May 10, 2026 • 27 mins
What happens when children reject truth and choose wrong paths?
Every parent eventually faces this pressure—watching a child make decisions that break your heart. In this episode, we examine biblical mothers who endured rebellion, failure, and disappointment, and learn how God’s plan provides stability when you cannot control your children’s choices.
Key Takeaways:
• Why your child’s negative decisions are not always your fault
• How to apply impersonal love without compromising truth
• Why loving God must come before loving family
• How to avoid bitterness, guilt, and emotional reaction
• The role of prayer and doctrine in handling family crisis
⬇Download Transcript: https://rhem.pub/1081-transcript
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Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
Welcome to the Flat Line with your host Rick Hughes.
For the next 30 minutes you'll be inspired, motivated, educated
but never manipulated. Now your host, Rick Hughes.
Good morning and welcome to the Flat Line.
I'm your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please
(00:27):
stay with me. It will not be long, only about
30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of
education, and no manipulation because we don't con people
here. We're not soliciting you for
money, not asking for anything. They're not trying to sell you a
book, not trying to sell you a T-shirt, not trying to ask you
to join up. Fess it up, give it up.
(00:47):
We just want you to listen up. Listen as I try to verify and
identify the plan of God for your life.
So thank you for joining the FLOT Line this morning.
You may be hearing it for the first time in your local radio
station because we have expandedour show, pressing now on
upwards to a great many shows across America.
If this is your first time to hear us, we are called the FLOT,
(01:10):
FLOT Line LINE. FLOT is a military acronym for
Forward Line of Troops. What we try to teach you and
give you instruction here is something I learned from my
pastor years ago. And if we will establish a main
line of resistance of the word of God in our souls thinking,
then we can stop the outside sources of adversity before they
(01:32):
ever become the inside source ofstress.
So we deal with 10 unique problem solving devices taught
in the word of God on this radioshow.
We have many books out availablethat you can check them out,
what I'm called Christian Problem Solving that list all 10
of them and it's free. And go to our website,
rickhughesministries.org and seewhatever we have available.
(01:57):
They're all free of charge. We don't sell anything.
OK, you know what day it is, it's Mother's Day.
Good morning to all you wonderful mothers who might be
listening this morning. You know this is your special
day and I hope your children areletting you know just how
special you are. Many years ago I played some
(02:17):
football at the University of Alabama.
I was not a star athlete, nor did I finish my career at
Alabama, but I was there with the famous Joe Namath and of
course the head coach being Pallbearer Bryant.
Coach Bryant required all freshman football players when
we got to campus to send a postcard back home to our Mamas
(02:38):
letting them know that we had arrived on campus safely and we
were there for fall practice. At one point, South Central Bell
asked him to do a commercial forthem on television.
In that commercial, he asked these words, Have you called
your Mama today? And then he followed it up by
saying, I sure wish I could callmine.
(03:01):
My mother's name was Violet and her nickname was Boots B Double
OTS. She raised me as a single parent
and remarried when I was 18 years old.
This very special day for mothers was conceived by Julia
Ward Howe, and she was best known for being the author of
the Battle Hymn of the Republic.In 1870, she issued what came to
(03:24):
be known as a Mother's Day Proclamation.
The version of Mother's Day thatwe celebrate today is rooted in
the work of Anne Jarvis and her daughter, Anna Jarvis.
In order to honor her mother's legacy, Anna set out to
establish a National Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May,
the day her mother died. She chose white carnations as an
(03:45):
emblem and urged people to writeheartfelt letters of gratitude
to their mothers and Anna Jarvis's eyes.
Sending a pre printed card just didn't cut it.
Anna succeeded in her quest for official recognition and
President Wilson issued a proclamation on the first
National Mother's Day just before the start of World War
One in 1914. Now let's take a moment and look
(04:10):
at some mothers found in the Bible.
However, these are not the traditional mothers you'll be
thinking about. These is a little take on
Mother's Day, a little differenttake.
Of course. You know the first mother
mentioned in the Bible is none other than Adam's wife, Eve.
We know that she made a criticalmistake when she listened to the
serpent in the Garden of Eden and we know this mistake LED her
(04:33):
to entice her husband Adam to either the same tree she had
partaken up. What's amazing is Satan
convinced a smart woman to disobey God because of her
arrogant curiosity. If you don't think Satan's
smarter than you just think about what Eve had there going
for her. She had it made and yet Satan
(04:54):
was able to trick her and because of her curiosity to get
her to go against what Madam hadtold her.
In Genesis 216 and 17, the Lord God commanded the man saying of
every tree in the garden you caneat freely, but the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the
day that you eat thereof, you shall die.
(05:15):
He didn't die physically, but hedied spiritually as well as Eve
underneath us about God and ate that fruit.
If you open your Bibles and readGenesis chapter 3 verses one
through 6, Genesis 3 one through6, you will see how her
disobedience led to enticing Adam to join her and the
resulting spiritual death and the dismissal of both of them
(05:37):
from the Garden of Eden for the rest of their life.
You can read about that in Genesis 3 verses 7 through 20.
Fortunately for them, God prepared to sacrifice for their
sin and clothed them in Genesis 3 verse 21.
And this is the first picture ofJesus Christ being sacrificed
for the sins of the world. You might remember Eve went on
(06:00):
to have many children, but the three we know about most often
are Cain, Abel and Seth. Eve was a mother.
You also may remember that Cain murdered his brother Abel
because of his jealousy. Genesis chapter 4 verse 9.
How do you think the mother feltwhen she found out that her son
(06:22):
had killed his brother, never tosee Abel again?
Was she angry? Was she confused?
Was she broken hearted? The horrible thing for a mother
to have to deal with that one son killed another son in an
argument in Proverbs 1725. The Bible says a foolish son is
(06:42):
a grief to his father and bitterness to her that bore him.
There's nothing more heartbreaking to a mother than
to have a child who's on their way to an early grave.
Unfortunately, many mothers havenot learned the necessary
spiritual skills to handle the wayward child and the mothers
find themselves broken hearted because of it.
(07:04):
Most of the time it's guilt related and thinking they failed
when it was the negative volition of the child all along
that caused them to head off down the my Way highway.
So if you are a mother with a child that's gone completely
negative to how you raise them, then you must learn how to use
impersonal love as a problem solving device.
(07:25):
It's one of those ten problem solving devices we talk about on
the flat line of the believer's soul.
Impersonal love does not imply you're ignoring their bad
behavior, but that you love thembased on your integrity, not
theirs. But lashing out at them in anger
will solve nothing. I get a lot of calls from
(07:46):
mothers or letters from mothers who have children that are in
jail asking for help. Fortunately, I have a friend
who's able to minister to those incarcerated through his
ministry called Philippi FreedomMinistry.
He's been able to reach thousands with Bible study
programs that give the individuals a way to start over
by accepting Christ as their Savior and growing to spiritual
(08:09):
maturity. Now let's talk about another
seldom mentioned mother in the Bible.
These are the ones I want to really get to.
This is going to surprise you. I seldom mentioned mother in the
Bible is the wife of Noah. Remember Noah's ark?
Well, Noah had a wife and we don't know her name but she had
(08:29):
three sons. We know about Shem, Ham and
Jeppeth. Even though her name is not
revealed in the scripture, it's obvious that she back supported
and and endorsed her husband's work and she encouraged him,
probably prayed with him. But Can you imagine your husband
working on building a large boatfor 120 years according to
(08:53):
Genesis 63? You know, the neighbors all
laughed at this persistence thathe had.
And the question I always had tobe, why are you building a boat?
What's going on with the boat? I mean, after all, it never had
even rained at that time. You can imagine Noah's wife
every time she went to the Walmart and to the Dollar
(09:14):
General store to pick up something.
You can imagine all the snide remarks.
You can imagine what their children had to endure with.
Yeah. Oh, Sham, Ham and Jeffeth always
got made fun of in school. Your dad's crazy.
Look, what's he building that big boat out there?
Is he lost his mind. And so is the mother had to
stand behind those kids and stand behind that dad.
(09:37):
I want to give you a principle here that I think you should
remember. Great mothers make great dads.
Great mothers make great dads. It's it's the great dad comes
from the great mother because they support their men and they
encourage their men and their role as head of the house.
Proverbs 3110 says who can find a virtuous woman for her price
(10:00):
is far above Ruby's in verse 11 and Proverbs 31.
The heart of her husband does safely trust her so that he
should have no need to spoil andshe will do him good and not
evil all the days of her life. That's a perfect picture of
Noah's wife, whatever name was in Ephesians 522.
(10:22):
The Bible says wives, submit yourselves unto your own husband
as under the Lord. That means to be under their
authority. That doesn't mean they're
they're allowed to browbeat you or intimidate you or make a
slave out of you, But that meansthat when the bottom line gets
down to making the decision, theman's responsible for any
decision that is made, and Mama needs to back him up.
(10:45):
These verses that I just read describe the character of the
spiritually mature wife and mother.
And so I'm asking you a simple question.
Do they describe you? One mom that is seldom mentioned
in pulpits today is a divorced mother.
Did you know that Moses had two sons?
(11:06):
You might ask, well, who who washis wife?
He had two sons. Better yet, who was his first
wife and the mother of those twosons because he was married
twice. To understand this you need to
know that Moses parents were Amaran and Jochabed.
They lived in Egypt and were facing a decree from Pharaoh to
kill all the Hebrew male babies.In Exodus 122 we read and
(11:29):
Pharaoh charged all his people saying Every son that is born
you shall cast into the river and every daughter you shall
save a life. Moses avoided this fate when his
mother placed him in a watertight basket and hid him
among the reeds in the Nile River, telling his sister Miriam
to keep an eye on him. But in God's plan, make a note
(11:51):
of this. What appears to be a complete
disaster is sometimes God preparing to do something
amazing. That basket floated away out of
those reeds and went down the river and was discovered by the
Pharaoh's daughter once she realized it was a baby boy.
Because he was a Hebrew, she could tell that from the
circumcision. She asked Moses sister who was
(12:13):
watching and panicking by the way, I'm sure she was running
down the river trying to get thebasket back.
And then she rounded the corner.There was the Pharaoh's daughter
picking it up and she just happened to come up.
And so the the Pharaoh's daughter said I need to find a
babysitter. I need somebody to take care of
this baby. And she said, well, I can find
somebody. And she went and got her own
(12:33):
mother and Pharaoh's daughter hired Moses mother to nurse him
to health, eventually turning him back over to Pharaoh's
daughter after he was off his breast.
And she raised him with a great education, gave him a place of
leadership. You can read all of this in
Exodus chapter 1 verses one through 3 chapters one through
(12:54):
3. Now in those chapters, Exodus
chapter 1-2 and three, we find Moses committed murder and wound
up fleeing out of Egypt at the age of 40 to a land called
Midian. It was there that he wound up
marrying the daughter of a Midianite priest and her name
was Zipporah. ZIPPORAH.
(13:16):
This is the mother I'm talking about.
She bore him 2 male children, Gersham and Eliezer.
Eliezer. And you can find their names in
First Chronicles 2315. At the age of 80, God called
Moses out of a burning Bush. Exodus 3 one through 6 and
(13:37):
directed him to go back to Egyptand set free the Hebrew church
children that have been enslavedby the Egyptians.
And so Exodus chapter 4 verse 20, Moses took his wife and his
sons and set them upon the donkey and returned to the land
of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in
his hand. It was on this particular trip
(13:58):
back to Egypt that that that Moses required his wife to
circumcise those two boys. Exodus 425 She got so angry
about it that she cast the foreskins at the feet of Moses
and left him and returned back to Midian.
She abandoned Moses. Later her father brought her
(14:18):
back to Moses, but things did not work out so they separated
and Moses later remarried in Numbers 12/1.
And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the
Ethiopian woman whom he had married for he married an
Ethiopian woman. Where is Ethiopia?
Well it's in the Horn of Africa.It's roughly 132 million
(14:40):
Ethiopians that live there. It's in the their next door
neighbor is Somalia and Uganda. So you can see this is an
African woman. But whatever became of wife
number one, we don't know, but I'm sure she probably regretted
leaving him and having to raise those two sons back in Midian.
A single mother raising two sonsmust not have been easy.
(15:03):
Here's the principle Divorce does not solve problems, but it
happens, and often for nefariousreasons.
A mature spiritual life overcomes the difficulty of
divorce. Any sin or any failure regarding
marriage or divorce on your partbefore you became a believer,
(15:27):
before you became a believer wastotally blotted out at the
moment of salvation. Isaiah 4325 says that along with
Psalm 103 verse 12. Therefore, you are not held
accountable for any sin that youdid before you got saved.
If you are a divorced single momfor whatever reason, you can
(15:49):
still recover and have a fantastic life by receiving
Jesus Christ as your Savior and learning God's plan for your
life. Isaiah 4325 As I told you, I,
even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my own
sake. So God wipes out all the
transgressions of the people that get saved prior to becoming
(16:12):
Christians. I will wipe them out for my own
sake, and I will not remember your sin.
And Psalm 103, verse 12, as far as the east is from the West, so
far hath He removed our transgressions from us.
The Christian mother, the one who brings about a divorce
because of her own behavior, canbe cleansed from her sin by
(16:32):
using rebound problem solving device #1 where it says if we
confess our sin, God is faithfuland just to forgive us of our
sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That's like setting a sinking ship upright again.
And now you can't begin to move forward as you learn God's word
and apply it to your life. So a divorced mother has a hard
(16:54):
time, very, very hard time trying to raise her sons,
especially Moses, two sons. In Judges 13, we find the story
of Samson's mother. You remember Samson, We don't
know her name, but we know that an Angel of the Lord appeared to
her with a message, came and spoke to her in Judges 13, two
(17:17):
through 5. And there was a certain man of
Zora of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah.
And his wife was barren and borenot, and she couldn't get
pregnant. Angels of the Lord appeared unto
the woman, and said unto her, Behold, now you are barren, and
you can not able to bear children, but you shall
conceive, and you will bear a son.
(17:38):
Therefore beware, I pray you, and drink not wine, nor strong
drink, and do not eat any unclean thing.
For lo, you shall conceive and bear a son, and no erasure shall
come on his head. For this child shall be a
Nazarite unto God from the womb,and he shall begin to deliver
Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
(18:01):
And Numbers chapter 6, verse 121through verse one through 21
details the law of the Nazarite vow in the Bible.
It's where individuals consecrated themselves to God
through special dedication. It included abstaining from
great products, not cutting yourhair, avoiding dead bodies, and
upon completion of the vow, thenthey would offer a sacrifice and
(18:24):
shave their hair and end their separation.
You know, being the mother of the strongest guy in the Bible
and the most stubborn man in theBible was not a very easy task
because Samson was very stubbornand of course, we know of his
feast of strength. On more than one occasion, he
broke his mother's heart, not tomention the capture and the
(18:47):
circumstances of his death. To his mother's surprise, for
example, he insisted on marryingA Philistine woman, Judges 14
one and two. That woman eventually betrayed
him. Judges 1417.
They had a child together that his mother never got to meet
because the wife's father gave that child to another man.
(19:08):
Because when Samson deserted herand he'd left the child.
And this led to revenge. Motivation on Samson's part and
he wound up killing 1000 Philistines because of that.
Samson was a judge in Israel andjudged it for 20 years.
Eventually he fell in love with a woman named Delilah.
(19:29):
He might have heard the song My My My Delilah.
That's the lady that betrayed him for 1100 pieces of silver.
She was able to get him to admithis source of strength and told
the Philistines in Judges 16 through 17.
He told her that all of his He told her all his heart and said
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unto her, There has no razor come upon my head, for I have
been a NASA right unto God from my mother's womb.
And if I be shaved then my strength will go away from me
and I will become weak like any other man.
Of course, for those 1100 piecesof silver, she told on him and
the Philistines were able to capture him, put his eyes out.
(20:14):
Bound him up in temple, made funof him.
It was his capture and demise that amazing.
It's amazing because God used Samson to destroy the entire
Philistine army, the Philistineswho had been a source of
contention for Israel. Read it for yourselves.
But imagine what all his mother had to endure.
Can you figure it out? And if you read about Samson,
(20:36):
his mother went through a lot. I don't know if she was alive
when he was captured and blinded, but you must wonder how
she dealt with all those circumstances.
This leads us to another principle.
Maybe your child has broken yourheart.
Please keep praying for that child.
There's still hope that God willintervene and use that child for
(20:57):
His glory. The verse I want to give you
here is today should be one thatyou send to your stubborn child
every day. You should write it down and put
it in an envelope and mail it tothem every day.
Proverbs 3 my son, do not forgetmy teaching, but keep my
commandments in your heart because they will prolong your
(21:19):
life for many years and they will bring you peace and
prosperity. I wish our children would listen
to those words, don't you? Obviously many times they don't
listen and so the Bible is very clear about what happens when
they don't listen. The Lord Jesus Christ said,
don't suppose that I've come to bring peace to the earth because
(21:42):
I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter
against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of
his own household. In our split society today, you
may find that if you're a Christian, your child may decide
(22:03):
to go another direction and may even turn against you and may
even report you somewhere down the line.
It may come to that someday where you'll be reported as an
as an outlaw because you're a Christian.
In Matthew 1037, Jesus said anybody who loves their father
or their mother more than me is not worthy of me.
(22:24):
Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me. Love for family members must not
be greater than your love for the Lord.
I know you love your children, Mothers, I know you love your
son. I know you love your daughter.
But do you love God? Is your personal love for God
greater than your love for your children?
(22:46):
Because if not, you've got things backwards.
It's your personal love for God that has to be first.
Jesus said it's the greatest commandment of all to love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and
with all your mind. If you have a problem with your
children and you just can't get them to act right, what do you
do? Psalm 3417 The righteous cry out
(23:09):
and the Lord hears them, and He will deliver them from all of
their troubles. Pray for your children.
Confess your attitude of frustration and despair, which
can be sin. Bitterness can happen.
Confess those mental attitude sins to God.
Don't let them eat you alive. Because if you stay full of
bitterness, if you stay full of frustration, and you're have no
(23:35):
hope, then you're going to live a miserable life as an
individual. That's not God's plan for you.
This is what it's hard for parents to understand.
At one point in time, your children has to be turned loose.
You do all you can do to evangelize them.
You do all you can do to implantthe Word of God in their soul.
You do all you can do to teach them the divine institutions of
(23:56):
freedom, marriage, family, nationalism.
You want them to understand God's plan for their life.
But at some point in time, they have to make up their own mind.
And so you have to remember thatthese are God's children, not
necessarily yours. Yes, you took care of them when
they were born. Yes, you bore them from your own
womb. But now they're grown and now
(24:17):
they're responsible for their own decisions.
And you cannot let your childrensteal your joy.
That was one of the things I've talked about before on this
radio show. You cannot let your children
steal your joy. So pray for your children.
Mothers, lift your children up before the Lord.
Relax, stand firm, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ with all your
(24:39):
heart. You can read about the prodigal
son in the Bible. Look it up for yourself and say
that he went way wayward down tomy way highway, but he returned
after he got under some discipline.
He came back home and said, father, I've sinned and I'm no
longer worthy to be called your son.
But the father received him backhome again, loved him and I'm
(24:59):
sure the mother did also as well.
A lot of times mothers names aren't mentioned in the Bible,
but these are some of the women I'm talking about the mother of
Noah, the mother of Samson, the mother of Moses.
And of course we talked about Eve, the wife of of Adam.
So what do you think? Are you a mother?
(25:20):
This is your Mother's Day. This is your day to be rejoice
and be if if your kids are squared away and they're all
doing fantastic. I know some families like this.
I'm actually jealous of them because they have such a
wonderful children. And you wonder what did they do
that I didn't do? Well, I don't know what they
did, I didn't do, but they have phenomenal children that go on
(25:41):
to be great, wonderful Americans, great and wonderful
Christians that love the Lord with all their heart.
That's what all of us want. We want our kids to grow up to
be fantastic kids and have fantastic grandchildren and all
of that to glorify God to the maximum.
So I sure hope you're listening this morning.
If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, it is the single
(26:03):
most significant decision you could ever make.
The Bible says whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. There's no reason for you to
walk around wondering if you're going to heaven because the
Bible says these things are written so that you might know
that you have eternal life. Not hope, not try, not wish, but
you can know it because the Bible says he that has a son has
(26:26):
life, He that have not the Son of God hath not life.
If you've never received Christ as your Savior, this is the day
to do it. You can do what the Bible says.
Whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And the minute you can bow your head, you can tell God the
Father you're a Sinner and you're willing to receive the
Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.
(26:48):
And that single act of faith will be the greatest decision
you ever make in your entire life.
It will be your ticket to heaven.
It'll be your ticket to a fantastic future.
No more pain, no more tears, no more sorrow.
The old things will be passed away.
OK Mama, I hope you enjoy the show today.
And the kids, if you're listening, I have one final
(27:08):
question. Did you call your Mama today?
Thank you for listening to The Flood Lion with your host, Rick
Hughes. If you'd like to contact Rick,
please write to him at PO Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama 35O54 or
online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
Welcome to the Flat Line with your host Rick Hughes.
For the next 30 minutes you'll be inspired, motivated, educated
but never manipulated. Now your host, Rick Hughes.
Good morning and welcome to the Flat Line.
I'm your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please
(00:27):
stay with me. It will not be long, only about
30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of
education, and no manipulation because we don't con people
here. We're not soliciting you for
money, not asking for anything. They're not trying to sell you a
book, not trying to sell you a T-shirt, not trying to ask you
to join up. Fess it up, give it up.
(00:47):
We just want you to listen up. Listen as I try to verify and
identify the plan of God for your life.
So thank you for joining the FLOT Line this morning.
You may be hearing it for the first time in your local radio
station because we have expandedour show, pressing now on
upwards to a great many shows across America.
If this is your first time to hear us, we are called the FLOT,
(01:10):
FLOT Line LINE. FLOT is a military acronym for
Forward Line of Troops. What we try to teach you and
give you instruction here is something I learned from my
pastor years ago. And if we will establish a main
line of resistance of the word of God in our souls thinking,
then we can stop the outside sources of adversity before they
(01:32):
ever become the inside source ofstress.
So we deal with 10 unique problem solving devices taught
in the word of God on this radioshow.
We have many books out availablethat you can check them out,
what I'm called Christian Problem Solving that list all 10
of them and it's free. And go to our website,
rickhughesministries.org and seewhatever we have available.
(01:57):
They're all free of charge. We don't sell anything.
OK, you know what day it is, it's Mother's Day.
Good morning to all you wonderful mothers who might be
listening this morning. You know this is your special
day and I hope your children areletting you know just how
special you are. Many years ago I played some
(02:17):
football at the University of Alabama.
I was not a star athlete, nor did I finish my career at
Alabama, but I was there with the famous Joe Namath and of
course the head coach being Pallbearer Bryant.
Coach Bryant required all freshman football players when
we got to campus to send a postcard back home to our Mamas
(02:38):
letting them know that we had arrived on campus safely and we
were there for fall practice. At one point, South Central Bell
asked him to do a commercial forthem on television.
In that commercial, he asked these words, Have you called
your Mama today? And then he followed it up by
saying, I sure wish I could callmine.
(03:01):
My mother's name was Violet and her nickname was Boots B Double
OTS. She raised me as a single parent
and remarried when I was 18 years old.
This very special day for mothers was conceived by Julia
Ward Howe, and she was best known for being the author of
the Battle Hymn of the Republic.In 1870, she issued what came to
(03:24):
be known as a Mother's Day Proclamation.
The version of Mother's Day thatwe celebrate today is rooted in
the work of Anne Jarvis and her daughter, Anna Jarvis.
In order to honor her mother's legacy, Anna set out to
establish a National Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May,
the day her mother died. She chose white carnations as an
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emblem and urged people to writeheartfelt letters of gratitude
to their mothers and Anna Jarvis's eyes.
Sending a pre printed card just didn't cut it.
Anna succeeded in her quest for official recognition and
President Wilson issued a proclamation on the first
National Mother's Day just before the start of World War
One in 1914. Now let's take a moment and look
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at some mothers found in the Bible.
However, these are not the traditional mothers you'll be
thinking about. These is a little take on
Mother's Day, a little differenttake.
Of course. You know the first mother
mentioned in the Bible is none other than Adam's wife, Eve.
We know that she made a criticalmistake when she listened to the
serpent in the Garden of Eden and we know this mistake LED her
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to entice her husband Adam to either the same tree she had
partaken up. What's amazing is Satan
convinced a smart woman to disobey God because of her
arrogant curiosity. If you don't think Satan's
smarter than you just think about what Eve had there going
for her. She had it made and yet Satan
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was able to trick her and because of her curiosity to get
her to go against what Madam hadtold her.
In Genesis 216 and 17, the Lord God commanded the man saying of
every tree in the garden you caneat freely, but the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the
day that you eat thereof, you shall die.
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He didn't die physically, but hedied spiritually as well as Eve
underneath us about God and ate that fruit.
If you open your Bibles and readGenesis chapter 3 verses one
through 6, Genesis 3 one through6, you will see how her
disobedience led to enticing Adam to join her and the
resulting spiritual death and the dismissal of both of them
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from the Garden of Eden for the rest of their life.
You can read about that in Genesis 3 verses 7 through 20.
Fortunately for them, God prepared to sacrifice for their
sin and clothed them in Genesis 3 verse 21.
And this is the first picture ofJesus Christ being sacrificed
for the sins of the world. You might remember Eve went on
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to have many children, but the three we know about most often
are Cain, Abel and Seth. Eve was a mother.
You also may remember that Cain murdered his brother Abel
because of his jealousy. Genesis chapter 4 verse 9.
How do you think the mother feltwhen she found out that her son
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had killed his brother, never tosee Abel again?
Was she angry? Was she confused?
Was she broken hearted? The horrible thing for a mother
to have to deal with that one son killed another son in an
argument in Proverbs 1725. The Bible says a foolish son is
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a grief to his father and bitterness to her that bore him.
There's nothing more heartbreaking to a mother than
to have a child who's on their way to an early grave.
Unfortunately, many mothers havenot learned the necessary
spiritual skills to handle the wayward child and the mothers
find themselves broken hearted because of it.
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Most of the time it's guilt related and thinking they failed
when it was the negative volition of the child all along
that caused them to head off down the my Way highway.
So if you are a mother with a child that's gone completely
negative to how you raise them, then you must learn how to use
impersonal love as a problem solving device.
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It's one of those ten problem solving devices we talk about on
the flat line of the believer's soul.
Impersonal love does not imply you're ignoring their bad
behavior, but that you love thembased on your integrity, not
theirs. But lashing out at them in anger
will solve nothing. I get a lot of calls from
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mothers or letters from mothers who have children that are in
jail asking for help. Fortunately, I have a friend
who's able to minister to those incarcerated through his
ministry called Philippi FreedomMinistry.
He's been able to reach thousands with Bible study
programs that give the individuals a way to start over
by accepting Christ as their Savior and growing to spiritual
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maturity. Now let's talk about another
seldom mentioned mother in the Bible.
These are the ones I want to really get to.
This is going to surprise you. I seldom mentioned mother in the
Bible is the wife of Noah. Remember Noah's ark?
Well, Noah had a wife and we don't know her name but she had
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three sons. We know about Shem, Ham and
Jeppeth. Even though her name is not
revealed in the scripture, it's obvious that she back supported
and and endorsed her husband's work and she encouraged him,
probably prayed with him. But Can you imagine your husband
working on building a large boatfor 120 years according to
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Genesis 63? You know, the neighbors all
laughed at this persistence thathe had.
And the question I always had tobe, why are you building a boat?
What's going on with the boat? I mean, after all, it never had
even rained at that time. You can imagine Noah's wife
every time she went to the Walmart and to the Dollar
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General store to pick up something.
You can imagine all the snide remarks.
You can imagine what their children had to endure with.
Yeah. Oh, Sham, Ham and Jeffeth always
got made fun of in school. Your dad's crazy.
Look, what's he building that big boat out there?
Is he lost his mind. And so is the mother had to
stand behind those kids and stand behind that dad.
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I want to give you a principle here that I think you should
remember. Great mothers make great dads.
Great mothers make great dads. It's it's the great dad comes
from the great mother because they support their men and they
encourage their men and their role as head of the house.
Proverbs 3110 says who can find a virtuous woman for her price
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is far above Ruby's in verse 11 and Proverbs 31.
The heart of her husband does safely trust her so that he
should have no need to spoil andshe will do him good and not
evil all the days of her life. That's a perfect picture of
Noah's wife, whatever name was in Ephesians 522.
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The Bible says wives, submit yourselves unto your own husband
as under the Lord. That means to be under their
authority. That doesn't mean they're
they're allowed to browbeat you or intimidate you or make a
slave out of you, But that meansthat when the bottom line gets
down to making the decision, theman's responsible for any
decision that is made, and Mama needs to back him up.
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These verses that I just read describe the character of the
spiritually mature wife and mother.
And so I'm asking you a simple question.
Do they describe you? One mom that is seldom mentioned
in pulpits today is a divorced mother.
Did you know that Moses had two sons?
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You might ask, well, who who washis wife?
He had two sons. Better yet, who was his first
wife and the mother of those twosons because he was married
twice. To understand this you need to
know that Moses parents were Amaran and Jochabed.
They lived in Egypt and were facing a decree from Pharaoh to
kill all the Hebrew male babies.In Exodus 122 we read and
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Pharaoh charged all his people saying Every son that is born
you shall cast into the river and every daughter you shall
save a life. Moses avoided this fate when his
mother placed him in a watertight basket and hid him
among the reeds in the Nile River, telling his sister Miriam
to keep an eye on him. But in God's plan, make a note
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of this. What appears to be a complete
disaster is sometimes God preparing to do something
amazing. That basket floated away out of
those reeds and went down the river and was discovered by the
Pharaoh's daughter once she realized it was a baby boy.
Because he was a Hebrew, she could tell that from the
circumcision. She asked Moses sister who was
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watching and panicking by the way, I'm sure she was running
down the river trying to get thebasket back.
And then she rounded the corner.There was the Pharaoh's daughter
picking it up and she just happened to come up.
And so the the Pharaoh's daughter said I need to find a
babysitter. I need somebody to take care of
this baby. And she said, well, I can find
somebody. And she went and got her own
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mother and Pharaoh's daughter hired Moses mother to nurse him
to health, eventually turning him back over to Pharaoh's
daughter after he was off his breast.
And she raised him with a great education, gave him a place of
leadership. You can read all of this in
Exodus chapter 1 verses one through 3 chapters one through
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3. Now in those chapters, Exodus
chapter 1-2 and three, we find Moses committed murder and wound
up fleeing out of Egypt at the age of 40 to a land called
Midian. It was there that he wound up
marrying the daughter of a Midianite priest and her name
was Zipporah. ZIPPORAH.
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This is the mother I'm talking about.
She bore him 2 male children, Gersham and Eliezer.
Eliezer. And you can find their names in
First Chronicles 2315. At the age of 80, God called
Moses out of a burning Bush. Exodus 3 one through 6 and
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directed him to go back to Egyptand set free the Hebrew church
children that have been enslavedby the Egyptians.
And so Exodus chapter 4 verse 20, Moses took his wife and his
sons and set them upon the donkey and returned to the land
of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in
his hand. It was on this particular trip
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back to Egypt that that that Moses required his wife to
circumcise those two boys. Exodus 425 She got so angry
about it that she cast the foreskins at the feet of Moses
and left him and returned back to Midian.
She abandoned Moses. Later her father brought her
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back to Moses, but things did not work out so they separated
and Moses later remarried in Numbers 12/1.
And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the
Ethiopian woman whom he had married for he married an
Ethiopian woman. Where is Ethiopia?
Well it's in the Horn of Africa.It's roughly 132 million
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Ethiopians that live there. It's in the their next door
neighbor is Somalia and Uganda. So you can see this is an
African woman. But whatever became of wife
number one, we don't know, but I'm sure she probably regretted
leaving him and having to raise those two sons back in Midian.
A single mother raising two sonsmust not have been easy.
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Here's the principle Divorce does not solve problems, but it
happens, and often for nefariousreasons.
A mature spiritual life overcomes the difficulty of
divorce. Any sin or any failure regarding
marriage or divorce on your partbefore you became a believer,
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before you became a believer wastotally blotted out at the
moment of salvation. Isaiah 4325 says that along with
Psalm 103 verse 12. Therefore, you are not held
accountable for any sin that youdid before you got saved.
If you are a divorced single momfor whatever reason, you can
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still recover and have a fantastic life by receiving
Jesus Christ as your Savior and learning God's plan for your
life. Isaiah 4325 As I told you, I,
even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my own
sake. So God wipes out all the
transgressions of the people that get saved prior to becoming
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Christians. I will wipe them out for my own
sake, and I will not remember your sin.
And Psalm 103, verse 12, as far as the east is from the West, so
far hath He removed our transgressions from us.
The Christian mother, the one who brings about a divorce
because of her own behavior, canbe cleansed from her sin by
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using rebound problem solving device #1 where it says if we
confess our sin, God is faithfuland just to forgive us of our
sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That's like setting a sinking ship upright again.
And now you can't begin to move forward as you learn God's word
and apply it to your life. So a divorced mother has a hard
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time, very, very hard time trying to raise her sons,
especially Moses, two sons. In Judges 13, we find the story
of Samson's mother. You remember Samson, We don't
know her name, but we know that an Angel of the Lord appeared to
her with a message, came and spoke to her in Judges 13, two
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through 5. And there was a certain man of
Zora of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah.
And his wife was barren and borenot, and she couldn't get
pregnant. Angels of the Lord appeared unto
the woman, and said unto her, Behold, now you are barren, and
you can not able to bear children, but you shall
conceive, and you will bear a son.
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Therefore beware, I pray you, and drink not wine, nor strong
drink, and do not eat any unclean thing.
For lo, you shall conceive and bear a son, and no erasure shall
come on his head. For this child shall be a
Nazarite unto God from the womb,and he shall begin to deliver
Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
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And Numbers chapter 6, verse 121through verse one through 21
details the law of the Nazarite vow in the Bible.
It's where individuals consecrated themselves to God
through special dedication. It included abstaining from
great products, not cutting yourhair, avoiding dead bodies, and
upon completion of the vow, thenthey would offer a sacrifice and
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shave their hair and end their separation.
You know, being the mother of the strongest guy in the Bible
and the most stubborn man in theBible was not a very easy task
because Samson was very stubbornand of course, we know of his
feast of strength. On more than one occasion, he
broke his mother's heart, not tomention the capture and the
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circumstances of his death. To his mother's surprise, for
example, he insisted on marryingA Philistine woman, Judges 14
one and two. That woman eventually betrayed
him. Judges 1417.
They had a child together that his mother never got to meet
because the wife's father gave that child to another man.
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Because when Samson deserted herand he'd left the child.
And this led to revenge. Motivation on Samson's part and
he wound up killing 1000 Philistines because of that.
Samson was a judge in Israel andjudged it for 20 years.
Eventually he fell in love with a woman named Delilah.
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He might have heard the song My My My Delilah.
That's the lady that betrayed him for 1100 pieces of silver.
She was able to get him to admithis source of strength and told
the Philistines in Judges 16 through 17.
He told her that all of his He told her all his heart and said
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unto her, There has no razor come upon my head, for I have
been a NASA right unto God from my mother's womb.
And if I be shaved then my strength will go away from me
and I will become weak like any other man.
Of course, for those 1100 piecesof silver, she told on him and
the Philistines were able to capture him, put his eyes out.
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Bound him up in temple, made funof him.
It was his capture and demise that amazing.
It's amazing because God used Samson to destroy the entire
Philistine army, the Philistineswho had been a source of
contention for Israel. Read it for yourselves.
But imagine what all his mother had to endure.
Can you figure it out? And if you read about Samson,
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his mother went through a lot. I don't know if she was alive
when he was captured and blinded, but you must wonder how
she dealt with all those circumstances.
This leads us to another principle.
Maybe your child has broken yourheart.
Please keep praying for that child.
There's still hope that God willintervene and use that child for
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His glory. The verse I want to give you
here is today should be one thatyou send to your stubborn child
every day. You should write it down and put
it in an envelope and mail it tothem every day.
Proverbs 3 my son, do not forgetmy teaching, but keep my
commandments in your heart because they will prolong your
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life for many years and they will bring you peace and
prosperity. I wish our children would listen
to those words, don't you? Obviously many times they don't
listen and so the Bible is very clear about what happens when
they don't listen. The Lord Jesus Christ said,
don't suppose that I've come to bring peace to the earth because
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I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter
against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of
his own household. In our split society today, you
may find that if you're a Christian, your child may decide
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to go another direction and may even turn against you and may
even report you somewhere down the line.
It may come to that someday where you'll be reported as an
as an outlaw because you're a Christian.
In Matthew 1037, Jesus said anybody who loves their father
or their mother more than me is not worthy of me.
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Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me. Love for family members must not
be greater than your love for the Lord.
I know you love your children, Mothers, I know you love your
son. I know you love your daughter.
But do you love God? Is your personal love for God
greater than your love for your children?
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Because if not, you've got things backwards.
It's your personal love for God that has to be first.
Jesus said it's the greatest commandment of all to love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and
with all your mind. If you have a problem with your
children and you just can't get them to act right, what do you
do? Psalm 3417 The righteous cry out
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and the Lord hears them, and He will deliver them from all of
their troubles. Pray for your children.
Confess your attitude of frustration and despair, which
can be sin. Bitterness can happen.
Confess those mental attitude sins to God.
Don't let them eat you alive. Because if you stay full of
bitterness, if you stay full of frustration, and you're have no
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hope, then you're going to live a miserable life as an
individual. That's not God's plan for you.
This is what it's hard for parents to understand.
At one point in time, your children has to be turned loose.
You do all you can do to evangelize them.
You do all you can do to implantthe Word of God in their soul.
You do all you can do to teach them the divine institutions of
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freedom, marriage, family, nationalism.
You want them to understand God's plan for their life.
But at some point in time, they have to make up their own mind.
And so you have to remember thatthese are God's children, not
necessarily yours. Yes, you took care of them when
they were born. Yes, you bore them from your own
womb. But now they're grown and now
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they're responsible for their own decisions.
And you cannot let your childrensteal your joy.
That was one of the things I've talked about before on this
radio show. You cannot let your children
steal your joy. So pray for your children.
Mothers, lift your children up before the Lord.
Relax, stand firm, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ with all your
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heart. You can read about the prodigal
son in the Bible. Look it up for yourself and say
that he went way wayward down tomy way highway, but he returned
after he got under some discipline.
He came back home and said, father, I've sinned and I'm no
longer worthy to be called your son.
But the father received him backhome again, loved him and I'm
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sure the mother did also as well.
A lot of times mothers names aren't mentioned in the Bible,
but these are some of the women I'm talking about the mother of
Noah, the mother of Samson, the mother of Moses.
And of course we talked about Eve, the wife of of Adam.
So what do you think? Are you a mother?
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This is your Mother's Day. This is your day to be rejoice
and be if if your kids are squared away and they're all
doing fantastic. I know some families like this.
I'm actually jealous of them because they have such a
wonderful children. And you wonder what did they do
that I didn't do? Well, I don't know what they
did, I didn't do, but they have phenomenal children that go on
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to be great, wonderful Americans, great and wonderful
Christians that love the Lord with all their heart.
That's what all of us want. We want our kids to grow up to
be fantastic kids and have fantastic grandchildren and all
of that to glorify God to the maximum.
So I sure hope you're listening this morning.
If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, it is the single
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most significant decision you could ever make.
The Bible says whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. There's no reason for you to
walk around wondering if you're going to heaven because the
Bible says these things are written so that you might know
that you have eternal life. Not hope, not try, not wish, but
you can know it because the Bible says he that has a son has
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life, He that have not the Son of God hath not life.
If you've never received Christ as your Savior, this is the day
to do it. You can do what the Bible says.
Whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And the minute you can bow your head, you can tell God the
Father you're a Sinner and you're willing to receive the
Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.
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And that single act of faith will be the greatest decision
you ever make in your entire life.
It will be your ticket to heaven.
It'll be your ticket to a fantastic future.
No more pain, no more tears, no more sorrow.
The old things will be passed away.
OK Mama, I hope you enjoy the show today.
And the kids, if you're listening, I have one final
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question. Did you call your Mama today?
Thank you for listening to The Flood Lion with your host, Rick
Hughes. If you'd like to contact Rick,
please write to him at PO Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama 35O54 or
online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
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