MOTHERS DAY 2026 / PASTOR NEIL HOPPER

Mother's must learn to respond in "HIS ability". It is a grace given for the calling, just like any other calling. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to Cedar Lake Christian Center Podcast. Our church exists to see lives transformed through a relationship with Jesus. We pray this message helps you continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior. You can find us online at clc.church.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Open the word and let's uh let me just start by saying uh happy Mother's Day. Um a large majority of us wouldn't be here today. I would say uh a good majority of us wouldn't even be here today if it wasn't for someone, namely mothers, who loved you, nurtured you, taught you, fed you, or someone who became a mother to you, someone who became a mother figure. And that could be in the natural, uh, it could be in the spiritual, both are equally important. Uh, I remember um not too long ago we had a pastor, his mom had passed away, and they asked to use the sanctuary here. It happened to be here on that day, and he talked about his mother was the one who took everybody in the neighborhood in. She became the neighborhood mother, right? And he talked about how, you know, important it was. So there's um some statistics that show, I don't know if you know this, but 3.3 million dads, fathers, are raising kids without the help of a mom. And uh so that is a rising number, equally as difficult. So, what I want to talk to you about, there's three uh three or four things I want to share with you this morning. Uh first of all, there are three ways that you can have success in life. Now, this it doesn't matter if you're a mom or a dad, a businessman, businesswoman, whatever. Here's the kingdom principle for how you do things. We uh we do it three ways. I call it three ways to success. Number one is you say to someone, watch me do what I do. Watch me do what I do. And then secondly, you say to them, let you and I do this together. And then lastly, you say, I'll let you do it, and I'll just stand over here and watch you and give advice if you need it. That's the kingdom principle. That's how the kingdom works. That's how God shows us. That's what we need is mothers and fathers who will say, you know what, I'm just, I'll do this, you stand here and watch. And that doesn't matter if it's walking by faith, especially by faith. Somebody needs a picture of someone who has gotten it right, someone that they can uh aspire to be. And uh I'll I'll say in the early days, Miss Della is here right now. And uh, Della, will you stand, please, in the early days? Amen. This lady was such a pillar in this house, both to my wife and I, amen, and to this entire congregation. She didn't just say, she didn't just talk a lot of stuff. She's she, if you watched her life, you could have watched it from miles away, and her life was speaking volumes. But when we did need advice, when we did need somebody that we could look to, when we saw what I saw and my wife saw how she treated her husband Paul when he took ill and how she cared for him and how she did for him, it's just a noble, godly example of what it means to walk the life of faith, even when it's difficult. And that's the reason I have her stand today, is because you need somebody that you can look at. Right? Now, here's here's where people, here's where people mess up. You get your eyes on somebody who, uh, and you think this is what a godly man or woman looks like, and then you're trying to be that person. Is there a way we can take out some of the reverb? Is there a way we can uh and then you're trying to be that person and you can't attain to that is because you haven't sat at their feet. You haven't learned from them. So let me go back to the model again. So here's how it works. The way the the I believe the kingdom model is, is watch me do what I'm about to do, watch me walk by faith, watch me just stand back, stand with me as I do what I do and just watch how I go about my business. And there's something that's transferred when you stand with men and women of faith. So for you mothers, if you had a good mother or you had a good example, or you had somebody in your church that could teach you how to walk through hell and back and not get burnt, you take their example and you see how they do what they do and you learn from them. Watch me do what I do. And then secondly, you say, Let's now, let's do this together. That's what happens when young girls uh have children or so forth. Um that that's when when young girls have have uh have babies of their own. Then they need a godly example of a mother, and you say, Hey, we'll do this together. I will help you every step of the way, right? And then lastly, you say to the next generation, I'll stand over here and give you any advice that you would want. And you just do, uh you just give it your best shot, and if you need me, I'm right here. See, I think that's an example for both for men and for women, for the people of God. It's say it another way, it's one generation teaching another generation how to walk in what God has for them. And you're not gonna do that without faith. You're not gonna do that. So let me share just uh a few things. I want to share an example that uh Dr. Jack Hayford uh said. I read this somewhere a number of years ago. If you don't know the late great uh Dr. Jack Hayford, he he wrote uh about his mom in an article that was published at one time, and I just thought it was so beautiful. I want to relay that to you. Then I'm gonna give you a few thoughts from Psalm 121, and I'm gonna let you be on your way. But please give me your ear for just a minute. So the late great pastor Jack Hayford wrote this. He said, My mother Dolores Hayford instilled lasting wisdom in my life. No less than all she imparted to me in my early years, an incident happened near the end of her life that represents a deeply significant moment in my years of walking beside her as a son. In the spring of 1997, my mother was 81 years of age and dying with a very painful cancer. I had returned home from visiting her in the hospital, and I bowed my head to pray. Dr. Hafford said, I said, Lord, you know my mama is ready to go home and to be with you. You know her heart is humble, you know she's righteous before you, you know she loves your son Jesus. He said, Lord, I release her, and I'm asking you to release her from this pain and to take her home. Take my mama home, he said. He went on to write, I labored over that, not trying to dictate to God, but imploring him with a passion I felt as a son watching my mother suffer so much. Mid-prayer, the Lord interrupted me, said, Child, you do not need to remind me of my appointment with my daughter Dolores. I was mindful that the scripture had said, It is appointed, it's an appointed time for us to die, meaning God knew in advance the time of my mother's homegoing. The Lord said to him, Your task is not to pray for her release. He said, Your task is to pray for her healing. And it'll be up to me how that healing comes. Whether she moves into the realm of earthly health or temporal health, and a later time of coming into my presence, I will take care of her. I yet have matters to deal with her about. A few days later, he says, at my mama's bedside, I shared with her the story. She took my hand. She said, Son, I trust the Lord and whatever he wants to do to shape the image of Jesus in me. That, my friend, he goes on to say, is the preoccupying concern of my mother's life. It was related to being conformed to God's image. It's stated in Romans 8.29, and we love 8.28, all things work together for good to those who love the Lord. But this verse goes on, there's more in this chapter. Those words go on to say, and to those who are called according to my purpose. And that purpose is defined in the 29th verse of Romans chapter 8, for whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate that we should be conformed to the image of his son. He goes on to say, conformity to the image of Jesus does not mean becoming a rigid, pious type person. It means having in ourselves the warmth, the genuineness, and the beauty of Jesus that was so attractive about him. That value was compulsive to my mother, Jack Hayford said. Even in pain when it racked her body, she wanted the completion of the Father's purpose in her more than she wanted out of her own pain. This is the goal for all of us. It's not just the goal for a mother, it's the goal for all of us as believers to be conformed to the image of his son. Can you say amen? Amen. That's the goal. And here's how I think we're gonna get there. There's two or three verses that I think I want to just highlight this morning, along with Romans 8, 28, and 29 of you being conformed. First of all, for him to do that, he has to continue to work in our lives. What do I mean by that? We learn and we relearn and we unlearn and we learn again and he teaches us again and he never gives up on us. He begins to mold us and make us put his hands on us, and it don't always feel good. But we learn and we unlearn and we relearn and we do it over and over, and he continues to make us mold us, break us, and shape us into what he wants us to be, and that's where I want you to be. That's where I want to be. Did you learn this prayer? If you didn't, I'm gonna teach you a beautiful prayer. Lord, mold me, make me, shape me, and break me into what you want me to be in Jesus' name. Now that's a dangerous prayer because if you pray that prayer, he just might do it. He's probably gonna put his hands on some places and you're gonna give me that ouch. Wow, oh man. He's gonna ask you to do some things that you're uncomfortable with. He's gonna ask you to overcome some things that you didn't think you could overcome. And he's not just gonna say, do it alone. He's gonna say, I'm gonna do it with you. I'm gonna grace you to do it. I'm gonna let my power work in you so you can do this. That's what, that's, I believe, how he's gonna do it. He's gonna send people across our path that will influence us. What I'm talking about this morning is influence. And I want to slow down right here because there are people who influence your life for the positive and for the negative, for godly and ungodly. Be aware of who you look to and who influences you.

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You don't need to be influenced by everybody.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

If you pick out a godly woman like this one that I picked out this morning, you pick out a godly man and let them influence your life, and you begin to walk in what God has for you. Influence is a powerful thing. You know why I believe God gave you the Holy Ghost? Well, he gave it for many reasons, but one of those is so that you can influence others. You become a testimony, you become uh, you become a walking, living, breathing, what I talked about earlier this week, an epistle. You are a letter written. When people look at your life, they read your life. Now, how are you gonna do it? You're gonna look at somebody else's life and read their life. We're talking about influence, and nobody has influenced me more than my own mother in how to live, how to treat my kids, how to love them well, how to sacrifice for them. Now, let me say this: if you had a mother that wasn't a good mom, happened to be confronted with a situation yesterday. Of course, many of you, thank you so much for your kind words for Benjamin. One of his classmates graduated from medical school, and some of his family uh didn't even show up. And he did not have a good relationship with his mom. And I was just meditating on that on the way home of I don't know, something about that just moves me. That your your son would graduate from medical school and he would have to ask you to leave because you, because you uh you ever seen those people that everything has to be, so your son's graduated from medical school, but it has to be about you. You know, there's some listen, there's some things, if you if if you don't learn anything else, learn this this morning. There's some things that ain't about you. Well, I uh I got to go see Dr. Ben Carson a few days ago. I've told this story because it impacted me so much. He tells the story about being an angry young man and power of influence, hear me. He tells the story about being an angry young man and why shouldn't he be? He had way less than perfect circumstances. He said, So I dealt with anger. He said, There was an old man down the street that used to talk to me all the time, and he told him one day, he said, Benny, you want to know how you don't have to be angry ever again? He said, I sure do, if you can teach me that. He said, Take yourself out of the center of the circle. Take yourself out of the center of the circle. He said, The reason you get mad is you still think you're in the center of the circle and everything revolves around you. But when you step out of the center of the circle and put Jesus in the center of the circle, you don't have to be angry anymore. Now that is a lesson in influence. That is a lesson in influence, my friend. That's what I'm talking about today, is influencing. So let's take a look at a couple of things. First of all, influence is even is important, especially when we talk about the influence of Jesus, the influence of the Holy Spirit, the influence of his life and how he went about his business. You know, I always say Jesus is perfect theology. Just look at what he did and how he did it. If you will, turn with me to Psalm 121, and I'm gonna I'm gonna conclude with a few thoughts from Psalm 121. And this Psalm is a psalm of ascent. You're going upward, you're moving upward. Psalm 121 is one of those. Verse 1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. Here's what I have to say to every man, woman, boy, girl, child, whoever you are, especially you mothers, you're gonna need some help. And you're gonna need some help that somebody else can't teach you. You're gonna need some divine help at some point. You're gonna need something bigger than you. And I'm gonna tell you your help is always gonna come from the Lord. The psalmist is saying, I need some help. And it's okay if you're in here today, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, if you need help, there is divine help on the way. All you have to do is call on him. There is a God who cares, there's a God who loves you. And in this case, how are you gonna teach somebody else how to live their life? How are you gonna mother them well if you don't have the help you need from another realm, from another place? You see what I'm saying? We gotta have some divine intervention. Right? You gotta have some divine intervention. Um, it if if kids turn out well these days, it it is make no difference. Uh somebody asked me, so how how did how did y'all do that? I said, I don't think we can take any credit. I think we have to give all credit to God, ain't like a thousand percent. Um if my kids did anything right, they've done some wrong, obviously, because all kids are kids. But what we decided was we weren't gonna instill fear in them. We're not gonna be fearful. Not gonna be fearful of things, not gonna talk about fearful things. We were careful about conversation. You can bring things up, but Lord, I wouldn't do that. I I don't know. I'm scared to death of that. We weren't religious about it, but we just made sure that especially if they wanted to do it, we didn't say, Oh my Lord, you can't do that. I don't know how you you ain't ever gonna be able to do that. We just said, okay, if that's what you believe, that's what you believe you you need to do. Benjamin started working when he was, I think, a sixth grader when he decided he wanted to be a doctor. You do understand the cost. I'm not talking about what it costs to put you through school. I'm talking about you understand the blood, sweat, and tears you're gonna have to put in to get through school. So as long as you count the cost of whatever you're gonna do. And here's the thing, and you won't have to do it alone. We'll be right here with you every step of the way. You probably won't have to ask me about organic chemistry. I'll sit in here and make coffee while you study. I'll do whatever I have to do. This uh motherhood thing for you, moms. So there's some things that you say, but I want to focus on this thing. We we have divine help. Divine help shows up when you shut up. One of the things that I used to do every time is when we would have a wedding, I would say to couples, they're gonna need to hear it and the families need to hear it. There's a whole lot of time they are not gonna need your help and your input. There's a particular lady, we recently had a conversation about her children, and she said to me, Ed, there's just some things I cannot say as a mother. There's some things that I know to keep my mouth shut. The helps is when you sometimes you have to just leave it alone. Anybody in here got kids when you start making uh suggestions and you start doing certain things, they clam up on you. Anybody else could have said it and it'd have been a good idea, but the minute you say it, you just became the enemy. I don't know why kids are that way. I don't, I don't know why I can't give you the history of that, but what I can say to you is there there are times, here's where your spirituality comes in. Here's where you have to be the man or woman of God that you need to be, and that is when you walk closely with the Lord, and sometimes you can't say what you want to say. Sometimes the Holy Ghost will restrain you and you'll know because if I say that, this ain't going down well. So, what do you do? You just be quiet and pray. You just be quiet and be who you are. Stay before the Lord, keep them in prayer and watch God work. Because you can you you can open your mouth and say some things and they ain't hearing you, but sometimes God can speak so loudly. Sometimes God can speak so loudly that they they they can't help but hear him. Sometimes, you know, sometimes God does speak loudly, right? Sometimes they don't want to hear what you gotta say, but they can't help but hear what he's gotta say. So we're talking about where our help comes from. Because there's all kinds of things that we're gonna need God's help in if we're gonna do this and we're gonna do it the way God wants us to do it. You're gonna have to be sensitive. This doesn't just work in raising kids, this works in marriage. This works in every relationship. This works with your employee, employer, it works all kinds of ways. There's just some things that God will just say, Don't say that. Am I the only one that has trouble keeping your mouth? I have trouble keeping my sometimes. Well, I just gotta say what I gotta say. All right, don't mess up what God's doing now. He's trying to do something. You're gonna put your two cents in there and mess it all up. I I mean, I know it ain't a typical Mother's Day sermon, but it's still true. Here's where I think this comes in. And this is just me being a pastor for for a good minute here. I think what happens is is your spirituality, where you are in God, is gonna matter when things like this happen. That's the thing. It's gonna matter when it happens because you are because you're walking close with the Lord, you can hear him say, Shh, don't do that. Mm-hmm. Because you're walking where you need to be. You you and that's the reason I think your spirituality is so vitally important. Truth be known, it's kingdom spirituality and it's vitally important. I need you and you need me to be spiritually sensitive to God's, uh, to God's voice, to the Holy Spirit, to what he says to us. Always sensitive to what the Holy Spirit's saying to us. So we we're gonna, if we're gonna influence the way we want to influence, we're gonna have to do it his way. And here's how you're gonna do that. Secondly, you're gonna have to respond in his ability. It's something I learned here many, many years ago. You don't always respond to every situation in your ability. Response ability is learning to respond in his ability. You can't respond in your ability because sometimes it's beyond your ability, but it ain't beyond his ability. So when I talk about taking on the responsibility of doing any kingdom thing, including motherhood or being a father, you have to respond in his ability. That's learning how to lean on him, that's learning how to allow Holy Spirit to be your biggest influence. It's responding in his ability, and you can only do that, listen, by grace. By the grace and power of God, you're gonna do what he's called you to do. So lastly, this verse says, Um, go back if you will, uh Sheila, if you will, go back to verse one and two for me. So he says this I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence come my help. Ladies and gentlemen, it don't matter who you are or what you're trying to accomplish, you're gonna need him. You're gonna need him. Your help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. In other words, he said, There's nothing that I didn't make, there's nothing that I don't understand, there's nothing you can't approach me with. And then he said this: He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber nor sleep. He that keepeth you is not gonna sleep or slumber. I asked, I asked Chat GPT, I said, What's the difference? A slumber is when you can barely keep your eyes open after dinner and it ain't bedtime yet. You're kind of nodding off and you're less aware of what's going on. And here's what God said. Think about the psalmist here. The psalmist is saying, the one who keeps me, he's not nodding off to sleep. And sleep in this, these passages means to lay all the way down. I mean relaxing in the bed for a full night's sleep. That's what he's talking about. And he said, He said, the God that we serve, he's not gonna slumber and he's not gonna sleep. You you don't have to wake him up at two in the morning when you get up to pray, he's already there. You don't have to worry, he's not falling off and nodding off, right? He's always available for you. Right? You gotta understand where your help is gonna come from because over the course of the years we're gonna need his help.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

You're gonna need his help. Said it for years.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Call it my famous saying, your first call is always to him. Your first call is always to him. Always to him, right? So it you also understand about Psalm 121. One more thing, and that is it's a psalm of ascent, which means he sees a place in the distance, and they would they would sing these psalms or quote these psalms as they were climbing. The reason they're climbing is because they're not there yet. They see it, they see a place in the distance. They were ascending up into a higher place, and they see a place in the distance, and they begin to say these kinds of things. They they begin to say in Psalm chapter 20 121 and verse 1, where he says, My help comes from the Lord, the Lord who make heaven and earth. I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. See, he sees it in the distance. I'm gonna lift up my eyes and I'm gonna look where I'm going because I know God has greater things for me. I know God, I'm I'm on my way there, but I'm not there yet. None of us are there yet. As a father, as a mother, as a friend, as a cousin, none of us are there yet. We continue to strive and climb and continue that upward ascent to walk in everything he has for us. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence come my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. And he's not gonna suffer my foot to be moved. Here's what I want you to see, and this I'll finish with this. The scripture says he's not gonna suffer my your foot to be moved. Now I'm traveling the whole time. What he's saying is he's gonna make you sure footed if you'll keep looking at him. He's gonna make you sure footed if you just stay in step with him. He it sounds like he's saying, I'm not gonna uh go down uh verse, I think it's three or four, let me go look. Maybe you can see three for me. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. So he's not gonna suffer your foot to be my feet are moving because I'm climbing. But he's not gonna suffer my foot to be moved from the foundation that I already have in him. He's not gonna allow my foot to be moved from this path that I'm on. How's that gonna happen? That's gonna happen because of his grace. That's gonna happen because of his strength. That's gonna happen because of his goodness. That's gonna happen because you're gonna stay in tune with him. That's gonna happen because you are rooted and grounded and seated in him in heavenly places in Christ. That's how it's gonna happen. You're gonna stay right on that path that he has for you. Amen. Amen. So there's a lot to this, obviously, but I just wanted to give you a few thoughts this morning. Say happy Mother's Day to you and say, look, you keep walking the path, you keep looking up, you keep believing for divine help, you keep believing for divine strength, you keep believing for God to do good things, you keep walking this road that He has for you. Keep influence and being influenced. Keep influencing, but keep being influenced. Keep feeding your spirit, keep feeding your soul. Stay where you need to be, stay sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Amen. Would you stand up on your feet? Again, happy Mother's Day. All of you, God said it's gonna be a great day. For all of you moms, we have a little gift for you. Lord reminded me, we've got a little gift for you outside. If you will stop by, pick your gift up on the way out, we have something for you. Uh also grab one of the bottles in the back, throw some change in it over the next couple of days or weeks, and bring it back and let's support uh pulp pregnancy care. Amen. I'm gonna pray over you before you go home. We love you, God loves you, and I believe He has good things for you. Father, we thank you for this time together. Thank you, Lord, for touching your people. Thank you that our eyes, our gaze, is fixed on you, oh God. I will lift up mine eyes to the hills. From whence cometh my help. My help does come. Not from this realm, but from another realm, from the divine, from a God who loves me, who is my father. Lord, I thank you for comfort and strength, for every mother who's dealing with difficulty and loss, trouble and hardship. Every person in here who's had loss in the family, like the Waters family, every person who just struggles with this day for many reasons. God, I pray a special grace on them. I thank you, Lord, for meeting them right where they are, just pouring your love on them. God, we love you, we bless you, and it is truly our desire to be pleasing in your sight. In Jesus' mighty name. Amen and amen. Have a great afternoon. Be blessed.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

I love the show.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Well I'm not a We pray this podcast has been a blessing. For more information about Cedar Lake Christian Center, you can find us online at clc.church. Our Sunday service begins at 1030 a.m. and our Wednesday evening Bible study begins at 7 p.m. If you'd like to contact us, our telephone number is 770 748 5750.