What I Learned About God From My Mom

And once again, happy Mother's Day. So glad to be with you. Glad everybody watching in venue could join us and watching online. My name is René, one of the pastors here. You know, one thing we've done over the last four or five years on Mother's Day is in each service we've picked a mom of the day to honor with a gift basket. And this year we thought we'd change that up just a little bit. We thought we'd choose a mom of the weekend. And specifically we thought, you know moms that sometimes feel left out on Mother's Day are single moms. So we thought we'd find a single mom at the church who was in need and honor her with a gift from all of us from this church.

And the mom that we... did you agree with that? All right. Well, we found a mom here at Twin Lakes Church who was in need. Her apartment, which you're about to see at the time that we discovered her need, really essentially only had a sofa and a love seat. And we decided to do something special for her. Watch this. My name is Maya and I'm a single mom here at Twin Lakes Church. A few years back our family hit up against some different challenges and they were really a perfect storm of loss and some hardship there. My sister was diagnosed with cancer and then she died. And then after that shortly after I got sick. And then not too long after I recovered and that was... My mom had a stroke. And then my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer and that was a whole other journey of about a year taking care of him and he passed away.

We live in condos and the joining unit to ours is a vacation rental. And apparently they had a pipe break in the wall and that unit was flooding for quite some time. And then it eventually bled over into our unit and we just really lost everything. They had to seal the unit. It had toxic mold and all sorts of things going on with it. And the heat from quarantining the unit and trying to get it detoxified or whatnot really damaged whatever wasn't damaged from the flood. The unit got remodeled and after that it's just been sort of a mishmash of trying to put things together and recreate a home. I think because it was the last in a very long string of loss it just sort of tipped us a bit in that we haven't really gotten out of boxes and looking at the overwhelming task of how do you recreate a home. And where's the time really? I don't think I even have a hammer or if I do it's somewhere in a box.

Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Her chicken soup is really good. She just literally does everything because she's a single mom and she works really really hard. It's like I don't have words really to say like how much she means to me. We love you mom! The best gift for a mother for Mother's Day is to see her children happy and to be able to have not just a house but a home. A place where they can come, they can bring their friends, we can break bread together. It gives me tremendous peace and gives our family a tremendous sense of belonging. One more time, Happy Mother's Day for all the moms here. We love you. Isn't that great? You know, part of being a church that talks about grace is you look for ways to grace people. Just with unexpected, you know, unearned gifts just as part of what God has done for us. I love to do that.

Well grab your message notes that look like this because today for the message time, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to hear from some of our pastors on what I learned about God from my mom. And you're going to see some photos of them and their moms. And I'm going to bookend it and just kick it off with this. This is the earliest picture I've been able to find of me and my mom and my dad right after I was born. As you may know, both my mom and dad were Swiss citizens, but they met and started their family in the Bay Area, intending to move back to Europe. Well, my dad died when my sister and I were very young and mom ended up raising us alone for most of our childhood years and decided to raise us here in the States instead of moving back to Switzerland.

And consequently, kind of a hallmark of our childhood was mom kind of mangling English phrases. Like one time, and there's a hundred of these, but one time she wanted to tell somebody that our house was way out in the Thuleys. She'd heard somebody use an expression like that, and she said, "Oh, we are living way out in the Thuleps!" And people were like, "What?" In college days, a friend of mine was visiting the house, staying over for a few days, and mom is showing him around, and she opens the fridge, and instead of saying, "Fend for yourself," which is what she wanted to say, she opens the fridge and goes, "Defend yourself!" And my friend's like, "What's going to come jumping out of the fridge?" But she also shared many nuggets of real wisdom, and I'm going to tell you the last nugget of wisdom she ever shared with me in just a moment. But first, let's hear from some other folks on staff on what I learned about God from my mom. First, let's welcome our pastor of communications, Adrian Moreno, as he shares.

So I didn't grow up a Christian. I didn't know. I graduated college very young. I'm a genius. I don't know. Anyways, so I didn't grow up a small boy, and I didn't know Jesus. I didn't have a relationship with him. I saw him twice a year on TV. We had a picture Bible. I kind of knew something about God. I believe something was up there, but I knew him personally. What I knew about God, I knew because my mom knew him. My mom was a Christian, and she was a Christian as long as I can remember, and she went to church. She had Bible studies in our house with her friends. She read her Bible, and she prayed, and she prayed, and she prayed.

You know, when you think of prayer, when you hear somebody pray, it usually sounds something like this, "Father, thank you for your love and for your grace for this day, for this food. Thank you for hearing my soft-spoken prayer." Amen. Koreans don't pray like that. This is when I entered clown college, and... That was a couple years later. What is this picture? Anyways, so I... You hear my mom pray, and it's a little different, and Koreans pray, at least the ones I know. It's kind of like this. Do you have anybody in your life that when they talk to you on the phone, they yell at you? But not because they're mad, just because they yell for some reason. They're like, "My mom's a phone-yeller." And growing up, I'd be watching cartoons, and my mom would get on the phone and talk to somebody in Korea, where she's from, you know, her family, and she would yell and scream, and she was just talking normally, and I couldn't hear the cartoon, and so I'd be like, "Mom, I can't hear." She's like, "I don't know. Shut up!" And she would just, like, freak out on me, because she was talking on the phone normally, as she thought.

And so she calls me, even today, we'll talk to her in a little bit, and I'll answer my cell phone upstairs, and my kids downstairs will hear her, and it's not on speaker. And she, because she's just yelling, and I think I realize why she does that is because we live far away. And I don't know that she really understands how the phone works. I think she thinks the, like, cable that goes in the wall is attached to, like, a string that goes across the country. She lives in Florida, all the way to California, to a cup that I hold to my ear or something. And Korea's far away, and so you think about it, that's the way she talks on the phone, now she's talking to God, and I'm a few thousand miles away. He's like, "What? I'm infinity miles away?" So I remember, I was a little kid, I was sleeping and woken to my mom screaming, and it sounds like she's fighting somebody in the living room, and so I'm a little scared, but I'm curious, so I, like, crawl out, and I crawl down the hallway, and, like, I peek over the wall to see what's going on, and my mom's on her knees, rocking back and forth, praying. But it sounds like she's fighting because she's yelling, and she has tears in her eyes, she's pleading with God.

And she prays in Korean and English for some reason, maybe just in case, like, he doesn't understand one of them, and her English isn't great, and she would pray for me a lot, and it kind of goes like this, she would say, "I should start hunting urihabo ji," which is God, Father God. "Please, please, my son, make a good boy, make a Christian boy, or make him pastor like a big damn pastor. TV, please, please, please, no more fat boy. Jesus, Jesus, please." So, she prayed for me every night. She prayed for my salvation, she prayed early on that I'd be a pastor, that I'd have a ministry like Billy Graham, and she prayed that I would be healthy and have a good life. And I'll say this, I believe God is sovereign, I believe God is gonna do what he wants to do, his will will be done, but I believe that my mom did, like, her prayers did something.

There's a verse, James 5:16 at the end that says, "The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." Growing up, hearing my mom pray, seeing her live her life, I read the prayer like this, especially today, "The effective fervent prayer of a righteous mom avails much." I might not be Billy Graham. My life might not be perfect, but I know this. I wouldn't be the man I am today. I wouldn't be on the stage talking to you today if it wasn't for "The effective fervent prayer of my righteous mom." Thanks, Mom.

I don't like following Adrian. Let me tell you. Now, my mom did not grow up in any foreign country. She grew up in Nebraska, so she had no accent whatsoever. Maybe the most I got out of her was "wash" instead of "wash" in my entire life. But this was a fun question to ponder. What did my mom teach me about God? My mom actually passed away a couple years ago now, and so I've even had that advantage of just time, where she's not speaking into my life all the time that I can think about. What did my mom teach me? And I think that as I thought about this, I've distilled it down to this one thing that I really saw her consistently live that I think I caught, and it was on a plaque that has hung on every door of every home my parents have ever lived in, and it simply says, "The will of God will never lead you, where the grace of God cannot keep you."

And I walked by the plaque. That's it. It's on my dad's door right now. I walked by that plaque every day of my life for 18 years. I walked by that plaque in times where our family was so poor, we were taking in renters, when my parents would kind of pick what they were going to eat, so Denise and I and my sister would have enough food to eat. I walked by that plaque when my mom was struggling with debilitating depression, which she struggled with a few times in my life, and I knew she wasn't going to get up that morning. She was just going to stay in bed. And I walked by that plaque when I was 12 years old, and my dad had told me that night, "My mom's going to die. You're not going to have a mom in the morning because she's so sick." And I had to run the house for months while my mom, she'd made it that time and while she recovered from that.

And I walked by that plaque when, in the dysfunction that comes with every family, and in my family that dysfunction exploded in anger a lot of times. And I walked by that plaque every single day, "The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you." And you know, my mom lived this out. She did not have an easy life in her youth. She grew up in Nebraska on a, her parents were dry land farmers during the depression. That wasn't a really easy life. And she didn't have an easy life as an adult all the time, but she had a charming daughter, so I'm sure that helped. But she didn't always have an easy life, but she lived this. And I saw her live this every single day.

I walked by that plaque when I would be opening the door for the unending trail of people that came into our house because they knew my mom loved them. And they knew my mom would welcome them. And I'm telling you, she had sought us to work with, but she fed everybody who walked through that door. I do not know to this day how she did it, but she always managed to feed everybody, loved them, and they kept coming in. And every Sunday night, I ran by that sign with my friends after church when we would have company over. And we always somehow managed to have grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for all. Might have been watered down, but we had it. And then we'd gather around and sing out of the country western gospel hymnal because we were wild Baptists. That's the kind of Baptist we were right there.

Every morning when I got up and I'd go to make myself breakfast, I would walk by that sign when my mom was reading her Bible and her daily bread. Every day my mom read the daily bread and the Bible and she made sure I saw her. My mom used her words for a lot of things. My mom could chat with anybody. But she used her life to teach me this lesson, to teach me that no matter how heavy life is, and she could have collapsed under the weight of it multiple times, she taught me that there is a sustaining grace of God that keeps you, no matter where life leads you. 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency and all things, may have an abundance of grace for every good work." And that's how my mom lived in the keeping grace of God.

Because she wasn't just drumming it up out of an easy life or great circumstances. She was doing it from a reservoir of abounding grace that God gave towards her and that He gives towards me. And that's the thing that I think she has taught me the most. You know, I find myself as I get older, and of course I appreciate this about my mom now. I didn't always give her the advantage in real time of knowing that I appreciated everything she taught me. But I appreciate this now, and I think as I get older I think less about the whys of life because I realize we all have them. And I think more about the what. And I really appreciate this lesson that she taught me, that God's grace abounds and is keeping grace for our daily situations abound as well.

Before I turn the mic over to the dynamic Spurlock duo, I want to take a moment just today to talk to people in the room who might find themselves in a situation like mine, where sometimes days like Mother's Day can be a little bit of a struggle for you. And they can be actually painful sometimes. And it can be painful because it just brings up unmet expectations or unmet dreams or loss in life. And I want to tell you that I understand. I understand. I actually always dreamt that I would have lots of kids and I have a big family. I love to organize, and it seemed like 20 or 30 kids would be a fun attempt at organizing things. But God, and how many times in life do we say our dream? And we say, "But God." But God had a different plan to this point.

And in his wisdom, he has given me not the opportunity to have my own kids but to be Aunt Valerie for lots and lots and lots and lots of kids. Actually more than I ever could have had, frankly. And it's such a blessing for me personally to have a unique relationship with these kids that I get to have, one that their parents don't necessarily get to have with them because I'm not their mom or dad. And I have been grateful to God for that opportunity. And I know it still hurts, and you may be saying, "Well, that's great, Val. You've got all those friends' kids, but they're not yours." And they've offered them to me occasionally in life, but no. They're not mine, and I get that. I'm not crazy. I know they're not mine, but I'm telling you, I could choose in that situation to wallow in the pain, to wallow in the fact that they're not mine, or I could choose to wallow in the daily grace that God's given me and these 30-plus kids that are in my life. And I'm telling you, I choose grace.

If I'm going to wallow in something, I'm going to wallow in keeping graces that I see every day that God does. And so I want to encourage you, because I know it's not just some women who feel awkward today. There's people in here who feel pain because there's an unmet expectation in life. There's an unmet dream, and there's an unmet hope. And I want to encourage you to choose to wallow in the daily keeping graces of God, because I promise you the will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you. Thank you.

Thank you, Val. There's a mom in heaven right now who's very proud. Connie Webb. We are, too. Well, good morning. My name is Mark. This is my brother Paul. We're here together to prove that there are actually two of us. It's actually three, but he's in prison. I'm just kidding. We're also here to tell you what we learned about God from our mom. And it's this. It's that God loves us just the way we are. And too much to leave us that way. And you know, along these lines, our mom really had her work cut out for her.

Yeah, check out these photos. Here's Mark. Typically looking dapper. He's content, composed. Paul, on the other hand, is insane. Or completely checked out, as he is here. Now here again, we're some kind of family photo. Now here's Christmas. You see, Mark is content. He's grateful for Christmas, enjoying the cousins. But me? I'm overtly off in some la-la land picking my head. What's going on here? You're mentally gone. Yeah, I mean, are you detecting a pattern here while I was typically cool and composed? I admittedly was very discontent and very angry. So I want you to guess which one of us was prone to fist fights and shoplifting beer. He was.

Now it's true. How many of you remember the Piggies Market and Aptos? The real kill drive across from Deer Park, yes. Mark and I grew up in the neighborhood, through the forest near there. We would come up in the summer when the back door was open. We'd enter in, and right there in the cooler was the big two quart bottles of Schlitz malt liquor. We'd get Schlitz... I don't even know if they still make that anymore. We'd get cigarettes, sometimes cherry flavored cigars, candy, and we'd make our way back out the door, down the ravine, into the forest, and enjoy the spoils. All at the tender age of maybe, what, ten and six? We don't want to glorify that. The point is, Mom knew that we were into some serious mischief, so she made it her mission in life to bring out the best in us. And she did that by communicating this godly, positive vision for our lives.

Now seriously, it actually reminds me of the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians. He says, writing from the top, he says, you know, even though you may be my most unruly, immature church, he says this, to the church of God, in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy. That word "sanctified" he puts in there, it means to be called out, set apart for special purposes for God. Holy purposes. But if you've ever read Corinthians, you figure out very quickly, they are anything but living holy lives. And so the Apostle Paul, he has to see them for so much more than they are in the moment. And he's convinced that God has this great future for them, and really Mom was exactly the same way, despite all evidence to the contrary, I might add.

Now with me, she would challenge me. I had a chip on my shoulder. I was demanding. I was always pressing for my way. I was, okay, I was obnoxious. And she had to put up with that, because I wanted things my way, and she had to guide it a different way. Yeah. You know how a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, here's what Paul is talking about. Check out the look on his face here. I think this is like Easter Sunday. You know, I had to share a bedroom with that kid. In fact, Paul, do you remember when you actually challenged Mom to a fight?

Oh, yeah, just last week. No, it was actually then. No, it's true. Now, our father had taught us how to box, but it was Mom who actually agreed to a fight. It was one of those days I was furious with her yet again. And I said, "That's it? I challenge you to a fight. Come on!" And so she, I think, thinking this was a game, you know, kind of put her fists up, and we began to bob and weave and shake and jive and all that. And I got even more angry because being so much taller than, she had the reach advantage, she was just gently tapping me on the shoulders and on the cheeks like this. And I wasn't getting any points on her, so I just flew off the handle and just lost all composure, trying to just land these big haymakers. And finally she realized, "This is not what I thought. This is not a game. This is serious, and this is going to get us on Dr. Phil." So she executed. She went from boxing to mixed martial arts and put me down on the ground.

I remember she sat on me like this, and she said, "Paul, this will be the last fight we will ever have, and you will never, ever, ever take a swing at me or another woman again. Do you understand?" And even though I was ashamed and defeat, and I wanted to keep fighting something, honestly, I remember to this day something from the Holy Spirit through her came alive in me and said, "It's not right to do this." And I was just one in a series of lessons and challenges she gave me that taught me that Jesus wanted me to serve people with my hands, not demand my way over them with a clenched fist.

Mom's parenting techniques got a little bit more, shall we say, nuanced with me, which was necessary because I was more quiet and outwardly compliant, and yet just as rebellious on the inside. And so Mom's strategy with me was to communicate again this positive vision. One of the things she would say to me often, she'd say, "Mom, I'm so glad that you always tell me the truth." Yeah, "Did I always tell her the truth?" No way! And she knew that! But it was like she was Obi-Wan Kenobi. You always tell the truth. You always tell the truth. And after a while it had an impact. I wanted to live up to her high opinion of me. And so I can remember I was about 18 years old, and I went to a party, and to my shame I drank too much, woke up the next morning with a well-deserved hangover. And Mom notices this, and she says, "Are you sick? Maybe you're coming down with the flu." And I wanted to say, "Yeah." You know, she handed me an alibi right there in the moment, but then the programming took over. "Mark, always tell us the truth. Mark, always tell the truth." So I said, "No. I was drinking last night. I'm sorry."

Now, she could have freaked out. Could have called all the Twin Lakes pastors in a panic. But instead, she simply said, "Well, Mark, you're a smart young man, and I'm sure you will learn from this experience." Just left it at that. Now, I'm not promising some sort of magic formula here, but what I am saying is that if you want to bring out the best, it helps if you actually believe the best. So sometimes Mom challenged us with the ways of Jesus, and other times she inspired us to embrace our better self. So thanks, Mom, and we thank God for you, and we love you. Amen.

How fun. Wow. Well, I don't know about you, but so far the takeaway for me from this has been how sorry I feel for Helen Spurlock. Well, let me land the plane here. One thing I am learning now. I look back on times like this in my childhood. This was right before a music recital. I actually played violin for a while. Then I heard people like Rebecca Jackson and just gave it up. But look at Mom just beaming at me with pride, even though my tuxedo is several sizes too small, and she knows she's in for a torturous music recital. And this was during a visit back to Switzerland in the '70s. I'm rocking my Godspell-like patchwork shirt here, just beautiful. But here's the thing. Treasure these moments because time is so limited.

I went up, just got back last night from visiting Mom and my sister in Oregon. Mom's in the late stages of Alzheimer's now. Most of the time she doesn't recognize me anymore. And take this from me. The time will come when you will want to reminisce with your mom, where you will want to share with your mom, "Here's what I learned about God from you." And you won't be able to anymore. Because time is limited. Quantities are limited when it comes to our time together, all of us. So treasure her. I mean, treasure her more than you do now. Give her hugs. Tell her I love you more. In fact, let me suggest this. Today when you go out with your mom or with your family or with your friends, your mom may be gone. I suggest making this simple question, your conversation starter, this afternoon. What did we learn about God from Mom?

But the biggest lesson I learned about God from Mom was this. A few years ago I was asked to do a funeral for a man here in the church. He was 36 when he passed away. His widow was 34, the exact ages as my mom and my dad when that happened in our family. Their little boy was three and a half. Their little girl was one, exactly the same ages as my sister and I. And so I went for a long walk with Mom and I asked her, "What advice would you give to this woman, this widow, since you walked this path?" Now, Mom already had Alzheimer's, was already finding it hard to speak. And so after I asked her, she stayed silent for so long that I start to wonder if she'd read me, if she'd forgotten my question. And then she looked up and with tears coming down her face, she said, "The Lord will provide. The Lord will provide."

After being widowed twice, losing a lot, struck with a fatal disease herself, suffering in many ways in her life, that was essentially her last word. On the whole life thing, on the whole shooting match, the Lord will provide. And whatever you are going through, don't take it from me, don't even take it from her, take it from God's word. The Bible says after God provided the sacrifice for Abraham, Abraham called that place, what? The Lord will provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided." God will provide in every way. We've talked a lot about our moms and we want to honor our moms, but really ultimate honor is only due to God because He's the one who will provide for you. He will provide for you in every way, including the sacrifice for your salvation. And so let's go to that God right now in prayer. Would you bow your heads with me?

As our heads are bowed, I just want to say this as we prepare our hearts for prayer. Whether you are a stay-at-home mom, a working mom, a single mom, a young, unwed mom, a stepmom, maybe you lost your mom, you're missing your mom, the Lord will provide. The one who can help you through all of that is the one being on earth who loves you even more than a mom could. And He's waiting for you to pray to Him right now. Heavenly Father, thank You for our earthly mothers. Thank You for their love and provision. And Lord, we thank You for Your provision that You love us in motherly ways too, that Your Word says as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings so You long to gather us together. And so God, thank You for that motherlike love from You. And we turn our eyes to You because we know our ultimate hope is really not found in any human but in You, Lord. And so we give You glory in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.