UNFORGETTING LOVE

UNFORGETTING LOVE

MOTHER’S DAY, MAY 11, 2014, the Year of Our Lord

Pastor Carolyn Sissom

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

Thanking God for you Mom

Lord I ask you to bless the sweetest gift I know,

My mom,

In a world frosty

With cold shoulders,

You’ve given me

Her warm heart

And filled it

With unconditional love,

She’s my hope to dream

And my faith to endure

She is a constant reminder

Of Your amazing grace

And tender mercy

Isaiah 49: 15-16:  “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget you.  Behold I have graven you upon the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.”

Each time a child is born, the natural soul of a mother “falls deeply in love” with her child.  The love of a mother for her child is earth’s most touching picture of constant devotion.  God says to each of us, “My love is stronger than the strongest of earthly ties.”  “Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it.”  Or, as it is beautifully said in “the Song of Songs’ of this divine affection, “The coals thereof are coals of fire, which have a most vehement flame”.

God is love.  The heart given to a mother for her child is as close as earth comes to the love of God.  There is nothing of the fitful or fickle human element in it---today furnace-heat, tomorrow cooled down.  It is divine, constant, everlasting.  The flames of love on the heavenly altar are fed with “the coals of God!”

A mother’s love!  It is the strongest emotion when first kindled; it is the last to perish.   

  The second figure, and one equally beautiful is taken from the engraver’s art---“Behold, I have graven you upon the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” 

The Jewish high-priest of old, in his approach to the Holy of Holies, carried on his breast a golden plate, set with four rows of precious stones, on which were engraved the names of the children of Israel.  Jesus, our great High-Priest, bears the names of his children along with Him as he sits at the right hand of the throne of God.  Only, instead of the golden breast-plate on the heart, the image is here transferred to the palms of His hands---those hands which are ever lifted up in pleading intercession---the hands which bear still the print of the nails, the perpetual memorial of His love. 

The prayer of Saint Augustine was, “You have graven me on the palms of your hands; read that engraving and save me”.  As we travel this journey on the path of life, we may forget that the saints of old paid a high price of faith and perseverance, that through their pressing in,  the fullness of Christ could be apprehended for their times.

In the movie, “Heaven is so Real”, Colton, the four year old who went to heaven and saw Jesus, describes the scars on the hands and ankles of Christ.

Today we are celebrating Mothers and a mother’s love.  Few have not known its lavish tenderness, sacrifice, devotion and intensity.  This love though it can reveal itself in “tough love” begins with the cradle and ends only with the grave.  In childhood’s seasons of pain and sickness, the mother and father gladly surrendered nights of sleepless watching, smoothing the pillow, opening an ever ready and willing ear for the confiding of little trials and hurt feelings, to which no other could patiently listen. 

When youth passes into teens--- then to young adults, that love extends itself to prayer that encompasses the child’s enlarged world.  Through prayer for children and husband, a mother’s prayer life soon elevates to that of an intercessor encompassing not only her sphere of influence, but the whole world.  I once told Shanna (not too long ago) that God used her and Kelly to make me who I am today.

Once Prophet Johnny Barham was ministering to me, He said, “No two children anywhere have had more prayer than those two girls!”  They were both in their teens or pre-teens at that time.

Then one day in Kelly’s late teens and Shanna’s early twenties, I told both girls, “You are on your own with praying for yourself.   I am going to stop praying for you.  You know how to pray and it was now up to you.”   Well, of course, I was bluffing, I was just trying to put the Fear of God in them (Smile).

When our children are grown, our love and prayers follow them in thought by day and in dreams by night as they face the challenges of life.  A parent’s only desire for their children is they know the Lord Jesus, be healthy and happy.  In Christ alone there is life now and forevermore---all the fullness of joy unspeakable and full of glory.  “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”   For those who have “tried sin”, you know the pain of the death of the carnal soul that is the result of choosing sin.

So in saying that from the love of a mother’s heart, God says he loves us even more than the love of a mother.

“Yet I will not forget you” is our solace and support amid painful earthly friendships and wavering earthly love: ---a glorious word to take with us through life to cheer us in passing through the Dark valley.  What will eternity be, but God loving His Church glorified, with more than a mother’s love?  “Yet I will not forget you;” as he stoops over each ransomed child.  This is the unending lullaby of heaven:  Unforgetting Love.

The Church and every individual member of the church is engraven, where? Not on the mountains, for though called “everlasting,’ they are to ‘depart;’ not on the hills, for they are ‘to be removed;’ not on the heavens, for they are to ‘vanish as a scroll;’ we are engraved upon the Hand of God.  From that, nothing can erase them.  The prayer of Job is answered; they are “graven as with iron pen and lead in the Rock for ever (Job 19:24).

As the mother’s heart is the symbol of love and tenderness, so the palm of the hand is the symbol of strength and security.

There is Love in God’s heart and Omnipotence in His arm.  These are both pledged and guaranteed on behalf of us. 

All the Church in her collective capacity has no might in herself.  Had it not been for the ‘stronger than the strong,’ the dragon of the Apocalypse would have drowned the woman with the flood from his mouth long ago. But He that is with her is greater than all that can be against her. 

Let us not feel abandoned, orphaned or forgotten when forsaken by earthly love.  God cannot forget.  He has our walls and battlements continually before Him.  These walls may be dilapidated; the weeds of forgetfulness may be growing.  Man-deserted we may be, but God-deserted, we cannot be.

We may be tossed by angry storms; sickness; rebellion; trial; disappointments, rejection and even tribulation, let us not steer by human landmarks---earthly beacon-lights, but by these two bright constellations here given us, the love of God’s Heart and the power of His Arm.   This is God’s Unforgetting Love. Secure in His promise, that He cannot lie, we will be brought into a safe and secure place.

When a cold shadow falls over our sunlit path, tempting us to doubt the fairness of God’s ways, we can trust in that inviolable, absolute, unforgetting Love.  The eyes of God’s love and power are there.  They are always working out some grand end for His own glory and for our good.  I have experienced this love time and time again as life required me to walk through a fiery trial of my faith.

When we are asked to take these walks of faith, all else that we were holding onto may perish around us and prove faithless.  The trusted may requite with treachery; the ‘summer friend’ may abandon and forsake in the winter of adversity; the golden prop on which we leaned may give way; the honey pot may go empty; the tree under whose shadow we sat may have its roots sapped and undermined by the stream; brother may be estranged from brother; the fond embrace of sisters may be mingled with unforgiving memories of the past;  and love into cold hatred; “they may forget, yet” says Jehovah, “I will not forget you.”

The Lord graced Motherhood with the grace of “Unforgetting Love”.

We are made in the image of God.  In his image, we are an extension of who he is, and we are being changed from faith to faith and from glory to glory that Jesus Christ may be glorified.

One of the mistaken notions of parents, is that our children are to be an extension of our image i.e. ego.  As these precious ones enter our life, if you were like me, I began to try to develop the perfect child.  If my child was an “A” student, well behaved, socially healthy, etc., then she was an extension of my extraordinary devotion as a mother.   Well, we soon realized after many battles, these precious ones were not given to us to recreate our egos or altar egos.   Often our love rewards were based on their performance of our standards.  In rebellion, they then fight to find their own identity.  When all the time, their identity is in Christ,

“The Lord has called each one of us from the womb; from the bowels of my mother has he made mention of my name.”

We are to be an extension of His divine purpose.  “…in the shadow of his hand has he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver has he hid me, you are my servant…in whom I will be glorified.” 

One of the wonderful things about being a grandmother is we love even more unconditionally than a mother.  Of course, I gently correct my grandchildren when I am tending them, but I don’t have any expectations of them except to enjoy them and love them for who they are.  Certainly, if they misbehaved in an inappropriate way, I would be the first to bring correction for their own good. 

The same is true of the Lord.  Because He loves us unconditionally, he will correct us but because we are created in his image, he will be glorified in us as we follow after Him.  We can trust our children to His Unforgetting Love.

“Train up a child in the way in which he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Isa. 49:22: “Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up my hands to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people; and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.”

As you have brought your children to the Lord, and trained them in the ways of God, you can trust the Unforgetting Love of God to keep them graven on the palms of his hands.

Carolyn Sissom, Pastor

Eastgate Ministries, Inc.

www.eastgateministries.com