“Faith, Hope, Love . . . and Wisdom” 1 Corinthians 13:13

When does a person stop being a parent? Does it stop when the child enters school? Does it stop when the child gains his or her driver’s license? Does it end when the child graduates from high school? When the child graduates from college? When the child marries, and becomes a parent themselves? When does the job of being a parent ever really end?

Asking a question like this to a room filled with people whose children have all grown up and are in different phases of their adults lives is sort of silly. The room knows the answer, and the answer is being a parent never ends. There is never a time when we stop being a parent, even when we become grandparents and great grandparents.

Granted, the relationship changes. No longer are we meeting their constant needs like we did when our children were babies. No longer are we setting perimeters and parameters for them as they attend school and continue to grow. There comes a point where we become more advisors than we are disciplinarians and providers. We are always there for our children, to meet their needs, even as the needs change.

And, really, when it comes down to it, the role of the parent is to meet the child’s needs, whether the need is shelter, nutrition, clothing or guidance and discipline. And a good parent is always wanting their child to receive their best needs, not wanting to settle for second or third best.

To be the mother of a grown child is to have certain needs of your own, in order that you can meet the needs of your adults. This message offers four items of importance that every parent needs for their children, regardless of the child’s age.

Central Truth: The role of a mother (and a father) doesn’t end when the nest is empty.

Mothers of grown children need:

Love (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31)

At the very core of the Gospel is the element of love. We are told that it was because of God’s love for us that He sent His Son to die for our sins (cf. John 3:16). We are told that the greatest commandment is to love God with our entire being, and to love our neighbors as ourselves cf. Luke 10:25-37). Jesus told His disciples of a new command, and that command was to love as He has loved (cf. John 13:34-35). We are told that way we demonstrate our love for God is to love other people (cf. 1 John 4:19-21).

All of this is because God is love (1 John 4:16). His love is demonstrated from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22. And this love is defined best in 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul wrote about what it means to have a Christ-like love. At the end of the chapter, Paul writes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (v. 13).

God’s love is an unconditional love. It is one that is given because it is His nature, and it is extended through His Son to all who accept Jesus as Savior. This love is at the very foundation of our relationship with God. He will always love us. He may hate our actions, He may be disappointed in us at times, but He never stops loving us.

As God loves us, we need to learn to love ourselves. How can we love our neighbor as ourselves if we don’t love ourselves? Satan likes to make us feel as though we are unlovely, unlovable and incapable of being loved. That’s Satan, and Satan is a liar. God’s statement is that we are loved for who we are. We don’t need to earn God’s love. It is freely given and given in abundance. Because of this, we are not only capable of being loved, we are loved. We need to learn to love ourselves as Christ loves us. We need to forgive ourselves and embrace ourselves where we are.

Only then can we really love our neighbor as ourselves. And our neighbors include our children. We need to let our children know that they are loved because they are our children. Maybe they’ve made life decisions that are not what we want them to make, but we love them anyway. Maybe our children disappoint us at times, but we love them anyway. A home that is built on love—a relationship that is founded in love—is one that allows freedom to grow, freedom to learn, freedom to become what God intends for us to become. When we let our children know that we love them as Christ loves us, then we give them the freedom to ask questions, to try new experiences, to live and learn without fear, because perfect love drives out fear (cf. 1 John 4:18).

One of the best ways to demonstrate this love is to follow the Golden Rule. The Rule appears twice in the Bible, once in Matthew toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, and the other in Luke where Luke records numerous of the teachings from the Sermon. In Matthew, the Rule summarizes the Sermon and what it means to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. In Luke’s gospel account, the Rule comes at the end of the teaching to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. In both instances, the point of the Rule is that we determine how we will treat people not based on how they treat us, but based on our relationship with the Father through the Son and by the presence of the Spirit. We determine to treat people the way we would want to be treated—with respect, patience and the benefit of the doubt, among other things. These same things is how we treat our family, our friends, our acquaintances and strangers. In so doing, we demonstrate to our children what it really means to love as Christ loves.

As parents, we need to love our children as Christ loves us, as God the Father loves us.

Faith (Hebrews 11:1)

Along with the need to love and be loved, we need faith. The writer of Hebrews tells us, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” He also writes, “And without faith it is impossible to please God” (11:6a).

Just as our relationship with God is built on the foundation of His great love for us, this relationship is also built on our faith in God. We have faith that God has done what He said He would do, and that He will do what He has said He will do. We trust God, and since we trust God, it only makes sense that we actually put that faith into practice.

What does that mean? It means we takes steps into darkness because God has led us to do so. We may not know where God will take us, but we know He has a plan, and, because we trust God, we trust His plan. I really like the words of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego when they stood before Nebuchadnezzar. “If you throw us into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18). Their words show a faith that is built around their trust in God, not in circumstances. God is able to deliver us, but that doesn’t mean it is always His will to deliver us. Still, we walk in faith, knowing that God’s plan is best and will bring about what is best for us.

That same faith we have in God needs to be expressed to our children. The writer of Proverbs says, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6). The verse tells us that we raise our children in faith in God, teaching them His ways and teaching them the lessons they need to learn in life. When they become adults, Proverbs tells us to trust—have faith—that they will follow the path God has set for them. It doesn’t mean we make them in our image, but that we let them find their own relationship with God. We have faith that God will lead them; we also need to have faith that our children learned the lessons we tried to teach them, that they learned the right way to do things and how to avoid the wrong things. As parents of grown children, we have to trust them in their decisions, even if their decisions are not what we would do.

When our children know we have faith in them, we give them the confidence to move forward and know they can talk to mom and dad.

Hope (Romans 8:24-25)

As Paul writes, hope is not the grasping of what we have, but the anticipation of better things ahead. Hope springs from the faith we have in God and it extends into the confidence that better things await us in Him.

This hope allows us to continue moving forward even in times of doubt and darkness. It is hope that gets us through the valley of the shadow of death, and it is hope that sees beyond the grave and knows there are rooms waiting for us that Jesus Himself is preparing for us (cf. John 14:1-6).

When we exhibit hope before our children, we teach them to see the bigger picture, to know that temporary setbacks are just that: temporary. When we instill hope in our children, adults they may be, we remind them of what it is to walk in Christ, to walk in faith, to walk with God. We are saved in our hope in God’s promises and this hope gives us patience to continue on, and we teach our adult children this same truth as we persevere in hope.

Wisdom (James 1:5)

It doesn’t take long on social media to realize that there are a lot of foolish people out in our world. There are people who are gullible, willing to believe anything that doesn’t challenge them or cause them to consider all the possibilities that are out there. If ever there was a time for wisdom, it is now.

James tells us wisdom is a gift from God. It is a gift He gladly gives in abundance, but we have to approach Him with the confidence that He will grant the gift we seek. And it isn’t something that just comes immediately. It isn’t a natural product of aging, though certainly life experiences help us to give counsel to our grown children. But even the best experiences can lead us to mislead with our advice if it is not grounded in Christ.

The wisdom the Bible speaks of is a wisdom that grows out of our relationship with God. As we walk with Him and learn from Him, we see more clearly His will and His ways, and we gain wisdom. No, we may not be great philosophers or deep thinkers, but we learn how and when to do God’s will. And that is wisdom as the Bible defines it.

This is the wisdom our children need, regardless of their age or their own experiences. This doesn’t mean we should constantly preach at our children, but to offer them godly advice and counsel when it is needed and sought.

Conclusion

We know from experience that our children will always be our children, and they will always need us. Granted, the relationship changes over the years, and we discover that we, too, need our children in different ways as we age with them.

On this Mother’s Day, let us remember our greatest gift is to be the parents of children, particularly if they have been trained up in the ways they should go.

On this Mother’s Day, let us commit ourselves anew to pray for our children, to model Christ for them and to impart to them God’s love, faith, hope and wisdom.