Intentional Mothering-Joy giver, Provider and Peace Giver

INTENTIONAL MOTHERING

A MOTHER’S MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ROLES- ISAIAH 66:10-12

A Mother Has Multi-Dimensional Roles To Play In Her Children…

Your role as a joy giver:

A mother should be a source of joy to her children

Your role as a mother is to constantly search for the kind words and actions that would make your child’s heart glad. Your everyday simple, kind words and actions would make your child’s heart swell, build their self-esteem, explore their potentials and be inspired to achieve their God-given life goals.

There would be hard times; when you would have no reasons to be joyful, but I’m elated to know that God gives an inner joy that cannot be taken away; an inner joy that would be reflective on others!

Upon a reflection of the past, I can confidently tell you that I have had a whole lot of ugly life experiences that had made me cry. Although I can’t remember the number of times I had cried over the years now but, through it all, I have watched God wipe every of my tears. It’s amazing how God replaced my nights of mourning and weeping with joy in the morning. I recall how He said to me, emphatically: ” Your joy no man takes away.” He gave me reasons to laugh, even when cloudy situations revealed a million reasons why I needed to cry.

Your role as a provider

A mother should be a provider to her children.

Your role as a provider requires you to pay rapt attention to the needs of your children. However, as hard as we may try, we cannot meet all the needs of our children. Given the nature of man, our needs are insatiable while we have limited resources to meeting those needs.

Similarly, your children’s needs would vary with their various life phases. In every phase, our children would always have a need. Being fully aware of this, we must realize our constant need of God and our total dependence on the Holy Spirit in fulfilling our roles as providers to our children. On the other hand, while we desire to let our children know our deep longings to meet their needs, we must constantly lead them to the greatest provider(God), who never gets stuck as He meets our daily needs out of the abundance of His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Hence, we must teach our children how to trust God to meet their daily needs.

More often than not, God lets us get stuck as we feel incapacitated in meeting certain needs. This is so that we may realize our constant need of Him-we cannot live without Him…He is our sufficiency! In our human frailties; when we get exhausted, we must be willing to stop- just to acknowledge Him; surrender all that we know and let Him have His way with us.

Take a critical look at Jesus:”And He who sent me is with me. The father has not left me alone, for I always do those things that please Him” John 8:29

“For without me, you can do nothing.”John 15:5

When the disciples found Jesus, they said to Him, “Everyone is looking for you.”
Although Jesus was a God in the very nature of man, He showcased God-He didn’t celebrate the fame but had a grip on His divine assignment. Simply put, He answered the disciples:

” …because for this purpose I have come forth.” Fulfilling purpose unravels a man’s worth-his true identity.Fulfilling purpose gives fame to a man.

The caption from our Lord’s prayer isn’t: “Give us this day our lifetime bread;" it rather says: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

This reveals the law of constant and absolute dependency on God. He won’t give us all that we need for a lifetime just in a day. This is to make us realize we must constantly run to Him for our everyday needs.

Your role as a peace Giver

As mothers, we are to reflect peace everywhere we go and everyday of our lives. We are peacemakers not pain makers (Romans 12:18).We have the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18). We should not be contentious and nagging wives and mothers (Proverbs 19:13, Proverbs 21:9). We should be raisers of the foundation of our children, builders of broken breeches and restorers of homes (Isaiah 58:12, Isaiah 59:8), We should be the preservers of lives: a salt (Matthew 5:13).

”To be a salt means you are impactful anywhere you go…you bring sweetness as you add a special colour and aroma to the lives of the people you meet. You aren’t a pollutant but a perfume; a preserving agent. You aren’t a life-destroyer but a life- giver and builder.”

In our peacemaking roles, we must ask for the ability to say words in due season to those who are weary, to be tactful in our responses to other people, to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. We must be constantly led by the Holy Spirit to say the right words at the right time to our physical and spiritual children.

As mothers, we should be God’s instruments to radiate peace in a troubled world; our feet must be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace because we have been given the ministry of reconciliation between God and man and among men.

As a mother, do you carry that atmosphere that brings God’s peace to your family?

“Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”Matthew 5:9