PRESSING ON TO HIGHER GROUND, Part 8, No. 605
PRESSING ON TO HIGHER GROUND
Part 8
“And the LORD their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people: for they shall be as stones of a crown,
lifted up as an ensign upon his land”
(Zechariah 9:16)
We ended yesterday about flying the banners of truth from our homes. For too long we have allowed our banners to drag in the dust. We have been silent while the deceiver has used his operatives to brandish his deception across our nation.
In the media we are bombarded with more fake news than ever in the history of the nation. In our education system our students are brainwashed with extreme socialism and alternative lifestyles. And even in the church most Christian couples limit their families to two children and God’s mighty home army have left their post in droves.
Let’s rally to the truth. Let’s not lower it to half-mast but wave it high. Speak it out at every opportunity. Write it to the world. Are you on social media? Don’t waste time on Facebook etc. but use it to proclaim God’s truth. Every day you can send a little nuggest of truth out into the world.
Isaiah 13:2 (GNB) says: “On the top of a barren hill raise the battle flag!”
Now for our last point about lifting up as we press on to higher ground.
10. LIFT UP MOTHERHOOD
God lifts up motherhood and He wants us to lift it up too. In Ezekiel we read an allegory where God talks about the tribe of Judah and likens her to a mother. As we read this passage, we understand God’s value of motherhood.
Ezekiel 19:10, 11: “Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters. And she had strong rods for the scepters of them that bare rule, and her stature was exalted among the thick branches, and she appeared in her height with the multitude of her branches.”
The Hebrew word for exalted is gabah. It means “to soar, to mount up, to lift up, to raise up to great height.” That’s what God wants us to do with our career of motherhood. He places it high in society. Higher than all other careers. It is manifold. God made men to be focused; they like to concentrate on one thing at a time. However, God created women with the ability to do many things at one time. He gives her this capability in order to care for several children at once.
Dear mother, God wants you to soar in your great role of motherhood. He wants you to mount up above the petty things that often pull you down and the trials that make you despondent. He doesn’t intend you to be flapping around like a chicken. He wants you to soar like the eagle.
Sadly, this allegory in Ezekiel 19:12-14 ends on a bitter note: “But she was plucked up in fury, she was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods were broken and withered; and the fire consumed them. And now she is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground. And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a scepter to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.”
This passage is an up-to-date picture of motherhood in our society today. God exalts motherhood to a high place but do you notice the “but” in the above Scripture? Angry hands seek to pluck mothers out of the home. They downplay motherhood but God lifts it up!
As women are wooed out of the home they end up in the wilderness. The wilderness in this passage literally speaks of Babylon which is a type of confusion, deception, and delusion.
This is where many mothers are planted today. They are misplaced! God purposes for them to be in the home but they are away from their children. Their wombs are “dried up” (v.12) because they no longer have time to have children. The children they do have are “devoured” (v. 14) by the enemy because they have vacated their post. They are not home to care for them. They have, often ignorantly, been sucked into the sly strategy of the enemy of our souls who wants to rob children of their mothers and mothers of their children.
Satan knows that if he can get mothers out of the home, he can get his hands on the children and consequently steer the course of the nation. He is terrified of mothers who understand their divine calling and who will not be pushed out of the home, no matter what the situation. He is afraid of mothers who are prepared to sacrifice new homes and many material things to stay home with their children.
One of Satan's biggest threats is godly mothers who have a vision to raise godly children and diligently teach and train these children to be pure and ardent in God's truth.
One woman writes: “Women can give up their jobs as clerks, engineers, doctors, etc., and other people will step in, and the world will go as smoothly as before . . . not so with mothering. When we leave this job, the world does not go on as before. It falters and begins to lose way.”
The world cannot do without mothers! When mothers abdicate their role of mothering in the home, they lay down their power to lead the nation in God's ways!
Dear mother, lift up your role of mothering. Lift it up in your mind. Lift it up to where God wants it. Never be ashamed of your God-given career. It is where you will soar into the fulness of all that God created your for.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
PRAYER:
“Dear God, please save me from society’s deceptions about motherhood. I want to embrace motherhood as You have mandated it for me. Help me to always lift it up in my own home and lift it up in all my conversations with other women. Amen.”
AFFIRMATION:
I am lifting up motherhood in my home and wherever I go.
More Scriptures about lifting up our banners:
Isaiah 5:26; 11:10, 12; 13:2; 18:3; 30:17; 31:9; 49:22; 57:14; 62:10; Jeremiah 4:5, 6; 50:2; and Zechariah 9:16.
God wants every home to have its own banner:
Numbers 1:52; Numbers 2:2, 18, 25; 10:14, 18, 22, and 25.
