Mother's Day 2017

Sunday my wife Corrie shared with us some great thoughts on living in (and out) the Father's love. Here are her notes.

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MOM GOGGLES – https://youtu.be/zkprjeipGD4

Welcome and shout out to moms

Story:

Did you ever have someone believe in you more than you could believe in yourself? Did you ever have some one that could look past all your “stuff” and see you, the real you?  I did! It was my mom.  She could always see the best in me even when I couldn’t, she could always call me to higher things when I couldn’t see past the task in front of me, she knew my potential, she KNEW me.  She believed in me and she believed in all of me … the past me, the present me and the future me.  However, she knew that no matter how much she loved me and no matter how much she saw my potential, she knew that changing me was not within her power.  She had on “MOM GOGGLES”

As a mom, I want to choose to see my kids as good and it doesn’t matter how bad they are, I want to choose to see their potential. I want to see their value! I believe in what they can be. I have hope for their future! Does this mean I do this perfectly? No, not at all, I have days where I struggle and I don’t love the way I should or do things the right way…BUT this does not mean I fail as a mom, because my kids KNOW I love them and they know I would do anything for them.

So let me tell you a story about how I had to love two of my kids…

A little over 3 weeks ago (when we had all that rain) we were having a family movie day, but I had to step out of the family room to take a phone call.  I was out of the room for maybe 2 minutes…but with 5 kids (who were all in there watching a movie) I get that anything can happen at any given time.  As I walked back in the room Ethne our oldest daughter grabbed my hand and pulled me over to wall and said uh mom…I think the twins made a mess.  And man, she wasn’t kidding from the mud room wall all the way to my built-in bookshelves there was black pen, and there wasn’t just black pen on one of my family room walls, but 2, there was black pen on my mud room walls, and a wall in the kitchen and to this day I continue to find black pen on my walls. 

How do you think I responded in this moment? I would love to tell you it was with patience, grace and speaking in hushed calm tones, but that was not the case.  I was mad, so what else does a mad mom do… I went and grabbed a wet paper towel and had them start cleaning their mess. Don’t worry I didn’t make it do it for long, because let’s be honest we are going to have to repaint, yes it was that bad.  (I mean look at these sweet little faces during their agony of trying to clean up their mess on my walls) You see in that moment I expected my twins to know what they did was wrong, I mean how dare they color on my walls, right? However, just because they made a mistake in a moment doesn’t mean I stop loving them or seeing how valuable they are in our family. 

You see the way Mothers love and believe in their children is a wonderful example of how God loves and sees us. This is what HE is like and we are HIS kids…He sees us in our mistakes and still says…I am proud of you, I see your potential, I see know your value, I knows your future AND I love you and because you are my favorite I made the ultimate sacrifice for you….

Pray…

                                                                                                           Word

Ok, Corrie I am not a mom, well that’s ok because this isn’t just a “mom” thing or a parent thing, it’s a people of the presence thing. You see it’s our heart posture towards our Father.

Today, we want to begin to understand both how God (the perfect parent) sees us & how that love affects our relationships with others.

Ephesians 3:14-21New Living Translation (NLT)

^14. When I think of the wisdom and scope of God’s plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father. 15 the creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit. 17 And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep in the soil of God’s marvelous love. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

To be people of the presence we need:

1) a relationship with the author of love

·      When we know our parents/moms/God, our love for them grows because we stay connected to them.

·      Can’t be learned apart from relationship. (Back to the twins, even though I was upset they never doubted my love for them because I have cultivated a relationship with them as their mom.)

2) a revelation of what that love means

·      Just like in the video earlier…the dad takes a moment to build the mom up after realizing how important she is and all she does. See this is also true of our Heavenly Father…we can’t live without him, he is vital to life and we need him, every part of him. Being able to experience the Fathers love is a vital thing to our spiritual growth. Hearing him say I love you, I am proud of you and no matter what you have done it doesn’t change how I feel about you. 

·      When I realized that no matter how much I screwed up as an adolescent my parents still loved me and never gave up on me.  They prayed…ok they prayed a lot… for the Fathers love to be revealed to me in new ways, in tangible ways.  But most importantly they had faith that my journey with the Father was not over, even though I might have taken the long way around.

Jesus in us broadens our capacity to see the world through the eyes of faith. “Seeing” people through eyes of faith gives us the ability to believe in every person we encounter.  This heart connection is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit.

20 Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope.  21 May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages. Amen.

We cannot love like the Father without Him accomplishing something amazing in our lives

1. The family of God includes all who have believed in him in the past, all who believe in the present and all who believe in the future (vs 14, 15)
            - We are all family because we have the same Father and he is the source of all             creation…He promises his love and power to his family, the church

            - Because of God the family includes all who believed in the past, the present     and the future, we can believe in every person we encounter

2. God’s love is total. It reaches every corner of our experience… (vs 17-18)
            - It is wide – it covers the extent of our own experience
            - God’s love is long – it continues the length of our lives
            - It is high – it rises to the heights of our celebration and elation
            - His love is deep – it reaches to the depths of discouragement, despair, failures             and disappointments

No matter how hard I tried to run away from my faith and cause heartache to my family, my parents continued to press into the Fathers love on my behalf because they saw past my failures in the natural so that the Father could accomplish more in my life through the supernatural.  Was it hard for them, absolutely, but as a parent isn’t it worth it to press in for our children when they can’t because we know what lies on the other side. And if you’re not a parent, do you have close friend or loved one you can press in for? ...Heart posture…
           
                                                          Where do we go from here?

 The “fullness” is fully expressed only in Christ (vs 19)
            - We have all the fullness of God available to us and Paul’s prayer for the             Ephesians is also for you and me. We can ask the Holy Spirit to fill every aspect      of your life to the fullest.

·      Have you ever seen a damn being released because the river on the side is getting so high it needs to go somewhere and its overflowing? That is what the Father wants us to experience. He wants His fullness overflowing in our lives that the damn needs to be released.

·      God wants us to overflow/be FULL of his love… its possible… not necessarily something out of reach or unattainable but something the Father wants to do… He wants to give you his love to start seeing people the way a mother/parent sees her/their children 

We need to reflect on the nature of God…What is that Father wants to be to you or how does he want to use you in this season of your life? What upgrades does the Father have for you?

·      What would it look like if our love was upgraded to what the Father wanted to do through us vs. what we are trying to accomplish on our own.

·      Our upgrade can be from “MOM GOGGLES” to “Holy Spirit Goggles”