Mother, the Helper
The Lord God hears and answers prayers in Jesus’ name for His sake, so call on Him today before you spend time in His presence. It is His pleasure to spend time with you!
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“The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.” Proverbs 31:11-12
Way back in the beginning, God had a plan for you as a wife and mother. While He made you with talent and a style of your own, He gives insight into the way He is pleased when you use them in Genesis 2:18: “And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
Marriage is God’s institution, and one that He is not ashamed of. Your husband can be a great delight to you, the one you would want to be closest to, yet maybe sometimes a source of discouragement, but always he is the one God wants to use specifically in your life to teach you about Himself. Marriage is not so much to make us happy as it is to make us holy, set apart for God. That gives us hope. No matter how many mistakes we have made, times we have been selfish and unloving, God is still at work in us and in our marriages to bring about character in us that will last beyond this life.
“I will make him a helper comparable to him.” You are a helper, specifically designed for the husband you are married to. Whether you love your marriage or not, God does, and He wants to give you vision for your place in it. What should you be helping your husband with? As far as motherhood is concerned, there is more detail in Ephesians 6:4, “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Your husband’s work as a father is to teach and raise up your family for Jesus. You are his wife, and that makes you his helper. It is a joint work.
“My son, keep your father’s command, and do not forsake the law of your mother,” Proverbs 6:20.
The Bible often speaks to sons; being a son was to gain the inheritance and to be brought up to lead others. Seeing this from a spiritual perspective, we are all sons if we have been adopted by faith, having the inheritance from God (Isaiah 54:17), and all have the enablement from God to lead others. When you see the word ‘son,’ put any name there of a child of God, and it applies. It is “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith...” 1 Peter 1:4,5.
So how exactly is it that a mother helps a father in teaching and nurturing the children “in the training and admonition of the Lord”? Certainly it is not to talk our husband into taking an active role in the children’s lives. It is not getting him to change or do anything. To criticize is not to help. We are called to be for our husbands, not against them. Pray about everything, take it all to Jesus, and “above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins,” 1 Peter 4:8. Your husband may be uninvolved, interested and praying for you, or so involved you feel that you have no room for creativity. But you are an ambassador from the King of Kings, sent to love God and love others to Him, and sometimes that is done without a word!
“Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives,” 1 Peter 3:1.
This means that there are times that a husband cannot move from disobedience to the Lord because his wife continues to talk about it and point it out. He will see the love of God in her life if she is quiet about the issue, but he cannot hear it from her because of the position God has given him. It isn’t that he is just stubborn or too prideful to listen; it is that God has wired him to be the head; he has been created to lead, and so that is what he will do, no matter how he is pressured. He will be wholly a man when he is leading, and a wife will be wholly a woman when she is helping him, because that is how God designed His plan to work. Following God’s ways will dispel confusion and quiet our storm.
It may be that your storm is in your heart, and that it concerns choices you have made. You struggle with guilt and wonder if you have missed the will of God in your life.
In the book of Genesis, we find the account of a man, Jacob, who married two sisters. He actually chose one and loved her, and he worked for her hand in marriage for seven years! When their wedding was performed, however, her father had deceitfully presented Jacob with the sister whom he had not chosen! Bridal gowns were very concealing at that time, and there was no way for Jacob to know until it was too late.
A heartbroken and angry man left his tent the next morning. He had been treated with deception, but he was not innocent of earlier deception himself, so he was reaping the consequences of his own sin. He could relive the situation a hundred times but it would never change: he was in this trap because of his own sin. Jacob tried to fix his life. He changed his marriage status by also taking the wife he wanted in the first place. He tried to make it all work out, yet his life as a husband and father was chaotic and unfulfilling. Amid all this turmoil, had he missed God’s plan for his life?
Let’s flash forward through Jacob’s life to the end, his last recorded words, his dying breath. We see him there, on his bed, a man who has had many years to consider the outcome of his choices, to learn to rely upon the mercy of His Creator. He is making a request for his remains: “Bury me...in the cave that is in the field...There...I buried Leah,” Genesis 49:29-31. He chose to be buried with his first wife, the one he hadn’t taken by choice, the one he had received through deception. Why?
Jacob could look back and see something in his old age that he hadn’t seen going in: the sovereign hand of God. While his father-in-law was seeing to the switching of the brides, God was at work. No, it wasn’t His will for a man to deceive Jacob. Lying is never God’s will. But long before it ever happened, He foresaw what would occur. In time, the Promised Messiah would come through Jacob’s line. The line would be through Jacob’s son, Judah. Who was Judah’s mother?
Leah.
Jacob would never have had to marry again to be in God’s perfect will for his life. He was right where he was supposed to be, even in the center of what looked like someone else’s control. And in the end, he understood what he would earlier have seen only by faith in the God who goes ahead of His children.
Wherever you are, single or married, whatever your circumstance, don’t squirm to get out. Don’t let your mind wander; fix it on the One who goes ahead of you in your life! If you have tried to fix your own life, stop right where you are. If you are wondering what to do, stop. Don’t move, but cry out to God to save you, right where you are.
God is in the now. You don’t have to look back or ahead to the future, just up to God. Sink into His Word. Let His songs wash over your mind and heart. Let Him fix wherever you are broken.
“A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench,” Matthew 12:20.
Remember that God is our healer. His heart is toward us. Whatever He calls us to do, He enables us to do. We live by believing God’s promises. That is what faith is, and we find that He meets our faith with power to enable us to obey Him. It is not the perfection of our obedience, but the heart attitude He is looking at. He will accomplish wonderful things through us when we believe Him. Stay in the Word of God daily, in prayer, and in fellowship with followers of the God of the Bible. Pray and thank Him for His Word!
Will you join with me to pray right now?
Oh, Lord, You have given me the position of a wife and mother, and I need to believe what You say in order to live my life with value that will last! Sink into my heart the truth of Your work for me, that I am to help my husband in raising up our children unto You. Cause me to love my husband and children the way You love me, and equip me through Your Word to not only be content, but to thrive. Wash my heart and mind with Your Word so that I can stand firm on Your promises and build my life on You. I want to be a wise woman who builds her house, not a foolish one who tears hers down with her own hands. By Your grace, You will accomplish Your good work in me! In Jesus’ name, A-men.
1 comment:
You're doing well here, Nic.
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