Every year near Fathers Day, we are reminded that Mothers Day is one of the highest attended Sunday’s of the year. When we lived in Brownsville, I learned that the day before Mothers Day is also the busiest day of the year for florists. A member who was a florist had to employ a number of additional helpers to meet the demand of Mothers Day.

Let’s face it. Mothers are important. When Kathy would go out of town when the children were young they always looked forward to her return. The food and cleanliness of the house made a big improvement within minutes of her return! Mothers are also important for Christian faith. I have heard a lot of testimonies over the last 35 years. The most common testimony is of how a mother or grandmother was essential in bringing a child to faith in Christ. Many of these testimonies were by young men who strayed from the Christian faith only to be rescued by the prayers and sacrifice of a mother or grandmother.

Two weeks ago when looking at the importance of Scripture for the wise and loving life, we looked at II Timothy. Timothy is one of the most important people in the New Testament. Timothy’s mother, Eunice, was central to his Christian faith. Paul discipled Timothy, but it was Eunice who brought him to Christian faith. Most Christians know the story of St. Augustine, who was not a Christian until very shortly before his mother’s death. [1] Monica prayed and prayed for young Augustine. Finally, after much wandering, Augustine embraced his mother’s faith in one of the most dramatic and important conversions in all of Christian history.

If Christian faith is going to be passed from generation to generation, then it will be because mothers, fathers, parents, grandparents, and others take responsibility to disciple children seriously. Churches are important in this process, but family is more important—and mothers may be the most important people of all!

A Warning from History

It may seem odd to read from the book of Judges on and near Mothers Day. However, mothers are part of families, and this is a blog on passing along faith in families. Therefore, it is appropriate to ask the question, “What happens if faith is not passed along?” “What happens if our children and grandchildren forget our faith or the faith of their parents and grandparents?” Judges tells just such a story. Our text comes from Judges 2, and I am going to be readying verse 7 and verses 10-13:

The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. … After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them (Judges 2:7, 10-14).

Most Christians seldom read the book of Judges. It is the seventh book in our Bible and tells the story of Israel between the death of Joshua, who led the people into the Promised Land, until the time of Samuel, the last judge. As Judges begins, a godly, wise, and effective leader has led the people of Israel into the Promised Land. Joshua was Moses’ assistant, a great general, and a godly person. Now, Joshua is passing away.

So long as Joshua was alive, the people of Israel followed the LORD. Joshua and the generation Joshua led into the Promised Land remembered their captivity in Egypt. They remembered that God had released them from captivity, led them in the desert, and miraculously delivered them to the Promised Land. However, after Joshua and the members of his generation died, the newer generations did not remember what God had done. They lost their memory of slavery in Egypt, of their suffering, of God’s miraculous deliverance by the leadership of Moses, the long wandering in the wilderness, and their conquest of the Promised Land. They lost their memory, and as they lost their memory of what God had done, they lost their faith. Soon they were worshiping false gods, living immorally, and acting violently. It was not long before they began to lose their blessings as well.

How long did it take? It took less time than the United States has existed as a nation. We need to take a warning from Israel’s history. There is every reason to believe that our nation and our families are forgetting God, forgetting our history, forgetting those who came here seeking religious freedom, forgetting their struggle for liberty.

Increasingly, young people are abandoning the church and the values of our nation. Increasingly, we see signs of religious persecution as elites who have no respect for religion, and even think it dangerous and deliberately suppress and often distort religion’s importance in our history. As individuals, as families, as communities, and as a nation we need to take the threat of losing our blessings seriously. Our nation was formed on the basis of religious freedom and self-discipline. It cannot survive without it.

Our founding pastor used to like to say; “The Church is only a generation away from extinction in every generation.” This is true. If those who went before us had not been faithful in their day, we who are Christians would not be here today. If we do not find ways to be faithful now, in our day and time, then the blessings of the wisdom and love that can only come from God will not be with our children. Worse, the sufferings that come with moral and spiritual failure will be theirs. We see every indication that this is happening in our time, in our nation. The increase in violence, selfish self-seeking, the increase in divorce, increasing incidence of instability, a loss of good jobs, and the loss of respect for human life—all these things coincide with our culture’s drift away from its spiritual, moral, and legal heritage.

Grace from God

Romans 8 is one of the most beautiful texts in the entire Bible. Here is the part of what Paul has to say in this lovely passage:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (Romans 8:14-17).

Here is the idea Paul is communicating: God is calling us by his Spirit. He has made us so that we desire to connect with an ultimate meaning and purpose. We have a longing for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. We have a longing for God built into all of our souls. This is reflected in St. Augustine’s famous line, “our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” [2] God in his great mercy has made us with hearts that yearn for meaning, purpose, faith, goodness, wisdom, beauty, and love.

God’s Spirit cries out in each one of us. When we respond and cry out, “Abba Father” or “Father God” we bring ourselves into alignment with the God of Wisdom and Love. When we do that, we are brought into God’s family. From this point, whatever our former condition, the power of God’s wisdom and love is unleashed in our lives to change us, reform us, renew, us, and permit us to live wise and morally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy lives. This can also mean a healing of our human family. I personally know this to be true in my life. My conversion to Christ coincided with a healing in my family. God’s grace is not just for our salvation when we die, it is for our healing and salvation and for the healing and salvation of our families, our communities, our church, our nation, our world, as impossible as that seems.

The first and most important things we can do to have a godly family is to open our hearts to God’s grace, invite God in, and allow God to change us. We won’t make a lot of progress on our own. We need God to help us.

Godly Families

Once we have God in the right place, we come to the place where we can get our human families in order as well. There is an old, old adage that a good marriage has three parties, a husband, a wife, and God.There are times when any family will come apart unless both parties are committed to something more important than their own self-interest. A reason divorce has become prevalent in our culture, even among Christians, is that we often do not remember that there is more at stake in a marriage than our own needs and satisfactions. We forget that God has an eternal purpose in our marriages and families. While God does want us to be happy and fulfilled, God has eternal reasons for the family as a place where children are loved, understood, and nurtured. The family is also a place where the elderly grow old in the care of their children and are respected for their experience and wisdom. This does not always work out; it never works out perfectly. Nevertheless, it is a goal we seek by God’s grace.

When we bring God into our family, it is important to really and truly make God a part of our family. A strength of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is our emphasis on family and on the role of mothers and fathers in the spiritual nurture of children. In a few weeks, we will have Vacation Bible School. All summer long we will have youth and children’s programs. Next fall, we will have EPIC (our midweek children’s program designed after what is called, “LOGOS”). We always have Sunday School. Our church is committed to helping parents in raising Christian children. Yet, the primary place our children learn Christian faith and discipleship is in the home.

A lot of mothers and fathers try to have family devotionals, try to say grace, try to have spiritual conversations with their children, and feel like failures. I urge us not to think this way. Often, we do not see immediate results in discipling children. Sometimes the results of our nurture are long years in revealing themselves. The example of Augustine’s mother, Monica, should always be with us in difficult times.

The Ultimate Family

I wish there were some way to say what I need to say now simply. This is the hardest part of this blog to understand, but it is important. In life there are things that are good in themselves, but they can become harmful when they become ultimate things. Love of country is a good thing—but as we saw in Nazi Germany and in Russian Communism, when love of country is not subject to love of God it can become something terrible. Love of family is the same way. From time to time we see inward-looking families who have no time for others, they are completely absorbed in themselves. Such families are rarely healthy. For a human family to find its place of greatest peace, it must find its true meaning and purpose as a part of the human family and God’s family. Families are part of God’s plan for the wise life, but the family is not God’s entire plan for human happiness.

Over the years, we have been on a few mission trips with our family and other families. Truthfully, I wish we had done more of these. I have really good memories of a few mission trips to Mexico and seeing Hilary, Trammell, Clara or Melanie on the roof of a house being built—and Kathy standing grinning or playing the guitar for a Bible School. On at least one occasion, a couple from Advent came with us and we stayed in the same motel in Mexico. It was a wonderful experience. Serving others, reaching out as a family to help others, getting out of our own selves long enough to see the needs of others is a wonderful and necessary thing.

A couple of weeks ago, the staff attended what is called the “Kainos Conference” in Memphis. It is a special conference that focuses on multi-racial ministry. “Kainos” means “fresh” or “new” in Greek. The idea is that God is doing a new, fresh thing in American churches, as our nation becomes increasingly multi-cultural. Several speakers encouraged us to make friends across cultural and racial barriers. They mentioned that people are uncomfortable with people who are different.

During the talk, one speaker quoted from Revelation a passage wherein we learn that, at the end of human history, we will all be together in heaven—people from every tribe, language group, and nation—all praising God together (Revelation 5:9-10). Then he said, “We are going to be together in heaven; we might as well be together on earth.” It is very true.

My mother is gone now. One promise I hold dear is that I will see Mom and Dad again in heaven. Our family is not over. Our family remains important to God, and he will restore it. In the end, I will meet people in my family, like my grandfather, I never even knew. Furthermore, in heaven, all the dysfunctions and problems of our family will be healed and we will be bound together in a perfect love we never achieved on earth. Finally, as important as my family will be to me in heaven, there will be another family there, the family of God, the Ultimate Family, of which my own family—and yours—is just a part.

Amen

[1] See, At. Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine tr. John K. Ryan (New York, NY: Image Books, 1960).

[2] Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 1, p. 43.

Copyright 2015, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved