 Happy Mother’s Day!
This is week #2 of our May series titled “A New Way Forward”… Our focus is on dramatically changing the future of our individual lives and the life of this church by taking new paths and trusting God with new levels of surrender… Last week as we talked about “A New Way Forward” we focused on how God gives us mountain top experiences that change the way we live down in the valleys of this life… John 16:20-22 your sorrow will be turned into joy. 21 A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you. What greater mountain top experience is there than carrying a child for 9 months and then birthing them into the world and looking into the eyes of a flesh and blood miracle?… But then comes sleepless nights and then post pardon depression for some and then an inability to nurse for others and then ICU instead of coming home for some and the opportunities for valleys seem to keep on coming from there… The reality is that the dream most mothers have for their children rarely comes true… Mothers love their children but the dream of what their love would produce in the lives of their children often seems to be so far from the reality… How many mothers do you know that can honestly say “its all gone exactly according to plan”?… But how many mothers and especially Christian mothers with grown kids look back and actually say “if I could go back I’d change my dream”?… Proverbs 13:12 12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life. Maybe the dream didn’t come true and they spent so much time hoping and trying to make it come true... Maybe it came true and the successes of the child caused the mother to lose their relationship with the child... Maybe the dream was too small and they didn’t reach for the stars so they ended up living on a low plane... What about the mothers here and that we know that still have small children... how’s your dream life?… Is it going according to plan?… I asked my wife Mary this morning “what’s the best part about being a mom?”… She said on the surface its being needed and wanted… At the core its partnering with God to to help in all the areas that are ultimately under His control… To care for a life and help it develop mentally and emotionally and spiritually… I thought her answer was so profound and I wisely stopped there instead of asking her “is it all you dreamed of and is it working out according to plan?”… In Week #2 of our series “A New Way Forward” I’ve titled the message “A New Dream”… This is a Mother’s Day message but I believe its for each of us and I hope it gives us all “A New Way Forward” for our dreams… Last night I had a nightmare and I woke up and asked Mary to pray for me… The reason I asked her to pray is because I believe my nightmares can be changed… When I woke up I sent a message to the friend that was suffering in my nightmare to check on them and their family… The point is that we have to pray for a new dream and then we have to do something in the physical world to redirect our lives out from the old and in to the new… Theres a story about a woman named Hannah in the bible who dreamed of having a child and then she wept and went to the temple and the altar until her dream came true... I’m going to share 3 R’s…
Nehemiah 1:1-11 & 2:1-5 1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, 2 that Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. 3 And they said to me, "The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire." 4 So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5 And I said: "I pray, Lord God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, 6 please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father's house and I have sinned. 7 We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. 8 Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; 9 but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.' 10 Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand. 11 O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man." For I was the king's cupbearer. 2:1-5 1 And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. 2 Therefore the king said to me, "Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart." So I became dreadfully afraid, 3 and said to the king, "May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?" 4 Then the king said to me, "What do you request?" So I prayed to the God of heaven. 5 And I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, that I may rebuild it."
6 please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father's house and I have sinned. So why “Realize”?… To Realize is to look back and consider and remember… When we look back and consider and remember we should not be afraid of the truth we should “Repent” of our sins and shortcomings… The parents repent of their sins and the sins of the children because they know they are responsible for them… We can’t move forward with “A New Dream” until we repent of the old nightmare we created… The other part of “Realizing” is considering and remembering that we have been chosen by God to be mother’s and father’s and this is a great and high calling and it means God has faith in us… 2. Request 4 Then the king said to me, "What do you request?" So I prayed to the God of heaven. 5 And I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, that I may rebuild it.” See after we pray and repent we have to make a “Request”… The request is not the same as the prayer… First we wake up and realize the nightmare so we repent and pray for “A New Dream” BUT then it’s time to phone a friend and actually do something… Nehemiah says to the king… “I want to be used in the rebuilding”... God will give you “A New Dream” but there’s work to be done… 3. Relaunch It’s great to have hopes for our children and that they would have all the amazing experiences available in this life… But I think they key this morning is remembering that even if what we hoped for isn’t what happens our dreams can still come true… We just need “A New Dream”… When our hopes become our dream life usually turns into a nightmare... I’ve waited to share this until the end here but I think the dream is so simple… My dream is that my children know and love Jesus… John 17:3 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. See we can all hope that it would go this way or that way but if we adopt “A New Dream” even today some of us could tell our friends and family and co-workers that our dream for our children has come true… Psalm 127:1-5 1 A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon. Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. 2 It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep. 3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. 5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate. This is the “Dream House” the Lord is building… Our children are arrows that need to be formed and released… Our joy is to say “Go out into the world with and for Jesus my child”… We need to tell our children that our dream is for them to love Jesus and if they do that we are happy… I call this a “Relaunching” because most of us have been trying to protect “fragile eggs” instead of shaping “arrows of impact”… We protect them like eggs that hatch late and then we are angry when there is a failure to launch… We need to relaunch “A New Dream”… I want to have an amazing 18 years of shaping arrows and mini-launches across the yard and then I want to pull back the bow and let them go with and for God wherever His will is for them to go… Of course its scary but God launched His Son out of heaven and changed the world and He’s not asking us to do anything He hasn’t already done… I want to close by talking about a mother named Elizabeth and her child… So Elizabeth loved the Lord and God blessed her and her husband with a little boy… She had high hopes for her boy even when he was in her womb because God told her he would be great… Then John was born and things were going according to plan… We don’t know anything really about how he grew up other than that he was faithful to the Lord and honored Him in the way he lived… It looks like he never got married and I’m sure his mother hoped he would’ve… Towards the end he lost the fruit of his life’s work and another Man took everything he had built and no mother wants to see their children suffer loss… He died a difficult death all alone after being imprisoned and I’m sure his mother hoped he would never experience anything like that… But heres the good news… John knew God in an even greater way than his mother Elizabeth did and because of that I am convinced that when we get to heaven and talk to her about her earthly motherhood she will say her dream came true… I think about the conversations about Christ that Elizabeth & her son John must have had... The Holy Spirit encounters they talked about with each other… John telling her about how He baptized people and how He felt the Holy Spirit and then she would say thats exactly how I felt when your Aunt Mary came over when we were pregnant… You don’t know a dream come true until you hear your child talking to you about their Savior and how the Spirit of God is moving within them… The relationship I have with my mother is something else now… She will always be my mother but our bond is different now as we find ourselves talking about our mutual faith and experience in Jesus… A mother never loses her influence… Even once the arrows have been shot out their trajectory can still be altered by their mother… This is part of the "all things are possible with God" phenomenon of our faith so don't neglect it... It’s not too late to have “A New Dream”…
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