Today, we're talking about Mother's Day and the important topic of spiritual parenting. We want to remind everyone that not all women in church are mothers, and for many, this day can bring a lot of pain. It's crucial to be sensitive and aware of this as we celebrate mothers. Instead of just honoring biological moms, we can challenge everyone to embrace the role of spiritual parenting, which is open to all.

Takeaways:

1. Mother's Day can be tough for many women who don't have children, so we need to be sensitive.
2. We need to challenge everyone in the church to embrace spiritual parenting, not just biological.
3. It's important to remember that spiritual parenting requires as much effort as physical parenting.
4. Many women attending church on Mother's Day may feel excluded or hurt, so we must be careful.
5. Spiritual children can bring both joy and pain.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. bible805.com

Welcome to the Ministry Miscellany Podcast A collection of tools, strategy and challenges for Bible teachers from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's been teaching the Bible ever since As a third grader, I started to teach the kindergartners at my church about Jesus. I've never quit doing that, and along the way I've picked up some practices, strategies, and resources that might be useful to you.

Our topic for today is Mother's Day and some gentle cautions and an opportunity to challenge your people to spiritual parenting.

Now, what follows is not one of my more happy, upbeat pieces, but it contains some really important pastoral advice, so I pray that you'll listen to it all the way through. Now remember that many women who attend your church on Mother's Day are not mothers. The reasons for that pain are many. They may have lost a child.

They may be unmarried with little prospects of a future marriage. They may be infertile and have not had enough money for either adoption or fertility treatments, both of which are really expensive these days.

They may have prayed for children for years, but for some reason the answer was no. The reasons are many, but the pain felt daily by all of these women is deepened significantly on Mother's Day.

Often this pain is intensified by the unintentional, unthinking, and honestly, unkind actions of churches on Mother's Day. Now, in case you're thinking what you know, well, here are some examples.

One church handed out flowers for women as they entered the church, but before a woman got a flower, she was asked, are you a mother? And if the answer was no, the woman was informed the flowers were for mothers only.

In some churches, moms are told to stand up, receive a free brunch. They're clapped for. They're acknowledged as significant given all sorts of other public affirmations.

They're really obvious ones, and it's on display for everyone to see. If somebody isn't a mom, and if a woman who spent many private hours crying over her inability to have children imagine her feelings at that time.

These reminders are not meant as a suggestion not to honor mothers, but that honor can be done sensitively and with the feelings of childless women in mind.

One way to do that is to focus briefly on the joy of physical children, but then to shift to a challenge for spiritual parenting that everyone can be part of.

You cannot take away the pain of childlessness, but that pain can be transformed into a vision for ministry if, in additional to special actions done for moms, the church actively presents some of the following ideas now.

One more thing Though these comments are directed toward women and Mother's Day, we need to acknowledge also the men who are not fathers and for whom the pain is even more deeply hidden and so remember that similar things to what I'm saying when you celebrate Father's Day. Now here are some of the challenges for spiritual parenting.

Remind all of the women in the church that the option to be a spiritual parent is open to every woman.

As the prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah 54:1 sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child, burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor, because more are the children of a desolate woman than of her who has a husband, says the Lord.

Remind them that though they may not have physical children and that truly insurmountable obstacles may prevent that nothing can prevent the birthing and raising of spiritual children. Remind them that to be childless does not mean you do not have God's favor. Remember, Jesus never had an earthly child.

Now think about what that must have meant in his humanity because he was fully human. Most likely all his childhood friends had children.

When he left home to travel around Nazareth and teach, there must have been a certain sadness in leaving that behind.

And I wonder if the human part of him didn't feel pain, perhaps wondering what it would have been like to have lived quietly in Nazareth and had a son who would have grown up beside him in the carpenter's shop, or a little daughter who would bring him water in the middle of a hot day.

We know he struggled with God the Father over the cross, and I wonder if in some lonely early morning prayer times he struggled with a wish that a child, like the children who loved him and clamored to be on his lap as he traveled and taught. I wonder if he worshipped that perhaps one could be truly humanly his.

But he didn't have physical children, and neither did many of the other great leaders of the church, such as Paul. And because they didn't have physical children does not mean they didn't have spiritual children.

Paul called Timothy his dear son, and Jesus often referred to his followers as his children. Now you must be honest in your challenge that embracing spiritual parenting is not easy.

It requires all the commitment, patience, and lifelong support of physical parenting if it is to be done well. And like physical children also, spiritual children will learn far more from what they see how you live your life than what they're told.

Spiritual parents must live lives of holiness, discipline and love for Jesus, if that is the kind of life they want emulated by their spiritual children. And then Also, a hard truth is that spiritual parents must expect nothing in return.

There are no biological familial obligations, and after years of nurturing, a spiritual child may feel they owe you nothing, or at least not enough to even carve out time for you in their busy life. That will happen in many instances because people get busy, people rearrange their priorities, and your prayers can always follow them.

But again, you can't always expect an ongoing relationship equal to the commitment that they will have to their biological family. Now, in regard to those left aside, there are many spiritual orphans in the church.

Those who perhaps on that side who started a relationship with the Lord in college or another place but have moved and now they're kind of wandering around spiritually and they don't have anybody to look after them. Look around carefully.

You'll see them challenge the potential spiritual parents in your church to help raise to maturity those around them who are young and weak in the family of God, who may have started elsewhere and don't know what to do now.

Finally, remind prospective spiritual parents that in addition to the commitment, work and possible pain of spiritual parenting, the encouraging words of the Apostle John who said, near the end of a long life of ministry, adventures and trials, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children, and he was referring to his spiritual children, are walking in truth. Spiritual children may cause as much pain as biological ones, but they can also bring great joy.

And one more thing, you could always challenge your people to pray for children, biological or spiritual. And again, that one Mother's Prayer that I have that I've shared with you, it's reprinted, it's reproducible.

You can download it on any of the articles that I have about Mother's day on the Bible805.com website. Now, you may or may not want to talk about this on actually Mother's Day itself.

It might not be appropriate for that day if you're doing other things. Some of the other things I've suggested in the other podcasts, but you may want to follow up and do a sermon on spiritual parenting. You can.

You could also put this material on your website to encourage people who may not come on on Mother's Day because you have so many visitors that day, it's easy to miss the people who aren't there.

Those people include the women who do not have children who quietly avoid Mother's Day at church because the internal pain and the insensitivity of people is just too much to bear. I don't ever attend and I never will. It hurts too much. Don't ignore this message. Put it somewhere a week after Mother's Day.

Be all inclusive and encouraging and challenge everyone to be a spiritual parent. It's a way to fill an empty place in a heart and heal pain.

God put the desire to nurture the young in every heart and he's provided a way in his church to make that possible for everyone. Now, no matter what you do, if you try to share some of these things, you might get a negative response.

You can be sensitive and caring, but don't be surprised if you're told it didn't help or if you receive maybe an angry response from some people. Remember, people react in many and not always pleasant ways to hidden pain, and you might be the brunt of that.

There are no reasons, explanations or solutions for the depths of some pain. The best we can do at those times is to share Jesus and lead people to his love and comfort and pray it'll be accepted.

There's a reason that the Bible tells us that someday God will wipe away our tears. Some hurts will never heal on earth. All we can do is hold tightly to the One who promises that someday all will be well.

I trust you found the content in this episode of Ministry Miscellaney useful.

For links to any resources mentioned and lots of free material to help you know, trust, apply and teach the Bible, go to www.bible805.com Let me close now with a reminder from the book of Daniel 12:3 where it says, those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. That's you, someone who leads many to righteousness.

And in doing that, may you be ever growing in your reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit, in the deepening of your friendship with Jesus, and in your trust in the goodness of God the Father, never forgetting in all the hard work you do, that you have a glorious heritage where you will shine like the stars forever and ever. Amen.