, my very sweet natured wife's voice was much louder than the horns of the oncoming traffic. And she could not let it go. I mean all these years later, she could not let... So she called my son and she said, "I just want to apologize to you for yelling at you on Ballast Road." And my son said, "Mom, what are you talking about?"
Praise God for the power that erases children's memories.
But not everything gets erased, nor does everything get properly remembered.
And for that reason, we pray to God, God power greater than mine. Dads, it's not just moms that get haunted by the past, right?
In a new book, Ken Harrison, who's the new chairman of Promise Keepers, he's been a police officer, he's been an industry leader, now he's in charge of this Christian organization.
And yet he writes, "On any given day, most men feel they fall short as fathers, husbands,
friends and followers of Jesus Christ."
Is that a true statement? Men know that's a true statement.
So let's just get it straight.
Mom or dad, you are inadequate.
God is not.
That's the point. She's saying, "God, I could not provide this child. I can now not take care of this child. I'm giving him over to the temple, but you have to take care of him. I recognize I've come to the end of myself, the end of my ability, the end of my care. But God, I am seeking you. I'm seeking you for protection for my child." Verse 9, right at the beginning, "God will guard the feet of his faithful ones." That's just a reminder, our feet can take us in paths that are not good. And so we pray, "God, protect my child from themselves as well as from their enemies." There have been times I will tell you that Kathy and I have never been closer than when we were praying for a struggling child. If your child is struggling with rebellion, with difficult things, I will tell you, it will do one of two things to your marriage. It will either push you apart or you will say, "We have to pray together for this child. We have to humble ourselves. I'm not going to blame you if you won't blame me. Let's come together. Let's pray before the Lord for this child." And how I will tell you there have been some of our sweetest moments as wedded people when we were praying desperately before the throne of grace for God's care upon our children. Because it's not just their actions that put them at risk. There are enemies you recognize. Verse 9, "He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall a man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces against them. He will thunder in heaven." God, I need you! Not just my wisdom, not just, I can't watch them 24-7.
They're getting too old for me to do things that I need to. God, you've got to take over here because the great threats to our children are their peers and predators and their smartphones and them just being smart kids.
So God, you've got to help here. I need you to come and express your work, your hand in my behalf. You've got to do more than I can do.
And in an amazing way, it becomes evident for Hannah in what she herself prays in one of the most amazing verses in the Bible, verse 10, of 1 Samuel 2. Right at the end of that verse she says, affirming about God, "The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anoint." There's no king in Israel. This is the period of the judges. Samuel is the first prophet and he will anoint the first king who will become the lineage
of the king of all the earth.
She is praying for something she cannot self-perceive is so powerful. God, take control.
Give us a king, but ultimately a king who will judge the ends of the earth. And God takes the prayer of this weak, barren, struggling, weeping woman who's saying, "God, you have to take over." And he doesn't just help her child and help her, he helps the world.
And I thank God for the spiritual mothers in my life and the spiritual mothers who are here who are not just thinking, "I pray for my child," but recognizing as I pray in the life and the body of the church, God is working far beyond us. He is touching life to life to life and he is bringing his salvation to the nations by the prayers of faithful moms. I mean, we read it in the New Testament, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." You know, Mother's Day, we need to just rewrite it a little bit.
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous mom availeth much.
Pray to your God for your soul's sake and your child's future and the God who will judge the whole earth and sent his Son for you will work. Father, so we pray that you who have shown yourself strong and loving, more loving than we can imagine, more powerful than we can imagine, would bring that love and that power into the prayers of the moms of this church.
People are physical. Our timetable is not yours, but you are using us the prayers of a fervent mom availeth much.
You sent Jesus through the prayers of my mother.
Send Jesus in the hearts of our children and community and world.
Through the spiritual moms who are praying here, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.