Writing about parenthood, the great preacher and writer, J. R. Miller says: “Duties cannot be transferred.” I happen to agree with him although many modern Christians would not.Why do we think we know better than God? Why do we think that we have a better plan for our lives that the One who intricately, wonderfully, and marvelously created us?
God, in His perfect design, for “all His ways are perfect,” created a father and a mother to bring children into the world and to care for them in this world. He gave each one distinct roles to fulfil. Each brings their own strengths to the parenting career. Many want to change the roles because of convenience. The wife wants to take on the role of provider which means she must give her children to someone else to watch. And yet no guardian, no matter how loving, can ever be in tune to the innermost needs of her child like the mother.
Sometimes a mother can earn more money than her husband, so she goes to work while her husband stays home with the children. This is a role reversal and not planned by the God who created us.
But you say, “I know fathers who are great stay-at-home-dads to their children.” That may be so, but they cannot be a mother no matter how they try. God has put within women a maternal anointing that men don’t have. Yes, men love their children. They have a strong instinct to protect their children. They want to provide for their children but they cannot mother their children, especially babies and little ones.
Babies and toddlers need the comfort of their mother’s breasts. Breastfeeding is synymous with motherhood. Scientific studies reveal that the more frequently a mother breastfeeds her baby the motherlier and nurturing she becomes. The hormones release the mothering hormones and a man does not have the abundance of these hormones.
God has also put within women a love for home, unless of course it is brainwashed out of her by our education system, the media, and the deception of our progressive society. A man is not cut out for the finer touches of the home and to making a home feel like a home. He was created to go out and to provide and to work hard for his family.
To get back to our original statement, I do concede that men and women can transfer their roles to a certain extent, but only at the expense of God’s ultimate blessing for the family. God intends fathers and mothers to fully embrace the way He created them and to reveal these strengths to their children, so they pass them on from one generation to the next. Children who grow up in a family where the mother works outside the home and the husband stays home with the children will have a distorted understanding of God’s definitive plan. They will be confused and deceived. And what happens in the next generation? Will they think it normal to carry on this pattern until we have a society of men at home and women in the work force? God forbid.
Be blessed today in your God-given role of mothering,
Nancy Campbell
477 Hits
How well-taught are your children? In answering this question many mothers refer to the school or college to which they send their children, perhaps the best private school they can find in their area. Parents like their children to go to the most prestigious school possible.
I sometimes hear women use Proverbs 31 as an excuse to be career women. They say that this woman was in real estate because verse 16 says: “She considers a field and buys it.” To purchase land to plant a vineyard is not the same thing as being in a full-time career. Vineyards were part of home life in Israel. They were part of their survival. As this family grew, they needed land to plant another vineyard and so she needed to check out the most suitable land. It is still the lifestyle in Israel and European countries today. When ministering in different countries in Europe Colin and I have stayed with many families who own their own vineyards nearby to their homes.
Not easy to do, especially in our marriages, but it works miracles. Let’s keep soft and humble hearts. Matthew 19:8 tells us that a hard heart leads to divorce.
What a momentous job we have as mothers. It’s no ordinary job. It’s the most powerful in the nation. One of our many great tasks is to be the peacemakers and to keep unity in the home. Wow, that’s not easy, is it? Sometimes we ourselves can be the cause of disunity!
A dear friend shared with me today a beautiful understanding of God who is our El Shaddai which means "The Breasted One."
It is a very important aspect of parenting to build a hedge around our family and home. Truthfully, it is God who builds the hedge, but we have to do our part. God built a hedge around Job's home. Satan was not able to touch Job until God removed the protective hedge He put around him. Satan tells God in Job 1:10: "Hast not Thou made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?"
I love the different words God uses to describe our children. God loves to reveal His plans to us by pictures. Psalm 128:3 tells us that our children are like "olive plants" sitting all around our table. The Hebrew word for "olive" is "zayith" and means "an olive (as yielding illuminating oil)." Among many other uses the olive was used as oil for the lamps to light up their homes. It was also used to light the golden candlestick in the holy place of the tabernacle.
Proverbs 26:8 tells us that to bind a stone in a sling is as bad as giving honor to a fool! A stone in a sling is not meant to be bound up but to go forth to hit the target. It goes forth to slay the enemy. In the same way, we are foolish to bind up God's truth and hide it. God intends His words to go out from our mouths to accomplish God's plans and purposes (Isaiah 55:11). The spoken word has great power. God created the world with His Word. Many times, we hold back divine miracles from happening in our lives because we are too shy, too afraid, or too lazy to speak out the word of the Lord.
A mother wrote me, saying, "I love all the positivity about motherhood I read here, but it seems to outweigh the blurbs about loving wifehood. As a young mama who tries to keep my priorities of God, hubby, and children in that order, do you have any thoughts?"
Worry? Why worry? What can worry do?
Are you bold to speak the truth when deception and lies are being proclaimed? Or do you find it easy to stay silent because you feel too timid or you are concerned what people think of you?
The trying days, the sighing days, the days when things go wrong,
Many years ago I remember seeing this cartoon. The mother was sitting at the table with the newspaper spread out before her. The home was in a mess, the toys were all over the floor, and the children were running wild! The husband came in the door and said, "What on earth are you doing?"
Dear mother, are you feeling overwhelmed today? You feel you have too much to do. How can you fit it all in? How can you keep up with the housework? How can you effectively homeschool all these children around you?
God’s word is true from the beginning and from the beginning God’s word is true!
Here's a lovely quote by Marianne Neifert, which an Above Rubies reader sent to me. I'm sure you will identify with these same feelings . . .
Yesterday we talked about women being saved through childbearing and motherhood. But why? We have to look at the preceding verse: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was FULLY DECEIVED, fell into transgression (1 Timothy 2:14 (NET).” The NET commentary explains that because two compound verbs are used for “deceived” in this verse that there is a stronger meaning intended for the second verb.