In our young adult years we’re encouraged to “find yourself,” as if we had somehow lived 20 years not knowing anything about ourselves.
I might suggest to you that the ten-year-old me may have had a better grip on life than twenty-year-old me. Somehow at age ten I knew that life was about others.
But somewhere on this journey to find myself, I became all that mattered.
And then I became a mom. And, the me I thought I’d found, was once again becoming someone different.
In the midst of caring for little ones I discovered fulfillment and satisfaction. Not because kids made me whole; because they led me to lean on the only One who can satisfy my soul.
While the younger me despised the thought of serving others, here I was day after day tending the needs of small children. And finding purpose and even joy in it!
“Find yourself” or “know yourself” or “serve yourself” all pale in comparison to “give of yourself.”
But somehow, this all gets discounted. Society screams at us that we’re settling if we choose to stay at home and raise babies.
It tells us loud and clear that we must not lose ourselves in the throes of mothering. That what we do as moms and homemakers pales in comparison to the jobs we could have at the corporate office or the hospital or the school building.
And we’re apt to believe it. Despite my weariness as a young mother, however, I eventually came to see that I am doing a work that matters. It is a work that will live on even after I am long gone.
It is, in fact, kingdom work. Our kiddos learn about the nurturing and sacrificial love of Christ, often right in our own loving embraces and through the giving of ourselves for their sake.
Some may argue that being a mom inhibits a woman’s ability to fully realize true success. But I am certain that the true measure of success for a mother at the end of her days is whether or not she taught her kids about Jesus and pointed them towards Him.
Importance of the Home for Advancing the Gospel
Sometimes, we need to zoom out to see the big picture of motherhood and what God is doing through it.
We are in a career, so to speak, of building godly marriages and families.
As we go about our daily responsibilities, we can model righteous, compassionate, selfless, and godly living to our children and teach them to do the same.
We can teach our kids to delight in God’s truth and love His commands so they live in such a way that impacts our communities.
Being a mom and homemaker is not sitting on the sidelines while others go out and do the hard, fruitful work of evangelism.
It is an incredibly important way women can build the Kingdom of God and witness to a lost world.
I don’t have a stadium full of lost souls hanging on my every word, but I do have the family God has ordained for me to pour into day in and day out.
I don’t have coworkers to witness to, but I have the children that God gave me to train and teach about the beauty and sufficiency of His Word.
I don’t have a foreign tribe that I’ll reach with the truth of Christ, but I do have a mother across the street who’s never heard the Gospel that I could invite into my home and my life.
Caring well for your home bears witness, showing hospitality is an opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus, and sharing burdens with a sister in Christ on a playdate builds up the Church.
Our living spaces should be greenhouses that promote spiritual growth.
Moms, we have a wonderful opportunity to be Gospel proclaimers (both through our words and actions) inside our very own homes. As Charles Spurgeon once said, “All this, and Christ too?”
Our Homes and Calling Under Attack
Of course, the devil doesn’t want us to do this, and constantly seeks to thwart us from our great and high calling from God.
The Christian home is an essential work of the Christian resistance. In any war, it’s common to target your opponent’s supply lines, manufacturing plants, and headquarters.
In our spiritual war, the Christian home is all of these things. Why then should we be surprised that the enemy would like to see it destroyed?
We have been cleverly fooled into thinking that the obstacles we face at home are due to the work being unimportant, insignificant, unappreciated, or mindless.
We are tempted to make many other things a priority besides raising kids who know God’s Word backwards and forwards.
We are told to find our sole joy and purpose “out there somewhere”, in other places besides the home and with our children.
But these little ones we take care of daily aren’t just bodies to clothe and feed; they are the next generation of this country.
Our homes aren’t merely spaces to flop down in; they’re one of the most valuable and strategic tools we have to win the world for Christ.
We should have noticed that anything under such attack from both without and within must be desperately important.
So we must have the attitude of Nehemiah, who, when his adversaries tried to get him to come down from his building project, he replied: “I AM DOING A GREAT WORK, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, while I leave it and come down you?” (Nehemiah 6:3).
I love how Nehemiah didn’t give up, but continued building the walls and the gates of Jerusalem in the face of ridicule, opposition, and persecution.
The Encouragement to Keep Going
God doesn’t call us away from our kingdom work; He joins us. He doesn’t pull us away from our godly duties; He meets us in the thick of our daily tasks.
So God finds a mother at the washing machine, or at the kitchen stove, or at the diaper changing table.
God meets each mother on her hands and knees cleaning up crumbs, milk spills, leftover laundry, and craft messes.
He meets her at the sink as she scrubs food residue on pots and pans, from meals she labored in love to make for her family.
He meets her by the bedside, reading Bible stories, kissing tired faces, and praying with young ones whose little hands are folded.
He meets her in the grocery store aisles, and the school pick-up lines, and the doctor’s waiting rooms.
While she’s scrubbing toilets and untangling knots and finding lost treasures and mending broken hearts.
In her cries of sorrow and in her jubilant laughter and in the quiet prayers of her overwhelmed heart.
He meets each mother with unexpected strength and undeserved grace; floods of ceaseless mercy and an abundance of unconditional love.
God comes to her in this kingdom work because He treasures her, and He knows what a beautifully busy being a mother truly is.
Our work now makes an impact that ripples far into the future. The simple faithfulness of our righteous living is an unarguable testimony to Jesus when it stands in marked contrast to the culture around us.
And so, mothers not only have the power to influence their own children, but an entire nation as well. We have the crucial role of preparing little souls to meet and fall in love with Jesus through ordinary, daily discipleship.
We’ve been given the great responsibility of training up boys and girls in God’s ways through consistent teaching of biblical truths.
The Lord has ordained the loving ministry of the mother and we see it in the fruits of a mother’s love poured into her children, as He pours His love into her.
And this is all for God’s glory. Because He created her to be completely immersed in the most precious job of all: caring for His children; His future generations of kingdom-builders.
Is there any other work I could be doing that would be this exponentially fruitful or influential?
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