Walking in the Spirit through Motherhood

Well, happy Mother's Day. I want to say Happy Mother's Day to my wife, my favorite mother. Sorry, mom, but my wife is now my favorite mother. Happy Mother's Day to my mom, who I know is listening online, and I have one grandmother left, Grandma Carolyn. Happy Mother's Day.

And to all of the spiritual mothers who have cared for and loved Heidi and me over the last several years. We're just so grateful. So grateful. Can we just show some gratitude again to our moms? Come on, you can't give too much gratitude to moms.

All of us guys just don't get it. We just don't get it. Well, for the last three weeks, we've been studying the Holy Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit do?

And last week was how do we walk in? In the spirit. And today we want to get super practical by looking at that through the lens of motherhood. Now, before all the non moms, that's the official term for everyone else in the room, are tempted to kind of check out. Don't worry.

This is a message for all of us. Because the tension that we're going to talk about today is something that every one of us faces. It's the tension between trying to control our lives ourselves or learning to trust God. That's really what's at stake for all of us. We're going to look at three women in Scripture and look at their stories.

We'll look at Sarai. Sarai became Sarah, Hannah, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Three very different stories, three different responses to God. And what we're going to see is that each of them was placed in a situation where something that deeply mattered to them was at stake and was out of their control. And in that moment, each of them had a choice.

Will they take control of things themselves or will they trust God? And then after we look at these three stories, I'm going to invite Heidi to come and share some of her experience of what it's been like and what she's been learning from the Holy Spirit. Walking in the Holy Spirit through motherhood. But before we do that, can we pray? Pray?

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of mothers. Help us to honor them. Mothers, grandmothers, spiritual mothers, today teach us from your word, Holy Spirit, open our eyes to your truth in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we begin with Sarai.

In Genesis, chapter 12, God makes a covenant with a guy named Abram. Abram is Sarai's husband. He promises to make Abram into a great nation and bless him so that he will become a blessing to others. And then in Genesis 13, he kind of expands this promise. He says in verse 16, I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.

So God promises Abram that he will have more descendants than Abram can even count. There's just one problem. His wife, Sarah. Sarai is unable to have children. And as time passes, what God promised to them doesn't seem to be coming.

Years go by, and the gap between what God says and what Sarai is experiencing is just getting wider and wider. And instead of waiting on God, Sarai takes things into her own hands. Read chapter 16, verse one. Now, Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abram, the Lord has kept me from having children.

Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build a family through her. Abram agreed to what Sarai said. I'm sorry, Abram.

Like, what is he thinking? He's like, oh, I mean, okay, you know, I mean, whatever you say, honey. After 700 times, she asked him to take out the trash, and he drug his feet. Now he's like, yeah, I mean, whatever. Yeah, I'll do that.

Like, it's a trap. Abram, come on. And basically, Sarai says, I know what God's promised, but I can't see how that's going to happen. So I'm obviously going to have to take control and make this happen and myself. And it works, at least on the surface.

A descendant of Abram is born to Hagar. His name is Ishmael. She created a solution, but something else is also tension, jealousy, division, pain. And as the preacher Philip Anthony put it, anything you birth in the flesh, you have to sustain in the flesh. What started as a moment of impatience becomes a fracture in a family that becomes a fracture between whole people groups.

And literally, generations and centuries later, the offspring of Isaac and Ishmael remain at odds with each other. Well, then we look at Hannah. Hannah shows up in the book of First Samuel. She's a woman who is also longing to be a mother, but she's unable to have children as well. She has the same longing as Sarai, but she responds very differently to her situation.

Now, the pain of infertility is already overwhelming enough, but on top of that, she lives in a household where her husband has another wife who can have children.

If you think that the Old Testament is boring, it is like Jerry Springer, okay? There is so much drama it's important to note here, though, that God does not endorse polygamy. In fact, the whole point, or one point of this story, I should say, is that there are major consequences that come when you have more than one wife. Just don't do it, guys. It's just, you know.

But as if it weren't bad enough for Hannah to be in a home with a second wife, to be infertile herself, the Bible tells us that this other wife provokes her, mocks her, and reminds her constantly of what she doesn't have. 1st Samuel 1, verse 7. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat. She's so sick to her stomach, she can't even eat.

In her deep grief for years, Hannah goes to pray, and every time she does, she's being provoked. This is awful. It's just a terrible situation. Now we don't get every detail of what every day looks like for Hannah over those years. We don't know how many times maybe she did step in and try to fix it.

But what scripture highlights what God chooses to remember Hannah for is something very specific. It's a moment that she submits herself entirely to God's will. Chapter 1, verse 10. In her deep anguish, Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she made a vow, saying, lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant and.

But give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head. And in time, God gives her a son. His name is Samuel. And true to her word, Hannah brings him when he's a young child, dedicates him to the temple. He's raised up in the temple and becomes one of the most significant leaders in the history of God's people.

But don't miss what. What happens before that, before the child, before the answer, before anything changes externally. While Hannah is still in her grief, still praying, still pouring her heart out to God, the priest Eli speaks to her. This is what he says. Verse 17.

Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him. She said, may your servant find favor in your eyes. Then this is the key point. Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast. Don't miss this.

Nothing has changed. Her reality has not changed. She's not pregnant. She's not holding a child. The Situation is the same, but she is different.

Why? Because she lays down her desires and her expectations and her hopes. Hopes. And she just submits to whatever God wants. The result of that submission, long before she holds a child in her hands, is peace.

Is peace the result of submitting fully to God is peace even before things are settled. So we saw Sarah try to force God's promise and create something she has to carry in her own power and strength and extra drama. And Hannah releases what she's been carrying and trying to control. And when she does, she finds peace. That's the answer.

And then we have Mary, the mother of Jesus. Her story is probably the most familiar story to us. Mary's a young woman, likely a young teenager, engaged to a guy named Joseph. And she's just living a quiet life, as far as we know. We know nothing about her before this extraordinary moment.

I don't think she's in a prolonged season of waiting like Hannah. I don't think she's trying to force an outcome like Sarah. She's just living a plain old, normal, faithful life. And suddenly an angel comes to her and everything changes. Luke 1, verse 30.

But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever.

His kingdom will never end. Just imagine how disruptive this must have been. This is going to cost her her reputation. It's going to complicate the rest of her future. It's going to require her to trust God in a way she never planned for and never asked for.

And of course, she doesn't even know. She doesn't understand how this is going to work at all. And I'm sure she has a million questions, but somehow her response is immediately resolute. She says, I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.

No delay, no attempt to control, no alternate plan, no argument. Mary just begins. Trust. And what makes her story so different from Sarai and Hannah is she's surrendering to something that she didn't ask for. Of course, what's born out of Mary is Jesus, the savior of the world.

Sarai hears God's promise, but tries to force the outcome in her own strength. Hannah brings her pain honestly before God and slowly learns to release control. Mary just humbly trusts God right out of the gate, even when obedience is going to cost her deeply. Three different stories with three different responses, and all of them centered around this same question. Will I trust God with what I cannot control?

All three of these women eventually trust God in big ways. But think about this. None of these ladies, we've been in this whole Spirit or Holy Spirit series. None of them had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that is available to us who are believers now. And I have to wonder if they could walk in faith like that without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, what might be possible for us to walk in obedience and submission to the Holy Spirit?

Three stories, three different snapshots, very different seasons, but they represent seasons that we've all experienced in our own lives, and they represent seasons that I have watched in the life of my wife, Heidi. So I'd like to invite her up. Will you welcome my wife Heidi?

And maybe they'll bring out a table. I think I skipped a paragraph. So they're panicking in the back. It's okay. We can bring out the table.

We can sit on the floor. I do that at school all the time. I'm sitting on the floor. Let's be clear. Let's be clear.

Thank you. Thank you. Vanna. Vanna. If you're old enough to laugh at that, thank you.

I was eating peanut butter crackers. Oh, he was eating. That's why Tristan said, sorry, I was eating peanut butter crackers. Well, this is my wife, Heidi. Hi.

She's the very best. If you were wondering, we've been married for 25 years this August, and. Thank you. Thank you. 25 of the best years of her life.

But, Heidi, thank you for being with us today. I know this is a huge stretch for you to step out onto the stage, tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about our family for people who don't know. Well, hello. I'm happy to be up here. There's a lot of bright lights.

It feels a lot different than room 29 in front of those kids. I am blessed to be a mother of three children. Three teenagers, 16, 15, and 13. And I love being a mom. I love how it's just.

When you're a parent, you can understand another piece of God and what unconditional love is. So I've also been a teacher for 24 years. And this morning, I added up all the students that I've ever taught. And I have two different classes because I teach language arts, But I have had 1,134 students. Wow.

Wow. And some of them are in the room. I know. And that's so much fun. I work with people in here.

That's awesome. But some of those kids just need a surrogate mother, a spiritual mother. And I just am so thankful that families trust me with their kids every day and love them for the time that they're at school. Awesome. Well, I want to go back to those early days of marriage, pre kids.

We were married eight and a half years before we got poor. And we were poor then. We were. But you really like when it was time to have kids. You're like, the clock is ticking.

We gotta make this happen. I'm ready to have a baby. You're like, sarai, Hannah, you're ready. Let's talk about that. Yes.

I was locked in. I had the whole thing planned out in my head. So I had mapped out the perfect timing. So for a teacher, you need to have your baby in March, and then you can have your 12th, 12 weeks off, and then roll right into summer break. And then you can maximize the most time with your child at home.

So I knew exactly when things needed to happen. We were gonna do our part now. God needed to do his part. And I know you're all thinking, oh, bless her heart.

So month after month passed, and whenever I went to Kroger, everyone was pregnant, even the men. I don't think that's a thing. And I had a relative that said, now, Heidi, you're approaching 30. Your eggs are rotting. That's a true story.

She looked at her and said, we're not going to have a discussion about my eggs right now. So I started reading fertility books, and I literally took my temperature twice a day. And I became more and more determined. One of my friends said, heidi, you gotta take Robitussin every day. So I just.

I did everything that everyone told me to do. So I did all the things Josh did, all the things I told him to do. Everything I said, it's time. So I was in control of this in my mind. So for me, it felt like I was being wise and responsible.

I was being noble. I viewed the whole thing as being prepared. A good mom is prepared and can control things. And so what I didn't realize was, was that I was tightly gripping to the future. So my desire really was for control, and I was really trying to prevent my own disappointment.

So after that, or in the midst of that, you had kind of a Hannah moment. Like. Like Hannah did. Will you tell us about that? So after months and months of intensely trying, I was exhausted Emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

One night, in the middle of. It was in the middle of the night, and I just couldn't sleep. My mind was racing, and I just felt this deep pull to get out of bed. You know, when you can't sleep at night, you're thinking, okay, what do I need to pray for? No.

It was audible. Get out of bed and pray. So I remember getting down on my knees in our bathroom, and I was really just tired of bargaining, calculating, planning everything. And really what just came out was this prayer of surrender. So I remember praying something very similar to what Hannah prayed.

And I. I prayed that this child, I would dedicate it to God. And I trusted him with their story and whatever he had planned. So it was really a turning point for me to this piece of surrender. So I had just loosened my grip on my control. I let go of the fear, the timelines, the pressure of being a good mom.

I wasn't asking God to follow my will anymore. I was gonna follow his will. Yeah. Well, of course, right after that, not too long after that, we got three kids all in a row. We went from zero kids to three kids living in our house in 38 months.

It was chaos. Describe for us kind of that season of raising little ones. Well, everyone said to us, gosh, you got your hands full. I mean, everyone felt sorry for us. Really.

We had no idea. It really felt like a blur of exhaustion, responsibility, and just survival. I was teaching full time, and then I had babies and toddlers at home, and every day felt like I was being pulled in a thousand direct. It's honestly amazing what you can do on less than four hours of sleep a night. So I really put a lot of pressure on myself to be the good mom.

And I had specific ideas of what that looked like. So one example was because I was working, I thought, I've got to give my children my milk. So I nursed and I pumped, and I had a whole freezer full, full of milk. But it was draining me physically and emotionally. And I just had this quiet belief that if I sacrificed enough, worked enough, met everyone's expectations, then maybe I would do motherhood the right way.

So at the time, I was also very isolated. I didn't really have deep friendships at that time. I really just didn't have the mental space. Space to invest in those. Yeah, you said, looking back, all this striving to be a good mom, living in the future, trying to control outcomes, eventually led you to a moment that you realized you weren't even living in the present.

Will you Tell that story. Yeah, that's exactly what was happening. I was in this constant state of living in the future. Even I would think at church I would be making my grocery list instead of listening to the sermon. I wasn't here.

Not here? No. It was that other guy.

And I remember scrolling through pictures on my phone and I was looking at moments with the kids and I came across this picture that really should have been significant and meaningful and I didn't remember experiencing it. And that realization hit me hard because I was physically there, but. But I was emotionally and mentally somewhere else. I was always anticipating the next thing, managing the next stage, and carrying the pressure of what I should be doing next. So anxiety at that point had taken over.

And when you talked in your sermon about how living in the flesh can keep you trapped in regret in the past where you can be depressed, I was really in that anxiety piece where I was always living in the future. And so I really connected with that when you shared that last week. So one phrase that really resonated with me was holy spirit awareness only happens when you're present. And that really, really convicted me. And I just realized at that time I was rarely present.

So we have three kids. Kids are grown up, we each have full time jobs. We're busy, we're exhausted. Describe a normal weekday for our family. Well, every day was survival.

Every day started off with setting my alarm as late as possible and then hitting snooze several times. I was really exhausted before the day even began. I. I'd throw on some makeup, some dry shampoo. Thank God for dry shampoo. I'd get the kids ready, grab coffee to go, and I would scramble out the door.

And then I'd hit the ground running and pour out myself to my students, my co workers, my students, parents, if they were there. And then we'd come home and I'd put on my good mom hat and Josh and I would make dinner, change diapers, clean, clean up the kitchen, do baths, read books, say prayers. They go to bed. And then at the end of after that, I'd open my laptop and start working on the next day's lesson and go to bed at 11:00pm so, you know, some nights we were so exhausted, we would just collapse on the couch and just watch TV and we just would veg just because we had nothing left for the day. So it was just really this nonstop cycle of being busy, never being still, always striving, constantly planning how to get through the next day.

It was really just a whirlwind season and I just remember we were feeling like we were drowning all the time. And our marriage was a bit strained. We were grumpy, we were tired all the time. And I really didn't know what to do. But then Josh had this great idea.

Well, it seemed crazy at the time. I remember, I remember praying and being convicted that the Holy Spirit was kind of kicking me like, you're the spiritual leader of your home. You need to do something about this. And I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way. There comes a point when you are out in the rain where you become so wet you can't get any more wet.

And I just thought, we are so tired all the time. It's not like we could be any more tired than we actually are right now. So what's another hour of sleep? And so I said, heidi, I know you're going to think this is crazy. We're setting the alarm an extra hour early and we're going to sit on the couch together, we're going to share a cup of coffee, we're going to share a devotional together, we're going to talk about our day and we're going to pray and we're doing this.

And so we did. We started what we now call coffee dates on the couch. And at first it was brutal. It was brutal to get up an extra hour early. But over time, this became one of the most significant things that we do, period.

It just restored so much of our friendship and our connection. We could talk about our day. We put on a lens of Christ and the word for the day and it dramatically changed things for us. It was a huge deal. And 12 plus years later, we still do this almost every morning, unless I'm out of town or something else is going on.

It's just been a huge thing for us. Yes, it was the best idea ever. It really became an example for our kids too. And they've grown up seeing that time with God in the morning really matters and time with each other matters. And in fact, now they join us.

And not every day. They are teenagers, but they. They enjoy that time on the couch. So coffee, our coffee dates really changed everything for us. And last week Josh talked about co pilots and now we really act as co pilots for each other to keep each other on that road.

And if we recognize we're starting to veer towards that ditch, we call each other out on it in a loving way. Some more than others. This really. I'm kidding. This helped us to stop making excuses about how much time we don't have and really intentionally use the time that we did have.

So I have a 40 minute commute to work and the Spirit laid it on my heart to start using that time in the car with him. So I used to complain about it and everybody felt sorry for me, but now I love it. My car is my sanctuary. It's my place of prayer, worship and stillness. I listened to a lot of Christian audiobooks and sermons and podcasts during that time.

An author, Stormy Omartian, became a mentor through my car speakers. And so I would highly suggest that you all have a mentor in your life like a real person. But that was really an uplifting time for me and I learned to just not waste time thinking and I would really just get rid of the noise in my life. And I started to fill my mind with truth and encouragement. So we also changed our evening routine.

I kind of set some boundaries with the amount of work I was bringing home. And instead of collapsing on the couch and watching tv, we started. We would watch sermons a couple nights a week. And we were still crashing, but we were at least 15, filling our time with something wholesome. We were just looking for intentional ways to just redeem and reshape the atmosphere of our home and our relationship with each other and of course, with God.

And after that, everything got perfectly easy and we lived happily ever after. And we are perfect now. That's not how it works. But I know even in the middle of all that, you still have this temptation to control things, to be that good mom that you projected onto yourself. Tell us how that played out as the kids got into school years.

So as an educator, I often felt like I knew what was best for my kids education. And I had opinions about the right teacher, about the right classroom placement. And twice I went out of my way to choose specific teachers for my kids. And both times I did that, it was very impulsive. I had convinced myself that I was being an advocate for my kids.

And my kids had the most difficult year those years. And it was really eye opening for me because I felt like what I knew was best. But I never paused to ask the Holy Spirit. So it taught me that even though my intentions might be good, control doesn't always lead to the best outcome. So more than anything, it just revealed that I needed to trust God and loosen my grip on trying to manage every detail.

Sorry, guys. So I'm still learning this now. It's something that God continues to shape in me. I'm learning to trust him and control less, especially as they're thinking about leaving the nest sitting. So this year, Ada made it into the Kentucky Governor's Scholar Program.

I know. And she'll be away at one of three colleges this summer. So my old self, my old flesh would be tempted to try to ensure that she gets into the best school. But I really feel convicted to not manipulate things this time. Instead, I'm choosing to let God lead her path.

My job as a mom is to pray for my kids, and my prayer is that God's will will be done. That's good. That's good. I'm sure so many people in the room live with this same struggle of living in the future, and I just appreciate you being willing to be transparent with everybody and share part of your story. I'd love for you to close with kind of what's fresh right now.

What's the Holy Spirit teaching you right now? Well, more recently, the Holy Spirit has been teaching me two things. So my first challenge is to slow down and be aware and then to practice stillness and listen. I can easily get back into that rut of what it looks like to be a good mom, a good wife, a good teacher, a good pastor's wife. And I can get caught up in all the busy.

So it's so important to be still, to make space for prayer, be in the Word, and just listen to what he's trying to reveal to me. So the challenge last week to listen, notice, and obey was so confirming for me. So I'm really learning that peace doesn't come from trying harder. It really comes from surrender. So the other thing I'm learning to trust is that every single day, the Holy Spirit provides just what I need for that day.

Recently, I was preparing a devotional on the Lord's Prayer, and I was struck by the line, give us this day our daily bread. So it brought me back to that Old Testament story where God provided manna in desert for the Israelites. And every morning God gave them manna and told them to gather just enough for that day. Not for the month, not for the next week, just enough for that day. And of course, they were like me and they would want to gather more than a day's worth.

And as the story unfolds, when they did that, it was filled with maggots and it spoiled so. So they thought they were being more prepared and God just was teaching them to trust him with what they needed for that day. So that's really been a personal picture for me lately. Sometimes I have to look for the manna that he's providing And I've realized that the Holy Spirit is always faithful to provide what I need for each day, so. So it's not necessarily what I would want to know for the future.

You know, it's not that. It's just for that day. So that's what I feel like. I'm still learning to stop reaching so far ahead. Just be more aware and present with his spirit.

And I cannot tell you the freedom that that peace brings. It's a. I want to spend more time with him because I want to have that peace. So that's good. That's good. Well, can we thank Heidi for being here today?

Thank you. I love you all, and I just love that this is a safe place where we can be vulnerable. I don't have this all figured out, and I feel like somebody in here needs to know you're not alone, you're not crazy. So just surrender to him. They might be crazy.

I mean, how do you. No, they're not. You were not crazy. You're not crazy.