The Painful Birth of New Life
Copyright: South Bay Community Church
Sermon Reflections: The Painful Birth of New Life
Date: May 14, 2023
Speaker: Rev. Leedah Wong
Scripture Text: John 16:21-22
Sermon Reflections: The Painful Birth of New Life
Date: May 14, 2023
Speaker: Rev. Leedah Wong
Scripture Text: John 16:21-22
Sermon Preamble
On this Mother’s Day, we continue our sermon series on The Gift of Darkness. Mother’s Day is a complex day for mothers and their children. Some women yearn to be moms. Some moms have outlived their children. Some moms have strained relationships with their children, feel regret and shame, and have a heavy heart because their children have strayed. Some children have toxic moms, moms who are in their last days. Some children have strained relationships with their moms or have lost their mom and would give everything in the world for one more moment together. This day is full of celebration and mourning, praise and pause, joy and heaviness. A call to motherhood is a call to pain, but God uses that pain to birth joy and new life in you and others.
A call to motherhood is a call to pain and suffering as a disciple
In John 16, Jesus is fore-warning his disciples about his work on the cross. His death and resurrection will bring about grief and suffering, but He will reappear with victory and joy. Jesus declared, “When a woman is giving birth, she has pain because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” (John 16: 21-22). Jesus was using this imagery of motherhood to illustrate to his disciples that His painful murder will be worth it in the end. There is going to be incredible pain, but through this pain will come incredible joy.
Mothers in childbirth radically accept the reality of pain and suffering. As a follower of Jesus, like a mom in child birth, your suffering and pain is the birth of new life. When they brought Jesus to the temple, Simeon prophesied more motherly pain for Jesus’ own mother from a sword piercing her soul: “And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, ‘Behold this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also) so that thoughts from many hearts will be revealed.’” (Luke 2:34-35).
Motherhood suffering brings new life
When a mother gives birth to the baby, she no longer focuses on the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. For moms, grandmas, and mother figures who are followers of Jesus, a call to motherhood is a call to suffering because you are birthing something new, speaking something new, restoring something to be like new, loving something to good health, and giving yourself away so that something can experience new life.
There are many examples that illustrate that new lives flourish because the call to motherhood is a call to suffering for new life. The foster mother of Everett, a traumatized toddler, works through breastfeeding issues so he can get COVID antibodies. The toddler wakes up all hours of the night with tantrums, and the mother provides comfort. The mother’s body takes a toll with the lack of sleep, time, relationships, health, and mental well-being.
A mother octopus is an example from the animal kingdom. She will diligently guard their eggs until they hatch. She will refuse food for months because her brain shuts off the impulse to eat. She will not leave her eggs to go looking for food. The octopus mother dies around the time that the eggs are hatched.
How physical pain births new life
God allows our physical pain so that we learn to rely on God. Hip surgeries, back pain, stroke, and cancer can birth new life. Paul declares, “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia. We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).
In a professional football game on November 29, 1992, Dennis Byrd collided with a teammate, and his spinal cord was snapped resulting in paralysis from the neck down. Months later, after his rehab, Dennis Byrd glorified God in his physical pain. He told the media that Christ was his source of comfort in his time of tragedy.
Job had sores from head to toe; three friends couldn’t even recognize him. At the end of Job’s story after losing everything, Job confessed and repented to God: “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes” (Job 42:5). Sometimes God needs to fix your vision, so God allows pain and heartbreak.
Like a mother in childbirth, God uses physical pain to birth new life.
How financial pain births new life
Sometimes God allows a financial disaster to show you that God will provide your needs. Have some of us not been sure how we were going to pay bills, feed the mouths of our family, or sleep under a roof? God may allow a financial set back so that we would see God come through in miraculous ways. My own life is an illustration. I wanted to start a new church. I did not have months to prepare departing from the church that employed me and build a new team. I just had a small handful of people willing to start something new. But God has provided for us the past 4 years, paying for food, house mortgage, and two children. God’s provision has been so great that we are able to pay not only our own bills, but we are paying other people’s bills including giving away $50,000 to refugees and the homeless. Sometimes how you make it through your financial stress was not what you expected, but if God always met your expectations, God would never have the opportunity to exceed them.
How has God worked in the face of financial hardship to bring new life in you and through you? The new transformed life may be to pray like you’ve never prayed before, to rely on God’s provision, to redefine what you think you need, or to live and trust with more generosity.
Like a mother in child birth, God uses financial pain to birth new life.
How relational pain births new life
Sometimes, God will allow certain relationships to be strained, because God is pruning you of toxic behavior. In a close relationship like a marriage, honest feedback can help us take a look at ourselves and then be who our partner needs us to be. The transformation can be painful, but the result can be a new you, a new us as a couple, and a new life. Perhaps another couple will see new life in your marriage and ask for help in dealing with their marital issues. Then, the results of our pain and suffering are breathing new life into other marriages.
Like a branch of a fruit bearing tree, God prunes us in a process that can involve relational pain and suffering. “Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, so it will bear more fruit” (John 15:2). If you are in relational pain, how is God inviting you to understand your own trauma to grow in finding healing and restoration? The Lord is right with us. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
What about relationship pains with children who have strayed? How is that pain birthing something new within you? Is there something that pain is doing in your prayer life? Is there something that pain is activating in you to depend on God like you have not depended on God before, creating a new you?
Like a mother in child birth, God uses relational pain to birth new life.
The pain when sharing the Gospel births new life
The suffering in making disciples also births new life. An illustration is the Ortiz family in Ariel, Israel. David, the dad of the family is a pastor in a local congregation. In 2008, a terrorist bomb exploded as 15 year old Ami Ortiz opened a box of chocolates containing the bomb. Ami barely survived after many surgeries and a long recovery process. When we visited Israel in 2009, the mother, Leah Ortiz, explained God understood her pain, for God’s son, Jesus also suffered. As a result of the horrific bombing, the Gospel was preached around the world, birthing new spiritual life.
In our missionary activities to present the Gospel, there is pain from some rejection when we invite our neighbors into relationship within a faith community. The rejection can come from family, friends, neighbors, or others we meet in our life journey. Sometimes there is pain from invested hours of friendship turned into hostility and misunderstanding turned into a loss of relationship. But in God working through this pain, there is new life. As a new faith community is formed in an interdependent growing relationship, my new life closer to Jesus is being birthed. That life is to love, forgive, and serve.
Like a mother in child birth, God uses the pain when sharing the Gospel to birth new life.
How pain of failed dreams births new life
There is a tale of three trees. One tree dreamed of being a treasure chest, but the carpenter made it into a feeding trough. The second tree dreamed of being a strong sailing ship, but the carpenter made it into a simple fishing boat. The third tree dreamed of being the tallest tree that points to God, but the carpenter made it into the beams of the cross. Each tree became something more directly connected with the birth of new life, Jesus’ birth, ministry, death and resurrection.
The Gospel results in new life. Jesus died in suffering and pain so that we may have the birth of new life. God uses the unjust trial and crucifying of Jesus to destroy evil.
Some of you are suffering because you had dreams for your life, and those dreams haven’t materialized: a business that crashed, a divorced marriage, a dead-end job, friendships and romances that went awry, a life you thought you’d have by now simply hasn't materialize.
Over 100 years ago, Leland and Jane attended a small church in Menlo Park. They waited 18 years for a child. Then they had a child, but the child died of Typhoid fever. They decided to care for many children in California. They started Leland Stanford Junior University. The failed dream of caring for a child brought forth the founding of Stanford University to care for many children.
As followers of the Gospel of Christ, God will bring us through afflictions. “Through many afflictions, we enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). “Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord brings them out of them all forever” (Psalm 34:19).
You accept your circumstances, but you do not surrender to them. You surrender to God; then God restores you. If that dream died, what is God birthing within you?
Like a mother in child birth, God uses the death of dreams to birth new life.
If you follow Jesus, your affliction is meaningful
Your affliction is momentary: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Not only is all your affliction light in comparison to eternity and the glory there, but all of it is totally meaningful. Every millisecond of your pain and every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience with Jesus is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that affliction. It’s doing something! Therefore do not lose heart. But take these truths and day by day focus on them. Preach them to yourself every morning. Get alone with God and preach His word into your mind until your heart sings with confidence that you are new and cared for.
Mothering is part of the character of God
There is tremendous purpose and meaning in the role of mother. The role of mothering reflects God as the original mother figure. “For this is what the Lord says: ‘I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream; you will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem’” (Isaiah 66:12-13).
As mothers, mother figures, and grandmothers, you are breathing new life and reflecting God to children of any age. If you are around teens, there is a tendency to tune out the parents. Their brains are not registering the parent’s voice like they did in pre-teen years. The Stanford School of Medicine used MRI brain scans to give neurobiological explanation for how teenagers begin to separate from their parents. The lead author of the study, Daniel Abrams said, “Just as an infant knows to tune into their mother’s voice, an adolescent knows to tune into other voices. As a teen, you don’t know you’re doing this. The brain’s shift toward new voices is an aspect of healthy maturation. This brain signal helps teens engage with the world and form connections which allow them to be socially adept outside their families.”
If your children are adults, prayers breathe new life. Breathing new life is done by working on yourself, learning your own traumas and triggers so that you do not perpetuate toxic family dynamics into the next generations.
God wants you to focus on who you are becoming
Satan wants you to focus on what you cannot control, like your circumstances and outcomes, how your adult children are living, and their decisions that you disagree with. Instead, focus on the ways God is transforming you while you breathe new life into them and reflect the character of God.
You are not too old to change. “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree…. They will still bear fruit in old age” (Psalm 92:14).
If it is not good, then it is not yet completed
“I am confident of this: that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). God is the one who finishes the work, and God makes it good. God’s call to motherhood and to discipleship is a call to pain and suffering in birthing a new life.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS INCLUDING FOR USE IN FAMILY GROUP
Sermon Preamble
-In what circumstances has God brought you through your pain to transform you on the inside?
A call to motherhood is a call to pain and suffering as a disciple
-As a follower of Jesus, who went through pain and suffering, why is it important to radically accept and share in the sufferings of Jesus?
Motherhood suffering brings new life
-After you experience pain and suffering, like a mother in child birth, in what ways have you or others experienced the joy of a new life, such as birthing something new on the inside, speaking something new, or loving and serving someone?
How physical pain births new life
-What physical pain has God allowed you to experience? How does that physical pain help you to see God and other people with a different vision?
How financial pain births new life
-How has God acted in the face of financial hardship to bring new life in you and through you?
How relational pain births new life
-How has God acted in the face of relational pain to bring new life in you and through you?
The pain when sharing the Gospel births new life
-What pain have you experienced as you act to present the Gospel?
-What are your feelings, knowledge, and actions when you face rejection or hostility?
How pain of failed dreams births new life
-If you have a dream that is not realized, what is God birthing in you?
If you follow Jesus, your affliction is meaningful
-In what circumstance did you have an affliction that is good for you or for others since you responded in obedience to God?
-How will you keep the truth in you that through afflictions you are transformed on the inside and cared for by God?
Mothering is part of the character of God
-The Almighty God, who is a spirit, is often referred to as our Heavenly Father. Is it equally true to refer to the Almighty God as our Heavenly Mother? Why?
God wants you to focus on who you are becoming
-Are you too old and unwilling to mature when God desires to transform you and breathe new life into you that reflects the character of God? Why not?
-What helps us focus on the ways God is restoring us into reflecting the character of God?
If it is not good, then it is not yet completed
-When God’s good work in you is proceeding through pain and suffering, why are you tempted to think that the pain and suffering is the last step in the completion of that process?
-If pain and suffering is not the final step in finishing the process, then what is it that completes the process?
On this Mother’s Day, we continue our sermon series on The Gift of Darkness. Mother’s Day is a complex day for mothers and their children. Some women yearn to be moms. Some moms have outlived their children. Some moms have strained relationships with their children, feel regret and shame, and have a heavy heart because their children have strayed. Some children have toxic moms, moms who are in their last days. Some children have strained relationships with their moms or have lost their mom and would give everything in the world for one more moment together. This day is full of celebration and mourning, praise and pause, joy and heaviness. A call to motherhood is a call to pain, but God uses that pain to birth joy and new life in you and others.
A call to motherhood is a call to pain and suffering as a disciple
In John 16, Jesus is fore-warning his disciples about his work on the cross. His death and resurrection will bring about grief and suffering, but He will reappear with victory and joy. Jesus declared, “When a woman is giving birth, she has pain because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” (John 16: 21-22). Jesus was using this imagery of motherhood to illustrate to his disciples that His painful murder will be worth it in the end. There is going to be incredible pain, but through this pain will come incredible joy.
Mothers in childbirth radically accept the reality of pain and suffering. As a follower of Jesus, like a mom in child birth, your suffering and pain is the birth of new life. When they brought Jesus to the temple, Simeon prophesied more motherly pain for Jesus’ own mother from a sword piercing her soul: “And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, ‘Behold this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also) so that thoughts from many hearts will be revealed.’” (Luke 2:34-35).
Motherhood suffering brings new life
When a mother gives birth to the baby, she no longer focuses on the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. For moms, grandmas, and mother figures who are followers of Jesus, a call to motherhood is a call to suffering because you are birthing something new, speaking something new, restoring something to be like new, loving something to good health, and giving yourself away so that something can experience new life.
There are many examples that illustrate that new lives flourish because the call to motherhood is a call to suffering for new life. The foster mother of Everett, a traumatized toddler, works through breastfeeding issues so he can get COVID antibodies. The toddler wakes up all hours of the night with tantrums, and the mother provides comfort. The mother’s body takes a toll with the lack of sleep, time, relationships, health, and mental well-being.
A mother octopus is an example from the animal kingdom. She will diligently guard their eggs until they hatch. She will refuse food for months because her brain shuts off the impulse to eat. She will not leave her eggs to go looking for food. The octopus mother dies around the time that the eggs are hatched.
How physical pain births new life
God allows our physical pain so that we learn to rely on God. Hip surgeries, back pain, stroke, and cancer can birth new life. Paul declares, “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia. We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).
In a professional football game on November 29, 1992, Dennis Byrd collided with a teammate, and his spinal cord was snapped resulting in paralysis from the neck down. Months later, after his rehab, Dennis Byrd glorified God in his physical pain. He told the media that Christ was his source of comfort in his time of tragedy.
Job had sores from head to toe; three friends couldn’t even recognize him. At the end of Job’s story after losing everything, Job confessed and repented to God: “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes” (Job 42:5). Sometimes God needs to fix your vision, so God allows pain and heartbreak.
Like a mother in childbirth, God uses physical pain to birth new life.
How financial pain births new life
Sometimes God allows a financial disaster to show you that God will provide your needs. Have some of us not been sure how we were going to pay bills, feed the mouths of our family, or sleep under a roof? God may allow a financial set back so that we would see God come through in miraculous ways. My own life is an illustration. I wanted to start a new church. I did not have months to prepare departing from the church that employed me and build a new team. I just had a small handful of people willing to start something new. But God has provided for us the past 4 years, paying for food, house mortgage, and two children. God’s provision has been so great that we are able to pay not only our own bills, but we are paying other people’s bills including giving away $50,000 to refugees and the homeless. Sometimes how you make it through your financial stress was not what you expected, but if God always met your expectations, God would never have the opportunity to exceed them.
How has God worked in the face of financial hardship to bring new life in you and through you? The new transformed life may be to pray like you’ve never prayed before, to rely on God’s provision, to redefine what you think you need, or to live and trust with more generosity.
Like a mother in child birth, God uses financial pain to birth new life.
How relational pain births new life
Sometimes, God will allow certain relationships to be strained, because God is pruning you of toxic behavior. In a close relationship like a marriage, honest feedback can help us take a look at ourselves and then be who our partner needs us to be. The transformation can be painful, but the result can be a new you, a new us as a couple, and a new life. Perhaps another couple will see new life in your marriage and ask for help in dealing with their marital issues. Then, the results of our pain and suffering are breathing new life into other marriages.
Like a branch of a fruit bearing tree, God prunes us in a process that can involve relational pain and suffering. “Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, so it will bear more fruit” (John 15:2). If you are in relational pain, how is God inviting you to understand your own trauma to grow in finding healing and restoration? The Lord is right with us. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
What about relationship pains with children who have strayed? How is that pain birthing something new within you? Is there something that pain is doing in your prayer life? Is there something that pain is activating in you to depend on God like you have not depended on God before, creating a new you?
Like a mother in child birth, God uses relational pain to birth new life.
The pain when sharing the Gospel births new life
The suffering in making disciples also births new life. An illustration is the Ortiz family in Ariel, Israel. David, the dad of the family is a pastor in a local congregation. In 2008, a terrorist bomb exploded as 15 year old Ami Ortiz opened a box of chocolates containing the bomb. Ami barely survived after many surgeries and a long recovery process. When we visited Israel in 2009, the mother, Leah Ortiz, explained God understood her pain, for God’s son, Jesus also suffered. As a result of the horrific bombing, the Gospel was preached around the world, birthing new spiritual life.
In our missionary activities to present the Gospel, there is pain from some rejection when we invite our neighbors into relationship within a faith community. The rejection can come from family, friends, neighbors, or others we meet in our life journey. Sometimes there is pain from invested hours of friendship turned into hostility and misunderstanding turned into a loss of relationship. But in God working through this pain, there is new life. As a new faith community is formed in an interdependent growing relationship, my new life closer to Jesus is being birthed. That life is to love, forgive, and serve.
Like a mother in child birth, God uses the pain when sharing the Gospel to birth new life.
How pain of failed dreams births new life
There is a tale of three trees. One tree dreamed of being a treasure chest, but the carpenter made it into a feeding trough. The second tree dreamed of being a strong sailing ship, but the carpenter made it into a simple fishing boat. The third tree dreamed of being the tallest tree that points to God, but the carpenter made it into the beams of the cross. Each tree became something more directly connected with the birth of new life, Jesus’ birth, ministry, death and resurrection.
The Gospel results in new life. Jesus died in suffering and pain so that we may have the birth of new life. God uses the unjust trial and crucifying of Jesus to destroy evil.
Some of you are suffering because you had dreams for your life, and those dreams haven’t materialized: a business that crashed, a divorced marriage, a dead-end job, friendships and romances that went awry, a life you thought you’d have by now simply hasn't materialize.
Over 100 years ago, Leland and Jane attended a small church in Menlo Park. They waited 18 years for a child. Then they had a child, but the child died of Typhoid fever. They decided to care for many children in California. They started Leland Stanford Junior University. The failed dream of caring for a child brought forth the founding of Stanford University to care for many children.
As followers of the Gospel of Christ, God will bring us through afflictions. “Through many afflictions, we enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). “Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord brings them out of them all forever” (Psalm 34:19).
You accept your circumstances, but you do not surrender to them. You surrender to God; then God restores you. If that dream died, what is God birthing within you?
Like a mother in child birth, God uses the death of dreams to birth new life.
If you follow Jesus, your affliction is meaningful
Your affliction is momentary: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Not only is all your affliction light in comparison to eternity and the glory there, but all of it is totally meaningful. Every millisecond of your pain and every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience with Jesus is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that affliction. It’s doing something! Therefore do not lose heart. But take these truths and day by day focus on them. Preach them to yourself every morning. Get alone with God and preach His word into your mind until your heart sings with confidence that you are new and cared for.
Mothering is part of the character of God
There is tremendous purpose and meaning in the role of mother. The role of mothering reflects God as the original mother figure. “For this is what the Lord says: ‘I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream; you will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem’” (Isaiah 66:12-13).
As mothers, mother figures, and grandmothers, you are breathing new life and reflecting God to children of any age. If you are around teens, there is a tendency to tune out the parents. Their brains are not registering the parent’s voice like they did in pre-teen years. The Stanford School of Medicine used MRI brain scans to give neurobiological explanation for how teenagers begin to separate from their parents. The lead author of the study, Daniel Abrams said, “Just as an infant knows to tune into their mother’s voice, an adolescent knows to tune into other voices. As a teen, you don’t know you’re doing this. The brain’s shift toward new voices is an aspect of healthy maturation. This brain signal helps teens engage with the world and form connections which allow them to be socially adept outside their families.”
If your children are adults, prayers breathe new life. Breathing new life is done by working on yourself, learning your own traumas and triggers so that you do not perpetuate toxic family dynamics into the next generations.
God wants you to focus on who you are becoming
Satan wants you to focus on what you cannot control, like your circumstances and outcomes, how your adult children are living, and their decisions that you disagree with. Instead, focus on the ways God is transforming you while you breathe new life into them and reflect the character of God.
You are not too old to change. “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree…. They will still bear fruit in old age” (Psalm 92:14).
If it is not good, then it is not yet completed
“I am confident of this: that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). God is the one who finishes the work, and God makes it good. God’s call to motherhood and to discipleship is a call to pain and suffering in birthing a new life.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS INCLUDING FOR USE IN FAMILY GROUP
Sermon Preamble
-In what circumstances has God brought you through your pain to transform you on the inside?
A call to motherhood is a call to pain and suffering as a disciple
-As a follower of Jesus, who went through pain and suffering, why is it important to radically accept and share in the sufferings of Jesus?
Motherhood suffering brings new life
-After you experience pain and suffering, like a mother in child birth, in what ways have you or others experienced the joy of a new life, such as birthing something new on the inside, speaking something new, or loving and serving someone?
How physical pain births new life
-What physical pain has God allowed you to experience? How does that physical pain help you to see God and other people with a different vision?
How financial pain births new life
-How has God acted in the face of financial hardship to bring new life in you and through you?
How relational pain births new life
-How has God acted in the face of relational pain to bring new life in you and through you?
The pain when sharing the Gospel births new life
-What pain have you experienced as you act to present the Gospel?
-What are your feelings, knowledge, and actions when you face rejection or hostility?
How pain of failed dreams births new life
-If you have a dream that is not realized, what is God birthing in you?
If you follow Jesus, your affliction is meaningful
-In what circumstance did you have an affliction that is good for you or for others since you responded in obedience to God?
-How will you keep the truth in you that through afflictions you are transformed on the inside and cared for by God?
Mothering is part of the character of God
-The Almighty God, who is a spirit, is often referred to as our Heavenly Father. Is it equally true to refer to the Almighty God as our Heavenly Mother? Why?
God wants you to focus on who you are becoming
-Are you too old and unwilling to mature when God desires to transform you and breathe new life into you that reflects the character of God? Why not?
-What helps us focus on the ways God is restoring us into reflecting the character of God?
If it is not good, then it is not yet completed
-When God’s good work in you is proceeding through pain and suffering, why are you tempted to think that the pain and suffering is the last step in the completion of that process?
-If pain and suffering is not the final step in finishing the process, then what is it that completes the process?
Posted in Stand Alone Sermon
Posted in mother, pain, child birth, suffer, baby, joy, John 16, new life, physical, Job 42, finance, relation, sharing Gospel, mission, dream, Stanford, affliction, mother character, transfpr, .gppd, Romans 8:28, Philippians 1:6, Heavenly Mother
Posted in mother, pain, child birth, suffer, baby, joy, John 16, new life, physical, Job 42, finance, relation, sharing Gospel, mission, dream, Stanford, affliction, mother character, transfpr, .gppd, Romans 8:28, Philippians 1:6, Heavenly Mother
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